Gelbspan, exposed oil and gas company efforts to deny global warming, dies at 84

Ross Gelbspan, an investigative journalist whose climate change reporting exposed a campaign of disinformation by oil and gas companies, has died at the age of 84.

Trip Gabriel of the New York Times reports, “In a second book, ‘Boiling Point’ (2004), Mr. Gelbspan was tough on his own profession, accusing reporters of laziness in falling for the ‘manufactured denial’ of the fossil fuel industry.

“Many journalists, he said, were undermined by their ethic of even-handedness, which added false balance to stories that reflexively included climate skeptics.

“‘For many years, the press accorded the same weight to the ‘skeptics’ as it did to mainstream scientists,’ he wrote. ‘The issue of balance is not relevant when the focus of a story is factual. In this case, what is known about the climate comes from the largest and most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific collaboration in history.'”

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