Journalist-turned-self-acknowledged activist Ross Gelbspan turns up the heat - to high - on global warming and in particular on those "skeptics" of whom he is unsparingly skeptical concerning their doubts about climate change science.

The author of The Heat Is On (1997), the former Boston Globe reporter Gelbspan, in his new book Boiling Point blisters politicians, big oil and coal and, TA-TA!, the media for what he sees as their role in making a bad situation - make that VERY BAD - much worse.

With the fine eye and writing style of a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team, which the new book touts on its cover, Gelbspan takes no prisoners. None.

The August release of Boiling Point, published by Basic Books, comprehensively pulls together much of the science on climate change that has published during the past seven years or so, much of it lending increased credence to scientific concerns over the climate change. Those reporters - you know who you are - who may have largely slept through this issue during that time would do well to begin here as part of an effort to come up to speed.

Gelbspan makes clear his conviction that climate change is far more than "just another issue" and, indeed, that it goes well beyond being merely an environmental issue. He lays out the case that it is an expansive and all-encompassing economic, energy, political and, perhaps above all else, moral issue.

"We are living on an increasingly precarious margin of stability," he implores, describing how "we have set in motion massive systems of the planet (with huge amounts of inertia) that have kept it relatively hospitable for the last 10,000 years."

As have others, he calls for something akin to a Marshall Plan level-of-effort to accomplish what he hopes isn't too late to reverse these suicidal trends. Gelbspan appears to somewhat relish the attacks that are likely to come from the "skeptics" whom he and others accuse of being in the deep pockets of high-carbon interests. He likely won't have to wait long.

On the book's cover, in his preface and in recent talks, Gelbspan seems almost to enjoy his critics having focused on his earlier claims to a Pulitzer while an editor with the Globe. While acknowledging those criticisms as "quite hurtful," he allows that he "was privately pleased." He says his coal and oil industry critics couldn't refute his reporting in The Heat is On and instead had to resort to character assassination.

He explains in the preface to the new book that he had "conceived and edited" the Globe series on systematic job discrimination against African Americans, "helped select the reporters, directed the reporting, and edited the articles." The Globe’s editor and publisher chose him to receive the Pulitzer on behalf of the paper, and included his photo and bio along with those of other team members under the headline "Pulitzer Prize Winners." He's posted that and other related information on his website.

That may not be the only place where some critics will try to fault him. In his new book, his rhetoric rises, for instance, in his "Criminals Against Humanity" chapter, which he opens with an admittedly bizarre quote from Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Ok), not often considered among the Senate's heavy lifters.

"Nothing has further alienated the United States from the rest of the world than the Bush administration's dismissal of global climate change," Gelbspan writes.

Nothing? Nothing at all? Written and released in the aftermath of the Iraq War controversies, that unqualified claim at a minimum is open to serious question, even if the underlying science behind humans' influence on climate change may no longer be.

"With the 2000 presidential election, however, the fossil fuel lobby won a victory beyond its wildest dreams," he continues. "What began as an industry campaign of deception and information was adopted as presidential strategy."

Bad Press

Lots of what Gelbspan writes in Boiling Point may be familiar to those who have followed the climate change issue carefully during the past decade. And much of it has been published previously in a hundreds of different papers, newsletters, and journals.

That is not to take away from the extensive research effort in gathering this information in one place and in presenting it in a readily accessible and highly readable way.

But it is Gelbspan's reporting on the role of the media where he may offer the most interesting news and information, certainly that of most interest to the audience of this newsletter.

Again, Gelbspan takes no prisoners when it comes to sparing the media the lash of his tongue and judgment. He finds American news organizations at best, missing-in-action, and at worst, complicit.

"The U.S. press has basically played the role of unwitting accomplice by consistently minimizing this story, if not burying it from public view altogether," Gelbspan writes.

Saying it is political reporting, not the science or environmental beat, that provides a career path to being a top editor, he accuses the media of doing "a deplorable job in disseminating" decade-old scientific information of human impacts on climate "and all its implications." He says US newspaper coverage suffers by comparison with Western Europe.

Why? Gelbspan points to "the campaign of disinformation perpetrated by big coal and big oil" but also, and perhaps more importantly, to reporters' own myopia.

"Were journalists to look beyond short-term political implications, their reporting would bring home how profoundly out of step the United States is relative to the rest of the world," he writes.

He also faults journalists for "laziness" committed "in the name of journalistic balance" and distinguishes the ethic of seeking balance in the case of opinion from those cases "when it's a question of fact."

"When it's a question of fact, it's up to a reporter to dig into a story and find out what the facts are. The issue of balance is not relevant when the focus of a story is factual." He advises journalists to pursue "the time-honored use of background conversations with scientists" to separate wheat and chaff, rather than merely to resort to some artificial "balance."

To Gelbspan, journalists underplaying the climate change story are doing more than simply short-changing their audiences on a critically important issue, they're short-changing themselves and their own careers.

"To sidestep this story is to deprive oneself of an extraordinary professional challenge. This is an immense drama. Its outcome is very much in doubt. The dramas embedded in the climate crisis offer by far the most important and exciting stories any reporter could ever want to work on.

"The conflicts are there. They are just waiting to be written," he writes.

And, one might add, broadcast.

Reporters on the environmental, science or any other beat would do well to invest a few hours or so of the enjoyable reading it takes to cover Gelbspan's many years of research and writing.