I was wondering how the pro-drilling group CARE and its executive director, Marita K. Noon, would react to the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico. Thanks to the Albuquerque Journal, that question has now been answered.

Noon has had a month to watch the beyond-control oil geyser as it pollutes the waters of the gulf, killing spawning fish, shrimp and other wildlife and threatening the coastal economies of several states. This, after the initial explosion killed 11 men.

In a column on the Journal’s Monday Op-Ed page, entitled “Stopping Exploration Costly,” Noon reacts by blasting President Obama for suspending work on 33 other exploratory wells in the Gulf, revoking a proposed lease sale off the coast of Virginia and halting exploration off the coast of Alaska, among other cautionary measures, and then she weighs in with these thoughts:

. . .to halt all exploration and potential new resources is like a frost killing an entire crop in one region. We still have lettuce, for example, but what we can get from other sources — both American and foreign — is suddenly more expensive because there is less to go around and it will be months before the damage to the supply chain can be bolstered. We can keep using it, but it will not be replaced.

The frost is an act of God. The announcement Thursday is from someone who thinks he’s God.

While most people are worried about damage to the environment and the billions of dollars in damage to the fishing industry and tourist economy of the Gulf states – and the potential damages looming as we enter hurricane season – Noon is worried about “damage to the (gas) supply chain.”  I won’t comment on her claim to knowing the president’s thoughts.

While acknowledging that the Deepwater explosion and oil leak is a “disaster of epic proportions,” Noon’s always-helpful suggestions are to offer “prayers” to those affected and rally for “all hands” to “get on deck to help clean up this catastrophic mess and get the population and ecosystems back on their feet.”

She makes it sound so simple.

But she draws the line at proceeding cautiously on further exploration and – heaven forbid – doesn’t even mention that better regulatory oversight and safety requirements might have prevented this disaster and, just as importantly, is needed to prevent future ones.

As executive director of CARE (Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy), Noon’s columns in fact have advocated elimination of New Mexico’s oil and gas regulatory body, the Oil Conservation Division, and elimination of one of New Mexico’s regulatory protection measures, known as the pit rule. Her group continues to claim that regulations are crippling the oil industry.

Yet, in March, the State Land Office reported that oil and gas lease sales during the third quarter generated $20 million in revenue, bringing earnings for the year to $51 million. The Journal Business page story reporting this added:

With three months remaining, the agency says it’s only $6.4 million short of beating the all-time record for lease sale earnings during any fiscal year.

And on May 14, the Journal Business page ran a story headlined, “Controversial Pit Rule Wins Plaudits,” which reported that pit rule regulating disposal of drilling waste, enacted in 2008, “has resulted in zero reports of groundwater contamination from operations permitted under the regulation.” Quoting Oil Conservation Division Director Mark Fesmire, the story said his agency is developing guidelines that will make it easier for producers to understand the regulations and make them less time-consuming and less expensive to follow, but that the rule would not be changed, basically because it’s working to protect the environment, and in turn, public health.

Meanwhile, Noon, who twice in Monday’s article calls the president’s actions to hold off on more drilling “political posturing,” says:

Obama’s political posturing hurts more than it helps.

It hurts, she says, because the actions will result in that ever-present threat – job loss — and for those of you not in the oil industry, something else that “will come as a shock to the pocketbook of every American.”

She is, of course, talking about gas prices:

Just as we head into the summer driving season, gas prices — which before the cessation proclamation had been pleasantly low — are predicted to top those of the summer of 2008.

She adds that:

The disaster itself did not adversely impact prices, as that well was exploratory. It was not yet a part of the fuel supply.

But says halting exploration is like a “frost” . . . well, you’ve read that part already.

Nowhere does she acknowledge the cost BP has incurred in what it will have to pay in reparations and in lost product, as oil continues to gush into the sea.

And what of the loss of lives? Well, Noon seems to think that’s part of the equation and we should honor those “many great Americans (who) have died in their efforts to provide us with all-important energy.” She stops short of calling them “fallen heroes,” but says this:

While the best brains in America are working to increase safety, improve efficiency and discover additional resources, those workers did not die in vain. They are as important to everything that is America as are our troops fighting overseas.

It appears that the Journal runs Noon’s articles as they receive them, without editing, as we’ve noted about the Journal’s handling of columns in general. Monday’s column appears to have received the same lack of treatment, as editors left a “par-for-the-course” phrase in the first paragraph unnecessarily hyphenated, which would have been corrected in a staff-written column.

At this point, even though Noon’s columns have received much negative attention, the Journal almost is obligated to run them. I’m perhaps not the only one who wondered whether CARE would continue to advocate for at-any-cost drilling in light of this disastrous blowout/spill.

To its credit, the Journal did post at the column’s end a description of CARE, calling it an organization “operating from the platform of ‘Energy Makes America Great’ and supporting all domestic energy development.”

I would add, “at any cost.”

It seems almost too easy to criticize the Albuquerque Journal for running yet another Marita K. Noon column, because we’ve pointed out her errors,  simplistic assertions and lack of expert credentials in the past.

But the Journal’s Op-Ed (opposite editorial) page carries her again today, this time with a convoluted essay headlined “Carbon Tax Honest; Cap and Trade Isn’t” (subscription required), which leads with an unsubstantiated anecdote about health care.

I won’t even attempt to sort out her stream of attempted logic, other than to point out some of the column’s myriad unsubstantiated claims. It’s another example of a column thrown at the public without any kind of vetting, fact-checking or even editing.

Some of the assertions from her column:

Those responsible for getting the hospitals paid for the services acknowledge that getting money from the private insurance companies is much easier than from the companies getting funded through government.

Never mind the mangled English, who is saying this? Noon doesn’t say.

How does this connect to cap and trade?

She answers with:

First, understand that cap and trade is a government plan to deal with so-called man-made global warming.

Love that use of “so-called,” and then she asserts:

While the entire climate change issue is challenged due to the acknowledged data forgeries and plummeting public concern over climate, governments are still moving forward with cap and trade plans.

With this sentence, she asserts that the entire issue is challenged, and offers as evidence unsubstantiated “acknowledged” information, this time in the form of “data forgeries”. And then she declares public concern over climate is “plummeting.” If that’s true, why do climate stories run on the news and Op Ed pages nearly every day?

In fact, just the day before, The Sunday Journal ran a column by a Santa Fe writer whose credentials include a post-graduate degree in climate change and carbon management. In it, Mark Giorgetti asserts that a disinformation campaign is being put out by “promoters of the fossil fuel industries and unregulated corporate expansion.” He doesn’t name them, but this is an apt description of CARE, the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy of which Noon is executive director, which claims to support citizens’ rights but is an unabashed supporter of extractive industries like oil and gas.

Unfortunately, the way the Journal packaged Giorgetti’s column can leave the erroneous impression its content comes from yet another climate change naysayer.

The headline, “Climate Controversy a Hoax,” technically is an accurate reflection of Giorgetti’s position (it’s the controversy that’s a hoax, not the science). But those who scan headlines could interpret it to mean climate change is a hoax. And to further cement that impression, the column ran with a cartoon showing a dinosaur holding up a sign that says “Climate Change is a Hoax.” Again, the cartoon actually supports what the column says – the dinosaur who holds up the “hoax” sign is calmly standing while his frightened fellow dinosaurs run to escape the obvious change in their midst: an erupting volcano.

Considering Girogetti’s credentials, his take on global warming deserves to be read, but likely will be dismissed as yet another of the unsubstantiated, agenda-driven opinions the Journal runs with annoying frequency, such as those written by Noon.

Giorgetti makes the case that yes, it does snow even in times of global warming, and says those denying climate change have an agenda – to block movement toward a clean energy economy in order to preserve that of fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, Noon, a so-called expert on climate change, helpfully offers that if there is climate change, “there is nothing humans can do to change what has been going on for millions of years,” so why inconvenience the oil and gas industry with cap and trade and other regulations?

In conclusion, she says cap and trade is nothing more than a tax, so:

. . . support the idea of a carbon tax. It is more honest. And no one wants more taxes.

Simplistic? Yes.

Honest? Not even the Journal seems to know what that means anymore.

Did anyone else find the Albuquerque Journal’s description of the state Environmental Improvement Board as “seven people appointed by a governor” rather jarring?

The description appeared Feb. 20 in an editorial called “Board Overreaching On Global Warming.” The editorial took the position that it “shouldn’t be up to a relatively obscure, appointed board in New Mexico to solve global warming, especially when Congress has yet to decide on how to address that issue nationally.”

The editorial follows a Feb. 7 news story that gives inordinate space to critics of the EIB’s mission generally and each of its current members specifically. I wrote about that story last week. The critics included close Journal allies Terri Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce,  oilman Harvey Yates of the State Republican Party and discredited Journal columnist Marita Noon of the Citizen’s Alliance for Responsible Energy,  all of whom complained that the board is stacked with environmentalists and shouldn’t have the right to help decide the state’s environmental policy.

The news story notes that the EIB is responsible for setting statewide regulations enforced by the Environment Department concerning environmental and consumer protection, and for hearing appeals on department decisions.

At the same time, it poses key issues regarding the EIB’s legitimacy as if they are questions whose answers have yet to be determined. From the story:

Simmering below that debate are questions over whether the kind of sweeping change proposed should be up to duly elected legislators instead of an appointed board, and whether there is an unfair environmentalist tilt to the board.

That’s why I thought it was so interesting that the Journal’s editorial Saturday following up on the news story described the EIB as merely “seven people appointed by the governor.”

It seems to me that completely glosses over what happened last week at the legislature, as the Senate roundly rejected Gov. Richardson’s nomination of Neri Holguin, an environmental advocate and political consultant from Albuquerque.

Clearly, the legislature holds sway over the Environmental Improvement Board – no one gets on there unless legislators say so.

Seems like the Journal is ignoring that fact.

And it seems to me that the Journal has gone ahead and answered all those questions it was asking about the legitimacy and makeup of the EIB, too.

Two fascinating Journal stories on New Mexico’s oil and gas industry recently caught my eye – and two more got my attention only after someone else pointed them out (more on those later).

The first was the Sunday A1 article “New Mexico’s Emissions Battle: Some Question Rule Maker’s Environmental Ties.”

What grabbed me first was the prominent front-page picture of oil and gas industry mouthpiece Marita K. Noon of the Citizen’s Alliance for Responsible Energy. We’ve written about her before and questioned why, with her many misrepresentations and her hackneyed prose, the Journal keeps using her as a featured guest opinion writer.

The Journal story is ostensibly about a lawsuit filed by an environmental group aiming to force the state’s Environmental Improvement Board to adopt tougher standards on greenhouse gas emissions in order to help curb global warming. The article makes clear that the state’s oil and gas producers are diametrically opposed to tougher restrictions, which they say will devastate their industry and the state’s economy.

And then the article essentially devolves into an oil and gas-driven scorecard of each member of the Environmental Improvement Board, with Noon and others saying various members should be disqualified for their association with known environmental groups.

We learn that Noon has a special name for EIB chairman Gregory Green, who is a lobbyist for the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, the New Mexico Audubon and the Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy.

She calls him “Greg Green and his Gang Green.”…aw, isn’t that just hilarious? (At least she didn’t call him a watermelon).

The story later quotes Green shrugging off Noon’s name calling with this: “Unfortunately in some circles, that is the level of debate.”

Indeed.

And the story goes on and on, listing each member and their (gasp) environmentalist ties, accompanied by scathing criticism from the oil and gas industry like Republican State Party Chairman Harvey Yates, Jr. (himself an oilman) and Journal cohort Terri Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce.

I’m confused – isn’t it called the Environmental Improvement Board? Shouldn’t the people on it be concerned about protecting the environment? It’s not called the Promotion of the Oil and Gas Industry Board, is it?

Noon’s name calling brings me to the second article, “Oil, Gas Group Retools Approach.”

It’s all about how the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, with whom Noon works closely, recently fired longtime president Bob Gallagher for, well…we’re not sure. The Journal didn’t get an interview with Gallagher on the subject, instead choosing to repeat “Internet rumor mill” gossip that pressure from the Richardson administration led to his firing (a claim the story admitted that a Richardson spokesperson “ridiculed”).

Also, the article paraphrases Gallagher’s interview with some other paper in which he says he was told he damaged the association’s image so badly he could no longer be effective.

We are pretty sure the gas producers are now looking for someone to speak for the industry who’s not quite as “adversarial” as the famously intense and acerbic Gallagher.

That’s because the story’s final quote comes from John Byrom, an NMOGA member who said he wants the association to build new, more positive relations with regulators, legislators and the new governor: “No more finger-pointing and name-calling.”

So, I can’t help but wonder – how does calling someone Gang Green fit into that?

Finally, I share former state Land Commissioner and former U.S. Bureau of Land Management director Jim Baca’s bemusement on his blog, Only in New Mexico, at the Journal’s juxtaposition of two other oil-and-gas related pieces Sunday  – one a guest op-ed and one a news story.

The guest op-ed was from an oil and gas lobbyist decrying the New Mexico Pit Rule that would require the industry to be responsible for keeping the state’s groundwater clean.

The news story was about, writes Baca: …”the very real possibility of a gigantic sinkhole opening up and swallowing part of Carlsbad because of oil and gas related extraction of brine water from the site. The owner of the company that caused it said it was the state’s fault for not having tougher regulations.”

I could comment further, but do I really need to? The mixed messages here really boggle the mind.

The “To Our readers” note on A-2 of Saturday’s Albuquerque Journal wasn’t kidding when it brightly announced that the Entertainer TV schedule in the day’s paper was sporting a “new look.”

For the first time in its history, the Entertainer cover carried advertising. Three ads bordering two sides made up nearly 45 percent of the cover page.

It was a surprise, but made perfect sense: The Entertainer, after all, isn’t a news tab – its cover ads don’t seem as out of place as those at the bottom of the “sacrosanct” front page – and for advertisers, it’s a promising outlet, as people tend to keep the television guide around the house for week. I was actually thinking how much unsold ad space had been wasted on Entertainer covers of the past.

But I’ve also been wondering this past week: How far will the Journal venture in its search for lifesaving infusions of cash to support its news side?

The impetus for this thought was the appearance of what can only be described as a “life is better with electricity” ad that appeared on the Op-Ed page in the form of a column by renewable-energy critic Marita K. Noon, coupled with the previous week’s appearance of a news story about a drop in oil and gas production and the Journal’s editorial reaction on Dec. 1. Disturbingly, the editorial dovetails with what Noon has advocated in her unenlightened promotions of the extractive industries – that the state and counties should just get rid of those pesky regulations designed to protect citizen health and the environment, water supplies, wildlife and archeology of New Mexico.

I was out of the country when Noon’s “Energy Use Makes Holidays Go ‘Round” appeared, but it was emailed to me and I reacted exactly as my colleague Tracy Dingmann did. Noon’s simplistic essay extolling overuse of electricity as a basic American right was, as Tracy pointed out, a hopelessly outdated throwback. (It took me back: Before I even read Tracy’s post it triggered memories of attending a Reddy Kilowatt cooking class in the summer of 1963. We soon-to-be fifth graders were told – I kid you not – that electric stoves were better than gas because electric heat comes on immediately and quits as soon as the knob is turned off.  I knew better, and was appalled that adults could get away with saying such things.)

I won’t say I’m appalled, but I’m disappointed that the Journal’s editorial board would shrug off health and environment protections for the potential royalties increased oil and gas production might bring to New Mexico.

I say “might” because the major Sunday story by Winthrop Quigley on which the editorial was based acknowledges that part of the reason oil and gas royalties are down is the fact that many New Mexico wells are “mature” and not producing as much. The story (“New Mexico’s Oil, Gas Revenues Shrinking Due To Tougher Regulations, Supply Glut,” Nov. 29),  says the San Juan and Permian Basins still have reserves, according to geologists. But there are no guarantees.

In its editorial entitled “State Needs Revenue From Oil and Gas”, the Journal notes that oil production has dropped and says:

Not surprisingly, state regulators and the industry disagree on what’s causing the drop.

Producers say an unfriendly business climate in New Mexico has helped drive them to other states. New state environmental regulations on drilling-site waste disposal and the intrusion of county governments into the permit process have made it easy for them to take their money — and jobs — elsewhere.

What’s interesting is that the editorial writer follows this by lifting a line from the news story, then changing its attribution, apparently to further widen the he said/she said gap between producers vs. regulators. The editorial version of the line is:

Regulators say (emphasis added) the more likely reasons for the decline are a global glut of natural gas, a decline in oil and gas prices and fields in New Mexico that have less oil and gas to recover than in other places.

But the news story attributed those reasons to “experts” on both sides of the aisle, an important distinction the editorial chose to ignore. Here’s the line from the news story:

Experts agree New Mexico’s oil and gas industry is also suffering from a global glut of natural gas, weaker prices and oil and gas fields that are less productive than some other places.

Ignoring weaker prices and tapped-out fields, the editorial’s simplistic conclusion is that:

Not much can be done about a worldwide glut, but a reputation as a bad place to do business will only drive investors away.

State leaders and the industry need to work to implement reasonable regulations that take cost of business into account. That’s just dealing with reality.

Trouble is, the Journal is ignoring another reality, the ones regulators address when they come up with rules to protect the rich archeological resources of Galisteo Basin, as Santa Fe County did, and when they (in this case, the state) introduce “pit rules,” the main culprit cited in Quigley’s article as driving producers to other states.

As he is a Journal Business Writer, Quigley approached his story from a business angle and did not get into the intricacies of the “pit rules”, other than to say they regulate the disposal of drilling waste.

But as a former Journal Environment Writer who covered this issue, I’ve seen first-hand the reality regulators face in dealing with drilling waste. Past regulatory laxity has left New Mexico a legacy of contamination one could characterize as the equivalent of a massive oil spill – one that’s on land instead of the sea. Nearly every pump jack in New Mexico is situated next to a brine pit that routinely draws unwitting migratory birds to their deaths (they think it’s potable water). Expanses of rangeland grasses contaminated by brine look scorched, as if by a fire. Ask any rancher who shares a land lease with a driller; it’s rarely a copacetic relationship. The threat to the state’s underground aquifers is always a concern. (To read the 14 pages of pit rules, visit the Oil Conservation Division Web site and click on “Current Rules, PDF format,” then scroll down the pdf file to Part 17 PITS, CLOSED-LOOP SYSTEMS, BELOW-GRADE TANKS AND SUMPS under Chapter 15 Oil and Gas.)

The oil and gas industry is using a budget crisis as an excuse to gut regulation. And the Journal is buying into it.

Which takes me back to Noon’s latest column on the joys of energy consumption. The column was an ad – pure and simple.  If a public relations agency had had such luck in having a piece like that printed, it would consider it a coup – the kind of advertising money can’t buy. Or can it?

In my experience, a newspaper normally would be embarrassed to run an advertorial on an opinion page and allow itself to be so used, even if it has decided to cheerlead the industry editorially.

Considering this, and considering the Journal’s financial straits, one might be led to wonder whether the Journal was paid by Noon’s pro-extractive industries organization, CARE, to run the brightly titled “Energy Use Makes Holidays Go ‘Round.” Or to wonder if the paper might have promised (wink, wink) to run Noon’s columns with the understanding the oil and gas producers would take out full-page Journal ads. (Have you noticed those full-page ads?)

Several years ago, a now-defunct New Mexico periodical operated that way – it would run a story about a business if the owners would take out an ad – and this was looked upon with disfavor by traditional journalists.

I’m not saying this is what the Journal has done. But sadly, it has opened the door to that impression.

I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the simplistic editorial about energy by frequent guest commentator Marita K. Noon in Monday’s Albuquerque Journal.

I understand that, as head of the energy trade booster group Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, Noon’s “Energy Use Makes Holiday’s Go Round” (subscription required) is supposed to make a point about how omnipresent energy is in all of our lives – especially at the holidays.

But extolling the uniquely American right to gorge oneself on twinkly lights, gas guzzlers, packed stores, heated blankets, electric knives, hot plates, dishwashers and flat screen televisions is a curious way to do it.

Is it just me, or are Noon’s unquestioning visions about unbounded, unlimited energy use a tiny bit…dated?  Her column reads like it was ripped from a 1950’s Home Economics textbook – or a TV ad (see below).

From the piece:

Once the meal is ready, many people use an electric knife to cut the meat and a hot plate to keep things warm while the final preparations are made. Both need energy.

AND:

In most homes, while the men watch the game, the women clean up. The dishwasher makes it so much easier. And the hot water coming straight from the tap is expected. Once again, energy.

If you are a regular Journal reader and think this kind of message sounds familiar, you should.

That’s because Noon’s pro-energy take is heartily endorsed by Paul Gessing, executive director of the libertarian think tank The Rio Grande Foundation.

Gessing also just happens to sit on the CARE board of directors (scroll down).

Not a week goes by without Gessing or another representative of this right-wing group weighing in on the Journal’s editorial pages or as sources in news stories.

Gessing himself linked to Noon’s piece in the Journal today on the Rio Grande Foundation blog “Errors of Enchantment.” I’m wondering whether Journal readers need to starting thinking of Noon, who appears regularly on the Journal’s editorial page (despite being discredited elsewhere), as yet another RGF appendage.

And finally, I’m confused. I thought the Journal’s editorial page only runs pieces that haven’t run elsewhere – with exceptions made for prestigious publications like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Noon’s very same “Give Thanks for Energy” piece ran on the local blog “Eye On Albuquerque.”

Not exactly the New York Times.

So what gives, Albuquerque Journal?

(VIDEO POSTSCRIPT: “Every day’s a holiday with Hotpoint”. Ahh, the good old days. Thanks to energy, life for busy homemakers like Harriet Nelson sure was easy. So can anyone guess who the dancing girl is?)

To piggyback on Tracy’s latest post just before this one:

This morning’s Mountain View Telegraph (sister paper to the Journal) carries yet another Marita Noon column, this one entitled “Climate Change Is Obama’s Iraq.”

The Telegraph is running her column with eyes wide open. In other words, it is well aware of the problems with her columns: On August 27, it ran a Noon column (“Energy Wrongfully Blamed[”) after that same column was pulled from Heath Hausseman’s nmpolitics.net and the Farmington Daily Times .

Reacting to criticism about running that already-discredited column, the Telegraph ran on Sept. 17 “Many Errors Found in Column,”  a response piece by New Mexico Wildlife Federation Director Jeremy Vesbach. At the end of his piece, Vesbach wrote, and – to its credit — the Telegraph printed:

I appreciate the opportunity provided by Telegraph Editor (Rory) McClannahan to present the facts on where NMWF stands on the San Juan River.

However, I also feel obligated to warn Telegraph readers that McClannahan said flatly that he is not interested in fact-checking opinion pieces and does not always print corrections or retractions for verifiably false information that appears on the Telegraph opinion page. This isn’t the way most news organizations work, and I believe this lackadaisical approach is a disservice to readers. But until something changes, Telegraph readers should realize that it is apparently up to us to fact-check opinion pieces we read in the Telegraph.

Having once been in the situation of finding columns and sorting through letters to fill the space on the editorial pages of the Mountain View Telegraph and the zoned editions of the Journal (the Rio Rancho and West Side), I have to say I understand McClannahan’s point that there is little time to fact-check the items that come in. And, believe it or not, it’s often difficult to get columns to put on those pages. When I had time, I would call presidents of neighborhood associations and other involved citizens asking them to write about what was going on in their part of the community so I wouldn’t be caught short on deadline day. And sometimes that was like pulling teeth and I’d still be scrambling to fill the space.

That said, I would be hard-pressed to use a column by someone who has been problematic.

On deadline, lacking anything else to run, one might consider running such a columnist only in conjunction with some clear disclaimers about the writer’s background.

Which brings me to my point: If the Telegraph is going to continue running Noon’s columns (as it obviously has decided to do), it should write its own end-note describing the columnist’s background.

The end-graph as it now routinely is run (or not) describes the Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy (CARE), of which Noon is executive director, as an advocate for “citizens rights to energy freedom.” What the heck is a citizen’s right to energy freedom?

At the least, those words should be put in quotes. Better still, instead of this squishy description crafted for general audiences, the Telegraph should lift from CARE’s Web site the words it uses when addressing its member audience, which are that:

. . . Marita has moved CARE toward specifically advocating for oil, gas, nuclear and coal. . .

Caveat emptor.

This letter to the editor that appeared in Wednesday’s Albuquerque Journal is so interesting, I’m just going to reproduce it in full here.
The letter, from Journal reader Terry Goldman of Los Alamos, ran under the headline “Energy Claim Doesn’t Add Up:”

Marita K. Noon either made a serious writing error in her column, “Target Redundant Costs First to Trim State Budget,” (subscription required)  or else she needs a substantive remedial course in elementary mathematics.
She quotes Oil Conservation Director Mark Fesmire as “sputtering” that “… the OCD annual budget was only about 4 percent of the state’s budget problems (emphasis added).” Earlier in the column, however, she elevated this amount to 4 percent of the state’s entire budget, claiming that eliminating the duplication represented by the OCD would reduce the need to cut the state budget by 10 percent to a cut of only 6 percent. If the quote of Fesmire is accurate, the savings amount to 4 percent of 10 percent, otherwise known as 0.4% of the total state budget.
While this is not to be ignored, and while we are all undoubtedly sympathetic to eliminating duplication in government (although I don’t favor dumping state costs on counties) and while it is clear that her organization (Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy) has much to gain by eliminating state oversight of oil and gas regulation in favor of more easily manipulated local governments, Noon does neither her organization nor her argument any good with what is either a blatant misrepresentation of the facts or an astounding display of mathematical ignorance.
On the contrary, she leaves the impression that none of her or CARE’s arguments should be considered accurate or trustworthy, let alone viewed as having been considered carefully and without bias.
TERRY GOLDMAN
Los Alamos

Hmm. That’s not the first time Noon, an oil and gas industry booster who the Journal features regularly as a guest columnist on its editorial page, has been shot down for making factual errors. We’ve written about it here and here.

Differences of opinion are one thing – but out and out errors made by a writer are another.

When is the Journal going to get the message?

The Journal’s done it again.

The Albuquerque Journal ran on today’s Op-Ed page a column by discredited columnist Marita K. Noon. This one’s entitled, “Target Redundant Costs First To Trim State Budget (subscription required).”

If you’re not familiar with Noon, you won’t get much help from the Journal in learning more about her. All that accompanied this column was the identifier under her byline, which said: “Executive Director, CARE.”

Which might make you think it was written by someone from the international humanitarian group, CARE.

No, it’s not that one.

This “CARE” is a New Mexico pro-energy group, Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy, the Web site of which says this about Noon:

Since wind and solar are the darlings of the energy world, Marita has moved CARE toward specifically advocating for oil, gas, nuclear and coal and has pushed CARE onto a national platform.

Why is this important? Because Noon’s column in today’s Journal advocates elimination of the Oil Conservation Division – the state group created by the State Legislature to manage and regulate oil and gas development in New Mexico.

Her point is that the state could start tackling the yeoman’s task of cutting the state budget by eliminating redundancy. It’s hard for anyone to argue with that, but she’s saying the OCD is redundant because a few counties have tried to impose even more rigorous rules on the oil and gas industry.

The way Noon puts it, these counties are “usurping the authority given to the division” and therefore there’s no reason to have an OCD. Yet, truth be told, counties are hiring consultants and creating their own regulations because they don’t think the OCD is doing enough to protect their interests, not because they would rather being doing the job themselves.

But Noon cheerfully suggests that by taking over the OCD’s duties, counties will have to hire more people, which she says is a “win-win” because that will create county jobs. “Certainly ‘job creation’ has become a buzzword,” she helpfully adds.

The Journal has done its readers a grave disservice by failing to run an explanatory bio on Noon at the end of this column.

The editors probably didn’t have the space, but interestingly, all they would have had to do to make enough room would have been to edit out some of the redundancy in her column.

But frankly, considering her track record as a columnist and the flawed logic of this anti-regulatory piece, it shouldn’t have been run at all.

The director of a New Mexico sportsmen’s group says he is having no luck getting a correction issued for an erroneous column that recently ran in the Mountain View Telegraph.

On Aug. 27, the Telegraph ran an guest opinion column on its editorial page that had previously been taken down from two other online news sources – one a blog, one a newspaper site – for inaccurate information. (see ABQJournalWatch, Sept. 2, 2009)

The column, purportedly about the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s positions regarding whether oil and gas drilling had affected fishing on the San Juan River, was written by Marita K. Noon, who has previously (and since) enjoyed prominent placement on the editorial pages of both the Mountain View Telegraph and its parent paper, the Albuquerque Journal. According to her column bio, Noon is the executive director of the Citizen Alliance for Responsible Energy, or CARE, whose members include New Mexico oil and gas producers.

Jeremy Vesbach is executive director of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a statewide group of “conservation-minded sportsmen” that was founded in 1914 by famed conservationist Aldo Leopold.

In an interview this week, Vesbach said he asked the editor of the Telegraph for a correction, but was rebuffed. Vesbach also said he was told that the paper “is not interested” in fact-checking the guest columns it runs.

Vesbach said he was told he is welcome to submit his own column for possible publication in the Telegraph.

The editor of the Telegraph did not respond to an email from ABQJournalWatch requesting comment on this story.

“I think its pretty clear that there is no policy of verifying information on the editorial page. No fact-checking,” said Vesbach.  “They ought to develop a policy for what to do when verifiably false information appears in the paper. And it would be nice to know that the same standard applies to everyone.”

Vesbach said much of Noon’s column was based on material contained in the Spring 2009 edition of the NMWF publication, The Outdoor Reporter.

In comparing the column and the publication, Vesbach is able to point out several outright errors.

I’ve looked at both the column and the publication.

From a journalist standpoint, perhaps the most dishonest part comes when Noon skips over 45 words to create a statement that expresses a very different sentiment from the one written in the NMWF publication.

Compare this line from Noon’s column, including her use of ellipsis marks (Boldface added for emphasis):

Later (page 8), a photo caption addresses “Sediment from Rex Smith Wash has been pouring into the San Juan River… from… oil and gas development.“

To this cutline in The Outdoor Reporter from which it was taken. (Non-bolded text indicates what was omitted by Noon):

Sediment from Rex Smith Wash has been pouring into the San Juan River near Navajo Dam after the state Division of Parks built the berm on the right to protect a parking lot.  Many anglers are hoping the state and federal agencies that control development along the San Juan will do more in the future to reduce sedimentation from both natural and man-made sources, such as oil and gas development.

Now that’s just not right.

In addition to being perplexed at the lack of concern from the Telegraph, Vesbach said he’s disappointed that Noon apparently keeps peddling a piece that she knows is dishonest.

Vesbach said he has sent letters to the editorial page editors of a number of New Mexico newspapers to warn them about the piece, but isn’t sure he can reach them all.

“It seems clear that she’s going to keep pushing it,” Vesbach said. “All it’s going to do is discredit her with these publications.”