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What happens when the media becomes vested in a certain perspective in an issue? Over the last few years, just as natural gas became plentiful because of massive discoveries of shale gas, the narrative from some of the most radical environmentalists, and journalists who echo the hard-left line, has shifted from “natural gas is a great bridge to alternative energy sources” to “natural gas is dirtier than coal.”

So earlier this year when researchers Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea at Cornell University released a letter based on their unpublished research—not peer reviewed—suggesting that shale gas might be worse for global warming than coal, it was hyped by the New York Times and widely picked up. Many analysts, from experts from energy firms and even unlikely places such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Natural Resources Defense Council poked holes in the study, but their comments got little play.

This deafening silence was repeated again earlier this month when scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, in a study partly funded by the Sierra Club, concluded just the opposite, in concert with the mainstream scientific view: shale gas, in this case derived from the huge Marcellus Formation which lies under New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, has significantly less impact on global warming than coal.

“Marcellus shale gas emits 50 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than any US coal-fired plant,” said study co-author Chris Hendrickson. John Hanger, the former head of Pennsylvania’s environmental agency during the prior Democratic administration, wrote on his blog that the study “debunks and decimates professor Howarth’s hit piece study that the NYT gas reporter and other media gave so much attention.”

Hanger is referring to the much-maligned series of reports attacking natural gas fracking (the process used to extract gas from shale) by embattled New York Times reporter, Ian Urbina, whose work has been rebuked on two separate occasions by the Times’ public editor, Arthur Brisbane.

But Urbina is at it again. In an article published earlier this month, he dredged up a 27-year old incident, claiming that hydraulic fracturing fluids contaminated a well in West Virginia. That would seem to conflict with comments from the industry, and even EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who said in May, “I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

Even if Urbina is correct, that’s one known incident out of more than one million wells hydraulically fractured in the history of the industry. But as Forbes’s contributor and University of Houston professor Michael Economides wrote yesterday, the cause of that one instance remains unclear, which is why organizations that track fracking, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, still maintain there have been no contamination incidents.

Even worse, Economides writes, Urbina falsely accuses industry representatives of trying to prevent a 1987 EPA report that cited this West Virginia case from circulating, when in fact the case was sealed, as is common in legal settlements. All in all, he says, more questionable reporting, particularly by the Times, and more misleading fodder for anti-fracking environmental activists and policy-makers.

Jon Entine is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University and STATS, and is a visiting fellow at AEI.

With a post-Kyoto agreement looking increasingly unlikely to come out of the Copenhagen climate summit, environmentalists are regrouping and debating the best strategy for promoting greenhouse gas reductions. A consensus on the Left has emerged around a cap-and-trade formula, which is already in place in Europe and is being considered in the U.S. Congress. But the economic impact of cap-and-trade is a wild card and it has its skeptics across the ideological spectrum.

Most liberal analysts claim the European scheme is flawed but getting better, while many conservatives blast it for being both inefficient and for not reducing carbon emissions. Just recently, Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute testified before the Senate Finance Committee and noted that cap-and-trade tries but fails to cap carbon emissions. Instead, it “caps economic growth.” Many conservatives argue for a carbon tax, claiming it is more cost-certain, which businesses crave. Liberal skeptics believe some conservatives disingenuously support carbon taxes as a way to throw a wrench into congressional debate and ultimately undermine support for carbon reduction legislation.

In recent weeks, the controversy has taken a new turn, as critics on the Right gained allies from the Left. While most environmental groups (ENGOs) are rallying for a worldwide cap-and-trade system, some aggressive ENGOs, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, have long made the case that carbon offsets are a boondoggle that would not help the environment very much. Now the iconoclastic duo, joined also by Public Citizen, has launched a new attack, spearheaded by a report by Friends of the Earth titled “A Dangerous Obsession.” According to FoE, cap-and-trade has not produced sweeping results because of rampant corruption and inefficiency inherent within the system. It claims carbon trading schemes are allowing speculators to grow rich but are not delivering the emissions cuts promised.

The trade in carbon permits and credits, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126 billion in 2008 and is predicted to balloon to $3.1 trillion by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off. But instead of being a trade between polluting industries, says FoE, it has become one dominated by banks and speculators making big profits. It’s feeding a carbon bubble, FoE says, that when popped could rival the economic damage brought on by the sub-prime mortgage debacle. FoE and Greenpeace continue to push for a carbon tax, although it differs in structure from one advanced by many conservatives.

The renewed attack on cap-and-trade was greeted with glee by gum-up-the-works conservatives at The Wall Street Journal and on Capitol Hill. But the truly interesting response has been the defensiveness of the Left, which has been struggling to hold its cap-and-trade coalition together. The liberal site TreeHugger dismisses FoE’s claim, citing a study authored by liberal NGO economists and released by the German Marshall Fund that the trading systems in Europe have led to annual carbon reductions of 2.5 percent to 5 percent with the “carbon market now worth 56 billion U.S. dollars.”

Patrick Birley from the European Climate Exchange jumped into the fray, calling the report “misguided,” and accusing FoE of demonstrating a loose grasp of financial markets by relating carbon trading to complex sub-prime trading. “Carbon trading is a very simple trading tool much like trading in oil or gas,” he said. He pointed out that carbon trading is merely a tool to achieve carbon caps set by governments.

The fierce contretemps further dampens congressional prospects for a cap-and-trade system and leaves the Left in the position of fighting itself at the very moment it needs to close ranks behind a bill, any bill, that could get to the president’s desk.

AEI intern Moon Doh contributed research assistance for this post.