Longtime Boston Globe editor Ross Gelbspan has been riding high since April, when Addison-Wesley published his book The Heat Is On: The High Stakes Battle Over Earth's Threatened Climate. Gelbspan's publisher claims that oil and coal interests have been "paying off scientists to pose as 'greenhouse skeptics,' employing political lobbyists, proliferating propaganda materials, and distorting and suppressing the mounting evidence of impending climactic [sic] disaster."
Who is Gelbspan to make such sweeping claims of fraud? Well, for one thing, he's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, according to his book's dust-jacket. Leftie interest groups -- Greenpeace, Fenton Communications -- have been quick to cite these Pulitzer credentials in touting the book's conclusions. The New York Times alluded to them, too. Gelbspan's own personal bio brags that he has "won a number of awards, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. " What did Gelbspan win his Pulitzer for?
Nothing, it turns out. Gelbspan has never been awarded a Pulitzer. He was one of the editors of a 1984 Globe series on race relations -- for which the paper did get a Pulitzer -- but Gelbspan was not one of the seven journalists the awards committee named. His claims of a Pulitzer turn out to be methane in a dangerously high concentration.