Behind the TimesSelect wall, New York Times business columnist Joe Nocera had this to say Saturday about the absurdities lately flung around Left Blogistan:

Some of the accusations hurled at Exxon Mobil are ridiculous � the �bribery� allegation turned out to be an effort by two American Enterprise Institute scholars to solicit articles from a range of global warming experts for a book they were putting together. They were paying $10,000 an article. (And Exxon Mobil, which contributes a minuscule portion of the group�s budget, knew nothing about the book until the accusations showed up in the papers.)

Meanwhile, at the prominent environmentalist magazine Grist, David Roberts and Andrew Dessler have written an account of the controversy that, while anything but uncritical of AEI, also firmly rejects the "sensationalist" approach of the Guardian story, "rich with insinuation", which "presented a highly charged interpretation as fact".