Mystery solved. Recall the controversy, noted on Planet Gore, over numerous reporters quoting former president Bill Clinton as acknowledging the findings of a study that exposed Spain’s “green jobs” debacle (Spain, of course, has long been cited by President Obama as a green-jobs model for us to follow — cited as a model, that is, until the mythology was exposed.)

As I wrote at the time, “President Clinton was reported in El Mundo this weekend as admitting that Dr. Gabriel Calzada’s study out of Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University shows that ‘green jobs’ programs have actually cost Spain many jobs.” However, a WSJ blogger who had already gone a little overboard in expressing hostility to Calzada’s study weighed in. He did more than bury the lead, he actually elevating a parenthetical beyond all reason, reversing the import of Clinton’s remarks by reporting them in mock horror at the reporters who (unlike him) were present as “the former president said exactly the opposite” of “acknowledg[ing] that Spain’s clean-energy push has cost the country a lot of jobs”.

I’ve obtained the audio of Clinton’s talk — which the university hosting him has still refused to release to the public, incidentally — and it’s clear: The message that Clinton actually stated, then about ten minutes later repeated, was ok, that’s what that study found, and you’re going to deal with that — punctuated with a fairly timeless Clintonistic allusion to an authoritative explanation that he could offer but, well, we’ll just move on . . . to — but if you young people want to stop global warming, knowing it’s expensive . . . well you have to find a way to make this agenda work.

The water-carrying by the WSJ blog notwithstanding, that’s not quite “exactly the opposite of” acknowledging the findings. The attending reporters got it right, as even the Spanish government has admitted, for Heaven’s sake.*

A particular Spanish economist notes how this recalls Engels famously pulling (see pp. 5-6, hilarious given the above) a similar dodge when, after Böhm-Bawerk intellectually pantsed a key theory and premise of Das Kapital, Engels told Team Red’s masses hey, we know why that’s wrong, and we could tell you, but, er, we want the masses to work through the issue and come tell us your answer and we’ll tell you if you got it right. There are other playground variations on this rhetorical flourish but, given the speaker here, this goes down as my favorite.

Here is Clinton’s intervention in pertinent part (minute 27, after in the previous minute acknowledging that the green jobs/climate agenda means a harder life for them):

So, if we live in an unsustainable time we have to find the way to produce and consume energy differently in a way that does not bankrupt the economy. Lot of controversy in Spain now. You have become, you know, one of the three leading countries in the world in virtually every clean energy category: second behind Germany in the production and employment of solar energy thanks to solar thermal as well as well photovoltaics, third behind the United States and Germany in the sheer volume of wind energy generated, and now you have got a study that says that your commitment to clean energy, I saw it in the press today, has cost you twice as many jobs as it gained you — I do not agree with that by the way, and I can, uh, if anybody wants to know why I will tell you why I do not agree with it — but the point is you have to ask yourself you young people if you want to avoid global warming and you want Spain and Europe and the World to continue to grow, knowing that it’s expensive to change the way you produce and consume energy, well, what are you going to do about that?

(And at 36:17):

So now there is a study as I said earlier there is a study that you are going to have to deal with in Spain, somebody says oh this commitment to solar and wind energy is costing you twice as many jobs as is giving you because you have to subsidize it too much. Well all I know is that we have to go to a future where we change the way we produce and consume energy. So you should be asking yourself: how can we create the largest number of jobs while we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?

Not that it’s not true, but I hear that and you’ve got to figure out your way out of the problem because we have to.

There are a few other relevant passages none of which support the blogged claim to having discovered a truth not available to reporters attending the talk. Our WSJ correspondent seems to have again simply reprinted what the greens fumed, with a result that is something less than accurate. Worse, it comes in the form of imputing the scribbler’s own (and/or received) beliefs or preferences to a figure of authority as an apparent way to make his own point.

None of which makes the case for the “green jobs” agenda any more credible. In fact, you might comment that it says exactly the opposite.

* Spain’s government acknowledged the study’s findings in a subsequent Royal Decree, reading in pertinent part as follows and as detailed in Prof. Calzada’s House testimony from earlier in the year:

The reality of renewable energy economics has forced the Spanish government to admit some of our findings at the introduction to the Royal Decree of April the 30th 2009 where it stated that the rate deficit, manly caused by the feed-in-tariff system to support renewable energies, “is deeply harming the system and puts at risk not only the financial situation of the electric sector companies´ but also sustainability of the system itself. This disadjustment turns out to be unsustainable and has grave consequences since it deteriorates the security and financial capacity of the investments necessary for providing electricity at the levels of quality and security the Spanish society demands.”