The NY times article or the papers?
There's a lot of documented evidence of ecological shifts over the 20th century due to warming. I don't see where it is dishonest to report that. If they attempt to use these observations to influence policy, then they are stepping out of their scientific bailiwick.
Mark Lynas, a rabid enviro-leftist who once assaulted the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg, with a pie in the face, ran off to China in 2001 to research "drought, duststorms and advancing deserts." He wants to prove that "advancing deserts" result from the American need for "cheap gas." He told me this himself. He went there already armed with the theory, and come hell or high water he is going to prove that "cheap gas" equals "advancing deserts."
Where the weather is concerned, the improvements in instrumentation that allow scientists to make finely calibrated calculations are actually part of the problem. There is a "tea leaf" quality to the calculations that scientists are loathe to admit, except after a few beers in a quiet corner of an off-campus bar. If someone says show me so that I can see it for myself, using only the grossly calibrated instruments with which my consciousness provides me, scientists sniff at the naivete. But really, "show me" is what rational people demand when faced with gloom and doom prognostications. We "show-me" types believe that it is the scientists, gnostic worshippers at the altar of supra-conscious instruments, who overestimate the power and accuracy of their predictions.