Getting Hooked on Sustainability
Steve Jobs got us attached to our gadgets. Some suggest that a similar bond needs to happen with sustainability. I explore this theme over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media.
Posts Under ‘climate change’ Category
Why Climate Uncertainty is Cause for Concern
At Forbes, William Pentland explores the “fat tail” of climate change and concludes: Uncertainty is intrinsic to complex systems like Earth’s climate, but in the context of catastrophic climate change, this uncertainty is so severe that it is difficult to draw basic conclusions about how fat the fat tail is. According to [Harvard University’s Martin]…Continue Reading…
Climate Dissent
When Al Gore said last week that scientists now have “clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year,” my heart sank. That would be the heart of Myles Allen, an author of this recent paper. His sentiment is candidly expressed in this Guardian piece published…Continue Reading…
The Climate War Meme
In a column published today, a scholar challenges the legitimacy of the climate security frame and suggests it is distracting from the real climate concerns that need to be addressed. But before I get to that, some quick background. In recent months, a flurry of highly publicized papers have explicitly linked climate change to war…Continue Reading…
R.I.P. Australia
The headline of this long feature in Rolling Stone suggests an epitaph: Climate Change and the End of Australia I’m generally a fan of Jeff Goodell’s work, but everything I find frustrating about the climate debate is on display in this paragraph: In the past year ““ one of the hottest on record ““ extreme…Continue Reading…
Give up Gadgets and Big Screen TVs? Get Real.
According to the Guardian, a UK report finds that despite householders’ efforts to switch to energy-efficient products, we are actually consuming more energy than five years ago, with almost a third of all the UK’s carbon emissions coming from the home. Hmm, where have I heard about this phenomena before? As highlighted in the Guardian’s subhead,…Continue Reading…
Morano's Faux Indignation
A typical day in Moranoland includes cynical, misleading headlines such as this: A sad day in journalism: NYT’s Andrew Revkin promotes word ‘denier’ in global warming debate Here is the supposed offending Dot Earth post, which discusses a recently published chart depicting a nexus of organized opposition to climate change. Of course, Morano’s faux indignation…Continue Reading…
GOP Faces Schism Over Climate Change
It turns out that some leading moderate Republicans are chafing at the “anti-science” label being affixed to their party. The National Journal has the story: Between 2005 and 2010, prominent moderate Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and John Warner of Virginia (now retired) were among Washington’s leading voices in the call…Continue Reading…
The Climate Funny Bone
At the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I survey the landscape beyond mind-deadening gloom and doom.
About That Anti-Climate Change Spike in the U.S.
On Sunday, a longish AP article appeared, with this headline: The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why? The reporter, Charles Hanley, takes stock of the hardening U.S. attitudes on climate change, including the sharp divergence between Democrats and Republicans. But Hanley seems to conflate the reasons for this state of affairs. Charlie Petit at The…Continue Reading…