The climate science community must have let out a collective groan after reading this opening line from Bill McKibben’s Daily Beast column: Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming. If that sounds familiar, then you’ll remember this from Ross Gelbspan six years ago: The hurricane that struck Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday was…Continue Reading…
Fans of smashmouth science communication have not been disappointed by the response to Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent statements on evolution. Richard Dawkins, the brilliant evolutionary biologist who is also famously combative, has slugged away in the Washington Post: There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and…Continue Reading…
[UPDATE: In the comments, Kate Sheppard has responded to this post, saying that I (and William Connolley) have “grossly misconstrued” what she wrote in her Guardian article. Here is my explanation and apology to Kate.] In an article about the nuclear implications of this week’s East Coast earthquake, Kate Sheppard writes: We had a pretty good warning…Continue Reading…
To paraphrase a famous remark used against a certain Democrat in the 2004 Presidential campaign, Mitt Romney was for global warming before he was against it. Romney’s waffling on climate change is sure to reinforce his already well-earned reputation for flip floppery. UPDATE: New York magazine says the waffle is more subtle: It’s not a…Continue Reading…
Evolution, Climate Change, Could Divide the Republican party That’s the headline to Ron Brownstein’s piece at The Atlantic. Like I was saying…
If you hear people talking in environmental debates about “climate-gate” and “Mann’s misconduct,” recognize that what you’re hearing is just like “Obama was born in Kenya.” These people are either passively uninformed or knowingly beyond the reach of fact. And if they can’t be convinced by the National Science Foundation, NOAA, Penn State, and various European…Continue Reading…
Earlier this month, Fox Nation prominently featured a NY Post story, which began: Every day it seems new evidence emerges that the “evidence” for global warming has been exaggerated, manufactured or just plain wrong. Coincidentally, Texas Governor Rick Perry echoed this same theme last week, which was summarily refuted by the Washington Post’s resident factchecker. On…Continue Reading…
So this past week many of us have been feeding at the trough where religion, politics, and science is ground up. It’s not been a pretty sight. In this Poynter article, a truism is observed: [Tom] Yulsman, the Colorado professor, noted that a [Presidential] candidate’s positions on scientific wedge issues tend to serve as a proxy…Continue Reading…
Jon Huntsman’s callout of Texas Governor Rick Perry’s controversial statements on evolution and climate change has garnered much attention and highlighted what Andrew Revkin at Dot Earth calls “the fundamental Republican science problem.” Meanwhile, in a similar vein, but flying under the radar of the national media, another Republican governor has recently said Huntsman-like things about climate change that…Continue Reading…
This one is from the left, and it was laid out last week by Bill McKibben in a Washington Post op-ed, in advance of the climate protests now underway in Washington DC: The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands…Continue Reading…