If there is anyone out there who still believes that a lack of knowledge of climate science (e.g., the deficit model) prevents people from grasping the consequences of global warming, raise your hand. Now read this passage from the abstract of a recent study: The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public…Continue Reading…
An intellectually bankrupt, marginalized social movement with an expired shelf life is at a crossroads. (Metaphor mix alert!) On Saturday, a Guardian article asked: Has the green movement lost its way? True, we have heard this tune before. This time, however, there is mounting evidence that more charter members of the club are at last recognizing that…Continue Reading…
Is Mark Lynas, the author of Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, downgrading global warming in his hiearchy of environmental concerns? In a recent post, he writes that biodiversity may well qualify as a more important planetary boundary even than climate change itself. By way of reminder, the “planetary boundary” concept was laid…Continue Reading…
The issue of special interest/advocacy funding is ever present in the climate change debate. Several months ago, Matthew Nisbet challenged the conventional wisdom that environmental organizations were being vastly outspent by industry-affiliated associations and deep-pocketed conglomerates with an anti-regulatory bent. One of the things that perpetuates the monolithic climate skeptics-are-funded-by-industry meme is the lack of…Continue Reading…
Anthony Watts, the proprietor of the well known climate skeptic blog, WUWT, seems to have a double standard on what constitutes an insult to ethnic groups. Watts is making a big deal out of some recent comments by Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. senator and now the president of the UN Foundation, who reportedly said this…Continue Reading…
A very interesting essay by Andrew Hoffman begins this way: The American debate over climate change turns on two main themes. One is the science of the problem; the other is government measures to fix it. Many believe these themes cover the entire debate. They’re wrong. Far more than science is at play on climate change. At…Continue Reading…
In my critique of the PBS segment on Al Gore’s Rolling Stone essay, I took what, in hindsight, looks to be a cheap shot at AEI’s Ken Green, when I wrote that he was aping Marc Morano’s tactics. Though Green has been an occasional commenter on this site before, I’m not actually familiar with where…Continue Reading…
One reader, in response to my post on the PBS discussion of Al Gore’s Rolling Stone essay, asks me if I have any comment on Gore’s primary critique; namely that the MSM is failing the public on this issue? I thought media bashing and climate change was your bete noire”¦. I do have some thoughts, but…Continue Reading…
Oh, the irony. Yesterday, Rolling Stone magazine posted Al Gore’s 7,000 word essay, which is critical of the media’s (and President Obama’s) handling of climate change. That same day, the highly respected PBS news show hosted a discussion of Gore’s essay. Instead of inviting non-partisan environmental scholars or political scientists to analyze the essay’s premises,…Continue Reading…
Leo Hickman in the Guardian takes stock of some recent encouraging developments and muses: Could peace talks ever end the ‘climate war’? In his article, he wonders, are there any shared goals between the two warring parties in the climate debate worth finding “peace” for? Towards the end, he sums up: When so much of…Continue Reading…