If David Mamet were to pay attention to the climate blogosphere, he might conclude that certain parts of it were stagecraft. And he might write a devilish story along the lines of this masterpiece. Just to be clear: I’m referring not to climate science, but the machinations of assorted players (major and minor) across the spectrum.
So, let’s take a short stroll down memory lane, when we saw headlines like this last summer: Climate Experts Agree: Global Warming Caused Russian Heat Wave Now, let’s hop over (it’s not far, either) to this place, where the owner was upset that the NYT wasn’t connecting the Hell and High Water dots to the…Continue Reading…
Grist’s ace climate writer does some reporting in New York City…well, actually, he pulls a Thomas Friedman and talks to a taxi driver, who then becomes the symbolic Everyman in ace climate writer’s post. (For those not familiar with this device, Thomas Friedman, when parachuting into European capitals or Middle Eastern cities, is fond of…Continue Reading…
Climate blogger Eli Rabett, presumably in response to this recent post of mine, let off some steam at his site. He begins: Kloor, Randy Olson and to an extent Andy Revkin, but a whole lot of other people appear to think that scientists are lousy communicators, and indeed, a whole lot of scientists agree and…Continue Reading…
In a reality-based world, stories like this (and it seems there are a few each week) should act like smelling salts to those who blame climate “deniers” and the media for lack of action on global warming. Here’s The Guardian’s lede: Vast reserves of coal in the far west of China mean it is set to become…Continue Reading…
The latest Congressional climate science hearing should be fun. Well, not as much fun as this. Tom Yulsman has a perspective well worth reading. In keeping with the spirit of my own superficial gloss (Have you noticed yet that I’m a Dennis Potter fan?), I’ll just add this.
Bud Ward has a nice dispatch on the AAAS session I wrote about last month, including this revealing back-and-forth I had wanted to follow up on: Another exchange involving an audience member “” in this case Peter Gleick, the head of the Pacific Institute “” also helped illustrate fundamentally different approaches distinguishing the media and…Continue Reading…
Has Glenn Beck peaked? In his NYT column today, David Carr thinks so and here’s why: The problem with “Glenn Beck” is that it has turned into a serial doomsday machine that’s a bummer to watch. There’s a lesson there for some climate bloggers.
If you had to pick the human influences most responsible for altering the earth, what would they be? Half a century ago, this question was (dispassionately) addressed in a landmark symposium called, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” A 2005 retrospective review of the volume of interdiscplinary scholarship that emerged in 1956 notes that the syposium was…Continue Reading…
Randy Olson, the scientist-turned-filmaker, dares to depart from conventional wisdom among climate advocates, many who would hang the news media in collective effigy over climategate: The media were irrelevant and largely blameless in Climategate. The whole incident was a case study in the absence of effective leadership in both the science and environmental communities. For…Continue Reading…