During election years, opinion polls and surveys often drive national media coverage of political candidates. This is derisively known as horse race journalism. It is a style that has carried over to everyday political coverage. “I worry that politics is covered almost like sports at a relentless who’s winning and who’s losing kind of way, who’s…Continue Reading…
Over a year ago I wrote a piece for Slate entitled, “GMO opponents are the climate skeptics of the left.” I pointed out that, when it came to biotechnology, certain environmentalists and supposed food safety advocates acted similar to those who denied the scientific consensus on global warming. Mark Lynas recently tweeted a good example of…Continue Reading…
And so… after a decade in which Americans are listening to you less and less, these warnings have to get more shrill just to have an impact — which, of course, only undercuts the reputation and credibility of those speaking so shrilly. I know who and what you think this is in reference to. Actually,…Continue Reading…
In a 2010 editorial, the journal Nature told embattled climate scientists to wise up and “acknowledge that they are in street fight” with their nastiest detractors. At the time, this seemed like a reasonable admonition, since climate scientists were indeed under siege following an illicit disclosure of emails that put the climate science community in an unfavorable light….Continue Reading…
In a world where everything from revolutions to extreme weather events is attributed (in some way) to global warming, it is helpful when a body of diverse experts come together to review and discuss what we currently know about the impacts of climate change. So the report issued yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences is…Continue Reading…
All you people indifferent to climate change, listen up: Global warming is accumulating in the Earth’s climate system at a rate equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations, 2 Hurricane Sandys, or 4 magnitude 6.0 earthquakes per second. This, according to a new widget created by the folks at Skeptical Science. Such a handy little…Continue Reading…
When China makes international news these days, it’s often because of its densely polluted air. The public health aspect of this story is usually front and center, while the global warming angle is somewhat muted. Still, there’s no getting around the climate implications of China’s reliance on coal. There are signs that China is trying to…Continue Reading…
By now, the pattern is pretty well established. If there is a famine, drought, catastrophic flood, wildfire, a major hurricane or typhoon, then you can be sure that trailing behind these disasters, like ambulance chasers, is a brigade of climate-concerned activists, scientists and their enablers in the media. And trailing behind them is an Anthony…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, in a Forbes article repurposed at the Chicago Tribune, a Heartland Institute staffer (who was not identified as such by the Tribune) wrote that, we should thank global warming for making hurricanes less frequent and less severe. Indeed, Hurricane Sandy may well have been much more deadly in the absence of global warming. This led…Continue Reading…
In the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, I have a piece on Bjørn Lomborg, who, as I write, shot to fame in 2001 with his first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, a broad critique of the environmental movement that infuriated many ecologists and greens. The notoriety transformed the little-known Danish statistician into a globe-trotting public intellectual. Since then,…Continue Reading…