If we really want to lick this global warming problem, then we need to be scared straight, says an Australian ethics professor: There is a view we should not scare people because it makes them go down their burrows and close the door but I think the situation is so serious that although people are…Continue Reading…
The flip side of climate change coverage is energy. CJR offers a prescription for how to revitalize the beat. Broadly speaking, the authors argue: if energy news is to engage and inform the decisions of politicians, industry executives, and the public, the media must think more strategically about what they cover, how they cover it,…Continue Reading…
If there’s a major flood in the headlines, you can bet Joe Romm is on the scene, milking the drama and tragedy for all it’s worth. Does it matter that he’s not even consistent? Here’s how he first classifies the Georgia flooding: I have called this type of rapid deluge, “global warming type” record rainfull.”…Continue Reading…
That’s how Oxford economist Dieter Helm describes global efforts to stem greenhouse gas emissions, in a brutally candid interview with Nature. Warning! The contents of his interview are for mature audiences only. For example, wind power advocates might want to close their eyes during this part: What exactly will windmills across Europe do to address…Continue Reading…
The tragedy of Kenya’s latest drought is captured in all its complexity by Jeffrey Gettleman. His deeply contextual story won’t lend itself to climate advocates who’d probably like nothing better than to tag it as another cautionary tale of global warming. As Gettleman explains, The aid community here has been predicting a disaster for months,…Continue Reading…
The ironies abound in this otherwise poignant story about one elderly woman’s solitary crusade to raise awareness of global warming. She also learns firsthand the core reason why it’s such a tough sell: Mostly people think it is a problem, but mostly they think it will not impact them anytime soon.
This is a seductive analogy: If astronomers spotted a huge asteroid with a 99.9 probability of hitting the Earth in 100 years, should we ignore it until we’re 100.0% certain of its trajectory? The only problem is that scientists can’t predict what the worst impacts of global warming will be in 2109. I think the…Continue Reading…
So CAP’s chief global warming propagandist and attack dog will be lecturing on”messaging” next month. I can hardly wait. And here I thought all along that Romm was leading by example with those endless Memos to the Media, nasty hominem attacks, and repetitive self-referencing to his own previous blog posts. There was a recent deceptively…Continue Reading…
This manifesto published recently at Grist seeks to rewrite the climate activist playbook. Why do I feel it’s the prelude to a larger internecine struggle within the environmental movement? Because there’s this growing belief among environmentalists that reversing the buildup of greenhouse gases is beyond our collective political, policy, and technical means. Forget about re-framing…Continue Reading…
Via The Wildlife Society blog, we learn of a new study that shows birds in Australia are shrinking because of warmer temperatures. Of course, there’s always a silver lining: Scientists commenting on the study said this was both good news and bad. It was “alarming”, they said, that global warming may be causing evolutionary change, but…Continue Reading…