Population has long been the third rail of environmental discourse. So while a lot of people are rightly incredulous at Rush Limbaugh’s ugly rant against Andy Revkin’s suggestion that people should perhaps be rewarded for having less children, I can’t say that I’m all that shocked by it. Really. First of all, this is Limbaugh…Continue Reading…
That’s the name of a new twice-weekly feature that I just started writing for Nature’s great blog, Climate Feedback. My first post appeared yesterday, and you can look for them regularly on Tuesdays and Fridays in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference. The posts will survey topical storylines and noteworthy news of the week related…Continue Reading…
Over my cornflakes this morning I was mulling this comment by Deltoid’s Tim Lambert, which he left in response to my criticism yesterday of Joe Romm, who is on the hot seat for claiming It is exceedingly common in regular journalism to ask people for a quote that makes a very specific point “” I’ve…Continue Reading…
After being caught feeding a scientist a quote, Joe Romm impugns my profession with this rationalization (emphasis added): It is exceedingly common in regular journalism to ask people for a quote that makes a very specific point “” I’ve been asked many times by reporters to do similar things. I’ve never done this during my…Continue Reading…
Michael Tobis is to be applauded for being open to the idea of geoengineering, but he’s delusional if he thinks the climate activist community is also open to it. In my post yesterday, I argued that, for climate activists, any discussion of climate adaptation is an unwelcome distraction from the debate at hand on mitigation….Continue Reading…
More proof that environmentalists can’t chew gum and talk about climate adaptation at the same time comes in this post from David Roberts at Grist. The cognitive dissonance from this crowd continues to amaze me. As we learned earlier this year, the carbon load already in the atmosphere is projected to lead to irreversible climate…Continue Reading…
I have an upcoming story in the Nov/Dec issue of Archaeology magazine that will perhaps generate some controversy among Southwestern archaeologists. (It’s called “Who were the Anasazi?”) The piece explores Navajo claims to ancient Puebloan sites in Chaco Canyon and other famous prehistoric ruins in the Four Corners region. My story also discusses a wealth…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of a fantastic piece by Chris Turner in the October issue of The Walrus, a Canadian magazine. He turns the typical environmental tale of crisis on its head, suggesting that, We need a new kind of story, a new template for our ecological philosophy “” one that acknowledges what we have lost…Continue Reading…
Do leading Democrats and enviros want a climate change bill so bad that they are being snookered by Republicans? Absolutely, argues Roger Pielke, Jr: The take over of climate policy by the Republican agenda is the most over-looked aspect of this entire debate. Perhaps those covering the horse race can’t see the forest for the…Continue Reading…
That’s the title of today’s column by John Fleck over at the Albuquerque Journal. What I really like about this piece is that the focus is on ecosystem services, which to me, seems firmer ground to build this concept on, rather than the climate security link. Via Fleck, we learn that a federal laboratory is…Continue Reading…