Andrew Freedman of the WaPo’s Capital Weather Gang nicely captures my philosophy: I’ve never been a fan of absolutes. People who espouse rigid beliefs – be they about climate change, religion, or politics (or a mix of all three) – instinctively make me question their evidence. As a reporter, I tend to see things in…Continue Reading…
Best spring training baseball story. Which sort of reminded me of one of my all-time favorite TV shows.
The evolution of Judith Curry, the outspoken Georgia Tech climate scientist, continues. Her emergence in the last few years as a persistent critic of the climate science community can be marked by distinct stages. At first, in the immediate aftermath of Climategate, Curry’s critiques focused on “climate tribalism” and “transparency” issues. By April of 2010,…Continue Reading…
A few weeks ago, I mused that the American Southwest may be on borrowed time. Forget that. The Southwest is toast. A new paper in Nature spells doom. From the abstract: The potential for increased drought frequency and severity linked to anthropogenic climate change in the semi-arid regions of the southwestern United States is a…Continue Reading…
I hadn’t paid much attention to the nifty online current events encyclopedia being built at the NYT until I read this post. The “topics pages” strike me as quite useful for casual readers seeking additional context and information on subjects covered in Times news stories and blog posts. For example, today’s NYT profile of Kenneth…Continue Reading…
The Guardian is the latest outlet to take a fresh look at long-held popular assumptions on energy efficiency. Their hook is the Breakthrough Institute report released last week. For efficiency advocates, this is surely an acid-reflux inducing headline from the Guardian: Could the rebound effect undermine climate efforts? Speaking of that Breakthrough report, I’m still…Continue Reading…
So what happens when two insufferably smug climate bloggers butt heads over at Climate Progress? It’s a karmic exchange: Eli Rabett says February 21, 2011 at 3:44 pm: As usual, this misses the real point. The current and long term threat to Egyptian agriculture is sea level rise. Egypt is a combination of Chile and…Continue Reading…
With tyrants falling like dominoes (Qaddafi seems next), perhaps it’s time we dreamed up the next reality TV show. Bravo could call it Dictator Island and assemble all the aging, exiled strongmen in villas spread out across one of those nuclear-ravaged atolls in the Pacific. Let the likes of Baby Doc and Mubarak conspire for…Continue Reading…
I suppose this story qualifies as news, in the technical sense: A legally binding accord to combat climate change “is not on the cards” at a December summit, because developing countries such as China, Brazil and India won’t commit to it, according to U.S. negotiator Todd Stern. What follows sounds more like fantasy: With developing…Continue Reading…
Everything you need to know about this AAAS session, called “Why Climate Communication Continues to be Colossal Botch,” can be summed up by this famous 40 second clip: Yes, I made that title up, too, but really, that’s what it was about. Panelist Gavin Schmidt, echoing the sentiments expressed by Kerry Emmanuel in a session…Continue Reading…