The issue of special interest/advocacy funding is ever present in the climate change debate. Several months ago, Matthew Nisbet challenged the conventional wisdom that environmental organizations were being vastly outspent by industry-affiliated associations and deep-pocketed conglomerates with an anti-regulatory bent. One of the things that perpetuates the monolithic climate skeptics-are-funded-by-industry meme is the lack of…Continue Reading…
Mainstream libertarians really don’t know how to deal with crazy-ass, anti-government fanatics. The libertarian fall back position is a combination of reflexive sympathy for anyone who distrusts government and a minimization of the threat posed by the curdling of the more zealous, violence-prone militia types. This is evident over at Reason, where one of the…Continue Reading…
Five years ago this September I was fortunate to spend a week with a team of archaeologists who were surveying remote stretches of Utah’s Desolation Canyon. Half the crew set off on the Green River and the other half on horseback, working their way down the Tavaputs Plateau. (I’ll get back to those horse guys in…Continue Reading…
Anthony Watts, the proprietor of the well known climate skeptic blog, WUWT, seems to have a double standard on what constitutes an insult to ethnic groups. Watts is making a big deal out of some recent comments by Timothy Wirth, a former U.S. senator and now the president of the UN Foundation, who reportedly said this…Continue Reading…
A very interesting essay by Andrew Hoffman begins this way: The American debate over climate change turns on two main themes. One is the science of the problem; the other is government measures to fix it. Many believe these themes cover the entire debate. They’re wrong. Far more than science is at play on climate change. At…Continue Reading…
I have a story that just went up on the Science magazine website. I’ll have much more to say about it on my site over the weekend. UPDATE: I didn’t see this editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune until after my story was published in Science. Here’s an excerpt: Puzzling out the real reason why…Continue Reading…
In my critique of the PBS segment on Al Gore’s Rolling Stone essay, I took what, in hindsight, looks to be a cheap shot at AEI’s Ken Green, when I wrote that he was aping Marc Morano’s tactics. Though Green has been an occasional commenter on this site before, I’m not actually familiar with where…Continue Reading…
One reader, in response to my post on the PBS discussion of Al Gore’s Rolling Stone essay, asks me if I have any comment on Gore’s primary critique; namely that the MSM is failing the public on this issue? I thought media bashing and climate change was your bete noire”¦. I do have some thoughts, but…Continue Reading…
Oh, the irony. Yesterday, Rolling Stone magazine posted Al Gore’s 7,000 word essay, which is critical of the media’s (and President Obama’s) handling of climate change. That same day, the highly respected PBS news show hosted a discussion of Gore’s essay. Instead of inviting non-partisan environmental scholars or political scientists to analyze the essay’s premises,…Continue Reading…
Leo Hickman in the Guardian takes stock of some recent encouraging developments and muses: Could peace talks ever end the ‘climate war’? In his article, he wonders, are there any shared goals between the two warring parties in the climate debate worth finding “peace” for? Towards the end, he sums up: When so much of…Continue Reading…