There’s no question about it: science reigns supreme today. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that we collectively take empirical evidence more seriously than we used to. What it means is that science has become increasingly debased, just another partisan tool that an increasing number of people take no more seriously than advertising claims about who has…Continue Reading…
It’s a rainy, gray day in NYC. My older son (second grade) reports that in school today, a classmate told him that “God is crying” when it rains. Naturally, I said this was true. I mean, we’re doing the whole tooth fairy thing, so what’s the harm. Okay, seriously, instead of crying myself, I came…Continue Reading…
This CJR story by Dean Starkman is being widely disseminated and discussed in journalism circles. Here’s what it’s about: No one reading this magazine needs to be told that we have crossed over into a new era. Industrial-age journalism has failed, we are told, and even if it hasn’t failed, it is over. Newspaper company stocks…Continue Reading…
Of all the rhetorical excesses associated with the climate debate, I find the overt Nazi/fascist/Holocaust allusions the most offensive. Both sides are guilty. Christopher Monckton, the darling of climate skeptics, has become notorious for his Hitler references and use of swastika imagery. It almost seems like a tic he can’t shake. In a similar vein,…Continue Reading…
I’m not sure whether Naomi Klein’s big cover story in The Nation qualifies as a stink bomb or as the kind of straight talk that will help cut through all the posturing and subtext in the climate debate. But I do know that its thesis will be devilishly seized on by one of the camps….Continue Reading…
Ben Smith at Politico has picked up on something that speaks to why the (temporarily) successful anti-Keystone pipeline protest is meaningful to the climate debate. Smith noticed this: Whatever the objectives of protesters involved in Occupy Wall Street, they have succeeded in engaging the country in a conversation about income inequality. A quick search of…Continue Reading…
Yesterday’s announcement by the Obama Administration to postpone a final decision on the Keystone pipeline until after the 20012 Presidential has triggered much chatter and insta-analysis. There are two smart takes worth pointing out. The first is this NYT op-ed by Michael Levi, a climate and energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, which…Continue Reading…
The report issued this week by the International Energy Agency (IEA) made a splash in the climate blogosphere and in some big-time media outlets like the Guardian, which ran a story with this headline: World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns That got me thinking of James Hansen’s
In recent days, Richard Tol, an economist and “climate polymath,” has been battling Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry. It started when Curry spotlighted some questionable research (two journal papers) on her blog, which contained statistical analysis that Tol initially called “sloppy.” He said the work was “published in minor journals, so that these papers…Continue Reading…
Six months ago, I would have said no. Now, I’m thinking there’s a good chance it may. I lay out the rationale over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. Also appearing today at the Yale Forum is Sara Peach’s meaty piece on the GOP’s dramatically changed stance on global warming. A…Continue Reading…