I’d like you to read two statements. Here’s the first: The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in…Continue Reading…
Like every parent, I want my two young boys to be resilient to life’s vicissitudes, everything from the slings and arrows on the school playground to the randomness of illnesses and tragedies. I want them to develop the capacity to bounce back from sudden shocks and hard knocks. So along with a father’s love and…Continue Reading…
Yesterday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now devoted her program to a discussion on California’s Proposition 37, a voter initiative that, if passed on November 6, would mandate the labeling of many foods in the state’s grocery stores (restaurants are exempted) if they contained genetically modified ingredients. One of the guests on the program was Michael Pollan,…Continue Reading…
Every energy source comes with its own set of problems that give rise to a passionate opposition. In the United States today, we see it with shale gas and the anti-fracking movement. In Britain, Australia and other countries where wind farms have proliferated across rural landscapes, we see fierce anti-wind campaigns gaining strength. Like gas…Continue Reading…
Earlier this year, you might recall a pair of essays I wrote challenging green dogma. They were published at Discover’s website. The first was called “The Limits to Environmentalism” and the second, “Is Environmentalism anti-science?” This is a theme I’ve explored at Collide-a-Scape which, as one conservative reader has noticed, “provokes less than friendly responses from…Continue Reading…
When it comes to media coverage of climate change, we still see occasional charges of “false balance,” despite the problem having been pretty much eradicated, as AP reporter Seth Borenstein pointed out during a panel discussion in 2011. That said, a legitimate example did occur last month when PBS inexplicably turned to Anthony Watts as a…Continue Reading…
The debate over climate change is well known for excesses on all sides. Those who claim that the issue is a hoax actually have a lot in common with those who see climate change in every weather extreme. The logic behind such tactics is apparently that a sufficiently scared public will support the political program…Continue Reading…
A blogger at Daily Kos rewinds back to the 1988 vice presidential debate and discovers that a question about global warming was posed to Dan Quayle about the the “Greenhouse Effect”: I guess that’s what they called it back then, before Global Warming and Climate Change became popular…There was no, do you think it is…Continue Reading…
At Slate, I have a short post that begins: The debate over genetically modified foods operates between two gradients: carnivalesque and politicized pseudoscience. I have some fun poking a stick at Bill Maher. I guess that makes me the David to his Goliath. Oh well. Enjoy.
We seem to be having a run of splashy, peer-reviewed GMO (genetically modified organism) studies that are of questionable merit. Several weeks ago, a team of French researchers published results that linked cancerous tumors in rats to the GM corn they were fed. But many scientists cast doubt on the study’s legitimacy almost immediately, and…Continue Reading…