Grist’s ace climate writer does some reporting in New York City…well, actually, he pulls a Thomas Friedman and talks to a taxi driver, who then becomes the symbolic Everyman in ace climate writer’s post. (For those not familiar with this device, Thomas Friedman, when parachuting into European capitals or Middle Eastern cities, is fond of…Continue Reading…
Climate blogger Eli Rabett, presumably in response to this recent post of mine, let off some steam at his site. He begins: Kloor, Randy Olson and to an extent Andy Revkin, but a whole lot of other people appear to think that scientists are lousy communicators, and indeed, a whole lot of scientists agree and…Continue Reading…
Those who pine for an idealized form (and era) of journalism that never existed (and never will), which would transform a nation of Snooki fans into a rationalist, scientifically literate citizenry, are going to looove this new article by James Fallows in the April issue of the Atlantic. At his media blog, Romenesko captures one…Continue Reading…
Bud Ward has a nice dispatch on the AAAS session I wrote about last month, including this revealing back-and-forth I had wanted to follow up on: Another exchange involving an audience member “” in this case Peter Gleick, the head of the Pacific Institute “” also helped illustrate fundamentally different approaches distinguishing the media and…Continue Reading…
This NYT exposé on lax regulation of the booming natural gas industry is a must read, but the paper of record is very late to the party. And the author of the piece, Ian Urbina, is fairly ungenerous in his acknowledgment of that fact when he notes, one quarter of the way into his story,…Continue Reading…
Freeman Dyson and Steve Connor, the science editor of The Independent, had a long email conversation that neither found very satisfying.
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…
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…
So I’m at the annual AAAS conference and the first session I attended Friday morning was called “Why climate Scientists are from Mars and Science Reporters are from Venus.” I made that up. The thrust of the session mostly focused on the state of science journalism in the rapidly changing digital media landscape. But in…Continue Reading…
A few days ago, House Republicans held their first hearing on climate science. Actually, as John Broder reported in the NYT, the ostensible purpose of the hearing was to review the economic impact of pending limits on carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. But much of the discussion focused instead on whether climate science supports…Continue Reading…