A recent article in Slate carried this headline: If You Don’t accept Climate Change is Real, You’re Not a Sceptic. You’re a Denier. I’ll return to its claim in a minute. The piece, by Arizona State University professor Lawrence Krauss, ruefully notes that the term “climate skeptic” is frequently used in the media as a…Continue Reading…
Last year, the late night talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel added some levity to the contentious GMO debate. He went to a Los Angeles farmers market and asked passerby to define GMO. The responses were hilarious and perhaps revealing. Of course, this was a comedy skit, so make what you will of the ignorance…Continue Reading…
With climate change commanding the news spotlight, dominating environmental discourse, you don’t hear much anymore about biodiversity or endangered species, two interconnected issues which, until the last decade or so, had been a focus of many environmental campaigners and widespread media coverage. A case in point: In recent years, the conservation community has been at…Continue Reading…
Last summer I was at a party where the guests included a bunch of successful heart surgeons. I spoke at length with one of them (I’ll refer to him as Dr. X) who has known and sometimes worked with Dr. Oz at New York-Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan. Dr. X is in his 40s. He told me Oz had…Continue Reading…
This tweet caught my eye: Prof Joachim Schellnhuber, at @PIK_climate: “Stabilizing the climate and combating poverty is largely the same thing” #COP20Lima — Damian Carrington (@dpcarrington) November 28, 2014 A greater elaboration on this statement by Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, can be read here. It starts out this…Continue Reading…
Now that the Republicans control Congress for the next two years, what’s in store for U.S. climate politics? Well, Keystone is the first order of business, and then probably a whole lot of bombast and theater, which many will find unappetizing: Most vocal climate change skeptic in the Senate now runs the Senate’s environmental committee:…Continue Reading…
In her last big superlative GMO story, New York Times reporter Amy Harmon wrote: Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s…Continue Reading…
In the early 1970s, leading environmental scientists and writers argued that curtailing economic growth was necessary to save human civilization from eco-collapse. The material needs of society were exhausting the planet’s resources. The worrying trends were laid out in a hugely influential 1972 report and best-selling book entitled, “The Limits to Growth.” Its authors concluded (page…Continue Reading…
This week NPR asks: When can a big storm or drought be blamed on climate change? If you have been nodding in approval to everything that Bill McKibben and his fellow climate concerned advocates say on this subject, then you already have your answer. And if you are familiar with the “new normal” meme, which I…Continue Reading…
Of the all the famous names associated with climate change, there are two I would love to see headlined in a debate–against each other. Both of these individuals believe global warming presents an existential threat, both believe Big Green is part of the problem, and both offer a radically different path to decarbonization of the…Continue Reading…