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…
Not long ago my wife and I went out to dinner at a restaurant with another couple, who, like us, have two boys. The conversation inevitably turned to our kids, school, family stuff. Their older son made the transition this year to junior high school. I asked how this was going. Pretty well, the mother…Continue Reading…
During election years, opinion polls and surveys often drive national media coverage of political candidates. This is derisively known as horse race journalism. It is a style that has carried over to everyday political coverage. “I worry that politics is covered almost like sports at a relentless who’s winning and who’s losing kind of way, who’s…Continue Reading…
And so… after a decade in which Americans are listening to you less and less, these warnings have to get more shrill just to have an impact — which, of course, only undercuts the reputation and credibility of those speaking so shrilly. I know who and what you think this is in reference to. Actually,…Continue Reading…
All you people indifferent to climate change, listen up: Global warming is accumulating in the Earth’s climate system at a rate equivalent to about 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations, 2 Hurricane Sandys, or 4 magnitude 6.0 earthquakes per second. This, according to a new widget created by the folks at Skeptical Science. Such a handy little…Continue Reading…
Sometimes I think the climate debate remains stalled because those who are most concerned refuse to ask the pertinent questions. Instead, they keep refighting old battles that are no longer relevant to a constructive discourse. The latest example is this survey by John Cook et al that is getting a lot of undeserved attention in…Continue Reading…
Last year, in an interview with New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, CJR’s Curtis Brainard asked: There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which media coverage does or does not influence public opinion about climate change and society’s willingness to address the problem. Do journalists matter in this regard? Gillis answered exactly…Continue Reading…
In his big speech earlier this week, President Obama put the American people on notice that he intends to make climate change a centerpiece of his second term. But is the nation with him on that? The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reports: Dealing with global…Continue Reading…
Two long-running debates involving the supposed purity of science have flared anew. A recent editorial in the UK’s New Statesmen that cautioned against the politicizing of science (using climate change as a prime example) kicked up a Twitter storm and has provoked numerous responses, including this one from a science policy expert in the Guardian headlined (probably to the author’s…Continue Reading…
A year ago, I noted that “much reportage and analysis on climate change” was beginning to emphasize the connection between global warming and weather related catastrophes. This emphasis gave rise to a new meme, which Newsweek summarized in the sub-headline of a cover story: In a world of climate change, freak storms are the new normal. To understand just how…Continue Reading…