That’s the title of a new post I have up at Discover magazine’s website. I’m specifically drilling down into the widespread anti-GMO activism/sentiment within the green movement. As I write at Discover: The big story on this front of late has been the planned act of vandalism on the government-funded Rothamsted research station in the UK. Scientists there are…Continue Reading…
It’s not easy when you stop trusting particular sources of information. It tends to reorder your world. Oftentimes there’s a precipitating event that suddenly puts the source in a different (and unflattering) light. This appears to be the case for John Callender, a birder, computer programmer, and blogger. Callender is an avid consumer of climate media, particularly…Continue Reading…
I have a confession to make. When I shop at a neighborhood foodie store for some organic staples, I sometimes forget to bring the environmentally correct, reusable grocery bags. It’s deliberate. For one thing, it pisses off my wife, a woman who hordes clothing catalogs the way I once collected comic books, and whose online…Continue Reading…
Wired magazine has an interesting interview with biologist and science entrepreneur Craig Venter, who, as Wikipedia describes, is most famous for his role in being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for his role in creating the first cell with a synthetic genome in 2010. The discussion is wide-ranging. At one point, Venter…Continue Reading…
Some time ago, a mischievous person who works in the environmental/science communication sphere brought something to my attention: Laurie David, the producer of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth documentary, apparently became bored with global warming activism and moved on to a new cause. Nobody says that green activists should remain tethered to one particular issue….Continue Reading…
In the run-up to next month’s Rio Earth Summit, we’re going to see a steady stream of bad news about the global environment. When that happens, let’s hope that some of our respectable media do more than regurgitate NGO press releases and talking points. Alas, the Guardian shows us what not to do in this…Continue Reading…
Two seemingly disparate events this week underscore major shifts in the climate discourse–at least in the U.S. One is the defeat of Senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary. The other is this NYT op-ed from NASA climate scientist James Hansen. What’s the connection? Well, each, in its own way, illustrate the newly established…Continue Reading…
When a questionable story gets rolling and takes on a life of its own, you can usually count on journalists to check it out thoroughly. Not that debunking it necessarily puts an end to the matter, as we discovered with President Obama’s birth certificate and the global warming hoax cooked up by thousands of scientists….Continue Reading…
Some of you may be familiar with Portlandia. If not, here’s how the Oregonian describes the satirical IFC show: It’s a comic portrayal showing a town populated by compulsively organic foodies who interrogate their restaurant server on every detail of the chicken they’re about to order; aggressive bicycle commuters; humorless proprietors of feminist bookstores; and…Continue Reading…
Bud Ward, the editor of the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, weighs in on the Heartland billboard furor: What stands out amidst the initial widespread revulsion is that the criticisms of Heartland’s effort came not only by the usual cadre of what climate skeptics dismissively call “warmists,” but also by those ideologically…Continue Reading…