The Climate Funny Bone
At the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I survey the landscape beyond mind-deadening gloom and doom.
Author Archive
Ecocide on the Docket
So the idea here is to make the burning of fossil fuels equivalent to genocide, which means the CEO’s of oil & gas companies would be the equivalent to war criminals. Some UK group I never heard of is behind this. They will succeed in generating headlines. And bringing scorn to their cause.
How Low Will Ken Green Go?
Ken Green, the conservative AEI scholar who has been sparring with liberal science writer Chris Mooney over which political party is more anti-science, keeps digging himself a bigger hole. Yesterday, I called attention to the loaded language Green used to describe his political opponents. I also wasn’t very impressed with his sourcing. Via Twitter, Green…Continue Reading…
An Elegy for Greece
There is nobody I know in journalism who is more modest than Joanna Kakassis, who I got to know several years ago when we were both fellows at the University of Colorado, in Boulder. Since then, Joanna has been filing incredible stories from around the world, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and her native Greece. Joanna’s latest…Continue Reading…
When the Ideologue Gets Ugly and Shrill
You are what you eat, and you are what you say. Or put another way, the kind of person you are is revealed by the language and terms you use to characterize those whose politics or policies you disagree with. Ken Green tells me everything I need to know about him here, of which this…Continue Reading…
Science Journo Transformation Underway
A media scholar surveys an emerging science journalism trend: The dominant way of thinking about the role of science journalists historically was to view them as translators, or transmitters, of information. Now, however, a powerful metaphor for understanding their work as science critics is to see them as cartographers and guides, mapping scientific knowledge for readers, showing…Continue Reading…
Wedges: The Sequel
In his 2010 book, The Climate Fix, Roger Pielke Jr. writes: The view that decarbonization of the global economy is a political problem and not a technological problem has been strongly influenced by a 2004 analysis by two Princeton researchers, Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow, that was published in Science. The analysis is often referred…Continue Reading…
Eco-Metaphors
They capture our imagination. They help frame public discourse on important issues. Just one problem: some of our most famous eco-metaphors have not held up to the test of time. At the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I suggest that some of the more popular ones stick around past their expiration date. Have…Continue Reading…
About That Anti-Climate Change Spike in the U.S.
On Sunday, a longish AP article appeared, with this headline: The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why? The reporter, Charles Hanley, takes stock of the hardening U.S. attitudes on climate change, including the sharp divergence between Democrats and Republicans. But Hanley seems to conflate the reasons for this state of affairs. Charlie Petit at The…Continue Reading…
When the Crazies Make You Look Gutless
On that latest bit of ugliness to rear its head at a Republican Presidential candidate debate, a James Fallows reader writes: I think the booing encapsulates what the Republican party we could once vote for now represents to moderate independents like myself: – A few people loudly proclaim repugnant (or in other cases nonsensical) things….Continue Reading…