HuffPo’s minky in-house science blogger talks GMOs with a plant geneticist. (Hey, you don’t title your show/column”Talk nerdy to me” if you look like Ann Ramsey in Throw Momma from the Train.) The scientist who was interviewed says the science blogger knows her stuff. I agree. I watched it about 12 times. Then I moved on…Continue Reading…
Nearly a year ago, I wrote that the “new normal” for climate communication and much reportage and analysis implies a connectivity between global warming and weather-related catastrophes. Well, that was then. Courtesy of James Hansen, we’ve entered new terrain in the climate debate. What that looks like at the moment is the subject of a post by me that just went up at Discover.
A war on drugs whose objective is to eradicate the drug market “” to stop drugs from arriving in the United States and stop Americans from swallowing, smoking, inhaling or injecting them “” is a war that cannot be won. This is a statement that should surprise no one. It comes at the end of…Continue Reading…
In a 2006 NYT op-ed, environment writer Gregg Easterbrook pronounced: based on the data I’m now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert. In 2011, in an essay titled, “Confessions of a Climate Change Convert,” conservative blogger D. R. Tucker said: I was defeated by facts. While others have made similar conversions over the last…Continue Reading…
If you follow climate-concerned bloggers and tweeters, as I do, you probably have noticed there is frequent mention of weather that implies a connection to climate change. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? By way of example, browse Bill McKibben’s tweets. He’s become a dutiful chronicler of weather-related bad news. If you want to know that…Continue Reading…
In her recent Mother Jones story, Julia Whitty mentions that “destruction of nature” has become a “dominant meme” in environmental discourse and politics. Her excellent piece does not follow this familiar script. Rather it chronicles the extraordinary conservation successes of a few unsung individuals. Anyone who follows environmental writing knows that Whitty’s article bucks a…Continue Reading…
Last year, Berkley physicist Richard Muller excited the climate world with this WSJ op-ed: The Case Against Global Warming Skepticism He touted his Berkley team’s preliminary re-analysis of temperature trends that, as Brad Plumer drily noted, appears to have confirmed the basic tenets of climate science. At the time, many climate scientists rolled their eyes at…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: Watts has toned down his momentous hype. He apparently has a healthy sense of self-importance that leads him to make grand pronouncements. That sound you hear is air deflating from the climate skeptic sphere. Either Anthony Watts is in possession of big-time climate news or he’s over-dramatizing a piece of news that he thinks is big:…Continue Reading…
If you had time to read only one scholarly paper on drought, I’d suggest this one (published in 2007) by Cook et al. It’s a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary overview that amply supports this assertion made in the first sentence of the abstract: Severe drought is the greatest recurring natural disaster to strike North America. The Cook…Continue Reading…
The contradictions in the climate debate make my head hurt. For years, we’ve been hearing that one of the biggest impediments to action is that people aren’t sufficiently alarmed and informed about global warming. And that this owes, in large part, to a collective media failing. Here’s Joe Romm in 2010: The dreadful media coverage simply…Continue Reading…