Author Archive

The Zombified State of Climate Communication

Some of you may recall a recent public awareness campaign by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that began this way: There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it…Continue Reading…

Climate Capo Watch

In the absurdist precincts of the climate blogosphere, certain gatekeepers take offense when their icons and orthodoxy are challenged. I’ve previously referred to these partisan gatekeepers as climate capos. So earlier today when Andy Revkin challenged conservative columnist George Will to be intellectually consistent, the response from climate capos was immediate and predictably cartoonish.

Keeping a Lid on the World of Me

Despite having a blog, I still haven’t fully embraced Twitter or Facebook. I’m scatterbrained enough and already consume too much media during the course of a day, so something has to give. Maybe when I have a book or some such product to hawk, I’ll rev up my social media machine. Meanwhile, I want to…Continue Reading…

Green Helmets

Climate security gets an airing today in a U.N. Security Council meeting. It’s not the first time the Security Council has taken up climate change. And wise heads, such as environmental security scholar Geoff Dabelko, offers some excellent pre-meeting context that puts the nascent climate security issue into perspective. The Guardian also has a nice story on the meeting’s…Continue Reading…

About Those Rising Food Prices

What’s this, a story about rising food prices, and no mention about global warming? Go figure. As Suzanne Goldenberg reports in the Guardian: Demand for biofuels in the US is driving this year’s high food prices, a report has said. It predicts that food prices are unlikely to fall back down for another two years. The report, produced…Continue Reading…

Who's Peddling Climate Bunk?

Darn, I missed this show by just a few days. (I was in Boulder, Colorado much of last week.) I would have loved to hear from two prominent climate skeptics on how I’m part of the “brainwashed” media. BTW, I spent much of my time in Boulder visiting with climate scientists at NCAR. I’ll let…Continue Reading…

The King of NIMBYism

In 2005, after Robert Kennedy Jr. published an op-ed in The New York Times opposing an offshore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, environmentalists were plenty pissed. Since then, RFKJr has offered numerous arguments against Cape Wind, but none of them has stuck. I thought he had reached a hypocritical apex a few years ago when he…Continue Reading…

Question of the Day

At Tumblr, Andy Revkin asks: Would things be clearer if the process known as “global warming“ had been described as “global heating“ from the get-go? His answer: Graph of heat-content anomaly in atmosphere and seas says YES.

When Green Groups Go Mad

Greenpeace continues its descent into anti-science oblivion. Last Thursday, the environmental group carried out a destructive anti-GMO stunt that has outraged scientists in Australia. Over at Sustainablog, agricultural scientist Steve Savage describes what happened: On July, 14, three Greenpeace activists dressed in hazmat suits scaled a fence, and used weed whips to destroy a GMO wheat experiment…Continue Reading…

Two Paths for Humanity

Andy Revkin wrestles with Tim Flannery’s new book, Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet, in a NYT book review: An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that humans have upended hosts of ecosystems and are exerting a growing and potentially calamitous influence on the climate. Some, perhaps in response to public indifference, have…Continue Reading…