In 2013, a psychology professor reviewing Malcolm Gladwell’s latest best-selling book was critical of the author’s modus operandi: He excels at telling just-so stories and cherry-picking science to back them. That charge had been percolating for a while, but people were suddenly paying more attention to it, including science journalists. After the WSJ review triggered a larger debate on…Continue Reading…
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…
I am teaching two journalism classes this semester, with climate change being a main focus these past few weeks. We had an obvious news peg in Sunday’s big climate march and the gathering of world leaders this week in NYC. Students in both classes have received climate change 101 lessons from me–where the body of…Continue Reading…
Climate concerned advocates received some welcome news yesterday: A new study finds that when they understand climate basics, some conservatives are more likely to accept that climate change is happening I continue to be amazed at how much time and resources are spent justifying attempts to win over the most ideologically entrenched demographic in the climate…Continue Reading…
It wasn’t that long ago that global warming was mostly discussed as (and believed to be) a distant threat– the scope, timing and severity of its impacts considered uncertain. Then in recent years, as climate scientists began studying and asserting linkages between greenhouses gases and severe weather events, the discourse shifted. We are now at…Continue Reading…
In the latest report issued last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), there is a chapter on human security that caught the media’s attention. I thought Seth Borenstein’s AP piece did a nice job distilling the chapter’s essence: Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems,…Continue Reading…
When I take issue with the one way skepticism and hyperbolic language of climate skeptics, I’m met with a chorus of “who me?” They especially object to being lumped together with the climate-science-is-a-hoax crowd. It’s a fair complaint. At the same time, it’s worth noting that the representative standard bearers for climate skeptics are Anthony…Continue Reading…
Twenty years ago, a hugely influential article by Robert Kaplan titled “The Coming Anarchy,” was published in The Atlantic magazine. Kaplan argued that the environment would be the “national security issue of the early twenty-first century.” He predicted that resource scarcity and ecological degradation would be destabilizing forces in the developing world, “making more and more…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…