If only their views weren’t so influential, in schools, universities, in the media, in the corridors of power, the global economy wouldn’t be nearly in the mess it’s in today. There are many chestnuts in this Delingpole screed, but that one was news to me. I’m going to rewrite the first sentence of his column:…Continue Reading…
The Guardian has published an essay titled, “Once men abused slaves, now men abuse fossil fuels.” The author, Jean-François Mouhot, is a historian. The parallels between fossil fuels and slaves occurred to him in the mid-2000s, he recounts: I was reading a book on climate change which noted how today’s machinery ““ almost exclusively powered by fossil fuels like…Continue Reading…
Remember the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)? To some, it justified the arms race between the U.S. and the old USSR. As Wikipedia explains: The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) assumes that each side has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the other side; and that either side, if attacked for any…Continue Reading…
This is brilliant: BREAKING NEWS IN THE CLIMATE DEBATE!!! By R.U. Kiddingme. Unassociated Press 15 minutes ago “Realists” use analogy of scientists to dentists” while “Skeptics” use analogy of scientists to Lysenko (and Inquisitors)” Voicing “concern” today, “skeptics” all over the blogosphere weighed-in write blog comments objecting to an analogy used in a WSJ op-ed…Continue Reading…
When issues becomes hotly politicized, such as GMO’s (“Frankenfood“), health care (“death panels“), and yes, climate science (“hoax“), the extremes dominate the public dialogue. When this happens, it is virtually impossible to have a grown-up conversation about these issues in the public sphere. The press, following the scent of controversy and conflict, ends up in…Continue Reading…
That’s the headline of my latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. I discuss the slide and why it soon may be reversed.
My latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media asks if the ratcheting up of climate fear will grab hold of a public already numb to such appeals. I think David Roberts at Grist makes a strong case for how it can work, but it rests on this assumption: what drives social…Continue Reading…
I dip in and out of the comment threads at Judith Curry’s blog. The nesting style annoys me, so I rarely follow an actual conversation all the way through. But there are some commenters, such as Joshua, Martha, and Louise, and a few others on the skeptical side, who I find quite engaging. They usually…Continue Reading…
There’s something remarkable happening this week in the climatesphere. People who routinely thunder that we are on the verge of climate doom have mostly shrugged at the lackluster outcome of the recent climate summit in South Africa. I’m wondering if they’ve self-medicated themselves with sedatives. Consider that, last week Grist’s David Roberts wrote (his emphasis): If…Continue Reading…
So you’ve probably heard there was some sort of climate agreement reached this past weekend. The spin afterwards was impressive and misleading. (The media’s collective interpretation was mostly perplexing.) Here’s my modest attempt at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media at untangling what went down and what it means for the bigger picture.