In the latest issue of Cosmos magazine, I have a piece on Bjørn Lomborg, who, as I write, shot to fame in 2001 with his first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, a broad critique of the environmental movement that infuriated many ecologists and greens. The notoriety transformed the little-known Danish statistician into a globe-trotting public intellectual. Since then,…Continue Reading…
At the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I survey the landscape beyond mind-deadening gloom and doom.
Here’s the publisher promo for James Lawrence Powell’s new book, The Inquisition of Climate Science: Modern science is under the greatest and most successful attack in recent history. An industry of denial, abetted by news media and “info-tainment” broadcasters more interested in selling controversy than presenting facts, has duped half the American public into rejecting…Continue Reading…
This is the suggestion from a Columbia University researcher, whose work I discuss in a post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. If you have a nuanced response, give it to me over there.
I have a new post up at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media that suggests Vice President Gore and like-minded allies are fighting their battle from a “defensive crouch,” which won’t get them where they want to go. Nor am I the only one wondering if Gore’s recent 24-hour mediathon is the…Continue Reading…
I’m not sure there is such a thing, but it’s probably good to know what your objective is. In this contentious thread, perspectives ran the gamut. One commenter observed: As difficult it is in this era of “Tea Baggers vs Marxists”, “Denialists vs. Warmistas”, “Conservatards vs. Mann-Made Glo-bull Warmists” or whatever other dumbass portmanteaus each…Continue Reading…
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…
Earlier this week, an informal email group I belong to generated a burst of fascinating exchanges after I listed my post on the Yale Cultural Cognition paper. This group consists of journalists, climate scientists, and social science scholars, among others. At the end of the back-and-forth, David Ropeik, a former journalist turned risk expert, posed a…Continue Reading…
If there is anyone out there who still believes that a lack of knowledge of climate science (e.g., the deficit model) prevents people from grasping the consequences of global warming, raise your hand. Now read this passage from the abstract of a recent study: The conventional explanation for controversy over climate change emphasizes impediments to public…Continue Reading…
Let's Get It On
Okay, don’t get any wrong ideas here. I am just trying to set the mood for the new commenting system that I know will make our conversations flow much better. On the subject of comment threads, I suggest folks take a few minutes to read this excellent post by Bora Zivkovic, the blog maestro at…Continue Reading…