When the definitive history of the GMO debate is written, Jeffrey Smith is going to figure prominently in the section on pseudoscience. He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information. (As David Gorski at the Science-based Medicine blog has noted, the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements…Continue Reading…
Last year, in an interview with New York Times reporter Justin Gillis, CJR’s Curtis Brainard asked: There’s been a lot of debate about the extent to which media coverage does or does not influence public opinion about climate change and society’s willingness to address the problem. Do journalists matter in this regard? Gillis answered exactly…Continue Reading…
As it becomes increasingly evident that a switch from coal to natural gas is reducing energy-related carbon emissions in the United States–which is a net plus if you care about climate change– opponents of fracking find themselves being asked to choose between the lesser of two evils. That is a debate in of itself worth…Continue Reading…
Guest post by Ramez Naam. Keith Kloor has graciously given me the opportunity to guest post here again. So let me cut to the chase: I support GMOs. And we should label them. We should label them because that is the very best thing we can do for public acceptance of agricultural biotech. And…Continue Reading…
Anti-biotech activists, like their fellow travelers in the anti-vaccine movement, are masters at pseudoscience. As I’ve previously discussed, the really clever GMO opponents put a veneer of science on their propaganda. One recent example that an anti-GMO website approvingly pointed to was so obviously absurd that I was sure it would be ignored by media.
Being a city boy (for all my adult life), my exposure to agriculture is woefully limited. I’ve parachuted onto actual farms in the Midwest during reporting trips for stories and every year around Halloween my wife and I take our kids to a farm in the outskirts to pick pumpkins, get lost in a corn…Continue Reading…
In the Fall, I walked with my son’s Kindergarten class and other parents to our local farmers market in Brooklyn. The kids had their list of items they had to find and identify (fruits, vegetables, flowers), I scored some delicious apple cider donuts, and a grand time was had by all on a blustery, sunny…Continue Reading…
As Reuters puts it: If the environmental movement has a high holiday, Earth Day is it. After four decades, the annual celebration of good deeds and eco-awareness in the United States is as meaningful to environmentalists as St. Patrick’s day is to the Irish. Both annual events are green and festive. One is a sanctioned…Continue Reading…
Adapted from the new book The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet by Ramez Naam What if there was a way to farm that spared the rainforests, cut down on toxins in our soil and waters, and provided healthier, more nutritious food? Sounds like organic farming, right? But actually, it’s GMOs….Continue Reading…
When James Hansen, the newly-retired NASA scientist talks, people who care deeply about energy and climate change pay attention. For example, when Hansen says “game over” for the climate if Canada’s oil sands get developed, people take to the streets. When he publishes a study that says global warming has caused recent heat waves and…Continue Reading…