There’s a new comprehensive report by a reputable think tank that assesses how many and what kinds of jobs are considered to be part of a burgeoning “green” industry. If you want the spin, go here. If you want an honest deep dive into the report’s numbers,
In an interesting essay in the NYT, a philosopher reminds us that there is no denying that there is a strong consensus among climate scientists on the existence of A.G.W. “” in their view, human activities are warming the planet. Since there is no denying this, hardcore climate skeptics (who don’t believe in AGW) take a…Continue Reading…
Because Ed Abbey and David Foster Wallace are no longer around, I’m nominating Charles Bowden to attend this upcoming conference sponsored by the European Science Foundation: Eco-Chic: Connecting Ethical, Sustainable and Elite Consumption As anthropologist Adam Fish observes: Eco-chic, like many other socio-cultural manifestations of neoliberalism is rife with contradiction. The fundamental contradiction being that it…Continue Reading…
Just for kicks, here’s my revisions to the opening paragraph in this Climate Progress post: Another week, another New York Times article Joe Romm post on extreme weather that fails to stretches climate science to simplistically connect the dots to global warming for the public. The NYT Romm blew the Arizona wildfire story. They He blew the Dust…Continue Reading…
Another day, another revelation about the news gathering methods of a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper in the UK–methods that some are referring to as “institutional criminality.” No doubt the curtain on Murchoch’s News International operations will be pulled back further in the coming days and weeks, revealing much more ugliness. The questions is, will it spur…Continue Reading…
This nuanced statement by Tom Kenworthy, a former reporter, was spot on until the very end (my emphasis): The reasons that the desert Southwest is having another extreme fire season are complex. They include decades of poor forestry and livestock grazing practices, misguided federal firefighting efforts that have prevented low-intensity fires in Ponderosa pine forests…Continue Reading…
This climate conversation at the Wilson Center covers a lot of interesting ground and is well worth watching. For a taste, here’s one exchange between the host John Milewski and Edward Maibech, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication. Milewski: One theory I’ve heard, one reason I’ve heard that people respond almost with…Continue Reading…
If you recall, last week I expressed some dismay that a three part series on global warming in Scientific American magazine was financed by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. To my surprise, no journalistic watchdogs (or science journalists) rose up to publicly question this unusual arrangement. But Bud Ward at the Yale Forum on Climate…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…