When a questionable story gets rolling and takes on a life of its own, you can usually count on journalists to check it out thoroughly. Not that debunking it necessarily puts an end to the matter, as we discovered with President Obama’s birth certificate and the global warming hoax cooked up by thousands of scientists….Continue Reading…
Some of you may be familiar with Portlandia. If not, here’s how the Oregonian describes the satirical IFC show: It’s a comic portrayal showing a town populated by compulsively organic foodies who interrogate their restaurant server on every detail of the chicken they’re about to order; aggressive bicycle commuters; humorless proprietors of feminist bookstores; and…Continue Reading…
Bud Ward, the editor of the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, weighs in on the Heartland billboard furor: What stands out amidst the initial widespread revulsion is that the criticisms of Heartland’s effort came not only by the usual cadre of what climate skeptics dismissively call “warmists,” but also by those ideologically…Continue Reading…
There was talk that the much maligned (but heavily trafficked) Huffington Post gained some journalistic cred after it snagged a Pulitzer Prize this year. We should keep in mind what makes the Huffpo engine run. As the LA Time’s Tim Rutten wrote: The bulk of the site’s content is provided by commentators, who work for…Continue Reading…
UPDATE: 5/7: Climatewire reports that Heartland “faces a mutiny” from donors and its Washington staff over the Institute’s billboard campaign, which it abruptly cancelled one day after it was unveiled. The billboards triggered massive outrage and scorn from across the political spectrum. [UPDATE: 5/5: Widespread condemnation of the Heartland billboard campaign (including from Republican politicians and well-known climate science critics) prompted…Continue Reading…
I know the environmental movement will have truly matured when the leader of a big mainstream green group can say something like this: We won’t meet the carbon targets if nuclear [power] is taken off the table. That’s from Jeff Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Here’s the opening to the Guardian story: Combating climate…Continue Reading…
Is there an example from human history of a culture taking action with the intended beneficiaries being two or more generations downstream, when there’s no benefit or maybe even sacrifice to the current generation? I haven’t been able to come up with one, and I suspect we’re just not genetically programmed to worry about two…Continue Reading…
When an institution remains wedded to a bygone era and unresponsive to change, It becomes irrelevant to people’s lives. Like the Catholic church. Many Catholics in the West don’t take the church’s anachronistic doctrine to heart. If they did, 98 percent of Catholic women wouldn’t be using birth control. Now when people criticize the Catholic church,…Continue Reading…