If you follow climate-concerned bloggers and tweeters, as I do, you probably have noticed there is frequent mention of weather that implies a connection to climate change. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? By way of example, browse Bill McKibben’s tweets. He’s become a dutiful chronicler of weather-related bad news. If you want to know that…Continue Reading…
The contradictions in the climate debate make my head hurt. For years, we’ve been hearing that one of the biggest impediments to action is that people aren’t sufficiently alarmed and informed about global warming. And that this owes, in large part, to a collective media failing. Here’s Joe Romm in 2010: The dreadful media coverage simply…Continue Reading…
How inconvenient. I go away on vacation for a few weeks and during that time everybody, it seems, becomes convinced that global warming has struck the earth like the Ten Plagues of Egypt. So does this mean the message (unabated carbon emissions = climate damnation) finally–finally!–has been received by 1) the media, 2) all earthlings…Continue Reading…
Two seemingly disparate events this week underscore major shifts in the climate discourse–at least in the U.S. One is the defeat of Senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary. The other is this NYT op-ed from NASA climate scientist James Hansen. What’s the connection? Well, each, in its own way, illustrate the newly established…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…
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…
As some might recall, the climate science community split into several camps in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I think similar fault lines are emerging in the global warming/severe weather debate. In my latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, I discuss this in the context of a popular new frame,…Continue Reading…
At Grist, there is a box with a rotating set of five images that highlights content from the site. When I went over there recently, my eye gravitated to the colorful pictures in the box, including one with this subheadline for a blog post: Germany aims to trade nukes for a fully renewable power system….Continue Reading…
That’s the title of my latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media. It’s about the pendulum swings of public opinion (in recent years), their connection to weather, and why this is problematic for journalists and climate communicators.
Before I get to that question, ask yourself this: What does the climate debate have to do with WMD’s (weapons of mass destruction) and the Iraq war? Tom Fuller offers an answer on this recent thread: One of the saddest consequences of 9/11 was the wholesale manipulation of both the media and public opinion to generate…Continue Reading…