Uncategorized

No wonder public and media seem uniformed

UPDATE:  Yes, bad coverage by big media, including the NYT’s Revkin, is one reason there has been a modest decline since April 2008 in the number of Americans who know that there is solid (in fact, overwhelming) evidence the Earth is warming and humans are the primary cause (see here).  Big media “did” the global […]

Hunters and anglers rally for climate bill

A recent poll by the National Wildlife Federation, which counts more than 420,000 members across 42 states, found that 66 percent of hunters and anglers surveyed believed that global warming was already occurring. A Gallup poll in March 2009 found that only 53 percent of the general population shared the same view. People who spend […]

GOP proposes to cut solar technology funding

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) is continuing his effort to limit the scope and spending of a solar technology bill headed to the House floor today with an amendment that would limit the length of the program and cut its funding levels. Broun has proposed a new amendment to H.R. 3585 that would provide $750 million […]

18 leading scientific organizations send letter to Senators

Here is the letter from 18 top U.S. scientific organizations: Dear Senator: As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view. Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human […]

Bicycles, Trauma Centers, and Injury Severity Scores

Two recent articles have motivated me to do another biking post. First up is this one, from Science Daily Despite the wide-spread attention paid to the importance of wearing helmets, helmet use did not change during the time period of the study, and more than 33 percent of 329 bicycle injury victims had a significant […]

Coauthor of SuperFreakonomics apologizes to me

[Note:  The error-riddled book is now searchable again on Amazon, so readers can confirm that all of my excerpts were correct and in context.  The book has garnered a number of positive comments from (fast) readers, even on the climate chapter whose main conclusion has been rejected by its two primary scientific sources — see […]

Myhrvold jumps the shark — and jumps ship on SuperFreakonomics

Un-friggin-believable. Nathan Myhrvold, who Levitt and Dubner call the “polymath’s polymath” — who is one of the primary “experts” the authors rely on to make the case for their central geoengineering-only approach to global warming — has just publicly repudiated that approach. Apparently he never read the chapter — or didn’t understand it if he […]

What makes a good story?

Clearly, pretending to loft your kid across the countryside in a balloon is the big story. But what about the fairly extraordinary effort that the kids at 350.org and Bill McKibben are mounting next weekend? They’ve taken serious scientific analysis—the contention first raised by Jim Hansen that 350 ppm co2 is the target we should […]

Interviews support my reporting on SuperFreakonomics

Caldeira, like the vast majority of climate scientists, believes cutting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions is our only real chance to avoid runaway climate change. “Carbon dioxide is the right villain,” Caldeira wrote on his Web site in reply. He told Joe Romm, the respected climate blogger who broke the story, that he had […]

Columbia suspends evironmental journalism program

Columbia Journalism Review itself reports the startling and depressing news: For the first time since it was created fourteen years ago, Columbia University’s highly regarded dual-degree graduate program in environmental journalism will not be accepting applications for next academic year. In a letter to faculty at the Graduate School of Journalism, the Department of Environmental […]