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TV weathercasters moonlight as climate experts. It’s a problem

This week in TV-news bashing, we learn that significant numbers of TV weathercasters are serving as climate-change experts, without training in climatology but with lots of confidence in their ability to opine on the subject. Here’s what it means for your weekend. Here’s why this forms a perfect storm of poor understanding: Meteorologists tend to […]

Walkshed dilemmas and the Nissan Leaf

The wife and I recently made a fairly difficult decision about where to send our 6-year-old to school for first grade next year. We had the following dilemma: he tested into the gifted program at our neighborhood school, but he also tested into the highly gifted program, which is run at a school across town. […]

Say it loud — I’m childfree and I’m proud

In 1969, graduating college senior Stephanie Mills made national headlines with a commencement address exclaiming that, in the face of impending ecological devastation, she was choosing to forgo parenthood.  “I am terribly saddened by the fact that the most humane thing for me to do is to have no children at all,” she told her […]

Lindsey ‘Green Economy’ Graham bashes the Clean Air Act

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is leading the bipartisan effort with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to craft comprehensive climate legislation that can overcome a Senate filibuster. “The green economy is coming,” Graham said when he announced the partnership with Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) last November, explaining that he was […]

The EPA weighs the hidden costs of carbon

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency will do more than set new fuel efficiency standards for cars. It will put a price on carbon. Within this historic climate change regulation is a powerful new way of thinking about greenhouse gas emissions: as costs that will borne by society. Burning oil in cars imposes a steep […]

Wind Power Soared Past 150,000 Megawatts in 2009

This piece was written by my colleague J. Matthew Roney at the Earth Policy Institute. Even in the face of a worldwide economic downturn, the global wind industry posted another record year in 2009 as cumulative installed wind power capacity grew to 158,000 megawatts. With this 31 percent jump, the global wind fleet is now […]

In a D.C. school, the simple power of a good breakfast

This is the first of three articles on how food made from scratch using local ingredients is served to the students and staff at Washington Jesuit Academy, a free-tuition private school for at-risk kids. Duane Drake, head chef at Washington Jesuit Academy. Chef Duane Drake lines a dozen pie shells on sheet pans and begins […]

The NY Times once again equates non-scientists with climate scientists

  Memo to NY Times:  TV weathermen are not climate experts. In fact, Dr. Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech explained to me a few years ago: Meteorologists are not required to take a course in climate change, this is not part of the NOAA/NWS [National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

Let’s call setting a price on carbon “puppies”

  The Hill’s blog has a post, “Why kill cap-and-trade? Because it’s there.” The NYT’s John Broder had a piece, ” ‘Cap and Trade’ Loses Its Standing as Energy Policy of Choice.” CBS reports of the forthcoming Graham, Kerry and Lieberman bill, “notably missing from it will likely be the cap-and-trade system that had not long ago been expected […]

Has CBS found dumbest idea yet for an online poll?

Yeah, please vote here. Pointedly ignoring my plea for an end to online polls, CBS has come up with perhaps the dumbest idea yet. Let’s use the least scientific, most easily manipulated choosing scheme invented since eeny-meeny-miny-moe to pick what major piece of legislation president Obama should pursue next. Seriously.  I can almost hear Walter Cronkite reading the […]