Articles by Kit Stolz

Small Colorado coal burner pays big bucks to climate change denier

According to ABC News, a small rural electric cooperative in Colorado paid a notorious climate change denier $100,000 without first informing or asking its members.

"It's outrageous," Ron Binz, a public utility consultant formerly with the state of Colorado, told ABC. "It's an abuse of authority. The customers are member-owners. [General Manager] Stan Lewandowski is basically spending other people's money."

A chat with Andy Revkin about Inhofe’s attack

Andrew Revkin has been reporting on climate and science for The New York Times for over 10 years. He recently completed a book about his experiences in the Arctic: The North Pole Was Here, a straightforward but appealing you-are-here account of visiting the top of our home planet, where the air is thin, the "ground" is ice floating on the ocean, and everything is changing. The story is intended to be accessible to anyone over the age of ten. (The first chapter is available for free on the NYT site.)

You might think it unlikely that a children's book would warrant the attention or ire of a U.S. senator -- but then, you may not know Marc Morano. Morano is a communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), a former staffer at The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the first in the media to publicize the smears of the Swift Boat veterans. Since joining Inhofe's staff, Morano has issued communiques from the office of the Senate Environment Committee, which Inhofe chairs, blasting reporters that fail to give equal time to climate skeptics. (Read about Morano's attacks on AP reporter Seth Borenstein and ex-NBC anchor Tom Brokaw.)

Neither the senator nor his attack dog appear to have read Revkin's book, but it has drawn their fire nonetheless -- not because of what it says, but because it was written by a reporter.

According to a story broken by Greenwire (paid subscription required) on Wednesday, Morano called into doubt the 20 years of Revkin's reporting on climate change issues because "sales of Revkin's book ... would be enhanced by his paper's coverage of climate." Morano said: "We're not just shooting arrows."

I contacted Revkin to hear his point of view on the strange situation.

Thom Yorke’s solo album focuses on climate change

Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, is not the first pop artist to find success with a song about global warming.

Andrew Bird, a superb violinist and exciting new rock musician with a long-term interest in weather systems, already has an alternative hit with his Tables and Chairs, a soaring song with a great chorus about global warming:

so don't, don't you worry, about the atmosphere
or any sudden pressure change
cause i know
that it's starting to get warm in here
and things are starting to get strange

But Yorke is the first rock star to top the charts with a record focused on global warming, hitting number two this week with his new album The Eraser. Although usually loathe to discuss the meaning of his often-inscrutable songs with the press, he openly described to the L.A. Times what inspired the record:

A “simple remedy” for global warming

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has been criticized for not offering enough ideas to solve global warming. But his documentary has not only far exceeded box office expectations, grossing three times the early estimates already; it has also brought in waves of new ideas from well-known thinkers in a variety of fields.

As long as global warming was thought to be a murky scientific controversy, so-called opinion leaders could safely ignore the subject. But now that -- as science reporter Eugene Linden remarked in an interview a couple of months ago -- "the naysayers and deniers are starting to look more and more like idiots," the experts are scrambling for unclaimed ground on which to plant their flag and show their smarts.