Climate Culture

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  • How best to pitch the climate change message?

    Mike Hulme of the UK’s Tyndall Centre says — yet again — that the language of "catastrophe" and "disaster" used by climate-change scientists and advocates is having the opposite of its intended effect: it’s making people numb and apathetic. I more or less buy this — I did, after all, write a five-part series arguing […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • Live Aid guy disses Gore’s Live Earth concerts

    Here’s what Live Aid and Live 8 organizer Bob Geldoff had to say about Gore’s Live Earth concerts: “I hope they’re a success,” De Volkskrant newspaper quoted Geldof as saying in an interview. “But why is (Gore) actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years. […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • Green the Pope way

    That’s the Vatican’s green vision.

    David Roberts Culture

  • Who says scientists aren’t funny?

    RealClimate has an extended satire against climate denier use of false correlation=causation logic to argue for solar cycles as the main cause of global warming. As humor with extended charts and co-efficients of correlation go, it is quite funny. However, I must admit that an exchange between two commenters on the post was much funnier:

    Gar Lipow Culture

  • We shed a tear

    Fundamentalist Christian minister Jerry Falwell is dead at 73. It’s probably churlish to use the occasion of someone’s death to point out that said person was a paranoid, avaricious, hate-spewing enabler of America’s basest lizard-brain impulses, so I won’t go there. I will, however, note that one of the proudest moments of my young career […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • When is pizza not a turkey sandwich?

    What we have available to eat is controlled by different businesses in different ways. Whether they are responsive to our needs and desires is something about which Americans can and should be at lot more vocal.

    We arrived at the boarding gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport about an hour before the scheduled departure time, stripped of any liquids over 3.4 ounces not stored in a clear, quart-size, zip-top plastic bag. I went to the service desk to ask the airline rep what food would be provided on our flight. (This is the airline which runs TV ads boasting that unlike their competitors they offer food on their flights.) The airline's website establishes that economy passengers get a sandwich on a flight like this one. Here's what we got:

    Carl Flatow Culture

  • Trouble With a Capital B

    Chemicals play a big role in breast-cancer cases, says report You know how Tammy Wynette said sometimes it’s hard to be a woman? Well, it just got harder: a new report finds a potential link between breast cancer and 216 chemicals, including 35 common air pollutants and 73 food or consumer-product ingredients. Racking up evidence […]

    Grist staff Culture

  • Isn’t aiding and abetting tax evasion a crime?

    Does anyone remember what a petard is? I think most folks only know them from the line in Shakespeare -- they picture some kind of quaint device, a Flintstones-like crane ... so you could be "hoisted on your own petard" in a clever, comical way.

    Actually, a petard is a kind of primitive land mine.

    The airlines have built an enormous petard beneath themselves; alas, they will not be the only ones hoisted when it explodes. 14 trillion miles of "free" flying outstanding ... man, that's a bunch of flying. OK, if only 1 percent are actually turned into flights, then it's only 140 billion miles of "free" jet travel.

    JMG Culture

  • The wheels on the bike go round and round …

    Happy Bike-to-Work Week! (She said hypocritically, eyeing her bus pass.) If you can’t handle the whole week, this Friday, May 18, is Bike-to-Work Day. (She said hypocritically, eyeing her invisible bike.) And FYI, May is Bike-to-Work Month. (She said tardily, eyeing her calendar.) Here are 50 things you can do to celebrate [PDF]. Or just […]

    Sarah K. Burkhalter Culture

  • From the guy who wrote the book on the GM EV1, literally

    Michael Shnayerson, who literally wrote the book on the ill-fated GM EV1, has an excellent piece in last month's Vanity Fair about the Tesla Roadster.

    Quoting is redundant -- the whole article is fun and packed with attention to personal detail. Eventually, someone is going to have to write a biography of Alan Cocconi, who seems to be at the center of all the electric car efforts of the last quarter-century or so.

    John McGrath Culture