mainstream media
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Note to media: Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, not an energy expert
If you google “Palin ‘energy expert,'” you’ll find more than 10,000 hits. It’s no surprise that conservative shills like George Pataki and Haley Barbour use that label — heck, a major conservative talking point is that she’s a foreign-policy expert because “Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia,” as Cindy McCain put […]
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Deniers’ talking points spread via the same process as that of all urban legends
John McGrath, a contributor to Grist, made an important comparison between how the internet contributes to making urban legends look legitimate and how it is used in spreading climate chaos denialism: It highlights the odd dynamic of the Internet: tiny, vocal, crazy-ass minorities can nevertheless be numerous enough on the Internet to appear more impressive […]
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Should you freak out at the lack of airtime for climate change in Denver — or Minneapolis?
Andrew Jones — former Rocky Mountain Institute colleague and systems-dynamic modeler extraordinaire at the Sustainability Institute — asks if I could write something “from a D.C. insider perspective” about why we shouldn’t be freaking out that climate change is getting so little airtime at the Democratic National Convention? Actually, Drew, getting people to freak out […]
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Media focuses on high costs of clean energy, but gives nuclear a free pass
When the media talks about clean energy, it usually deals with the cost issue with a rational, balanced analysis. Something along the lines of, say, “It’s so expensive!“ Yet somehow, in Keith Johnson’s Environmental Capital blog post today slamming greens for not supporting nukes, the cost issue is little more than an afterthought. The nuclear […]
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Note to media: Enough with the multiple hedges on climate science!
In an otherwise fascinating story on the growing “icebreaker gap” in the rapidly defrosting Arctic Ocean, NYT reporter Andy Revkin writes: Even with the increasing summer retreats of sea ice, which many polar scientists say probably are being driven in part by global warming caused by humans, there will always be enough ice in certain […]
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Climate whiplash
In a recent article in The New York Times, Andy Revkin talks about the whiplash effect: When science is testing new ideas, the result is often a two-papers-forward-one-paper-back intellectual tussle among competing research teams. When the work touches on issues that worry the public, affect the economy or polarize politics, the news media and advocates […]
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Exxon sponsors political coverage
ExxonMobil is sponsoring political coverage from CNN, CBS, and National Journal. Here’s a question: Would they accept sponsorship by Philip Morris?
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Why McCain hates renewables but pretends he loves them
McCain has been an opponent of renewable energy all his political life. Why? He is a conservative — and that is what conservatives do. The GOP’s ultra-rich big energy donors don’t like competition and dole out millions to get their way. He has long been uncomfortable around cutting edge technology — witness his Internet illiteracy. […]
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The internets weigh in on drilling
A few bits and pieces from around the internets on the drilling issue. Rick Hertzberg has a piece on his New Yorker blog about arguments against drilling. He points out that most of the opportunistic Dem arguments against drilling used thus far — it’s too far out; it won’t save us; it’s gimmicky — aren’t […]
