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  • Does anyone take science seriously?

    Politicians ignore them. Journalists distort what they say. No wonder scientists complain about getting no respect.

  • With Gulf-spill facts in short supply, spin takes center stage

    You spin me right round …Photo: Pip WilsonFor all the fire-hose coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it’s a story with startlingly few known facts.  We don’t know how much oil has actually spilled out.  We don’t know where or when it will hit land. We don’t know exactly what’s in the chemical […]

  • A near thumbs-up for Joe Romm’s ‘Straight Up’

    Joe Romm is pissed off — and I’m delighted. His latest book, Straight Up, takes on the oil and coal companies, the skeptics, and the press. His unfailing sense of priorities shines through his startlingly thoughtful and brutally blunt writing. I have one problem with his book — but more about that later.    As […]

  • On ‘climategate’

    Jeff Masters gets at something in his great piece on the “climategate” e-maelstrom that most press coverage leaves out: this isn’t our first time around the track. The Manufactured Doubt industry has been around for decades, working to thwart regulatory constraints on large corporations that make dangerous products. Not only are all the same techniques […]

  • Is Freeman Dyson really “brave”?

    Freeman Dyson is a noted physicist who’s argued — utterly implausibly — that carbon eating trees will save us and we shouldn’t worry about the whole climate change thing. For this, he’s been profiled in The New York Times and now dubbed a Brave Thinker by the Atlantic. But is he really that brave? Said […]

  • WSJ reporter knocks own editorial page for Chamber defense

    Today the Wall Street Journal editorial board published a typically dismissive editorial defending the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from the companies that have quit or criticized it over its position on climate change. The Chamber, to recap, opposes the clean energy bill in Congress and recently called for a “Scopes Monkey Trial” questioning the scientific […]

  • Time magazine names me one of the ‘Heroes of the Environment 2009’

    I have to admit — sometimes Joe Romm ruins my mornings. As the author of Climate Progress, one of the most influential global-warming blogs on the Internet, few debates on energy or the environment get past his ravenous attention, and he takes particular pleasure in targeting mainstream journalists who’ve written something he deems stupid. That’s […]

  • NYT reads the future: Senate Dems consider maybe doing something in 2010

    What do they know that we don’t?A scoop in The New York Times doesn’t surprise me. A scoop from nine months into the future does. This morning the Times Environment page featured a ClimateWire story dated May 15, 2010. “Senators Spend Recess Fine-Tuning Messages on Cap and Trade” finds Senate Democrats still hand-wringing over the […]

  • We are what we think: Why the press fails us and how to fix it

    We are what we think. With our thoughts we create the world. — Buddha OK, first, let me hasten to say that I find myself, as most any physical scientist would, irritated by the ancient quote above. I expect a modern person to know, though the Buddha may or may not have known, that the […]