mainstream media

The New Yorker (!) parrots right-wing talking points on climate

[Please write an email to themail@newyorker.com about this outrageous piece and submit a question to author David Owen.] The New Yorker magazine has just published a lead story on climate, “Economy vs. Environment,” by David Owen, that is so bad, so filled with long-debunked right-wing talking points, it would barely qualify for the Wall Street […]

Scientists and science writers take Will to task in the WaPo

I didn’t follow the George Will Climate Crank Controversy very closely on this blog. You can read a comprehensive play-by-play from Adam Siegel here. The good news is, two new shots were fired today by the forces of sanity, in the pages of the Washington Post, which hosted Will’s original idiocy. The first is an […]

Fox News story advocates for reducing meat consumption to combat global warming

This week, as I sorted through my inbox and overflowing number of “google alerts,” one particular story from Fox News caught my attention. In a decidedly personal yet informative piece, Andy Kroll of Fox News outlined the reasons why he was going to reduce his meat consumption by 75 percent in the upcoming months. The […]

Americans care about global warming, but don’t see how it connects to other environmental problems

A new poll shows that Americans do care about global warming, but don’t seem to realize how prevalent it really is. This week Gallup released data from its latest poll on global warming indicating that more Americans — 41 percent, the highest number since 1998 — believe that global warming is exaggerated. This sounds like […]

Economics malpractice, climate and poverty, oil sands nightmares, and more WSJ dipshittery

• Max Schulz demonstrates how economics is typically used in the energy debate: "There's an unavoidable problem with renewable-energy technologies: From an economic standpoint, they're big losers." As though the "economic standpoint" is some static, univocal thing. Douchebag.

• A nice report from Brookings on a woefully under discussed topic: Double Jeopardy: What the Climate Crisis Means for the Poor.

• National Geographic has an in-depth examination of the horror that is Alberta's oil sands program. Excellent journalism, albeit the stuff of nightmares.

• Shockingly, the oil and gas industry opposes the Obama administration plan to eliminate some taxpayers subsidies for the oil and gas industry.

• A while back, Holman Jenkins, a Wall Street Journal columnist and member of the editorial board, characterized Obama's concern over climate change as a "soppy indulgence," and said of climate science: "We don't really have the slightest idea how an increase in the atmosphere's component of CO2 is impacting our climate, though the most plausible indication is that the impact is too small to untangle from natural variability." Stuart Gaffin, an actual climate scientist at Columbia University, responded in a blog post, pointing to actual science. In turn, Jenkins retrenched in a blog post of his own, with a bunch of absurd harumphing and misdirection. Gaffin responded again, decimating the smoldering remains of Jenkins argument with a torrent of scientific citations.

This is typical of many other exchanges between ideologues and scientists about climate. The galling thing, with this one as with most of them, is that the scientists are correct, by any reasonable assessment, and yet the ideologues can just go on saying whatever they want, in widely read editorials. There simply is no winning here. It's really hard to see what the scientists should do.

Wolf Blitzer parrots right-wing talking points on global warming

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Last week on the Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer parroted right-wing talking points on global warming. His program emphasized that Monday's climate crisis protest took place in the cold -- a talking point pushed by Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) office and global warming deniers from Glenn Beck to Nancy Pfotenhauer. He then followed the Heritage Foundation's reasoning to challenge Tony Blair on the urgency of establishing a cap on carbon pollution, asking if it is "wise" to "effectively impose a new tax on consumers" instead of dealing with "bread-and-butter issues":

At a time of this extraordinary economic distress, not only here in the United States but around the world, why go forward right now as a priority with all of these global warming related projects? It seems there are so many other key bread-and-butter issues literally on the table. ... Is it wise to go ahead, effectively impose a new tax on consumers right now, an energy-related tax, this uh, uh cap-and-trade if you will, to try to reduce carbon emissions right now? In effect that's going to be higher costs on consumers who use either gasoline or other electricity, forms of energy. Is that wise at a time of economic distress?

Watch it:

Blitzer summarized: "You say do it now despite all the economic issues."

Blitzer is missing a few key facts:

In the interest of fairness and balance, a shout-out for what the WSJ is doing right

The other day, I had some not very complimentary things to say about the Wall Street Journal Eco:nomics conference. (Summary: no booze.) And earlier today I had some even less complimentary things to say about a WSJ editorial. (Summary: propagandistic lies.)

So I want to take this opportunity to point out something at WSJ that most decidedly doesn't suck: the WSJ Environmental Capital blog.

It's not written with the same, um, opinionated flair (hey, you wanna call it some thing else, get your own blog) as this blog, but I don't know of a blog going that is more comprehensive and information-rich on the subjects of energy and the environment. I've come to take it for granted, but really it's somewhat odd that a mainstream paper like WSJ -- especially with its rightward leaning editorial stance -- supports writers like Keith Johnson and Jeffrey Ball who really get into the details of green finance, technology, and policy, and do so with accuracy and understanding (rare enough on any blog!).

When you think about it, it would be much easier for WSJ, and probably get them more traffic, to do something gimmicky and vapid like National Review's Planet Gore. Instead they've created something that's a real value-add for policymakers and other opinion leaders in this space.

So kudos, WSJ! Now don't screw it up.

Thomas Friedman's rock-star status

"If rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. I hear the craziest stuff. But it is a sign of a country that is actually exploding with innovation from the ground up."

-- The Mustache on collecting cards from clean-energy entrepreneurs

The NYT asks: are we shaming our politicians about their lifestyles enough?

Eager to find new ways to trivialize the warming of the planet, the New York Times has been reporting on the carbon footprint of individual politicians and legislatures.

They are abetted in this effort by Terra Eco, a French environmental magazine that has calculated British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's footprint to be -- quelle horreur! -- 8,400 tons of CO2 per year. By my calcs, that's about 0.0001 percent of America's carbon footprint, so as soon as Brown buys a bicycle, we should have the climate problem pretty well licked.

In the meantime, I applaud Terra Eco's work on this important issue, and look forward to their upcoming report on the size of Al Gore's swimming pool.