By Ray Pierrehumbert 2 April 2013 (RealClimate) – This year, the Geological Society of America is rolling out their Switch Energy Awareness campaign. The centerpiece of the campaign is a documentary film, Switch, which purports to be about the need for a transformation in the world’s energy systems. Recently, I attended the Chicago premier of […]
By Brenda Ekwurzel, climate scientist 5 April 2013 (UCS) – You know something really weird is happening when in a single season more than 123 records are broken. That was the news from my home country, Australia, last month. The Australian Climate Commission, a government-sponsored science group, released a report confirming that the country’s climate […]
By Nick Wiltgen 4 April 2013 (Weather Channel) – Roughly three of every eight registered voters in the U.S. believes that “global warming is a hoax,” according to a national poll released Tuesday by the firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) [pdf]. The automated telephone poll asked 1,247 American registered voters their beliefs on a wide […]
Desdemona has been following the “ghost city” story since Business Insider first collected satellite photos of new, empty cities in China in 2010. NBC News did a story on the ghosts that haunt China’s landscape in 2012. Business Insider has a new story for 2013: Scary new satellite pictures of China’s ghost cities. Now, Wade […]
By Dan Vergano23 March 2013 (USA TODAY) – How you ask the question skews the results when it comes to public opinion on global warming, finds an analysis of hundreds of polls. The public mostly agrees on global warming’s reality, it says. The Arctic keeps melting, the atmosphere keeps warming, and polls keep bouncing around […]
[“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Democracy simply doesn’t work.” – Kent Brockman] By Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer28 February 2012 (LiveScience) – The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they […]
By MARGARET SULLIVAN5 March 2013 (The New York Times) – Judging by appearances, things are not looking good for environmental reporting at The Times. In January, The Times dismantled its environmental reporting “pod” – a group of reporters and editors solely devoted to that subject who worked with one another to develop stories and projects. […]
By Will Oremus4 March 2013 (Slate) – In January, the New York Times dismantled its environmental desk but promised that its coverage wouldn’t suffer. “We can tell the story just as well without the infrastructure,” managing editor Dean Baquet told the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan. Reaction to the news was generally disconsolate, but Bora […]
By Paul Rosenberg25 February 2013 Could feelings of disgust be the key to saving the planet from global warming? Strange as it might seem, the answer may be yes. Concern over environmental harm is disproportionately a liberal phenomena, but concern over violating the purity and sanctity of nature cuts across ideological lines. What’s more, it’s […]
By Adam Vaughan 28 February 2013 (guardian.co.uk) – Public concern in environmental issues including global warming, the loss of species and air pollution has dropped to its lowest level in two decades, according to an international poll released this week. The GlobeScan poll, undertaken last summer before superstorm Sandy hit the Caribbean and New York, […]
