[UPDATE: Keystone XL pipeline: US government report drew on analysis by oil consultants] By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson1 March 2013 (Washington Post) – The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday afternoon, suggesting that blocking the project would not have a significant impact on either the […]
In an escalation of the annual farce that plays out at the Weblog Awards (cf. Antiscience site wins another ‘Best Science or Technology Weblog’ award), this year we have 4 of 5 nominees in the Science category held by antiscience blogs. In 2010, Des tried to persuade the Weblog Awards staff to reconsider allowing antiscience […]
By Emily Heffling, Virginia Campus Organizer22 February 2013 If Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was featured on the TV show, Are you smarter than a 5th grader?, he would have been out before the first commercial. In his new book, The Last Line of Defense, Cuccinelli has a chapter called “Weird Science” dedicated to his […]
20 February 2013 (AP) – The company that wants to build a controversial oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas said on Tuesday said that shutting down the oil sands at its source would have no measurable effect on global warming. “You could shut down oil sands production tomorrow and it would have absolutely no […]
TOKYO, 21 February 2013 (AFP) – Japan vowed to continue its whale hunt in the Southern Ocean after clashes with the militant conservationist Sea Shepherd group, which claimed Tokyo had been forced to end the mission. “We are keeping our whaling programme,” an official at Japan’s Fisheries Agency told AFP on Thursday, denying a report […]
[“Teach the controversy”: Taking a page from the Creationists’ playbook. –Des] 18 February 2013 By Celia Llopis-Jepsen (The Topeka Capital-Journal) – With the Kansas State Board of Education preparing to vote on new science standards this year, the House Education Committee has introduced a bill asking schools to include evidence against climate change in science […]
By Matthew Herper, Forbes Staff18 February 2013 (Forbes) – We have reached the point where every rational person who believes in making decisions based on science and available data should, if not fully believe that human beings are warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, at least recognize that this is what the data seem […]
16 February 2013By Brendan Fischer (PR Watch) – Legislators in four states have introduced bills in recent weeks supporting the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, with language that appears to have been lifted directly from a “model” American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bill and from TransCanada’s own public relations talking points. Some of the first […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent 14 February 2013 (guardian.co.uk) – Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m (£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned. The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks […]
By Brendan DeMelle11 February 2013 (DeSmogBlog) – A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene. Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf […]
