On Monday, a massive tornado plowed a near 20-mile path through suburbs of Oklahoma City, killing dozens of people and destroying entire neighborhoods. My purpose in writing about it here at the Tracker is to take a look at the ways that...
Category: climate change
21May 2013
On Monday, a massive tornado plowed a near 20-mile path through suburbs of Oklahoma City, killing dozens of people and destroying entire neighborhoods. My purpose in writing about it here at the Tracker is to take a look at the ways that science writers helped illuminate the power of that storm. But stories of big storms are always first stories of devastated lives and I'd like to start by extending the sympathy and best wishes of all of us here to people in those damaged communities.
The tornado that struck in the region of Moore, Oklahoma yesterday was reportedly as much as a mile wide at points and reached peak wind speeds that topped 200 miles an hour. According to the National Weather Service, that classifies it as an EF-4 tornado on the widely accepted...
"Does the fate of a tiny, quizzical, picky, jaunty, crimson-eyed, migrating, night-flying, snail-eating, lagoon-living and horribly threatened water bird that lives only in the outback of Patagonia matter?"
That's the question Alanna Mitchell...
"Does the fate of a tiny, quizzical, picky, jaunty, crimson-eyed, migrating, night-flying, snail-eating, lagoon-living and horribly threatened water bird that lives only in the outback of Patagonia matter?"
That's the question Alanna Mitchell asks as she begins the first part of a gracefully written, two-part series on the hooded grebe of Patagonia. Mitchell, a Canadian journalist, lives almost as far from Patagonia, at the tip of South America, as one can be. What, she wonders, could the bird mean to Canadians?
If we, like the ancient Sisters of Fate, snip the hooded grebe’s thread of life, killing off a creature that painstakingly, chaotically, maybe randomly evolved over billions of years from a single-celled entity to a heart-tuggingly beautiful bird with a scarlet crest, are we diminished? Or here’s another thought: are we at risk too...
Michael Calderone at The Huffington Post is reporting that Lenny Bernstein, a sports editor at The Washington Post, has...
Michael Calderone at The Huffington Post is reporting that Lenny Bernstein, a sports editor at The Washington Post, has been assigned to the environment beat at the paper.
The Columbia Journalism Review and others raised concern earlier this month when Bernstein's predecessor on the beat, Juliet Eilperin, was reassigned to the White House. The move was particularly disturbing because it came just after The New York Times had canceled its Green blog, a signal to many that the Times would devote fewer resources to environmental coverage. (Times officials said that was not the case, and that...
Nobody has to start supporting a carbon tax or "wearing hemp shoes," but any rational person with a brain in his or her head ought to "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 to suggest and that it...
Nobody has to start supporting a carbon tax or "wearing hemp shoes," but any rational person with a brain in his or her head ought to "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 to suggest and that it is what the vast majority of scientists who study weather believe is the case."
That's the conclusion of an evidently exasperated Matthew Herper at Forbes, who doesn't expect this to put an end to the political fighting, but does allow us "to start aiming our fiery furnace of a political system at actually solving our problems." Fight over a carbon tax, a pipeline, or composting, but at least admit the facts, he argues.
He then lists some of the main objections he...
28Jan 2013
Bora Zivkovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia when it was still Yugoslavia, but he was born again into the world of science blogging. As one of the founders of the annual Science Online conference (or unconference, as they like to call it), an editor at Scientific American, a prolific...
Bora Zivkovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia when it was still Yugoslavia, but he was born again into the world of science blogging. As one of the founders of the annual Science Online conference (or unconference, as they like to call it), an editor at Scientific American, a prolific blogger himself, and the author of 111,418 tweets as of this morning, Zivkovic uses, understands and pushes the boundaries of the science blogging world as well as anyone.
So when he decides to assess the current state of blog commenting, it's worth paying attention.
In a substantial post at Scientific American, he begins with a word or two on the recent article in which researchers say they found that found that uncivil comments can...
The New York Times is dismantling its environment desk and will assign its two editors and seven reporters to other departments, Katherine Bagley...
The New York Times is dismantling its environment desk and will assign its two editors and seven reporters to other departments, Katherine Bagley reports on InsideClimate News.
Andrew Revkin, the author of the Dot Earth blog at the Times, said on his Facebook page that he thought the paper was making a mistake:
I was never [a] fan of [a] standalone environment desk even when I worked for it. Creates a ghetto for the subject and reporters. Environment is not a beat. Environmental impacts are a result of human decisions and actions. I do think it's a mistake, however, to end position of environment EDITOR. More than ever, the paper...
While I was working with Dan Kahan yesterday to arrange for his guest post on guns and the death penalty, I came across another one of his posts--...
While I was working with Dan Kahan yesterday to arrange for his guest post on guns and the death penalty, I came across another one of his posts--a discussion of the climate-change chapter in Nate Silver's recent book, "The Signal and the Noise." Kahan, a professor of law and psychology at Yale Law School who studies how cultural values shape risk perceptions, described Silver's thoughts on climate change prediction as correct and even wise.
Then he addressed something that puzzled him--a highly critical review of Silver on The Huffington Post by Michael Mann, the...
Yesterday on his Dot Earth blog for The New York Times, Andrew Revkin posted a video interview with...
Yesterday on his Dot Earth blog for The New York Times, Andrew Revkin posted a video interview with Michael Schlesinger, a climatologist at the University of Illinois.
No, Revkin and Schlesinger were not being trailed by a camera crew, nor did a boom operator with bulging earphones use a fishpole to prop a furry mic over their heads. Revkin brought a Flip camera with him, and he propped it somewhere it could catch Schlesinger's head and shoulders. That was it.
A blog post could have conveyed the substance of the interview. Why bother with video?
I asked Revkin that question in an email. "There are lots of reasons I do this," he said. "One is to let scientists tell their own story. One is to do cross-platform storytelling (...
While politicians in Washington are squabbling over who-knew-what-when with regard to UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Benghazi, an environmental reporter has revealed important information about her finances.
The woman who could become the next Secretary of State "holds significant investments in more...
While politicians in Washington are squabbling over who-knew-what-when with regard to UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Benghazi, an environmental reporter has revealed important information about her finances.
The woman who could become the next Secretary of State "holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline," writes Scott Dodd on the website of the Natural Resources Defense Council's OnEarth magazine.
If she is nominated by President Obama and confirmed, one of her likely duties would be "consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project," writes Dodd, the editor of OnEarth.org...
15Nov 2012
The idea of taxing carbon emissions to address climate change is once again in the air in Washington. But it could prove no more popular this time than it did in 2009 when President Obama tried to get a climate-change bill through Congress, and failed.
Seth Borenstein at The AP...
The idea of taxing carbon emissions to address climate change is once again in the air in Washington. But it could prove no more popular this time than it did in 2009 when President Obama tried to get a climate-change bill through Congress, and failed.
Seth Borenstein at The AP has written a nice scene-setter, which refers to recent reports on the subject (but doesn't link to them!) and surveys the political landscape. (Ouch; the mixed metaphors are mine, not Borenstein's.) To get a sense of the depth of feeling on this issue, note that Borenstein reports that the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking access to Treasury Department emails on the subject.
Before you place your bets for or against a carbon tax, read Borenstein.
...The business press has not been among the leaders in writing and thinking about climate change and the consequences for the economy.
This week, Bloomberg Businessweek begins to rewrite that script with a slashing story on climate change and...
The business press has not been among the leaders in writing and thinking about climate change and the consequences for the economy.
This week, Bloomberg Businessweek begins to rewrite that script with a slashing story on climate change and a dramatic cover that is an instant classic:
It's a strong story, and well worth reading. But the cover is what people will remember--and it's what might prod business people into a more open-minded attitude toward climate change and its consequences.
Josh Tyrangiel, Businessweek's editor, tweeted, "Our cover story this week may generate controversy, but only among the stupid....
On this week's Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge fills a basket with important links related to climate and Sandy. Her selection is especially valuable if you were among those of us who didn't have power to read these things when they were posted.
She...
On this week's Science Blogs, Tabitha M. Powledge fills a basket with important links related to climate and Sandy. Her selection is especially valuable if you were among those of us who didn't have power to read these things when they were posted.
She also notes that a few other things happened last week, including news on the politics of health care, the election and Jonah Lehrer. Remember Jonah Lehrer?
Find it all here.
-Paul Raeburn
In comments Tuesday, while discussing the high-powered destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo went into territory mostly avoided by U.S. politicians these days. To quote: "There has been a...
In comments Tuesday, while discussing the high-powered destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo went into territory mostly avoided by U.S. politicians these days. To quote: "There has been a series of extreme weather incidents. That is not a political statement, that is a factual statement ... Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality."
Okay, he said "dramatic change" rather than "climate change" but there's no missing the point. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised the possibility a little more directly: "the storms we've experienced in the last year or so around this country and around the world are much more severe than before. Whether...
I expected Climate Depot to be slicker. It’s a site run by Mark Morano, a former reporter for the Rush Limbaugh show and a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. It...
I expected Climate Depot to be slicker. It’s a site run by Mark Morano, a former reporter for the Rush Limbaugh show and a spokesman for Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. It’s clear that he doesn’t know anything about science but I thought a character like that would have a nicer looking website.
Today the site has fixed its crosshairs on AP science reporter Seth Borenstein, who has offended them yet again but writing about climate change as if it’s a problem. I’ve run afoul of climate skeptic bloggers before, and so I may be biased in saying they can be childish and vindictive and lack any sense of logic. When I covered the “climategate” affair, a similar denier site called Watts Up With That accused me of being a porn writer...
5Oct 2012
If you're looking for a Friday afternoon pick-me-up, you won't find it at Tabitha M. Powledge's On Science Blogs--unless fraud, lies, and statistics stimulate your synapses.
She starts...
If you're looking for a Friday afternoon pick-me-up, you won't find it at Tabitha M. Powledge's On Science Blogs--unless fraud, lies, and statistics stimulate your synapses.
She starts the discussion with the PNAS paper on misconduct in the life sciences, broadens that to misconduct in other sciences, and even tracks down a story about scientists in South Korea, China, and Iran who set up a scheme so they could glowingly review their own papers.
On a lighter note, she turns to the presidential debate. There she provides links to stories pointing out errors, lies, and damn lies relating to healthcare, green energy, and even one story on why it was a good thing that climate change was not mentioned in the debate.
Mercifully, she says nothing about Big Bird.
-Paul Raeburn
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