media coverage
A Total Eclipse of the Heat
The eclipse mania gripping U.S. media and the entire nation is an opportunity to gaze in awe at the climate crisis we’ve unleashed and talk about our collective response.
Millions of Americans traveled this week to the path of totality to hunker down with loved ones and total strangers to gaze upwards at one of the most amazing astronomical events of our lives and share something like a transcendent, spiritual experience. I hope we can collectively reckon with another terrifyingly awesome atmospheric event: the …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia is Suing Big Oil Thanks to Journalism
California’s climate and consumer protection lawsuit against Big Oil was made possible by the past work of journalists. What’s the state of climate journalism now?
The state of California has joined the party. By “party” I mean the increasingly ambitious climate liability litigation against Big Oil. And when California shows up at the party, the volume goes way up. There’s already been a lot of smart analysis on the legal arguments (including by UCLA’s Cara Horowitz here). I’d like to …
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CONTINUE READINGThis Climate Debate is a lot of Hot Air
Geoengineering is having a moment. But much of the media coverage is failing to capture the actual debate.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately about geoengineering – the various scientific theories and governance ideas that could eventually lead to technological interventions to help cool the planet. A weather balloon stunt in Mexico by a small startup called Make Sunsets generated a lot of hot headlines, even though that solar geoengineering “experiment” was so …
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CONTINUE READINGPope Francis Channels Mike Tyson
Who Will Get the Movie Rights to the Encyclical on Climate Change?
Many hope that the Pope’s impending encyclical on climate change (and inequality) will change the debate on both topics. Certainly right-wing Catholics are getting nervous about it. But who will get the movie rights? I don’t know, but here’s a potential trailer. What does this have to do with Mike Tyson? Just watch:
CONTINUE READINGA New Low for Fictional News Network
Guess which cable news network misleads on climate?
Well, what a shock: To gauge how accurately [cable news] networks inform their audiences about climate change, the Union of Concerned Scientists analyzed the networks’ climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently. Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained …
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CONTINUE READINGHow Not to Write About Keystone XL
I’ve always liked the work of New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, ever since his days as an investigative reporter for the Texas Monthly. He doesn’t come to a topic with an axe to grind, and tries to see through the cant. But I think he just got snookered. In Nocera’s recent column on the …
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CONTINUE READINGI’m Too Sexy for this Chimp
Growing up, I had always heard of Jane Goodall, knew that she had something to do with primate research, and that she was famous. So when my second-grader came home from school and announced that she had chosen to do a presentation about Goodall, I thought it would be a nice opportunity for me to …
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CONTINUE READINGSeeing Nature Through Conservation Eyes
There’s a cool new video on “conservation biology,” which you can find here. It has fabulous photos, as well as interesting commentary on the role of photography in prompting conservation. The photo to the left is an early example: a 19th century shot of Yellowstone that helped prompt the creation of the national …
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CONTINUE READINGGlobal warming still a partisan issue
The latest Gallup Poll on attitudes toward climate change has a disturbing message for advocates of strong policies either to limit greenhouse gas emissions or to promote effective adaptation. Forty-one percent of respondents think that news coverage generally exaggerates the seriousness of global warming, the highest number since Gallup started asking the question in 1997. …
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