Climate change polls may be misleading
Americans have a more nuanced view of climate change than news reports about recent polls suggest, according to a Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media article by environmental journalist John Wihbey.
Wihbey, a former environmental reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger, is addressing a supposed trend trumpeted over the last few months by the mainstream media: Despite mounting scientific evidence to the contrary, people seem to be getting more skeptical of climate change.
Wihbey makes a good case that the trend isn’t at all definitive, but the article doesn’t entirely convince me that public perception isn’t headed in the wrong direction. Read more
OK. This is my last ‘Apocalypse Now’ headline
Britain’s Independent newspaper grabbed the phrase a few years back soon after we entered the new millennium. Just last week, Toronto’s Globe and Mail picked the two words to top a thoughtful piece on proper responses to the climate crisis.
Freeman Dyson: Patron saint of climate skeptics
Officials at climate-change-skeptical think tanks, including the founder of one, responded earlier this week to my Mother Nature Network column on such think tanks. The column argued that they’re closer to PR organizations than research institutions.
First up was David J. Theroux, founder and president of the Independent Institute, a free-market oriented think tank has published the work of skeptic S. Fred Singer:
You fail to even mention, much less examine, the empirical findings discussed at [last week's Heartland Institute] conference that indicate that climate alarmism is unfounded and has far more to do with environmental religion and interest-group politics than science. Instead, your article is just more dismissive punditry, with the obvious point that while Lord Monckton may not be a scientist, neither are you or Al Gore.
In contrast, here is a new interview with Nobel Prize Laureate physicist Freeman Dyson that actually discusses some of the pertinent matters that you will not address: http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151 As for the matter of corporate interests determining the debate, perhaps the following will be useful regarding what is now the eco-corporatist Climate-Industrial Complex: http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2217 David J. Theroux Pres[i]dent The Independent Institute
Anti-environmental polemicists have been bringing up Dyson a lot recently. Read more
Editorials say climate’s ripe for climate bill
The landmark climate-change bill approved by a key House committee may be a whipping boy for Fox News and Rush Limbaugh But the legislation won strongly favorable reviews last week on U.S. newspaper editorial pages.
If anything, the most searing (certainly the most cogent) criticism of the Waxman-Markey carbon “cap-and-trade” bill came from editorial writers who believe it doesn’t go far enough. Among those was Boston Globe:
[I]n an attempt to build broad support for the measure, sponsors Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Henry Waxman of California have given away too many allowances, reducing pressure on firms to curb their emissions. …
The bill’s supporters say auctioning off all allowances would put too many industries, such as steel, at a competitive disadvantage with foreign rivals. But a strong US climate-change bill would give US negotiators the clout they need in upcoming global climate talks to insist on similar reductions in other nations, leveling the economic playing field.
Favorable editorial treatment during just one step toward passage is just a snapshot. The legislation still hasn’t passed the full House, and in July, the Senate’s expected to become the real battleground over passage. Surely by then the Wall Street Journal will weigh in, as will other papers. Read more
