Eighteen top news executives, representing some of the nation’s leading metropolitan daily newspapers and other news organizations, met all day September 5, 2007 at Stanford University with nine leading climate scientists and researchers. Their goal: to better understand the physical science underlying many scientists’ growing concerns … and to explore the energy and economic implications […]
Posted inFeature Article, Policy & Politics
Call it Climate Change. Strike That. Let’s Call it Global Warming. Strike THAT. Let’s Call It … (Pt.1 of 2)
Go back to May 1997, about seven months before the Kyoto Protocols were negotiated. The Cooler Heads Coalition established its web site, www.globalwarming.org. It was a savvy move for a group that’s skeptical about the risks of rising temperatures. Even it recognized how universal the term “global warming” was becoming.
Posted inFeature Article, Weather Extremes
Profile of The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen
One quick look at her resume alerts you that Heidi Cullen isn’t your “normal” journalist who took college courses, let’s be honest here, in large part to avoid dicey courses dealing with things like statistics, coefficients, and math generally. Cullen, in fact, is perhaps even more comfortable with issues involving engineering and paleoclimatology than she […]
Posted inFeature Article, Policy & Politics
Newsweek’s ‘Hoax’ Cover Story Raises Ire of Deniers, … and also Criticism from Within
“Hoax” is a potent accusation, a four-letter grenade of a word. In the public discussion of anthropogenic climate change, prominent conservatives such as Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh have used it to convey profound suspicion about the motives of those who say manmade global warming is happening and worthy of action.
Posted inClimate Science, Feature Article
Tamino’s ‘Open Mind’
“Saying something brilliant simply.” The phrase comes from former WNET-TV/Nature documentary film producer and writer Gianna Savoie, now a freelance documentary producer. It’s a rare gift to express complex scientific concepts in simple terms. Perhaps more than any other prominent climate blogger, the pseudonymous Tamino delves into many of the day’s common climate change sophisms […]
Posted inFood & Agriculture
Carbon Footprint Labeling on Foods?
Are all those health and nutrition beat reporters starting to get envious about the growing amount of column inches and air minutes going to climate change? They need to fret more. There’s plenty to go around the news room. And around and around and around.
Posted inWeather Extremes
NOAA Release Draws Unusual Attention … But Why?
Climate change watchers were quick to pounce when NOAA on August 28 put out a release with the headline “Greenhouse Gases Likely Drove Near-Record U.S. Warmth in 2006.”
Posted inClimate Science
Climate Skeptic Pat Michaels … Life After U.Va. and ‘State Climatologist’ Role
Climate change skeptic par excellence Patrick J. Michaels never has been known as the shy and retiring type. And that isn’t likely to change just because he’s now resigned from the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Sciences, where he had been associated for nearly three decades.
Posted inEnergy, Jobs & Economy
Mortgages for Energy Efficiency
A recent Wall Street Journal feature offers valuable insights for reporters looking for a climate change connection to their housing and mortgage beats. Lenders are “pitching mortgage products that offer homebuyers bigger loans or discounts if they are making energy-efficient improvements,” Sara Schaefer Muñoz reported. She reported on a Citigroup program offering $1,000 off closing […]
Posted inOceans
Climate Change, Overfishing Sited in ‘Red Listing’ of Ocean Corals
Climate change is one of two principal factors (the other is overfishing) being sited in the first-ever listing of ocean corals in the annual report of wildlife going extinct from the IUCN (World Conservation Union). The group’s 2007 “Red List,” released in September, lists two corals ñ Floreana coral (Tubastraea floreana) and Wellington’s solitary coral […]
Posted inJobs & Economy
On the Business Beat? Cover Climate Change
Here’s a peg. The University of Rhode Island is moving toward a graduate program offering studies in climate and oceanography along with business administration. With plans to offer the two-year dual degree program starting in the fall of 2008, URI officials say it would be the first of its kind in the world. They say […]
Posted inClimate Science
Feeding on the Beast of Climate Change: Science, Impacts, ‘Solutions’ Focus of SEJ Convention
Climate change issues were front-and-center at the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) 17th annual conference at Stanford University September 5-9.