Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the OPT

On the BBC's Horizon tonight, Sir David Attenborough, patron of the Optimum Population Trust, tackles the question How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? Except he doesn't. He comes up with an answer alright - 15 billion if we all live like the average Indian, 2.5...

Newsnight of the Living Dead

For those who missed Wednesday's edition of BBC2's Newsnight, we highly recommend that you watch it: When you're asked to adapt your lifestyle to combat climate change, what goes through your head? Do you embrace the challenge, switch off the lights and reach for the...

Has Climate Porn Already Tipped?

At the BBC's Earth Watch blog, Richard Black takes a different perspective on the recent survey of the British public (well, 500 of them, anyway) and Climate Porn that we covered in our last post. Among the emails that arrive in my inbox regularly on climate change,...

Which is First: Chicken Little or the 'Perfect Storm'?

John Beddington is the UK's Chief Scientific advisor and Professor of Applied Population Biology at Imperial College, London. On Monday, the soothsayer's foresight was the subject of a BBC feature. As the world's population grows, competition for food, water and...

Future-Present Imperfect Imperative

The English language is just not equipped with the verb tenses required to report environmental news stories easily. Where's the tense that would allow environment reporters to write stories about predictions about the future as if they are occurring in the present,...

The Lady Doth Protest too Much…

After a 20-year-long role at the BBC, Peter Sissons has attacked the anti-journalistic culture at the BBC. Writing in the Mail on Sunday (the article has been taken off-line for some reason), Sissons outlines some key reasons for his decision to leave. This bit caught...

Hogging the Climate Change Gravy Train

Nearly two years ago, we wrote a post about 'research' emerging from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, showing that fat people contribute disproportionately to climate change. True to the commandments of environmentalism - Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle -...

B*llsh*t B*ll*cks Cr*p

Some journalists are supposed to be critical of government. It is their job. Some journalists are supposed to make arguments in favour of government policy. It is their job, even if the result is bland and inconsequential. Some journalists feign 'balance' by reporting...

Is JR Killing the Polar Bears?

'Tis the season of resurrections. And right on cue, science PR is working overtime to bring the polar-ice soap opera back from the dead. Following a disappointing summer of 2008, in which the 'worst ever' Arctic ice scenarios prophesied at the start of the year failed...

No Fire Without a Smokescreen

In far flung corners of the globe, where tedious matters of grim reality tend to be of greater concern than the theoretical possibility of the ravages of global warming, there seems to be a growing realisation that, to generate interest from the western media in stuff...