Ward Loses Patience

Among the most absurd elements of climate change debates is the persistence of the issue of 'funding'. Absurd because at the same time that science is held to give uncorrupted and incorruptible instructions about how to respond to a changing climate, it is also held -...

Gore Mouthing-Off About Make-Believe Madoffs

Our last post concerned the New York Times article by Andrew Revkin, about allegations of a ‘tobacco strategy’ conspiracy to distort the climate debate in the interests of energy companies. The story was used by Al Gore in testimony to congress, in which he accuses...

Know Your Times

>> UPDATE: Gore uses the flawed NYT article in his testimony to congress. READ MORE. << New York Times journalist, Andrew Revkin, generally writes thoughtfully in the paper, and on his Dot Earth blog, even if we generally disagree with him. However,...

The Psychology of the Psychology of Denial

Last week, we mentioned an academic conference at the University of the West of England about the psychology of climate change denial, which appeared to be rather lacking on the academic front. It was a gathering of a handful of higher beings - Jungian analysts,...

Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree

This weekend, the University of the West of England's Centre for Psycho-Social Studies is holding a conference on 'The Psychological and Political Challenge of Facing Climate Change'. According to conference organiser Professor Paul Hoggett: "We will examine [climate...

Labouring with Labels

It's often hard to have a discussion about the climate change debate without recourse to language about 'sides'. We are certainly not the only ones to have argued that the conventional portrayal of the debate as a polarised one between warmers/alarmists and...

The Conspiracy-Theory Conspiracy Theory

Our previous post, and one the week before looked at the arguments emerging from climate activists about what to make of the existence of an email news circular, operated by Marc Morano, the Communications Director at the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee,...

Biased Broadcasting Climate

Dr. Iain Stewart's new BBC2 series Earth: The Climate Wars promised to be a 'definitive guide' to the climate debate. Instead, this week's episode 'Fightback', which focused on the sceptics was as shallow and as hollow as any old commentary. The film's blurb on BBC...

90 Minutes of TV; 16 Months of Handwaving…

...and counting... Every day in the UK, £millions are spent on making sure that national and local government departments do not produce too much CO2. Business, schools and hospitals have to make sure they are complying with regulations that require them to reduce...

The Well Funded World Wide Fund for Fear

We reported earlier in the year how claims that a 'denial lobby' had influenced public opinion on climate change were totally at odds with reality. The UK's Royal Society, for example wrote an open letter to Exxon in 2006, accusing it of funding these sceptics. The...