Penguins Are Killing the Polar Bears

This week has been a PR disaster for the North Pole. No sooner had scientists shown that the Antarctic really had been warming up a bit, actually, probably due to climate change and everything, than it was proved that Emperor penguins are more screwed even than the...

activism.plc@gov.ac.uk

At the risk of getting all Exxon-Secrets 'on yo asses'... Thanks to the reader who let us know about Bob Ward's latest career move. Ward, if you remember, left his post of director of communications at the Royal Society to join global risk analysis firm RMS as...

Cut and Paste Journalism

BBC bosses today tried to make excuses for the cut-and-paste job by BBC science journalist, Susan Watts, as discovered by Tony at Harmless Sky recently. Answering criticism on Watts' blog, Newsnight Editor Peter Rippon said: We did edit sections of the speech to...

Biased Broadcasting Climate – Part 2

Over at the Harmless Sky blog, the sharp-eyed, and quick-minded Tony N has spotted an alarming piece of journalistic interference with Obama's inauguration speech. It would seem that someone at the BBC had taken the trouble to splice the tape so that half a sentence...

Only Four Years Left to Save Environmentalism

Another sure sign that environmentalists are struggling to sustain a rational basis for their influence emerged last week. The pages of the Observer featured the opinion of NASA activist/scientist James Hansen in two articles [1 , 2] and an editorial. Barack Obama has...

The Movement Movement

One of the most toxic effects of environmentalism's tendency to reduce human needs and wants to problems that need to be contained and controlled is found in the debate over transport policy. Movement itself is threatened by demands that we reduce our 'impact' on the...

George's Aga Ga-Ga and the Heathrow Hoo-Haa

George Monbiot is a very confused man. A few days ago, he announced his campaign against the Aga cooker (because it uses lots of energy). This, he said 'is indeed a class war' - the Aga is an expensive piece of kit, and therefore, you have to be rather wealthy to own...

Pick a Number – Any Number

Worldwatch, which aims to 'empower decision makers to build an ecologically sustainable society that meets human needs' have upped the stakes:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - To avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, world carbon emissions will have to drop to...

Comment is NOT Free

Over at Comment is Free, George Monbiot attempts to rescue the eco-movement from the criticism that they're a bunch of toffs by launching a campaign to 'ban the aga'. "This is indeed a class war," he says.  So where is the campaign against Agas? There isn't one. I've...

Site Design

A number of readers have let us know of some problems with the site.  First is the colour scheme, which makes difficult reading for more mature eyes.  The second is the loading time of pages in Internet Explorer.  We're aware of both these problems, and are working on...