Headlines don't get much more alarmist than this... As Tory Outcast points out, the story that the Independent Newspaper thinks a catastrophe is in fact far more mundane: The article by Tony Patterson tells the story of two commercial vessels which have managed to...
May, the Farce be With You
We haven't mentioned Bob May for a while. Here he is, talking to BBC R4's World at One presenter Martha Kearney today about... oh, you know, everything. [Listen again - UK Only] MK: The issue of climate change is being addressed tonight by the president of the British...
0 out of 10 for 10:10
It turns out we've missed a trick in our articles about the fashion for what we have called 'pastiche politics', the phenomenon by which environmentalists attempt to muster non-existent public support by comparing themselves to world-changing political movements of...
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...
Folie à Deux
Reading it is enough to make you want to stop breathing... On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of...
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,...
British Ponds for British Dragonflies
Any article that includes the line The dragonfly family has more species than any other mammal has got to be worth a closer look. And this one, from Saturday's Guardian, doesn't disappoint. Dragonflies in danger of extinction seek sanctuary at new rescue centre...
The 'Green Energy Revolution': Spinning Failure as Success
The UK government recently gave its 'low carbon transition plan' an airing. At the launch of the plan, the unelected Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills who has been forced, twice, to resign from previous roles within the government for his...
Make Us Let You Eat Less Cake
We've flagged up Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband's relationship with climate activists before. When he's not snuggling up to Franny 'Age of Stupid' Armstrong, he's egging on airport protesters and comparing them to past popular movements: When you...
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...