A Brief History of Ecology

Regular readers of this blog will know that one of its central themes is the idea that, in the environmentalist's argument 'the politics is prior' to the science. Environmentalists seem to forget what it is they have presupposed, and appear to believe that...

Putting humanity in a kangaroo court

<em>Published on Spiked-Online at http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/10549/</em> You may not have noticed, but last week you were a co-defendant in a court case. In Stockholm, the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability met at the...

Against Humans

I have an article up on Spiked-Online today, about the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability and their mock-trial of humanity. The ‘trial’ was merely a stunt, of course, designed to make a stuffy, pompous and self-serving enterprise such as this more...

Eco-Rapture and the Cult of Malthus & Gaia

There's been a lot of talk this week -- and probably a lot of disappointment -- about the end of the world. Said the Observer today... To the shock and distress of a handful of ultra-devout Christian believers, the sun went down yesterday on an America and a world...

Can Pap-Pop Save the Planet?

A couple of commenters on my last post questioned my judgement of misery-act, Radiohead. I hope that we can find a consensus on this little number more easily... [youtube h65xXOVrQzQ] Eww. It's the Finnish entry to the Eurovision Song Contest -- an annual high camp,...

Science-Pop Won't Make Climate Science Pop-Science

What is worse than pop stars preaching about climate science? [youtube EkBS7Sw5BaA] [Thom Yorke, lead singer of crap miserablist act, Radiohead, wondering what he's doing on Age of Stupid director, Franny Armstrong's Stupid Show] It's climate scientists expressing...

The Inter-NGO Panel on Climate Change

The IPCC has published an SPM of its forthcoming report on renewable energy. The Guardian claims, Renewable energy can power the world, says landmark IPCC study. Hmm... Sven Teske, renewable energy director at Greenpeace International, and a lead author of the report,...

The Eco-House of Horror

Popular wisdom has it that 'necessity is the mother of invention'. I'm not so sure. How could we explain this in terms of 'necessity'? [youtube -jw2mNeR1tw] I'm not knocking it. I think it's fantastic. This, on the other hand, is damn awful. A tour of the Cube from...

The Ecology of Stupid

The Guardian has a revealing editorial today, which makes the claim that Biodiversity: It's the ecology, stupid At every level, human civilisation is underwritten by the planet's countless and still mostly unidentified wild things As discussed in the previous post,...

Trust Me, I Speak for Science

Two recent posts here have been about the role of trust in the environmental debate. Briefly, Mark Lynas and George Monbiot seem to expect everybody to share their trust in scientific authority, yet not so long ago, they were themselves suspicious of it. It was the...