Grist | Topics | 55 Results

RESULTS		Results 26 – 50 of 55
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Modestly right, not interestingly wrong The right way to interpret Shellenberger & Nordhaus	David Roberts	13 Jan 2008	Gristmill
Matt Yglesias has a review of Shellenberger & Nordhaus' book in the NYT Sunday Book Review. It contains a good insight and a fairly crucial mistake -- albeit a mistake common to those enter S&N's hall of mirrors for the first time. The insight is twofold. First, that the core and most valuable part of S&N's book is about messaging: "We know from extensive psychological research," they write, "that presenting frightening disaster scenari ...
Topics: books, climate, energy, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Bush plays Baker, part IV Tom Carper totally knows the president	David Roberts	04 Jan 2008	Gristmill
(An on we go, in a series on the WaPo piece so bad it required numerous separate gripes.) Tom Carper would like you to know that he's a) committed on global warming, and b) tight with the president: People find all sorts of ways to lobby President Bush. Sometimes it comes in the form of a handwritten note slipped into his palm during a bill-signing ceremony. Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) tried that last week when Bush signed energy legislation that will curb g ...
Topics: climate, George Bush, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Is the competence of CBS News overblown? Presidential candidates answer dumb question about global warming	David Roberts	11 Dec 2007	Gristmill
I have complained a number of times -- even on CNN! -- that the mainstream political press is ignoring the issue of global warming, particularly in the context of the presidential race. Well, it seems CBS News finally decided it was time to address the issue, as part of its "Primary Questions" series, which asks 10 questions of each of the candidates. What question did they choose? "Is the global warming threat overblown?" Oh. My. God. Will you ...
Topics: climate, elections, energy, messaging, politics, presidential race 08 (all these topics)

What he said Tobis on the multidimensionality of the climate discussion	David Roberts	21 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Readers know that I was mightily bothered by Andy Revkin's attempt to classify certain thinkers as part of the "middle" of the climate debate. Some folks have attacked Revkin because they think one "side" -- the "alarmist" side -- is correct. That wasn't quite my point. What I was trying to get at I just found summarized in a comment by Michael Tobis over on John Fleck's site. Tobis makes the point with many fewer words: Opinion space i ...
Topics: climate, energy, messaging (all these topics)

Chatting with Revkin NYT author discusses recent story on climate 'centrism'	David Roberts	15 Nov 2007	Gristmill
On Tuesday, NYT environment reporter Andy Revkin published a piece called 'Challenges to Both Left and Right on Global Warming.' The following day, I wrote a highly critical response: "Centrist dog food." With typical graciousness, Revkin offered to discuss the piece, so I took him up on it and we fired up a Skype chat. Here is the transcript: David Roberts: Thanks for doing this. Andy Revkin: So I'm always more eager to search for points of agreement tha ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, messaging (all these topics)

Centrist dog food NYT's Andy Revkin pens another stinker on the so-called 'center' of the climate debate	David Roberts	14 Nov 2007	Gristmill
'This wind is extremist!' Andy Revkin has been doing such great stuff on his Dot Earth climate blog, I wanted to ignore the story he published yesterday in the NYT: 'Challenges to Both Left and Right on Global Warming.' Pretend it never happened. But I can't. It's just ... awful. The preposterous claim at the center of the piece is that Newt Gingrich, Bjorn Lomborg, and Shellenberger & Nordhaus represent the "pragmatic center on climate and ener ...
Topics: climate, energy, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Green is the new blah NBC sitcoms universally ... unfunny	Katharine Wroth	09 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Last night I watched the TNSFKAMST (Thursday Night Shows Formerly Known as Must-See TV). To be honest I'd forgotten it was Green Is Universal week; I was just indulging in a little sitcom sitdown. But there was no escaping the green message, and it was ... what's the word? ... artificial and painful and forced. Three of the four shows -- My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock, and Scrubs -- took the over-the-topness over the top, having fun at their bosses' expense and doing th ...
Topics: climate, green living, messaging, TV (all these topics)

The political climate is changing: Part II How should the presidential candidates convey the issue of climate change to the public?	Joseph Romm	07 Nov 2007	Gristmill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project. ----- We've seen in Part I that the political climate is changing. How should presidential candidates talk about climate in the 2008 campaign? My advice to the candidates is to love the global warming deniers and delayers to death and to handle the economic issue head-on. Invite them into constructive discussion. Elevate the dialogue. Emph ...
Topics: climate, elections, energy, messaging, politics, presidential race 08 (all these topics)

Experts agree: We should all lie. A lot. About important stuff. Nobody fights for change unless they see there's a problem	John McGrath	29 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Ugh. So my local paper decided to print its own local blend of Nordhaus-Shellenberger drivel. Did you know that "it's time to stop blaring dire warnings about the perils of climate change and, instead, start enthusiastically proclaiming solutions"? I sure didn't. It's not as if people like Amory Lovins, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, or I dunno, Gar Lipow have spent years talking about exactly that. It's not like the central message adopted by successful c ...
Topics: climate change impacts, climate change skepticism, climate, messaging, environmental movement, climate change mitigation (all these topics)

Most opinion leaders just don't get global warming: Part I The intelligentsia isn't helping the public understand the urgency of the climate crisis	Joseph Romm	15 Oct 2007	Gristmill
Why does the public largely lack a sense of urgency on climate? Maybe because most opinion leaders also lack that sense of urgency. To mark its 150th Anniversary, the Atlantic Monthly (subs. reqd) ... ... invited an eclectic group of thinkers who have had cause to consider the American idea to describe its future and the greatest challenges to it. Now this one is real easy -- you don't have to be scientifically literate or read the work of James Hansen, you just ...
Topics: climate, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Right message, wrong vehicle Environmental Defense's climate ads go negative, miss the mark	Erik Hoffner	25 Sep 2007	Gristmill
There's no shortage of messaging on climate change these days, but the latest ad I came across concerned me in the same way that Greenpeace's pissy kid ad did. I just heard the radio version of Environmental Defense's two TV ads (which this hard-rock station was repeating back-to-back, for extra negative impact), which tear a page from the same playbook: "The Gift" features kids reading off a list of lousy things that adults are giving them, like droughts, str ...
Topics: climate, messaging (all these topics)

Well, it's memorable ... Greenpeace ad on climate change	JMG	05 Sep 2007	Gristmill
I have mixed feelings about this powerful ad. I'm curious to know how it strikes others.
Topics: climate, Greenpeace, messaging (all these topics)

Keep your friends close ... Some unwitting climate change advice from the National Review	Adam Stein	29 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Hey, did anyone here read that recent article on political strategies for action on climate change? You know, the one published in the National Review? [crickets chirping] OK, I generally don't recommend the National Review on environmental policy, but I couldn't help peeking at the recent article [PDF] by Jim Manzi. Various writers of the more thoughtful right-of-center blogs have alternatively described it as "brilliant" and "a taste of how a wise ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, messaging (all these topics)

Looking for a new GW metaphor: Canaries exhausted No more canaries in coal mines, please	Kit Stolz	22 May 2007	Gristmill
While on a book tour recently, Bill McKibben made an interesting point in an appearance in Santa Barbara. McKibben -- a former New Yorker writer who wrote his first book on climate change back in 1989 -- told the crowd that to expect the Sierra Club and traditional conservationists to take on global warming with "the grammar of wildness" that John Muir drew from his life in the Yosemite Valley back in the 1860s was impractical and unfair. He suggested that &q ...
Topics: Bill McKibben, climate, cutesy, environmental movement, messaging, Sierra Club (all these topics)

The alternative to fear is not lack of emotion How best to pitch the climate change message?	David Roberts	15 May 2007	Gristmill
Mike Hulme of the UK's Tyndall Centre says -- yet again -- that the language of "catastrophe" and "disaster" used by climate-change scientists and advocates is having the opposite of its intended effect: it's making people numb and apathetic. I more or less buy this -- I did, after all, write a five-part series arguing that fear is no friend of greens. But the conclusion Tim Haab draws from it is so spectacularly, diametrically wrong I can only sh ...
Topics: climate, environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Newt Gingrich's 'green conservatism' It's not an alternative, it's a subset	David Roberts	10 May 2007	Gristmill
Newt Gingrich has a new book out called A Contract with the Earth, which purports to outline a "green conservatism." For a summary, you can check out this brief op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I approached it with an open mind -- eagerly, even. There's nothing I would like more than for a vibrant green conservatism to join the debate over the best way to accomplish green goals. That would be an enormous step forward from the current situation. ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, environmental movement, messaging, Newt Gingrich, politics (all these topics)

Sensenbrenner: protecting the children from <del Oy	David Roberts	19 Apr 2007	Gristmill
A panel of retired generals thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. The U.N. Security Council thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. But wait! We forgot to ask Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R)! Sensenbrenner questioned "why global warming has suddenly become an issue of national defense" and afterward accused politicians and pundits of stoking children's fears. Think of the children.
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, Congress, environmental movement, insanity, messaging, politics (all these topics)

The chasm between our agenda and climate science: The problem statement It's time to accept dire climate realities	Ken Ward	18 Apr 2007	Gristmill
((brightlines_include)) A review of recent climate science findings finds that Jim Hansen's bright-line standard and timeframe for global action [1.0�C limit on further increase in global temperature / 475 ppm cap on atmospheric carbon with <10 years for global action] is, if anything, not conservative enough. A rash of recent reports identify major climate forcings wholly unaccounted for in IPCC models -- such as a five-fold increase in methane releases from Si ...
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, climate change mitigation, climate science, environmental movement, messaging (all these topics)

No sweat solutions to global warming: a series A reintroduction	Gar Lipow	16 Apr 2007	Gristmill
I'm restarting my series on solutions to global warming, both on how to phase out fossil fuels and the best means to sequester carbon, because I consider the topic a critical one. The carbon lobby has mostly (not entirely) given up disputing that global warming is occurring. They know that they won't be able to confuse the public on its human-caused nature much longer. But a final stalling tactic is open to deniers -- to pretend that nothing can be done, or at lea ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Walking backwards from cataclysm: A strategic planning methodology The basic approach of the Bright Lines project	Ken Ward	16 Apr 2007	Gristmill
((brightlines_include)) After a decade of brutal political trench warfare, the surreal debate in the U.S. on the reality of climate change is over. A Democratic Congress looking to put climate in play in 2008, serious buy-in for federal regulation from a band of corporate heavyweights, and a rash of climate conversions from the likes of Pat Robertson and Frank Luntz (author of the infamous strategy memo advising Bush administration operatives how to muddle the clima ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, environmental movement, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Scientists and social power They've got it, they shouldn't be ashamed of using it	David Roberts	13 Apr 2007	Gristmill
In a previous post, I argued that the public doesn't particularly need a sophisticated scientific understanding of climate change (or evolution, or stem cells) in order to make the right basic policy decisions. A rudimentary understanding, deliverable and understandable by a layman, is perfectly sufficient. We're warming the climate? It's gonna hurt us? Let's stop. Bada-bing, bada-boom. Given this, and given the fact that such rudimentary explanations of the science ...
Topics: climate, climate science, environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

Scientists and framing The public doesn't really need all that much science	David Roberts	12 Apr 2007	Gristmill
While I was on vacation, science journalist Chris Mooney and social scientist Matthew Nisbet came out with a short commentary in Science. Their thesis was that scientists should pay attention to how they frame their public communication, so as to most effectively reach their target audience. To me this is obvious to the point of banality. Nonetheless, it sparked a enormous blog storm. Nisbet rounds most of the reactions up here. The paper got lots of support, but a ...
Topics: climate, climate science, environmental movement, messaging, politics (all these topics)

'Climate change': too big and too little It's the wrong lever for creating social change	David Roberts	03 Apr 2007	Gristmill
On Saturday night, I was on a panel at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival on the subject of "communicating about climate change." My co-panelists were KC Golden of Climate Solutions, LeeAnne Beres of Earth Ministry, and Sean Schmidt of the Sustainable Style Foundation. The moderator was Steve Scher of local public radio station KUOW. It was fun. Most of what I said had to do with the following mini-revelation that came to me as I was walking to the ...
Topics: climate, environmental movement, green living, messaging, politics (all these topics)

TIME's survival guide to global warming Lots o' good stuff therein	David Roberts	02 Apr 2007	Gristmill
This week's TIME has a big package of stories on global warming. Upping the ante on the de rigueur '10 things you can do,' the magazine offers a whopping 51, an odd mix of large structural reforms and consumer tips like drying your clothes on a clothesline. Coming in at No. 1? Ethanol. Oy. Then again, a carbon tax comes in at No. 5, so all is not lost. Also earning the DR thumbs up: geothermal heat, urban living, cutting down on meat, supporting farmers markets, and ...
Topics: climate, environmental movement, green living, messaging (all these topics)

Feedback frenzy 2006, the year global warming came into focus	Joseph Romm	20 Mar 2007	Gristmill
Steve Connor from the U.K.'s The Independent summarized what we learned in 2006 with the article 'Review of the year: Global warming,' subheaded with, 'Our worst fears are exceeded by reality.' According to Connor, '2006 will be remembered by climatologists as the year in which the potential scale of global warming came into focus. And the problem can be summarised in one word: feedback.' Connor has collected and examined research from the last year on positive and ...
Topics: climate, climate change impacts, messaging (all these topics)

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