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The continental United States has been slammed by cold temperatures and it is difficult to escape images of Buffalo’s massive snowfall. When there is a big snowstorm, climate science deniers gleefully crow “Where’s Global Warming” and otherwise in a way that resonates with (sadly, too large) a segment of the population and is gleefully played […]

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George Marshall’s Don’t Even Think About It: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change (first chapter in pdf) should be on the must read list for anyone concerned about communicating climate change (and — as importantly — who is open to reconsidering much of their thinking about what works and doesn’t work). In […]

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Simply put, the economic analysis related to climate change issues in public debates has systematically gotten things wrong.  The very nature of the analytical process fosters an exaggerated projection of costs and an understatement of benefits from climate mitigation and adaptation investments.  This fosters a discussion of the “costs” of action, rather than a more […]

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With today’s roll-out of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidance for reducing coal-fired electricity plants carbon emissions, industry interests have been pressuring hard with efforts to undermine public support for EPA action. Before heading further and in line with the Debunking Handbook, let us start with some basic truths about investing in climate mitigation. Climate mitigation investments […]

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The White House release a report yesterday heralding the All of the Above energy policy.  Entitled “The All-Of-The-Above Energy Strategy as a Path to Sustainable Economic Growth,” the document seeks to bask in expanded US oil and natural gas production while asserting that policies for energy efficiency and renewable energy are setting the stage for […]

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An area of Alaska larger than Chicago is in flames, 1000s of people are evacuated, with 100s of homes threatened. What are we to make of this fire? After all, fires occur in nature and Alaska has had its share in the past. As Larry Lazar put it in an email to me, While the […]

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Searching for the silver lining … perhaps Global Warming will boost drug company stock prices. Searching for the silver lining … perhaps Global Warming will boost drug company stock prices.  That is one reasonable conclusion from the National Climate Assessment released earlier today. In short, the NCA lays out that climate is creating worsened conditions […]

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At this time, US television screens are graced with several blockbuster science programs.  Showtime’s The Years of Living Dangerously provides serious and substantive looks at climate change. With Cosmos, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, NewsCorp is giving thinking people a substantive reason to tune in every Sunday evening. “Cosmos aims to be a primer on the […]

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Around the planet, difficult cultural norms exist for writing.  Avoidance of direct discussion and attribution seem to be the norm for many nations.  Over recent decades, the U.S. business world has adopted an emphasis on using more direct language with the active voice.  When it comes to passive voices, a standard recommendation: Use the passive […]

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Drastic shifts in weather (from beautiful sunny skies to dark menacing ones, from t-shirt frisbee temperatures to parka-wearing cold, from …) are natural. Humanity, however, has been putting its figures on the scales of “natural”. As Bill McKibben so eloquently discussed 25 years ago in The End of Nature, due to fossil fuel emissions, humanity’s […]

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