Collide-a-scape

Goes to this post at Green Inc.

And quoting a well-known American environmentalist, there’s this catch-all reasoning, which only die-hard greens will embrace and which will alienate most everyone else:

Overpopulation is the driving force behind virtually all environmental problems — air pollution, water pollution, the extinction crisis, global warming , yet it is rarely ever addressed by conservation groups. They are really afraid of touching the issue and appearing anti-human.

That’s from Kierán Suckling, the executive director of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. I’ve covered endangered species issues in the West for many years. Overpopulation is not the problem–not by a long shot. Mostly, it’s the sprawl of residential and commercial development that has chewed up wildlife habitat. Not teeming hordes of people. Just their wasteful, highly consumptive habits.

There’s a number of good reasons why overpopulation (and its toxic surrogate, immigration) is the third rail of American environmental discourse. Just ask the Sierra club.

I have no problem with a leading climate scientist taking issue with how the media portrays his profession. And if Gavin Schmidt would have kept his criticism of recent press coverage limited to the UK, he’d be on semi-solid ground. (He’d also be vulnerable to charges of mischaracterizing this coverage as one big “fact-free” monolith.) But Schmidt leaves reality behind when he goes after two American journalists in this manner:

Two relatively prominent and respected US commentators – Curtis Brainard at CJR and Tom Yulsman in Colorado – have both bemoaned the fact that the US media (unusually perhaps) has not followed pell-mell into the fact-free abyss of their UK counterparts.

No doubt Schmidt is being sarcastic here, for surely he doesn’t mean that two “prominent and respected US commentators” would be advocating for “fact-free” journalism. No, what Schmidt is really saying is that all this stuff about the IPCC and its chairman, and those stolen emails from a few months ago warrants little legitimate media coverage.

Michael Tobis, nodding his head, writes:

Just because there are lunatics willing to spin a sort of tale doesn’t make it,  you know, actual news.

Yulsman’s rejoinder over there is worth noting, especially this:

Just because I and many other science journalists believe this story should be covered doesn’t mean that we are advocating for shoddy journalism. All I called for was for journalists here to follow the story wherever it leads. If it leads to a conclusion that the accusations have been blown up all out of proportion, then that is the story.

But right now, all Americans are getting is Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other bloviators of their ilk who are filling the vacuum left by the absence of responsible journalism. Are you actually saying that you would like to cede the playing field to them? Or that if the press ignores the story it will just go away. If you believe that you are more naive than I thought.

That’s the headline, and this is the best quote:

I grew up in the city; I wasn’t a girl scout; I didn’t camp; I wasn’t a skier; I wasn’t an avid hiker—but the environmentalism I came to know was more about the effects of pollution in society.

Meet Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator. She says her goal is to put the agency

in the minds of the American people, and not just those who consider themselves environmentalists.

If only the nation’s leading environmental groups strived to reach beyond their white, upper middle class demographic, more Americans would consider themselves environmentalists.

Is Joe Romm becoming the Michael Mandelbaum of climate change in Thomas Friedman’s op-ed columns? Romm still has a way to go before he can approach Mandelbaum’s record number of appearances. But today’s column brings the latest evidence that Romm is a fav of Friedman.

What’s doubly perplexing about this is that Friedman has never cited Andy Revkin’s work at Dot Earth, a far superior informational source on climate change related news and issues. Maybe Revkin is just too evenhanded and nuanced for Friedman’s boilerplate arguments.

Last year, evidence from a DNA test was thought to have solved one of Utah’s oldest cold cases: the 1934 disappearance of Everett Ruess.  National Geographic Adventure published a big, splashy exclusive on the 75-year old mystery. But some observers, most notably Kevin Jones, Utah’s state archaeologist, had reason to question the findings in the story, including the genetic analysis that seemed to confirm the identity of the discovered bones.

In this Salt Lake Tribune story last summer, Jones continued to air his doubts:

A lot of people threw aside their skepticism with the announcement of the DNA tests. They don’t realize that DNA is just another line of evidence, and can yield mistakes as well.

That infuriated the scientists at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, who did the DNA analysis. One of them, Dennis Van Gerven shot back:

Genetic evidence is not just another kind of evidence. This is the kind of evidence that puts people on death row and takes people off death row.

That quote is going to haunt Van Gerven for some time.

Kevin Jones turned out to be right. Here’s my short profile of him in the current issue of High Country News.

I do feel bad for Phil Jones, the scientist caught in the maw of climategate. It’s obviously taken an enormous personal toll on him. But he appears to still be in the same bunker that got him in trouble in the first place. He comes off fairly defensive in this interview with Olive Heffernan in Nature. Here’s just one of the passages that is bound to raise eyebrows:

But he fears that the aftermath of the climategate affair is undermining the integrity of the scientific review process. “I don’t think we should be taking much notice of what’s on blogs because they seem to be hijacking the peer-review process,” says Jones.

That’s probably not a smart thing to say, given he’s the guy who wrote this (in one of those infamous emails) to Michael Mann:

I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!

Here’s the kicker in Olive’s interview:

It is now essential for climate researchers to stand up for their science, he says. “[I'd] like to see the climate science community supporting the climate science more. Lots of them are trying but they’re being drowned out.”

By who? Those very same bloggers, I presume.

The big story on the climate change front was the snow. Too bad about that. But if you’re still searching for some enlightened perspective to counter the silliness, here’s my favorite three blog posts, in no particular order:

Michael Tobis on the importance of El Nino.

Ronald Baily on hypocrisy.

Roger Pielke Jr., because he’s both pithy and spot on, especially about this:

Using the weather to score cheap political points in the climate debate appears to be a tactical area of agreement among those who otherwise disagree about climate change.

That headline, from an excellent online story at Foreign Policy’s website, is obviously not one you will see at Climate Depot. And that’s a shame, because the writer, Stephan Faris, makes some very important points, while also not downplaying the recent IPCC mistakes and bad behavior of climate scientists.

For example, he writes:

The IPCC’s critics do well to examine the panel’s claims carefully. Science and policy are both served when mistakes are uncovered (the IPCC has since fended off similar accusations over its predictions about the fate of the Amazon). And though there’s no doubt that many critiques are motivated more by ideology than truth-seeking, that doesn’t excuse researchers who allow their passions to spill into their findings.

Isn’t that a passage ripe for Climate Depot readers? Or this one:

The world has no shortage of advocates. What it needs is a dispassionate source.

So Marc, I dare you. Step off message for just a minute and link to this FP story.

Actually, this editorial appears in the Journal’s Europe edition. I can’t imagine it appearing in the U.S. edition, especially with this kicker:

Some dubious emails and slightly dodgy dossiers have cast a new, and unflattering, light on the global-warming debate, raising the risk of a return to the belief that we can go on consuming oil with impunity. Being a “climate-change denier” is in danger of becoming almost fashionable. But whatever the risk to the climate, scarce and expensive oil would be a threat to established economies.

We need alternatives.

Here’s the best part: the author is WSJ Europe’s editor-in-chief.   Ah, the Tale of Two Journals surely will continue…

Actually, it was yesterday, but I’m running behind. And Exum’s internal editor should have left it as this:

Why You Should Not Write Newspaper Columns While High on Qat.

Here’s hoping the mustache doesn’t return home with a bad case of the jitters.