In episode 3 of this season’s star-studded HBO show ‘Big Little Lies’, Renata (played by Laura Dern) explodes when her daughter, Amabella, is hospitalized after suffering a panic attack as a result of her second grade teacher’s discussion about what global warming might do to the world. This leads the principal to call a school […]
National Geographic chooses spin over science
National Geographic recently created an infographic entitled “Seven things to know about climate change”. For a publication that professes to believe “in the power of science”, it’s created something more unscholarly than scientific. For starters, there are actually fewer than seven things in its list. Let’s review some of them: Number one: “The world is […]
A response to “What’s really warming the world?”
Back in June, an article on Bloomberg had some pretty fun charts that purport to unequivocally demonstrate that man and his CO2 emissions are wholly responsible for Earth’s warming since 1880. Every few weeks another friend seems to stumble across this article and share it. I’ve been offering them all friendly explanations about the reality of these charts, but […]
Thalidomide, the Precautionary Principle and Global Warming
Dr. Frances Kelsey, a physician and pharmacologist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who was credited with largely averting the tragedy wrought by thalidomide in other parts of the world, passed away on Friday at the age of 101. As the Washington Post reported, she held up its approval and helped gather evidence of the […]
Adapting to “Seattle on the Mediterranean”
With Seattle’s hot streak of weather in June, it was only a matter of time before someone tried to use it to make the case for “doing something” about climate change. Timothy Egan did just that in the July 3 New York Times, in which he pleads: “Before giving in to a future in which […]