By Christine Woodside
A series of domestic and global developments are increasing the impact of climate change on the banking and financial industry and reporters covering those beats.
The changes are under way notwithstanding growing pressures from the sagging economy and real estate foreclosures.
Climate change until recently had attracted only scant following among many banking interests; it's only in the past two years or so that the banking industry has started paying serious attention to Earth's increasing temperatures. [ Full article ] POSTED MAY 06 2008
BOOK REVIEW
By Bill Dawson
As bookshelves increasingly sag with climate change books, it would be hard to find one more useful to journalists than Robert Henson's The Rough Guide to Climate Change, recently issued in a second, revised edition.
The book, first published in 2006, is an engaging and comprehensive primer that veteran environmental or science reporters and global warming neophytes alike could benefit from reading - or simply having nearby as a ready reference. [ Full article ] POSTED MAY 06 2008
By John Wihbey
CAMBRIDGE, MA. - Media veterans experienced in covering war zones and science are finding the climate change beat as difficult and mentally taxing a reporting job as they have ever had.
That was an overarching theme from a panel of journalists gathered at Harvard University April 30 to discuss "Covering a Changing Climate." [ Full article ] POSTED MAY 06 2008
President's Lame Duck Proposal ...
By Zeke Hausfather
President Bush, well into what is widely seen as his lame-duck period, last month proposed his administration's first concrete plans to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Policy makers and many in the news media appear to have largely written-off the proposal as too little, too late, in effect saying it would amount to further delay rather than serious action. [ Full article ] POSTED MAY 06 2008
NEWS NOTES
POSTED MAY 06 2008
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By John Wihbey
The world's green technology labs are bubbling with brave new ideas that aim to help invent our way out of climate change disaster. Spraying sulfur particles in the sky. Creating artificial trees. High-voltage batteries engineered by viruses. Tidal and geothermal plants. Generators in the jet stream to harness the wind.
Yet 2008 has already seen some high-profile setbacks, raising some serious questions about emerging technologies - and how reporters can best assess their potential. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
Working their climate message
By Bruce Lieberman
Last summer, when Oregon high school teacher Greg Craven wanted to tell young people about the Earth's warming climate, he went to where many of them live - on the Internet.
Craven's video, basically a graphic representation of the action-as-insurance-policy argument, avoided delving into the science behind climate change. But it was a powerful example of how the Internet can reach the masses.
The Internet, a gargantuan living library with information that's accurate, plain wrong, clear and confusing, has become perhaps the primary destination - but not the only one - for young people looking for information about climate change. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
BOOK REVIEW
'Hopeful' ... 'Not Scary'
By Bud Ward
"A hopeful book in a discouraging time."
It's how Antioch University Professor David Sobel characterizes "How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming," co-authored by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch.
"This is not a scary book," the front flap of the book jacket reinforces.
It's the kind of velvet glove approach Cherry and Braasch take in walking 10- to 14-year olds through the ins and outs of a changing climate ... and their roles in helping address the attendant challenges. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
By Zeke Hausfather
An impressive YouTube video has been making its rounds over the past week, appearing at first glance to show high-resolution satellite images of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
Rather than images from space, however, the Vulcan Project is actually a revolutionary new model of CO2 emissions building on and extrapolating from existing models of more conventional pollutants. The project, funded by NASA and the Department of Energy, is the work of a team at Purdue University in Indiana. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
Chronicle and Times Take Lead
By Bill Dawson
You might think it would be news when MIT scientist Kerry Emanuel, who has influentially linked global warming to stronger hurricanes, reconsiders his views in light of new evidence.
Two respected climate journalists - Eric Berger of the Houston Chronicle and Andrew C. Revkin of The New York Times - thought so. But few other traditional news outlets seemed to find time for the story. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
By Joseph A. Davis
 Making climate change a presidential campaign story is harder than it looks - though a lot of journalists tried to do so at the National Press Club April 11. There was no contest. That was the story.
But the candidates didn't bite, and their surrogates - prominent though they were - played nice and refused to argue. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
By John Wihbey
CAMBRIDGE, MA. - Mass media coverage of climate change has suffered from a hostility to science, a failure to vet biased sources, and an adherence to a warped sense of balance, two prominent academics said at a recent MIT event on climate change.
The remarks, made at a conference titled "Disruptive Environments" and held on April 10-11, came as part of an opening panel discussion on "communicating climate change" featuring New York Times science reporter Andrew C. Revkin. Some 100 MIT and other Boston-area university faculty members and students and others attended the opening session. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 17 2008
By Janet A. Phoenix, M.D., MPH
Search climate change news most days and you'll likely find few references to public health impacts.
So it comes as no surprise that the American public - apparently unlike the public in Western Europe and other industrialized countries - by and large perceives climate change as affecting nature, but not so much their families, health, or own communities. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 03 2008
COMMON CLIMATE MISCONCEPTIONS
By Zeke Hausfather
Measuring Earth's temperature is no easy task.
Four different groups produce temperature records that attempt to compile a single global mean surface temperature: NASA's GISStemp, the Hadley Center's HadCRU, Remote Sensing Systems' RSS, and the University of Alabama, Huntsville's UAH.
NASA and Hadley rely on an overlapping set of surface and ocean temperature measurement stations and span the period from 1880 to present. RSS and UAH use satellite monitoring and include only the period from 1979 to present.
Despite differences in calculation criteria and a host of technical problems that have plagued the satellite-based records in the past, all four temperature records now show a remarkable degree of agreement. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 03 2008
By Christine Woodside
A new report from the National Research Council (NRC) warns that the nation's transportation system - roads, ports, railroads, and airports - all stand to suffer substantial damage or destruction as a result of climate change.
Increased rain, more intense storms, ground thawing in Alaska, and rising sea level all are expected to take their heavy tolls. The report's authors caution that those working on transportation infrastructure must ensure that the system operates and adapts as a network, with "redundancies" or alternative routes for railroads and highways in emergencies. [ Full article ] POSTED APR 03 2008
By Bud Ward
Cogito, ergo sum. Or Je pense, donc je suis.
Enough of the Latin and French. Let's stick to English.
I think, therefore I am. We can thank Rene Descartes for giving us that critical element of Western philosophy.
But for our purposes in The Yale Forum, let's paraphrase it to read: "I report, therefore I blog." [ Full article ] POSTED APR 03 2008
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