Memo to Rick Perry: Galileo Was a Liberal
472px-Justus_Sustermans_-_Portrait_of_Galileo_Galilei,_1636.jpg Ever since the Republican presidential debate last week, science watchers have been shaking their heads over Rick Perry’s rid...
Chris Mooney
On Global Warming, the Tea Party is Worse than the GOP
dont-tread-on-me.jpg There’s a fascinating new public opinion analysis out today from Anthony Leiserowitz and the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. It looks at political divides...
Why Questionable "Science" Gets Published, Pounced On in the Media, Retracted, Causes Resignations…Rinse and Repeat
scientific journals.JPG An editor resigns after a journal publishes a paper that seems to trash the scientific consensus on climate change—but is heavily criticized by top scientists. Where...
Communication Fail: Why the IPCC Must Do a Heck of a Lot Better in 2013
IPCC-Logo.jpg Regular readers know I’m pretty critical of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--particularly when it comes to how this expert body communicate...
Number One Lesson *Not* To Take Away from Hurricane Irene
800px-Atlantic_hurricane_tracks.jpg I was watching CNN this morning. I don’t know why—except that it was on in the gym at the hotel where I’m staying. Pretty soon, I was arguing...
Hurricane Irene, Climate Change, and the Need to Consider Worst Case Scenarios
Irene Track Aug 25.gif In May of 2005, a few months before Hurricane Katrina, I wrote an article that nobody noticed. It was entitled “Thinking Big About Hurricanes: It’s Time…
The Republican War on Science Returns
republican war.jpg As author of the 2005 book The Republican War on Science, I’ve watched recent developments in the presidential race with fascination. It is not exactly news that man...
Become What You Despise? Why "Beating" Conservative White Male Climate Deniers May Mean Joining Them
1112_no-nukes.jpg David Roberts of Grist has written a wonderful and psychologically deep portrait of why conservative white males deny climate change—and much else—and how this ...
S&P Downgrades Planet Earth, Citing Unbalanced Carbon Budget, Reckless Political Debates and Role of “Deniers”
600px-NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg Washington, D.C.—In a move that came as a shock both in this city and throughout the planet on which it is located, Standard & Poor’s late M...
The Attacks on Climate Science Education Are Picking Up Steam
Teacher-writing-on-blackb-007.jpg A few months back, those who care about accurate climate science and energy education in high school classes registered a minor victory. Under fire from outlets ...
Here Comes the Atlantic Hurricane Season
2011218gosst.png This has been a year of dramatic disasters and weather extremes. From tornadoes to droughts to heat waves, the U.S. has been battered. Unfortunately, the hurricane season that&rs...
The Bias Trap: Are We All Just A Bunch of Motivated Reasoners?
1112_no-nukes.jpg There were a ton of great responses to my last post about conservative white men and climate change denial. Perhaps most notably, some savvy respondents called into question whe...
What’s Up With Conservative White Men and Climate Change Denial?
Rush_Limbaugh.jpg They come at you at public events, wanting to argue. They light up the switchboards whenever there’s a radio show about climate change. They commandeer your blog comments ...
The Annual Arctic Sea Ice Drama Begins
N_daily_extent_hires.png In my last post, I discussed how the increasing risk of devastating heat waves—unlike the worsening of tornadoes—is definitely a phenomenon we can link to glo...
Forget Tornadoes. Lets Talk–Unendingly–About Heat Waves and Global Warming
us-heat-wave.png Earlier this year, I grew uncomfortable with attempts to link the massive tornado destruction that we saw in the U.S. to climate change. As I explained then—based on an…
Light Bulb Madness: A New Case Study in Right Wing Misinformation
incandescent.png The examples of conservative misinformation—devoutly believed by followers, repeatedly asserted by ideological leaders and media outlets—are growing too numerous to c...
Say Brother, Can You Share My Logic? The Climate Debate and “Talking Past Each Other”
al_gore_i_an_inconv_100607o (1).jpg I’ve previously written about University of Michigan business professor Andrew Hoffman’s insightful work on the underlying motivations behind clima...
Watts Up With the Internet? Motivated Bias on Climate Skeptic Blogs
Disconfirmation-Model.gif Recently, I’ve become aware that the prominent climate science skeptic blogger Anthony Watts has been challenging a number of my posts. Maybe it's because in ...
The Science of Astroturfing
astroturf.jpg Here at DeSmogBlog, and around the environmental and liberal political blogosphere, there is great concern about “Astroturf” organizations—groups that pose as real...
Climate Skeptics Misunderstand Us, Too
Heartland_Logo.png So recently, I’ve watched a few videos from the Heartland Institute conference on “Restoring the Scientific Method”—and it has been a fascinating experi...