From a report by an international group of multi-billion dollar insurers attending the Copenhagen conference, led by Munich Re, against climate change denier claims: Business knows how to keep it simple. What does the international insurance industry want? An agreement to reduce emissions — now. What we need now is leadership. It is up toContinue reading “Insurance Industry Debunks Climate Change Deniers”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
Science and poetry: what they have in common
While confronting — on the page and in person — those who wield shotguns and bulldozers, John Kinsella in Poetry drops in a fascinating digression about what poetry and science have in common: The language of poetry, even in its most lyrical modes, is a language of specific usage—poetry is about arrangement, selection, and presentationContinue reading “Science and poetry: what they have in common”
The Aughts: the decade that sucked
Most everyone polled by Pew agrees: the Aughts sucked. Really. If this decade was a guy in high school, he'd be one lonely fella. If this decade was an athlete, he'd be the last picked for the team. (Seriously — every other decade on which a poll has been taken has been well liked byContinue reading “The Aughts: the decade that sucked”
Evan Bayh: in this economic climate, we must ignore climate change
The Senate will not act on climate change in 2010, if conservative Democrats in the Senate like Evan Bayh have their way, and Yglesias, for one, is not happy about it. He writes: Evan Bayh, too, seems like he wants to write a blog about congressional politics: “We need to deal with the phenomena ofContinue reading “Evan Bayh: in this economic climate, we must ignore climate change”
Enviro Song of the Year 2009: a new “This Land is Your Land”
The columnist George Will recently wrote about the new movie Up in the Air. While breezily discoursing on the emotional pain of the worst unemployment record in decades, Will happened to mention that the "opening soundtrack" to the movie, featuring a new version of Woody Guthrie's classic This Land is Your Land, was (and IContinue reading “Enviro Song of the Year 2009: a new “This Land is Your Land””
Mann’s latest temperature reconstruction record: Could a warming globe mean more La Ninas?
From a November paper by Michael Mann and cohorts in Science, meticulously reconstructing the temperature record over the last fifteen hundred years, from proxies including tree rings, pollen, coral, oxygen isotopes, sediments, and so on. The end point — in black — is from the instrumental record. This gives us a familiar conclusion — sinceContinue reading “Mann’s latest temperature reconstruction record: Could a warming globe mean more La Ninas?”
Cap and Trade: FactCheck calls GOP liars
The ACES/Waxman-Markey bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, currently going nowhere in the Senate, has been victimized by a number of outrageous misrepresentations and figures. Even if you don't think the bill is the best answer to the challenge of global warming, as many do not, that doesn't justify flat-out lying. Here are the facts,Continue reading “Cap and Trade: FactCheck calls GOP liars”
Positive Thinking and Calvinism: American Twins
"If one of the best things you can say about positive thinking is that it articulated an alternative to Calvinism, one of the worst is that it ended up preserving some of Calvinism's more toxic features — a harsh judgementalism, echoing the old religions's condemnation of sin, and an insistence on the constant interior laborContinue reading “Positive Thinking and Calvinism: American Twins”
Feminism Messes with Blanche DuBois
On Double X, Slate's relentlessly smart site for women's issues, Margaret Wheeler Johnson alleges that feminism has screwed with Blanche DuBois. Forget about the irony of the alleged perpetrator for a second, and think of the victim. Is there a greater crime possible against a character in American theater? The greatest of all American tragediesContinue reading “Feminism Messes with Blanche DuBois”
Dean of Climate Reporters Retires From Daily Coverage
Andrew Revkin, a superb reporter and a wonderful guy, is retiring from covering the climate on a regular basis. He's taking a buy-out from The New York Times. That's the bad news. The good news is that he will continue to maintain his first-rate global sustainability blog, Dot Earth, and write books as well. AsContinue reading “Dean of Climate Reporters Retires From Daily Coverage”
Kit Stolz 