Author Archives: Kit Stolz

Here Come the Right-Wing Hippies

Well, that’s the theory, anyhow, to be found in this book I reviewed for the VCReporter called Crunchy Cons. Interestingly, I interviewed the likable author, young former National Review writer Rod Dreher, but about a third of the way through the session, he abruptly stopped answering questions (via email) and stopped responding to further contacts.Continue reading “Here Come the Right-Wing Hippies”

The Lighter Side of the Plagues of Global Warming

From Tom Toles, of course. The fact that a big American Elm actually fell right outside the White House during the floods of June does make one wonder if the natural fact of global warming could have possibly come up inside. Too much to hope for? Perhaps we’ll find out in a year or twoContinue reading “The Lighter Side of the Plagues of Global Warming”

Why They Call It “Global” Warming

In Greenland, reports the Wall Street Journal [$], temperatures have warmed 2.7  degrees Fahrenheit in the last thirty years. This has been good for Greenland’s farmers and ranchers, even though (ironically) Greenlanders support the Kyoto Protocol, and–according to the story–frequently express concern about warming elsewhere. Still,

For Mr. Magnusson and his reindeer ranch, the longer grazing seasons mean fatter animals for slaughter, since reindeer gain about half a pound per day during the spring and summer grazing season. More abundant grasslands have prompted one farmer to buy cows for a government-funded experiment in dairy farming. A longer growing season allows crop farmers to expand their home gardens into commercial enterprises. Fishermen have begun catching tons of warm-water cod, after that fish’s long absence from the region.

"We have so many cold places in Greenland, and a lot of it is covered with ice," says Mr. Magnusson. "So we are grateful for those two extra degrees we get."

Greenland_areas_of_warming

In England, it’s a different story. The warming–which is breaking heat waves records this summer–

Small Colorado Coal Burner Pays Big Bucks to Climate Change Denier

According to ABC News, a small rural electric co-operative in Colorado paid a climate change denier  $100,000 for unspecified activities without informing or asking its members.

"It’s outrageous," Ron Binz, a public utility consultant formerly with the state of Colorado, told ABC. "It’s an abuse of authority. The customers are member-owners. [General Manager] Stan Lewandowski is basically spending other people’s money."

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Senate Staffer Attacks NYTimes Reporter for Writing Book on North Pole

A book written to be accessible to anyone over the age of ten, The North Pole Was Here, has a staffer for a prominent denier in the US Senate up in arms.

Not for what the book says–because the staffer appears not to have read it–but the fact that it was written by a reporter.

NYTTimes reporter Andrew Revkin published a straightforward but appealing you-are-here account of visiting the top of our home planet, where the air is thin, the "ground" is ice floating on the ocean, and everything is changing.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

Unlike the planet’s South Pole, where a continent is home to permanent research stations and dozens of scientists, engineers, cooks, doctors, and other staff, at the North Pole nothing is permanent except the seabed far below. The ice that is here today will be somewhere else tomorrow. In a few years, much of what I am walking on, what our airplane landed on, will break up and slide out of the Arctic Ocean altogether through passages around Greenland, replaced by newly formed ice. A while ago, a visitor left a message in a container on the ice near this spot. It was found on a beach in Ireland a few years later.

Amazingly, this factual account has alarmed Marc Morano, a communications director for Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma). Marc Morano, formerly with The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the first in the media to publicize the attacks of the Swift Boat veterans, has now attacked New York Times’ reporter Andrew Revkin.

According to a story broken by Greenwire (reg. required) on Wednesday, Morano called into doubt the twenty years of Revkin’s reporting on climate change issues, because "sales of Revkin’s book…would be enhanced by his paper’s coverage of climate."

Morano said: "We’re not just shooting arrows."

Yesterday also saw the revelation in the NYTimes that NASA has altered its credo, removing the first line–"To alter and protect the home planet"–perhaps because prominent climate researcher James Hansen pointed to that phrase when insisting on the right to speak up on the hazard to the planet and our way of life from global warming.

Given this somewhat crazy state of affairs, Gristmill asked Revkin to answer a few questions, to which he graciously responded.