Ever been frustrated trying to make a reasoned, sensible, logical argument to a denier? There’s a reason why it is so difficult. Let’s take a look at the Dunning/Kruger effect. Have you ever noticed that often times the most incompetent people have the highest opinions of themselves, especially when debating? This video explains why. Filed under: [...]

Elsewhere on the blog, we are still hearing that “CO2 is good for Plants”. Meanwhile, here in the reality based community…. Windsor Star, May 5:  A catastrophic freeze has wiped out about 80 per cent of Ontario’s apple crop and has the fruit industry looking at losses already estimated at more than $100 million. “This [...]

Detroit Free Press: Fresh spinach in winter Last July, Ann Arbor resident Jeff McCabe turned his passion for local foods into a business designing, selling and installing hoop houses, a type of greenhouse that extends the growing season and doesn’t use electricity. Nifty Hoops expects to sell 50 hoop houses in Michigan this year. McCabe, [...]

Forecast the Facts: Less than two weeks after the Heartland Institute compared people who believe in global warming to the Unabomber on a Clear Channel Chicago (CCMO) digital billboard, Clear Channel has rejected an ad campaign highlighting corporate support for the controversial think tank on the eve of its annual climate-change-denial conference. The proposed ads, [...]

Yale 360: These two false-color thermal images taken by NASA satellites depict the rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska over the past 25 years. The top image shows the glacier’s terminus just north of Heather Island in 1986. By 2011, the terminus had retreated 12 miles up the inlet, and is identifiable in [...]

From Earth an Operators Manual. The idea of concentrated solar power is 100 years old: the journey from Philadelphia in the past to the Sahara in the future.   Filed under: News and Announcements

NYTimes:  Five years ago, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization published a report called “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” which maintained that 18 percent of greenhouse gases were attributable to the raising of animals for food. The number was startling. A couple of years later, however, it was suggested that the number was too small. Two [...]

Above – Hilarious and weirdly sexy folk-rock version of Nelly’s “Hot in Here”. Below, hottest 12 months on record. LA Times: Americans just lived through the hottest 12 months ever recorded, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Tuesday. The announcement came as NOAA reported that the U.S. also just experienced its third-warmest April on record. “These temperatures, when [...]

Following close on the heels of the Heartland Institute’s disastrous, ill conceived billboard campaign, this news from Colorado makes one wonder if someone has been switching the sugar cubes at Tea Party meetings lately. Look out for the the brown darjeeling, dude – it’s heavy. ThinkProgress: The billboard campaign was rolled out at 28 locations around [...]

Forecast the Facts: Pharmaceutical maker Eli Lilly (LLY), BB&T Bank (BBT), and PepsiCo (PEP) have all confirmed that they will not continue funding the Heartland Institute, joining GM, State Farm, and numerous other leading corporations in deserting an organization that produces radical attacks on climate science and scientists. The defections come aftergrowing pressure from corporate [...]

Get ready for Fox News to start highlighting the Bicycle/Kenyan-UN-Terrorist connection. (video above features DC, Denver and other cities as well as NYC) Cleantechnica: As someone in love with 3rd-generation bike-sharing systems before the large majority of Americans knew anything about them, I’ve been eagerly anticipating and covering NYC’s huge bike-sharing plans for years. This could transform [...]

What’s Disneyland without Mickey Mouse? That’s going to be the question on a lot crestfallen climate denier’s minds when they attend next week’s International Conference on Climate Change, aka Denia-palooza, sponsored by the Heartland Institute. The finalized speakers list was just released, and I don’t see His Serene and Magnificent Lordship on it anywhere. Watt’s [...]

The tobacco industry showed us decades ago  that if you put out bad information, and repeat it often enough, a certain percentage of people will keep believing it, and repeating it, endlessly. The whole premise of the climate crock series is to tackle those crunchy nuggets of ignorance head on. I’ve been so pleased to [...]

Yesterday’s post on SunRun’s new ad campaign was somewhat serendipitous. The New York Times has a story today on their business model, which is rapidly spreading. See one of SunRun’s competitors in the video above. HOLMDEL, N.J. — Jay Nuzzi, a New Jersey state trooper, had put off installing solar panels on his home here [...]

NYTimes: GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for [...]

Filed under: Crock of the Week

Filed under: News and Announcements

Forecast the Facts: San Francisco, CA – Forecast the Facts, an organization dedicated to ensuring that Americans are accurately informed about climate change, applauds the United Services Automobile Association’s (USAA) decision to immediately pull its support for the Heartland Institute. “Since the U.S. military has recognized climate change as a key national security threat, it’s [...]

FastCompany/Co.EXIST SunRun is a solar company with an interesting model: Instead of just selling you solar panels, they pay to put them on your house, and then you pay them for the energy those panels provide. In other words, for no upfront costs you can start having access to a source of clean energy. What you [...]

Last July I wrote in a post - I can’t prove that the anti-science “Windbagger” movement is part of the larger right wing astro-turf campaign organized by fossil fuel and Koch-funded interests -yet – but their tactics certainly are reminiscent of what we’ve been seeing elsewhere. The Guardian:  A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on [...]