The Undead: A Holiday Rant

It’s the holiday season so, of course, I’ve been binge-watching The Walking Dead. Something about this time of year makes the still-unbitten characters’ lives appealing. Minus the blood-oozing zombies, life is uncluttered. There are no commercials screaming that Santa’s sale on Christmas socks ends Friday, no light displays at the mall flashing to the beat of Grandma Got […]

Give a Science Writer a Stage

The Devil had two tattooed women in tight skirts holding a rope taut on stage. One he told to stand on her toes while the other crouched slightly. The rope between them showed a slight angle downward, which the Devil said expressed global mean temperature decreasing slightly from 1998 till now. The Devil’s data was cherry picked […]

Thou Shalt Watch This

The People of LWON have spoken. As promised, here is our annual list of what to watch over the holidays. For more recommendations, please refer to last year’s list. Erik: It’s hard to make a suspenseful drama around the Revolutionary War. “Ooo! Who will win? The scrappy Americans or the evil redcoats? I just don’t […]

The Last Word

December 13-17, 2015 Michelle’s job as a climate change reporter feels like working a crime beat in a lawless nation. Compared with the natural, abysmal state of international climate negotiations, the Paris agreement is something she celebrates, however briefly. Christie, meanwhile, is not impressed. The Paris agreement doesn’t include shipping or aviation, and it relies […]

Thou Shalt Read This

The holidays — one of the few times of year when the decision to pick up a book should never be preceded with the question, “But have I finished All The Work?”. Today, the People of LWON pick up a tradition we started last year, providing a handy list of great reading.   Erik Vance : […]

Halfway

  We had been driving across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco when I noticed the flags. They were everywhere, on top of the silvery tall buildings, on top of the squat red-brown ones, even on some places that seemed too precarious to fly a flag. They all unfurled themselves halfway down the flagpole, making the […]

Let’s stop pretending we give a damn about climate change, 2015 edition

In 2011, I wrote about how little that year’s climate conference had accomplished. The latest edition of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change just wrapped up in Paris over the weekend with a historic agreement. Nearly 200 nations acknowledged the importance of keeping global temperatures from rising […]

Let Us Celebrate The Lack Of Total Failure

This past Friday evening, when I heard that the 195 nations represented at the COP21 climate meeting in Paris had reached a draft agreement, I was pleasantly surprised. On Saturday morning, when I saw the stronger-than-forecast draft text, I was shocked. And on Saturday afternoon, when the final agreement was signed—signed!—I was thrilled. The Paris agreement won’t singlehandedly head off the worst […]