Often, environmentalist's sense of triumph belies their actual intellectual reach. George Monbiot calls himself the winner of a debate with director of the Institute of Ideas, Claire Fox, Last week, on an internet radio channel called The Fifth Column, I debated...

I have a story up on Spiked today... It was the latest in a long series of last chances to save the planet. Like a convention of superheroes, 14,500 politicians, civil servants, journalists and campaigners from development and environmental NGOs descended on Durban,...

I'm so bored... BORED... of climate change. Environmentalism is such a boring, boring, boring thing. It's mundane. It's banal. It obsesses about the minutiae of biological functioning only to the extent that it wants to limit the possibilities of human life, rather...

The BBC's Frozen Planet is continuing to fuel controversy. First, as discussed previously on this blog, the BBC's decision to sell the seventh episode of the series -- David Attenborough's personal view of climate change and the crysophere -- as an option led to...

I thought it might be worthwhile posting this presentation I gave in Edinburgh in Spring last year, following the first Climategate. It seems to me that the same is true of Climategate 2 as was true of the first: if there had been a more transparent debate,...

I have a post at the Independent on the Battle of Ideas blog about the problems with 'evidence-based policy-making'. The big lie about evidence-based policy-making is that it’s based on evidence. Evidence no more produces and speaks for itself than cars decide their...

So... Part two of the Climategate series is out. Popcorn is flowing. It's too early to say anything that isn't already being said about what the new emails revealed. But, as per usual, what's being said about what the emails do or don't reveal is interesting. Leo...

This story was intended for Spiked-Online, who may be publishing it at some point, but I wanted to get it out a bit sooner. A new scientific study of the Earth's temperature record aimed to rescue climate science's reputation from the aftermath of the 'Climategate'...

I have no idea about the truth of a story in the Telegraph today. As usual, however, I find that the way the facts -- whatever they are -- are treated is more interesting than the reality. BBC drops Frozen Planet's climate change episode to sell show better abroad The...

Predictably, the UK's first shale gas fracking plant has become the site of 'direct action'. Once again, a small number of protesters have decided to inflict themselves on the rest of the world. The Guardian reports this morning that, Protesters from the UK's...