Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute Photograph: The Heartland Institute The ultra-conservative Heartland Institute admitted it was in financial crisis on Wednesday, with the flight of corporate donors making it difficult to pay staff or cover the costs of its annual conference aimed at debunking climate science.In a speech at the close of this year's climate conference, Heartland's president, Joseph Bast, acknowledged that a provocative ad campaign comparing believers in human-made climate change to psychopaths had exacted a heavy cost.However, Bast also attributed Heartland's current problems to his weakness in financial management."These conferences are expensive, and I'm not a good fundraiser so as a result I don't raise enough money to cover them. We really scramble to make payroll as a result ... Continue reading →
It was an odd choice of icon for the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute. But there he was in round glasses, beard, and halo of curls staring out from T-shirts and coffee mugs at their gathering of climate change contrarians this week, the scientist whose internet sting set Heartland on its current course of collapse.Heartland's seventh climate conference, which runs until Wednesday, was a much diminished event, compared to earlier lavish gatherings which spilled out over several floors of a hotel in New York's Time Square, and attracted up to 800 followers.The tables were set for 270 at this year's gala, featuring the Czech president and climate contrarian Václav Klaus, and there were well over 100 no-shows. In a further sign of Heartland's cash crunch, meals were ... Continue reading →
Gary Knight/VII Women in Darfur returning from Kutum market to the Fata Borno camp for internally displaced persons under the protection of African Union soldiers, January 2007; photograph by Gary Knight from Questions Without Answers: The World in Pictures by the Photographers of VII. The book has just been published by Phaidon. The fence that divides the city of Nogales is part of a natural experiment in organizing human societies. North of the fence lies the American city of Nogales, Arizona; south of it lies the Mexican city of Nogales, Sonora. On the American side, average income and life expectancy are higher, crime and corruption are lower, health and roads are better, and elections are more democratic. Yet the geographic environment is identical on both ... Continue reading →
WASHINGTON — A federal proposal to ban the construction of coal-fired power plants that release all of their carbon dioxide into the atmosphere would seem to smooth the way for carbon capture, a budding technology that traps the greenhouse gas for storage or other uses. But even as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to open hearings on the proposed rule, unveiled in March, industry experts say the persistently low price of natural gas is threatening the viability of the nation’s carbon capture projects. Natural gas is so cheap and plentiful that utilities have little incentive to build coal-fired plants with the capture technology. And the proposed rule exempts existing coal- and gas-fired plants. In the tiny universe of American carbon capture projects, the first casualty ... Continue reading →
Jean-François Leroy uncorked his first bottle of champagne late Tuesday afternoon to celebrate, like every year, the opening of this 23rd edition of “Visa pour l’Image”, the International Photojournalism Festival in Perpignan. For 23 years, photojournalists, publishers, editors, and media owners have spent the first week of September in the capital of French Catalonia to discuss the year’s events, feast their eyes on thirty exhibitions, get absorbed in the giant screen projections at Campo Santo, and celebrate despite their heavy hearts. Each year this extremely dangerous profession pays a heavy price for the call to witness the world’s wars, conflicts, disasters and miseries. There are the injured, like Joao Silva who lost his legs in Afghanistan. Another operation is preventing his visit to Perpignan this ... Continue reading →
For the benefit of anyone who has spent the past decade or so on a different planet, the most frequently asked questions about climate change on this one are as follows. Is it getting warmer? Yes, surface temperatures have risen by 0.8°C from pre-industrial levels. Are humans causing it? Almost certainly. The gases produced by industrialisation and agriculture are known to have an insulating effect, and their concentration in the earth’s atmosphere has increased in line with rising temperatures, while natural causes of global warming have remained constant. Will it get warmer still? Very probably, though no one can accurately predict when or by how much. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report offers a range of projections within which its best estimates ... Continue reading →
