State of the Blog

I know everyone has been waiting on pins and needles about the future of this blog. The suspense has been killing me, too. Well, I have good news and bad news. Let's start with the latter. Your combined generosity has enabled me to buy some new socks, take my kids to a matinee movie and fill up the family car's gas tank. The upshot: unless some amazing ad revenue model materializes, or George Soros and the Koch brothers team up to throw money at me, this is a dead blog walking. Oh, quit your bawling. We've had a good run. You'll be fine. Maybe some old friends will even start talking to me again. The good news is I won't totally go away. In fact, I still write a once a week thingamajob at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media, which appears every Tuesday or wed. You can check Colide-a-Scape on those days for the blurb and link. Also, it's not like I'm going to stop reading, reporting and writing about the subjects that have been a mainstay of this blog. So when my work appears elsewhere, I'll flog it here. Lastly, while I explore a few life support options for this blog, I'm going to post a round-up once or twice a week of links that catch my eye. That starts today, just below. ******* Climate Change Global warming "has joined abortion and gay marriage as a culture war controversy," writes conservative WaPo columnist Michael Gerson, as if this were a fresh insight. There's enough fodder in his piece to piss off all sides and reinforce the theme of Gerson's column. On a similar note, Judith Curry finds that "the extreme polarization of the public debate on climate change seems very difficult to change." Hmm, ya think? Curry says she is trying to build a "community for floaters, and diminish the basis for inflexibles and liars." What is a floater? Someone who floats away from being inflexible and deceitful or between those two types? In any case, she seems to have realized that her blog, Climate Etc., "is fighting an uphill battle." The National Center for Science Education announces the launch of a new initiative "aimed at defending the teaching of climate change." This one will be interesting to watch. The Center made a name for itself by defending the teaching of evolution. See this LA Times story for more background. Meanwhile, in the Guardian, University of Colorado media scholar Max Boycoff says that, beyond all this culture war stuff,