Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise. Former National Post & Toronto Star columnist, past vice president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

The Unromantic Green Energy Reading List

A counterbalance to mindless cheerleading.

June 12, 2019

Why Fossil Fuels Kick Butt

To be useful, energy must be reliable.

February 9, 2018

Independent Greenpeace? Never Mind

Greenpeace makes a show of rejecting government and corporate money. But it’s close pals with the WWF – which gets enormous funding from exactly those sources.

December 2, 2013

Dumb Energy vs Smart Energy

Supplying electricity to a typical family for 12 hours requires the pedal power of 80 elite cyclists. The same amount of electricity can be purchased from the grid for under $5.

June 27, 2013

The Open Letter to American Universities

Eminent individuals are urging US educators to encourage a genuine campus debate about fossil fuels.

June 11, 2013

Why Fossil Fuels Improve the Planet

A free, shortish book defends – and celebrates – oil and coal.

June 6, 2013

Earth Day an Oil Industry Scam?

According to 1960s radicals, the environmental movement has been funded and orchestrated by fossil fuel interests.

April 23, 2013

What Rick Mercer Didn’t Tell Us About the ZENN Car

Why weren’t the profound limitations of the ZENN car the butt of a comedian’s jokes?

April 21, 2013

The Sierra Club’s Broken Moral Compass

The Sierra Club took fossil fuel money. Lots of it. How dare it falsely accuse other people of doing this.

January 27, 2013

The Secret Santa Leak

Thanks to a whistleblower, draft versions of most chapters of the IPCC’s upcoming report are now in the public domain. Among the new revelations: the IPCC has learned nothing from the Himalayan glacier debacle.

January 8, 2013

Intermission (And Why Bill McKibben is an Utter Fool)

This blog will return in mid-September. In the meantime, here’s a video of a presentation I gave in Australia last month – and some thoughts on the bankruptcy of contemporary green analysis.

August 17, 2012

Masters of Hypocrisy: the Union of Concerned Scientists

A new report funded by big oil and big tobacco has the chutzpah to complain about corporate influence on the climate debate.

June 8, 2012

Der Spiegel Skewers the World Wildlife Fund

A splendid and disturbing investigative feature in Der Spiegel explains why the WWF doesn’t deserve your charitable donations.

May 30, 2012

Big Oil Money for Me, But Not for Thee

The Sierra Club takes fossil fuel money. So does the Nature Conservancy and Rajendra Pachauri’s sustainability conference. So why is the Heartland Institute being torn to pieces for the same behaviour?

February 17, 2012

The Pipeline, the Jobs, & the Media

Why do journalists never doubt green groups?

January 20, 2012

You Doubt Monger, You

When environmentalists organize themselves, fund-raise, and try to spread their message this is considered legitimate democratic activity. Yet the minute climate skeptics do the same we’re accused of being doubt-mongers who manufacture uncertainty in order to mislead the public.

February 25, 2011

Bill McKibben Says It’s Urgent

In the world inhabited by this environmental crusader, climate change is “a crisis that’s breaking over our heads at this moment,” ExxonMobil peddles petroleum the way drug dealers peddle heroin, and we “have no choice” but to turn our backs on fossil fuels.

February 21, 2011

Andrew Weaver vs Tim Flannery

Two activist scientists, both committed to the climate change fight, have starkly different views of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One says it’s the most “rigorous scientific process” in which he has been involved. The other says it isn’t good science, but “lowest-common-denominator-science.”

February 16, 2011

It Isn’t a Conspiracy – It’s Just Money, Fashion & Power

If much of the world were to snap out of it and realize that global warming has been over-hyped, large companies would lose hundreds of billions.

February 14, 2011

The Royal Society’s Big Oil Award

The UK’s Royal Society awarded an Esso Energy medal annually for 25 years. A short time later, when opinions on climate change diverged, the society began painting Esso’s parent company, ExxonMobil, as demon spawn.

November 29, 2010

Greenpeace and the Violent Video

A Greenpeace spokesperson suggests that the only people concerned about the video in which kids are executed for insufficient eco enthusiasm are those with ulterior motives – “climate skeptics and think tanks funded by corporations.”

October 5, 2010

The Story That Should Be on the Front Page

Attempts to deal with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are being hampered by a foolish EPA regulation and other bizarre concerns.

June 26, 2010

BP, Greenpeace & the Big Oil Jackpot

It is frequently alleged that climate skeptics are being funded by big oil – and that their views should therefore not be trusted. In fact, green groups have received far more funding from oil interests. Really.

June 4, 2010

Independent Bloggers vs Corporate Environmentalists

30 years ago Greenpeace rented creaky fishing boats. These days it purchases $22-million custom-built mega-yachts. The shoestring voices in the environmental debate now belong to skeptical bloggers.

February 22, 2010

Canada’s Tar Sands & Cancer Rates

Dr. John O’Connor is the hero of a documentary film that alleges a connection between the Alberta tar sands and cancer. But an investigation found many of his statements to be “inaccurate” and “untruthful.”

November 9, 2009

How Much Is a Bird’s Life Worth?

Oil companies get fined $7,000 per bird for inadvertently harming wildlife. Yet society ignores the predictable massacre of thousands of birds by wind farms. Are we protecting wildlife – or harassing oil companies?

August 21, 2009

Slurs, Smears & Money

Skeptical climate scientists are often accused of being motivated by financial gain. So why does Al Gore charge $175,000 to deliver a speech? If global warming is really a planetary emergency, why won’t he deliver the same talk for $50,000?

June 19, 2009