Publication Items

Edited By MIKE MANSUR

Jim Handman and Pat Senson, producers with CBC Radio's weekly science progra, "Quirks & Quarks," have won the 2007 ScienceWritingAward from the American Institute of Physics. It is the second time the team from Q&Q has won the prestigious prize. The program has been a runner-up in the SEJ Awards three times.

By BILL KOVARIK

In 2006, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth dominated The New York Times best seller list. But in 2007, Glenn Beck's swaggering rebuttal, An Inconvenient Book, topped the same list with the idea that climate change is "the greatest scam in history."

While Beck's book has little chance of outselling Gore's book over the long run, the paradox illustrates a larger problem in the environmental publishing industry: serious science is a hard sell.

 By BUD  WARD

The hard truth of the matter is that few of the reporters most likely to read this column will be in a good position to ask the presidential election front runners or nominees penetrating questions about environmental policy.

Few of them may have the opportunity, even briefly along a rope line, to probe a candidate's familiarity with "cap and trade" versus carbon taxes, wetlands restoration versus coastal development, nuclear energy versus coal versus biofuels versus conservation.