Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called 
I think if I had it to do all over again I would be a storm chaser. I find tornadoes and thunderstorms fascinating, although I don't know the first thing about meteorology. The ultimate in bad weather, however are hurricanes and I don't know much about them either, so I was interested when I received my copy of Chris Mooney's Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.
Chris Mooney does an excellent job summarizing the fascinating history of hurricane research from the early debates over causes to the modern debate over the impact of global warming on hurricane formation. Along the way he manages to humanize the participants in the debate - something vitally necessary given contemporary perceptions of scientists and the scientific endeavor. The book is written in a highly accessible style for those who know nothing about hurricanes or the impact of global warming on them. As a matter of fact I found the book quite gripping, once I started it I was pulled along, eagerly reading to find out what happens next. The only thing I can compare it to is a really good mystery novel where you eagerly devour each plot twist as you try to decide "who done it." Reading Storm World had that same feel to it, consequently, once I picked it up I didn't put it down till I was finished.
As I mentioned above, Storm World is about hurricanes and not specifically about the debate over global warming. From it's very beginnings, as Chris Mooney tells it, hurricane research has been mired in controversy. Part of this controversy concerns differing approaches to science. On one side are the empiricists - the data collectors who, for once, are dashing swashbucklers due to things like flying through hurricanes - and on the other are the were the theorists who were trying to understand the data by putting it into some kind of context. Chris Mooney does un excellent job of tracing these two strands of science through the controversies leading upt to todays debate concerning the impact of global warming on hurricane development. More importantly, he shows how attempts to resolve these controversies provoke deeper questions and subtler research.
Over and above the above debate, there are two more strands to the book. First, the impact, or should I say intermixture, of science and politics. Chris does an excellent job of detailing the political interference, by the Bush administration, on the scientific process. He also goes into some of the politics that go on behind the scenes at science conventions. Second, Chris covers some of the policy implications of the debate - and especially of some of those policies that unwittingly exacerbate the impact of hurricanes - ranging from government subsidies for flood insurance to the fact that a large percentage of Americans now live on the coasts. Taking a more global view, we also learn about the impact of stronger or more frequent hurricanes on developing areas of the world.
All in all, this is an informative and readable book, which I heartily recommend.
Comments
One of my collaborators - Mike Wehner - is one of the bigguns in the Global Warming Hurricane debate. He helped write some of the IPCC report and then disparaged it to some extent: the data set he was allowed to write about was not his most recent and most - he feels - accurate.
Anyways, I wanted to work with him again, but I want to do some paleoclimate work and he'd rather not. Personalities loom large in small scientific circles it seems and there's a conflict there. In fact, I've already crossed one inadvertently. oy.
Posted by: Will Baird | July 10, 2007 12:35 PM
Problem is, the impactof global warming on weather isn't just on the intensity of hurricanes. It (probably) increases the intensity of all kinds of storms, including two quite awful windstorms that blew out of the Bering Sea last December and January. I know, because I lived through both of them, and one was so bad that it (literally) blew down power lines that couldn't be repaired for weeks, in some places. Worse, there is very little money, thanks to the way the current administration has "governed" on these matters, for necessary upgrades to the infrastructure. Something similar happened in New Orleans, and we all know the result of that. I'm not a climate scientist, but if I was, I'd be yelling, loud and clear to anybody who was willing to listen on these matters.
Anne G
Posted by: Anne | July 10, 2007 2:08 PM
Close the itals!
Posted by: Seth Manapio | July 10, 2007 4:08 PM