cmooney
Posts by this author
December 3, 2008
How and when will the Obama transition team announce the president's science adviser? And will the rollout be given the prominence it deserves?
These are questions I address in my latest Science Progress column. You can read the full piece here.
November 26, 2008
My latest Science Progress column, about a recent, cutting edge attempt to bring science and Hollywood together, is now up. It's entitled, "Attack of the Nerds from Outer Space," which should be more than enough of a teaser.
You can read it here.
November 21, 2008
Over at DeSmogBlog, I take a look at the events of this week and how they point to strong and dramatic action on global warming and energy early next year. In particular, it now appears that Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, and Henry Waxman will be our triumvirate of policymakers who finally cap…
November 19, 2008
My latest Science Progress column attempts to imagine what Barack Obama would do if he had been elected "president of science." My answer: He would try to close the gaps between scientists and the public, and try to defuse the divisive culture war over science and religion.
You can read the full…
November 11, 2008
My latest Science Progress column is on a topic that we've already discussed a bit here over the past week--the meaning of Michael Crichton's work. You can read it here. It starts like this:
Anyone who ever met the late Michael Crichton--who died of cancer in Los Angeles last week at the age of 66…
November 10, 2008
After so, so many emails about a possible Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appointment to head EPA, we had to blog about it over at Talking Science. The gist?
Such an appointment would be problematic and controversial for all the reasons that folks like Orac have cited. However, it hasn't happened yet...and…
November 8, 2008
Like everybody else, I'm pretty surprised about Hurricane Paloma, which has just become the fifth major hurricane this year--a powerful Category 4 and tied for the second strongest storm ever to show up in the Atlantic in the month of November.
And Paloma sets an even bigger record, because this is…
November 7, 2008
This morning at 11 ET, I'm going to be on this program with Tom Ashbrook:
Remembering Michael Crichton, from "The Andromeda Strain" to"Jurassic Park," "ER," and "State of Fear." We'll look at the blockbuster master's long reach.
Guests:
Lev Grossman, book critic for TIME magazine.
Lynn Nesbit,…
November 5, 2008
Wow...I have written lots of critical things about Crichton, but I also stand a bit in awe of the massive influence he has had on the image of science in our culture. I only met him once, and he seemed a very kind, humble man in person. Not to mention overpoweringly gigantic--I believe he was…
November 5, 2008
My post-election Science Progress column--written after I woke up super early and felt the effect of all the champagne--is now up. You can guess the gist, so I'll just give you the punch line and you can follow the link for details:
Despite many challenges ahead, it's clearly a new day for science…
October 29, 2008
My latest Science Progress column just went up...it's about the decline of science reporting in newspapers, and what we can do to fight back against this trend.
I start out with the story of Peter Calamai, until recently the staff science writer of the Toronto Star:
Peter Calamai describes himself…
October 23, 2008
My latest Science Progress column is a piece of reporting from the Innovation 2008 conference, and contemplates what will happen to science budgets in a coming era of unprecedented federal budget deficits. The answer: No one knows for sure, but it can't be good.
You can read the column here.
October 15, 2008
Given their unwillingness to debate science on the campaign trail, I've been down on both McCain and Obama. However, I increasingly must acknowledge that even as McCain went and appointed an anti-science running mate and started scoring cheap political points by attacking government science…
October 8, 2008
I've now been writing for this website since October of 2007, and have delighted to watch it mature into one of the top sites for serious science policy analysis on the web. To that end, my one year anniversary column, entitled "A Year's Worth of Thinking About Science Policy," enumerates five of…
October 2, 2008
My latest Science Progress column just went up--it's about the series of reports the National Academies has done over the past eight years (see here, here, and here) to help facilitate presidential transitions with respect to science and technology appointments, and the interesting commonalities…
September 24, 2008
My latest Science Progress column just went up: It's about the controversies surrounding CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which many people crazily think is going to open up black holes, turn us all into strangelet particles, etc. There's no basis for it--but, there was a good deal of basis for…
September 17, 2008
So: I'm en route to Mississippi right now, for a panel discussion about science and the election that is to precede the first of three presidential debates, scheduled to be held on the Ole Miss campus September 26.
Our panel tomorrow is noteworthy because in some sense, it may be the closest we…
September 10, 2008
[Ike gathering strength in the Gulf.]
With Hurricane Ike on course to--probably--slam Texas as a serious hurricane, I address my latest Science Progress column to the question of whether we can, defensibly, discuss global warming during hurricane season. My basic answer: Yes, but it's probably…
September 3, 2008
Tropical Storm Ike intensified into a hurricane today, and then rapidly intensified into a sudden Category 3 storm, our third major hurricane of the year. And instead of recurving northward, as hurricanes at its location tend to do, Ike is forecast to plow straight towards Cuba and Hispaniola, and…
August 31, 2008
There is so much to worry about with this storm...and also, just maybe, a ray of hope.
Gustav has not explosively intensified over the Gulf of Mexico loop current, as feared. It is now a 100 knot Category 3 storm, with some intensification forecast before landfall, but not too, too much. Meanwhile…
August 30, 2008
The latest report is that maximum sustained winds have jumped all the way up to 125 knots. Frankly, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Category 5 at some point on Gustav's highly ocean-heat laden journey.
I just talked to the family in New Orleans. They are in Pensacola, and headed to Atlanta…
August 30, 2008
Until then, try to guess what we have to tell you....
August 27, 2008
In my latest Science Progress column, contemplating declining funding levels for university-based scientific research, I ask where science stands in America today. The answer, not surprisingly, is complicated--but also worrisome.
On the one hand, people really respect scientists. But on the other,…
August 27, 2008
[Tropical Storm Gustav coming off Haiti and reorganizing.]
It has been almost three full years since a major hurricane hit the United States. The last one was 2005's Wilma.
We aren't really used to this any more. 2004 and 2005 are slipping deeper and deeper into our memories...but they shouldn't…
August 25, 2008
Today I am down at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, speaking to a class taught by Jeremy Jackson, along with journalists Ken Weiss from the Los Angeles Times, Rex Dalton from Nature, and Mark Dowie from Mother Jones and many many other outlets.
We've all been addressing science…
August 20, 2008
In my latest Science Progress piece, I crusade head on at a piece of misinformation that is incredibly prominent of late--the idea that U.S. scientist production is in decline. Looking at the data, whether on Ph.d. production, bachelor's degrees, graduate degrees, or graduate enrollments, I show…
August 13, 2008
My latest Science Progress column is about how Bruce Ivins unfortunately reaffirms the damaging stereotype of the "mad scientist". As I put it:
Certainly science has had its dark episodes in the past--most notably the eugenics fad in the early part of the twentieth century (which is what works like…
August 8, 2008
That's the title of my latest Science Progress column. The argument is that amid all this talk about energy, we need to get the scientific community as a whole more integrally involved--and indeed, get American science as an institution to fully embrace what will surely be its new, generational…
August 4, 2008
So here's some news: The paperback of Storm World, with a new author afterword and a new Katrina cover, is officially published today. I haven't held a copy in my hands yet, but I know they've shipped from Amazon. You can click here to pick one up online.
Meanwhile, we already seen our fifth named…
August 1, 2008
I didn't realize I was going to have the cover story of the latest New Scientist with this in-depth article I did about the climate-tornado relationship. Essentially, the bottom line is this--it's even more complicated than the climate-hurricane relationship. And so for all those politicians,…