cmooney
Posts by this author
June 1, 2006
That's the contention of a group called the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, whose protest--outside of the offices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--I attended yesterday. It's headed by Mike Tidwell, a writer and global warming activist who has a book coming out on all of this…
June 1, 2006
Well, folks, I'm off to Pasadena tomorrow; the debate with Ron Bailey is Saturday. I may blog more about it here if I need feedback on any particular point as I prep my arguments today and, once I arrive at the hotel in Pasadena, tomorrow.
Meanwhile, as thing are likely to be bumpy, here is what…
June 1, 2006
Check out Jeff Masters, especially this entry here, where he explains why we are not going to see any early season storms this year (too much wind shear). I'm adding him to the blogroll.
May 31, 2006
Two new studies on the hurricane-global warming relationship are just out, reported on here by the New York Times. I haven't seen the Purdue study yet. The other study, by Michael Mann and Kerry Emanuel, has already been discussed at scientific conferences and even reported on by some journalists…
May 30, 2006
Well, folks, my debate with Ron at the Skeptics Society conference is coming up this Saturday. We did a virtual coin toss today and I won, which means I go first. Whatever else this event will be, it will certainly be illuminating.
The question at the center of the debate, you will recall, is, "…
May 30, 2006
Just read the following in the Washington Times from an April 28 article:
With the official start of hurricane season days away, meteorologists are unanimous that the 2006 tropical storm season, which runs from June 1 through November, is likely to be a doozy. The first tropical storm of this…
May 30, 2006
This morning, I'm just finishing up final edits on the paperback version of the book. Especially as these things go in the publishing industry, it contains quite a ton of new material: A lengthy new preface that covers recent developments, puts everything in a still broader context, and discusses…
May 27, 2006
Does the Republican mayor of New York accept the Republican War on Science critique of his own party? Recent remarks delivered at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine--where he discussed global warming, stem cells, and the Terry Schiavo case--suggest that perhaps he does. It is of some interest to…
May 24, 2006
Commenters here were beating up on Michael Shermer of Skeptic mag a while back, so let's acknowledge that he too is now on the record accepting anthropogenic global warming. And it seems that Al Gore helped give him a push! Now, as in the case of Easterbrook, I don't see why people like Shermer…
May 24, 2006
I am not particularly impressed by his piece in the New York Times today. The evidence on global warming was in long ago; there was no particular reason for Easterbrook to hold out this long. But that's not what really troubles me about Easterbrook's argument. He writes:
Once global-warming…
May 24, 2006
There's a good Slate piece up about GW, but unfortunately, one of its paragraphs says this:
....consider Hurricane Katrina. When it first reached Florida, it was a Category 1 storm. While traveling across the warmer-than-usual surface of the Gulf of Mexico, it brewed itself into a Category 5 then…
May 24, 2006
...and since then have recommended it to my audiences at two public speeches. Randy Olson's documentary is funny, humane, and completely spot-on when it comes to the blind spots of scientists, the would-be defenders of evolution who often don't have a clue about how to connect with the rest of…
May 21, 2006
This Monday morning at 11 Eastern, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is going to be releasing its first seasonal prediction for Atlantic hurricane activity for 2006. If the prediction is anything like the one that William Gray and Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University have…
May 20, 2006
By now, everyone is having fun with the amusing Competitive Enterprise Institute ads with the following slogan : "Carbon Dioxide: They Call it Pollution. We Call It Life." I have little to add, except a few parodies:
1. Earth: They call it being buried alive. We call it life.
2. Air: They call it…
May 19, 2006
I must admit, I was starting to worry about this upcoming Yearly Kos science panel in Vegas. In the city that never sleeps, the event was scheduled for 8 am (!)--the one time, if ever, when people visiting Vegas probably do sleep. I had a suspicion that nobody would even attend.
Well, scratch that…
May 16, 2006
Just a couple of things that I've been meaning to give a plug to:
1. Daniel Collins, a geoscientist and environmental engineer at MIT, has started a new science blog entitled "Down to Earth." Check it out.
2. Defenders of Wildlife has launched a new program, the Conservation Support Network, to…
May 15, 2006
I just got shipped six copies of the Korean edition of my book. Man, it's weird; I wish I had a jpeg to throw up here so that I could show you. The cover says "Science War" and there are pictures of belching power plants and what looks like stem cells. Plus lots of characters (presumably Korean)…
May 15, 2006
I'm going to be in New York next monday for what looks like a great panel on "intelligent design":
"Intelligent Design" under the Microscope
An evening of presentations on the controversial movement. What is the history of the movement? What are its scientific claims? What impact will it have on…
May 14, 2006
While I was out in San Diego last month, I got to do a lengthy interview with science historian Naomi Oreskes for UCSD-TV. UCSD-TV also filmed a keynote speech I did for Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties. The latter hasn't aired yet, but the former is now available online and…
May 11, 2006
Well, there's nothing like a little controversy to make a conference well attended...and now it appears that all of the back and forth on this blog about the upcoming Skeptics Society conference has indeed triggered such a "controversy." John Rennie over at SciAm Observations has done an entire…
May 8, 2006
Well, my last post triggered a lot of comments that raised some very serious issues about science, skepticism, and the upcoming Skeptics Society conference. Some fair points were made (about whether "skeptics" ought to be embracing Michael Crichton), others less fair (slamming Ronald Bailey, who I…
May 5, 2006
I'm locking horns with Reason's Ronald Bailey early next month at the following conference put on by Michael Shermer's Skeptics Society:
Why are we still debating climate change? How soon will we hit peak oil supply? When politics mix with science, what is being brewed? Join speakers from the left…
May 4, 2006
I spent a fair amount of time last week talking to Iris Kuo, author of this Knight-Ridder story about the meaning of the phrase "sound science." I urged Kuo to check out my book--which contains one of the most extensive analyses of the "sound science" movement that I'm aware of--so that she could…
May 3, 2006
For many, it might seem as though all the recent attention to hurricanes and global warming is something new. On the contrary, this topic has been with us for a long time. And debates in the past have sounded surprisingly like debates today.
For instance, I just read a 1999 Time magazine story by J…
May 2, 2006
There's been a lot of beating up on NOAA--the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--for squelching the viewpoints of some of its scientists on issues such as global warming and global warming's relation to hurricanes. And there certainly has been some troubling stuff reported on this…
May 1, 2006
I just spent a wonderful weekend in Los Angeles, at an event that I didn't know existed but that so impressed me that I simply must give it a plug. I'm talking about the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a staggeringly well-attended mega literary phenomenon that really revives one's faith that a…
April 29, 2006
Last night she was announced winner of the Los Angeles Times book prize in science and technology for her book Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, which I haven't read but which I'm certain is very deserving of the distinction. Afterwards, Sean Carroll and I cried into our beers....…
April 24, 2006
I know I haven't been posting much but you probably wouldn't either with my travel schedule...May will be much more calm, I assure you. Anyway, today I'm in beautiful San Diego doing a private talk; then it's off to Monterey for the American Meteorological Society's 27th conference on Hurricanes…
April 21, 2006
Seed has just published an interview I did with the Times global warming reporter Andy Revkin to discuss climate change coverage and his new book, The North Pole Was Here, which is unique in that it is a GW book that's aimed at an audience aged 10 and higher (after all, they're the ones that are…
April 19, 2006
For the second time in under a year, I'll be heading to Amherst tomorrow, this time to give a speech at Hampshire College. The deets:
Thursday, April 20
6:00 PM-7:30 PM
Hampshire College
Franklin Patterson Hall
East Lecture Hall
Amherst, MA 01002
Here's a link to a campus map. I'm going to be…