cmooney
Posts by this author
January 31, 2006
A while back I blogged about an idea floated by Morton Kondracke: That George W. Bush should try to become the "science" president by emphasizing, in his State of the Union speech, themes of global scientific competitiveness and the need to ensure that the good old USA is leading the pack. Well, it…
January 30, 2006
House Science Committee chair Sherry Boehlert--who has countered attacks on science before--isn't going to stand for the current games at NASA that are being played to restrict scientists from speaking. In a letter to NASA administrator Michael Griffin, Boehlert writes the following:
It ought to go…
January 30, 2006
Call me crazy, but I've agreed to appear at 1 pm ET, for half an hour, on the Bob Dutko Show. Here is how it's described on the show's website:
In addition to interviews, the show offers up a steady stream of faith building information and apologetics. In addition to faith in Jesus Christ, Bob…
January 30, 2006
Juliet Eilperin, too, had a front page story in the Post yesterday about global warming. Alas, it wasn't as juicy as the Times piece about James Hansen (though it included a bit about him). It was mainly about the future risk of dangerous or abrupt climate change, but I found myself puzzled by the…
January 30, 2006
Well, folks, Andy Revkin has done it again. Previously I have written about how Revkin has basically broken every major story about abuses of climate science, and climate scientists, by the Bush administration. And I must say, it's quite a litany of abuses. That's why I'm glad that so many bloggers…
January 30, 2006
Almost a year ago the Washington Post, following on my own work in Mother Jones, reported on Fox News "junk science" columnist Steven Milloy's ties to ExxonMobil. The piece was by Howard Kurtz, and it included a reaction from Milloy:
Milloy says Mother Jones has taken "old information and sloppily…
January 29, 2006
Media Matters has the latest on dubious statements about science by the editorial page of this seemingly august paper. It seems that two ed page folks have claimed that new findings about methane emissions from trees somehow undercut the case for concern about human caused global warming.
This is…
January 29, 2006
There has been a ton of news lately on the climate change front. This is just to let all of you know that I have been assimilating it all, and will be blogging furiously about it tomorrow. I'm devoting the whole day--heck, perhaps the whole week--to this subject. Standby....
January 27, 2006
Folks, I've been traveling, and while I thought I would be able to blog more on this trip (to Berkeley, CA), it hasn't happened due to technical difficulties and general fatigue. That's too bad, because there's a lot that I want to be writing about. But I'm afraid that I'm not going to be back at…
January 26, 2006
Allegedly the British populace is not nearly so pro-evolution as one might assume. That's the finding of a survey just released in connection with a BBC special, but I'm a bit skeptical of the results in at least one respect.
The survey asked over 2000 participants what best described their view…
January 26, 2006
It has been widely noted that U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, who's in electoral trouble in 2006, has been distancing himself from his old buddies in the ID movement. Santorum has flip flopped on the closely linked questions of whether ID counts as science and whether it should be taught in public…
January 25, 2006
This post isn't about science, but it is about something close to my heart. For a long time, I've been outraged over the eternally-unresolved status of U.S. territorial possessions like Puerto Rico and Guam, and over the disenfranchisement of Americans right here in Washington, D.C., who aren't…
January 25, 2006
Just imagine the uproar we would hear if every time a Jew was featured in a Hollywood film or mini-series, he or she converted to Christianity by the end. Such a situation would be intolerable and widely denounced, and rightly so. Yet Hollywood does precisely the same thing to another minority…
January 24, 2006
There's an article up at OpenDemocracy.net that's attempting to be contrary and counterintuitive about the Bush administration's "war on science." I must say, I found it fairly feeble.
The author's first maneuver is to significantly understate the causes of concern. Thus, the vast scope of science…
January 24, 2006
I'm pleased to announce that along with PZ Myers and Wendy Northcutt (genius of the Darwin Awards), I'll be heading up the science panel at Yearly Kos, Friday, June 9 in Las Vegas. This is the progressive blogosphere's mega-convention; its theme is "Uniting the Netroots." The keynote speaker will…
January 24, 2006
PZ caught Kurt Vonnegut mouthing pro-ID nonsense recently. This is deeply depressing. Myers attributes it to Vonnegut getting pretty old and addled, but I'm not so sure.
Back in 1998, Vonnegut showed up at Yale University for a master's tea at my college, Silliman. I didn't think much of it at the…
January 24, 2006
How naive I am. I thought it was settled that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was back among us. I guess I was wrong. As an amateur birdwatcher, I also thought that the videotape provided of the bird was extremely convincing. But I guess I can't be too certain any more, as a real expert ornithologist…
January 24, 2006
I'm Google dependent, just like all the rest of you. But I heard about a new search function that's going live today, and I've been checking it out. (Full Disclosure: I heard from a friend here in D.C. who's involved in promoting this search.) The name is catchy--Dumbfind. It doesn't replace Google…
January 23, 2006
The latest attempt to create sparks over science and religion came on Sunday in the New York Times book review. There, Judith Shulevitz wrote a subtle but ultimately very troubling piece that largely points the finger at scientists themselves for spurring on the evolution conflict. John Rennie goes…
January 23, 2006
My book was reviewed in the Sunday Times of London yesterday. The reviewer was generally positive. Nevertheless, presumably out of the standard critic impulse to say something, anything negative, he created one of the most staggering strawmen I've ever witnessed:
But the central plank of [Mooney's…
January 23, 2006
Some of you may have seen that there is a vampire-werewolf movie in theaters starring Kate Beckinsale. The title is seriously disturbing: Underworld Evolution. I haven't seen the movie yet, although it sounds like my kind of trash. But how much do you want to bet that it misuses or distorts the…
January 22, 2006
Although it isn't out yet, people already seem to be pre-ordering Bobby Henderson's The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm one of them; heck, I already have the FSM T-shirt. I predict that Henderson's book will be a huge success, and in the process will further serve to prove a key axiom:…
January 22, 2006
If you'd like to see an impressive example of how politically relevant, non-"balanced" science reporting can be carried out, read this article in the Reno News and Review. It's a takedown of Congressman Jim Gibbons--now running for Nevada's governorship--for releasing (along with Rep. Richard Pombo…
January 22, 2006
Looks like a lot of the folks here at ScienceBlogs.com keep on going straight through the weekend. My habit is the opposite: For sanity, for relaxation, for a change of pace, I'm not a weekend blogger, unless there's something that I really think needs to be noted and can't wait. But when it comes…
January 20, 2006
Bill Ruckelshaus. Russell Train. Lee Thomas. Bill Reilly. Christie Todd Whitman. What do these names all have in common?
Answer: All are former administrators of the Environmental Protection Agency. All take human-caused global warming seriously. And all are Republicans--moderate Republicans, of a…
January 20, 2006
I'm heading off to Boston for an event tonight. I may get to blog again from Beantown, or I may not. A couple of things to leave you with: First, check out the latest Bush administration science scandal. A government report was apparently doctored to take out references to the possibility that Navy…
January 20, 2006
I went and saw a movie the other night, and in the process also wound up seeing an ad that I'm sure many of you are familiar with. It's for Coca Cola, and it involves cute penguins and surprisingly benign polar bears getting together to enjoy fizzy beverages at the North Pole.
Now, the conceit of…
January 20, 2006
DarkSyde over at Daily Kos has been doing yeoman's work to bring information about science and politics to the blogging masses. Today, he's got the latest contribution: A long interview with three of the principals of RealClimate (Mike Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Stefan Rahmstorf). They talk about the…
January 20, 2006
There's a very interesting, lengthy editorial about politics and science in the journal Cell by Paul Nurse, the president of Rockefeller University. Nurse articulates the scientific community's standard complaint about levels of research funding, but also goes much farther, dealing with the "…
January 19, 2006
Lots of folks have been posting stuff from their prior blogs. I'm not going to do too much of that, but I would like to breathe some more life into one discovery from my old blog--a rather scandalous quote from Energy and Commerce committee chair Joe Barton on climate science.
Nowadays everybody…