hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
November 24, 2008
For the most past few months I've been making brief posts at The Weather Channel's Forecast Earth website, as part of a team of bloggers concerned with climate change and our relationship to the planet in general. Looks like I won't be doing that for much longer, given the news that NBC, which…
November 22, 2008
Upon first read, a new study about the contribution of "black carbon" to the global carbon cycle, and therefore to climate change, suggests things might not be as bad as now commonly thought. But first reads, especially by those who don't have a graduate degree specializing in exactly the field in…
November 20, 2008
Over at A Few Things Illconsidered, the commenters are debating what to call those folks who just can't bring themselves to accept the science of climate change. You know, the science that says we have to stop spewing the products of the combustion of fossil fuels into the air if we want to keep…
November 18, 2008
Mostly because I'm tired of being a pessimist. But there's also things like this:
"Delay is not an option. Denial is no longer acceptable." Gotta love that.
h/t to Reader Brian D for directing me to the video. Much better than the print coverage of same.
November 18, 2008
So much has changed in the last few weeks that I'm only now beginning to get a handle on things. I'm still processing and unsure about so much that I'm going to do something that I have resisted doing since joining the blogosphere three and half years ago. I'm going to share some personal thoughts…
November 13, 2008
I've got a post up at my other blog, where I write about climate change for the Weather Channel's Forecast Earth site, that briefly discusses James Hansen's new paper on appropriate targets for CO2 levels. I still intend to write something more consequential here, but in the meantime, I thought I'd…
November 11, 2008
There's talk of "a low-cost, safe, and permanent method to capture and store atmospheric CO2." All it would take is some conventional rock drilling and a little energy in the form of warm water. That's what the authors of a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences say is…
November 10, 2008
Words of wisdom are pouring from the pages of America's punditocracy, and many embrace a common theme: dare to be bold, Mr. President-elect.
From E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post:
The president-elect is hearing that his greatest mistake would be something called "overreach." Democrats in…
November 9, 2008
I would have included something about the need for a googolplex of public transportation projects instead of simply encouraging cleaner automobiles, but yeah: this is what Obama should do.
November 7, 2008
Most of my favorite ScienceBlogs colleagues are up in arms at the very hint that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could end up as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The problem is RFK, while justifiably cherished for many years by the environmental movement, also happens to be the…
November 5, 2008
"Now the hard part" writes Peter Baker in today's New York Times. Sure enough. It's never too soon to be reminded that Barack Obama is just this guy, you know? But it doesn't take Baker two paragraphs to completely misconstrue the enormity of the challenge facing the next president:
WASHINGTON --…
November 4, 2008
The conventional wisdom is that you have to get a PhD if you want to be a serious scientist. I don't have one, but I'm not a scientist, just a journalist with a BSc who can't claim to have advanced any particular branch of marine biology. There are accomplished researchers out there that have…
November 3, 2008
Given than John McCain is now relying on non-Euclidean geometry to construct a scenario in which he prevails on Tuesday, I think it safe to pour to cold on water the hyper-optimism now coursing through progressive America.
Yes, Barack Obama's victory will be cause for celebration. It will be a…
October 30, 2008
After Doonesbury, my morning reading begins with a peek at the RSS feed from Real Climate. Most mornings it's worth a repeat look at posts I've already reviewed as the comments left there offer one of the highest signal-to-noise ratios in the blogosphere. Today I came across this noteworthy note…
October 29, 2008
I know of no solid evidence that editorial endorsements have even the slightest effect on presidential campaigns. You might be able to find some correlations in some states, but that could easily be because the newspaper and magazine editors are good at following the general feeling of their…
October 28, 2008
The Chinese are a complicated lot. On the one hand, they're building a new coal-fired power plant every four or five or six days, depending on who's counting, an endeavor that cost them $248 billion in hidden costs last year "through damage to the environment, strain on the health care system and…
October 27, 2008
It's almost not worth the bother of taking another swipe at Sarah Palin's anti-intellectual bigotry this late in a game that's pretty much over. I mean, the coverage of her speech in Asheville, N.C., last night couldn't find anything newsworthy to mention beyond her decision to eschew the $150,000…
October 23, 2008
OK. Not clueless. But today we have yet more evidence that we really don't understand how this planet's carbon cycle works,thanks to the latest issue of the Soil Science Society of America Journal. In "Nitrous Oxide Emissions Respond Differently to No-Till in a Loam and a Heavy Clay Soil", a group…
October 22, 2008
I just don't understand where the EPA is coming from when it assigns fuel economy ratings. The latest rankings are out and they just don't jibe with my driving experience. I'm not the most aggressive driver out there, but neither am I an expert hypermiler who keep it down to the speed limit and…
October 17, 2008
There's a new report on Arctic temperatures that is not only worrisome, but helps make clear one of the most challenging aspects of the climate change story, specifically the role of feedback.
For example, pseudoskeptics whose primary source of information on climate is Fox News, are forever…
October 16, 2008
Two things stand out in my mind about Wednesday's presidential debate, both of them the product of John McCain's imagination. First is his insult to every science educator in the country. Once again, he deliberately mischaracterized a grant request to update an aging projector for Chicago's Adler…
October 15, 2008
Canadian scientists, and climatologists in particular, are probably among the most depressed this morning following Tuesday's federal election, in which the semi-governing Conservative Party was sort-of re-elected to another parliamentary minority.
In Canada, minority governments don't command…
October 13, 2008
To no one's surprise, the New York Times prefers Barack Obama's energy policies to those of John McCain. I have no quarrel with that, of course. But I would like to nit pick one little phrase in its editorial of Oct. 11, the one in which both candidates are positively reviewed for their inclusion…
October 9, 2008
I was going to post a rant about John McCain's dishonest reference to Barack Obama's "overhead projector" earmark in Tuesday's presidential debate, but Joe Romm beat me to it. Again. So let me just say this about planetariums (planetaria?) instead:
The planetarium at the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg…
October 7, 2008
The Canadian Press has this story about Canadian scientists who have written an open letter calling on the Canadian voter to consider climate change in next week's federal election. When will their American colleagues follow suit?
Here's the opening to the letter:
We have been disturbed by what we…
October 7, 2008
The reliably poignant Ben Goldacre explores the declining signal-to-noise ratio in the scientific press through a recent paper that tentatively suggests ejaculation could be "a potential treatment of nasal congestion in mature males." This is to get your attention, as it apparently did. But his…
October 2, 2008
To the growing list of consequences of global warming add underwater noise pollution, which may make life difficult for the whales and dolphins who are already facing increased background noises from shipping. It may sound like a stretch, but it's actually pretty straightforward science.
The…
September 29, 2008
Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth, has just bought the world's largest wind turbine. This from the Daily Mail.
The 100-metre high turbine will supply 7.5 megawatts of power to the national grid when it is installed off the North East coast of England. It is hoped the Queen's involvement will…
September 26, 2008
Some of the world's top climatologists, under the collective title of the Global Carbon Project, have released what is widely considered the definitive accounting of the greenhouse-gas emissions situation. And the news is, as you might expect, not good. Nature's Climate Feedback bloggers sum it up…
September 25, 2008
I usually like to refer to the actual study, but I can't find it, so we'll have to make do with the Independent's story on a survey of thousands of British primary and secondary schoolchildren that found most have no idea that science is something of value.
The story starts off with the now…