hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
February 13, 2008
Some folks are pushing for the US Postal Service to issue a stamp or two bearing the image of the late great Carl Sagan. I say, if they can put out a Star Wars series, they can bloody well do the same for a real galactic hero.
February 13, 2008
Let's return now to climate change "tipping points," or as a group led by Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia has renamed them, "tipping elements." They're important because if we can nail these down with a fair degree of confidence, we'll finally have some tangible policy advice to offer…
February 11, 2008
Great. We have a date for the still-theoretical Science Debate 2008. Is its fate to remain in that unrealized state, or will it rise above the level of rhetorical bait, and actually engage the candidates in an exchange about the research on each other's campaign platform plate? Maybe we've left it…
February 11, 2008
The past few days have seen wild thermometer swings in my neck of the Blue Ridge woods. Overnight lows are hitting a few degrees below freezing and by the mid afternoon it's almost room temperature. Measuring all that in Fahrenheit only makes more confusing. What this country really needs, says…
February 8, 2008
Friday morning chuckle: The Science Channel asks William Shatner about scotched plans to get him into space:
Q: And there was some kind of mix-up with the Richard Branson civilian space project?
A: Well, I guess you could call it that. He thought I should pay to go into space, and I thought he…
February 7, 2008
Whales hear through their jaws, right? Maybe not, if a new study is correct...
Researchers from San Diego State University and the University of California have been using computer models to mimic the effects of underwater noise on an unusual whale species and have discovered a new pathway for…
February 7, 2008
Nicholas Kristof, one of the best voices on the New York Times op-ed pages, wants us all to stop being so mean to evangelicals. Why? Because so many of them are doing so darn much good. Yes, but...
Last weekend's column, Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love, drew a fair bit of contrary comment, to…
February 6, 2008
The editors of Nature, that really important science journal, have weighed in on the wisdom of holding a presidential debate devoted exclusively to science policy. They aren't impressed with Science Debate 2008. There reasons are severalfold...
But here's the essence of their argument:
... any sort…
February 6, 2008
I need help with this election thingy.
I don't get to vote, as I can't apply for U.S. citizenship for another 13 months. Frak. But if I could, I would be flummoxed by the lack of significant differences between the two remaining Democrats on the issues I care about most. Which would be climate…
February 1, 2008
Sting was right. History will teach us nothing. Seemingly oblivious to the disaster that was the Bush administration's efforts to limit media access to government scientists, Canada's governing politicians are following in their American neighbor's footsteps.
According to Margaret Munro of the…
February 1, 2008
Having torn a thin strip off statician William Briggs recently for what seems to me to be a disingenuous attack on the climatology community, it seems only fair to commend him for a succinct and poignant post, this time on the nonsensical argument over who's allowed to criticize.
Briggs, tired of…
January 31, 2008
An editorial in the current edition of the journal Nature suggests we science types take advantage of the writers' strike. It does this under the headline "A quantum of solace," stolen from the next Bond flick. The headline's a stretch, and so is the editorial itself, but hey...
Here's the…
January 30, 2008
... or, at least, in this one case, he's on the right track. Although the editors at the journal Nature don't think so. In fact, they tear a strip off the guy in last week's editorial, and I'm not really sure why.
Here's the Romney quote that ignited Nature's ire:
"We spend $30 billion a year in…
January 29, 2008
Upon the advice of Roger Pielke Jr., who in a recent post at Prometheus praises the appearance of two new blogs, I checked out William M. Briggs, Statistician. Although the most recent post there, "Is climatology a pseudoscience?" begins with an intriguing premise, it eventually deteriorates into…
January 28, 2008
The latest example of irrational, Medieval policy-making in Washington to outrage these parts of the blogosphere is a three-week-old story from NPR in which we learn that federal officials oppose the distribution of cheap "overdose-rescue" kits to heroin addicts. Why? Well, according to Dr. Bertha…
January 25, 2008
CBC reports that Canada's "national science adviser Arthur Carty would be retiring on March 31, and that the position and office would be phased out." To which I could only say: "Who would want the job anyway? You'd just be ignored and made to feel small and insignificant."
John Smol, a leading…
January 25, 2008
The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell says "after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand." This in an email from Jeroen van der Veer to his staff. Hmmm.
That means two things: even more demand for the expensive stuff, like Alberta's tar sands, and really expensive…
January 23, 2008
Will a warmer world mean fewer hurricanes hitting American soil? Nobody really knows. But a study just published in Geophysical Research Letters is bound to provide fodder for those who enjoy heralding every little morsel of evidence to support their contention that climate change is a communist…
January 22, 2008
Too much of anything is a bad thing, and skepticism is no exception. Indeed, without some degree of trust, modern society would be impossible. Which brings us to another of those questions that dominated last weekend's North Carolina Science Blogging Conference: Just what are bloggers good for,…
January 21, 2008
We bloggers tend to assume, or at least hope, that blogging is intrisincally a Good Thing. But at this past weekend's North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, some even dared ask if we can save science. If that's not a tall order, I don't know what is.
The conference drew a couple of hundred…
January 19, 2008
Coal is everywhere in the news. Which is a good thing. Especially when the news is bad. For example:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The country's fourth-largest coal producer, Massey Energy Co., has agreed to a $30 million settlement with the government over allegations that over seven years it routinely…
January 18, 2008
So, there's this town in Montana, see. Name of Choteau. And seems that science ain't so popular in those parts...
School authorities' cancellation of a talk that a Nobel laureate climate researcher was to have given to high school students has deeply divided this small farming and ranching town at…
January 17, 2008
It didn't take but two weeks for President George W. Bush to resume his war on science. Collateral damage this time will be of the cetacean order, thanks to an executive order exempting the Navy from any inconvenient environmental laws.
From the AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush exempted the…
January 15, 2008
Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgment coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices ... In the tower of song
;;;; Leonard Cohen
Predicting the future is rarely a…
January 14, 2008
A new study of Antarctic ice trends by an impressively international group of scientists has raised the alarms bells, and not just in the blogosphere, either. We should always take notice when reputable researchers find things are worse than expected, but let's not put out tenders for the Ark just…
January 12, 2008
I've been presenting Al Gore's climate-change slide show for a year now, spreading the "message" to anyone prepared to receive it on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My version has evolved, along with the science, and the social and political landscape. But one part of Gore's…
January 10, 2008
We may never live it down. The sight of George W. Bush traipsing about his ranch in Texas, extolling the virtues of switchgrass-derived ethanol as a replacement for gasoline generated more than a few chuckles among scientifically literate environmentalists. Yet another example of the commander in…
January 9, 2008
Did Clinton win the New Hampshire Democratic primary Tuesday because her name came before Obama's on the ballot? SciBlogger Matt "Framing Science" Nisbet has a couple of posts referring us to someone who seems convinced she did. I'm not so sure, but find the mainstream media's reluctance to at…
January 9, 2008
Are the ice sheets about to melt away? Andrew Revkin of the New York Times offers a news story and a blog post that explores what the scientists trying to answer the question have to say. Both are worth reading, but I found the "Dot Earth" blog post, which is just as journalistically sound as the "…
January 7, 2008
With a little over a year left for analog television broadcasts, just about every non-Luddite who hasn't already bought an HDTV will be doing so in 2008. For most, the selection process will boil down to getting the largest set in their price range. More sophisticated buyers will weigh the pros and…