hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
January 4, 2008
It's not over until the Supremes rule on any appeal, but yesterday U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper became my new hero when she issued a ruling that ...
...severely limited the Navy's ability to use mid-frequency sonar on a training range off the Southern California coast, ruling that the…
January 3, 2008
Should the U.S. Navy be above the law when it comes to saving the whales? So asks Marc Kaufman of the Washington Post. Good question. One with much broader implications as we head into a future that will almost certainly include mandatory limits on all sorts of now-common but environmentally…
January 1, 2008
Climate-change chatter in the blogosphere over the Christmas holidays revolved around a provocative op-ed essay in the Washington Post by Bill McKibben, for whom 350 is the most important number. As in 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's a curious new strategy from one…
December 24, 2007
The question comprises the headline of an essay in the New Statesman from David Whitehouse, a former BBC science editor and astronomer ;;;; not someone easily dismissed as a psuedoskeptical crank. His argument getting a lot of traction, and I've even been asked "is this legit?" The answer is ...
No…
December 21, 2007
Matt Nisbet once again points out that nobody in America cares about climate change. With all due respect to the Pew survey gang, I doubt things are really that bad. Consider a recent poll of Canadians that puts the environment at the top of their political priorities. As a Canadian living in…
December 21, 2007
From the master of doom and gloom, James Howard Kunstler, comes this attempt to simultaneous amuse and depress:
December 20, 2007
It doesn't really matter how many transition fossils paleontologists uncover. Creationists are forever claiming fasely that they've produced "nothing which would qualify as intermediate" between today's whales and their terrestrial ancestors. So this week's fascinating news that we might have…
December 18, 2007
The latest news in what the journos are calling the "isotope crisis" reminds us why, even for the biggest supporters of Science Debate 2008, there's something more important than a scientifically literate president.
While I'm still in favor of the science blogosphere's new Mission: Impossible…
December 16, 2007
The failure of the negotiators at Bali to reach any kind of agreement on a schedule for reducing greenhouse gas emissions has left many observers wondering if maybe it's time to resort to Plan B. Instead of adapting our industrial economy to the physical realities of radiative forcing and positive…
December 13, 2007
One of my Facebook friends, someone I only know through the Internet, just invited me to join the new "Atheists >> Theists" group. I'm sure she meant well, but this is exactly the wrong way to go about trying to spread the word about the Enlightenment.
The group has just 24 members, so it's…
December 12, 2007
Just how out of touch with science is Bush's science adviser? Ray Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climatologist, bring us a report on a speech by John Marburger at the current meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Unfortunately there are noreal surprises, just the usual denial.…
December 12, 2007
Get ready for the climate change pseudoskeptics to exploit to their own disingenuous ends the inevitable disagreement among climatologists over just where the latest 12 months falls in the list of warmest years on record. See? they'll argue, the science can't be trusted. Depending on the record,…
December 11, 2007
I don't know how many hours and dollars were spent by this hot-off-the-presses official government duplication of what Chris Mooney laid out two years ago in The Republican War on Science, but I suppose it's always good to have confirmation that:
the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic…
December 10, 2007
A long list of science community luminaries, including Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of our own Intersection, are trying to organize the first ever presidential candidate debate on matters scientific and technological. This would be a good thing. Science Debate 2008 is at this point just a…
December 10, 2007
Today we hear about a new study suggesting the north pole's summer ice will be gone within seven years. Not, 40, not 30, not even 13, but seven. I can't find any information from the actual study. All that we know comes from a brief mention in Al Gore's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, so this should…
December 8, 2007
So there was this guy, right? He worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. His research was specifically targeted at evolutionary processes. But he was a creationist, so he refused to address evolution in his research. So he was fired. So he sued.
In a 2004 letter to [Nathaniel] Abraham…
December 7, 2007
"In order to stay below 2 °C, global emissions must peak and decline in the next 10 to 15 years, so there is no time to lose. -- Bali Climate Declaration
Item 1: The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has come up with a bill that "calls for a roughly 70 percent cut from 2005 levels…
December 4, 2007
A little press-commentary comparison shopping is in order following the recent news of a breakthrough in the effort to produce stem cells without using embryonic cells. I promise this won't take long. First, the Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer, who announced that Bush was right all along to…
December 4, 2007
There is almost no chance the Bali round of negotiations, which get underway this week, will actually accomplish anything of consequence. Mostly because the United States has no stomach for mandatory greenhouse gas emission caps, but also because too many people still can't get their minds around…
December 3, 2007
Nicole Kidman says her grandmother, a devout Catholic, would have been happy with her work in the soon-to-be-released The Golden Compass. This even though the book, the first of what producers hope will be a triology of films base on Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials series, begins a story that…
November 30, 2007
"It" is the great geoengineering debate. And the stakes have never been higher.
The basics are ably described by Chris Mooney and his blog partner Sheril Kirshenbaum has already supplied a less-than-appreciative response. Even though there are still a good number of misinformed folks out there who…
November 28, 2007
Coal is turning out to be one of those political litmus-test issues for those worried about climate change. And as usual, the country is polarized. The Iowa Utilities Board is the on the side of angels. Holding the fort with Satan are Arkansas and Indiana, among others. It splits on predictable…
November 19, 2007
My favorite Sunday morning NPR radio host , Liane Hansen, introduced a story about the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report by describing its contents as "terrifying." Later in the day I came across an AFP report on a study from Australia's Climate…
November 17, 2007
Our observer of all things antipodean, Deltoid Tim, reminds us that there are still some pseudoskeptics out there of some stature who not only cling to the notion that humans aren't to blame for climate change, but also continue to insist the world isn't warming at all. Nigel Lawson, a member of…
November 15, 2007
Nature's editors have written an excellent summary of the state of climate politics in anticipation of the Bali negotiations on a post-Kyoto regime. Despite recapping all the daunting challenges, including the technological hurdles facing those interested in carbon capture and sequestration, the…
November 12, 2007
Forget efficient, clean, renewable technologies. Never mind grandiose geo-engineering schemes. No need to choose between carbon taxes and emissions caps. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has a cheaper, simpler alternative to the climate change conundrum: prayer.
Perdue's state-wide day of prayer,…
November 12, 2007
Begin your week with a dose of hilarity at the expense of the editor of the Ely Times, a modest little publication for some of the very few readers in Nevada who don't live in Vegas or Reno. If you have time you can then let the story drag you in a more substantive issue.
In an attempt to make…
November 9, 2007
The Seventh Day Adventists aren't the brightest lights on the tree (although as they don't celebrate Christmas, I suppose that's not the best metaphor), but sometimes their propaganda astounds even me. The latest edition of the church's monthly magazine, Signs of the Times, offered freely in…
November 8, 2007
Vote now, before the polls close today at 10 pm ET, in the Best Science Blog competition. It's neck and neck between Bad Astronomy, which is a pretty cool read, and Climate Audit, which is a place where people who refuse to accept the science on climate change hang out. So help give BA the edge.
November 8, 2007
By now you may of heard of a fictional paper in a fictional peer-reviewed journal that claims to prove that bacteria, not humans, are to blame for climate change. Here's a link to "Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?" (Journal of Geoclimatic…