hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
June 7, 2007
Dear Mr. Hume,
I doubt that you intended to further tarnish your already sullied reputation in the journalism community, but your failure to exercise even an infinitesimal measure of professional skepticism this past Monday during a climate change segment of your Fox News program "Special Report"…
June 6, 2007
What does a climatologist have to do to attract some attention? Sure, there are plenty of good journalists and a handful of thoughtful editors and news directors out there, but sometimes it seems that even sensational climate stories get buried. For example, this past week we learn that global…
June 5, 2007
President George W. Bush is getting plenty of attention for finally acknowledging that climate change is a problem, which is at least an improvement over the approach taken by the man overseeing the bulk of climatology being conducted for his government. Some have argued Bush's strategy is actually…
June 4, 2007
Few historical events are cloaked in as much confusion and controversy as the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. There's dueling government reports -- one concluded it was the work of a lone gunman, the other fingered an undefined conspiracy. Otherwise respectable researchers and journalists…
June 1, 2007
Last night in Washington DC was held the 80th annual Scripps Spelling Bee. I love watching 8th-graders spell words they (and I) have never heard before. Two items of interest arose. First, the runner-up, for the second year in a row, was a Canadian, Nate Gartke of Alberta. Second, the favorite…
June 1, 2007
The reaction from the scientific community to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's lack of concern over climate change is blunt. Here are some examples. First, from Jim Hansen, who works for Griffin: "I almost fell off my chair. It's remarkably uninformed."
Next we have Berrien Moore, director,…
May 31, 2007
The incredible words that spilled from my radio this morning were spoken by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Asked on NPR's Morning Edition to respond to an attack on his agency's competence the previous day by Gregg Easterbrook, who wrote Wired magazine's "How NASA Screwed up," Griffin said…
May 29, 2007
The coal industry's PR machine is in overdrive. Today's New York Times gives the dirtiest energy sector every invented a lot of space to make its case that coal power can save the world from climate change, free us from dependence on MidEast oil, enhance the economy and cure cancer. OK, it can't…
May 27, 2007
If hell was real, a place of honor would be reserved for Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who blocked a plan to honor Rachel Carson last week. We named our cat after Carson, so you can guess how angry this makes me.
From a Reuters report a couple of days ago"
"Rachel Carson's work both directly and…
May 26, 2007
The plight of just two humpback whales that got themselves lost up the Sacramento River has got the nation transfixed. This sort of thing happens every few years. Back in 1988, it was three gray whales trapped in the ice on the north slope of Alaska. It's curious how we, as in news directors, get…
May 24, 2007
This Memorial Day will be truly memorial for those who believe the universe is only 6,000 years old. The Creation Museum opens Monday in Petersburg, Ky. A creation of the creationists responsible for the Answers in Genesis "resource," primarily Ken Ham, B.Sc., the designers of the new museum have…
May 22, 2007
Actually, the report in question came on just shy of 11 p.m. Although my local Fox television network affiliate had been promoting its 10 o'clock news report, in which a scientist uses physics to prove the Christian god exists, for several days, the editors didn't think it newsworthy enough to slot…
May 17, 2007
Hot on the heels of the good news that the deep ocean conveyor doesn't appear to be on the verge of shutting down -- a scenario that would have eliminated many of the world's most important fisheries among other things -- comes the inevitable flipside bad news. The Southern Ocean has stopped…
May 17, 2007
New Scientist has assembled a marvelous list of 26 of the most-cited objections to the scientific consensus on climate change. Temperatures rise before carbon dioxide; polar bear population is increasing; there is no consensus; it's all there. This handy-dandy resource -- the answers include source…
May 16, 2007
Pity the poor rationalist, who won't have Jerry Falwell to kick around any more. Gone is one of the leading opponents of reasoned debate, a man who seemed to devote every waking hour to turning the clock back on the Enlightenment. I have no idea how good a family man he was, but his public persona…
May 15, 2007
Anyone who uses Google's personalized home page service and never bothered to delete the default quote of the day was greeted this morning with one of third-rate sci-fi author Michael Crichton's more inane utterances."Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach…
May 11, 2007
The new Encyclopedia of Life may be the best new thing since sliced bread, but not necessarily just because a catalog of every living species is a pre-requisite to understanding our planet. By making it clear just how little we actually know about life on Earth, EOL could be just the thing biology…
May 10, 2007
I'm off on a family extended weekend, and may not have the opportunity to lambaste the forces of darkness until next week. Meanwhile, I'll point you in the direction of two precious posts elsewhere in the blogosphere. First, there's "Fun with correlations" at Real Climate, in which Gavin pokes fun…
May 8, 2007
There's a big problem in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Not that it's surprising an economics report would be self-contradictory -- it's not for nothing that they call economics the dismal science. But it's a pretty big problem to sort out. Here's the conflict…
May 5, 2007
I am so embarrassed to be a Canadian. A member of Canada's Parliament has given voice to an effort to add Bigfoot to the country's Species at Risk Act. Read it and weep:
The debate over their (Bigfoot's) existence is moot in the circumstance of their tenuous hold on merely existing," reads a…
May 5, 2007
Believe it or not, the New York Times has decided that it would be appropriate to quote someone making the old "Darwin is responsible for Nazis" canard. Using the pretext of the bizarre scene at the Republican presidential contenders debate the other day, when participants were asked to raise their…
May 4, 2007
While reading a hilarious New York magazine interview with Christopher Hitchens, I came across the news that Karl Rove is a apparently an atheist. Really?
Well, Christopher Hitchens may have his problems -- his defection to the pro-war camp a few years back was and remains disappointing -- he's not…
May 4, 2007
I didn't watch the Republican debate last night, so I can't be sure that climate change got short shift, but seeing as I couldn't find more than a hint of the subject in this morning's coverage on the net -- and heard only a passing reference in a NPR report listing the "other" subjects addressed…
May 3, 2007
Some commenters seem puzzled by my conclusion that a couple of recent studies of melting north polar ice could mean an ice-free Arctic within 13 years. I will agree that it does seem rather extreme, but the data support such a conclusion, as a responsible estimate of the near-term end of range of…
May 2, 2007
It's been a bad week for the US Interior Department, and it's only Tuesday. First a deputy assistant secretary resigned after her habit of passing endangered species information to private groups was exposed for all to see. Then more than three dozen scientists signed a letter condemning the Bush…
May 1, 2007
In a story that caught the attention of only the more astute climate science journalists a few weeks ago, one of the more experienced oceanographers of our time, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, reported that the Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than we thought. How much faster? So fast…
April 30, 2007
No one should ever be granted a degree in science without being able to finishing this little gem of an aphorism: "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble...
...It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
Various sources attribute the quote to Mark Twain, or Will Rogers or…
April 30, 2007
I've always been intrigued by the Roman Catholic Church's relationship with science and intellectualism in general. On the one hand, the church's history is not one anyone who cares about reason would be proud of, what with the Inquisition, its opposition to Copernican theory and whatnot. On the…
April 28, 2007
Get ready for a big fracas among oncologists: "In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding." (Globe and Mail, April 28). A lot of people are going to find this hard to swallow.
More…
April 26, 2007
The cover story of the latest edition of SEED, which arrived in my physical mailbox today, explores the green technological revolution under way in China. According to Shanghai correspondent Mara Hvistendahl, "an environmental consciousness is building" there. I sure hope she's right, because the…