hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
January 8, 2010
What's better for a book and its author: good reviews or a threat of a boycott of the publisher?
Today I received an email from one Gavin Bower of Quartet Books of London, a publisher with a respectable history of daring to handle works that no one else was willing to touch. The Joy of Sex in 1973…
January 7, 2010
One of the more common arguments from skeptics of anthropogenic climate change is that the Earth has experienced periods during which atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were much much higher than they are today -- as much as 10 times higher. Why worry about a mere 30% increase over pre-industrial…
January 6, 2010
Some has decided that the Island of Doubt is one of the top marine biology blogs around. Which is a bit odd as I rarely post about such issues anymore. But I do pay attention, and in an effort to at least acknowledge the honor, here's a relevant post:
The Sea Shepherd Society's ultra-cool trimaran…
January 6, 2010
Over at Linked In, the professionally oriented social networking service, there's a discussion group called "Climate Change - I care!" Most of its members are those who share a concern for what anthropogenic global warming is threatening to do to civilization as we know it. Until this week,…
January 5, 2010
Well, I thought I'd see it all, but I was wrong. Of course, it's been a long time since anyone whose opinion I respect considered Fox News a serious source of news and analysis. Still this example boggles the mind. Here's Brit Hume, the network's senior news analyst, discussing the most important…
January 4, 2010
Storms of My Grandchildren
The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe
And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
by James Hansen
Bloomsbury USA, 304 pp.
Another year, another plea for scientists to start communicating better. Here's Chris Mooney, reminding us yet again that
Scientific training…
December 30, 2009
It's taken me a while to assemble something cogent about the outcome of the CoP15, the Copenhagen conference that produced what some are calling "better than nothing." There are those who consider it a complete failure because the final accord, which didn't receive full approval, includes no…
December 29, 2009
I really should do this more often, but probably won't manage it again for another five years, so...
Thank you for reading this blog. There's a long list of regular readers and commenters who have helped make the Island of Doubt a project something approaching a worthy project, including Scott…
December 22, 2009
Not from me, but from Daniel Loxton of Skepticblog, who has been doing some thinking about what skeptics can learn from James Randi's missteps on climate science. His advice is bound to rankle the feathers of those who are innately distrustful of everyone and everything associated with "…
December 17, 2009
James Randi has corrected himself. After this week's Swift blog post that verged on climate change denialism, he now writes that his observation that the world has cooled over the last 150 years was supposed to have said "warmed." And he accepts that his description of the Oregon Petition as…
December 17, 2009
I've run out of anything useful to say about Copenhagen. This graphic, from "Climate Interactive" tells you just about everything you need to know.
December 17, 2009
I know we're just hours away from the nail-biting climax of the Copenhagen conference at which the fate of humanity hangs in the balance (or not), but a Daily Kos post explaining why efforts to reform health insurance in the U.S. have amounted to nothing has fallen into my "must read" category. One…
December 16, 2009
James Randi has few peers when it comes to applying scientific rigor to claims of paranormal or supernatural activity. He's been doing it for what seems like eons, all without any formal scientific training. So when he even hints that climate change denialists might have a point, it's time to see…
December 15, 2009
Following yesterday's Yes Men hoax, in which Canada's position on greenhouse-gas emissions was mocked, the country's minister of the environment seems to have become a persona non grata. At least, that's how it looked to a Toronto Star blogger reporting from Copenhagen:
Canadian Environment…
December 15, 2009
The good news is Andrew Revkin will continue to post at his Dot Earth blog for the foreseeable future. The bad news is he will be doing so not as a staff reporter for the New York Times, which has allowed him the rare honor of specializing in something as specialized as climate change, for many…
December 14, 2009
It would be funny if so much weren't at stake.
Anonymous culture-jammers (probably the "Yes Men") earlier today apparently managed to fool the Wall Street Journal into reporting that Canada has abandoned it established greenhouse gas emissions reductions target of just 3% below 1990 levels by 2020…
December 11, 2009
Forget Copenhagen for a moment, and turn your attention back to the U.S. legislative process, into which has just been thrown a new option, a "third option" that just might be able to satisfy both the "it's the only game in town so let's support the cap-and-trade bills now before Congress" gang and…
December 10, 2009
Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science. In an op-ed published in today's Washington Post, he excoriates Sarah Palin for her illterate essay, published earlier this week, on the topic of…
December 9, 2009
Dear Ms. Palin,
Re: "Copenhagen's political science" as published in the Washington Post. As the Post didn't see fit to edit or fact-check your piece, I thought I'd save you any embarrassment that might result if you see fit to publish it elsewhere.
I will begin with this paragraph:
The e-mails…
December 8, 2009
I use the term "climategate" reluctantly because the stolen climatology email story has little in common with Watergate. Those who would deny the physical reality of climate change seem to have latched onto the meme, however, and it is my sad news to report that the essence of the meme, if not that…
December 7, 2009
William "Stoat" Connolley draws our attention to a couple of essays by Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia climate team on the role of climatologists -- and scientists in general -- in the policy-making process. I have to agree with William, it's not exactly clear just what Hulme is getting…
December 4, 2009
Science as a Contact Sport:
Inside the battle to save Earth's climate
by Stephen Schneider
National Geographic, 295 pages
Not even Stephen Schneider could have anticipated how timely his new book, Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the battle to save Earth's climate, would be. The histrionics…
December 2, 2009
A two-hour PowerPoint/Keynote presentation isn't enough time to explain the science of climate change, the political forces governing our response to it, and the economics involving in reducing greehouse gas-emissions. Oversimplification is an unavoidable hazard. Just imagine how much trouble you'…
December 1, 2009
Anyone who still thinks, fears or harbors even the tiniest suspicion that the stolen CRU emails offer evidence that climatologists are cooking their data must read Tim "Deltoid" Lambert's examination of one of the most widely cited examples of the alleged crimes.
November 30, 2009
Maybe I've just been at this too long. But it seems that the ratio between banal observations and helpful analyses of the climate crisis is much larger than usual. I mean, I was offline for five days over Thanksgiving and apparently missed nothing. Consider this conclusion from Ted Nordhaus and…
November 25, 2009
Well, that headline's a little unfair. I wrote it to lure in those who jump on every opportunity to prove that climatologists are frauds. What I really mean to say is: "Where the most recent assessment by the IPCC has been superceded by more recent findings.
It's all in a new report, The Copenhagen…
November 24, 2009
The Darwin Experience:
The Story of the Man and his Theory of Evolution
by John van Wyhe
National Geographic Books
It almost seems like a throwback to another age, a time when people actually read books and stuff. And National Geographic Books' The Darwin Experience: The Story of the Man and his…
November 23, 2009
One of the commenters to my last post, an attempt to explain why the hacked climatology emails do not constitute a scientific scandal, came up with a darn fine idea:
If you think that global warming rests on a few temperature data sets and models, you are very wrong. If you don't understand this…
November 20, 2009
Much is being made by those who really, really believe that there's a global conspiracy among climatologists of the emails and other documents stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit. According to such bloggers, thousands of "embarrassing" pieces of correspondence between…
November 20, 2009
I promise to get back to substantive blogging shortly, but in the meantime, if you've got three minutes to tear yourself away from coverage of Sarah Palin's book:
Scientifically sound? Not the words I would use, but not too far off the mark, either. Hyperbolic? Yes. Offensive? To some. Provocative…