Policy
jjacquet | July 2, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
This week, I'm going to start with another tidbit from last week's theme of how far we've come in a year, and then pivot to global warming as an "ocean issue," and posit the question of whether it is the ocean issue that eclipses all others.
Here's the clip from Reuters:
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, aiming to put an end to the debate over whether global warming is actually occurring, passed legislation recognizing the "reality" of climate change and providing money to work on the problem....
By inserting a declaration in the…
sheril | July 2, 2007I was going to comment on Chris' post, and then thought to myself, "Am I a co-blogger, or what?" So I'm sitting here in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, amid a whirlwind of conservation biologists with very little battery remaining on my laptop -- pausing to provide my perspective on the book that kept me in good company during a 15 hour flight here from DC.
Storm World is a thought-provoking piece of work. My co-blogger (there, conflict of interest disclosed!) has successfully managed to craft an interesting and honest account of the history of hurricanes and climate science, but what makes…
nisbetmc | June 30, 2007Chris Mooney's Storm World is reviewed in Sunday's edition of the NY Times, a major moment for any author since the attention will surely give a major boost to the book's profile and sales. Indeed, to date, the buzz about Chris' new book has been glowing.
(Full Disclosure: Currently on a joint speaking tour with Chris, I have first hand experience with the growing buzz. I've been in rooms where climate scientists have been lining up to have Chris autograph multiple copies of his book.)
But don't take my word for it, consider the evidence: The Boston Globe called his tale of the science…
nisbetmc | June 30, 2007I'm obviously a bit late in commenting on the scientist-journalist debate that went on through last week, so I'm not going to weigh in at this point. (Round up of posts. The entry that started it all.)
But for the motivated reader, below the fold are listed several studies and book chapters that I assign in my course on Science, Media, and the Public or that I recommend to graduate students doing research on the topic. All of the sources are available at your university library and provide useful context for understanding the interactions between scientists and journalists.
Moreover, at…
tlambert | June 25, 2007Via Eli Rabett, Rolling Stone has the story of the Bush administration's war on global warming science:
But a new investigation by Rolling Stone reveals that those distortions were sanctioned at the highest levels of our government, in a policy formulated by the vice president, implemented by the White House Council on Environmental Quality and enforced by none other than Karl Rove. An examination of thousands of pages of internal documents that the White House has been forced to relinquish under the Freedom of Information Act - as well as interviews with more than a dozen current and former…
nisbetmc | June 25, 2007"I think one movie can make a difference; I do believe that," says director Michael Moore. Indeed, speculation over the impact of his new documentary SICKO was the subject of a news feature in the Sunday New York Times:
Whether embracing Mr. Moore's remedy or disdaining it, elected officials and policy experts agreed last week that the film was likely to have broad political impact, perhaps along the lines of "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's jeremiad on global warming. It will, they predicted, crystallize the frustration that is a pre-existing condition for so many health care consumers.…
cmooney | June 23, 2007
One of my first interviews about the new book can now be heard online by clicking here (MPG). I recently spoke with Bob McDonald of the CBC's Quirks and Quarks about the science, politics, and policy implications of the hurricane-global warming debate, and the roughly 12 minute segment just aired today.
As this is one of my earliest live interviews on the subject, critical feedback is most welcome. In fact it will be of much help to me, since there will be many more such interviews, including an appearance on the Barometer Bob Show, a popular meteorology program broadcasting out of Florida…
sb admin | June 22, 2007Declan Butler, Reporter updates us on the situation of the six health workers facing death in Libya. The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian medic were sentenced to death on the charge of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV, despite scientific evidence that the infections resulted from hygiene lapses and contamination of medical material. Butler reports that Libyaâs Supreme Court will rule on the health workersâ appeal on July 11th and that the EU is working towards a settlement with the Libyan childrenâs families. He credits campaigns by scientists and others (in which Butler…
cmooney | June 20, 2007posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
We all know music is powerful. It moves and motivates us. Makes us feel something. The latest issue of Vanity Fair features Bono as guest editor and draws attention to AIDS, genocide, and poverty in Africa. Folks at the magazine seem to be getting accustomed to framing important social and environmental issues by way of celebrity icons in order to reach out to a broad demographic. They've also figured out that a social conscience is more fashionable and profitable these days than even the latest from Manolo. Just weeks ago we saw Leo and Knut the polar…
oracknows | June 19, 2007If you leave aside the problem with the Autism Omnibus trial, which has just entered its second week, that annoys me the most, namely a hypothesis so poorly supported by science and so badly argued by a panoply of nonexperts could make it so far in our legal system and possibly even endanger the Vaccine Injury Compensation System with 4,800 almost certainly frivolous claims that vaccines or the mercury in the thimerosal preservative in vaccines, you're left with the more minor annoyances that this whole trial brings. Foremost among these lesser annoyances, which, let's be frank, do not…
jjacquet | June 18, 2007Posted by Dr. David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
Last week I made the case that if you care about good public policy, you should care about politics. I suspect my strong bias that the key to ultimate success in the public policy arena is political power/leverage with elected officials came through loud and clear. Now taking a step back, where does communication fit in? In our Turning the Tide report, public communication and grassroots support are the foundation for building political strength, while lobbying and direct involvement in the electoral process gives this foundation a voice…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2007Lotsa links. First, the science stuff:
I have a published opinion piece about cefquinome approval.
T. Ryan Gregory has a great post on junk DNA.
Whales are over 100 years old? Who knew?
Here's a nice eulogy for Mr. Wizard.
Will Lagos be the new frontier in sewer technology?
PZ chronicles the War on ChemistryDrugs.
Here's a nice post on ecdysis.
The other stuff:
Seymour Hersh on Abu Gharib.
Bluememe argues that talking about issues in politics for many Americans is like "trying to explain Schrödinger's cat -- to the cat."
A while ago, I chronicled in their own words the hate-filled…
tfk | June 14, 2007A paper by Notre Dame's David Campbell (PDF link) finds that evangelicals are more likely to vote for a Republican when they live in a community with more people who do not identify with any religion. Building on a tradition of research in race relations which tests whether integrated communities foster greater social acceptance or stronger separation between groups. Studies in Southern communities in the 1960s had found that white voters were more likely to vote for racially conservative candidates as the fraction of African Americans in the community increased. Whether that trend…
cmooney | June 14, 2007posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum
While Chris is still in The Great Lakes State, I'm back with a recommendation for those in Cap City next week..
On Tuesday June 19 at 9:00, you have the opportunity to listen to Chris and Matt Nisbet present Speaking Science 2.0 at the Center for American Progress. I saw this great tag-team talk last Thursday at the American Meteorological Society's 2007 Summer Policy Colloquium. While normally I'm not a fan of dual presenters, these two pull it off spectacularly while getting their audience engaged and thinking!
Come early for breakfast at 8:30 and stay…
jjacquet | June 11, 2007Posted by Dr. David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org
I'm back home in California after a week in Washington, DC for Capitol Hill Ocean Week. It was an exciting week and, considering it was the first week in June, I can't even complain about the weather. Oceans obviously received a lot of attention because it was, after all, "Ocean Week", and in future blogs I'll talk about the prospects of turning talk and good intentions into action. However, after spending a week wandering the halls of power, I want to talk about the importance of politics--a common theme for this blog. Simply put I believe…
nisbetmc | June 11, 2007Consider the following events, their political timing, and their impact on the framing of the stem cell debate:
1) Last week, as the House was preparing to vote on legislation that would overturn Bush's limits on funding for embryonic stem cell research, studies published at the journals Nature and Cell Stem Cell reported that mouse skin stem cells could be turned into a pluripotent stem cell with all the characteristics of an embryonic stem cell. Coverage of the studies appeared on the front page of the Washington Post and other newspapers across the country.
Though the research teams…
j7uy5 | June 6, 2007
"You can't handle the truth!" ranted Jack Nicholson in
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men#Trivia">A
Few Good Men. I never saw the movie, but
I saw the commercials.
Several months ago, Seed
Magazine (a darn good publication) published an
article entitled
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/free_dscovr.php">Free
DSCOVR!. The article informs us that a fully
functional, paid-for satellite is sitting in storage, not used.
At
a time when the Earth's climate is at the top of practically every
nation's agenda, it might seem perplexing that there's a $100…
jjacquet | June 5, 2007WHO: Dave Wilmot and Jack Sterne, co-founders of Ocean Champions
WHAT: A blog about ocean politics
WHEN: Every Tuesday
WHERE: Here
HOW: Using the magic of cyberspace
WHY: Because scientists do a lot of talking about policy (not as much listening), but often understand very little about politics. Dave and Jack will share the down and dirty details of ocean conservation, politics-style.
About Ocean Champions: As co-authors of the 2003 report, Turning the Tide, Dave and Jack urged the ocean conservation community to participate fully in the political process. Then they took their own advice…
jjacquet | May 31, 2007Ever since Canada backed out of Kyoto, under the leadership of Stephen Harper, climate change policy has been in a fog (or was it smog?). Yesterday, the Ottawa Citizen published an article on the Canadian climate change charade. The author opens,
It is easy to get lost in the complexities of the fight against climate change -- the multiple deadlines, shifting baselines and arcane technicalities of the file. And lost is just where Stephen Harper's government seems to hope voters will stay.
What is this shifting baseline? Apparently, Canada's Environment Minister expresses support for the…
tsmith | May 30, 2007I blogged earlier about the Georgia man who globe-trotted while infected with XDR-TB. I wrote that post late Tuesday evening, and since then, a number of other details about his case have come to light--and they're not encouraging. In fact, this serves as a nice example of a convergence of a number of areas I've written about before--obviously, the evolution of antibiotic resistance and the terrible position it leaves us in, the politics and policies of quarantine/isolation (and how they'd be enforced), and the global spread of infectious disease, so I figured this would warrant another…