cmooney | April 14, 2008I just did my latest Daily Green item about Tropical Storm Erin--the last 2007 Atlantic storm to have its definitive report (PDF) emerge from the bowels of the National Hurricane Center.
Suffice it to say that the delay seems well justified--meteorologists still don't really have a clue what Erin was. I mean, we're talking about a storm that barely attained tropical storm status over the Gulf, but that developed an eye, 995 mb central pressure, and 50 knot winds over Oklahoma!
Read here for more on this very, very wacky weather phenomenon....
sheril | April 14, 2008Science blogs are buzzing over National Poetry Month, so here is my favorite poem of all time:
If I Were The Sun
- Seth, 1984
If I were the shining sun,
I would shine on the Earth everyday,
And clear away people's gloom,
So that they would be full of joy.
cmooney | April 11, 2008At the risk of getting more comments about framing...In January I spoke at the 2008 American Meteorological Society meeting's 7th Communication Workshop, and the audio and powerpoints are now online. Many or most of the panelists--and especially myself and Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan--are making "framing science"-type arguments, but of course, there is no real controversy over them because we're applying them mainly to global warming, not evolution.
Anyways, you'll need the WebExPlayer, but I encourage you to check out the session. The panelists were myself and Arthur Lupia,…
sheril | April 11, 2008
This month, The Brothers Bleiman host Carnival of the Blue 11 and Zooillogix features categories spanning the benthos from 'Hot Mollusk Action' to 'Darling It's Better, Down Where It's Wetter.' Rumored to be the 'best ever', it's a post to behold, and we've got our own contribution in the mix, so go check it out!
cmooney | April 10, 2008So this is the first bit of news that we've been promising....
In the latest issue of Science, we--the ScienceDebate2008 crew--have a policy forum article that lays out how this all got started, its implications, and where it's going. Doing the article was Sheril's idea, and she did a great deal of the work, as a consequence of which she is now a twentysomething first author in Science...not bad, huh?
I am not sure yet whether we can link to the article in a non-password protected way. There will also soon be some press releases; we'll throw those links up shortly. But in the meantime, let me…
cmooney | April 10, 2008
[Storm tracks, 2007 Atlantic hurricane season.]
Well, it's April, and the earliest of the pre-season Atlantic hurricane forecasts have appeared. My latest Daily Green entry parses two sets of predictions that are really quite similar:
Colorado State University: 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, 4 intense hurricanes, heightened U.S. intense hurricane landfall risk
Tropical Storm Risk: 14.8 named storms, 7.8 hurricanes, 3.5 intense hurricanes, heightened U.S. intense hurricane landfall risk
In both 2006 and 2007, the big U.S. landfall didn't happen. But we won't keep on getting lucky....and…
cmooney | April 9, 2008My latest Science Progress piece is up: It's about what we would actually have to do to prepare just one sector (transportation) and one region (the Gulf Coast) for climate change. If you then extrapolate that to all sectors and all regions, well....we are so unready it is ridiculous, and the Bush administration has done virtually nothing to change that.
Climate change adaptation, therefore, will be a massive project for the next administration.
sheril | April 9, 2008We spent the past couple days together in our nation's capitol with lots to discuss including some exciting news you'll find out Thursday followed by our upcoming BIG announcement...
Let's just say over the past year, we've noticed we not only work well together, but also have a habit of coming up with interesting ideas collaboratively. And of course the best part is we have a lot of fun in the process.
So stay tuned, keep an eye to the blog, and very soon we'll be able to share our plans with readers!
sheril | April 9, 2008
Folks up in DC have the chance to catch my colleague Dr. Raphael Sagarin tomorrow at AAAS. He's in town to talk about his new book 'Natural Security: A Darwinian Approach to a Dangerous World':
'From observations of nature and studies in evolutionary biology, Dr. Sagarin has drawn some intriguing conclusions that he suggests may have applications to security in human society. Biological organisms have been developing and adapting novel solutions to myriad threats for their own security for over 3.5 billion years. Across that immense span, literally millions of natural features have…
cmooney | April 8, 2008Gee, this sounds scarily familiar....not that I have experienced anything like the kind of health problems these bloggers seem to to have incurred from the insane 24-7 lifestyle. But I too have been sucked in many, many times by the obsessiveness of it--and then stepped back and found myself wondering if that obsessiveness was entirely healthly.
sheril | April 8, 2008I'm troubled to read that according to a UN-commissioned report, women are discriminated against in almost every country. We make up 70% of the world's poor, owning 1% of titled land. While I often write about gender bias in academia, that disparity is merely the tip of the iceberg.
Surely more can be done to improve opportunities for women globally. So how and where do we begin?
cmooney | April 7, 2008Well, discussion seems to have mostly run its course on "framing science" premises II and III. I have defended them, at least to my own satisfaction. There may be some folks who still reject them, but at this point, at least for those who don't, I'm ready to continue with the argument.
So let's get on to the next two premises that gave some people trouble, or raised issues. Premise V was the following:
Therefore, if--if--you want to get beyond audiences of science enthusiasts who understand the fine details, and move this broad public on these highly complex and politicized issues, you have…
cmooney | April 5, 2008I've been writing more for D.C. based political magazines lately--going back to the roots, I guess--and I now have a piece in the latest issue of The New Republic about why scientists need to stop taking abuse and fight back. As described in this piece, "framing science"--or, as I put it, "investing... in mass-media initiatives to communicate"--is just one part of what must be done. There's a great deal more if we want science to be both tough but also smart:
So how can scientists strap on the gloves? They can start by investing, through their major organizations, in mass-media initiatives to…
sheril | April 4, 2008Chris and I, along with the rest of the ScienceDebate2008 steering committee, continue to work hard behind the scenes to push for candidates to talk about where they stand on issues related to science and technology. Here's the latest, from Alan Boyle with MSNBC:
If the candidates pass up the Pennsylvania opening, Science Debate 2008 will shift its focus to Oregon. Portland State University is being lined up as the proposed venue. Otto said the media partners in the effort would be "Nova," the venerable public-TV science program; and "Now," a more recent public-affairs series on PBS. A…
sheril | April 4, 2008In the following photo, am I...
a) revealing my secret identity as a spy in the greater NC region?
b) laying low from the ScienceBlog paparazzi?
c) sharing lunch with Bora and Abel after we guest lectured at Duke's Sanford Institute on Public Policy on a sunny Spring day?
d) in the running for which SciBling can sport the dorkiest glasses?
The story behind the image here...
cmooney | April 3, 2008Okay, so: After reading over some ninety comments, I think I am ready to advance the framing science discussion further. Recall that I am starting from the ground up, because I believe that while I have made some errors and Nisbet has made some errors, and there has been some unfortunate polarization and nastiness on top of that, I still think that the concept of framing holds considerable import for the future of science communication.
So I am now going to defend those premises that received considerable criticism in my previous post. I want to go in order, because I want to play this out…
cmooney | April 3, 2008Yesterday, though I didn't get the chance to blog it, my latest Science Progress column went up. Entitled "Just Coasting," it's about the vulnerability of the US gulf states to climate change, and how government agencies are consistently failing to do their job to prepare us for it.
The quotation in the title is, by far, my favorite part of the piece. It's from the National Academy of Sciences, critiquing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' garbling of hurricane science in a draft report on the vulnerability of New Orleans. Megabytes? Can you believe that?
You can read the entire item here.
sheril | April 2, 2008Chris has been posting his thoughts on framing, and while we share many ideas, it's time I provide my own perspective. You see, I'm often mistaken for my coblogger, and while I do understand a thing or two about storms and climate, we're not one in the same. So with that in mind... [deep breath], let's get down to making sense of framing science.
There is much I have to say on this topic, and could not possibly do so in a single post, so I would like to expand upon the premise written yesterday that has been discussed a good deal in the comments that followed:
6. Rather, you have to pare…
cmooney | April 2, 2008Well, it's Wednesday, and so far I've done two posts--and gotten more than 170 comments--in the new "framing science" dialogue that I've sought to begin here. Let's briefly recap, so that I can then explain how I'll be moving forward. Meanwhile, Sheril wants to start weighing in, so expect her to do that later today.
First, I began with my "framer culpa": Clearly, I have not managed to get these ideas across to many ScienceBlogs folks in a way that resonates. Rather, the subject has become polarized, and generated far more heat than light. I am in part to blame. Mistakes have been made--…