cmooney | January 8, 2008Well, the book has been out for some five months now...but it was just recently reviewed in a top Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Globe & Mail. A quote:
...perhaps the most lasting legacy of Storm World is not its descriptions of hurricane science or politics. Instead, it's Mooney's disgruntled discourse on the misguided practice of scientists who "cling to the antiquated myth that their job is merely to put the 'facts' out there, and nothing more." Mooney goes on: "Scientists can complain all they want, but they'd be better off taking actual measures to prevent and counter it [misuse of…
cmooney | January 8, 2008In the latest issue of New Scientist, I've got a review of climate change journo Mark Bowen's new book, Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. I have to say, this book is right up my presumed alley, and yet I had a hard time getting through it. You can't read the entire New Scientist review online, but here are a few parts:
Unfortunately, while Bowen gives play-by-play details - who emailed whom, who sat in on what meeting - Hansen remains curiously distant, or just plain absent, from much of the narrative. The story of his past is…
cmooney | January 7, 2008In my latest "Daily Green" column, I find myself slightly praising John Tierney of the New York Times, who is right for the wrong reasons about something he calls "availability entrepreneurs":
Today's interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.
I agree that there's an unfortunate tendency to opportunistically blame individual weather events on global warming. I've said this…
cmooney | January 6, 2008From "Why I Write," a bracingly honest assessment of the scribe's motives:
All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's…
cmooney | January 4, 2008A propos of the ScienceDebate2008 project, my latest Seed column has just gone online. It's about how we must reinvent the role of the presidential science adviser for the modern media and political era. An excerpt:
Because formal US science advising was born during the Cold War, the emphasis often lay upon finding someone who intimately grasped nuclear security issues. The tradition lingers up to the present: The past four science advisers, including Marburger, have all been physicists. Yet while nuclear security issues remain vital, the science policy portfolio has dramatically diversified…
sheril | January 4, 2008They call it the City of Angels, but for me, Los Angeles is the City of Co-Bloggers. Yesterday, Chris and I had a blast getting ready for The Intersection in 2008 and now I'm hanging out at the Correlations Compound with the Wired Science crew.
You know, in such good company, I just might stay awhile...
sheril | January 4, 2008There is another aspect of our educational system that merits attention. Institutions of higher learning have served as the nation's research and development labs. These institutions train the innovators of the future. Here too, our policies have been moving in the wrong direction. Each month, scientists and engineers visit to discuss the federal government's diminished commitment to funding basic research. Over the last 30 years, funding for the sciences has declined as a percentage of GDP. If we want an innovation economy, then we have to invest in our future innovators--by doubling federal…
cmooney | January 3, 2008Our efforts were recently mentioned in an editorial in Nature:
Election year offers a chance for scientists who aspire to a direct role in the political process to make their voices heard. Prompted by seven years of what they see as manipulation of scientific findings by the Bush administration, groups are trying to raise the profile of science in the upcoming campaign. An organization called Scientists and Engineers for America plans to launch a project tracking the science- and health-related votes of all members of Congress, plus challengers for their seats as well as the presidential…
sheril | January 3, 2008
[The Intersection in LA, plotting world domination.]
Well what better way for two cobloggers to ring in the new year than from the same coast and time zone? We're blogging together from L.A.--catching up on framing science, sea cucumbers, hurricanes--and plans for The Intersection. We've got some BIG ideas for 2008!
This year we'll be writing about the upcoming election, the stormy world, conservation, the environment, and the intersection of science with art, literature, history, and more. Now and then Sparticus Maximus the Great will take over and provide his birdbrain perspective, too…
cmooney | January 2, 2008
Well, welcome back everyone...I'm in the saddle blogging for the moment, and later today, Sheril and I are going to be hanging out here in LA together. We'll try to post a picture or something.
In the meantime, though, I wanted to post a link to a fun "storm pundit" item I did for the Daily Green recently, entitled the "Most Superlative Storms of 2007." I went through the year's many hurricanes and identified the following: Most Deadly, Most Intense, Most Surprising, Hardest to Forecast, Wettest, and Most Political.
Follow the links to see which storms I picked for each category. And here's…
sheril | December 29, 2007'I'm going to celebrate the new year when it's most convenient to me and, give or take 365 later, do it again.' - M.C. 2006
Many of us will spend the fleeting moments of 2007 toasting something that arguably rivals an odometer ticking over to a round number. Completely arbitrary. For even if space and time do exist, who's counting and to what end?
Those crazy Romans. In the midst of sport and spectacle, Ceaser and Virgil, and the cultural norms of man-boy love, their calender observed the new year in March. Then sometime around 153 BC, two consuls picked January 1st - conveniently later…
sheril | December 28, 2007
Well folks, I'm headed to California for a couple weeks...
Posting from me will be light, but you can bet Chris will have lots to share about Science Debate 2008 in the meantime.
Happy New Year!
sheril | December 26, 2007Chris already listed several amazing new signatories who joined ScienceDebate2008 and now we can finally announce the most exciting news yet!
NEW YORK - A Republican and a Democratic member of the United States Congress, who are each also scientists, are leading an effort to push for a presidential debate on science and technology policy.
Congressman Vern Ehlers, R-MI, and congressman Rush Holt, D-NJ, have agreed to co-chair the non-partisan initiative, called ScienceDebate2008.com, whose signers also include fourteen Nobel laureates, several university presidents, other congresspersons of…
cmooney | December 26, 2007I can't believe the names that have rolled in over the holidays, including a very large number of university presidents:
Warren Baker, President, California Polytechnic State University
Eugene Butcher, Professor of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine; Crafoord Prize in Polyarthritis, 2004
Jared Cohon, President, Carnegie Mellon University
Dianne Harrison, President, California State University, Monterey Bay
John Hennessy, President, Stanford University
Albert Karnig, President, California State University, San Bernardino
Don Kassing, President, San Jose State University
Eugene H…
sheril | December 26, 2007= 3.1415926...
Over at Correlations, I'm having fun with Ï:
Just think: patterns exist that establish themselves out of disorder. So could it be that a higher order of some kind constructed a universe ascribing to specified geometrical axioms that result in early trajectories forward? And what if these single points of origin determine not only where we came from, but where we are headed?
cmooney | December 23, 2007It's not like a lot of people are reading blogs right now...but still, I thought I'd get this up before I take the night train to Flagstaff, AZ, where I'm spending Christmas with my mom and sister.
First of all, since last I posted ScienceDebate2008 has (once again) added some extremely impressive names. In ABC order:
Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature
Rita Colwell, Former Director, National Science Foundation 1998-2004; Distinguished Professor, University Of Maryland/Johns Hopkins University School Of Public Health; National Medal of Science, 2006
Robert H. Grubbs, Victor and…
cmooney | December 23, 2007As some of you will no doubt already have noticed, the main ScienceBlogs page now has up a cool feature that runs you through the top scienceblogging subjects of 2007.
Sheril and I are proud to note that the Intersection has been at the epicenter of three of the biggest blogologues from this year: framing science (April), Cyclone Sidr (November), and ScienceDebate2008 (December).
Who knows what next year will bring....
sheril | December 23, 2007Last month, everyone was up in arms as Japan launched its fleet off Antarctica in the first major hunt of humpbacks since the 1960s. The move wasn't great for public relations, and would you know it... turns out all the hullabaloo has made a difference:
'Giving in to U.S. pressure and worldwide criticism, Japan's government on Friday announced a whaling fleet now in the Southern Ocean for its annual hunt will not kill the threatened species as originally planned. The fleet will, however, kill some 935 minke whales, a smaller, more plentiful species, and 50 fin whales.'
Good news for a…
cmooney | December 21, 2007Because we hope to forge a truly broad and bipartisan coalition to push for a presidential debate on science, you can imagine how heartened we were to add the following name:
Calvin DeWitt
President, Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists; Chair, Advisory Council, Evangelical Campaign to Combat Global Warming and Climate Change; Professor, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison
Furthermore, we are currently sitting on more big news that I can't share yet, but that we'll release soon. Suffice it to say that since we've gone public, not a day goes by but there is…