cmooney | August 15, 2007I'll be appearing on this popular late-night radio program tonight, in studio, at 10 pm ET to discuss Storm World. You should be able to listen live from this link. I hope you'll tune in.
Meanwhile, thanks to some amazing helpers, my entire talk on Storm World at the Yearly Kos science panel is now watchable on YouTube. It had to be broken up into three videos; I've posted those in order below the jump.
To watch Ed Brayton's talk on the same panel, go here.
Part I:
Part II:
Part III:
sheril | August 15, 2007...or at least picked a B rate movie...
In an apparent attempt to "sex up" a news program, the TV station has been caught passing off footage from the 1997 Hollywood blockbuster Titanic as a real-life report on the Kremlin's recent attempt to stake its claim to the riches of the Arctic Ocean.
While I'm all for appealing to the general public, there's a stark contrast between sexing up science and ripping off the highest grossing film of all time. Someone had to notice and in this case it was Finnish 13 year old Waltteri Seretin:
I have heard that they don't always tell the truth in Russia…
cmooney | August 15, 2007MIT hurricane theorist Kerry Emanuel pioneered a mode of analysis known as hurricane maximum potential intensity theory (MPI theory)--essentially, an equation that can calculate the maximum surface wind speed, and the minimum sea level pressure, achievable by a given hurricane in a given climate. I don't understand in intimate detail all the terms in the equation (which you can read here), but I understand in essence what it does. You might say that it calculates a kind of hurricane speed limit.
Obviously, the maximum potential intensity varies by time of year and by area of the globe; but…
cmooney | August 14, 2007
The worst case scenarios for the now weakening Hurricane Flossie seem unlikely to be realized--this storm will affect Hawaii, but will not strike it head on.
In the Atlantic, though, our "D" storm--Dean--was just named by the National Hurricane Center. Indeed, you can see Dean starting to wrap convection around its low level circulation center in the image above. My latest "Storm Pundit" post, readable here, discusses possible scenarios for Dean's future...some of which don't look so good. Short version: This storm could end up in the Caribbean and very intense.
Click here for more…
sheril | August 14, 20072006 Legislative Knauss Fellows Reunion Sea Ranch, California August 2007
This is the true story of 10 strangers, picked every year to live in Congress and have their worlds turned upside down. Sucked into the vortex of Capitol Hill and spit back out the other side, they develop an understanding of what the policy world is like and are now armed with the experience and perspective to inform and move legislation with motivation grounded in science and strengthened by providing the right socioeconomic incentives. Yes, generations of past Knauss Sea Grant Fellows now give voice to…
sheril | August 14, 2007As I'm driving down Highway 1 listening to The Plain White Ts, the road twists and turns and all I can see is blue. I can't tell where ocean ends and sky begins and I'm reminded why I became a marine biologist: The real magic in the world is far more interesting and invigorating than anything even J.K. Rowling can dream up and today this stretch of California's coast is simply breathtaking..
All too often we're bombarded with visions of a dying planet. Sea birds covered in oil, drowning polar bears, beached whales.. the famous photos keeping several NGO's and plenty of actors in the…
cmooney | August 13, 2007The latest discussion from Central Pacific Hurricane Center forecaster Sam Houston (yes, that's really his name) says it all:
HURRICANE FLOSSIE IS NOT WILLING TO GIVE UP. DESPITE HINTS THAT THE HURRICANE MIGHT MOVE OVER COOLER OCEAN WATER TEMPERATURES...AND THAT IT WOULD EVENTUALLY ENCOUNTER HOSTILE VERTICAL WIND SHEAR...IT CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN ITS INTENSITY. THE LATEST SATELLITE INTENSITY ESTIMATES FROM JTWC AND SAB WERE 6.0...WHILE HFO REPORTED 5.5. THE ADT AT 1200 UTC IS 6.2...WHICH SUGGESTS A MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WIND SPEED OF 120 KT.
That's right: Flossie has strengthened since the last…
cmooney | August 13, 2007
Hurricane Flossie continues to approach the Hawaiian islands, although it remains quite hard to predict precisely where the storm will go or how strong it will be when it gets there. But we know this: Flossie has already made quite a habit of defying forecasts and expectations. This storm has now remained at Category 4 intensity for more than 48 hours, despite steady predictions of weakening (and no advance prediction that Flossie would become so strong to begin with).
My latest "Storm Pundit" column, discussing Flossie in greater detail, can now be read here.
Meanwhile, there are lots of…
cmooney | August 13, 2007I just heard from a buddy in Iraq that the Yearly Kos science panel aired on C-SPAN on Saturday, but I've only just now been able to track down what appears to be a temporary archive of the video. For those interested in watching great talks by Sean Carroll and Ed Brayton, as well as my own presentation, here's how it works: Click here, and then select "American Perspectives: Campaign 2008, Rep. Rogers (R-WA), Yearly Kos Convention." The science panel footage begins around 1:23:30.
Also, if anyone know how to save this video and perhaps archive on YouTube or elsewhere that would be great.…
cmooney | August 11, 2007Overnight and up through this morning, Hurricane Flossie in the Northeast Pacific--having started out as a category 1 storm--rapidly intensified into a weak Category 4 with a well defined eye, as you can see in the infrared image below:
I think it's fair to say Flossie's behavior took everyone by surprise. The National Hurricane Center forecasters were not predicting it, or anything close. Neither were the models. This is yet another indication of how bad we still are at forecasting hurricane intensity.
But you can't blame the forecasters, really. I'm looking at some of the same data they…
sheril | August 10, 2007Well, I showed up here at The Intersection, and boy, the place needed some cleaning up...Chris's bad habits, leaving unwashed dishes in the sink, mountains of empty Miller Lite bottles everywhere, and most troubling...we have no proper Scibling banner. So after some sidebar housekeeping and other small-scale fixing up of things, it was time to address that major faux pas. As a result, Chris and I are now ready to announce:
The 1st Annual CRASH THE INTERSECTION Contest
Design an "Intersection" banner and have your art displayed atop our blog for at least one year where the world can be…
cmooney | August 10, 2007My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up over at The Daily Green. It's entitled "Forecasts, Fulminations, and Flossie," and it gives the rundown on the latest prognostications of Atlantic hurricane activity, as well as discussing the strong (and weirdly named) tropical storm now possibly headed towards Hawaii.
Meanwhile, the website ClimateandInsurance.org, created by the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, just interviewed me about Storm World. I say stuff like this:
I wanted to tell a story that provided a chance to explore some of the knottiest questions at the interface between…
sheril | August 9, 2007They say extinction is the only real certainty. Species are constantly blinking in and out of existence. This may or may not be of concern depending on your scale of interest. In 2007 we're doing all sorts of things to pillage and plunder life on this incarnation of planet earth, but of course 2007 is a rather arbitrary number.. for even if space and time do exist, who's counting and to what end? In any event, I do remain interested in the here and now because that's where I live. You do too. So it's worth taking note when Biological Letters reports the first probable human-caused…
sheril | August 9, 2007The thing about conservationists is that although many of us begin with the best intentions, we align ourselves with groups competing for the same limited resources. Overlap of of issues leads to inefficient investment of time and energy as repetitive efforts concurrently strive to accomplish similar goals. Last year, I would often take meetings from my Senate office with different lobbyists sharing the same principle mission who were clearly not communicating with one other. The result was conflicting messages confusing to Congressional staffers. And there's no question that scientists…
cmooney | August 9, 2007 Althought I haven't read it, I've heard great things about the book Freakonomics, co-authored by (and about the work of) University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. Levitt is supposed to be a true original thinker, and has really shaken up the somewhat traditionalist field of economics.
And now, Levitt has moved his popular blog--co written with Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner--to The New York Times online. This week he started off the new show with (among other things) a post on hurricanes and global warming. Alas, Levitt seems unaware of the history of this debate, and so…
cmooney | August 8, 2007James Elsner is a hurricane specialist at Florida State University. He's just reviewed my book quite positively in the latest issue of Nature. I like the opening paragraph, which is really pretty funny:
Chris Mooney's follow-up to his The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005) is a reconnaissance flight into the turbulent debate over a link between hurricane activity and global warming. The flight log is compelling enough for Hollywood. It records a clash between the empiricist climate scientist William Gray (think Ian McKellen) at Colorado State University and the theoretician Kerry…
sheril | August 8, 2007When I had the opportunity to review Danica McKellar's new book Math Doesn't Suck, I was excited on two levels. First and foremost, it's aimed at getting girls interested in math. I've always been flummoxed as to why the subject is such a male dominated field and curious to find out how Danica would take it on. Second, there's a more personal issue of having been nicknamed Winnie Cooper since elementary school because most everyone seemed to think we look an awful lot alike. (You can judge after the jump). And now it turns out we do indeed have something very real in common aside from…
cmooney | August 8, 2007I just did an online commentary for The Guardian's science site about just how bad Bush's presidency has been on science, and particularly stem cell and climate policy. It starts out like this....
The presidency of George W Bush is waning and laming. The time has come to think about the future and when it comes to policies for US science and to the use of science in US policy, let's put it bluntly, pretty much anything will be an improvement.
...and it only gets meaner from there. So I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Click here to read the whole thing.
cmooney | August 7, 2007So: I just went on the show This Week on Science--otherwise known as "TWIS," otherwise known as "The Kickass Science Podcast"--to talk about Storm World. And just as we strove to keep the science fun (& funny) at Yearly Kos, so hosts Kirsten and Justin of TWIS regularly do the same...and they're pretty darn good at it.
Let's just say I didn't know the discussion would turn to how we could reframe "global warming" as "climatea," a venereal disease the planet has caught.
To figure out how that happened, guess you'll just have to listen to the Podcast. My segment starts just before minute…
sheril | August 7, 2007So where have we gone wrong?
Allow me to return to a theme that I think is central. We all have different realities shaped by our individual experiences and perspectives. I have been inundated with science so when I hear global warming, I envision the carbon cycle, statistical analysis, oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, and climactic shifts at rates frighteningly distinct from anything we have record of...not to mention the decreasing pH in oceans that scares the bejebus out of me.
Now that even the Vatican and the Bush Administration have finally acknowledged we need to do something, I…