cmooney | July 14, 2007Sheril has already posted a recent picture of us featuring me in my trusty black Banana Republic shirt, comfortably toting a beer. It's the same shirt I've been wearing pretty much every night on my book tour, since I haven't had any luggage and, therefore, any other options.
This sartorial detail is mentioned by way of full disclosure: When you survey the pictures below--taken at the Seed-sponsored Storm World book party in NYC last Tuesday and finally posted here--be forewarned that it might appear that, like some cartoon character, I never change clothes.
Let me also acknowledge at the…
sheril | July 13, 2007Last night Chris hit Raleigh on his second stop of the Storm World tour so I caravaned over to Quail Ridge Books and Music with a couple carloads of friends to hear what he had to tell us about Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming. Now as I realize my review could seem suspect (conflict of interest and such), figured my overly critical friends would be able to provide an excellent unbiased perspective. As it turns out they're just as impressed as me because the book involves a subject that's topical, timely, and affects every one of us. Chris delivers his ideas in a…
cmooney | July 12, 2007I want to thank Sheril for the last post. I've literally been so slammed on the road I haven't been able to write anything. Indeed, I don't even have any clothes to wear; I didn't get to pack for the tour due to travel upheaval. (Hence my appearance in a T-shirt with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.)
However, I do take time out from my tour craziness to point out to you a disturbing event unfolding today and tomorrow: Okinawa is about to get hit by a Category 4 equivalent typhoon, Man-Yi. Indeed the storm may strengthen into a supertyphoon just before landfall. Later, Man-Yi is forecast to…
sheril | July 12, 2007While Chris is on tour talking about Storm World, related global warming news right out of the state near and dear to my heart of mammoth proportions..
The Florida Climate Change Summit is about to kick off July 12-13 in Miami and I expect it will be a precedent setting event. State, regional, national and international leaders will explore opportunities for advancing the global climate change agenda which means serious discussions on combating greenhouse gas emissions and global warming pollution, creating cleaner car and efficiency standards, and promoting renewable energy. Governor…
sheril | July 11, 2007As a child of the 80's growing up in the US of A, I was raised under the 'Reduce, Reuse, Recycle' mantra. The phrase was as familiar as Stop, Drop, and Roll or This is your Brain on Drugs. To improperly dispose of a plastic bottle was an act of sacrilege in a world of neatly labeled disposal bins. Television even suggested we could recycle our way to a healthy planet where the animals sang songs and we were Free to Be You and Me. Or something like that. It was as if abiding by the three R's would bring utopia.
Even though this notion no longer holds water in my pragmatic adulthood, I…
cmooney | July 10, 2007
As I write this I'm stranded in Chicago, where I and many other people suffered travel upheaval yesterday due to severe thunderstorms in the area. But presumably at some point today I will get to New York, in time for the official Storm World book tour to kick off tomorrow with an appearance on Democracy Now. Tomorrow evening, I'll be speaking at this Barnes and Noble in NYC.
And then it really kicks into gear as I'm off to Raleigh on July 12th, Ft. Lauderdale July 13th, Miami July 14, Tampa July 15, Pass Christian, Mississippi July 16, New Orleans July 17, and Houston July 18. Eight talks…
sheril | July 8, 2007
Map of South Africa from Safarinow.com.
It's before 6:00 am in the field with temperatures around -9C. Winter in South Africa. A thick sheet of frost covers the countryside. Our small caravan includes an ecologist, botanist, naturalist, biologist, herpetologist, theologian, and four of Stuart's current and former students. And me of course. Collectively we come from Ireland, Greece, South Africa, Great Britain and the US of A. It's a spectacular mix for good conversation and the opportunity to compare conservation practices in different parts of the world.
After a week at the '07 Society…
cmooney | July 6, 2007If arguments within the hurricane community were the Star Wars series, then the battle over the relationship between hurricanes and global warming would be Episode I: A New Strife.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary fight that has erupted of late at the National Hurricane Center--pitting now 23 of the center's staff against new director Bill Proenza--would be Episode II: Attack of the Forecasters.
In all seriousness: The last thing the hurricane research and forecasting community needed was another of these battles. Sad. Anyways, you can read the hurricane staff complaint petition here (PDF). It…
cmooney | July 6, 2007My second post on this subject is now up at Huffington Post. Check it out.
The first post, published yesterday, is here. Read together, in order, I think they make for a pretty comprehensive essay on the subject at around 2,000 words in length.
I want to emphasize that I couldn't have written any of this without Nisbet's research, and want to give credit where it is way due.
cmooney | July 6, 2007Soon I'll be putting up my second HuffingtonPost entry on "Why Global Warming Tipped." (For the first entry, which has gotten 50 comments at last glance, see here.) In the meantime, though, I'd like to republish the fascinating figures that I used at HuffingtonPost, both of which arise from Nisbet's research and are part of the Speaking Science 2.0 talk. Here's the first (for a high resolution version see here):
This depicts the volume of attention to global warming over time at two agenda-setting newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post (presumed to be broad indicators of…
cmooney | July 5, 2007So: Scienceblogs interviewed me. How cool is that?
I say stuff like this:
What's your greatest habitual annoyance?
The slow middle elevator in my building.
What's your most marked characteristic?
I'm a recovering workaholic.
What's your fatal flaw?
Aging.
What would you like to be?
A professional soccer player and then a professional musician--five years of each. And then go back to being a writer.
You have all just peered deep, deep into my soul.
And stop laughing, Sheril, you'll be doing one of these Q & As soon enough....
MEANWHILE: Timed in anticipation of the Live Earth concert…
sheril | July 4, 2007
Although the act lasts only a minute or two at most, lions mate up to 100 times a day during the breeding season. That's a serious undertaking - once every 15 min or so.
[More photos from the tracking expedition after the jump]
Setting out at sunrise on a cold winter morning
Tracking cats using telemetry
A spectacular pair
Cheetah brothers
cmooney | July 4, 2007
I've barely even met newly installed National Hurricane Center director Bill Proenza. I shook his hand at the National Hurricane Conference last April in New Orleans, and at the American Meteorological Society meeting last January in San Antonio, I asked him a question about hurricanes and global warming at a press conference, which he answered respectably (if cautiously). All in all, he seemed like a nice enough and more than competent guy.
Moreover, when Proenza started speaking out about how NOAA was underfunding his center and not planning adequately to save the ailing QuikSCAT satellite…
cmooney | July 4, 2007The Bush administration climate "policy" is a sham and an embarrassment. The number of abuses against science--and of power--that we've seen on this topic over the past six years is overwhelming.
Sometimes, though, one choice quote can capture it all far better than a laundry list of well-documented misbehaviors. A choice quote like, say, this one from a recent Rolling Stone expose on Bush and climate:
One e-mail exchange about the study underscores just how many industry foxes were guarding the climate henhouse. When Matthew Koch (a White House energy adviser who today lobbies for API) saw…
cmooney | July 3, 2007The latest issue of Wired features The Transformers on the cover. And all I can say is, why did Hollywood wait so long to make this movie? Don't they know what I put my parents through when I was six years old and trying to keep pace with friends who'd collected more of these nifty bots than me?
The latest Wired also features a short item about Storm World. You can read it online here, but I vote for the PDF version (here), so you can see the truly awesome graphic design (the best I've seen from my clips so far on the new book).
And thus the question becomes: Which is tougher, bots that…
sheril | July 3, 2007Day two of the Society for Conservation Biology conference. While I love this stuff, I admit there are times I'm sitting in a talk and my eyes are heavy with boredom. It's the very same phenomenon that happens in congressional offices during long tedious briefings when we the people are overscienced and under stimulated. Like much in the natural world, this is mainly about stimulation.
With regard to lackluster talks, several factors may be at fault (and let me be the first to insist that I am no doubt guilty of several now and then). After a day of both stellar and not-so-much seminars,…
cmooney | July 2, 2007Jeff Masters has just posted his outlook on the meteorological factors that should determine hurricane activity over the next two weeks. It's great reading, especially for weather wonks. Masters sees a roughly 70 percent chance of a named storm in the next two weeks, as wind shear is expected to relax and and sea surface temperatures are warm enough.
I was particularly struck by this figure that Masters showed:
I don't think anyone expects the 2007 hurricane season to be as wild as 2005--which, as I detail in Storm World, set all kinda records for July hurricane activity. Nevertheless, this…
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…
cmooney | July 1, 2007
The infamous "Thingamabobbercane" off the coast of Oregon last November.
I'm excited to say that my book is reviewed today in the Sunday Times Book Review, available online here. I think it would be fair to call the review itself lukewarm (not quite warm enough for storm formation, let's say). The reviewer, Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation, seemed to want a repeat of The Republican War on Science.
Most of the Times review attempts to recap the book, but because we don't blanch from it at the Intersection, here is the paragraph of criticism:
Mooney has written a well-researched…
cmooney | June 30, 2007UPDATE JUNE 30: So. I've finished reading The Assault on Reason. I must say, it's not what I expected. My ultimate takeaway feeling is that this is a very powerful book, whatever flaws it may have. But that's getting close to giving away my review, which I'm still in the process of writing....so in the meantime, let's carry on the great dialogue we have going in the comments. I'll do so by making the following additional points:
* In response to Mark Powell: I know you think Gore is making too much of the concept of "reason"--but it's clear that in using this term, Gore doesn't simply mean a…