cmooney | March 7, 2007
We had a great panel discussion last night. Except for the fact that the moderator confused me with the other Chris Mooney at the outset, I really got a lot out of it. One thing that I learned, however, troubled me.
On December 15, 2006, Vancouver's Stanley Park got hit by a powerful windstorm (technically an extratropical cyclone or winter storm) which caused tremendous destruction, felling a large number of trees and damaging a sea wall. I saw the aftermath of the storm myself (see image above), and it's really quite stunning.
However, it seems to have been exploited for political reasons…
cmooney | March 6, 2007 Especially since El Nino went away (PDF), hurricane watchers have been worrying about what kind of season we'll see in the Atlantic later this year. El Nino has a well known tendency to suppress Atlantic storms, contributing to quieter years like 2006 (click image). But now, we're expected to see El Nino-neutral or even La Nina conditions (the opposite of El Nino) over the coming months.
The latest forecast from Tropical Storm Risk (PDF), a group based in the UK, only heightens the sense that we may have a bad year ahead.
TSR has now raised its forecast for an active season:
Based on…
cmooney | March 6, 2007Perhaps only scientists could be such a bunch of media naifs that they would release a pivotally important report--one so significant that it only comes out once every five years--on a Friday.
But that and other failings, combined with well-known pathologies of the media itself, collectively helped to ensure that the latest policymakers' summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (PDF) made only a minor blip on the public's radar screen. Matthew Nisbet now has the definitive take on how and why this massive communication breakdown occurred--a breakdown that is all the more…
cmooney | March 5, 2007This morning--or at least it will still be morning on the West Coast--I'll be appearing for an hour on the Bill Good show, the top-rated talk radio program in Vancouver. I'll be on with Ross Gelbspan, author of Boiling Point and The Heat is On, to discuss the role of the media in covering climate change (and whatever else comes up in the conversation). We go on the air at 11 am PT, which of course is 2 pm ET....you can listen by clicking the "Listen Live" link found on this website, and feel free to post any comments about the show here.
UPDATE: One of the callers to this show quoted…
cmooney | March 4, 2007Last week I went to one of those fantastic D.C. parties hosted by Big Head Rob....this one for Village Voice gossip columnist Michael Musto. I was chatting with Washington Post blogger Emil Steiner--who's a cool guy incidentally--and didn't know that I was getting photographed...er, but here's the picture, which is up at Wonkette, and in which I am caught in the act of giving Emil my business card:
cmooney | March 2, 2007
Tomorrow I catch a flight to one of Canada's great cities, and one which I have never before visited. My wonderful hosts are the DeSmogBlog and the University of British Columbia, and other than the fact that it's going to be cold and rainy, I'm absolutely psyched.
The occasion is the UBC's "Celebrate Research Week," and I'll be participating in two events, both of which are described in detail after the jump:
The State of the Media on Climate Change
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
6:00PM - 8:00PM
UBC Robson Square Theatre - 800 Robson St.
UBC's School of Journalism and the DeSmogBlog.com host a…
cmooney | March 2, 2007 There's a very interesting write-up of a talk fellow ScienceBlogger Matt Nisbet, of Framing Science, just gave at Illinois State. The write up comes from the student paper over there. Here's an excerpt:
Through a theory called "Framing," Nisbet displayed how the media can affect people's views on politics.
"Framing," Nisbet said, "gives certain dimensions of a complex topic greater apparent relevance." In other words, framing emphasizes different aspects of a topic and what gets emphasized is all based on the writer's opinion. The whole thing, as Nisbet said, is "reference dependent."
Nisbet…
cmooney | March 2, 2007 Sadly, this recent paper on global warming (PDF) from the Senate Republican Policy Committee, which is chaired by Kay Bailey Hutchison, demonstrates that too many in the GOP still refuse to cop to the scientific consensus in this area. Many aspects of the document's discussion are judicious and well informed. Yet at the same time, the conclusions are completely skewed:
There are three general areas of scientific agreement on climate change.
⢠Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) to 380 ppm over the last century due in large part to…
cmooney | March 1, 2007I just keep, er, distinguishing myself after talks. First it was with Prof. Steve Steve. Now, my DC neighbor, fellow science-writing English major, and fellow speaker in Chicago Jennifer Ouellette reports another infraction that took place following our recent event:
Chris' manly image suffered a serious blow, however, when he bellied up to the bar after the reading. The event was held at The Hopleaf Bar, touted as one of the best beer bars in the country, with a "beer menu" that runs many pages and features fine fermentables from all over the world. So the bartender might be forgiven for…
cmooney | March 1, 2007
As I noted yesterday, a very important paper (PDF) has just come out on hurricanes and global warming, by Jim Kossin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies and his colleagues. The paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters. Here's how the University of Wisconsin-Madison's press release describes Kossin's results:
HEADLINE: New evidence that global warming fuels stronger Atlantic hurricanes
MADISON -- Atmospheric scientists have uncovered fresh evidence to support the hotly debated theory that global warming has contributed…
cmooney | February 28, 2007Storm World, my new book, has been "finished" for some time. But some forms of completion are more complete than others. For example, this week I've been getting the book's "galleys"--i.e., the not-quite-final version that goes out to media and various important folks--together. This involves finding typos, changing little things, tidying up various outstanding details, etc. It's been more labor intensive than I thought, and now I'm behind. So, I won't blog again until the galleys are done...hopefully it won't take too long.
P.S.: Meanwhile, a major study has just hit that has large…
cmooney | February 27, 2007
Something very interesting has happened to Cyclone Gamede in the South Indian basin over the past day or so. Due to "competing steering influences" (as the Joint Typhoon Warning Center puts it), the storm hasn't moved much. Instead, it has remained perched off the coast of Madagascar, its rainbands repeatedly lashing that island as well as the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Reunion, as you can see from the NASA image above.
Meanwhile, as Gamede has continually churned over the same stretch of ocean, it has also weakened. Why? Because the storm created huge waves that, in turn, mixed the…
cmooney | February 27, 2007He says global warming is "Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" towards environmentalism. He also says the "jury is still out" on the subject.
Personally, I think Falwell should have stuck with bashing Teletubbies, blaming gays and feminists for 9/11, and saying that the Antichrist is Jewish and among us.
Those were really his strong areas.
cmooney | February 27, 2007Last week, when I was hanging out at the AAAS meeting in San Francisco, I ran into someone I hadn't seen in a long time: New York Times columnist John Tierney. Tierney isn't someone who I know particularly well, but I did write a long profile of him many years ago for The American Prospect magazine. That was back when I was a young, wet-behind-the-ears political reporter. Even then, though, I was oddly fascinated by Tierney's techno-progressive optimism about science and technology. We called the piece "Libertarian Rhapsody," which I still think is a great title.
Meanwhile, over the…
cmooney | February 26, 2007I have just contributed an item to the website Gather.com about Bush's (or to be more precise, his administration's) lying on the subject of global warming. Twenty comments have flown in so far. Feel free to head on over there and discuss...I may need backup. Heh.
cmooney | February 26, 2007On Friday I noted that Vice-President Cheney apparently still does not accept the scientific consensus on global warming. True, Cheney concedes that humans might be contributing to the problem. But that's not the mainstream scientific view at this point. Rather, the latest IPCC report expressed high confidence that humans are causing most of the current trend. It's a significant distinction.
It's important to note that Cheney's latest remarks contradict a prior statement from the White House itself. Right after the IPCC Summary for Policymakers came out in early February, the White House put…
cmooney | February 26, 2007Casey Luskin has now dug into my past and found some secularist credentials from my college days. Apparently he views this as some sort of smoking gun. As he puts it: "Chris Mooney provides a yet another example of the fact that many (though certainly not all, of course) leading Darwinist activists are secular humanists."
Calling me a "leading Darwinist activist" is flattering, but a bit over the top; I haven't really made a significant peep about evolution-related stuff (other than brief asides) in some time. As you may have noticed, I've been on the global warming beat.
Moreover, it's…
cmooney | February 25, 2007Many visitors to this blog will already know who Professor Steve-Steve is. For those who don't, go here.
In any event, it's kinda ancient history now...but last October, when I was in North Carolina giving a few talks, I actually had the opportunity to meet Steve-Steve and, well, share a few drinks with him. Only, I really wasn't up for the challenge. You can see for yourself how it turned out:
No Miller Lite wisecracks, if you folks can help it...
P.S.: Speaking of speaking events, the talk in Chicago last week at the Bookslut.com reading series went very well. I also enjoyed meeting my…
cmooney | February 24, 2007Hurricanes can vary dramatically in size, and it's my understanding that there is not any meaningful correlation between storm size and storm strength. For instance, last week's Category 4 Cyclone Favio, which caused serious damage to Mozambique, was a relatively small storm, as can be seen in this image (with Favio located in the southern Mozambique Channel):
But now look at the latest Meteo France satellite image of the Southwest Indian Ocean, showing the same area as before, but with a huge Cyclone Gamede (945 millibar central pressure, a strong Category 2) in the middle of it.…
cmooney | February 23, 2007
One of the most devastating tropical cyclones of 2004 was Cyclone Gafilo, pictured at left, which struck northern Madagascar at full Category 5 intensity, causing destruction that left hundreds of thousands homeless. And while it's too soon to say yet what will happen, this year's G storm in the South Indian, Gamede, could also be quite troublesome.
Gamede is currently a Category 3 storm, with a minimum sea level pressure estimated at 956 millibars by Meteo France. It is also a very, very large hurricane, considerably larger than Favio was, as you can see from this satellite image:
None of…