cmooney | December 13, 2006
Cyclone Gaflio, South Indian Ocean, March 2004.
Well, my first hurricane-related presentation, at the Exploratorium here in San Francisco, can now be watched here...Here for Real Player, here for Windows Media Player....I think it came off pretty well. Lotsa slides, hurricane pictures, and even a movie....enjoy. I think it's a good start for my speaking on this subject.
Meanwhile, literature on Storm World is being distributed at the American Geophysical Union meeting at the Elsevier exhibit table, booths 720-724. Check it out....more info here.
cmooney | December 12, 2006I'm here in San Francisco--just arrived--and tomorrow will be doing a webcast at a fantastic museum called the Exploratorium. This is an open-to-the-public webcast--i.e., you can come see me in person or you can see me through your computer. The webcast starts at 1 pm PST on Wednesday, the 13th. I will be talking about hurricanes for the first time, and even showing some slides on this new subject (for me), though nothing too extensive. We will also be talking about politics and science.
Anyway, go here to tune in to the webcast online. It will also be archived, of course.
cmooney | December 4, 2006
Harcourt Books now has a description up, so no need for secrecy any longer:
Chris Mooney delves into a red-hot debate in meteorology: whether the increasing ferocity of hurricanes is connected to global warming. In the wake of Katrina, Mooney follows the careers of leading scientists on either side of the argument through the 2006 hurricane season, tracing how the media, special interests, politics, and the weather itself have skewed and amplified what was already a fraught scientific debate. As Mooney puts it: "Scientists, like hurricanes, do extraordinary things at high wind speeds."…
cmooney | December 2, 2006Typhoon/Supertyphoon Durian was apparently the deadliest tropical cyclone event in the world this year, due to heavy rains that created mudslides from the slopes of the Mayon Volcano, in turn burying a large number of villages. Jeff Masters has more. This is now a major humanitarian disaster and Masters advises giving to the Red Cross International Response Fund. I'll second that.
cmooney | November 30, 2006From an AP article on the Washington Post website:
About 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year.
Yeah, right....almost as bad a science blooper as Scalia's!
[By the way, here's the 2004 Northwest Pacific storm tracks, looks like about 3-5 hit the Philippines in that year.]
UPDATE: Unbelievable, the AP repeats this staggeringly incorrect factoid again here. If 20 typhoons and tropical storms hit the Philippines each year, who would live there?
cmooney | November 29, 2006This is just too much...so I'm taking time out from working on the book to bring you more. I've now seen the Supreme Court transcript and can provide actual passages of what Scalia said. It's even worse than the previous post made it seem. To wit:
JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Milkey, I had -- my problem is precisely on the impermissible grounds. To be sure, carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and it can be an air pollutant. If we fill this room with carbon dioxide, it could be an air pollutant that endangers health. But I always thought an air pollutant was something different from a stratospheric…
cmooney | November 29, 2006From my friend Eli Kintisch, reporting on today's Supreme Court global warming hearing:
"We are not asking the court to pass judgment on the science of climate change," said Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General James Milkey in his opening arguments. That may be fortunate for some justices, including Antonin Scalia, who asserted erroneously that global warming occurs in the stratosphere before Milkey corrected him by noting that it was a tropospheric phenomenon. Scalia then confessed his scientific limitations:
"I told you I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to deal with global…
cmooney | November 28, 2006
In 2004, as we all remember too well, four hurricanes--Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne--struck Florida in fairly rapid succession.
In early 2005 (as relatively few Americans know), the Cook Islands had to deal with four extremely intense tropical cyclones--Meena, Nancy, Olaf, and Percy--in the space of a month.
Now 2006 is seeing its rapid-fire shellacking, and the unlucky country is the Philippines. First came Typhoon Xangsane, then Super Typhoon Cimaron, then Typhoon Chebi--all very intense, and all hit the main Philippine island of Luzon in the space of just over a month.
And it's not…
cmooney | November 20, 2006
Well, I guess there's no point hiding it any more. My new book, due out in June 2007, will be entitled Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming. It now has a cover image and everything.
You should not judge from this fact that the book's completely finished, however; nor am I ready to divulge what it says or argues (beyond what might be gleaned from the cover image). But I will say a few words about what the book is not:
1. This is not a "sequel" to The Republican War on Science.
2. This is not a late-breaking addition to the literature of "Katrina books" of last…
cmooney | November 15, 2006
From the National Hurricane Center:
THIS SPECIAL ADVISORY IS BEING ISSUED TO REFLECT THAT SERGIO HAS INTENSIFIED TO 85 KNOTS. THIS IS BASED ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PINHOLE EYE AND OBJECTIVE DVORAK-T-NUMBERS. THE INTENSITY FORECAST HAS BEEN A CONSERVATIVELY ADJUSTED ACCORDINGLY AND THE INITIAL AND 12 HOUR WIND RADII HAVE BEEN EXPANDED. NO CHANGE IN FORECAST TRACK IS INDICATED.
Sergio is, apparently, a late season rapid intensifier....and a lot of the models suggest that its burst has only begun (it's currently at Cat2). Yikes.
November 16, 2006, UPDATE: Sergio's rapid intensification did not…
cmooney | November 9, 2006With the Dems now about to assume control of both houses of Congress, science policy is going to change. Big time. Indeed, in The Republican War on Science I pointed out that one reason the Reagan administration never messed with science as much as the current administration was because the Democratic Congress helped keep it in line.
We can now expect the same thing to transpire with the Bush administration. The big changes I'm looking at will come in the following areas:
1. Committee Chairs. People like James Inhofe won't be able to build global warming hearings around people like Michael…
cmooney | November 8, 2006From CNN:
Republican Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri early Wednesday conceded defeat to Democrat Claire McCaskill after a hard-fought race, telling supporters that "the headwind was just very, very strong this year."
McCaskill was backed by actor and stem-cell-research advocate Michael J. Fox.
I leave it to more knowledgeable political analysts to determine just how much of a role stem cells played in the race--but it was undoubtedly a prominent issue. So in some sense, reaction against the "war on science" might have cost Jim Talent dearly.
cmooney | November 6, 2006Once again, I'm speaking on election day, hopefully after the results are in, in Coral Gables, and then in Orlando two days later. These are the last two public speeches for a while--perhaps until 2007. Not sure yet. Again, these are the details:
Tuesday, November 7
8:00-9:00 PM
BOOKS & BOOKS
265 Aragon Ave
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Thursday, November 9
7:30- 9:00 am
The Westin Grand Bohemian
for Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando
Tickets available at www.ppgo.org
In the new year, I will be adding a new talk to the repertoire--an Al Gore-style PowerPoint heavy on multimedia which will,…
cmooney | November 2, 2006I have either been holed up writing somewhere, or on the road speaking, for quite a while now--and the speaking side of things doesn't let up until November 9. Here are the remaining public events:
Tuesday, November 7
8:00-9:00 PM
BOOKS & BOOKS
265 Aragon Ave
Coral Gables, FL 33134
Thursday, November 9
7:30- 9:00 am
The Westin Grand Bohemian
for Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando
Tickets available at www.ppgo.org
Among my various trips, I just spent three days in North Carolina doing a series of talks and meeting the locals. And now, thankfully, we've got a picture from my blogger…
cmooney | November 1, 2006From the transcript of the October 30th show; "INGRAHAM" is Laura Ingraham:
KING: Laura, would you agree that more than 50 percent of the public would support stem cell research?
INGRAHAM: I think more than 50 percent of the public would probably approve of public executions of child molesters but it doesn't mean that we actually do that, Larry, I mean please.
KING: But so the question is -- Laura let me finish. It's my show.
INGRAHAM: Thanks for clarifying.
KING: Laura, the question is if you came out for the public execution of child molesters you might win and that's the question. Will…
cmooney | October 30, 2006I've just finished up a fun whirlwind tour of the Raleigh-Durham area, which included three talks and lots of meetings with scientists and fellow science bloggers. Abel Pharmboy was my thoughtful and accommodating host, and as far as science bloggers go, I also got to meet Coturnix of A Blog Aound the Clock and Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily.
They have posts on my events, too. See here for Abel's banging the gong to announce everything, here for Coturnix's reaction to my first bookstore talk (and our after-hours drinking experiences), and here for Dave Munger's reaction to my second one. I'm…
cmooney | October 10, 2006Okay, I wasn't supposed to be blogging...and now, I'm not any more. At all. Period.
Let me just repost my events list for those wishing to catch me on the road in the next month or so; note that a new event, in Miami/Coral Gables, has been added, for election day no less (wonder what that will do to turnout...):
Friday, October 27
4:15 PM-5:45 PM
National Association of Science Writers
Fall 2006 Annual Meeting
Tremont Grand Meeting Facility
Tremont Plaza Hotel
Baltimore, MD
Saturday, October 28
7:00 PM-8:30 PM
Quail Ridge Books
3522 Wade Ave.
Raleigh, NC 27607
Sunday, October 29
4:00 PM-5:30…
cmooney | October 10, 2006I know I am supposed to be working on my book, and indeed I am--a productive day today has made me feel less guilty about blogging.
Anyway, following on my last post, I'd like to go further. The earliest elephant's ass I've seen in the media (broadly conceived) is the following:
However, so far as I know, there was no influence of the above image (# 1) on this one:
I cannot be sure, however, that image # 2 (above) did not in any way influence image # 3:
So, where does that leave us? Well, first of all, the elephant's tail has moved to the center and then swung back to the left again…
cmooney | October 9, 2006
Um, maybe it's just me, but doesn't the above image look an awful lot like the image below?
What do you think, should I be annoyed by this, or flattered?
cmooney | October 4, 2006
Well...I am not bringing this blog back to life for the moment...but I also can't avoid a major update like this.
I'm happy to announce that an article I did for Seed last year, about the Dover evolution trial, is now contained in Houghton-Mifflin's Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006, edited this year by Brian Greene.
Obviously this volume, by definition, has lots of great stuff in it, including articles by Daniel Dennett, Dennis Overbye, Charles Mann, and many others. I hope you'll check it out. You can buy the book here.