cmooney | August 25, 2006
It's official, we have our fifth storm of the season. The NHC is now projecting that it will reach hurricane strength within days. And here's the part of the forecast that's disturbing:
THE INTENSITY FORECAST.....CALLS FOR SLOW STRENGTHENING FOR THE FIRST 24-36 HR...WITH SOMEWHAT FASTER STRENGTHENING THEREAFTER. THE NEW FORECAST CALLS FOR MORE STRENGTHENING OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO THAN PREVIOUSLY FORECAST DUE TO THE FORECAST UPPER-LEVEL WINDS AT 96 AND 120 HR. ALTHOUGH THE SHIPS AND SUPERENSEMBLE GUIDANCE CALLS FOR LITTLE CHANGE IN STRENGTH AFTER 96 HR...THERE IS A CHANCE THAT ERNESTO…
cmooney | August 25, 2006One of the rewarding things about publishing The Republican War on Science has been to sit back and watch as the book's title phrase has caught on. Now and then one finds bloggers using the words "Republican war on science" without any attribution--which is fine with me. Meanwhile, "war on science" panels are now popping up at conferences. The phrase hasn't exactly achieved the exalted status of other book titles-turned-expressions like "tipping point," of course. But it has taken on a modest life of its own.
Politicians are using it too. For example, at the Yearly Kos science panel in Las…
cmooney | August 25, 2006
As you can see from the image above, courtesy of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, we've got a Cat 5 right now in the Pacific. But it isn't a typhoon, because it didn't form in the western North Pacific. Neither did it form in the eastern North Pacific (the "I' storm from that basin this year is Ileana). Rather, Wikipedia has this to say about Ioke: "It is the first tropical storm to form in the Central Pacific since 2002...Overnight between August 24 and August 25, Ioke strengthened into a Category 5 storm, the first storm with a name from the Central Pacific list to reach that intensity."…
cmooney | August 25, 2006There's been trouble at NASA lately. A suite of scientists from the agency's National Advisory Council have resigned over the agency's priorities, a dispute which seems to centrally turn on how the president's Moon-Mars plans have taken an emphasis away from purer scientific research. The NAC itself was reorganized just this spring, when it was put under the leadership of one Harrison M. Schmitt, a former Apollo astronaut who's also been a U.S. senator and is trained as a geologist.
But there's more that you ought to know about Harrison M. Schmitt. He is chairman emeritus, and former…
cmooney | August 24, 2006
Jeff Masters reports that we've got another storm to pay attention to, and this one looks very dangerous, although it is not officially named Ernesto yet. In the satellite image above, what we're talking about is the area of very thick clouds just off the coast of northeastern South America. The hurricane center should have something soon, and we will learn whether or not this disturbance has already reached tropical storm strength. Stand by....
cmooney | August 24, 2006This entry will be short and sweet. Over at the book website, we've put up a new excerpt--a revised Chapter 11, the chapter on the subject of "Intelligent Design." And in addition to making the entire chapter available, we've also put up, at its end, the new update section that follows exclusively in the paperback edition. Seven full chapters of The Republican War on Science have been revised in this way for the paperback; this sneak preview is meant to give a taste of what that kind of updating entails. So, enjoy. Incidentally, for those of you who haven't read the book, having reread it…
cmooney | August 24, 2006There are two things you've gotta read today on the politics and science front. First, check out Matt Nisbet's analysis of polls on hurricanes and global warming. A current Zogby poll is getting attention, but one single poll never really means anything from a scientific perspective.
What Nisbet shows, though, is that when you look at all the polls on this subject--many of which have dubious question wording--the following conclusion emerges: "Outside of the scientific and technical debate, the power of the events and the many political claimants connecting the storms to global warming…
cmooney | August 24, 2006In the poli-sci literature--politics and science, not political science--an important new book has come out; and no, I'm not talking about my own book in paperback. It's a more scholarly take on the problem, entitled Rescuing Science from Politics: Regulation and the Distortion of Scientific Research, a collection of essays edited by Wendy Wagner and Rena Steinzor, both legal scholars who helped me out a bunch as I worked on The Republican War on Science and who are doing some of the most important thinking about this stuff. The book has a prologue by Don Kennedy, who writes that "though it…
cmooney | August 23, 2006My latest Seed column is up, and it dovetails so nicely with some of the themes I've been trying to enunciate in relation to the paperback release that I'd like to call it to your attention. Entitled "Thank You for Polluting," it's a piece about my battles with Congressman Jim Gibbons of Nevada, and it narrates how my critiques of a contrarian report on mercury pollution put out by Gibbons have actually ended up being picked up by the local media now that Gibbons is running for governor in his state--thereby forcing Gibbons to respond, generating greater controversy, and so forth. Look at how…
cmooney | August 22, 2006Let the tasteless jokes begin...the NHC expects this one to develop slowly but they've adjusted the track more to the west. Still no indication that Debby will be hitting land, but she certainly does have the chance to become our first hurricane of the year in the North Atlantic.
Meanwhile, when it comes to fun with hurricanes, I note this letter in the Pensacola News Journal:
Let's try bombing storms
Some years back I read a novel which told the story of an English sea captain who, with his daughter and crew, were sailing to Australia. At one point a waterspout was in the ship's path so the…
cmooney | August 22, 2006This post is just to thank everyone who helped me prepare to debate tonight with your comments....you can listen here. I actually am feeling a little rusty, I haven't done much public speaking or radio in a while. I'm not as sharp as I once was because I'm out of practice, but this should be a great way to dive back in. At the end, please post any comments or feedback here, and thanks again!
cmooney | August 22, 2006Here is how Wells ends his book:
So a growing number of bright young men and women have the courage to question Darwinism, study intelligent design, and follow the evidence where it leads. They know they are in the middle of a major scientific revolution. And the future belongs to them. (p. 207)
This is wildly overstated. There is no paradigm shift going on. This isn't plate-tectonics. Kuhn doesn't apply.
Nevertheless, I actually agree with something that Wells says in his last chapter as he builds up to this, namely the following: "Anyone who studies American history knows that telling…
cmooney | August 22, 2006Well, I continue to peruse The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design in anticipation of the debate tonight. (11 pm ET, the Alan Colmes Show, website here.) By this point in the text, Wells is done debunking evolution; now he's on to promoting intelligent design. In the "debunk evolution" section, he tried to undermine evidence from the fossil record, embryology, molecular phylogeny, and speciation. None of these attacks were convincing, but what's even more illuminating are the strands of evolutionary evidence that got completely ignored: biogeography, DNA evidence,…
cmooney | August 21, 2006We now have Tropical Depression 4 (perhaps soon to be Tropical Storm Debby) just off the African Coast. First forecast discussion here. Satellite here. Jeff Masters thinks this one will stay over the ocean; apparently waves that develop this early almost always do. More soon....for now, hold off on the "Debby Does the Atlantic" jokes....
cmooney | August 21, 2006Word is starting to get around about the paperback. If you didn't see them yet, DarkSyde over at Daily Kos did something last week; and now, Big Head Rob (dynamo of the D.C. social blogging scene) has done an interview with yours truly that, although pegged to the book release, covers a somewhat, er, wider range. A typical excerpt:
Better role model: GI Joe? Barbie? I hate to be a geek here, but GI Joe wasn't really a character. I guess I'll take Barbie.
I will post more of these as they come along....
cmooney | August 20, 2006I just downloaded and read a small part of Judge Gladys Kessler's gargantuan 1742 page opinion in the Justice Department's tobacco industry racketeering case (PDF). The table of contents alone is 29 pages long! I must say, this looks like the best and most official documentation we will ever get of just how extensively the tobacco companies conspired to deceive the public about the health risks of their products. As far as courts unmasking attacks on science, it's right up there with Judge Jones' opinion in the Dover evolution trial.
Few if any of us will have time to read Kessler's whole…
cmooney | August 20, 2006One of the things I have tried to do, as a journalist who's been cast in the role of a defender of science ever since the publication of The Republican War on Science, is to take on some of the attackers. That's why I agreed to debate Jonathan Wells this coming Tuesday night, and it's why I have debated a number of other folks as well, like Tom Bethell. I feel like it's a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Moreover, I can't fairly criticize the scientific community for failing to engage, as I have done repeatedly, if I myself am not engaging.
So I want to thank everyone who posted comments…
cmooney | August 19, 2006In anticipation of the paperback release, the book website is being substantially upgraded. It announces many new tour dates, most recently including this one in Ohio. It now shows the actual paperback cover image (displayed in high resolution below after the jump). Furthermore, there's a new book description; and most importantly for our current purposes, a new introduction from the author (moi).
More features to the site will appear in the coming days. But right now, with nine days til pub, I'd like to highlight some central themes enunciated in the new website intro (the same themes are…
cmooney | August 18, 2006Well, there are ten days until the official publication date of the paperback Republican War on Science (August 28). And I have decided, based on the suggestion of an e-correspondent, to do a countdown here on the blog, adding a relevant new angle, analysis, or update every day. So here's the first:
I am doing a book tour over the course of September, and having just booked the travel, I can now calculate that it will require flying some 11,000 miles. Back in July when I flew over to London, folks really kicked my butt about the size of my carbon footprint, and rightly so. And so I decided…
cmooney | August 17, 2006Well, I just started reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. All in all, I find Wells fairly lucid at the beginning of this book and I agree with most of the definitions he offers about what "evolution" is, what "creation" is, and so forth. In short, Wells starts out a lot better than Tom Bethell, his fellow author in the Regnery Politically Incorrect Guides series.
However, I don't agree with the following from Wells' page 8:
...since intelligent design relies upon scientific evidence rather than on Scripture or religious doctrines, it is not biblical…