cmooney | May 2, 2006There's been a lot of beating up on NOAA--the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration--for squelching the viewpoints of some of its scientists on issues such as global warming and global warming's relation to hurricanes. And there certainly has been some troubling stuff reported on this front in the past by major newspapers. But that doesn't mean NOAA can't clean up its act, and this press release is clearly a huge step in the right direction. Let me quote:
May 1, 2006 -- The region of the tropical Atlantic where many hurricanes originate has warmed by several tenths of a degree…
cmooney | May 1, 2006I just spent a wonderful weekend in Los Angeles, at an event that I didn't know existed but that so impressed me that I simply must give it a plug. I'm talking about the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a staggeringly well-attended mega literary phenomenon that really revives one's faith that a true and loyal audience for the written word still exists. As a New Orleanian, the best analogy I can come up with is this: The event is like a Jazz Fest for books. Some 150,000 people attended the two day festival at the UCLA campus, forming long wait lines to hear readings and talks by the likes…
cmooney | April 29, 2006Last night she was announced winner of the Los Angeles Times book prize in science and technology for her book Before the Fallout: From Marie Curie to Hiroshima, which I haven't read but which I'm certain is very deserving of the distinction. Afterwards, Sean Carroll and I cried into our beers....er, no, just kidding, I was glad just to be recognized, and it was a great event here in Los Angeles. It was fun to hang out afterwards and talk to the city's literary bigwigs. I'll be appearing on a panel tomorrow at the LA Times book festival along with Arianna Huffington, Jules Witcover, and…
cmooney | April 24, 2006I know I haven't been posting much but you probably wouldn't either with my travel schedule...May will be much more calm, I assure you. Anyway, today I'm in beautiful San Diego doing a private talk; then it's off to Monterey for the American Meteorological Society's 27th conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology; then to LA for the Los Angeles Times book prize ceremonies (fingers crossed) and to speak at the Los Angeles Times book festival; then back to San Diego again for more events...see here for all the gory details.
cmooney | April 21, 2006Seed has just published an interview I did with the Times global warming reporter Andy Revkin to discuss climate change coverage and his new book, The North Pole Was Here, which is unique in that it is a GW book that's aimed at an audience aged 10 and higher (after all, they're the ones that are going to have to live with a different planet). There was some really good stuff in the interview, in my opinion, like the following:
Mooney: Is there anything that science journalists ought to be doing to focus attention more acutely on this issue [global warming]?
Revkin: The bottom line is, I don'…
cmooney | April 19, 2006For the second time in under a year, I'll be heading to Amherst tomorrow, this time to give a speech at Hampshire College. The deets:
Thursday, April 20
6:00 PM-7:30 PM
Hampshire College
Franklin Patterson Hall
East Lecture Hall
Amherst, MA 01002
Here's a link to a campus map. I'm going to be trying out some new material in the talk, should be fun. I hope those in the area can make it.
cmooney | April 18, 2006I just gave a speech at George Mason, to a much more scholarly and academically oriented crowd than I'm used to addressing. The event, after all, was entitled "Who Owns Knowledge" and was sponsored by the cultural studies Ph.D. program. There was a time when these sorts of scholars, who study science in its social context, were at absolute loggerheads with members of the scientific community over the extent to which scientific knowledge is a) socially constructed; and b) profitably deconstructed.
I want to argue that those days have at least begun to be eclipsed, thanks to a clear and present…
cmooney | April 17, 2006Global warming. Stem cells. Evolution. These are high profile scientific topics that are extremely politicized. They get a fair amount of press regularly. One or the other of them is pretty much always in the news in some way. It's almost like they take turns, or rotate.
But as I and others have pointed out, a lot of the science games in the Bush administration are occurring much more below the radar. George Washington's David Michaels flags one that has gotten almost zero press:
...the White House is making a run around Congress to change the way the agencies conduct risk assessments, the…
cmooney | April 17, 2006You may not have ever heard of it, but one of the right's more interesting think tanks dealing in matters of science is the so-called Annapolis Center, or the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy. The group does the typical global warming and mercury type stuff, but it also does one thing that's unique: Each year it presents a science award to a politician. And each year, seemingly without fail, the chosen recipient of this award--which recognizes an individual who promotes "rational, science-based thinking and policy-making"--has been a leader when it comes to political attacks…
cmooney | April 16, 2006I'll be speaking on Tuesday at what looks to be a great event hosted by George Mason University's cultural studies Ph.D. program. Here's the roster of talks (for more details see here):
Who Owns Knowledge?
A Symposium on Science and Technology in the Global Circuit
9:00-10:20 AM: States of Knowledge: Science in Political and Institutional Contexts
CHAIR: Daniele Struppa (Mathematics, GMU)
Hugh Gusterson (Associate Professor of Anthropology, MIT): "Do Nuclear Weapons Scientists Matter Anymore? Military Science After the Cold War."
Itty Abraham (Research Fellow, East-West Center; SSRC): "…
cmooney | April 14, 2006I just left the National Hurricane Conference in Orlando, Florida; I'm currently sitting in the happily wired Orlando airport. Anyway, I noticed something at the conference that I can't resist mentioning--and no, this has nothing to do with hurricanes.
Just as the hurricane conference ended, a new conference was starting at the same hotel--a distinctly Christian conference oriented towards promoting youth "leadership." Now, possibly it's just me, but I was staggered by the name of this event: "Lads to Leaders & Leaderettes." Er...questions running through my head when I heard this…
cmooney | April 14, 2006Taking over for Henry Waxman (not that the bulldog has gone to sleep or anything), Rep. Brad Miller is starting to cause some serious trouble for the Bush admin over politics and science. See here for an interview with Miller at DailyKos--which, thanks to DarkSyde, is once again doing a great job of bringing integrity of science issues to the political blogosphere. Anyway, what I like about the interview is that Miller gives credit where credit is due, including to Republicans like Sherwood Boehlert who are not pretending this problem doesn't exist (although they could have been on the ball a…
cmooney | April 12, 2006Famed global warming "skeptic" Richard Lindzen has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about global warming--which includes some debunking of the proposed hurricane/GW link. He writes:
If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s…
cmooney | April 12, 2006Since he's been in the news I perused his website...and what did I find? An outright denial of human caused global warming, based upon a questionable-sounding argument (culled from some dude writing in The Telegraph) that I've never actually heard before:
Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Um...like I said, I've never heard…
cmooney | April 12, 2006Basic Books has just published The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, by Harvard historian of science Joyce Chaplin. I got to read the book in galleys and it was excellent. From his studies of electricity and storms to his charting of the Gulf Stream, Franklin was easily this nation's first great scientist. I was happy to endorse this book and have a blurb on the back which reads as follows:
Joyce Chaplin's book is as electrifying as her subject. For those alarmed by the current rift between scientists and our political leaders, Franklin's life reminds us…
cmooney | April 9, 2006Not that you shouldn't drink liberally on other days...but seriously, I'm speaking in DC this Wednesday night at a Drinking Liberally event. It should be a heck of a lot of fun. Vital details: Mark & Orlando's, Wednesday, April 12th, 7:30PM. There should be a book signing after. And then, er, drinking liberally....
cmooney | April 6, 2006In case anyone was wondering why I didn't blog yesterday, I was traveling--and a long day on the road culminated in a very well received speech at Bowling Green. I'd say there were over 200 people present. They laughed at my jokes.
Now I'm off to Michigan State for another one of these events....meanwhile, the Bush administration just keeps giving me more fodder with this latest Washington Post piece about NOAA and GW...not to mention that Nature is reporting that the Energy Department is ditching its scientific advisory board, which had served for over 30 years. Not a week goes by, it seems…
cmooney | April 4, 2006Very apropos of my previous post about George Will and Robert Novak, just found this quotation from Michael Kinsley:
Abandoning the pretense of objectivity does not mean abandoning the journalist's most important obligation, which is factual accuracy. In fact, the practice of opinion journalism brings additional ethical obligations. These can be summarized in two words: intellectual honesty. Are you writing or saying what you really think? Have you tested it against the available counterarguments? Will you stand by an expressed principle in different situations, when it leads to an unpleasing…
cmooney | April 4, 2006I really think the folks at Real Climate have an important point when they write, in outrage over Robert Novak's recent attack on James Hansen, the following:
What is happening at the Washington Post, unfortunately, has nothing to do with a critical examination of the evidence for an imminent danger. It has nothing to do with a quest to come to a real understanding of the issue. The editorials mentioned above [by Novak and George Will] show no respect for the truth; they shamelessly use distortion and deception to discredit climate science and climate scientists. It is hardly new that us…
cmooney | April 4, 2006The junior senator from Illinois recently gave a long speech on global warming, which included the following:
And while the situation on the land may look ugly, what's going on in the oceans is even worse. Hurricanes and typhoons thrive in warm water, and as the temperature has risen, so has the intensity of these storms. In the last thirty-five years, the percentage of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has doubled, and the wind speed and duration of these storms has jumped 50%. A hurricane showed up in the South Atlantic recently when scientists said it could never happen. Last year, Japan set a…