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Looking Through The Glass

Read an article about Glass at NY Times. It seems to have coalesced some scattered thoughts between my ears (the word coagulated probably fits too, you decide). Some weeks back I was looking through the window at the sky. An airplane was gliding slowly across my field of vision from right to left. When it reached the edge, it vanished. Although one part of my mind anticipated it, in another part, at a quiet dark corner, a little spark flashed. Why! If the window was not made of glass, I'd be staring at a blank wall and there would be no airplane! Or, if the whole room was made of glass I'd…

Science fiction: The grandest of all dreams

Before I get to the post, some contest updates. I have started reading the contest stories. To level the field, Ramya downloaded the stories from the contests email, edited the author identities out and has given me a folder full of stories without author names on it. I am reading blind, so to speak (if you want to pursue this technique yourself, Margaret Atwood speaks of this in her book Curious Pursuits). To the post now. I watched Sunshine an hour ago. It is a wonderful movie with rare depth of science seen these days. I enjoyed the movie, the intense drama created by existential questions…

Bartley-Fox law

Dean Payne writes: "For example, in 1974 Massachusetts passes the Bartley-Fox Law, which requires a special license to carry a handgun outside the home or business. The law is supported by a mandatory prison sentence. Studies by Glenn Pierce and William Bowers of Northeastern University documented that after the law was passed handgun homicides in Massachusetts fell 50% and the number of armed robberies dropped 35%." Actually Pierce and Bowers found that the number of GUN robberies dropped 35%. The number of armed robberies only fell by 15%. According to Kleck ("Point Blank..."), many…

Did Orlando gun training reduce rapes?

Bill Gray said: [talking about Orlando gun training] Anyway, during the period after the training when the rapes dropped so dramatically, none of the women ever fired their weapons. Moreover, none of them shot a husband or boyfriend, nor were any children harmed with these firearms. I personally called the Orlando PD to confirm as much of this as I could, and it checks out with their records department. There was an increase in homicide the same year, but the base numbers were so low that even one or two additional would come out to the 22%--in short, it wasn't like they dropped 122…

What about demographic change in NSW?

Alan Watt said: However, what effect did WW-I have on the age-distribution of the population? I would expect the percentage of 18-25 year-olds in the general population to be reduced due to war casualties. In the U.S., this is the age group which accounts for most of the violent crime. Here are the percentages of the population of NSW that were between 18 and 25 inclusive at each census year: Male Female 1911 8.4% 8.2% 1921 6.4% 7.1% 1933 7.3% 7.0% This suggests that the male percentage would have been 7.4 in 1921 were it not for the Great War. However, I…

Doctors and torture, cont'd

Earlier today I drew attention to a post by Questionable Authority on The Torture Memos, Medical "Professionals", and the Hippocratic Oath. Says Mike, I cannot remember ever in my life being as ashamed of my country as I am at this moment. The contents of the memos are so insanely wrong that I'd like to believe that they're fiction, but they're clearly not. He ends by calling for the AMA to identify the medical professionals involved and help them find new lines of work. A commenter on one of my earlier posts on psychologists, doctors, and torture, T. Hunt, joins him: While the modern…

Can Americans Cope With European Toilets?

"Part of being on the road means the ability to live a little more luxuriously than at home, and that means not having to turn off the lights and the TV." Now, that is a good ole American quote. But, I wonder how many Americans live "a little more luxuriously" at home all the time as well. Here's another one that in my experience is quintessentially American: "People say they want to be green, but they don't want to compromise." Those quotes come from a NYT article on American hotels going "green", which could also be summed up as American hotels catching up with the rest of the developed…

Antidepressant toll on sex worse than thought

As time goes on, it seems the benefits offered by modern antidepressants seem to drop while the downsides seem to expand. A story in today's Boston Globe -- excerpted below -- suggests that up to half of people who take SSRIs suffer significant sexual side-effects. Sexual "numbness." Lack of libido. Arousal that stalls. Such sexual symptoms have long been known side effects of the popular Prozac class of antidepressants, but a growing body of research suggests that they are far more common than previously thought, perhaps affecting half or more of patients.... Current warnings on the labels…

Carlat: How Drug Companies Hid Millions in Physician Payments in Vermont

This one hits close to home, as I live in Vermont. As Daniel Carlat notes, Vermont is one of the few states to actually require drug companies to disclose drug-company payments to MDs, but the state allowed exception for payments related to 'trade secrets.' The companies apparently made the most of this. The Carlat Psychiatry Blog: How Drug Companies Hid Millions in Physician Payments in Vermont: Vermont is one of a handful of states that requires drug companies to disclose their payments to physicians. But the law contains a loophole as big as the Ritz%u2014companies are allowed to…

Meta-Analysis Shows Antidepressants Have No Significant Effects

I've not had time to thoroughly read this yet. But on the heels of another study published a few weeks ago (I blogged on it here) showing that SSRIs have little therapeutic effect if you include the (unflattering) clinical trials the industry had previously hidden, PLOS Medicine now publishes a larger study -- a meta-analysis of all available data on clinical trials of SSRIs -- that shows that "compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression" --…

Eiger loses face

I enjoy most any mix of science and mountaineering — part of why I so like Mark Bowen's Thin Ice, his book about climatologist Lonnie Thompson's remarkable work documenting global warming in high-altitude glaciers. Scientific work done at rarefied altitudes. How can you not like it? The North Face of the Eiger, 2005 — aka the Eigerwand of climbing fame. The east face, photos of which I couldn't find, is out of sight around the corner. Photo by Dirk Beyer via Wikipedia Commons. I'm less thrilled to see global warming meet alpinism on the Eiger, where last Thursday about 400,000 cubic…

This Week's other Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite

OK, OK, I know I already did one sci-fi worthy parasite this week. But they published a paper about a parasite! Ed and other people already beat me to the punch, but I have to write about it! It's a parasite! I love parasites! So anyway. Here it is. Maculinea rebeli, the Mountain Acon Blue Butterfly, is a rather pretty creature as an adult. It's young, however, are gluttonous, lazy pigs. They don't like to feed themselves, or even move around much. They just want to sit there and have someone wait on them hand and foot. So, of course, like any master con artist, they found a nice family to do…

This Week's Sci-Fi Worthy Parasite

Ok, to date, all the paraites I've mentioned are invertebrates. So, to be fair, I'm going to make the next two weeks parasites that are vertebrates - after all, it's not like having a backbone makes you somehow a nicer animal. Take the pearlfish. I first heard about the pearlfish in my freshman year of college during an Invert Bio course, when it became the brunt of nerdy bio jokes. Technically, by just calling it a "pearlfish", I'm not being very specific - pearlfish refers to any member of the Carapidae family, a group of 6" long eel-looking fish. Most, in general, just happen to live in…

Oi! I've been Tagged!!

Rose Ragai over at MY LIFE IS MY CHOICE has tagged me a game of tag! Here are the rules: 1. Link to the person or persons who tagged you.2. Post the rules on your blog.3. Write six random and/or revealing things about yourself.4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.5. Let each person know theyâve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog6. Let the tagger know when your post entry is up on your site. 6 Random Things1. In high school, I took AP Physics instead of AP Bio, and I went into my college career planning to double major in Marine Biology and Physics. Clearly,…

Welcome back to blogging - the 4 meme

Blogging has been very light over the last two weeks as I was serving my national health agency and fellow scientists and physicians by critically evaluating research proposals. By the end of last week, the sight of my computer screen began to induce migraines and I'm still not feeling 100%. However, my cross-town blog bud and SiBling, Coturnix, has tagged me with the 4 Meme to get me warmed back up for writing of a different sort. After I finish this, I'll see about answering the last two questions from 'Ask a ScienceBlogger.' 4 jobs you've had: 1. Dishwasher at an Italian restaurant 2.…

It's so easy to make him mad!

Ken "The Squealing Piglet" Ham is irate again. The Louisville Courier-Journal ran an article today (a print-only exclusive, so I haven't been able to read it) in which they had independent experts review Ham's claims about prospective attendance at his silly theme park. The headline is "Ark park attendance claims exaggerated, theme-park experts say", so I can guess at the gist of the analysis. Ham is complaining about how the newspapers dare to question his estimates. Mark Looy, our CCO, has sent me a report on how the two state newspapers have been misrepresenting the project and are…

Something Called "Tsunami Warning" Issued For Portion of South Pacific Following Mag 7.9 Quake

Update 2: PTWC has cancelled the regional warning. A tsunami was in fact generated, but the waves have been measured and are very small (about 1.5 inches in height). Updated: The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center states that a tsunami was generated by this earthquake. The size of the tsunami is not yet known, and the warning has not been extended to other areas of the Pacific. (Remember,tsunamis can be very small.) An earthquake tentatively measured by the USGS at magnitude 7.9 has struck Tonga in the South Pacific. It's unknown at this time if the quake has generated a tsunami, but given…

The election is over. It's time to work. Let's start by focusing on the Kennedy/EPA thing.

It's been almost 36 hours since the networks called the election for Obama. That's enough of a honeymoon. There's work to be done. There are widespread reports that President-elect Obama is seriously considering appointing Robert Kennedy Jr. as head of the EPA. The appointment does seem to have some benefits - including, as Politico points out, some political ones for Obama - but Orac is right. It's a bad idea. Kennedy's active participation in the anti-vaccination movement is a threat to public health. It also demonstrates, quite clearly, that he is willing to actively promote positions…

It's a tern (I think), but which one?

I've only recently started birding with any sort of regularity or enthusiasm, and I'm not all that good at it yet. I snapped a couple of pictures of a bird in flight the other day, and I've been trying to figure out what species it is ever since. Despite my lack of expertise, I think I've got it narrowed down to two possibilities. Of course, it's also possible - again given my lack of expertise - that I've managed to totally miss even the family identification. With that in mind, I'm turning to all of you for help. I've got two pictures, both taken through a 300mm telephoto lens. One of…

Gender Bias in Particle Physics: A Statistical Analysis

UPDATE: After posting this entry, I found out that the paper I discussed here is not actually slated at this time to be published in a peer-reviewed journal; it is merely available as a preprint. Nevertheless, I hear that the folks at Nature have picked up on this and have interviewed the author; we may see something next week there about it. Remember that famous line about how women need to be twice as good as men to be considered half as good? A new statistical study by Sherry Towers available on ArXiv.org shows just how true this is in the world of particle physics. Here's the scoop…

Sunday Sacrilege: The truth hurts

Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, has spoken. "A minority of people, usually people without religion, are frightened by the future," he says. "It's almost as though they've … nothing but fear to distract themselves from the fact that without God the universe has no objective purpose or meaning. Nothing beyond the constructs they confect to cover the abyss." Mr Pell has a few wrong ideas there, but there is a grain of truth to his statement. We don't believe the universe has been granted a grand purpose by some kind of deity, something central to the Abrahamic religions, at least,…

Pharyngula's Mutating Genre Meme Lands Here

Primate Diaries passed this meme on to me. It was started by Scibling PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace. First, the rules: There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: * You can leave them exactly as is. * You can delete any one question. * You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The…

Recruiting The Very Best

So, the Chronicle of Higher Education announced a new blog On Hiring. An item of interest: Don't Just Search, Recruit. There's a link in the post to a Heads Up column on the topic, which I read in this week's print version. It's a great article, with lots of good tips, most of which are summarized neatly in the On Hiring blog post. Design a Web site dedicated to the search with links that will showcase the institution and the community. Advertise in multiple venues so "the greatest number of people have the potential to see the announcement." A little extra personal attention goes…

Seed Magazine Writing Contest

UPDATE: Unfortunately, this contest is only open to U.S. citizens because of laws regulating sweepstakes and contests. Apologies to any readers outside the U.S. Seed Magazine is having a writing contest, and you're invited! It's actually the Second Annual Seed Writing Contest presented by Honeywell. Throughout the 20th century, science changed our perspective on the world. It altered our sense of individual identity, compelled us to environmental consciousness, and shaped our view of the cosmos. Its legacy is apparent in what we learned: the three Rs, our As, Ts, Cs, and Gs, the…

English Words the President Doesn't Understand #3685: Scapegoat

In this 60 Minutes interview, President Bush explained why he brought up mistakes that had been made in his recent speech to the nation asking fordecreeing that more troops be sent to Iraq: PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about? BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it. OK, let's see what's wrong so far. First of all, Abu…

Are you a science nerd?

Janet has challenged all of us to a nerd-off. I'd love to participate, but before I can I'm going to need to figure out if I'm qualified. It's not easy. Identifying nerds and geeks isn't something that you can do just based on looks, or a superficial knowledge of habits and personality. Determining whether one is a nerd is a complex procedure, requiring the analysis of a large number of interacting variables. To aid in the self-identification of nerds, I've devised the following checklist: You might be a science nerd if... The ratio of journals to magazines on your coffee table and/or in…

Weird meme

Janet started a meme, which started the whole world meming... Ten weird things about me? Hell everything about me is weird. 1. My first full novel read was Brave New World. I was eight. 2. As a kid I wrote to all the Soviet as well as the American space centres looking for information. I'm sure there's an intelligence file on me aged 12 somewhere. I kept a card index of all cosmonauts and astronauts. I probably knew more than the FBI. 3. My first introduction to philosophy was Søren Kierkegaard. I read nearly all his works. I regained sanity about my mid-20s. 4. That was while I was doing a…

Google and the moral imperative

Google prides itself for being an ethical company. "Do no harm" is their motto, I believe (although some Chinese dissidents may dispute this). But what happens when an honest site is hacked and porn links are included on their index page? Google delists and deindexes that site immediately, with neither warning nor notification of what is wrong, that's what. What site are we talking about? The award winning anticreationist site, The Talk Origins Archive. Wesley Elsberry, the admin, gives the story of trying to get Google to reindex us here. But the site has been subjected, along with the Panda…

Darwin and the Holocaust 2: Christians and Jews

Well, we have established that the subhuman thesis is not of Darwinian origins, and made a start on showing that the eugenics thesis isn't either (more to come later), but while we're all waiting, Daily Kos has an interesting article by a former history teacher on the Christian attitude to Jews, going back Chrystostom, Augustine and Gregory I, between the 4th and 6th centuries CE. Of course, he also quotes the execrable writings of Luther, which I mentioned, and the behaviour of the First Crusade in 1096 in which 10,000 Jews were murdered for religious reasons.There were also an indeterminate…

Ask a ScienceBlogger - AIDS

This week's question is To what extent do you worry about AIDS, either with respect to yourself, your children, or the world at large?... I was in my sexually active 20s when AIDS hit, but it was a distant thing, something that affected gays and IV drug users, and I was not in the vulnerable categories. But I watched as partners of acquaintances died of it, and I now have several friends who either contracted it and died, or whose partners or children did. I am greatly more worried about it now than I was in the 1980s. What worries me is not that I or my family might get it - Australia…

Placebo hype: Do the facts match the headlines?

Over at SEEDMAGAZINE.COM, my column discusses the recent flurry of blog posts and media reporting on the placebo effect. Here's a snippet: This is the primary misconception about placebos: that the placebo itself is somehow "working" to treat a medical condition. You can see it even in the headline for an otherwise well-crafted article that appeared in Wired last August: "Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why." As internist and medical professor Peter Lipson noted on the Science-Based Medicine blog, placebos by definition have no medical effect. The "…

Liveblogging the conference: Mishler

Brent Mishler is a very nice guy who is wrong on a few things - Phylocode, species, and so on - but he's absolutely right about barcoding. He's talking today about so-called DNA barcoding and species concepts. He says that species are just the least inclusive taxa for whatever view of taxa one has - there is no species problem per se. He thinks that species are just the smallest monophyletic group worth diagnosing. And more: since biology should be free of taxonomic ranks, species (as a rank) should be dropped. I can agree or not depending on what interpretation is given here. Brent…

The "design" mistake

Back when Darwin was a student at Cambridge, he read, and almost memorised the Rev William Paley's Natural Theology, and thereafter remained impressed by the obvious adaptiveness of the parts of organisms and their interrelations. As is well known, he gave an explanation differently to Paley's external intelligence that designs all these facets of life - instead he claimed that natural selection, a process like Adam Smith's "hidden hand" explanation for the functioning of economies, was enough to explain adaptation. I have long thought that Darwin was too much in thrall to the traditions…

Does religion evolve?

Here's a comment that represents a widely held misconception about the evolution of religion: Whenever there is an discussion about religions and changes in religions someone always pulls out the argument that religions evolve. I am very sorry but I believe that applying the concept of evolution to religion is not a valid argument. The argument suggests that religions start off as primitive beliefs and then change to become better beliefs. This is not the idea of evolution. Evolution does not necessarily make life forms better. Evolution changes life forms and sometimes these changes…

Counting ancestors

Yesterday, a commenter asked why I said this and what I meant by it: All species at a given time have exactly the same evolutionary duration, and on average, probably the same number of ancestral species, as their nearest relatives. Consider this diagram: This is an evolutionary tree, or rather part of it since we probably do not know all the branches and taxa that actually occurred in it, for four extant species. The concestor c for A and D is shown by the lowest circle, for A and B and C at the next highest circle, and for B and C at the top circle. The number of previous species to…

UNPAID INTERNS WANTED: A Job Posting

Re: Blogging is for Chumps, first off. This is a call for outstanding candidates to apply for two intern positions within the context of producing relevant material for The World's Fair. The successful applicant is expected to work in areas of interest to current faculty members (Dr. David Ng and Dr. Benjamin Cohen), to interact with related groups within our network, and to have demonstrated ability in producing essays of reasonable quality and interest. Due to the competitive nature of this process, we ask that all candidates at the very least meet the following criteria: The candidate's…

Prometheus on Bleak Prospects for Climate Stabilization

Roger Pielke at Prometheus has some back of the envelope calcuations suggesting that the prospects for climate stabilization are rather bleak. His conclusions: 1. Serious thought and research needs to be given to the prospect of stabilization levels much higher that currently being discussed. What are their policy implications for mitigation and adaptation? 2. The EU, for instance, needs to move discussion beyond its fantasy of stabilization at 450 ppm (see Richard Tol on this here). 3. If stabilization at higher than 550 ppm is determined to be "dangerous interference" in the climate system…

I can't handle the Truth

Siris has a nice short post on the use of "truth" in discourse: This appeal to truth is incantatory: it is not an argument but a rhetorical ploy that usually involves a false dichotomy. By ritually displaying one's 'interest in the truth' in contrast with someone else's interest in something else, one simultaneously paints oneself as in possession of the truth and the other person as compromising the truth in favor of something else; when, of course, it is entirely possible that their concern with whatever it may be is itself a form of interest in the truth. Certainly, nothing says that…

How sad are these faces? Depends on how sad you are

Take a look at these schematic faces: Just a few simple changes to the mouth and eyebrows can create faces depicting a wide array of emotions. Face 1, for example, is clearly quite happy, and face 12 is sad. Face 7 is obviously angry. But what about face 4? Embarrassed? Happy but sleepy? Perhaps your own emotion at the time you look at the faces might affect your understanding of the emotions the faces convey, especially when the emotional state depicted is unclear. Perhaps people suffering from clinical depression are stuck in a sort of infinite feedback loop: every face they see seems…

Cross another ability off the "humans only" list

As was noted with irony a few days ago, many psychologists feel obligated to describe the abilities that make humans unique. Perhaps this trait itself is part of human nature: we're constantly seeking to justify our actions -- many of which harm other organisms. When we learn that an animal can, for example, recognize itself in a mirror, we begin to wonder if we're really so different from the other animals; whether our dominance over the world is really merited. The latest study covering such ground involves the scrub jay, a remarkable bird which hides its food in thousands of caches,…

I'm a sucker (new, improved demos, with polls!)

Last week's post on how sound affects perception of visual events was the most popular post ever on Cognitive Daily, with over 15,000 visits. This was thanks to links from both Fark's technology page and digg.com. Yet commenters on both sites expressed disappointment with the demo. I wasn't especially happy with it either, but then again, I didn't realize that more people would look at that one post than visited the site in all of February last year! The problem with the movie is that it's showing two conflicting phenomena. Turn your sound down and watch the movie: Even though the motion…

Neurosurgeon the hero of new TV show

I'm actually doing better than usual: I'm just a day behind on the latest entertainment news. Last night, CBS premiered a TV show called 3 Lbs., which focuses on the tensions in a world-class neurosurgery unit of a major hospital. Most promising aspect of the show: it stars Stanley Tucci. If you missed it, you can catch the entire first episode on the show's web site. I haven't watched it yet, but if I have a free 40 minutes later in the day, I'll post an update with my thoughts about the show. If you're not ready to commit that sort of time to the show just yet, you might watch this CBS…

The music we like: Does expertise make a difference? (Part 2)

In 2001, Mark Orr and Stellan Ohlsson found that experts preferred more complex bluegrass music compared to non-experts, but there was no difference in preferences with jazz music. The model they were using to describe music preferences did not appear to describe all types of music. But what if the problem wasn't the model, but the "experts"? All the participants in the 2001 study were college students. "Experts" had an average of 9.7 years of music training. This seems like a lot, but compared to professional musicians, it's still not much. In their new study, Orr and Ohlsson recruited 22…

Comments Problems and Policies

It's high time that I make a note about how comments are handled on this blog. This has been made particularly urgent by the fact that I was until recently getting an overwhelming amount of spam comments, which in turn led me to up the spam filter, which in turn led some real comments to be miscategorized as spam...and so forth. Big headache. Hopefully all of the real comments have now been published, and hopefully my spam filter will not swallow up any more of them. However, there will be times in the future--and in fact there have been times in the past--when certain non-spam comments do…

Casual Fridays: Ear-shattering results on iPod safety

This week's Casual Friday study was about the hearing loss problem associated with headphone use, and whether readers would adopt a technological solution to the problem. Eighty-one percent of our 133 respondents said that they own a portable music device (though the relatively low response rate suggests that perhaps some people who don't own such devices chose not to respond to the study) (from here on out, I'm going to refer to these devices as iPods, even though not everyone who has a portable music device has an iPod -- remember, it's casual!). Forty-nine percent of our respondents said…

Nice kids become better students

Every parent wants his or her child to do well in school. They help the kids with their homework, volunteer in the classroom, do everything they can think of to help their children succeed. But what type of elementary school education actually leads to older kids who do better in school? Typically students are tested at the beginning of the year and the end of the year, and if they improve, their educational program is labeled as successful. This type of assessment, though valuable, sheds little light on what happens in the long run. A team of researchers led by Gian Vittorio Caprara sought…

Stem cells, cloning, and the theological opponents of science

If you've read this outrageous WaPo op-ed that basically says you can't expect moral behavior from scientists who are glorified baby-killers, you might appreciate this rebuttal at the Give Up Blog. The foundation of the fundiecrat anti-science article is that 1) Hwang Woo Suk was bad, therefore all stem cell/cloning research is tainted, and 2) alternative techniques (most of which they don't seem to understand) and adult stem cells will give us all the answers we need. Which actually leads into this week's "ask a science blogger" question: On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first…

Watch out for that parked car!

Have you ever noticed that when you drive by a car whose hazard lights are blinking, something doesn't look quite right? You know those blinking hazard lights are really on the car, but they seem off, somehow. Part of what might be going on is something called the flash-lag effect. Take a look at the movie below, and decide whether or not the blue flashed object is exactly aligned with the end of the gray rod. To start the movie, click on the rod. In general, it looks as if the blue object is a bit behind the rod; or that the flashed object is lagging relative to the moving rod. This…

From the Archive: High Fashion Meets High Tech

Silk taffeta, flowing gowns, sheaths, and...a lab coat? It may sound like a fashion faux pas, but these were the makings of NYC-based designer Shin Choi's spring 2000 collection. At $378, this lab coat should probably be saved for the most special occasions That season's catalogue, which recently ended up on my desk after a coworker's office-cleaning session, featured a fitting backdrop: intriguing scientific scenes at Brookhaven Lab. Alongside the slender model stands bulbous cryogen tanks, an abandoned bubble chamber, and widgets and gadgets galore. This shot was taken next to a set of…

My MSNBC Interview About Cyclone Nargis

MSNBC's Alan Boyle, author of Cosmic Log, just interviewed me about the ever worsening Nargis catastrophe. You can hear the audio here, and excerpts here. An excerpt: Q: Is this another sign that the global warming nightmare is coming upon us? Mooney: I'd be careful about saying that. There's good evidence that global warming should affect tropical cyclones ... in some way and probably make them stronger on average. But when you get a catastrophe like this, global warming isn't the direct cause, and it really doesn't explain why there's been so much suffering. You really have to look at other…