Global Warming and Hurricanes
cmooney | March 15, 2009It's been a while since I had a good string of talks lined up--it's harder, I think, to do a lot of them from the West Coast. But now I'm back east and about to embark for the first two of these four upcoming appearances; so mark them down if you're in the area. And of course, when Unscientific America comes out, we'll both be traveling up and down the country (mostly the coasts, as usual):
Lynchburg, VA
Randolph College
Annual Thayer Lecture: "The War on Science is Over. Now What?"
Monday, March 16
7:30 PM-8:30 PM
The Wimberly Recital Hall, Presser Hall
Web site
Jupiter, FL
Scripps Howard…
cmooney | November 8, 2008Like everybody else, I'm pretty surprised about Hurricane Paloma, which has just become the fifth major hurricane this year--a powerful Category 4 and tied for the second strongest storm ever to show up in the Atlantic in the month of November.
And Paloma sets an even bigger record, because this is the first year we've ever had an intense hurricane--Category 3 or greater--in July, in August, in September, in October, and in November. That's right, you can see it all here. As usual, this is consistent with, but no proof of, the idea that global warming is lengthening the Atlantic hurricane…
cmooney | September 10, 2008
[Ike gathering strength in the Gulf.]
With Hurricane Ike on course to--probably--slam Texas as a serious hurricane, I address my latest Science Progress column to the question of whether we can, defensibly, discuss global warming during hurricane season. My basic answer: Yes, but it's probably better to use other messages, particularly economic ones ("Green Jobs").
You can read the full piece here.
cmooney | August 4, 2008So here's some news: The paperback of Storm World, with a new author afterword and a new Katrina cover, is officially published today. I haven't held a copy in my hands yet, but I know they've shipped from Amazon. You can click here to pick one up online.
Meanwhile, we already seen our fifth named storm of the season develop--Edouard, which could strengthen into another Texas landfalling hurricane. I don't like all this action in the Gulf of Mexico--or for that matter, all this early season action period.
We've had 8 Category 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic in the past five years. The way things…
cmooney | April 29, 2008It has recently come to my attention that Amazon is selling them for $ 8.49--a dramatic markdown from the list price of $ 26.00--so if you haven't gotten one yet but had planned on it or wanted to, now is the time.
Alternatively, you can wait for the paperback with the new cover and afterword, which is due out in August.
cmooney | April 17, 2008There has been some buzz of late over the idea that with a recent paper, MIT hurricane guru Kerry Emanuel is backing down from the stance that global warming has intensified recent hurricanes. But after reading the paper, I just don't see it. Sure, Emanuel admits he might be wrong but that's no more and no less than any other scientist might do.
I explain in a lot more detail over at The Daily Green.
cmooney | April 3, 2008Yesterday, though I didn't get the chance to blog it, my latest Science Progress column went up. Entitled "Just Coasting," it's about the vulnerability of the US gulf states to climate change, and how government agencies are consistently failing to do their job to prepare us for it.
The quotation in the title is, by far, my favorite part of the piece. It's from the National Academy of Sciences, critiquing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' garbling of hurricane science in a draft report on the vulnerability of New Orleans. Megabytes? Can you believe that?
You can read the entire item here.
cmooney | March 19, 2008That's the quandary I face tomorrow, when I'll be returning to New Orleans' Isidore Newman School--alma mater of, among others, Peyton and Eli Manning, Walter Isaacson, and Michael Lewis--to talk to the senior class.
This isn't entirely a shot in the dark, as the seniors are taking a course on the environment, and I'm their speaker as they move into a section on Hurricane Katrina. So it's obvious that I'm to talk mostly about Storm World and the hurricane-global warming debate.
At the same time, though, that won't suffice...roughly thirteen years ago, I was one of these seniors. I feel like…
cmooney | February 1, 2008I'm not quite sure what is up with people...but, they seem to be buying, already, copies of the paperback edition of Storm World on Amazon.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that there's 5 % off on Amazon.com book preorders. I'm not sure.
In any event, given that I am devoting this weekend to writing a scintillating new introductory essay to the paperback edition, seeing some preorders come in was really inspiring.
Now I'd better deliver.
Also, I thought I'd preview, at this point, the new cover image for paperback. What do you think of it?
cmooney | January 8, 2008Well, the book has been out for some five months now...but it was just recently reviewed in a top Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Globe & Mail. A quote:
...perhaps the most lasting legacy of Storm World is not its descriptions of hurricane science or politics. Instead, it's Mooney's disgruntled discourse on the misguided practice of scientists who "cling to the antiquated myth that their job is merely to put the 'facts' out there, and nothing more." Mooney goes on: "Scientists can complain all they want, but they'd be better off taking actual measures to prevent and counter it [misuse of…
cmooney | January 7, 2008In my latest "Daily Green" column, I find myself slightly praising John Tierney of the New York Times, who is right for the wrong reasons about something he calls "availability entrepreneurs":
Today's interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.
I agree that there's an unfortunate tendency to opportunistically blame individual weather events on global warming. I've said this…
cmooney | December 20, 2007
[Tracks of storms in the Northwest Pacific basin, 2007.]
Okay--I realize the year isn't over yet. But I figured it was close enough to start compiling some data on global hurricane activity. Using a cutoff of 35 knot maximum sustained wind speed to identify a storm, here's what I get if you use the Unisys database to look at activity up through yesterday (and there is nothing new today):
Atlantic: 15 Storms, 2 Cat 4-5 (Dean, Felix)
Northeast Pacific: 11 Storms, 1 Cat 4-5 (Flossie)
Northwest Pacific: 25 Storms, 7 Cat 4-5 (Yutu, Man-Yi, Usagi, Sepat, Nari, Wipha, Krosa)
South Pacific: 10…
cmooney | November 21, 2007It is important to remember--as I note in my latest Daily Green item--that Cyclone Sidr isn't the first staggering storm in the North Indian Ocean basin this year. Indeed, you could argue that 2007 has been the worst year on record for intense North Indian cyclones; and before Sidr came Cyclone Gonu, the first Category 5 ever observed in the Arabian Sea.
Sidr turned out to be the bigger tragedy, but Gonu, pictured above, was certainly in the running for a while. The storm caused some $ 4 billion in damage to Oman, and it could have been worse. If Gonu had stayed intense for longer, and…
cmooney | November 5, 2007See here. Storm World made a list of 150 books in total, 25 of which are "nonfiction" entries. I'm honored.
cmooney | November 1, 2007Last week I published a detailed critique of Maryland-based climate activist and writer Mike Tidwell's book The Ravaging Tide. This week, I have followed up with Part II: My explanation of why it is that I'm going after Tidwell even though he's on my own "team," so to speak.
An excerpt:
In my view, what we need on global warming is not merely to energize the base of people who already agree with us, but to reach across the aisle and move conservatives as well. But the way that Tidwell frames the issue won't do that. To Tidwell, global warming is repeatedly depicted as a "Pandora's Box," set…
cmooney | October 31, 2007
My latest Science Progress column just went up. It's about what we can and can't say about global warming and the California wildfires--and the strong parallels between the climate-wildfire debate and the climate-hurricane debate. A quotation:
...an important generalization about climate change and disasters: Even as we must be cautious not to attribute any single disaster to climate change, and even as we must acknowledge the societal factors that make us more vulnerable, we still have every right to fear the double whammy of a societal trend superimposed atop a climatic trend. In both the…
cmooney | October 27, 2007As usual, the president's science adviser has been trotted out to explain away the administration's latest misbehavior with respect to climate science. Marburger just put out a statement (PDF), defending White House changes to CDC director Julie Gerberding's testimony. Because I've been on the road, I have not yet been able to do an in depth analysis of the before and after versions of the testimony. But I don't even need to do that to challenge the following from Marburger:
2) Extreme Weather Events. The draft testimony says "Climate change is
anticipated to alter the frequency, timing,…
cmooney | October 25, 2007A few days ago I mentioned that I had been in College Park, Maryland, sitting on a panel to discuss the work of Mike Tidwell, author of The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America's Coastal Cities. Tidwell's book has been assigned as the "first year book" for some 4,000 University of Maryland freshmen.
Over at DeSmogBlog, I've now posted the first installment of a two-part discussion about why I find this book so problematic, and why I felt that I had to speak out about the matter--especially after my visit to the UMD. I begin by posing the following…
cmooney | October 19, 2007As I mentioned earlier, I spent the beginning of this week in Hays, Kansas, where I had a number of successful events at Fort Hays State University. And now, they're available to be seen online.
First, I did what the folks at FHSU call a "Times talk"--in essence, I gave an entirely improvisational faculty presentation that was grouped around three New York Times stories about global warming, politics, and science. The three stories (two by Andy Revkin) are here, here, and here (links in chronological order, as that was how I tackled the material). My riffing upon these articles, followed by…
cmooney | October 17, 2007When PZ reviewed my latest book as if it was a sci-fi novel, I thought the result was hilarious.
I certainly didn't think anyone would take him literally.
But now across my cluttered desk comes this:
Australia's Great Western Entertainment (GWE) has expanded backing for its kids and family sci-fi series Stormworld, with production, investment and broadcast partners from Canada and Australia, and now Singapore also involved.
The live-action 26x30' series follows two teenage friends, Jason and Lee, who are transported to a parallel universe.
It goes into production in January 2008, for delivery…