Global Warming and Hurricanes
cmooney | August 27, 2007I finally figured out how to create diavlog links. Cool. So here are the different segments of my Blogginheads.tv discussion with Henry Farrell, which I think came out quite well.
First, the main link: You can watch the whole diavlog in its entirety here.
Meanwhile, here are the segments:
Chris's new book Storm World (13:30)
How hurricane science got hot (03:57)
Bill Gray, "the Howard Stern of meteorology" (07:49)
Kerry Emanuel, the anti-Gray (11:05)
Pre-Katrina prophecies, including Chris's (10:15)
Should scientists "frame" research for the public? (15:56)
Media's climate coverage getting…
cmooney | August 27, 2007There are inevitably plenty of typos, but after the jump I've pasted in the transcript of my Science Friday conversation with NPR's Ira Flatow about hurricanes and global warming. Callers raised several interesting questions.
Enjoy.
National Public Radio (NPR)
August 24, 2007 Friday
SHOW: Talk Of The nation: Science Friday 2:00 PM EST
Is Hurricane Dean a Sign of Storms to Come?
LENGTH: 3838 words
IRA FLATOW, FLATOW:
This is TALK OF THE NATION: SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow.
Presidents of Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula are digging out this week after Hurricane Dean. Dean was the…
cmooney | August 25, 2007I haven't had time to see it yet, but Henry Farell did a longish book review-type interview with me on Bloggingheads.tv which has just gone up. Among other thrills, you get to see the inside of my apartment.
Seriously, though, I hope you'll check it out, Henry is a very smart guy and asked some penetrating questions. They should give him his own version of Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
We also talked about (gasp) framing. Anyways, it's all here. I'm still trying to figure out how to paste in the video segments, so hopefully I'll do that soon enough.
cmooney | August 23, 2007 Tomorrow I'll be talking with Ira Flatow for 30-40 minutes about Hurricane Dean, global warming, and the new book. You can figure out how to listen in here.
I don't know if it'll be as exciting as my BoingBoinged Science Friday debate with Tom Bethell of over a year ago...but I hope you'll tune in.
cmooney | August 23, 2007I just came across this nonsense from something called the Patriot Post, which dubs itself "the conservative journal of record." In the midst of a typical anti-Gore debunking of global warming, we get this:
Nonetheless, some of the most ardent global alarmists are starting to change their tune. In 2005, Chris Mooney wrote "The Republican War on Science," a thorough indictment of the GOP's attempt to discredit scientific work on climate change. When he started research for his latest book, "Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming," he assumed it would be more of…
cmooney | August 22, 2007Here are some pretty staggering factoids I recently compiled. For the Atlantic:
* 8 Cat 5 hurricanes in last 10 years (Mitch, Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean)
* 7 Cat 5 hurricanes in last 5 years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean)
* By pressure, 6 of 10 most intense recorded Atlantic hurricanes in last 10 years (Mitch, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean)
* By pressure, 5 of the 10 most intense recorded Atlantic hurricanes in last 4 years (Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean)
For Dean:
* Total insured damage going to be in the billions--latest estimate I've seen…
cmooney | August 22, 2007I'll be appearing on the NPR show On Point with Tom Ashbrook this morning at 11 ET to talk about hurricanes and climate change in the wake of Dean. I think it's going to be a fascinating segment because I won't be appearing alone: Two of the key scientists discussed in Storm World, Peter Webster of Georgia Tech and Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center, will also be on.
As you may already know, Webster and Landsea disagree pretty vigorously on this subject.
So it should be a pretty interesting segment, and it's a full hour long. Listen in--or even call in if you're interested...list…
cmooney | August 21, 2007I've just done an entry at the Huffington Post discussing this subject. Short version: It's complicated (what else is new?), but we have every reason to be worried.
Here's Dean over land, now weakened down to Category 3 but still maintaining some semblance of an eye for the moment:
P.S.: Welcome Andrew Sullivan readers...Sheril and I hope you'll stay a while here at "The Intersection"! And for a more in depth treatment of the subject matter, in addition to the link above see my book, Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming.
cmooney | August 21, 2007My latest Storm Pundit column is up; it considers Dean in both Atlantic and global perspective. Some factoids:
1. Dean is the ninth most intense Atlantic storm by pressure, and six of the top ten (Wilma, Rita, Katrina, Mitch, Dean, and Ivan) have occurred in the past ten years.
2. Dean is the strongest hurricane anywhere this year, and by far the strongest at landfall. It is the tenth category 4 or 5 hurricane globally and the 3rd Category 5.
You can read the rest of the "Storm Pundit" post here.
Here's an image, courtesy of Weather Underground, of Dean at landfall:
* Clarification: The…
cmooney | August 15, 2007I'll be appearing on this popular late-night radio program tonight, in studio, at 10 pm ET to discuss Storm World. You should be able to listen live from this link. I hope you'll tune in.
Meanwhile, thanks to some amazing helpers, my entire talk on Storm World at the Yearly Kos science panel is now watchable on YouTube. It had to be broken up into three videos; I've posted those in order below the jump.
To watch Ed Brayton's talk on the same panel, go here.
Part I:
Part II:
Part III:
cmooney | August 9, 2007 Althought I haven't read it, I've heard great things about the book Freakonomics, co-authored by (and about the work of) University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. Levitt is supposed to be a true original thinker, and has really shaken up the somewhat traditionalist field of economics.
And now, Levitt has moved his popular blog--co written with Freakonomics co-author Stephen J. Dubner--to The New York Times online. This week he started off the new show with (among other things) a post on hurricanes and global warming. Alas, Levitt seems unaware of the history of this debate, and so…
cmooney | August 8, 2007James Elsner is a hurricane specialist at Florida State University. He's just reviewed my book quite positively in the latest issue of Nature. I like the opening paragraph, which is really pretty funny:
Chris Mooney's follow-up to his The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, 2005) is a reconnaissance flight into the turbulent debate over a link between hurricane activity and global warming. The flight log is compelling enough for Hollywood. It records a clash between the empiricist climate scientist William Gray (think Ian McKellen) at Colorado State University and the theoretician Kerry…
cmooney | July 31, 2007
In my previous post, I went into some detail about the intense argument between Greg Holland and Peter Webster on the one hand (PDF), and Chris Landsea on the other (PDF), over whether the total number of Atlantic storms is increasing. And I concluded, somewhat unsatisfyingly, that there may be limits placed upon the extent to which we can determine who's right and wrong in this debate. After all, we will never know for certain how many storms were missed in previous eras.
However, that doesn't mean that we can't draw any conclusions about the current debate--it's just that they may not be…
cmooney | July 30, 2007 It may seem a strange question to be asking in a season that, so far, hasn't yet seen an Atlantic hurricane. But while the weather in any given year can be tricky and unpredictable, there's no doubt that we're currently in an active period for Atlantic storms in general--and now, a new paper (PDF) from Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Peter Webster of Georgia Tech explicitly ties this period of heightened activity to global warming by asserting that the total number of Atlantic storms has increased markedly over the past century, in correlation with rising sea…
cmooney | July 28, 2007Read it here. The review is by the New Orleans Times Picayune's Pulitzer winning writer John McQuaid, who is the coauthor of a really great book that helped me a lot with my own research, Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms. Here's an excerpt from McQuaid's review:
Storm World is at its most cogent on the author's favorite issue: science in the noisy public square. Many hurricane scientists reacted with dismay when their subtle arguments were distorted by press accounts or used to score partisan points in the political storm that erupted after…
cmooney | July 25, 2007I just got done with a great event at the National Center for Atmospheric Research here in Boulder, CO. I would estimate that 140 people attended, and I gave a talk that combined elements of my bookstore presentation on Storm World with a PowerPoint show and a number of Nisbet-Mooney slides and analyses. I spoke for about 45 minutes, after which many scientists asked questions.
Among those scientists was William Gray, famed hurricane specialist from Colorado State University, who came down from Fort Collins for the talk. Gray is heavily featured in the book, and his name pops up in pretty…
cmooney | July 23, 2007I swear to God (sorry PZ), this post is tangentially related to science.
I mean, on its face it may just seem like an excuse to put up my brother's latest two YouTube vids of his jazz performances.
But if you peer deeper, you might note the following: 1) Davy Mooney is coming to DC this Friday to play at my book party; that party is to celebrate a book about hurricanes; and the other kind of hurricanes will be served at the bar.
And no, if you drink them in the southern hemisphere, the alcohol doesn't spiral into your bloodstream any differently.
See, toldya, this post is tangentially…
cmooney | July 21, 2007I just appeared on the Air America show Ring of Fire to discuss Storm World, and it turns out there's a televised version on GoLeft TV where you can at least see RFK Jr. talking, although not me:
In other updates, my fellow science bloggers have been really great to Storm World and have published a number of thoughtful reviews. Kevin Beck and Afarensis had already given their take, and this week Josh Rosenau, Janet Stemwedel, and PZ weighed in. I have to say a bit more about PZ's take: He elected to review the book as it it was a sci-fi novel, and the result is simply hilarious. Favorite…
cmooney | July 17, 2007 Once in a while, hurricane-like storms (like the one in this image) form in the Mediterranean Sea. These cyclones are often called "medicanes," and one scientist who's done a lot of work on what causes them to form is Storm World main personage Kerry Emanuel of MIT. In a recent study (PDF) published with a number of scientists from Spain, he writes:
Tropical-like storms on the Mediterranean Sea are occasionally observed on satellite images, often with a clear eye surrounded by an axysimmetric cloud structure. These storms sometimes attain hurricane intensity and can severely affect coastal…
cmooney | July 15, 2007Much ink is starting to get spilt about Storm World. Arguably the book's best review yet appears in the LA Times today by Thomas Hayden. Although not without criticism, Hayden ends the review like this:
Science is a messy business, more a matter of hard work, blind alleys and lucky guesses than a straight march from question to answer. Above all, science is about uncertainty and the way we stumble through it looking for clarity. Science is not always elegant and not always even particularly effective. But (to paraphrase Winston Churchill on democracy) it's surely better than any of the…