Sheril Kirshenbaum is a marine biologist at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke. Sometimes she's a classicist, radio jock, or congressional staffer. Never sure what's next, she continues to enjoy the journey...
Over at Island of Doubt, you'll find Carnival of the Blue 12, 'A celebration of all things wet and wonderful'. This month features contributions from both The Intersection and Correlations.
Props to my brother, who has been "noticed." From the New York Times Artsbeat blog, covering the New Orleans Jazz Fest:
This year's Monk Institute class has only been working together since the start of the fall term, but already there's a noticeable chemistry among the students, judging by their Jazzfest performance on Sunday morning. The group didn't sound quite like a full-fledged band yet - there were still some tentative moments - but it wasn't hard to detect much promise.
Based on the set I heard, the most advanced musicians in the group are Davy Mooney, a guitarist from here in New Orleans, and Colin Stranahan, a drummer from Denver. Both players worked at a high level of rhythmic assuredness, and their rapport together was palpable. But there were also solid contributions from the pianist Vadim Neselovskyi (from the Ukraine) and the tenor saxophonist Jake Saslow (Long Island).
Mr. Mooney, by the way, has been on my radar for a couple of years now. He placed third in the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition - another signature effort of the Monk Institute - back in 2005. And for a while he was based in New York, playing often in Brooklyn. It's good to see him involved with the institute in this capacity, where he can only develop further.
My brother's website is here. A song audio clip plays here, and you can buy his CD here.
I'm looking forward to connecting with SciBling Jessica Palmer of Bioephemera and would love to meet any readers in attendance as well... Come on over to say hello and I hope you'll stay for my talk Friday at 1:45:
I Am New Media (And So Can You!)
Communicating Science And Policy Through The Series Of Tubes And Beyond
That's what CNN is suggesting. This puts the catastrophe at tsunami scale. And it suggests that Nargis could rank among the top three or four most deadly cyclones of modern times.
My god.
Courtesy of Weather Underground, the deadliest cyclones list:
1. Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh, 1970, 550,000
2. Hooghly River Cyclone, India and Bangladesh, 1737, 350,000
3. Haiphong Typhoon, Vietnam, 1881, 300,000
4. Coringa, India, 1839, 300,000
5. Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh, 1584, 200,000
6. Great Backerganj Cyclone, Bangladesh, 1876, 200,000
7. Chittagong, Bangladesh, 1897, 175,000
8. Super Typhoon Nina, China, 1975, 171,000
9. Cyclone 02B, Bangladesh, 1991, 140,000
10. Great Bombay Cyclone, India, 1882, 100,000
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 factors in order to figure out why a storm can hit the United States and only a couple die, and a storm can hit Myanmar and tens of thousands of people die. That has much more to do with socioeconomic conditions, forecasting systems, lack of evacuation, lack of communication to the populace, and all these other things.
Q: Is this another case of a perfect storm, where, as in Katrina, it happened to hit just wrong and was something that played on all the vulnerabilities that that area faced?
A: It's certainly looking like that. You had something with Nargis that you didn't have with Katrina. Katrina, we saw it coming days in advance. We saw a Category 5, and we were just sitting there waiting. Well, Nargis rapidly intensified at the last minute. It had been a fairly weak storm, and then it just started exploding even as it headed toward the coastline. So people didn't even know there was a bad storm coming until maybe just 24 or 48 hours out. And it kept getting worse and worse and worse, and then it hit a vulnerable place.
Q: But you had written about Nargis, gosh, more than a week in advance and indicated that this would be a pretty bad storm.
A: Yeah, I blogged about it. I wrote about it over at the Daily Green. I track cyclones, so whenever I see something developing in the Bay of Bengal, and I see the ocean temperatures are really warm ... you just know that it can't be good. I didn't know how strong the storm was going to get, but I knew that the ocean temperatures were warm and I knew that it was already completely formed - and it had this ocean ready to pounce and ready to draw energy from. If you look at the Bay of Bengal, it sucked a couple of degrees Celsius out of the ocean and flung that at the coastline.
I can't tell you how many people this morning have emailed me this Michael Gerson op-ed from the Washington Post, which debunks the "Republican war on science" thesis. They all want me to debunk the debunker in this instance. But why?
Gerson doesn't accurately represent my argument in the first place. He's off down the eugenics trail, talking about values, blah blah blah. We "war on science" folks all know these distinctions--that the facts of science don't prescribe moral positions, that science doesn't dictate policy, etc--but they're dealt with long before we actually make our "war on science" argument.
By contrast, Gerson ignores the meat of that argument entirely. He doesn't touch climate change, or evolution, or any of the dozens upon dozens of Bush administration political science scandals. Neither does he address the literally hundreds of government scientists polled by the Union of Concerned Scientists who complain of political interference.
In short, Gerson's oped is a joke. No need for debunking, just laughing.
Myanmar ranks #4 in the world for annual forest area lost per year. Between 2000 and 2005, the country lost, on average, 466,000 hectares per year which puts their annual deforestation rate at 1.45% based on FAO statistics.
Given deforestation results in higher flooding and erosion rates and mangroves serve as important buffers against storm surges, I'm wondering to what degree Myanmar's serious deforestation played a role in the tremendous loss of life from Cyclone Nargis...
We've been watching Cyclone Nargis for a week here at the Intersection, but I've finally done my first lengthy piece about the disaster over at Science Progress. Over there, I make the following points, most of which I don't think you're seeing elsewhere:
1. It's Not About Global Warming, But Poverty and Infrastructure.
2. The American Media Present a Very Selective Picture of Cyclone Disasters in the Developing World.
3. Hurricane/Cyclone Forecasting in the North Indian Region is Lackluster at Best.
4. Hurricanes Can Bring Down Governments.
I want to expand upon the last point, which is increasingly on my mind. So let me quote from the column:
In his book Divine Wind, MIT's Kerry Emanuel emphasizes how at key moments, tropical cyclones have actually changed world history. That's precisely what happened with the 1970 Bhola Cyclone: It was the deadliest storm known to us, with some 300,000 to 500,000 dead in what was then East Pakistan. At the time Pakistan was one nation; but a strong separatist movement existed in the east. Enter the cyclone, and in the ensuing tragedy, even as the international community mobilized and the news media swept in, the central government in West Pakistan was widely perceived as inept, uncaring, uninvolved. Anger rose, and before long the nation we now call Bangladesh declared its independence--although it took a civil war to ensure it.
Even without a sophisticated analysis of the political situation in Myanmar, one can see many parallels in the Nargis catastrophe. We clearly have another regime that was out of touch, that did little or nothing to protect its people--the worst kind of despotism and irresponsibility. And now, in the glare of international scrutiny, there will be mounting outrage, and rightly so. If Cyclone Nargis can help strengthen the movement for Burmese democracy, at least there will be some silver lining in this tragedy.
A death toll this high is unfathomable. No words beyond a reminder we collectively share this pale blue dot and must now do all we can to help the people of Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.
For over a week, we've been watching and worrying about Cyclone Nargis from halfway around the world. The storm hit Maynmar on Saturday with wind speeds reaching 190km/h (120mph).
YANGON, Myanmar (CNN) -- Almost 4,000 people have died and another 3,000 remain missing in Myanmar as a result of this weekend's devastating cyclone, state media reported Monday amid fears that the death toll could continue to soar.
Diplomats summoned to a government briefing on Monday said the foreign minister had acknowledged that as many as 10,000 could be dead as the reclusive southeast Asian country's ruling military junta issued a rare appeal for international assistance in the face of an escalating humanitarian crisis.
According to the BBC, Tropical Cyclone Nargis may be the world's deadliest storm since a 1999 cyclone in India, which killed up to 10,000 people. Jeff Masters explains the counter-clockwise circulation of winds around the storm likely built up a storm surge of at least 4 meters (13 feet), drowning thousands in the Irrawaddy Delta region. Our hearts and thoughts are with the people of Myanmar.
While I love Randy Olson's 'Flock Of Dodos', one science documentary remains the most memorable of all... 'Cane Toads: An Unnatural History'. I had the pleasure of watching this fantastic film once again with a number of graduate students last week and I'm convinced it gets better every time. If you somehow missed out catching it during biology 101, the product description from Amazon.com provides a good synopsis:
"A fat, ugly creature whose sole purpose in life is the pursuit of sexual gratification is rapidly taking over Australia! The Cane Toads were imported by the sackload from Hawaii to Australia in 1935 in an attempt to rid the country of the Greyback beetle, which was rapidly destroying their sugarcane crop. The Cane Toads adapted beautifully to their new surroundings. Problem was, the beetle could fly and the Cane Toad couldn't. What the Cane Toad is unusually good at, however, is making more Cane Toads--thousands upon thousands more. If Monty Python produced a National Geographic Special, it would be Cane Toads!"
Here's a preview:
If you haven't seen 'Cane Toads', go rent it. This delightful documentary is one you're sure to remember and enjoy for years to come!
A reminder to readers that in exactly one week, I'll be speaking at the AAAS Forum On Science And Technology Policy about 'Science and the New Media.' I encourage you to comment with thoughts on the topic HERE. I'll be showing the post live during my talk. For ideas, consider these questions:
* New media addressing S&T issues - what/where/who are they?
* Who do they see as their primary audiences?
* What do they try to convey (or try not to convey)?
* What do they see as missing from the current dialogues on S&T and policy?
* How are they addressing those elements?
* What are the new media missing?
We've already got a great dialogue going, so hope to see you at the Forum!
As bloggers and blog readers, we spend lots of time behind a computer. And while I don't recognize many of the cameos in this video, there are enough to convince me I should get out more. This is Episode 1. of a weekly web cartoon by the 'brilliant yet weird' Dan Meth, hosted by Channel Frederator. My buddy, graphic artist Ben Marra, is the voice of Meth's Space Cowboy (Episode 20.) which may appeal to fellow sci-fi fans.
So gauge your own interweb habit by checking out how many 'Internet People' you remember...
[Hat tip to Homestar Runner, who kept my entire lab laughing through grad school.]
This coming Sunday morning, I'll be speaking in the "Feed Your Brain" lecture series at the Center for Inquiry-West, right here in Los Angeles (info here). The talk will be entitled, "The War on Science: What Have We Learned?" It's auspicious to me for two reasons:
1. This event is in my neighborhood, actually just about a mile from where I live, on Hollywood Boulevard in the Los Feliz area of LA.
2. I am actually spending five days a week lately in residence at the CFI-West, which has generously provided me with space to work on the next book, and asked me to lecture to boot. Cool, huh? As a freelance writer, you can get a bit out of touch with the outside world at times, so being able to come to the "office" every day has been great for me, and I owe the CFI-West folks big time for that opportunity.
Again, talk details here. Hope to meet some neighbors at the event....
Chris Mooney is a freelance writer and the author of two books, 
I especially enjoyed reading Jame's take on my April 28th post that explained NOAA's never been authorized by Congress:
