hrynyshyn
Posts by this author
September 16, 2009
On one side we have a long list of scientists who are known, and respected, by the wider public primarily because they have chosen to venture beyond the confines of the laboratory or the classroom into the realm of policy advocacy. Think Carl Sagan (nuclear winter), Sylvia Earle (marine…
September 15, 2009
Just eight episodes into a 13-part first season, ABC has canceled suspended (see update below) Defying Gravity, a flawed but relatively honest attempt at hard-core science fiction. Why is this noteworthy? OK, this is a stretch, but I am reminded of attempts to reform the U.S. health insurance…
September 14, 2009
One of Canada's best journalists, Andrew Nikiforuk, is the author of a just-released report on Canada's tar sands from Greenpeace. "Dirty Oil: How the tar sands are fueling the global climate crisis" is not a peer-reviewed paper, it was commissioned by environmental activists, and it relies heavily…
September 10, 2009
Miles Grant at Grist has alerted us to a new global-warming pseudoskeptic website, PlantsNeedCO2.org, with questionable parentage. Although "Plants Need CO2 is a 501 (c)(3) non profit corporation" it appears to be closely associated with decidedly profit-oriented types.
The domain name is…
September 9, 2009
Climatologists have long known that aerosol "haze" plays an important role in determining just hot things get on Earth. But figuring out just what the role is has proven frustrating. The tiny, airborne particles that fly out of smokestacks, tailpipes and ordinary biomass fires can either help cool…
September 8, 2009
The typical western post-industrial human being has two roles to play in society: citizen and consumer. Both offer the opportunity to exert power and influence, and whether we like it or not, neglecting one over the other invariably gives competing interests an opening. On matter climatological,…
September 3, 2009
While most media commentators obsess over the "news" that Diane Sawyer will be replacing Charlie Gibson on ABC World News, there are at least some observers who remain more concerned with content. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne weighs in this morning on the sensationalism that has dominated…
September 2, 2009
While the U.S. Senate's sense of urgency on the climate change front wanes, a new campaign originating on the other side of rapidly warming pond is urging us all to get with the program by cutting our emissions sooner rather than later. This is obviously a good idea from a scientific point of view…
August 31, 2009
Hypothetical: If you had to make do with just one source of news, what would it be? I don't mean which medium, either. Let's narrow it down to one outlet, one group of journalists operating under a collectively identity, working with a common set of standards and principles. Twenty years ago, I…
August 27, 2009
Yes, your car, and your toaster and television, too, if your electrical utility includes coal- or gas-fired power plants in its portfolio, are contributing to a shift in the Earth's axis by changing the distribution of water in the oceans. This according to a new paper in Geophysical Research…
August 25, 2009
In an effort to launch what it calls "the Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to defend the science of climate change at a public hearing.
Believe it or not. As reported by the L.A. Times:
"It would be…
August 25, 2009
I put the last word of the headline in quotes, because in this space, I prefer to use the term "pseudoskeptics" when describing those who claim to be applying scientific analysis to the issues without bothering to actually understand the science involved or stay abreast of even long-ago-published…
August 24, 2009
There's a fascinating exchange between two of England's better minds, George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth, over at the former's blog/website under the rubric of "Should we seek to save industrial civilization?"
It begins with Kingsnorth's lament over the implications of all the exponential growth…
August 21, 2009
If you pay attention to environmental matters in North Carolina, you already know this, but I'm still catching up on a month's neglect:
The NC Senate voted 42-1 earlier this month to ban most wind turbines from the state's windiest regions. While offshore wind farms are still kosher (for the time…
August 20, 2009
For me, the most interesting parallel between the national debates over how to stop heating the planet and how to reform health care insurance is the response both have generated in my own brain.
For years now, the failure of a sizable portion of the American public to accept the need to sharply…
August 18, 2009
From the Center for American Progress, via Climate Progress:
and from the comments to Joe Romm's post:
Mark Shapiro says:
August 18, 2009 at 11:01 am
. . . "It would be great if the skeptics were right!"
That's a near-perfect rejoinder whether debating a skeptic or just chatting with friends.…
August 10, 2009
The similarities between the campaign against mitigating the consequences of climate change and the campaign against health insurance reform go far beyond the use of distortion and fiction. The parallels are everywhere.
For example, those with vested (monied) interests in the status quo are…
July 30, 2009
Returning from a non-wired vacation I find much has happened in the past couple of weeks. One team of researchers is arguing that sea levels won't rise as much as other fear, another team finds the northern peatlands will release more carbon than we once thought, a new study pegs the potential…
July 17, 2009
If predicting climate trends was as easy as predicting the reaction of global warming pseudoskeptics there wouldn't be any deniers left. When I came across a new study in Nature Geoscience on the cause of the massive shift in the climate 55 million years ago, my first reaction was, "How long will…
July 16, 2009
As someone with a marine biology degree, I've been asked to help spread the word about the threat to ocean ecosystems from falling pH levels -- what everyone who doesn't have a marine biology degree calls ocean acidification. It's a worthy cause. Read the following letter, review this report and…
July 15, 2009
Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney are getting a lot of mileage out of their new book, Unscientific America. This week they pop up in Newsweek to argue that we should welcome the likely appointment of Francis Collins as head of NIH because in a time of polarization, he's a unifying figure, one…
July 14, 2009
By "that," I mean Sarah Palin's first attempt at recreating herself as a pundit. For some reason, the Washington Post continues to publish error-ridden op-eds.
By "this," I mean former Fortune managing editor Eric Pooley's debunking of the climate-bill scare tactics of Warren Buffet, scare tactics…
July 10, 2009
Poor Chris Mooney. He's found himself deep in the old "are science and religion compatible" debate. I usually try to stay out of this particular rabbit hole, but the Island of Doubt could use a traffic boost to make up for my upcoming vacation, so...
Chris and his Unscientific America co-author…
July 9, 2009
The science machine continues to churn out depressing reports. The high-latitude permafrost contains more carbon than originally thought. The Arctic Ocean ice is even thinner than we feared. But my thoughts are dominated by the issues raised by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum in their new book…
July 7, 2009
Unscientific America:
How scientific illiteracy threatens our future
by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum
209 pages,$24 (US) Basic Books,
I wish I'd written this book. Its subject matter is exactly the thing that gets me going. The tension between science and irrationality was the original…
July 6, 2009
For at least as long as I've been paying attention, Roger Pielke Sr. hasn't been all that popular among those are doing their best to convince the world to take the threat of climate change seriously. He's a genuine, and until recently, reputable scientist at a genuine and reputable institution of…
July 2, 2009
And now we turn to a voice of reason. Ken Caldera, discussing the nuts and bolt of science, and climatology in particular, as part of a group interview with Discover magazine, reminds us all just how silly it is to argue that anthropogenic global warming is bothing but a conspiracy theory…
July 1, 2009
I have an extremely low attention threshold for any mention of the small town of Inuvik, NWT, tucked away in the northwest corner of Canada's Northwest Territories. Not because it's a particularly beautiful place, or politically, economically or scientifically significant, but because I spent 14…
June 29, 2009
Even the most optimistic elements of the environmental community know that Friday's passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the U.S. House of Representatives was the easy part. Getting something comparable through the Senate will be much tougher. Paul Krugman says it best:
Indeed,…
June 25, 2009
I've been agonizing over this for weeks. My initial stance was yes, because if Waxman-Markey (a.k.a. the American Clean Energy and Security Act) doesn't make it, I doubt we can afford to wait for Congress to take another stab at it. But the lobbying over the past few days has been fierce. I get…