cmooney
Posts by this author
September 10, 2007
As I noted in the last post, we've now got an official La Nina situation in the tropical Pacific. Here's one of the many figures of current cold anomalies courtesy of NOAA:
Over at the Daily Green, my latest "Storm Pundit" entry discusses what La Nina likely means for the 2007 Atlantic hurricane…
September 10, 2007
See here (PDF). Top bullet points:
â¢La Niña conditions are present across the tropical Pacific.â¢SST anomalies have become more negative in the central equatorial Pacific, and remain positive in the western equatorial Pacific.â¢Most dynamical models predict a further strengthening of La Niña in…
September 10, 2007
In my public talks, I often mention Randy Olson's wonderfully funny and humane documentary Flock of Dodos--and the many lessons it hold for those of us seeking to defend the teaching of evolution and to explain science to those unfamiliar with it. Yet too often, the audience has responded with a…
September 9, 2007
There were a lot of comments to Friday's post, in which I shared U. Penn risk assessment specialist Adam Finkel's critique of a particularly bad Robert Samuelson column in Newsweek. Now, Finkel has come back and responded in detail to all of your comments. Check it out. A very brief excerpt:…
September 7, 2007
Several weeks ago, Newsweek ran a much-discussed cover story by Sharon Begley "revealing" the story that many of us have been writing for years: There has been a campaign, supported by many fossil fuel interests, to sow doubt about mainstream climate science. Duh. The main newsworthy thing about…
September 7, 2007
My piece just ran today, here's an excerpt:
When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship, neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should lead to a stance of cautious, well-informed…
September 6, 2007
Well, it's just like Nisbet has been saying--and like I have been saying. The "facts" rarely change minds. Here's Shankar Vedantam:
The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and…
September 5, 2007
Last week climate scientist Andrew Dessler posted a review/blog entry about Storm World over at Gristmill. I really appreciated the final paragraph, showing that Dessler truly understood what I was trying to get across. Moreover the words are so quotable and resonant that I thought I'd share them…
September 5, 2007
So: The latest is, I'm going to be blogging weekly for DeSmogBlog on global warming and sundry related matters. I'm a longtime reader of this site and a big fan of the folks up there in Vancouver who produce it--so I'm glad to be involved.
My first item for the DeSmoggers has just gone up. In it,…
September 5, 2007
I just love this picture. Click here for the story behind it.
September 4, 2007
Colorado State's Phil Klotzbach and Bill Gray are out with their next Atlantic seasonal hurricane forecast (PDF), and get this: They're calling for three more Atlantic hurricanes in September, one of them intense (Category 3-5).
They're also calling for two more hurricanes in October-November,…
September 4, 2007
We've been talking a lot about hurricane records lately. But that's not the only kind of record germane to this blog at the moment.
As some of you no doubt noticed, things have been up-and-down here at the Intersection over the past year. Particularly when I had a pressing book deadline, posting…
September 4, 2007
My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up at the Daily Green. Using Wikipedia and outher sources, I've cobbled together the records apparently set or otherwise affected by this storm. It's quite a staggering list:
1. Fastest intensification from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane --…
September 4, 2007
Felix has restrengthened overnight, and it's going to hit just as hard as Hurricane Dean did two weeks ago--140 knots, or 160 mile per hour sustained winds. Damage at the coast south of the Honduras-Nicaragua border will be potentially catastrophic, but what may be even more worrying is inland…
September 3, 2007
Felix's weakening has been fairly pronounced since this morning; it's now a weak Category 4, though the hurricane guys expect a slight bounce-back before landfall.
In the meantime, we're in the waiting phase: The damage will depend upon the precise track, speed, and so on. No one can predict it in…
September 3, 2007
As I mentioned earlier, only three Atlantic hurricane seasons other than this one have recorded more than one Category 5 storm. Those seasons are 1960 (Donna, Ethel), 1961 (Cleo, Hattie), and 2005 (Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma). But here's what makes 2007 distinct: Each of the year's first two…
September 3, 2007
Here's a detail that I missed:
Felix now holds the record for shortest time for an Atlantic storm to intensify to Category 5 strength. Felix required just 51 hours to reach Category 5 strength after it started as a tropical depression. That is a truly remarkable intensification rate, considering…
September 3, 2007
With a storm like Felix out there, I've been spreading it around in terms of my blogging. I've just posted about the storm at both The Daily Green and The Huffington Post. Here's the gist from the latter post:
To be sure, it might be the case that there's a natural up-and-down cycle in the Atlantic…
September 3, 2007
Here's some data I recently compiled. First, concerning Hurricane Felix:
* After not having once since Andrew in 1992, we are now expected to see two Category 5 Atlantic basin hurricane landfalls in the space of 2 weeks.* Hurricane Felix reached Category 5 on September 2, just 13 days after…
September 2, 2007
I'm flabbergasted. So are the forecasters. These are their words, and they should be read in their entirety:
THERE HAS BEEN RAPID STRENGTHENING OF THE HURRICANE TODAY. FELIX HAS A SPECTACULAR PRESENTATION ON SATELLITE IMAGES WITH A WELL-
DEFINED EYE EMBEDDED IN A CIRCULAR CENTRAL DENSE OVERCAST.…
September 2, 2007
Whoa boy. And the intensification very likely isn't over yet. In fact, as I note in the latest Storm Pundit column, the Caribbean only gets more conducive to hurricane strengthening as you head further west; and indeed, there's a deep patch of warm water ahead of Felix:
How strong will Felix get…
September 2, 2007
Here's the now-Category 2 storm, forecast to follow a similar track to that of Hurricane Dean last month--almost straight across the Caribbean towards the Yucatan, Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
The official forecast says Felix will reach Category 4 strength along the way. Any track change could…
August 31, 2007
This is pretty troubling. NASA is reportedly requiring longtime career scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Goddard Space Flight Center to go through FBI screening similar to what you need to get a security clearance. The new scrutiny is allegedly pursuant to a Homeland Security…
August 31, 2007
In which I discourse about hurricanes and global warming with Sarah Goforth of Discovery News:
What do folks think of the ending, where--following my lead--the video contrasts the number of Category 5 storms between 1970 and 2002 (8) with the number between 2003 and 2007 (7)? My own view is that…
August 30, 2007
This is the picture--suspiciously resembling my colleague and Scibling Matt Nisbet--that runs alongside our two and a half page letters exchange (PDF) in the current issue of Science. Essentially, there are four letters reacting to and criticizing various aspects of our "Framing Science" policy…
August 30, 2007
[God: "Go ahead, make my day."]
I have been staying out of the science and religion mess lately--although I think it's already known that while I'm personally non-religious, I agree with Nisbet that going head-on at people's faith probably isn't a very good strategy if you want to defend the…
August 30, 2007
[Matt Nisbet battles PZ Myers (artist's rendition).]
Uh oh. There is some heavy talk coming out of some folks about this Minnesota thing in September.
Greg Laden:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Scoundrels and Aristocrats ...
... In this corner, we have Author and Journalist Chris the Madman Mooney…
August 29, 2007
And so this is what it has all been building up to: Leadership. If New Orleans is languishing right now, there's one chief person to blame. And if we're not investigating how global warming is going to change our hurricane risks on a national level--well, again, there's one person to blame.
The…
August 29, 2007
My first two Katrina posts announced the following "lessons": 1) science doesn't confer certainty about hurricanes and global warming; but scientific uncertainty doesn't justify inaction, either; 2) the issue of hurricane risks is much bigger than New Orleans. In other words, there are many, many…
August 29, 2007
There is going to be a lot of hand-wringing today about the relative lack of progress when it comes to rebuilding and redefending New Orleans. And rightly so. But kind of like with Fight Club, the second lesson to be learned from Hurricane Katrina is that you shouldn't simply focus on Hurricane…