cmooney
Posts by this author
August 13, 2007
I just heard from a buddy in Iraq that the Yearly Kos science panel aired on C-SPAN on Saturday, but I've only just now been able to track down what appears to be a temporary archive of the video. For those interested in watching great talks by Sean Carroll and Ed Brayton, as well as my own…
August 11, 2007
Overnight and up through this morning, Hurricane Flossie in the Northeast Pacific--having started out as a category 1 storm--rapidly intensified into a weak Category 4 with a well defined eye, as you can see in the infrared image below:
I think it's fair to say Flossie's behavior took everyone by…
August 10, 2007
My latest "Storm Pundit" post is up over at The Daily Green. It's entitled "Forecasts, Fulminations, and Flossie," and it gives the rundown on the latest prognostications of Atlantic hurricane activity, as well as discussing the strong (and weirdly named) tropical storm now possibly headed towards…
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…
August 8, 2007
James 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…
August 8, 2007
I just did an online commentary for The Guardian's science site about just how bad Bush's presidency has been on science, and particularly stem cell and climate policy. It starts out like this....
The presidency of George W Bush is waning and laming. The time has come to think about the future and…
August 7, 2007
So: I just went on the show This Week on Science--otherwise known as "TWIS," otherwise known as "The Kickass Science Podcast"--to talk about Storm World. And just as we strove to keep the science fun (& funny) at Yearly Kos, so hosts Kirsten and Justin of TWIS regularly do the same...and they'…
August 7, 2007
We are going to hear a lot on this subject as August 29--the day two years ago that Hurricane Katrina made its final landfall, as a Category 3 storm, near the Mississippi/Louisiana border--approaches.
I plan to blog continuously about the upcoming anniversary from now until the actual date. To…
August 7, 2007
Just a coupla updates: I'll be speaking about Storm World at a Cafe Scientifique in Arlington, Virginia, tonight. This Cafe is put on by the National Science Foundation, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, I'll also be appearing today on a great radio show--This Week in Science. I'll…
August 6, 2007
I've seen all kinda attacks on the theory of human-induced global warming. But it wasn't until I did my first storm tracking post over at The Daily Green that one commenter referred me to this paper, purporting to argue that the greenhouse effect itself--which has been well established in science…
August 6, 2007
I have lotsa blog posts today. Only, they're not on this site.
First, I wrote a long essay at Huffington Post about the Yearly Kos science panel, which I thought was just extraordinary. It was definitely worth dropping a dime to travel to Chicago for. Click here to read my take. And here's a great…
August 6, 2007
There are a lot of big articles you (and I) should be reading this week.
The latest Time puts the continuing failure to protect New Orleans on the cover: "The Threatening Storm: How years of misguided policies and bureaucratic bungling left New Orleans defenseless against Katrina--and why it may…
August 2, 2007
My latest Seed column, entitled "Extremophile Journalism," is now online. It's based on my experience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia last April, where I learned much about the plight of science reporters in developing countries and emerging economies. Here's…
August 1, 2007
I offered my little sister, Kate, an internship this summer because I knew she was a talented writer and thought I could teach her a thing or two. So she's been helping me out with stuff.
Little did I know that she would suddenly punch the journalistic hyperdrive button and not only become a…
August 1, 2007
Tomorrow I fly to Chicago, where I'll be speaking--for the second year in a row--on the Yearly Kos science panel. This time, my fellow speakers will be ScienceBlogs' Ed Brayton and Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance. Scienceblogs' own Tara Smith will be chairing the panel.
Tara is also heading up…
July 31, 2007
Man. Japan is getting it bad lately. Just weeks after Supertyphoon Man Yi, another powerful storm is barreling in. Here's the latest satellite image of Typhoon Usagi, just pronounced a Cat 4 with 115 knot sustained winds by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, with an expected intensification to…
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…
July 31, 2007
The National Hurricane Center just named our third Atlantic storm, Chantal, off the eastern seaboard. Chantal is heading across the Atlantic along with the westerlies, possibly destined to become a quite powerful extratropical storm as it travels towards Iceland and Europe. It is not a threat to…
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…
July 29, 2007
It's a long ways out, to be sure. A lot could change and most certainly will. Nevertheless, this storm, which has just formed, is currently forecast to be a Category 3 at landfall and to strike Japan.
For more information check out the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and Tropical Storm Risk. The…
July 28, 2007
Read 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…
July 27, 2007
Last Saturday night, party animals that we are, some friends and I went on Rhapsody and searched for pop songs that mention "hurricanes." Sweet Jesus, there were a lot of them. And a large percentage used "eye of a hurricane" as a bad love metaphor.
So we were inspired to make a hurricane music…
July 25, 2007
I 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…
July 23, 2007
I 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…
July 23, 2007
The first leg of the Storm World tour ended Saturday, with my best attended event yet--close to 100 people at Politics and Prose. Looks like Harry Potter and I have different audiences after all.
Now, for the second leg, I begin to whip out the PowerPoint presentation (once, at least). I'm off to…
July 21, 2007
I 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…
July 19, 2007
This coming Saturday evening, all across Washington D.C., Maryland, and Northern Virginia, people are going to have a stark choice to make.
On the one hand, they can curl up at home, their newly purchased or arrived copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in hand, and speed read to find out…
July 18, 2007
Congress is now wading into Episode II of Hurricane Wars. Tomorrow morning the House Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing entitled "Tracking the Storm at the National Hurricane Center." I was just emailed the witness list, which I've posted after the jump.
The most obvious thing…
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)…
July 17, 2007
Although the northeastern Pacific just got its first hurricane of the year--Cosme--we haven't yet had a named storm in the Atlantic in July. Clearly, then, this doesn't seem likely to be a repeat of the 2005 hurricane season, when we had two extremely intense July hurricanes (Dennis and Emily).…