cmooney
Posts by this author
September 1, 2006
Here in DC, Ernesto's outmost bands seem to have moved in overnight. It's much cooler than it has been in ages and I expect the rain will be getting steadily worse. Which is fine by me: I plan on staying indoors and getting work done, both on the current book project and in anticipation of the…
September 1, 2006
This is a history of science question for all of you folks. What do you think are the most prominent historical cases in which new ways of taking measurements of nature, or new scientific calculations, have themselves brought about major new theories or hypotheses? In other words, what are the case…
August 31, 2006
For the first time (at least that I've noticed), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center makes it explicit--Supertyphoon Ioke may ultimately hit Japan. Granted, it will have weakened by then--but still. Here's how they put it:
IN THE EXTENDED FORECAST FROM TAU 72 TO TAU 120 STY 01C WILL CONTINUE TO TRACK…
August 31, 2006
...for causing so very many people so very much depression and angst. Reading this reaction to my book recently on a blog, I thought to myself, wow, it sounds like countless other reactions I've gotten from folks:
Reading these two books back to back [mine and Esther Kaplan's] is a tough thing to…
August 31, 2006
This storm has less than 24 hours over water before getting acquainted with the Carolinas. But Ernesto is already stronger than it has been in quite a while: 55 mph winds, 996 mb of pressure. It's forecast to strengthen further, but it's all a question of how much....
Update: One possible answer…
August 31, 2006
I first heard of the Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam several years ago when he wrote a wrongheaded attack on the then-new phenomenon known as "blogging." Bloggers quickly eviscerated him; among other things, Beam had failed to comprehend one of their April Fool's jokes. As Catherine Seipp later…
August 30, 2006
If Supertyphoon Ioke keeps its present course, Wake Island will look very different after the 50 foot waves (and higher) have passed....
P.S.: Larger image available here. See also NASA's terrifying size comparison between the gigantic Supertyphoon and the tiny island.
August 30, 2006
A lot of folks have asked me to come speak in this area for quite a long time. And now, it's finally happened. We've just added these bookstore events:
Saturday, October 287:00 PM-8:30 PMQuail Ridge Books3522 Wade Ave.Raleigh, NC 27607
Sunday, October 29
4:00 PM-5:30 PM
Regulator Bookshop
720…
August 30, 2006
When Hurricane Ioke went out of the range of the Central Pacific Hurricane Center and crossed the International Dateline, the last update said this:
IOKE COULD ENTER THE RECORD BOOKS FOR LONGEVITY AS A CATEGORY 4 OR GREATER STORM.
Now the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, with new responsibility for…
August 29, 2006
I've just put up a link on the left to the GoogleVideo version of my UCSD-TV interview with Naomi Oreskes, which I think is one of my best interviews. You can watch it here. This is the beginning of my quest to create some sort of YouTube or other archive of videos of some of my appearances. If…
August 29, 2006
Mother Jones has just put up an amazing timeline of the march to war with Iraq. It runs from August, 1990, up through 2003. It's incredible. You need to check it out here.
Now, of course, I don't usually blog about the war. But I'm increasingly convinced that the march to war and the "war on…
August 29, 2006
Something fascinating and more than a little spooky is happening right now with Hurricane John in the eastern Pacific. The storm is undergoing rapid intensifcation, so rapid that it has developed what forecasters call a "pinhole eye"--an extremely tight eyewall contraction evident in the image…
August 29, 2006
I heard no promise of Category 5 hurricane protections for New Orleans. Indeed, you can search the whole speech. It's vague on just how strong the rebuilt levees will ultimately be. The most explicit promise is this: "We're working to make the levees stronger than ever by 2010, and we will study…
August 29, 2006
Timed for the Katrina anniversary, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has put out a short report on the hurricane-climate issue (PDF). Without taking a premature stand on who is or isn't winning the scientific debate at the present moment, I'd like to point out how CEI misrepresents the state of…
August 29, 2006
Well, yesterday was the official pub date for the paperback RWOS: I haven't been to a major bookstore yet to see if they're there, but they ought to be. Meanwhile, my thanks to all the blogs who noted the pub date and commented, including the following in no particular order:
MoJo Blog: "Mooney's…
August 28, 2006
Tom Toles has long been one of my favorite cartoonists--but even I was a little stunned when I saw his latest work, which essentially says, don't vote Republican if you care about climate change. I'm not used to cartoonists being this directly political--but I'm also not sure I have any problem…
August 28, 2006
It looks like Supertyphoon Ioke could completely overwash one of the U.S. possessions in the Pacific--the tiny Wake Island, which is comprised of 3 coral atolls and houses about 200 people who have now been evacuated. Apparently the whole thing could be entirely underwater from this massive and…
August 28, 2006
Over at the Huffington Post, I've got a longish entry on the conclusions I draw from the Katrina tragedy one year later. Check it out.
August 28, 2006
Well, the paperback is officially out now (though I haven't yet seen it in an actual store...) Books continue to ship from Amazon and, I assume, from other outlets.
Meanwhile, tomorrow is the anniversary of Katrina. I'm going to have some more politically oriented thoughts on this later, but here…
August 27, 2006
Well, it's official: Some of the paperbacks have started shipping from Amazon.com. If you preordered the book that way, you should get it soon. The official pub date is tomorrow, Monday, so this will be my last "countdown" post prior to the book release. Of course, I will have much to say after the…
August 27, 2006
Ernesto is now a Category 1 hurricane, and appears to be one of those spooky ones that comes up through the Caribbean bouncing off of islands as if in a pinball machine, before finally expending its fury against the Gulf Coast. "Unfortunately," in the words of forecaster Stacy Stewart, the track…
August 26, 2006
Above is the latest water vapor image for Ernesto, which now has a central pressure that's dropped to 997 mb and sustained winds that are nearing 60 mph. In short, it looks like this is going to be a Category 1 hurricane soon, our first of the season. And the projected track continues to look…
August 26, 2006
Recently, several folks have sent me this link to Blogs for Bush, where one Mark Noonan has pronounced the "Death of Science." "We have reached the end of the Age of Science," Noonan writes. "What will come after, I don't know, but I don't think that we'll ever again have a time when Science is…
August 26, 2006
You folks may have found it already, but Panda's Thumb is in the midst of posting a series of takedowns of Jonathan Wells' new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. Having read the book myself, I was very, very unimpressed by the attack on evolution that Wells…
August 25, 2006
It's official, we have our fifth storm of the season. The NHC is now projecting that it will reach hurricane strength within days. And here's the part of the forecast that's disturbing:
THE INTENSITY FORECAST.....CALLS FOR SLOW STRENGTHENING FOR THE FIRST 24-36 HR...WITH SOMEWHAT FASTER…
August 25, 2006
One of the rewarding things about publishing The Republican War on Science has been to sit back and watch as the book's title phrase has caught on. Now and then one finds bloggers using the words "Republican war on science" without any attribution--which is fine with me. Meanwhile, "war on science…
August 25, 2006
As you can see from the image above, courtesy of the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, we've got a Cat 5 right now in the Pacific. But it isn't a typhoon, because it didn't form in the western North Pacific. Neither did it form in the eastern North Pacific (the "I' storm from that basin this year is…
August 25, 2006
There's been trouble at NASA lately. A suite of scientists from the agency's National Advisory Council have resigned over the agency's priorities, a dispute which seems to centrally turn on how the president's Moon-Mars plans have taken an emphasis away from purer scientific research. The NAC…
August 24, 2006
Jeff Masters reports that we've got another storm to pay attention to, and this one looks very dangerous, although it is not officially named Ernesto yet. In the satellite image above, what we're talking about is the area of very thick clouds just off the coast of northeastern South America. The…
August 24, 2006
This entry will be short and sweet. Over at the book website, we've put up a new excerpt--a revised Chapter 11, the chapter on the subject of "Intelligent Design." And in addition to making the entire chapter available, we've also put up, at its end, the new update section that follows exclusively…