hrynyshyn

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April 1, 2011
No one is more surprised than I to see something worthwhile reading in The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad magazine. You might even be forgiven for suspecting an April Fool. But there it is. It's an editorial by Shikha Dalmia, a senior policy analyst at frequently misnamed Reason Foundation, exploring…
March 30, 2011
Last year much was made by climate-change deniers of a poorly referenced section of one of the IPCC reports of 2007 that said "up to 40% of the Amazon rainforest could be sensitive to future changes in rainfall." It turned out that the claim was based on solid science, despite the best efforts of…
March 25, 2011
Just case you were wondering what was going on up North: Arctic sea ice extent appeared to reach its maximum extent for the year on March 7, marking the beginning of the melt season. This year's maximum tied for the lowest in the satellite record -- NSIDC, March 23
March 23, 2011
I'm almost weary of blogging about nuclear power. But others are still going strong. Take the Globe and Mail's Doug Saunders, who writes this week that we shouldn't even think of abandoning the technology. Such enthusiasm is particularly curious because he glosses over the Achilles heel of nukes…
March 22, 2011
James Delingpole's relationship with what is commonly understood by the term "journalism" is not readily apparent. 1. PLOS One publishes a peer-reviewed paper by some of the world's leading marine biologists with an interest in the effects of underwater noise pollution. The paper tests the idea…
March 21, 2011
There's an amusing little video making the rounds, and receiving a largely positive response. Which is unfortunate, because it's little more than government-industry propaganda that glosses over the colossal abrogation of responsibility that led to the Fukushima crisis. At first glance, the…
March 16, 2011
How nuclear power is perceived by the general public will take decades to return to what it was a week ago. (Kind of like radioactive decay.) But the list of immutable and defining characteristics of the technology is long one and nothing that happens in Japan is likely to change them. First up:…
March 15, 2011
The journal Nature inadvertently (I suspect) reveals why the nuclear power industry has a public-trust problem: Robin Grimes, director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London ... says that he believes the [Fukushima] event actually proves the safety of nuclear power plants…
March 14, 2011
At one end of the hyperbole scale we have Helen "If you love this planet" Caldicott, who raises the specter of "cancer and genetic diseases" if things get any worse at the growing list of nuclear power reactors crippled or destroyed by last week's earthquake in Japan. At the other we have…
March 10, 2011
I don't drink much coffee. So the news that some coffee producers are finding it tough to deal with changes in growing conditions that could be an early taste of what global warming will bring doesn't strike close to home. And of course, "scientists are uncertain whether the peculiar weather…
March 9, 2011
"What is the optimum temperature for man?" asked Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith at yesterday's Congressional hearings on a bill that would remove the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions "Have we looked at that? These are questions that, believe it or not, I lay awake at night trying…
March 4, 2011
Andy Revkin recently asked us to consider this 1881 New York Times article and judge whether it's an example of early global warming alarmism or satire. It was unearthed by pseudoskeptic Steve Goddard, prompting Andy to write: For some reason Goddard avoids pasting into his blog post the humorous,…
March 3, 2011
Four years after Al Gore unleashed his army of slide show presenters on the planet in an attempt to spread the word that climate is something we should be worried about, the polls show public opinion has budged hardly at all. If anything, opposition to climate-change mitigation strategies has only…
March 2, 2011
One of the things that keeps me from throwing in the blogging towel in an era when climate change denial seems to be a prerequisite for membership in the party of Abraham Lincoln is the quality of the comments I get. The praise is nice, the thoughtful exploration of the ideas I introduce is better…
February 23, 2011
Ray Kurzweil might be right. It could very well be that Moore's law can be applied to all forms of technology, and within a couple of decades clean, renewable forms of power production will be so cheap they will have replaced all fossil fuels. Hey, it could happen. Maybe even it's not just possible…
February 21, 2011
We all know we need to get off fossil fuels and replace them with carbon-neutral alternatives. The question is not IF we should choose this path, but how best to get where we need to go. There are those who, fairly enough, worry that those clean renewables aren't up to the job. This is a critical…
February 17, 2011
Media outlets both main and sidestream are abuzz (atwitter?) with the story that scientists are finally daring to link specific weather events with anthropogenic climate change. A pair of papers in Nature are to blame. One, Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes, concludes that…
February 16, 2011
As a father of a four-year-old, I'm a big fan of Bob the Builder. The basic plot of each episode of the charming stop-motion children's series revolves around one or more pieces of heavy machinery learning self-discipline, which, as a new PNAS study shows, is a key skill associated with success and…
January 28, 2011
Fast Friday feature (from Utah!): Climate Science in a Nutshell #9: How Bad Could it Get? from Planet Nutshell on Vimeo. My only comment is to draw your attention to the video's assumption that the 350 ppm CO2 target is widely accepted as the maximum necessary to avert catastrophic change. It's…
January 24, 2011
Last week it was the abuse of a 140-character context-free nano-report on an hour-long discussion on the challenges of communicating science. This week it's the credulous coverage of a 50-page report on climate change. Seems that no matter the length of the material at hand, there are plenty of…
January 19, 2011
I've long been ambivalent about the merits of Twitter. Some may recall my "Why Twitter is Evil" post of a while back. That was written with one cheek mostly occupied by my tongue. It now seems clear that, whatever the original designs, the 140-character telegraph has become an invaluable network-…
January 15, 2011
From the wonderful "Overheard in a newsroom" service: Reporter doing a phone interview: "Please slow down, professor. You've been researching this topic for a decade. I've been researching it since lunchtime."
January 13, 2011
So, 2010 is a statistical tie for warmest year on record. This from NASA's GISS and NOAA's NCDC. Some AGW refuseniks might cling to the fact that the year just past was 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than 2005, but then you'd know they never bothered to take a stats class. As the GISS press…
January 3, 2011
Just in case you need a refresher: It continues here. Meanwhile, the Onion sums it up nicely: "Climate change is real, and we are killing our planet more every day," said climatologist Helen Marcus, who has made similar statements in interviews in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,…
November 18, 2010
You've no doubt come across this before, but it's worth repeating whenever someone does a story on the American auto fleet's fuel economy: The New York Times reports that "the average fuel economy in 2009 model cars, vans, pickups and S.U.V.'s was 22.4 miles per gallon -- an increase of 7 percent,…
November 17, 2010
There's an advertising feature in the latest GQ that champions 17 "Rock Stars of Science." Each ad includes a genuine rock music star alongside three or four genuine scientists, some Nobel laureates among them. The idea is to make science sexy. Will it work? Chris Mooney, co-author of Unscientific…
November 7, 2010
Climatologists muster. UPDATE: Or maybe not.
October 7, 2010
I'm still trying to avoid blogging at the moment but the news that Science Friday may not last much longer deserves to be brought to as wide an audience as possible. Apparently, the National Science Foundation no longer believes supporting the show is part of its mandate. Heard live each Friday…
September 14, 2010
I am taking a break from blogging. My reasons are personal. I do not know how long the break will last. In the meantime, I reproduce a note from the editorial board of Climatic Change. It takes the form of a letter to the late, great Stephen Schneider. I hope they provide some inspiration for…
September 9, 2010
There's always room for one more post about oceanic acidification. Even Sheril Kirshenbaum understates the threat that it poses to the planet's ecosystems and civilization when she describes it a "huge deal." First, let's get one thing straight: Falling pH levels in the seas do not constitute…