cmooney | September 11, 2007My weekly post at DeSmogBlog is now up. It's about the latest Naomi Oreskes brouhaha, which I've been trying not to watch too closely. That's what the piece is about. And if that's too mysterious--well, read it.
sheril | September 11, 2007September 11, 2007
Dear New York,
We've been together a long time and although I'm terribly unfaithful, you always welcome me back with open arms because you know no matter how many states I've slept in, I'm yours. And truth be told, I love you. You're my city - center of the universe - and there will never be another to take your place in my heart. DC and Maine were fun, North Carolina's been good to me, and I'll never forget the college years in Boston.. but New York - you ROCK my world! You'll always be home.
Two years ago I composed an OpEd to commemorate the fourth anniversary of…
cmooney | September 11, 2007We have now gotten some good entries, but we still need more to make a completely, er, informed decision...and we're afraid some real Picassos out there are still holding back. So with just days left, Sheril and I want to remind everyone one last time about the The 1st Annual CRASH THE INTERSECTION Contest!
Design an "Intersection" banner and have your art displayed atop our blog for at least one year where the world can be dazzled by your creativity and wit! That's thousands of views a day all credited to you! We like to mix things up so there are no guidelines as long as it's not rated NC…
cmooney | September 10, 2007As 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 season. In short, although we can never say precisely what a given year will bring, there's a higher risk of U.S. damage during La Nina years, for a variety of reasons. So...we are hardly in the clear. Not yet.
Details and discussion here.
cmooney | September 10, 2007See 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 the next couple of months, while half of the statistical models indicate a weak La Niña through the end of the year.
â¢Recent equatorial Pacific SST trends and model forecasts indicate La Niña conditions will develop further during the next several months.
I'll have more shortly on what this…
sheril | September 10, 2007Before Sheril dissected a sea cucumber, briefed a senator, or picked up a mic, she found me - Sparticus Maximus The Great. She's my human. As the superior of species (hey, did you descend from dinosaurs? I thought not!), I keep her in line when necessary. You can imagine with her unusual preoccupation with books -- which ought to be eaten not read! -- this particular homo sapien can be a handful...err beakful. Of course, I try to be patient, recognizing she's less evolved since humans didn't spring into existence until sometime in the Cenozoic Era.
Anyway, when we all learned of Friday…
cmooney | September 10, 2007In 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 blank stare--they obviously haven't seen the documentary yet.
But now, finally, Flock of Dodos is available on DVD. If you haven't seen it yet, you simply must acquire a copy. Just click on the DVD image--and in the process, help prevent science and critical thinking from going extinct!
cmooney | September 9, 2007There 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:
Unfortunately, economists have a HUGE problem thinking adequately about uncertainty in cost, and they tend to "solve" it by ignoring it. On a good day, they can tell us something about how much money is needed to drive the "partial equilibrium" phase of a regulatory program--the one in which some people…
sheril | September 7, 2007* Friday Trivia: Who Said That? *
On Tuesday, I explained it's Hip to be Geek, but there's another side to the academic life that's more difficult... the moving part. Those of us pursuing the sciences have this pesky habit of skipping around the globe from one pursuit to the next driven by curiosity to understand the natural world. We love what we do, but it's bittersweet. While whisking off to the next exotic (or not so glamorous) locale is quite a romantic notion -- the thing is, somewhere along the way all this traveling makes home a confusing concept.
As you read this, my good friend…
cmooney | 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 this effort, to my mind, is that it now appears in decline. But it was a naughty, naughty thing to do, and it certainly ought to be exposed and re-exposed.
So far, so good.
But then comes Newsweek's own Robert Samuelson with a chowder-headed takedown of his own magazine's "Truth About Denial" cover…
cmooney | September 7, 2007My 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 concern. Further research -- or, perhaps, more mega-hurricanes -- may seal the issue. But meanwhile, given how much we have at stake, we should already be moving to prepare and protect ourselves -- even as we remain fully open to new evidence.
You can read the whole piece here.
cmooney | September 6, 2007Well, 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 clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths....
....Contrary to the conventional notion that people absorb information in a deliberate manner, the studies show that the brain uses subconscious "rules of thumb" that can bias it into…
sheril | September 6, 2007According to another groundbreaking study on mate selection, men prefer good looking women. Who knew? Wait didn't I touch on this in May? And we ladies apparently are trading off our attractiveness for 'higher quality men' or whathaveyou. Really? Before I comment (deep breath), I'll start with the research to be fair. Out of this week's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
While humans may pride themselves on being highly evolved, most still behave like the stereotypical Neanderthals when it comes to choosing a mate, according to research by Indiana University…
sheril | September 5, 2007Well, we've gotten some creative entries so far... With two weeks left, Chris and I want to remind everyone about the The 1st Annual CRASH THE INTERSECTION Contest!
Design an "Intersection" banner and have your art displayed atop our blog for at least one year where the world can be dazzled by your creativity and wit! That's thousands of views a day all credited to you! We like to mix things up so there are no guidelines as long as it's not rated NC-17. Out-of-the-box ideas encouraged and keep the theme in mind: An Intersection of Science, Policy, and Pop Culture. Maximum size that…
cmooney | September 5, 2007Last 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 with you:
Overall, I think this book helps pull back the curtain from science. Science is much messier and, frankly, less scientific than most people realize. Despite that, science is incredibly successful and, I believe, a force for good in this world, and I am proud to be a scientist.
Fellow…
cmooney | 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, I take on the Danish environmental apostate Bjorn Lomborg's new book Cool It--and in particular, his section on hurricanes and global warming, which I find pretty off-base. Excerpt:
...from here, Lomborg grows increasingly misleading. Before long, we find him citing a late 2006 statement from the…
sheril | September 5, 2007All of these storms whirling around causing trouble and now the most dramatic link I've seen yet demonstrating how that pesky troublemaker climate change is likely harming endangered sea turtles. And as it happens, this hits directly at the Intersection of Chris' world and my own.
According to an article in Current Biology, tropical cyclones may increasingly drive sea turtle egg mortality. The logic is quite simple:
If (1) global warming leads increased storminess* and sea level rise, (2) given these factors decimate sea turtle populations, then (3) it's not rocket science to figure out…
cmooney | September 4, 2007Colorado 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, including yet another intense one. The total forecast (including Felix as a September storm) is for 9 more named storms, five more hurricanes, and two more intense hurricanes. In short, we are hardly in the clear yet.
The prediction of a busy October-November, in particular, seems consistent with NOAA's…
cmooney | 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 frequency went way, way down. And so, understandably, did our traffic.
In May, however, I invited Sheril to join the blog, and boy do I not regret it. Since May our traffic here has almost doubled, reaching a peak of nearly 60,000 pageviews in August as judged by Sitemeter. We've never had this much…