One of my first interviews about the new book can now be heard online by clicking here (MPG). I recently spoke with Bob McDonald of the CBC's Quirks and Quarks about the science, politics, and policy implications of the hurricane-global warming debate, and the roughly 12 minute segment just aired today.
As this is one of my earliest live interviews on the subject, critical feedback is most welcome. In fact it will be of much help to me, since there will be many more such interviews, including an appearance on the Barometer Bob Show, a popular meteorology program broadcasting out of Florida, on July 5.....
Update June 24: Dr. Fred Bortz, a frequent commenter on this blog, is also a reviewer of science books. He reviewed The Republican War on Science, and now, I'm pleased to announce he has also reviewed Storm World. The long form review is available here on Fred's site; versions are slated to run in a number of papers and have already appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and now, today, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer (here). A quotation from Fred's review:
...the book captures not only the scientific and political stories, but also the personal stories of those involved on all sides of this important scientific and political issue. It begins with a history of how scientists' understanding of hurricanes has developed over two centuries.
There has always been a creative tension, usually played out between dominant personalities with different scientific approaches. On one side are the empiricists who emphasize collecting data. On the other are those who seek the underlying physical principles.
Today, the latter group is armed with supercomputers and mathematical climate models, which they are constantly refining and in which many of the former group place little confidence.
Therein lies the disagreement. Predicting the climate of a future greenhouse Earth requires more than the weather data from the familiar planet Earth of the recent past. The empiricists focus on an apparent natural multi-decadal storm cycle. The modelers view the same data as the result of changing emissions from changes in fossil-fuel burning engines and power plants.
Mooney genuinely seems to admire them all....
You can read full review here.
Heard it live, good job. CBC is one of the perks of living in the little house on the (Northern) prairie.
Quirks and Quarks is a great Canadian institution on CBC Radio. It popularizes science without compromising its integrity. Its shows are archived on their website back to 1988 in mp3 format. I highly recommend it as a podcast to subscribe to.
I heard it while I was running around rural Nova Scotia doing field work... I'm afraid I only caught bits of it, but I greatly enjoyed the parts I heard!