cmooney

Okay, so....I got sick of this new wave of conservative science punditry, which dismisses the "war on science" argument without even bothering to show it's wrong, and then goes on to claim that we liberals are "new eugenicists" and that our embrace of science is going to lead us off a political…

Look, folks. It's this simple. Carl Zimmer is one of our very best science writers. If not the absolute best bar none. So if you like reading about science, go buy his newest, Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. And don't wait--the book is just out, and if you buy now you drive up the…

Props to my brother, who has been "noticed." From the New York Times Artsbeat blog, covering the New Orleans Jazz Fest: This year's Monk Institute class has only been working together since the start of the fall term, but already there's a noticeable chemistry among the students, judging by their…

That's what CNN is suggesting. This puts the catastrophe at tsunami scale. And it suggests that Nargis could rank among the top three or four most deadly cyclones of modern times. My god. Courtesy of Weather Underground, the deadliest cyclones list: 1. Great Bhola Cyclone, Bangladesh, 1970, 550,…

MSNBC's Alan Boyle, author of Cosmic Log, just interviewed me about the ever worsening Nargis catastrophe. You can hear the audio here, and excerpts here. An excerpt: Q: Is this another sign that the global warming nightmare is coming upon us? Mooney: I'd be careful about saying that. There's good…

I can't tell you how many people this morning have emailed me this Michael Gerson op-ed from the Washington Post, which debunks the "Republican war on science" thesis. They all want me to debunk the debunker in this instance. But why? Gerson doesn't accurately represent my argument in the first…

We've been watching Cyclone Nargis for a week here at the Intersection, but I've finally done my first lengthy piece about the disaster over at Science Progress. Over there, I make the following points, most of which I don't think you're seeing elsewhere: 1. It's Not About Global Warming, But…

Kinda like opening up your fist after you've punched someone...in this case, that someone was Myanmar, and the punch came at Category 3 strength.... CORRECTION: Looks like the punch was actually a Category 4...

This coming Sunday morning, I'll be speaking in the "Feed Your Brain" lecture series at the Center for Inquiry-West, right here in Los Angeles (info here). The talk will be entitled, "The War on Science: What Have We Learned?" It's auspicious to me for two reasons: 1. This event is in my…

In my latest Science Progress column, I describe the utter meltdown at the Environmental Protection Agency, which involves not only mistreatment of agency scientists but the blatant failure to follow the law. Things probably haven't been this bad at the agency since the days of Ann Gorsuch Burford…

It has recently come to my attention that Amazon is selling them for $ 8.49--a dramatic markdown from the list price of $ 26.00--so if you haven't gotten one yet but had planned on it or wanted to, now is the time. Alternatively, you can wait for the paperback with the new cover and afterword,…

Meet Cyclone Nargis--image courtesy of CIMSS--which may be set to terrorize the Bay of Bengal region. This storm is expected to steadily intensify to Category 4 or higher, and then hit something. That something could be India, Bangladesh, or Burma/Myanmar...not a development that anyone in this…

You may have noticed that things have been a little wild here on the blog lately, argument and comment-wise. To calm things down, we've decided that all comments from now on will be moderated. This is actually going back to the way we used to do things. If comments are not on point, respectful, and…

It has just gone up over at Science Progress. Since there are certain things you cannot really say on ScienceBlogs any longer, I will only quote here the parts of the review that are ideologically palatable: Okay, let's get this out of the way first: Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled, is a deeply…

This is not to knock the very important Expelled Exposed website. But in my opinion, in this day and age you really have to answer film with more film--and entertaining film with more entertaining film. Ben Stein is very intellectually dishonest in Expelled, but he's also funny. Luckily, Randy…

...by Greg Laden. Or as one of my own commenters put it, "Either you really are just fucking stupid, or you're a closet creationist in this blog group. Pick one." I won't be deleting that comment despite the profanity, because I want to have it all on the record--the record of what now happens at…

I merely report the facts: Expelled, opening at over 1,000 theaters this weekend, has raked in $ 3.15 million, placing it ninth at the box office. In terms of political documentaries, it is already the eighth highest grossing of all time. UPDATE: Randy Olson, with whom I just went to see Expelled…

Tonight Larry King will be hosting two celebrity documentarians--Morgan Spurlock (cheers) and Ben Stein (boos). Alas, if the former wanted to be well equipped to debunk the latter's expected tripe about evolution, there probably would have been no better training than making The Republican War on…

Okay, so...The Daily Show was pretty easy. Lewis Black's "Root of All Evil"? A bit tougher. I went on the show with Sean Carroll, Jennifer Ouellette, Clifford Johnson, Michael Shermer, and a number of other "scientists" for a schtick called "Last Scientist Standing"--a parody of American Idol. And…

Following our hint last week of an announcement--which we have now officially made--there was some gossip about Sheril and myself. I know it's not meant that way, but it can be hurtful to people in our personal lives. So although until now I have kept that part of my life pretty much off the blog,…

There has been some buzz of late over the idea that with a recent paper, MIT hurricane guru Kerry Emanuel is backing down from the stance that global warming has intensified recent hurricanes. But after reading the paper, I just don't see it. Sure, Emanuel admits he might be wrong but that's no…

You've already read our policy forum in Science--but in my latest column for Science Progress, I go farther in drawing lessons from the ScienceDebate2008 experience thus far. They are: 1. Ignore the Naysayers 2. Whatever Happens in 2008, We Can Build on the Experience in 2012 3. There is No Excuse…

Last week, we certainly had you folks guessing--sometimes in a pretty off-the-wall way--about the news we planned to announce. So here's what's really happening: We have just inked a deal to do a book together. Yes, that's right--my third, Sheril's first. And yes, the book is about science--and…

I just did my latest Daily Green item about Tropical Storm Erin--the last 2007 Atlantic storm to have its definitive report (PDF) emerge from the bowels of the National Hurricane Center. Suffice it to say that the delay seems well justified--meteorologists still don't really have a clue what Erin…

Try this link. It ought to work. We think. We hope.

At the risk of getting more comments about framing...In January I spoke at the 2008 American Meteorological Society meeting's 7th Communication Workshop, and the audio and powerpoints are now online. Many or most of the panelists--and especially myself and Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan…

So this is the first bit of news that we've been promising.... In the latest issue of Science, we--the ScienceDebate2008 crew--have a policy forum article that lays out how this all got started, its implications, and where it's going. Doing the article was Sheril's idea, and she did a great deal of…

[Storm tracks, 2007 Atlantic hurricane season.] Well, it's April, and the earliest of the pre-season Atlantic hurricane forecasts have appeared. My latest Daily Green entry parses two sets of predictions that are really quite similar: Colorado State University: 15 named storms, 8 hurricanes, 4…

My latest Science Progress piece is up: It's about what we would actually have to do to prepare just one sector (transportation) and one region (the Gulf Coast) for climate change. If you then extrapolate that to all sectors and all regions, well....we are so unready it is ridiculous, and the Bush…

Gee, this sounds scarily familiar....not that I have experienced anything like the kind of health problems these bloggers seem to to have incurred from the insane 24-7 lifestyle. But I too have been sucked in many, many times by the obsessiveness of it--and then stepped back and found myself…