Monthly Archives: September 2011

“It is better to heed a wise man’s rebuke than to listen to the song of fools.”                  Ecclesiastes 7:5 (NIV) Yesterday, Roger Pielke, Jr. commented as gently as he could about a factual error in my post on disaster losses. … Continue reading →

Here is the question for today: “The threats from climate change, sea rise, drought and desertification, food security and many other slowly developing crises are not linked to dramatic events that focus media, public, and political attention. How well do … Continue reading →

Congress, like most of the rest of us, has returned to work after the Labor Day weekend. The news headlines accompanying their return have largely centered on the work of the twelve members of Congress tasked over the next few … Continue reading →

Irene, Lee, and other tropical storms both here and in the western Pacific continue to wreak havoc through rain and flood. Some three dozen wildfires ravage Texas. The world reverberates to the upheaval of earthquakes here and abroad over the … Continue reading →

The September 1 post addressed tropical cyclones as rainmakers, using Irene as a focus, but calling attention to tropical cyclone Katia, approaching the United States from far out in the Atlantic, and a then-unnamed tropical depression forming in the Gulf … Continue reading →

In a front page article in today’s Washington Post, Juliet Eilperin and Peter Wallsten provided more coverage of reaction to President Obama’s Friday decision to postpone new proposed anti-ozone/smog standards. The closing quote for the article? Noteworthy. It came from … Continue reading →

This morning many of us woke up to headlines on the Obama administration’s decision to pull back proposed new standards for ozone levels. An example of such news coverage? Juliet Eilperin’s signature-thoughtful piece in this morning’s Washington Post. The new … Continue reading →

Reading this? Chances are good you’re asking, “What’s MOTN?” I didn’t know the acronym myself until a few minutes ago. But I’m afflicted by it – have been for years. It stands for middle-of-the-night insomnia. Getting to sleep most nights … Continue reading →

When it rains it pours. This bit of folk wisdom, like so many, reflects an underlying reality. The Earth we live on does much of its business through extreme events. What we call continental drift manifests itself on the Earth’s … Continue reading →