Not to let himself be outdone by his skeptic colleague in good standing, George Will, The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby has penned an equally vacuous and misinformed column posing the thought-provoking question: “Where’s global warming?” It’s hard to know where to start. F...

Many of us are blissfully unaware that almost the whole of human history -from the hunters and gatherers to the rise of towns and cities, the development of science and medicine -the whole of our great human pageant- has taken place within an atypical period of fair weather. For most of our 4.5-bill...

By Marc Stuart Secretary Clinton’s weeklong trip to Asia was notable for a number of firsts. The first time a new Secretary of State of a new administration has opened her tenure by flying west, rather than east. Well, George Schultz apparently went south, as the exception that proves the rule. It...

Common Dreams - By Luke Eshleman - Feb. 23 (News Analysis) - A central point of the Wrong Ball analysis is that emissions trading is designed to keep the price of fossil-fuel energy relatively low and thus will not create sufficient incentive to invest in carbon-free energy and disinvest in coal. Th...

I came across an article in my Google Alerts titled, "Harvard study: Under-treatment of mental illness contributes to crime." Intrigued, I clicked on the link to read more of the article. Turns out the lede is: Two thirds of prisoners......

REUTERS/Mick Tsikas The climate change deniers are so fond of pointing out how much snow there is in North America and asking "where's the global warming?" Two can play at that game of purposefully conflating climate and weather, of cherry-picking events to suit the message. We present Sophie Tedman...

Whether it is avoiding fatty foods, saving money for the future, or taking cod liver oil regularly, somewhat unpleasant actions today to prevent disaster tomorrow are a struggle against our very nature. This struggle extends from individuals to society, as present consumption and today’s conce...

My buddy, Max, has some thoughts he wants to share. Max isn’t technologically impaired — not at all — but he’s reluctant to get into blogging on his own. He and I do have discussions about current events from time to time, and he had some thoughts that I’m passing along...

Is it more appropriate to use the term "global warming" or "climate change"? Of course, like anything, it's complicated. For a bit of history lesson on the terms there is a great post on the NASA Global Climate Chage blog. To break their very detailed explanation down a little: 1970: referred to as ...

Image from Peter Siver) Crime-fighting doesn't typically fall within a botanist's job description but, then again, Peter Siver is hardly your typical botanist, as Julie Wernau makes clear in her nice profile. Siver has spent his entire career studying diatoms and chrysophytes, microscopic photoautot...