Chris Mooney

My latest hosted episode of the podcast is now up–it’s with Georgetown scholar Jacques Berlinerblau, discussing his new book How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom.

Basically, Berlinerblau believes that the Christian Right has routed secularism in the U.S.–no argument there for many atheists and freethinkers.

But where he goes further is arguing that to fix the problem, atheists and religious skeptics need to be building allegiances with moderate religious believers, ranging from Sikhs to, yes, many Catholics.

So far as I know, few if any folks in secularism are actively trying to build these bridges–because of course, the predominant emotion out there is all about denouncing religion, rather than trying to work with it.

So it is a pretty controversial view–and one that should get some attention. Full show here; book link here.

I’ve just done a Mother Jones piece to channel my frustration about how the global warming-Sandy issue is being discussed. In my view, people are making it needlessly complicated.

So my piece is about how it’s profoundly simple: Global warming caused sea level rise, then sea level rise increased Sandy’s damage directly. Period.

Case closed.

And apparently that very direct and kinda fed-up take is working, because the piece is the top article at Mother Jones right now. You can read it here.

There are only so many things you can do, prior to an election, to make a difference.

My cardinal contribution, I think, was captured right here: Along with Shawn Lawrence Otto of ScienceDebate.org, I moderated a presidential science policy debate between an Obama campaign surrogate, Kevin Knobloch, and a Republican, long time Rep. and former Delaware governor Mike Castle. (Castle did not represent the Romney campaign, which declined to participate).

The idea was to show–and we did so, successfully–that you can have a serious, substantive, and important debate about science policy and climate change…in essence, about vital issues totally ignored in the 2012 presidential debates.

Here’s my write up of the ensuing event (video also available at that link), which ends like this:

In the end, the debate seemed to bespeak a less partisan, and also more substantive Washington than the one we’ve grown used to in the last four years—a Washington that might actually get things done. The question, then, is why such events are such a rarity.

Candidates for president debate the economy without being economists, and foreign policy without being diplomats. With science issues like climate change affecting nearly every aspect of life in the 21st century, why shouldn’t they also debate those? This event modeled what such a presidential debate might look like, and showed that politicians—and non-scientists working in politics—can not only talk very intelligently about science policy, but that they can also get along doing it.

“I’ve really developed a liking for Kevin,” Castle said in his closing remarks.

“I don’t agree with him,” he quickly added.

Full article and full debate video available here.

The latest Point of Inquiry episode just went up. It’s a special episode, in which co-host Indre Viskontas and I are both in the same place (very rare) and each inteview a guest–after actually, you know, talking to each other about current events.

It went great–and it doesn’t hurt that our guests are superstars: The Men Who Stare at Goats author Jon Ronson and the magician, psychologist, and bestselling skeptic author Richard Wiseman. Enjoy the show–listen here.

I had forgotten about this video until very recently. In it, I am recorded by Seed Magazine, then my employer, asking a question for the 2008 presidential candidates–and my topic is whether they’re ready for a hurricane submerging much of New York City.

My precise words:

“What are you going to do about the well documented possibility of a strong hurricane hitting New York City and possibly submerging much of it? Have you or your advisers even begun to think about this incredibly alarming scenario?”

As I recall, this was supposed to be submitted to CNN for some sort of crowd-sourcing of questions they were doing. Clearly, it was never asked directly of any candidate.

The point is, this kind of disaster was easy to predict if, you know, you pay attention to scientists.

So why didn’t our leaders start building seawalls back in 2007? Simple–we continue to have a huge disconnect between science and public policy in America. It has always been my goal to bridge that gap. But we’ve got a long, long way to go.

My latest piece in Mother Jones  is zinging around everywhere right now–as I write this, Facebook likes on the piece just went over 1K.

The article about how we ignore disaster predictions in the U.S. until it’s too late–focusing in particular on an uncanny 2006 analysis from NASA, which discussed a worst-case hurricane capable of submerging

….the Rockaways, Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan, and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano Bridge.

So, yeah. We knew. Just like we did long before Katrina.

For the whole piece, read here.