I take a look at two new books on global warming in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. The International Herald Tribune has already posted it on their site (which has no subscription wall to boot). (Update: NYTBR link.) The books are The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery and Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. Both are very good (though not perfect) books, and I suspect that they may have a noticeable effect on the discourse about global warming. I will be curious (in a kind of staring-at-a-car-wreck way) to watch the reaction of the global warming denial crowd.

Continue reading “Taking the Temperature on Global Warming Books” →

Mike Lemonick, Time’s excellent senior writer on science, has started a blog. I can’t think off the top of my head of another staff science writer at a big magazine or newspaper who has a blog (as opposed to us itinerant science scribes). So welcome to Mike.

One quibble: why no comments? A journalist who doesn’t let blog readers comment is…well, I won’t use bad language here (but I will here).

Perhaps that’s the downside of life on staff–lots of lawyers hovering about. 

Continue reading “Lemonick Blogs” →

Loyal readers need no introduction to this bit of entomological “Faces of Death.” Others who think this must be some sort of hoax, read this (or this).

Courtesy of Dr. Fred Liebersat, oracle of the emerald cockroach wasp. 

Originally published March 10, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

The Discovery Channel picked up my cockroach zombie story and interviewed Dr. Fred Liebersat on his research. They included some cool footage of the roach and its sinister wasp brain surgeon. To watch, go to their archives and scroll to “Roach-o-rama.”

Unfortunately, there’s no footage of young wasps poking their heads out of their cockroach hosts, but perhaps that was too hard to catch. Or maybe just too disturbing… 

Originally published March 10, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

Enceladus, a tiny moon of Saturn, suddenly gets interesting. It may be spewing liquid water. And since the only life we know of needs liquid water–and since Enceladus may now be the second place we know of in the solar system with liquid water–I want to buy a ticket there. Details and pictures here. 

Originally published March 9, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.