The Mooney-Nisbet combo act is heading to New York: We are doing a talk at the New York Academy of Sciences, sponsored by the Science Alliance, on Monday night. Click the icon for details. This should be our biggest event yet (we just got a nice mention from Darksyde over at Daily Kos), so if you're in the area, we hope you'll attend. Blogging from the road is always difficult, of course, and I won't be back until Tuesday night late. We may be getting some posts from Sheril between now and then, though. She did such a great job tending the blog while I was away that I have asked her to stay on and blog whenever she wants, and I hope that she'll do so.
But in the meantime, I also want to leave you with some brand new content, and I think I have just the thing. You see, thanks to my peeps over at Harcourt Books, the official Storm World website (www.StormWorldBook.com) is now up and entirely functional. This site features tour dates; a central blog (which is dedicated to providing updates about book reviews and other miscellany); and perhaps most importantly, the entire opening chapter of the book, entitled "The Party Line," which is provided as a free excerpt. In addition, there is also an extensive author interview on the site. That's a lot of new stuff to check in my absence. Hopefully it will keep people busy. So, let me start you off here with the first two paragraphs of the book's opening chapter, and then below you can click on to the site to keep reading:
"The Party Line" The worst Atlantic hurricane season on record still hadn't ended when the American Geophysical Union held its fall meeting in San Francisco in December 2005. Twelve thousand scientists packed themselves into the Moscone Center, the city's space-age mall of a conference facility, for lectures on topics such as the massive 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and the tsunami that it generated, and data beamed from NASA's Mars rovers and the Cassini spacecraft. Many of the presentations were being given on the center's upper levels, and security guards had to police the towering escalators just to prevent overcrowding. MIT hurricane theorist Kerry Emanuel arrived on this scene riding a swell of fame that few researchers ever experience. A short man with striking blue-green eyes and a slightly surprised smile, Emanuel had just seen his latest work featured in a Time magazine cover story and would soon find it rated (along with the work of several colleagues) the top science story of the year by Discover. He was averaging five to ten media calls per week. Later, he would be named one of the hundred "Most Influential People of 2006," once again by Time. At the American Geophysical Union meeting, Emanuel had been slated to speak following another of Time's most influential: NASA's James Hansen, the nation's best-known climate scientist and the man sometimes dubbed the "father" of global warming.
Click here to keep reading.
Update: Time Out Chicago just singled outStorm World on its list of summer reads....
Update June 4: The storm in the Arabian Sea, named Gonu, has rapidly intensified into a very strong Category 4. Landfall is currently forecast in Oman at Category 3 strength (but that's days off and very uncertain). We're still awaiting our first Cat 5 of 2007; Gonu is now a candidate. It doesn't have far to go. The forecasting center at New Delhi probably puts it best in its 17th advisory on Gonu: "SEA CONDITION WILL BE PHENOMENAL." Meanwhile, here's a spectacular satellite picture:
