By Dr. Robert Thorson An orange armada floated down the Connecticut River last week. Heavy rains on upriver farms sent a fleet of pumpkins downstream to smiling boaters photographed by The Courant during the unusual rescue event. Within a few days, New England’s attention had shifted away from happy people collecting pumpkins in the river […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Halloween makes me nervous, though not for the reason you might expect. Of course I’m concerned about kids being run over in the dark, juvenile sugar overdose, and the license for youthful mayhem. But my biggest issue with Oct. 31 is personal. This is the time of year when I come […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson In the history of environmental policy, the construction of dams on rivers is always a win-lose situation, with one species — Homo sapiens — getting the gains and the rest of the ecosystem getting whatever comes next. It’s also a win-lose situation in which one group of humans gains at the […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson `The largest poisoning of a population in history.” That’s how an epidemiologist from the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Smith, describes arsenic groundwater contamination in India. In the Indian state of West Bengal, more than 40 million people live in the poison zone. In Bangladesh, more than 82 million are threatened. […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Let’s assume you are fortunate enough to be feasting with family and friends. When you pause to give thanks for your blessings, be sure to include the water that made everything possible. Then make a commitment to guard Northeastern water against Southwestern encroachment. What few modern Thanksgiving Day feasters appreciate is […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Millions of people stubbornly refuse to believe that the Earth is older than about 10,000 years. Anything older is inconsistent with their understanding of the Creation, and is therefore rejected a priori. Oh, how wrong they are! Within the United States, the most common psychological yardstick for Earth’s antiquity is the […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Congratulations to the University of Connecticut for giving Mirror Lake, its campus centerpiece, an underwater haircut and lake liposuction treatment. Tom Callahan, the administrator in charge, has done a superb job in his new role as beauty consultant. They say that beauty is only skin-deep. In the case of artificial ponds […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Beware the serpent. This is a biblical injunction to avoid reptiles without limbs. Beware the serpentine. This is my geological injunction to avoid building homes on the banks of meandering rivers, which writhe on their flood plains like snakes in the grass. I refer to the tragic case of Pete and […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Connecticut, with much at stake, Prefers to call a pool a lake, But in New Hampshire and beyond They like to call a lake a pond. Those lines are from a poem by Phyllis McGinley titled “New England Pilgrimage.” If this sounds like a riddle, then my suggestion is that you […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Earth’s most precious fluid is not gasoline, but the tiny fraction of Earth’s water that is neither frozen nor vaporized, low enough in salinity to be considered fresh and free enough of contaminants to be legally potable. By mid-century, its price will be on people’s minds the way liquid fuel is […]