By Dr. Robert Thorson Geologists just learned that the greatest extinction of life on Earth was aided and abetted by the burning of coal. Though this material has been a great boon for humans since the 18th century, it was a bane beyond measure for nearly every living thing during the 2,519,410th century B.C. Why […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The MAD principle — mutually assured destruction — brought an end to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. I’m convinced that serious attention to MAD is the only thing that will keep us from completely trashing our planetary home. This thought was precipitated by an unusual pairing of experiences: […]

By Robert Thorson Deal-making used to be done in smoke-filled rooms. Now it will be done in a cabinet room filled with the smell of big oil. The parallels between the war on tobacco half a century ago and the current war on fossil fuel consumption are astonishingly close. During the 1960s, my brief flirtation […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Say the word pollution and everyone seems to be against it. Oil-soaked seabirds. Blue-green algae. Mercury blowin’ in the wind. Litter. The list is endless. Extend the concept of pollution to noise and the consensus breaks down. Motorcycle rights organizations insist that their right to ride roaring bikes trumps the right […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson All talk and no action. We accuse politicians of doing this all the time. But rarely can we pin down such a clear-cut case as the one involving Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s stance on preserving and protecting the quality of Connecticut lakes, a subject dear to my heart. First the […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson As Hurricane Sandy bore down on the East Coast in late October, we in southern New England had a week’s worth of warning, including three days of increasingly accurate forecasts by the U.S. Weather Service. Now, imagine stripping away all that advance notice. Instead, it was Monday afternoon, Oct. 22, and […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Shore Up Connecticut is a policy mistake. A state loan program named Shore Back Connecticut would make more sense because retreat from the coast is the only viable long-term option. Recent developments in Antarctica have made this crystal clear. As I write, the edge of the Thwaites Glacier is thinning and […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. So said, Robert Frost, poet laureate of New England. Although Frost chose fire, he was sufficiently ambivalent to add: … for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. As a professor of “ice-age” science, and as one who […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The absurdity of Connecticut’s water politics stuns me. Yes, we need a comprehensive statewide plan, which explains why state law (Public Act 14-163) requires submission of one to the General Assembly by Jan. 1, 2018. But funding for its creation seems to have gone missing. This may explain why an insider […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The most famous historic image of Connecticut’s creation story is geo-fiction. I refer to Frederic Edwin Church’s “Hooker and Company Journeying Through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636.” Though this magnificent painting captures the defining moment of Connecticut history, it fails to capture the physical reality. Instead it shows […]