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 […]

By Ben Crnic Last year, on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, there was an eruption of media stories. I passed on the hoopla, waiting instead for what I considered the more important 101st anniversary, which will take place this Friday. Last year’s centennial was the proper time to celebrate the human […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Our lives are sprinkled with new years. Most popular is the calendar year. Most exciting is the school year. Most regular is the astronomical year. Most political is the fiscal year. Most invisible is the water year, which begins and ends on Oct. 1. This is the arbitrary date marking the […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Environmental politics is so much hot air I sometimes don’t know which way to whirl. Take the Keystone XL pipeline project, which is designed to link the oil-thirsty United States to the tar sandstone of Alberta. It’s been under environmental review since September 2008 when TransCanada applied for a permit from […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I have an unusual type of seasonal affective disorder, known as SAD. During these darkening days, I don’t get sad at all. In fact, I find it progressively easier to extract hope from failure. Feeding my SAD this year was a recent story by Steve Grant about New England’s collective failure […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Harvard advances. Yale retreats. I’m not talking about the annual football game between the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Bulldogs, scheduled for Nov. 18. I’m talking about two tidewater glaciers in Prince William Sound, Alaska, one named Harvard, the other Yale. Knowing something about the forward and backward behaviors of these […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Loaded Dice. The perfect analogy for deciding whether our weirdly warm winter was the result of climate change or luck. I heard this from climatologist Michael Mann, who visited the University of Connecticut last week to round out this year’s Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series. Just as loading the dice with […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson During a summer dominated by bad international news — Ebola, ISIS, climate change — I made a conscious choice to be positive about something that really bothers me. So, I decided to share my attitude adjustment before summer officially ends Sept. 22. My moment of choice came at Echo Lake, near […]