By Dr. Robert Thorson ‘Property Values Drop, So Do Town Grand Lists.” This was the subhead on a story this month by Kathleen McWilliams in The Courant. Normally such stories are about rising crime, neighborhood blight or corporate closings. But in this case it’s about disintegrating home basements in northeastern Connecticut that can cost up […]

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 This year’s ice jam on the Connecticut River was a potentially dangerous spectacle, making it a perfect stage for political theater. It was also a perfectly natural, noncatastrophic event that, to my dismay, was distorted by the media. Slipping away from the grime and sleaze of Washington, D.C., U.S. Sen. Richard […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson One thing that’s puzzled me this winter is the astonishing box-office success of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which is nearing the $2 billion mark in ticket sales. This is remarkable for the seventh movie in a series consisting of a trilogy, a prequel trilogy, and a sequel trilogy now under […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Last week, even as I enjoyed the first signs of summer’s rising heat, I found myself wincing at the progressive death of our planet’s mountain glaciers. Each summer, a few dozen more melt into nothingness. There are plenty of practical reasons for keeping glaciers healthy. They are natural reservoirs providing water […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Last week, even as I enjoyed the first signs of summer’s rising heat, I found myself wincing at the progressive death of our planet’s mountain glaciers. Each summer, a few dozen more melt into nothingness. There are plenty of practical reasons for keeping glaciers healthy. They are natural reservoirs providing water […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I have insect envy. Cicada envy. Right now, I wish I could be watching and hearing these noisy, redeyed, prune-sized, flying bumper-car bugs in the woods behind my Connecticut backyard. But I can’t because the habitat range of this year’s crop of these extraordinary insects reaches only as far north as […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is a staple of environmental politics. Take the case of the old stone dam on the Blackledge River in Glastonbury. The dam is likely to come down not because it’s the right ethical response to nature, or because it’s economically advisable, but because […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Though I hope to forget the divisive political campaign as soon as possible, I do want to keep those baseball embers glowing. Hence, I offer the following story about a Little League team that stayed on top for 840,000 years. Dubbed “hobbits” by the scientists who discovered them, this extinct group […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Late last month, more than 500 enraged citizens crammed into an auditorium in the sleepy hollow of Old Lyme to beat up on bureaucrats from Washington. Led by a gang of national and state senators, representatives, mayors, first selectmen and business leaders, they lambasted the Federal Railroad Administration for proposing a […]