By Dr. Robert Thorson I love it! Government in general and Chicago’s park district in particular is letting us decide whether we should swim in our own effluent or not. Paralleling astronaut Neil Armstrong’s first small step on the moon, I see this as one small swim for mankind. With luck, the contagion will grow, […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The heat is oppressive. I turn on my air conditioner. The electricity flows in from Millstone Nuclear Power near Niantic, where high-level radioactive waste steadily accumulates on the shore of Long Island Sound. Why? Because there’s nowhere else to put it. Why? A political failure no less tragi-comic than our failure […]

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 As the presidential election draws near, I’ve become astonished at how little the environment seems to matter. Based on the three debates it sits in back of the political bus, far behind the seats for national economy, taxes, medical reform, foreign policy and the sharing of power. I’d like to see […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I applaud President Barack Obama’s recent climate change policy speech. Fundamentally, he’s doing what he believes is right. Ethically, he’s delivering on a promise he made in 2009 to the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen: to cut U.S. carbon emissions 17 percent by 2020. Politically, he’s invoking executive authority to […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson ‘So the last shall be first, and the first last.” This quote from the King James Bible is my response to Scientific American’s Top 10 stories of 2013. Their tenth-ranked story about the BRAIN initiative is my top story for the year. I refer to Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson ‘Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence?” asks a new study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, which should be required reading for all members of the U.S. “do-nothing” Congress. Psychologist Dan M. Kahan and his colleagues proved […]

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 Rumors of war are on the horizon. Political wars pitting deeply held convictions about private property against equally held convictions about the interconnectedness of all things. One side is fueled by the first law of private property: that it belongs to someone and not everyone. The other side is fueled by […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson When I first visited Dock & Dine, a notable waterfront restaurant in Old Saybrook, I was struck by its extreme exposure to Long Island Sound, the fury of river flooding, coastal storms and shifting sands. It leans into the nor’easters coming off the Sound at the mouth of the Connecticut River, […]