Aug
15
2021
One of the first things a journalist learns covering science is this: Words are to science what numbers are to math. A researcher using the wrong word (or even misspelling it) in published conclusions is analogous to a mathematician...
May
24
2021
Isle de Jean Charles is now completely surrounded by open water. (Ted Jackson, NOLA.com)
Donald Boesch, the native New Orleanian whose long career in science has made him one of the world’s leading authorities on the causes and solutions to...
Feb
21
2021
Drilling rigs at the Port of Iberia in 2016. Advocate Staff File Photo
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago, Louisiana’s political and civic leaders admitted what science and facts on the ground had been shouting for decades:...
Jan
24
2021
President Joe Biden signs his first executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House. AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Anyone covering Louisiana’s battle for coastal survival, which includes its risks from climate change, will invariably come up against this criticism:...
Dec
27
2020
Delacroix in 2010. Photo by Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune
So how does 2020 grade in Louisiana’s struggle to prevent the environmental, economic and social disaster caused by its sinking, crumbling, drowning bottom third?
I’ll give it a “D.”
It avoided a solid “F”...
Mar
22
2020
Reporting to Louisianians about the existential threat climate change presents to our state’s coast often has me recalling one of Winston Churchill’s famous sayings: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried...
Mar
08
2020
Remember low-tar cigarettes?
In the 1960s and ’70s politicians from North Carolina and Kentucky were helping one of their most prominent industries fight an overwhelming tide of science and evidence proving the products they produced were spreading poisons and killing...
Nov
23
2019
Almost every day, news from around the world reinforces one of the most frustrating and dangerous paradoxes about our state: When it comes to its chances for coastal survival, Louisiana refuses to listen to its own best advice.
I’m talking...
Aug
18
2019
As long as I have been reporting and commenting on our various environmental problems, the most frequently asked questions from audiences has been how to make government respond to pressing issues, from our coastal crisis to protecting our air,...
Aug
04
2019
A question for your Sunday morning as you keep an eye on those tropical weather maps and world-record temperatures:
Should America’s taxpayers invest in finding cures for Ebola, West Nile virus, cancer and other deadly diseases — or just put that...
