My interview with Chris Nolan, director of ‘Oppenheimer’

I had fun interviewing Chris Nolan about his newest movie. I hope you enjoy the result. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-07/an-extended-interview-with-christopher-nolan-director-of-oppenheimer/#post-heading

OPPENHEIMER, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

The salmon problem

This is a wonderful in-depth piece on the farmed Atlantic salmon that you’ve probably been eating, which does not come from the Atlantic Ocean and, in Chile, causes all sorts of environmental problems. https://thebulletin.org/2023/06/patagonian-paradise-lost-the-environmental-hazards-of-farming-fish-in-a-warming-world/#post-heading

CJR on me, again

If the Columbia Journalism Review keeps writing about me this favorably, I’m going to have to start a CJR/Mecklin vertical. https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/john_mecklin_ai_existential_story.php

Columbia Journalism Review interviews me

Covering Climate Now interviewed me for CJR and Andrew McCormick, who conducted the interview, was very kind in making me sound much more eloquent than I am. But the interview is good fundamentally because it does a pretty good job of presenting who I am

The Ike Dike is a $29 billion dollar project that won’t work

This Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists/MIT analysis shows that almost 4,900 sites that handle toxic chemicals sit in flood-prone areas of Texas and Louisiana, posing a catastrophic environmental threat if a major hurricane hits the wrong place. Which it inevitably will. The government’s current plan to protect Gulf Coast infrastructure—the $29 billion Ike Dike, which would harden 70 miles of Texas coastline with artificial dunes, huge gates, and a new sea wall that wraps around the city of Galveston—will simply not stand up to the major storms that are its raison d’etre, experts say. If the big one hits the Houston Ship Channel head on, LSU researcher John Pardue says, “It really is a potential Chernobyl, The Houston area has such a large number of tanks and the potential for so many chemical releases all at once.”

The full story (with interactive maps showing flood-endangered industrial sites and the chemicals they contain) is here.

Why $750 billion? The defense budget insanity

The United States spends as much as China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia spend on defense—combined. And remember: Many of the countries in that list are US allies. The continuous, almost automatic approval of ever-higher US defense budgets is a scandal in plain sight. Someone ought to do something about it. That someone is you. https://thebulletin.org/premium/2021-09/introduction-can-we-make-overspending-on-the-military-politically-costly/

Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book is worth reading

I was lucky enough to get to interview Elizabeth Kolbert about her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. The book is good, she’s brilliant, and I thought the interview went reasonably well. You can judge for yourself. https://thebulletin.org/2021/03/watch-now-under-a-white-sky-the-nature-of-the-future/

The missile we don’t need

Why is America getting a new $100 billion nuclear weapon?

This story is going everywhere on the interwebs. That’s because it’s first-rate journalism.

Columbia Journalism Review: That Bulletin is pretty damn interesting

This may be the best outside appraisal of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists I have ever read. The author, Tammy Kim, did an amazing job of reporting and writing. The result is more than worth reading, and it is here.

Bioluminescent dolphins. You know you want to see them.

There’s an algae bloom along the California coast that makes the water glow in the dark. Which is cool. But nowhere near as cool as these bioluminscent dolphins, streaking through the algae glow. So I just went with it.