Maggie Koerth-Baker is a freelance science journalist and the science editor at BoingBoing.net. Her work has appeared in magazines like Discover and Popular Science, and online at sites like New Scientist and National Geographic News. She is currently working on a book about the future of energy in the United States, set to be published in March 2012 by Wiley and Sons.

Blog Posts

• A Twist on Climate Change, Risk, and Uncertainty

  The air grows thick. Dark clouds churn like a pot of boiling water overhead. The colors of reality become oversaturated—greens too green, yellow a sickly gold. This is what tornado weather looks like, and the United States has been hit with a lot of it lately. Make no mistake, the past two months don’t just seem to be particularly twister-laden. This isn’t one of those situations where an increased awareness of what’s happening outside our own home states has made an average number of tornadoes appear more spectacular. In just five months, the United States has experienced more tornadoes than we often get in an entire year. And far, far more people have died. 2011 is already the deadliest year for tornadoes since 1953. As of May 23rd, 498 people have been killed. That’s a big jump from normal. I was born in 1981. In my entire lifetime, annual tornado deaths in the United States have only broken the 100-person mark three other years—1984, 1998, and 2008. Clearly, there is something different about this year. The question is, “What?” Read »