As of today, my new blog is ready for visitors.  Besides the usual topics I’ve written about here, I’ll write on science, technology and society topics that didn’t seem quite right for Prometheus.  Find me at:

http://pascophronesis.wordpress.com

I’ve imported my Prometheus posts to the new site, though you should still be able to find them here.

I want to thank a few people.  Roger, for giving me the space to write.  Ami, for keeping things running online really smoothly, and handling the rare technical issue deftly.  Lisa and Kevin, for keeping me in the loop while Roger was on sabbatical, and Genevieve, who uploaded some of my earliest posts.

Last, and not least, thanks to all who read and all who commented.  Without your feedback (or pushback), my posts wouldn’t have been nearly as good, and probably focused on a narrow set of topics.  Please visit me at the new site and speak up.

May 13, 2008. Roger Pielke Jr. CIRES, CU Boulder. “Have we underestimated the Carbon Dioxide Challenge?” Details. RedFish, 5:30PM, 2027 13th Street.

I’ll be blogging on climate policy over at the Breakthrough blog, check it out, my first post is up!

[A long-time reader who wishes to remain anonymous asked us to post the following excerpt from a Joe Klein column in Time magazine. -Ed.]

This is not the first time this kind of free-range lunacy has been visited upon me. Indeed, it happens, oh, once a week to each of us who post on Swampland (Karen Tumulty, Jay Carney and Ana Marie Cox are the others). A reasonable reader might ask, Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren’t you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn’t you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history? And why on earth does any of this matter?

First, let me say that I really enjoy blogging. It’s a brilliant format for keeping readers up to date on the things I care about—and for exchanging information with them. . .

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable. Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

And that is precisely the danger here. Fury begets fury. Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party’s bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end. Limbaugh’s show—where Dick Cheney frequently expatiates—has become the voice of the Republican establishment. The same could happen to the Democrats. The spitballs aimed at me don’t matter much. The spitballs aimed at Harman, Clinton and Obama are another story. Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded. (Obama even said so in his statement explaining his vote.) Each knows, as Senator Jim Webb has said repeatedly, that we must be more careful getting out of Iraq than we were getting in. But they allowed themselves to be bullied into a more simplistic, more extreme position. Why? Partly because they fear the power of the bloggers to set the debate and raise money against them. They may be right—in the short (primary election) term; Harman faced a challenge from the left in 2006. In the long term, however, kowtowing to extremists is exactly the opposite of what this country is looking for after the lethal radicalism of the Bush Administration.

After three years of blogging, I have decided to take an extended break that just-so-happens to coincide with my sabbatical leave. Oh, I’ll be promoting my book here and there, but I won’t be posting regularly. It has been a fun experience, even with the obvious downsides, but it is time to close this chapter.

Prometheus, I hope, will continue to provoke and irritate, as is our custom, so don’t go far!

Only sort of . . . Nature has set up a new blog on climate science and policy and the opportunity to join a blog community of people with very diverse views has proven too good to pass up.

The new blog is call Climate Feedback. It has just gone live with a new post by yours truly on climate variability and trends, plus posts by Hans von Storch and Eduadro Zorita on how the scientific process worked in the case of the “hockey stick”. Kevin Vranes will also be blogging there.

As the website gets up to full speed I plan on concentrating my climate-related posts at the Nature blog and more general science policy stuff here. We’ll see how it goes.

Have a look!

I am interviewed by the website ClimateandInsurance.org, check it out here.

Out any day now:

I’ll be taking a spring blogging break . . . back in April! But stay tuned, Kevin is in charge while I’m offline.

We have recently asked people to register as a less subtle way of encourgaging people to post under their own identities.

In particular, the commenters who go by Eli Rabett and Dano continue to submit anonymous posts despite our intentions. Both are welcome to participate, but only under their real names. Anonymous posts from these two will continue to be deleted. This is how we have decided to operate our weblog, and we respectfully ask that you follow these guidelines or comment elsewhere. I do not expect to continue discussing our comment policy, and we will simply delete those comments that do not follow the spirit of our guidelines.

If for some legitimate reason anyone desires to post a comment anonymously, then you can email a comment to Kevin or I noting as much and we will be happy to share your comment on the blog.

Thanks all.