This week in science: An ill wind blows

Yes, Issac could hit Tampa, head on or glancing, it could come by land or sea, and it will probably be in the air, next week, regardless of the precise track the storm takes, but looks reasonably good for now:

The Republican National Convention begins on Monday in Tampa, Florida. The latest 11 am EDT wind probability forecast from NHC gives Tampa a 17% chance of receiving tropical storm-force winds and a 1% chance of receiving hurricane-force winds on Monday. Tampa is in the NHC cone of uncertainty, though near the edge of it. At a minimum, Tampa will receive very heavy rains and wind gusts in excess of 40 mph. Isaac is going to be hard-pressed to bring hurricane-force winds to the city, though, since any path that takes it close to Tampa would keep the storm too close to land for significant intensification to occur. I put the odds of a mass evacuation being ordered for Tampa during the convention at 1%. I have detailed information on Tampa's storm surge vulnerability in a post from last week.

• Todd Akin actually sits on the House Science Committee, but he's not alone in the GOP when it comes to breathtakingly ignorant pseudoscientific statements about human reproduction. In fact Akin's, umm, "science adviser" in the reproductive phsyiology Akin himself now claims is completely bogus, is one of Romney's confidants.
• Texas took a turn to the right in the last election'any further right and they'll be in danger of falling off the edge of the flat earth they cherish. The tea party winners have big big plans for Texas education and K-12 science curricula.
• I may have something more comprehensive in the next week, but I have to say climate blogger Joe Romm's new book on how to communicate science (Order info) has received gushing praise from normally hard-to-impress writers:

  Everybody who cares about why science doesn't get through to the public should read it. Basically, it is a powerful treatise on the neglected art of rhetoric, the technique mastered by Shakespeare, Lincoln, and the writers of the King James Bible.