This seems huge. Researchers have preserved a rabbit brain down to the neuron.
Category Archives: Science And Society
Mosquitos
Imagining a world without them:
“The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That’s the consequence,” says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be “less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools”, says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila.
They kill more humans than any other animal species, by many orders of magnitude. I wouldn’t miss them.
[Update a few minutes later]
We have the technology to wipe out all Zika-spreading mosquitos.
Why stop there? Go after every species that vectors blood. As the article notes, though, gene drive is not without risk.
George Washington’s Winters
What is the right climate?
Why are we defining ‘dangerous climate change’ with respect to the climate of the 18th century, which was the coldest period in the last millennia, with wicked winters? Why not use a reference point of 2000 or 1970? The IPCC doesn’t provide a convincing explanation for the overall warming between 1750 and 1950; according to climate models, human causes contributed only a very small amount to the global warming to during this period (so presumably this overall warming was caused by natural climate variability). Co-opting the period between 1750 and 1950 into the AGW argument muddies the scientific and the policy waters.
It would make much more sense — from a scientific perspective, from the perspective of adaptation and engineering, and in the public communication of climate change — to refer to warming relative to a more recent reference period. Since the emissions reference periods are between 1990 and 2005, this also adds to the argument of citing a more recent reference period for defining ‘dangerous’.
The argument that human caused warming is already ‘dangerous’ — widely made by politicians, the media and some scientists — flies in the face of scientific evidence reported by the IPCC AR5 and SREX. Extreme weather events were worse earlier in the 20th century, and sea level has been rising for millennia, with recent rates of sea level rise comparable to what was observed in the middle 20th century.
It’s almost as though there’s some sort of political agenda at work.
The Science-Correction Process
It’s as broken as peer review.
As with civil (and military) space, we have a 20th-century system in place for the 21st century.
Update a few minutes later]
Related: Why scientists hide their doubts about global warming from the media.
[Update a cuple minutes later]
Sorry, HTML was broken for first link, should be fixed now.
#ProTip To Climate Scientists
When you say “the science is settled,” you are arguing for an end to your research funding.
Oops.
This is all part of the Democrats’ war on science:
Looking forward to a new U.S. President next year, whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power, I don’t expect a continuation of the status quo on climate science funding. The Democrats are moving away from science towards policy – who needs to spend all that funding on basic climate science research? Global climate modeling might be ‘saved’ if they think these climate models can support local impact assessments (in spite of widespread acknowledgement that they cannot). If the Republicans are elected, Ted Cruz has stated he will stop all funding support for the IPCC and UNFCCC initiatives. That said, he seems to like data and basic scientific research.
Heh.
[Update a few minutes later]
“It’s a bit complicated.”
You don’t say.
Life Extension
A 25% increase in healthy lifespan in mice, by genetic surgery. It’s unclear, though, if this can be done to existing phenotypes.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a more interesting take from Ed Yong.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, they do actually seem to be clearing senescent cells from normal mice. This is pretty exciting stuff.
Why Settle Space?
Dale Skran critiques a strawmannish article from a few days ago, so I don’t have to.
Violating The Norms And Ethos Of Science
A roundup of links and discussion of the latest in scientific “transparency.”
In my opinion, science that has any policy implications (I’m looking at you, climate and nutrition) has gone completely off the rails.
The Food Pyramid Scheme
A call for an impartial scientific review of government guidelines.
They’re currently worse than useless.
Climate Models
Another example of their bogosity:
It occurs to me to wonder whether this error in the GISS-E2-R ocean mixing parameterisation, which gave rise to AMOC instability in the Pliocene simulation, might possibly account for the model’s behaviour in LU run 1. It looks to me as if something goes seriously wrong with the AMOC in the middle of the 20th century in that run, with no subsequent recovery evident.
But let’s make wealth-destroying policy based on this!
[Update on January 28th]
Insights from Karl Popper to break the gridlock in the climate debate.
It’s sad how so many people who (ironically) accuse me of being a “climate denier” or a “science denier” are so profoundly ignorant of how science actually works.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
An analysis from Judith Curry and Nic Lewis on the latest climate crap from Mann et al:
As I see it, this paper is a giant exercise in circular reasoning:
- Assume that the global surface temperature estimates are accurate; ignore the differences with the satellite atmospheric temperatures
- Assume that the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble can be used to accurately portray probabilities
- Assume that the CMIP5 models adequately simulate internal variability
- Assume that external forcing data is sufficiently certain
- Assume that the climate models are correct in explaining essentially 100% of the recent warming from CO2
In order for Mann et al.’s analysis to work, you have to buy each of these 5 assumptions; each of these is questionable to varying degrees.
You don’t say.