Category Archives: Science And Society

The Feeling Is Mutual

James Cameron says that climate-change skeptics are “swine.”

[Tuesday morning update]

Well, he can dish it out, but he can’t take it:

A real shame [he chickened out of the debate]. Would have been fun to watch the reaction to him calling skeptics “swine” to their faces, for once. Exit question: Forgive and forget? C’mon — he has important things to do this week!

Bwwaaack, buck buck buck buck, Bwwwaaaaack.

[Bumped]

Politics

not science:

The government report instantly made headlines for the astonishing conclusion that approximately 75 percent of the oil had been collected, burned, skimmed or simply disappeared. Given the magnitude of the spill — the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history — some scientists concluded it was premature to draw such conclusions.

Another independent study released this week estimated as much as 79 percent of the oil remains in the Gulf, beneath the water’s surface.

Lehr’s admission that the peer review wasn’t completed in advance of the report’s release undermines the administration’s claim that it was.

And then, there’s this:

Interior Department officials knew beforehand that President Obama’s six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would cost more than 23,000 jobs and inflict devastating economic damage throughout the region.

Even so, the administration was not deferred from defying a federal judge and doing it anyway.

You’d almost think that they want to destroy the economy. I’m not sure what they’d be doing differently if they did.

And I don’t want to hear any more partisan noise about a “Republican war on science.”

Whose Choice?

This is a fascinating article. A few years ago, in the context of his concerns about the general ability to redesign ourselves, I had a question for Stanley Kurtz:

Suppose we find that there is something different about the brains of gay men and women (a proposition for which there’s already abundant and growing evidence). If we can come up with an affordable, painless therapy that “fixes” this and converts them from “gay” to “straight,” should we a) allow them to take advantage of it, or b) forbid them from doing so, or c) require them to? And should “straight” (i.e., exclusively heterosexual) people be allowed to become gay, or bi?

I have a lot of thoughts about this but (to paraphrase Pascal) insufficient time to write them down right now (meetings all day). I will say, though, that in this particular case, I think that many of the “bioethicists” in question are less concerned about the ability of parents to design their children to be “normal” than they are about stigmatizing homosexuality.

[Update a while later]

Sorry, link’s fixed now.

The Bermuda Triangle

Solved?

Oceanographic surveyors of the sea floor in the area of the Bermuda Triangle and the North Sea region between continental Europe and Great Britain have discovered significant quantities of methane hydrates and older eruption sites.

Because of the correlations and existing data, the two envisioned what would happen when gigantic methane bubbles explode from natural fissures on the seafloor.

Makes sense to me. There would be no warning, and nothing you could do. You might be able to set up a warning system for aircraft, though, perhaps with satellite monitoring. I don’t think that ships would have the ability to escape. Too slow and unmaneuverable. Better to avoid the area, or perhaps to better map the deposits, and put them on the charts like other hazards.

[Via Geekpress]

The Big DNA Letdown

Thoughts on the (so far) overhype of genetic sequencing.

I think that there are going to be huge breakthroughs in health and longevity, but our understanding of genetics is currently much too dismal for them to come from DNA analysis in the near term.

My understanding is that the DNA is a recipe, not a blueprint. And while even with a blueprint of a house, the final product is still dependent on the carpenter, it is at least specified. A recipe can have much more varied outcomes, depending on the cook, and the available resources and ingredients.