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]
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.”
A conference, in San Francisco in October. Could be interesting and useful.
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.
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]
Some thoughts on overconfidence in the Singularity, from Jaron Lanier.
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.
Thoughts from Eric Raymond on the working conditions in IT and engineering, and the disparities between men and women.
[Update a while later]
Who will manage the mainframes?
Why it’s a bad idea to put the government in charge of our nutrition (and health care in general):
According to Scientific American, growing research into carbohydrate-based diets has demonstrated that the medical establishment may have harmed Americans by steering them toward carbs. Research by Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard, concludes that diets rich in carbohydrates that are quickly digestible—that is, with a high glycemic index, like potatoes, white rice, and white bread—give people an insulin boost that increases the risk of diabetes and makes them far more likely to contract cardiovascular disease than those who eat moderate amounts of meat and fewer carbs. Though federal guidelines now emphasize eating more fiber-rich carbohydrates, which take longer to digest, the incessant message over the last 30 years to substitute carbs for meat appears to have done significant damage. And it doesn’t appear that the government will change its approach this time around. The preliminary recommendations of a panel advising the FDA on the new guidelines urge people to shift to “plant-based” diets and to consume “only moderate amounts of lean meats, poultry and eggs.”
This seems like part of the general war on science. I think that the disastrous FDA food pyramid is driven by a combination of political correctness (it’s evil to use grain to feed cattle when children are starving in India), and corporate lobbying by Big Grain (funded by us, of course, via farm subsidies). But it’s one thing to have FDA recommend things — we can always ignore them if we inform ourselves. Much more troubling is having fascist nannies like Nurse Bloomberg force us to follow their recommendations.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Glenn has a question:
In an age when aggressive government agencies in places like New York City seek a greater hand in shaping Americans’ diets, the next set of guidelines, published later this year, could prove more controversial than usual because increasing scientific evidence suggests that some current federal recommendations have simply been wrong. Will a public-health establishment that has been slow to admit its mistakes over the years acknowledge the new research and shift direction? Or will it stubbornly stick to its obsolete guidelines?
Can we sue them and jail their executives, like we’d do if they were drug companies . . . .?
No, because you see, the drug companies are all about corporate greed and profits, whereas the bureaucrats have nothing in mind but our good health.