Category Archives: Science And Society

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Global Warming

40 Comments

…and the sun:

I applaud Meehl’s reluctance to go beyond where the science takes him. For all I know, he’s right. But such humility and skepticism seem to manifest themselves only when the data point to something other than the mainstream narrative about global warming. For instance, when we have terribly hot weather, or bad hurricanes, the media see portentous proof of climate change. When we don’t, it’s a moment to teach the masses how weather and climate are very different things.

No, I’m not denying that man-made pollution and other activity have played a role in planetary warming since the Industrial Revolution.

But we live in a moment when we are told, nay lectured and harangued, that if we use the wrong toilet paper or eat the wrong cereal, we are frying the planet. But the sun? Well, that’s a distraction. Don’t you dare forget your reusable shopping bags, but pay no attention to that burning ball of gas in the sky — it’s just the only thing that prevents the planet from being a lifeless ball of ice engulfed in darkness. Never mind that sunspot activity doubled during the 20th century, when the bulk of global warming has taken place.

What does it say that the modeling that guaranteed disastrous increases in global temperatures never predicted the halt in planetary warming since the late 1990s? (MIT’s Richard Lindzen says that “there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.”) What does it say that the modelers have only just now discovered how sunspots make the Earth warmer?

It says that there is some other agenda going on.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Only Forty Years Left For The Planet

14 Comments

Because they aren’t taking our advice to not shout:

Great. So if there is an advanced civilization on Gliese 581d, the very first communication it’ll get from us will be a two-hour long text spam attack. How, exactly, is several billion variations of “u r teh suxxors rofl” and “OMG ur my new BFF aliens!!11!!!” supposed to convince an alien planet that we’re actually intelligent. More importantly, how will this convince them that we’re actually good neighbors?

Seriously, why should they be allowed to put the entire planet at risk like this? Listening is one thing, but deliberately broadcasting (or even, as in this case, narrowcasting) our presence doesn’t seem very smart to me.

Philosophy, Science And Society, Social Commentary

A Grand Bargain?

11 Comments

…over evolution?

There are atheists who go beyond declaring personal disbelief in God and insist that any form of god-talk, any notion of higher purpose, is incompatible with a scientific worldview. And there are religious believers who insist that evolution can’t fully account for the creation of human beings.

I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic.

If both groups were to truly accept that power, the landscape might look different. Believers could scale back their conception of God’s role in creation, and atheists could accept that some notions of “higher purpose” are compatible with scientific materialism. And the two might learn to get along.

The believers who need to hear this sermon aren’t just adherents of “intelligent design,” who deny that natural selection can explain biological complexity in general. There are also believers with smaller reservations about the Darwinian story. They accept that God used evolution to do his creative work (“theistic evolution”), but think that, even so, he had to step in and provide special ingredients at some point.

Perhaps the most commonly cited ingredient is the human moral sense — the sense that there is such a thing as right and wrong, along with some intuitions about which is which. Even some believers who claim to be Darwinians say that the moral sense will forever defy the explanatory power of natural selection and so leave a special place for God in human creation.

I’m not as sanguine as Bob Wright about the prospects for a truce between fundamentalist atheists and theists. I do believe in a teleology of the universe, and if he can make a scientific case for it, more power to him, but unlike creationists, I have sufficient confidence in my faith that I don’t demand that science validate it.

Science And Society, Social Commentary

No Surprise To Me

9 Comments

Women are more attracted to men who are already taken. This matches up with my own experience that wearing a ring can be a chick magnet. It’s unfair, too, because it creates something like a barrier to entry. Errrr….so to speak.

There’s also this other shocking news:

Other researchers say the study provides interesting insights into mate poaching. “It tells us something about the role of social desirability in mate preference,” says Fhionna Moore of the University of Abertay Dundee, UK, whose own research has shown that richer women are more choosy about mates.

Richer women are more choosy about mates? Who would have guessed?

How do I get money for these kinds of studies? I think I’d like to do a study on whether or not men date women to have sex. Maybe there’s something in the stimulus bill.

[Update a few minutes later]

I would note that this is due to a similar psychology among employers — it’s easier to find a job, and you’re more attractive to them, if you already have one. It gets tougher to get one when you’ve been laid off.

General, Science And Society

A One-Two Punch?

5 Comments

It’s still too far out to be worried, but the long-range tracks on tropical storms Ana and Bill (which is expected to form late today or tomorrow) both have south Florida in the middle of the bullseye for late next week and weekend. It’s worth noting that this is the latest first named storm since 1992. The name of that one was Andrew, which hit exactly where the current five-day track for Ana is centered, in Homestead. But it came in from a more northern, unobstructed path than the models are currently showing for Ana, which may be weakened by crossing the mountains of the Greater Antilles. We’ll know more in a couple days.

[Update late afternoon]

Bill is born.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space

The Last Public Meeting

15 Comments

…of the Augustine panel was today. Clark Lindsey has been keeping an eye on it.

[Update mid afternoon, Pacific time]

I don’t know what Bill White means in comments when he says that Jeff Greason “blew up the meeting,” but there is an old concept from the military (and later from the computer industry) called FUBAR: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (though some think that the first word may actually be something else…).

That’s a fair description of the US human spaceflight program, and has been, really, since the end of Apollo, if not before, at least in terms of being effective at getting humans into space in reasonable numbers. My New Atlantis essay was a long-winded way of saying that, with some recommendations for fixing it, which are probably politically unfeasible. But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be pointed out.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bobby Block has a real-time report over at the Orlando Sentinel:

“We are on a path right now for a system on a close order of just double the budget to operate,” said panel member Jeff Greason of Constellation, which stemmed from President George W. Bush’s 2005 “vision” to return Americans to the moon by 2020 and then move on to Mars.

Greason added that if Santa Claus gave the program to the country fully developed, NASA would still have to cancel it because the agency could not afford to launch it.

Greason and former astronaut Sally Ride later questioned the utility of the Ares I rocket, which was supposed to launch humans to the international space station by 2015 but which now won’t be ready until well after the station is deorbited in 2016, as NASA currently plans.

Constellation has spent more than $3 billion in the past four years. And while the panel stopped short of recommending that the program be killed, it wasn’t immediately clear what financial solution it might suggest.

Presumably, they’re assuming that the administration is smart enough to draw their own conclusions…

[Update a few minutes later]

Clark has a late update:

Some discussion items that stand out include:
/– Agreed that splashing the ISS in 2015 is not realistic so all program options that include it will be eliminated.
/– The program of record (i.e. Ares I/V/Orion/Altair), which exceeds the expected budget substantially, will no longer be in the options table but kept separately just as a reference.
/– There will be two options that fit the expected budget. Others will assume growth up to $3B more than current annual budget.
/– A lengthy discussion of the Mars First option seems to have led to its removal. Instead the Lunar and Deep Space options will be presented as preparing the technology and in-space infrastructure for Mars missions later. The current baseline is far too expensive and any other scenario would involve too much sci-fi.

Emphasis mine. Bye bye, Constellation.

Here’s the chart of all the options being evaluated. There is no obvious weighting of the criteria, but to first order, all of the options seem to suck. There are a lot more negative numbers than positive ones. None of them are scored as sustainable. It really is an unsolvable Rubik’s cube. I don’t envy the panel members. Or the new NASA administration.

[Late evening update]

Commenters indicate that the numbers in the chart are changing in real time. As I noted above, I don’t envy the panel, or the new administrator and his deputy who have to implement whatever comes out of this process.

Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Asteroid Impact Craters

5 Comments

Some great pictures from space, which is the best place from which to see them.

But we still don’t seem to be taking the problem seriously:

NASA is charged with seeking out nearly all the asteroids that threaten Earth but doesn’t have the money to do the job, a federal report says.

That’s because even though Congress assigned the space agency this mission four years ago, it never gave NASA money to build the necessary telescopes, the new National Academy of Sciences report says.

Because space isn’t important. Even when it is.