Category Archives: Science And Society

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Still Giving Them Hell

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Freeman Dyson continues to refuse to be part of the “consensus”:

Wearing an effusively-colored tie that set off his gray suit, Mr. Dyson began his talk at the Nassau Club by encouraging the audience to interrupt him as he spoke, since, he declared, “it’s much more fun to have an argument than do a monologue.”

In the absence of audience interruptions, Mr. Dyson had an argument anyway with the scores of people (like Al Gore) who weren’t present to defend their belief in the dire consequences of global warming. (“There’s no accounting for human folly,” Mr. Dyson said when asked about Mr. Gore’s Nobel Prize.) Saying that on a recent trip he and his wife found Greenlanders to be delighted with their warmer climate and increased tourism, Mr. Dyson suggested that representing “local warming by a global average is misleading.” In his comments at both the Nassau Club and Labyrinth, he decried the use of computer modeling to make “tremendously dogmatic” predictions about worldwide trends, without acknowledging the “messy, muddy real world” and the non-climatic effects of increased carbon dioxide. “There is no substitute for widely-conducted field operations over a long time,” he told the Nassau Club audience, citing the “enormous gaps in knowledge and sparseness of observation” that characterize the work of global warming experts.

Why can’t some people get with the program? Thankfully, though, mz will be along any minute to call Professor Dyson “stupid.”

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

A Corrective

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…to the charlatans like Jim Hansen. Here are two useful books. First, Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg who, while he doesn’t deny the science behind global warming, he doesn’t need to, because he has actually prioritized useful government policy actions based on cost and benefit (something that the warm-mongers refuse to do, e.g., Kyoto). Second, from Chris Horner, Red Hot Lies, which is well described by its subtitle: “How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed.

Yup. As many reviewers note, “climate change” isn’t really about science–it’s just the latest ideology to come along for the collectivists to use in their latest attempt to bend us to their will.

Science And Society, Technology and Society

Better (And Longer) Living

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…through RNA interference:

In monkeys, a single injection of a drug to induce RNA interference against PCSK9 lowered levels of bad cholesterol by about 60 percent, an effect that lasted up to three weeks. Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology company that developed the drug, hopes to begin testing it in people next year.

The drug is a practical application of scientific discoveries that are showing that RNA, once considered a mere messenger boy for DNA, actually helps to run the show. The classic, protein-making genes are still there on the double helix, but RNA seems to play a powerful role in how genes function.

“This is potentially the biggest change in our understanding of biology since the discovery of the double helix,” said John S. Mattick, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Of course, as the article points out, there’s still a lot we don’t know, and there are likely to be unforeseen side effects until we understand how this all works much better. But this is a breakthrough in itself.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s an interesting article on how far genetics has come in the ninety-nine years since the word “gene” was coined.

[via Derbyshire, who has other thoughts]

Science And Society, Technology and Society

When Are The Human Tests?

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A new drug that is a thousand times more powerful than resveratrol:

In the study, scientists fed the mice a high-fat, high-calorie diet mixed with doses of SRT1720 for approximately 10 weeks. The mice were given 100 or 500 milligrams of fat per kilogram of body weight each day (a high dose even for humans). The mice did not exercise regularly, although the scientists tested the animals’ exercise capacity, or endurance, by making them run on a treadmill. “The mice treated with the compound ran significantly longer,” says Auwerx. The drug also protected the animals from the negative effects of high-calorie diets: metabolic disorders, obesity-related diseases, and insulin resistance. It even improved the mice’s cholesterol.

It is significant that the drug mimics the effects of a calorie-restricted diet, since this has previously been tied to increased life expectancy, says William Evans, a professor of geriatric medicine, nutrition, and physiology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

It’s as if the couch-potato mice underwent a strict diet and exercise regime, says David Sinclair, a biologist at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, who is one of the cofounders of Sirtris but was not involved in the current study. The new study “is a major step forward, showing that we can design and synthesize potent, druglike molecules that could slow down the aging process,” says Sinclair.

I think that people are going to be amazed at the life-extension and health advances coming along in the next few years. It makes it all the more the shame that we continue to lose people who we might save if they could just hang on long enough.