Category Archives: Science And Society

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Coming Climate Change Attractions

24 Comments

Are you ready for a new glacial advance?

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

It might be a PITA to dike Florida and Bangladesh, but it would be a lot easier than staving off half a mile of encroaching ice in the upper midwest and Europe. Crank up your SUV and build some new coal plants before it’s too late!

[Update later afternoon]

Well, it’s good news in the near term at least, for those living out west, which has had a drought for the past few years. This year was the biggest snow pack in this millennium.

[Thursday morning update]

The criticism begins.

General Science, Science And Society

Caught In The Act?

8 Comments

Some rapidly evolving lizards have been discovered on an Adriatic island:

The transplanted lizards adapted to their new environment in ways that expedited their evolution physically, Irschick explained.

Pod Mrcaru, for example, had an abundance of plants for the primarily insect-eating lizards to munch on. Physically, however, the lizards were not built to digest a vegetarian diet.

Researchers found that the lizards developed cecal valves–muscles between the large and small intestine–that slowed down food digestion in fermenting chambers, which allowed their bodies to process the vegetation’s cellulose into volatile fatty acids.

“They evolved an expanded gut to allow them to process these leaves,” Irschick said, adding it was something that had not been documented before. “This was a brand-new structure.”

Along with the ability to digest plants came the ability to bite harder, powered by a head that had grown longer and wider.

It will be interesting to see not only if there is a genetic basis for this change, but if they can still interbreed with the original species. If not, that’s called a “new species,” folks.

Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Feel-Good Disaster

18 Comments

Virginia Postrel writes about the economic ignorance of the global warm-mongers, a group that unfortunately includes all three presidential candidates. I just hope that Phil Gramm or someone can get McCain to come to his senses on the issue once he’s actually in office.

The connection between higher prices for energy and reduced carbon dioxide emissions may not have hit the national consciousness yet, but the LAT’s Margo Roosevelt reports that California utilities–and eventually their customers–are beginning to realize this isn’t just a symbolic issue.

…The DWP, to whom I pay my electric bills, wants out of the carbon dioxide caps. It apparently thinks the law shouldn’t apply to socialist enterprises.

Isn’t that always the way? The laws are for “the little people.”

Education, General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Darwin And Hitler

38 Comments

Derb has some thoughts:

As so often with creationist material, I’m not sure what the point is. Darwin’s great contribution to human knowledge, his theory of the origin of species, is either true, or it’s not. Is David saying: “When taken up by evil people, the theory had evil consequences. Therefore the theory must be false”? Is he asserting, in other words, that a true theory about the world could not possibly have evil consequence, no matter who picked it up and played with it, with no matter how little real understanding? Does David think that true facts cannot possibly be used for malign purposes? If that is what David is asserting, it seems to me an awfully hard proposition to defend. It is a true fact that E = mc2, and the Iranians are right at this moment using that true fact to construct nuclear weapons. If they succeed, and use their weapons for horrible purposes, will that invalidate the Special Theory of Relativity?

If David does not think that Darwin’s explanation for the origin of species is correct, let him give us his reasons; or better yet, an alternative explanation that we can test by observation. That a wicked man invoked Darwin’s name as an excuse to do wicked things tells us nothing, nada, zero, zippo, zilch about the truth content of Darwin’s ideas.

I always have to scratch my head at conservatives who are perfectly comfortable with Adam Smith’s invisible hand when it comes to markets, but can’t get their heads around the concept of emergent properties in the development of life. And of course, the opposite is true for liberalsfascists.

[Evening update]

Jonah Goldberg has more defense of Darwin (and Einstein). Bottom line, with which I agree:

Nazism was reactionary in that it sought to repackage tribal values under the guise of modern concepts. So was Communism. So are all the statist and collectivism isms. The only truly new and radical political revolution is the Lockean one. But, hey, I’ve got a book on all this stuff.

He does indeed.

General Science, Popular Culture, Science And Society

He’s Beyond The Event Horizon

John Wheeler has died:

Unlike some colleagues who regretted their roles after bombs were dropped on Japan, Wheeler regretted that the bomb had not been made ready in time to hasten the end of the war in Europe. His brother, Joe, had been killed in combat in Italy in 1944.

Wheeler later helped Edward Teller develop the even more powerful hydrogen bomb.

The name “black hole” — for a collapsed star so dense that even light could not escape — came out of a conference in 1967. Wheeler made the name stick after someone else had suggested it as a replacement for the cumbersome “gravitationally completely collapsed star,” he recalled.

“After you get around to saying that about 10 times, you look desperately for something better,” he told the Times.

He was a giant in physics, and inspired a lot of great science fiction. RIP.

General Science, Popular Culture, Science And Society

He’s Beyond The Event Horizon

John Wheeler has died:

Unlike some colleagues who regretted their roles after bombs were dropped on Japan, Wheeler regretted that the bomb had not been made ready in time to hasten the end of the war in Europe. His brother, Joe, had been killed in combat in Italy in 1944.

Wheeler later helped Edward Teller develop the even more powerful hydrogen bomb.

The name “black hole” — for a collapsed star so dense that even light could not escape — came out of a conference in 1967. Wheeler made the name stick after someone else had suggested it as a replacement for the cumbersome “gravitationally completely collapsed star,” he recalled.

“After you get around to saying that about 10 times, you look desperately for something better,” he told the Times.

He was a giant in physics, and inspired a lot of great science fiction. RIP.

General Science, Popular Culture, Science And Society

He’s Beyond The Event Horizon

1 Comment

John Wheeler has died:

Unlike some colleagues who regretted their roles after bombs were dropped on Japan, Wheeler regretted that the bomb had not been made ready in time to hasten the end of the war in Europe. His brother, Joe, had been killed in combat in Italy in 1944.

Wheeler later helped Edward Teller develop the even more powerful hydrogen bomb.

The name “black hole” — for a collapsed star so dense that even light could not escape — came out of a conference in 1967. Wheeler made the name stick after someone else had suggested it as a replacement for the cumbersome “gravitationally completely collapsed star,” he recalled.

“After you get around to saying that about 10 times, you look desperately for something better,” he told the Times.

He was a giant in physics, and inspired a lot of great science fiction. RIP.

Economics, Education, Political Commentary, Science And Society

This Would Be A Disaster

3 Comments

Academia has already been greatly damaged by post-modernists and an extreme leftist bias over the past few decades, but fortunately math and science have been spared, to date. Those days may be coming to an end, though, as Christina Hoff Sommers warns about the potential Title IXing of science, based (ironically) on shoddy science (similar to the “comparable worth” myth).