New Scientist has published a thorough overview of global warming, and why the hacked emails are largely irrelevant.

The leaking of emails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, UK, has led to a media and political storm. The affair is being portrayed as a scandal that undermines the science behind climate change. It is no such thing, and here’s why.

We can be 100 per cent sure the world is getting warmer

Read the full article.

One of the main arguments by young-earth creationists against evolution actually has nothing to do with either creation or evolution.  The argumant goes like this:

• With evolution there is no need for a god.
• The study of evolution therefore leads to atheism.
• Since God is the arbiter of right and wrong, disbelief in God removes any perceived need for a moral filter a person might have.
• Therefore, evolution is wrong because it leads to amorality.

While this is just so wrong on so many levels – akin to “Your research is completely false because I dislike your sweater” – there is something even more. It turns out that it is belief in god that leads to a wandering moral compass.

A recent study, described in New Scientist, shows that people map their own beliefs on what they think God believes. In other words, people presume God’s beliefs based on their own, rather than the other way around. Thus, as people’s beliefs change, so does their presumption of God’s beliefs.

 This means that there is no absolute and permanent recognition of what God believes, and thus there is no definitive moral compass imposed by the Almighty. Even worse, it says that whatever a person believes, if they are a believer, they will tend to think that their personal beliefs are shared by God, and therefore just.

As an argument, this does not, of course, demonstrate the validity of evolution (there is plenty of that elsewhere) any more than the original argument refutes it. It does, however, suggest that creationists should not throw stones. Or, to take it a step further, maybe it suggests that evolution should be taught because it removes the wandering moral compass, leading to greater morality. 

I’m just sayin’.

One scientific issue that may polarize people even more than evolution is anthropogenic global warming – the idea that CO2 from human activity is throwing off the natural balance, leading to significant, possibly irreversible,  greenhouse warming.

The proponents argue that there is significant evidence that CO2 levels have risen faster since industrialization than any time in the geologic record, and that the temperature and climate profile are consistent with rising temperatures induced by GHG’s. Increased energy in the atmosphere could not only lead to rising temperatures, but increased storm activity, melting ice caps, increasing sea levels, and ultimately economic disaster and the displacement of a significant portion of humanity.

The naysayers claim that the evidence is inconclusive (at best) or nonexistant (at worst). Further, they argue that Global Warming Propagandists (or “Warmers”) are threatening global economic stability for personal agenda, or even personal gain.

Significant fuel for this dispute was tossed into the flames this week with the “hacking” of emails and data files from the University of East Anglia Climate Reasearch Unit (CRU). Selected exerpts mention using “tricks” in the data, and “hiding” a decline in temperatures. Sites sharing this information – purporting to blow the whistle – go over the top with rhetoric about how ALL of climate research from “warmers” and alarmists can immediately be dismissed because of clear evidence of fraud and conspiracy.

Folks, chill.

This leak of private information in no way informs the debate. None. This is private communication, out of context, taken illegally. Third party interpretation and trumpeting is not even remotely reliable. Why? because those spreading the files have as much of an agenda as they purport the “warmists” to have. Innuendo and quote mining is not the way to win an argument upon which the future of humanity may rest. Sorry, but it’s not.

There are legitimate scientific questions still outstanding about climate change, because we don’t have a control earth to compare with. But the venue to resolve those problems is in the scientific literature, not FOX news. But, you cry, how can we trust the Warmist conspirators to allow unbiased peer review? Well, the criminal responsible for stealing and publishing the CRU files has seen to that. Climate research will now undergo an extra-thorough level of review, simply because everyone is watching. Carefully. Of course, that goes for all climate research, including that indicating minimal anthropogenic effect. So perhaps the theft will have a beneficial effect in that scrutiny will be even more thorough (not that it wasn’t before), but perhaps it will also delay important research.

In the end, I suspect nothing useful will come from the stolen files, but the potential for setbacks to important research is significant.

Love it.

A common argument against past human achievements – that they are either fraudulent, or the result of superhuman intervention – is the supposed impossibility of those achievements. The Nazca lines, the pyramids, astronmical discoveries, Stonehenge etc.  A whole field of woo, starting with von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? is based on the premise that past humans could not have been clever enough to do things, simply because we, today, don’t know exactly how they did it.

The argument devolves to “I can’t figure it out, so how could they figure it out?” or, more simply “Nobody in the past could possibly be smarter than me.”

That’s why I love this TED video. It shows a simple device invented millenia ago, but I would wager far fewer than 1% of people alive today – especially in the developed world – could figure out how to make one.

A recent article in New Scientist is a perfect illustration of how mutations can be beneficial, how beneficial genes can spread rapidly, and how humans are still evolving.

The mutation is a single amino acid change that appears to provide complete resistance to kuru, a prion disease similar to CJD or mad cow disease. Kuru was passed on through ritual cannibalism in Papua New Guinea, when family members ate the brain of the dead out of respect. Of course, once the disease began to spread, more funerals would lead to more cannibalism, which lead to more disease.

The protective gene is thought to have arisen within the last 200 years, and spread rapidly due to the selective pressure of kuru on the community.

As reported in Science Daily, Dr. Joe Thornton at the University of Oregon has reconstructed an evolutionary sequence of an “irreducibly complex” system – alosterone and its receptor.

“Our work demonstrates a fundamental error in the current challenges to Darwinism,” said Thornton. “New techniques allowed us to see how ancient genes and their functions evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. We found that complexity evolved piecemeal through a process of Molecular Exploitation — old genes, constrained by selection for entirely different functions, have been recruited by evolution to participate in new interactions and new functions.”

As a dancer and choreographer I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my life defending something that’s very hard to see. I mean, people see dance, they see the dancers, but they have trouble understanding why it’s valuable, what you are trying to say.  And in some ways I feel that’s reflected in what I learned initially from the physicists. It’s very abstract, it’s hard to see, people have trouble trying to understand it. It has tremendous value to us as a civilization but it’s not easy to explain.

 -Liz Lerman

This story from New Scientist  illustrates the power behind the complexity of living things. It was once thought that all new genes had to come from modifications of existing genes. This is of course great fodder for creationists, who then ask “where did the first genes come from?” A few years ago, de novo genes – genes that arose from scratch from previously non-coding DNA – were found in fruit flies. It now turns out that humans, too, carry de novo genes. Three genes carried by humans, but no other primates, appear to be the result of mutations in nonsense, or non-coding sequences of DNA. The fact that these genes are active in all sequenced human genomes implies that they do perform a beneficial function, though what that is, is as yet unknown.

This is somewhat off topic from my usual posts, but it is something I feel rather strongly about. With the current US administration discussing socialized health care, the conservative critics are once again screaming that this would raise the cost, limit accessibility, stifle innovation, infringe on personal rights, yada yada.
Let me just say this:
BULLSHIT.
Those in the US with scads of cash who can afford premium health care and premium insurance have access to some of the best medical care in the world. And the most expensive. These people are the minority. The majority of the population has access to public clinics, or limited-insurance sponsored clinics that get paid extra for not referring patients to the tests they need. Oh, and they can’t afford the outrageous cost of prescription meds, which can be many times the cost of the same meds in other countries.
Let me make a comparison with other state-operated social services, such as, say, police and fire departments.
Imagine the following scenario:
You get mugged at knifepoint, the thief steals your wallet and runs into an alley. You call for help, a policeman shows up, but refuses to help until you have paid up front. You protest that the whole point is that you just had your wallet stolen with all your money, and the thief is standing right over there. Still, he refuses to assist until a deposit is given.
Or imagine your house catches fire, you get your family out, the fire truck arrives, and the driver says they cannot begin until they are paid. You explain that your money is inside the burning house, and would they be able to bill you afterward. They could, says the fireman, but they would need some collateral. Like your house. Which is rapidly loosing value…
These same scenarios are panning out in emergency rooms and medical offices across the country. But it’s an issue of liberty. My ass.
Properly run healthcare is cheaper, with greater accessibility for more people. And as for innovation, most of it comes from research institutions (ie universities), not private medical offices.
These arguments are simply smokescreens from idealogues who are rabidly allergic to anything even remotely resembling socialism. But socilaized medicine is not communism. And if you think it is, well, we can just tell that to the police and fire departments as well the next time you run into trouble.