Speedkill

As I mentioned before, Dr. Tim Flannery, author of The Weather-Makers came to MSU to give a lecture tonight. Flannery is an ecologist from Australia.

The night began with Mike Phillips, my state rep, telling us what the Montana legislature is doing to combat climate change. He told us about the formation of the Montana climate caucus and the Montana Climate Solution Act, which will be presented to the natural resources committee this Friday. Phillips’s speech then took a partisan turn. Prefacing his comments with the claim that he’s not a particularly partisan legislator, he attacked the state Republican party for “not getting it” and hindering legislative action on climate change. He mentioned Krayton Kearns as the Republicans’ “go-to guy on science” and that Kearns believes the whole thing is a giant scam. He concluded by saying that the Republicans will not get it regarding climate change unless we vote against them and that if we want things done about climate change, we must elect Democrats and re-elected Governor Schweitzer. The charitable interpretation of that is frustration at the Republican party and the uncharitable interpretation is a rather brazen attempt at what he said he wasn’t doing in his preface to those remarks. I’m inclined to be charitable, though I noticed that the crowd seemed uncomfortable with his comments and I would have preferred remarks advocating pressure on Republicans.

After that, Geoff Gamble, the president of MSU, spoke for a bit and then Flannery took the podium. His lecture focused more on what the effects of global warming will be and what we can do curb it than the science behind how we know the Earth is warming. I have no complaints there, but I doubt it convinced any skeptics in the audience. Flannery did an admirable job of laying out what effect climate change will have on our planet and the emerging technologies to stop it. He painted a “worst case” scenario of environmental stress on human beings causing increased socio-political strife. It was definitely more restrained than some of the doomsday, “all humans will die,” scenarios you occasionally hear from hyper-ventilating environmentalists. Questions followed, but nothing particularly noteworthy. I was too shy to jump up and ask my question, which was about his omission of nuclear power from the list of possible solutions to the problem.

All in all, it was a worthwhile lecture. Phillips’s comments make for more interesting blogging, but Flannery’s talk was definitely more educational and interesting.

Looks like Tim Flannery, author of The Weather Makers will be giving a lecture at MSU on Monday night.

Should be pretty interesting. I wonder how many anti-global warming crackpots denialist crackpots the lecture will attract?

Apparently, non-believers are 3 times more likely to die during open heart surgeries than believers. I’m sure the supporting evidence for that little factoid has been published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal. Right?

Right?

It seems strange that that claim is in the first paragraph of the story, but it’s mentioned nowhere else. It’s a pretty big claim, don’t you think?

Jay points out an anti-global warming post by a new Montana legislator. It’s not impressive. You can get the article here, which is probably the best way to go. The full site appears to have been designed in 1996, or by a team of 9 year olds. Seriously, frames, blinking text, and animated flag gifs are pure evil.

Anyway, onto the article. It’s mostly nonsensical conspiracy theorist rambling, as Jay so ably points out, so I won’t concern myself with that. This is what I want to discuss:

Carbon dioxide emission as a cause of global climate warming is the biggest hoax of the last 30 years. In 1975 the number one slot was held by those who proclaimed that the earth was entering the next ice age because economic growth was producing pollutants that were eating a hole in the ozone layer and letting the earth’s heat escape into space.

First off, this is simply a dumb reason not to believe in a scientific hypothesis. Scientific hypotheses are overturned constantly. Pick any scientific theory or hypothesis and some contradictory was probably advocated by scientists in the past. That’s sort of what happens with science. We gain more knowledge, progress is made, we know more about the world. So it’s simply ridiculous on its face.

Secondly, it’s simply wrong. Actually, it’s at best disingenuous and at worst completely false. There were some who promoted the idea that global cooling was imminent, due to the hole in the ozone layer. They were in the media, primarily (e.g. this Newsweek article). The scientific community didn’t approach anything more than there would be an ice age in the next 20,000 years; for example:

Future climate. Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth’s orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends – and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted.

The NAS in 1975 said they simply didn’t know:

…we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…

Of course, the report also said there was a finite probability of a imminent (within 100 years) significant global cooling. That, of course, tells us very little, especially considering the NAS’s assessment of the state of knowledge of the climate science community. It’s possible, but they weren’t in a position to say more than that. We are now and the evidence says that global warming is caused by humans.

The bottom line is that this is a climate skeptic myth. There’s plenty of information in the links above, including discussions of most scientific papers brought up by the purveyors of this tripe. There were alarmist media articles about global cooling then. There are alarmist media articles about global warming now. The difference is that the science backs up global warming now and it didn’t back up global cooling, according to the consensus of the day.

1

Gen-e-sis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins

by Robert Hazen

The title and subtitle say it all, really. This book is a fairly high level overview of what we know about the origin of life and some of scientists behind the search for answers. The author is a scientist working in the field and an active participant in some of the issues surrounding the origin of life.

The book is organized straightforwardly, starting with the question of what life is, progressing through the generation of organic molecules, and finishing with self-replicating polymers like RNA. Central to Hazen’s presentation is the idea of “emergence,” which essentially means the process by which unique and complex systems arise from simpler systems. The opposite of reductionism, as Hazen says. It’s a pretty simple concept, but difficult to quantify in meaningful ways. The book also features occasional “interludes” dealing with somewhat related topics like creationism and women in science. Hazen intertwines both quest and science throughout the book, giving us a glimpse at both the scientists doing the research and participating in the debate and the science they’re producing.

I’m hard pressed to find flaws in the book when I take it for what it is. Part of me wanted a less general view of things, but the other part of me knows I already read a fairly detailed book on the subject and got lost in the details. In the end, it does a pretty good job of giving the reader an overall view of the question of life’s origin along with details about the specific hypotheses involved. I also started off a little annoyed with the “quest” aspect of it, as I wasn’t reading the book for the scientists involved. That said, they turned out to be fairly interesting and even heart-breaking at times, as when Hazen describes a scientist (Glenn Goodfriend) succumbing to a tooth infection that had spread to his brain and Stephen Jay Gould going over his Cerion shells saying “20 more years is all I need” a few months before his death.

The science in the book is interesting to me, but I only understand it at a very basic level. Discussing it very thoroughly is beyond my ability. That said, I did find one thing interesting on a broader level. Hazen describes many experiments and theories that show promise and generate excitement at first, but later fail on some level. The book is occasionally anti-climactic. Hazen does mention that we learn plenty when experiments fail, as anyone interested in science knows, but it seems like he should have devoted more time to it. It’s something that seemed to pop up quite a bit early in the book and I wonder if an “interlude” on the subject wouldn’t have been a good idea. That’s my only real quibble, however. Hazen does an excellent job of presenting what science knows while making sure the reader understands that it’s dwarfed by what we don’t know.

If you’re interested in the subject, I whole-heartedly recommend this book. Hazen writes very well and communicates the scientific concepts in such a way to make them both understandable and interesting. And the next time some creationist says “evolutionists believe we came from rocks” you’ll have an understanding of the awe-inspiring process that lead to our precursors and realize just how stupid that statement is.

AgapePress is touting new research findings about stem cells from amniotic fluid. As we all know Agape is always on the front line promoting the successes of science in improving the lives of God’s children.

What? That’s not what the article’s about? Oops. Agape sees this as a vindication of stem cell research opponents:

(AgapePress) – An opponent of embryonic stem-cell research says a new report from U.S. scientists revealing the presence of pluripotent stem cells in amniotic fluid offers confirmation of what pro-life groups have been saying for years — that is, that advancing medical knowledge does not require the destruction of human embryos.

Researchers with Wake Forest University Medical School and Harvard Medical School have reported that they were able to extract stem cells from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women and then turn the cells into several different tissue cell types including brain, liver, and bone tissue cells (see related story).

Pro-life, pro-family, and medical ethics groups are jointly hailing the new stem-cell study, the findings of which suggest these non-embryonic stem cells derived from amniotic fluid show great potential for usefulness in treating disease. Pro-life advocate Mark Crutcher, founder and president of Life Dynamics Incorporated, says he and other pro-lifers have been trying for years to get the message across that it is not necessary to kill a living human being in order to achieve benefits in medical science. “This just proves that we’re right,” he contends.

There are plenty of problems here. First, the results are excellent, but the authors are careful to note that they didn’t necessarily produce stem cells equivalent to ones of the embryonic variety. So Agape and Crutcher can calm down.

Second, there’s a subtle shifting of goalposts here. Witness the next paragraph:

Crutcher says he finds it interesting that in the past the medical science community has not been able to demonstrate even “one single scientific breakthrough using embryonic stem cells.” All the breakthroughs that have taken place in therapeutic use of stem cells to treat disease have come through use of adult stem cells, he points out — not through embryonic stem-cell research, or ESCR.

Now, embryonic stem cells are useful because they’re pluripotent – they can generate lots of different types of tissue. Adult stems cells don’t have that advantage. This research is being touted because these are non-embryonic stem cells with some of the features of embryonic cells. Crutcher just said embryonic stem cells aren’t that useful. So, why does he think this finding is important? If embryonic stem cells aren’t useful, why are we celebrating that we found a non-embryonic way to produce stem cells like them?

Opponents of embryonic stem cell research are caught between two contradictory strategies. They can acknowledge the advantages of embryonic stem cells and try to promote research that shows we might be able to get around using embryos or they can deny the advantages of embryonic stem cells. Neither is good science and both are cynical PR strategies. I have some respect for those who have moral objections to embryonic stem cell research. They lose my respect when they attack science that shows what they object to might help those with certain medical conditions. The two aren’t connected. Science doesn’t always lead us to ethical solutions and the ethical stance isn’t always the best scientific stance. That just means they both need each other.

Integrity, however, is vital to both of them.

It’s the Carl Sagan memorial blog-a-thon!

I, being the age that I am, largely missed out on Sagan. Aside from seeing him on TV a couple times and having read The Demon-Haunted World, I haven’t encountered much of his work. What I have seen is enough to tell me that he was an amazing person with a gift for making science powerful and awe-inspiring and that someone like him is sorely needed today.

I have a post on the issue over at Montana Netroots. Go read it if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

I think I have officially two posts on this blog about global warming and I don’t feel like talking about religion or politics, so I figured this was useful to discuss.

One of the better points I see climate change deniers as having is the claim that our climate goes through warming and cooling cycles, so today’s global warming is completely natural and there’s nothing we can do about it. At least, it’s an interesting claim to me.

Supporting that argument is the claim that we produce little CO2 in comparison to natural sources. I’ve also heard in several places that volcanoes produce far more greenhouse gases than human beings do. That seems to be clearly wrong, according to the USGS, who say humans win 150 times over. However, the kernel of truth seems to be that humans produce little compared to the overall amount of CO2 produced by nature. But not so fast:

The Earth has a natural CO2 cycle that moves massive amounts of CO2 into and out of the atmosphere. The oceans and land vegetation release and absorb over 200 billion metric tons of carbon into and out of the atmosphere each year. When the cycle is balanced, atmospheric levels of CO2 remain relatively stable. Human activities are now adding about 7 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year,which is only about 3–4% of the amount exchanged naturally. But that’s enough to knock the system out of balance, surpassing nature’s ability to take our CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. The oceans and land vegetation are absorbing about half of our emissions; the other half remains airborne for 100 years or longer. This is what is causing the rapid buildup of CO2, a buildup that dwarfs natural fluctuations.

So, while we may not produce that much compared to natural causes, we put out enough to knock the balance out of whack. That still doesn’t answer the question I have. What exactly does that CO2 do in the atmosphere. According to one scientist,

“CO2 and climate are like two people handcuffed to each other,” he said. “Where one goes, the other must follow. Leadership may change, or they may march in step, but they are never far from each other. Our current CO2 levels appear to be far out of balance with climate when viewed through these results, reinforcing the idea that we have significant modern warming to go.”

The IPCC says it’s “virtually certain” that CO2 will be the main factor driving climate changes in this centure.

But don’t CO2 levels lag behind global temperature increases? Seems like a cause and effect problem. Well, maybe not:

The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.

The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

Sadly, my ability to understand a lot of this ends at trying to evaluate how much CO2 affects global temperatures. The IPCC concluded that, outside of the early 20th century, natural causes can’t explain the warming, but greenhouse gases do. Specifically, it’s inconsistent with natural variability:

While these estimates vary substantially, on the annual to decadal time-scale they are similar, and in some cases larger, than obtained from observations. Estimates from models and observations are uncertain on the multi-decadal and longer time-scales required for detection. Nonetheless, conclusions on the detection of an anthropogenic signal are insensitive to the model used to estimate internal variability. Recent observed changes cannot be accounted for as pure internal variability even if the amplitude of simulated internal variations is increased by a factor of two or more. It is therefore unlikely (bordering on very unlikely) that natural internal variability alone can explain the changes in global climate over the 20th century

Which is where I started, I think.

Part of the problem with all this is that the science is amazingly complicated. When we have entities and groups on either side of the debate who aren’t entirely trustworthy (the fossil fuel industry and environmentalists, if you didn’t know) firing back and forth over on the subject it’s occasionally difficult to deal with. Eventually the distrust of the group that isn’t on our “side” takes over. That’s how I see it, at least. Still, I think a good faith effort to evaluate the scientific groups and their conclusions leads to clear cut support for global warming as a significant human caused problem.

It’s just so hard! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to remain honest in arguing for a bizarre and twisted worldview?

Difficult enough for PETA to resort to smearing a biologist studying homosexual behavior in sheep.

PETA is nothing if not good at lurid imagery:

You heard right—OHSU experimenter Charles Roselli is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to kill homosexual rams and cut open their brains in an attempt to find the hormone behind homosexual tendencies so that these tendencies can be changed.

…

To put it simply, these experimenters believe that homosexuality is a defect that needs to be fixed, and they’re cutting open and killing gay sheep to do it. Roselli has made it very clear that he intends to use the findings of his experiments to “cure” humans next.

Right next to that is a picture of some very cute lambs. You can just imagine the mental image running through the average PETA member’s head: a drooling, psychopathic homophobe driving a knife into the forhead of a cute little lamb while screaming about eliminating the gays from the world.

Perhaps that’s just my respect for the average PETA member showing, but anyway.

The people at PETA are lacking in the area of reading comprehension, as demonstrated by the first link above.

Also, I have to just say, I’m not exactly appalled at the idea of “curing” gay people. Seems like an overly broad thing to oppose. I’m quite happy to let anyone develop and sell almost any kind of safe pharmaceutical. I’m also quite happy to allowing anyone to live according to their sexual orientation or try to live according to what they want their sexual orientation to be. If someone finds a way to change sexual orientations…I don’t really care. Of course, if that cure were to be forced upon anyone it would be monstrous. You could also see pressure for homosexuals to take the “cure” to placate uneasiness about gay people in our society, which would also be a disagreeable consequence.

In any case, I don’t think that’ll ever happen, but it’d certainly be a conundrum if it did.