hrynyshyn | February 27, 2008Joseph Romm of the Climate Progress blog makes a case this week in Salon for the retirement of the term "consensus" when it comes to discussion the science of the imminent climate crisis. It's an Interesting proposition, and although I suspect it's ultimately doomed to fail, worth examining.
Romm's central thesis is wrapped up in the observation that the official reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change seriously underestimate the severity of climate change. This is not a particularly new or even remarkable idea. The IPCC cut off submissions of science for consideration in…
hrynyshyn | February 26, 2008Another study purports to find that, for most people, Prozac and the other members of the antidepressant family of pharmaceuticals are no better than sugar pills. Expect Big Pharma to object, but not too loudly. At least, don't expect them to expend too much effort and money denouncing the findings. We've heard this before, and it would seem that neither patients nor the doctors that prescribe antidepressants care much about whether or not the drugs actually do what their makers claim they do.
You can go all the way back to 1998 to find studies casting doubt on the efficacy of antidepressants…
hrynyshyn | February 26, 2008It's got to be one or the other. How else to explain the latest attempt by GM vice Cchairman Bob Lutz to attract attention to himself and his company, which continues to hemorrhage money? "Global warming is a total crock of shit," Lutz reportedly said told journalists at a Texas restaurant. "I'm a skeptic, not a denier."
Those bon mots represent one of the most unambiguous denunciations of an entire body of scientific knowledge ever uttered by an American corporate executive. They trounce even Sen. James Inhofe's ever-so-slightly hedged claim to have presented "compelling evidence that…
hrynyshyn | February 21, 2008Plenty of fuss has been made in the past few weeks over a New York Times investigation into the health risks of eating sushi, with tuna, and more specifically, bluefin tuna, painted as the biggest villan. The problem is the level of mercury in the fish, and mercury is a nasty neurotoxin. The fuss is over whether the risks of poisoning your brain outweighs the benefits to your heart from all those healthy omega-3 fats tuna offers. But there's another way to resolve the dilemma that seems to have been overlooked.
The New York Times public editor summarizes the tuna battle in a look at the…
hrynyshyn | February 21, 2008I have no idea if there's a new team of editorialists at Nature or if the old team has simply decided it's time they started to stir the pot. But they've been an ornery lot of late, and this swipe at the Canadian government's failure to respect science's contribution to society is a welcome wakeup call:
When the Canadian government announced earlier this year that it was closing the office of the national science adviser, few in the country's science community were surprised. Science has long faced an uphill battle for recognition in Canada, but the slope became steeper when the Conservative…
hrynyshyn | February 20, 2008According to the BBC, "an Israeli MP has blamed parliament's tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently." Whoa.
hrynyshyn | February 20, 2008British Columbia's right-of-center government has just introduced a carbon tax, making it the second jurisdiction in North America, after Quebec. It's hard to believe, coming from such an administration, but perhaps this is a sign of things to come. On the other hand ...
The BC tax, which will mean small increases in the consumer cost of fossil fuels, is only a baby step toward actually bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, calling it a baby step is generous. For example, the tax means gasoline will cost an extra 2.4 cents a litre (about 10 cents a gallon), this year, and rising to 7.…
hrynyshyn | February 19, 2008Towards the tail end of Michael Specter's rambling feature on carbon footprint accounting in the latest issue of New Yorker, we are reminded that the single most effective and cheapest way to bring down atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels is preserving and restoring tropical rainforests. We're hearing that a lot these days, and with good reason.
Specter's article deals mostly with the challenges of assigning "carbon footprint" numbers to consumer goods, as the U.K's Tesco supermarkets are trying to do. The problem is, as usual, in the myriad details. But as becomes clear later in the article,…
hrynyshyn | February 18, 2008The New York Times' Andrew Revkin asks in his latest Dot Earth blog post if there might be "more effective ways to describe human-caused global warming." The problem with "global warming," he says, has been summed up by Seth Godin thusly:
The muted reaction to our impending disaster comes down to two things:
1. the name.
Global is good.
Warm is good.
Even greenhouses are good places.
How can "global warming" be bad?
I'm not being facetious. If the problem were called "Atmosphere cancer" or "Pollution death" the entire conversation would be framed in a different way.
Neither of those…
hrynyshyn | February 15, 2008North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley must think that electricity just oozes out of the ether, free for the picking. How else to explain his enthusiasm for a network of electrical outlets along highways to allow drivers to recharge their plug-in hybrids?
Believe it or not, this is our governor speaking, as relayed earlier this week by the Asheville Citizen-Times:
Progress Energy and Duke Energy have agreed to install a statewide network of stations along the highways where motorists can charge their cars like a cell phone or even sell back to the companies their unused power.
"It sounds like the…
hrynyshyn | February 13, 2008Some folks are pushing for the US Postal Service to issue a stamp or two bearing the image of the late great Carl Sagan. I say, if they can put out a Star Wars series, they can bloody well do the same for a real galactic hero.
hrynyshyn | February 13, 2008Let's return now to climate change "tipping points," or as a group led by Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia has renamed them, "tipping elements." They're important because if we can nail these down with a fair degree of confidence, we'll finally have some tangible policy advice to offer the powers that be.
Lenton et al have turned a 2005 meeting on the subject into a paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. It's full of predictions about just how far away we might be from triggering dramatic shifts in critical features of the Earth's climate. But…
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2008Great. We have a date for the still-theoretical Science Debate 2008. Is its fate to remain in that unrealized state, or will it rise above the level of rhetorical bait, and actually engage the candidates in an exchange about the research on each other's campaign platform plate? Maybe we've left it too late? Any at rate, I can think of no reason to wait any further.
Chris and Sheril and an ever-growing list of famous science-types who support the idea of getting the presidential contenders together to talk science finally have set a venue and time for the event. April 18 at the Franklin…
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2008The past few days have seen wild thermometer swings in my neck of the Blue Ridge woods. Overnight lows are hitting a few degrees below freezing and by the mid afternoon it's almost room temperature. Measuring all that in Fahrenheit only makes more confusing. What this country really needs, says this Canadian ex-pat, is a presidential candidate who thinks in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit....
OK. Not really. I'm talking metaphorically. But for me there really is a connection between American resistance to the metric system and the absence of anything more than lip service paid during this…
hrynyshyn | February 8, 2008Friday morning chuckle: The Science Channel asks William Shatner about scotched plans to get him into space:
Q: And there was some kind of mix-up with the Richard Branson civilian space project?
A: Well, I guess you could call it that. He thought I should pay to go into space, and I thought he should pay me. The conversation pretty much ended there.
hrynyshyn | February 7, 2008Whales hear through their jaws, right? Maybe not, if a new study is correct...
Researchers from San Diego State University and the University of California have been using computer models to mimic the effects of underwater noise on an unusual whale species and have discovered a new pathway for sound entering the head and ears.
...
Since 1968, it has been believed that noise vibrations travel through the thin bony walls of toothed whales' lower jaw and onto the fat body attached to the ear complex. This research shows however that the thin bony walls do not transmit the vibrations. In fact…
hrynyshyn | February 7, 2008Nicholas Kristof, one of the best voices on the New York Times op-ed pages, wants us all to stop being so mean to evangelicals. Why? Because so many of them are doing so darn much good. Yes, but...
Last weekend's column, Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love, drew a fair bit of contrary comment, to which he has replied at his On The Ground blog. One line of argument is particularly relevant to these ScienceBlogs. Here's a piece of the opening to the column:
... few would dare make a pejorative comment about Barack Obama's race or Hillary Clinton's sex. Yet it would be easy to get away with…
hrynyshyn | February 6, 2008The editors of Nature, that really important science journal, have weighed in on the wisdom of holding a presidential debate devoted exclusively to science policy. They aren't impressed with Science Debate 2008. There reasons are severalfold...
But here's the essence of their argument:
... any sort of science debate is quite a stretch from business-as-usual. Well meant though it may be, the idea of Tim Russert or some other journalist-interrogator looking Republican hopeful John McCain in the eye and asking "What balance will you seek in federal science funding between major-programme project…
hrynyshyn | February 6, 2008I need help with this election thingy.
I don't get to vote, as I can't apply for U.S. citizenship for another 13 months. Frak. But if I could, I would be flummoxed by the lack of significant differences between the two remaining Democrats on the issues I care about most. Which would be climate change, the environment, and respect for science. Fortunately, my wife can vote, and given the tight race between Obama and Clinton, North Carolina's delegates might actually count for something when this state holds its primary in May, I have a chance to influence at least one voter.
The good people…
hrynyshyn | February 1, 2008Sting was right. History will teach us nothing. Seemingly oblivious to the disaster that was the Bush administration's efforts to limit media access to government scientists, Canada's governing politicians are following in their American neighbor's footsteps.
According to Margaret Munro of the National Post,
Environment Canada has "muzzled" its scientists, ordering them to refer all media queries to Ottawa where communications officers will help them respond with "approved lines."
The new policy, which went into force in recent weeks and sent a chill through the department research divisions…