hrynyshyn | November 23, 2006The good people at deSmogBlog have stumbled across exactly what's wrong with the public debate on climate change. IsCanadaReady.com is a compedium of non-scientific arguments that attempts to undermine confidence in anthropogenic global warming theory. But nowhere on the site is there any information describing the author(s) of the material posted thereon. I wonder why that could be?
Could it be that the fellow to whom the domain is registered, one Ed Unverricht of Edmonton, Alta., appears to have some claim of expertise in taxes and golf, but not atmospheric heat flux trends, radiative…
hrynyshyn | November 22, 2006The good news is the world's technological powerhouses have finally agreed to get off their collective butts and start building ITER, the big fusion power experiment. The bad news is they're only planning on spending $12.8 billion on it. That's it?
I mean, come on. $12.8 paltry billion? The U.S., which is a junior partner in the international consortium and only recently rejoined after balking at the cost a few years ago, is spending that much fighting a war in Iraq every two or three months!
Sure, fusion is going to be expensive. It almost certainly won't be feasible until half way through…
hrynyshyn | November 21, 2006Today's New York Times Science section includes coverage of a forum on the religion-science wars this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Just about everybody who's anybody in this battle was there. My favorite quote comes from Steve Weinberg: "Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization."
That's quite a thing to say -- it's not the medical advances, and understanding of our place in the universe, or our kinship with all other species that will define science…
hrynyshyn | November 20, 2006I was talking yesterday with a friend of mine who works at the University of British Columbia's Fisheries Centre, which has long been at the forefront of research into the scope of the decline of fish species around the world. He said it's good to see so many scientists finally willing to take a public stand on what is clearly a crisis in the oceans.
Now, assuming a position on a matter of public policy is very different from issuing a statement on the science involved in the issue. In climate change, for example, there remains considerable debate over just how alarmist climatologists should…
hrynyshyn | November 18, 2006I don't want to get all giddy over the Democratic victory and what it means for the planet. But this little snippet of news from today's WaPo is a good way to start your day off right.
Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) announced his intention to become the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, now headed by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who has said that global warming is a hoax. Warner has called for action against climate change, and his ascension to a leadership post would accelerate significant changes already underway.
I'm not saying Warner is the Messiah. But…
hrynyshyn | November 14, 2006Wired magazine's Gary Wolf tries to come to terms with what he calls the "New Atheists" by reviewing the latest Dawkins, Dennett and Harris books. (The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell and The End of Faith. and then interviewing the authors. There's some good stuff in his lengthy take on the subject, including ths scenario:
IâRETURNâFROMâOXFORD enthusiastic for argument. I immediately begin trying out Dawkins' appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. "Who here is an atheist?" I ask.
Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by…
hrynyshyn | November 10, 2006For anyone wondering about the recent decline in frequency of posts to the Island of Doubt, I must report that things are only going to get worse. Yesterday, my wife, Mary, and I welcomed our first-born son into this world, and I doubt I'm going to have all that much free time to indulge in extra-curricular activities. At least that seems to be a safe assumption.
Anyone interested can view Aidan here. I will resume posting just as soon as time and energy permits.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, however, I have every intention of attending the NC Blogging Convention in January and hope to…
hrynyshyn | November 5, 2006Anyone who's spent even a modest amount of time and effort investigating the battle over the teaching of intelligent design creationism in the country's classrooms will recognize the argument that an understanding of evolution is essential to a decent science education, let alone a degree in biology. And so it is.
But many of the same proponents of banishing creationist clap-trap from public schools, myself included, often extend that argument beyond science into the wider cultural and economic spheres. And there things get a little muddy.
A proper understanding of evolution is the…
hrynyshyn | October 26, 2006So Iceland is back at it, joining Norway and Japan in the atavistic habit of killing whales. I find it interesting that this subject is so often framed as a scientific one, evidenced by the number of posts on the subject my fellow SciBloggers. Is there in fact a scientific argument against killing whales? Yes, but it's not the one that most people make.
When it comes to certain species, most notably the fin and minke whales that are the target of the Icelandic and Norwegian whaling fleets, the world's populations can certainly handle the minimal, self-assigned, quotas. There are tens of…
hrynyshyn | October 25, 2006Got three minutes? Then watch this vision of what would happen if Stephen Hawking was a super hero, championing science against the evil forces of "The Fundamentalist" and his Dogma-ray.
hrynyshyn | October 23, 2006Defending the status quo is not my default position, particularly in my own field of science journalism, but I think someone should stand up for our side, considering the knocks we're taking from various angles. Some of my fellow SciBloggers have stepped to the plate but as I'm one of the few actual science journalists on the roster, I'm going to take a swing at it.
First, I'm not going to insist that all scientists should learn how to be better communicators. That shouldn't have to be stated explicitly. So should every professional. And that's just a lazy response to complaints about…
hrynyshyn | October 22, 2006For a guest post to the meta-blog Daily Canuck, I whipped off a few words on the chasm between what's considered politically feasible when it comes to a national climate change strategy for Canada and what climatology suggests will be necessary. Along the way, I got sidetracked by the bigger question of what to do when the "moderate," "reasonable" or, to use a Taoist phrase, the "middle way" is no longer up to the task of addressing a serious threat.
It seems pretty darn obvious that by now, we have allowed ourselves to get in just such a situation. Here's the fundamental problem:
1. Even…
hrynyshyn | October 15, 2006It's only been a few days, but already the Lancet study of excess deaths in Iraq has faded from the headlines. Even NPR seems to have decided that further analysis is not worthy of interrupting this week's pledge drive pleas. Which is a pity, because this is the sort of thing that should decide elections.
Almost as depressing as the media's offensive diminution of the story's import was the bizarre juxtaposition of George W. Bush's reaction to the study with his support of embattled House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Both the media and the presidential handling of the issue betray a dismal level…
hrynyshyn | October 9, 2006Razib's post about The Economist's review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and the resulting comments got me thinking heavily on Dawkin's description of the religious indocrination of children as form of child abuse.
In response to Razib's observations that "only in cases of clear and present abuse am I willing to allow the state to intervene. I don't consider religion abuse" I implied that almost all of us are willing to intervene, if the case is extreme enough. Cults, for example, often get even normally laissez faire types riled up and willing to separate child from parent. What it all…
hrynyshyn | October 6, 2006 It's Friday. Time for some idle musing.
A former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, one Burton Richter, has written an intriguing little essay on the allegedly sorry state of affairs in particle physics.
Richter's main thesis is that there's too much "theological speculation" going on in the high-energy and cosmology labs these days. He defines such thinking as "the development of models with no testable consequences" as opposed to proper, Popperian, falsifiable theorizing. That seems to a common theme among many observers, what with all the dissing of string theory. (See the…
hrynyshyn | October 4, 2006Why is it that one of the top critics of religion should be a biologist? Could it be that a deep understanding of biological evolution through natural selection really does lead one inexorably to atheism? If so, creationists might actually have reason to fear the inclusion of evolution in school curricula. Better not let them read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion then, because that's one of the core messages of the book.
Which is funny, because Dawkins writes that he very much would like to reach those raised in a religious environment, but are a little unsure about the whole thing. "If you…
hrynyshyn | October 2, 2006In addition to ridding D.C. of a pedophile, the resignation of Republican congressman Mark Foley last week may also be good news for defenders of science. About three years ago, Foley got himself involved with a couple of front organizations for the Church of Scientology. One report, from Cult News, says one of those front groups, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, appears to have used its connection with Foley and other legislators to defeat a series of state "pysch bills" dealing with prescription drugs.
On the other hand, the only hard evidence of a connection between the pedophile…
hrynyshyn | October 2, 2006The first question is: how bad are things, really? The second: if things are as bad as the authors of two recent books on climate change say they are, are we capable of doing anything about it?
I've just finished The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity by James Lovelock and Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning by George Monbiot. Both authors are familiar to British readers. Both care deeply about the natural world, and both are very worried about where things are headed. Each book comes to similar conclusions -- (1) very bad and (2) yes, but only if we're very…