Quote

"What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if in the end all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?"

-- F. Sherwood Rowland, whose theory that the introduction of huge quantities of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere would reduce the ozone layer around Earth was dismissed by industry as "merely theories."

2008 Templeton Prize

Michael (Michał) Heller, a Polish cosmologist and Catholic priest whose research specializes on the origin and cause of the universe, won the 2008 $1.6 million Templeton Prize a couple of weeks ago.

Upon winning, Heller described his work as:

"Various processes in the universe can be displayed as a succession of states in such a way that the preceding state is a cause of the succeeding one… (and) there is always a dynamical law prescribing how one state should generate another state. But dynamical laws are expressed in the form of mathematical equations, and if we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about a cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the Great Blueprint of God's thinking the universe, the question on ultimate causality…: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes."

Please, can someone tell me what this means? I can't see that it means anything whatsoever, beyond what a freshman physics student would tell you. It is just gibberish as far as I can tell, no different from anything in the Dancing Wu Li Masters or What the Bleep Do We Know? There's just nothing remotely profound about it -- and this guy gets a million and a half for spouting such nonsense, merely because he says it in a deep, introspective tone? What garbage....

Conserving Gas

See what high gas prices do? Truckers may be slowing down to save fuel costs -- I read the other day that each 10 mph over the speed limit is like spending an additional $0.54/gallon.

By the way, gasoline use per capita is down about 2.5% in the last year....

US Health Insurance

The entire discussion of health insurance in the US is going in the wrong direction, and its clear that none of the presidential candidates has the courage to confront corporate America. McCain, of course, like Bush, could not care less who has insurance and who doesn't, as long as the military is fed, oiled, and greased.

But Clinton and Obama.... Tonight Clinton announced that she'd like health care premiums to be no more than 10% of an American's income.... This is a complete give-in to corporate America and it can never lead to affordable and efficient health care. Corporations and insurance companies are always going to want their 20-30%, and they are so greedy that they will take it regardless of the health of Americans -- regardless if they are, literally, dying. The service they provide has been proven time and again to be inferior and useless, compared to single-payer systems.... they must be completely eliminated.

Neither Clinton or Obama has the courage to do this, it is now clear. I wonder how much money each of them is receiving from these corporations? A lot, clearly. Enough to corrupt them, clearly.

I really thing that the US is teetering on the edge of existence, and that if it cannot solve the health care issues of tens of millions of its citizens -- one-sixth of the population, soon to be more as employers -- including yours -- increasingly opt out of the system (and who can blame them when medical inflation is running at 7-12% a year), this country will quickly sink in a very mediocre status. At this point I really see no way out of it.

This is Funny

From the film "The Job."



via: Dark Roasted Blend

Ice Shelves

Yes, of course I worry that large sections of ice breaking off of Antarctica are due to global warming, but there's a bias in stories like this. Since large chunks of ice break off suddenly, but form only gradually, you will never see a headline like "Scientists Startled: Massive Ice Shelf Forming Rapidly." Really, you need a full picture of ice buildup and melting to really mean much of anything, and that's a lot less dramatic.

Cold Winters and Greenhouse Gases

This has been an unusually cold winter in the northern hemisphere, and as The Oil Drum points out, natural gas use is up. Presumably heating oil is too.

Q: how much more CO2e will be emitted because of the cold winter?

I've seen this type of calculation done -- somewhere -- about the additional power consumption of air conditioners as the world warms. Ought to be a similar calculation here....

Spencer's Exaggeration

Roy Spencer has an op-ed in the Energy Tribune, that ends with this:

I am not claiming that all of our recent warming is natural. But the extreme reluctance for most scientists to even entertain the possibility that some of it might be natural suggests to me that climate research has become corrupted.

I just don't think that's true. Mainstream climatologists seem to me to be somewhat imprecise on the exact amount of current warming is manmade, and use words like "most." Never "all."

Here's exactly what the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report says:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic warming over the past 50 years averaged over each continent (except Antarctica).

(Emphasis mine.)

I think Roy Spencer is exaggerating, and it doesn't help his cause any.

Irony

From the isn't life ironic department: Mary Louise Parker (Nancy Botwin) is engaged to Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Judah Botwin), who played her real-life but dead husband on Weeds. They broke up once ( you would too if you were involved with her), but made up (you would too if you were involved with her.)

PS: Yes, I like Weeds. In fact, it is the only program I have ever paid for and downloaded from Amazon.com.

Hillary

Hillary says the reason she lied about undergoing sniper attack in Bosnia is because she was "sleep-deprived."

OK. But I assume this is a not uncommon state for the President of the United States, to which she aspires. Can we therefore expect each time she reaches it we can expect inconsistencies and factual muckups?

I've been sleep deprived. But I'd never confuse something like a kind welcome for sniper fire. Neither would you.

ThinkProgress

ThinkProgress are big fans of arguing about the consensus of climate scientists on global warming -- case closed.... but when they're on the other side, the minority view is "blistering" and must absolutely be taken into account, even when the consensus view comes from the National Academies.

Hypocrites, pure and simple.

I've no doubt that smaller cars do lead to more deaths via accidents. But I'd also like to know the number of deaths, and the amount of environmental damage, that CO2-belching cars enact on people and the environment. It' s a complex calculation, to be sure. But it's not zero.

Chelsea

OK, I am as happy to get rid of the Clinton machine as anyone, but still, you have to like Chelsea Clinton's response today at Butler University:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Chelsea Clinton had a quick retort Tuesday when asked whether her mother's credibility had been hurt during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

"Wow, you're the first person actually that's ever asked me that question in the, I don't know maybe, 70 college campuses I've now been to, and I do not think that is any of your business," Clinton said during a campaign visit for her mother, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton had picked out the male questioner as she wrapped up a question-and-answer session at Butler University. It wasn't immediately clear what statement by the first lady the questioner was referring to. Before she was fully aware of her husband's relationship with Lewinsky, a White House intern, Hillary Clinton said the allegations about that relationship were manufactured by a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Clinton's answer was met with loud applause from the about 200 people in the audience. After the applause, Clinton responded, "and I also don't think that should be the last question."

Let's hope for more responses like that.

Mercury's cliffs

Did you know that the planet Mercury has cliffs that are 2 miles high and hundreds of miles long?

That must be a sight to see....

Major US City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis

The environmental group Common Current has released a report, "US City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis," and here are the top six prepared cities, they say:

1. San Francisco (#1 in the telecommuting category)
2. New York (#1 in public transit commutes and metro area transit use)
3. Chicago
4. Washington, DC
5. Seattle
6. Portland, OR

I'm sorry, but I really see these kind of lists, and this kind of planning, as completely ridiculous. So 5-10% of San Franciscians telecommute. So 50% (or whatever) of New Yorkers take the subway. Such statistics vastly underestimate the impact of peak oil. So you workers can take the subway to get to work. What are they going to eat once they get their? How will you heat or cool their buildings? What will power their Internet and phones?

We live in far too interconnected of a society and an economy to think that Portland, Oregon is going to smoothly survive Peak Oil just because there is some plan sitting on a shelf. This is a civilization-wide problem. The cost of food being trucked around is going to rise drastically everywhere. Most people -- let's be honest -- just do not have convenient mass transit available to them. What are people going to do when gas is $9/gallon, and delivery trucks are parked idle because they can't afford to run? You think some little plan sitting on a shelf in city hall -- produced by a bunch of amateurs -- is going to save the day? Please. I know they mean well...but it is very short-sighted.

Big Dog

Every so often you get a glimpse of the future and it strikes you that it's going to be very weird. That was my reaction to watching this demonstration of Boston Dynamic's Big Dog robot. Maybe it's its resemblance to the Star Wars AT-AT walkers. In any case, I actually felt sorry for this thing when the guy in the video tried to push it over, for a couple of seconds.

Hadley's February Temperatures

The Hadley Centre in England is out with their February temperature measurement: +0.194°C above the long-term average. That compares to NASA GISS's +0.26°C. Both indicate a +0.14°C increase (in the anomaly) from the month earlier.

sea level

For a really good review of the state of knowledge about past, current, and future sea-level rise, see the WaterWired blog.

Betting on McCain

Currently you can buy a futures contract on John McCain winning the Republican nomination for 94.3 cents on the Iowa Electronic Market, paying $1 if he wins it. That seems like a lock, with the only downside is that he might drop dead in the next five months.

You could also sell a futures contract on Giuliani winning it for 0.3 cents, where you pay $1 if he should happen to be the nominee.

Gary George's bigotry

Wow, here's something you don't see much anymore: raw, naked anti-gay bigotry from a Oregon state senator. And he's not even ashamed to admit it.

Spitzer

Yes, I am tired of the Larry Craig's and David Vittner's and James McGeervey and, now, Elliot Spitzer. It's mostly a matter for him and his family...EXCEPT that he made political hay out of busting other prostitution rings. He was all moral and uppity when it benefited him...despite his weaknesses (and simple humanness) that he was well aware of. He and his wife will now step easily, because they long ago sold their souls for power. Both of them. And we bought it.

Should prostitution be legal? I really, really do not know. Kevin Drum wrote:

...my official position is: who cares. This stuff shouldn't be illegal in the first place and I don't care what these guys do in their private time.

Let's be real: very, very few women are choosing to be prostitutes out of simple choice. They are doing it because they are out of choices and are scrapping the bottom of the barrel. Only a very tiny few of them are brilliant, sexy, forceful women taking care of their destiny, like get written up in New York Magazine. Almost all of them are, in fact, poor, desperate, and perhaps have substance abuse problems. They are poor. It sucks.

I'm disappointed that a liberal like Kevin would think otherwise. There are so many god-damned more important things than where Eliot Spitzer puts his dick. Tens of millions are living without health care. Our very civilization is destroying the planet's atmosphere. Our major means of energy production is starting to decrease in abundance.

And we're worried about who Eliot Spitzer sleeps with. It nearly makes me puke.