Science Etcetera JD 2454432
Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
BlogLines Plumber |
My RSS aggregator, BlogLines is down for the night, so I’m limited to what news sources I can remember subscribing to:
Brilliance CT machine |
Archive for November, 2007
“Within You Without You”
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
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In the last second, cesium-133 atoms around the world oscillated through 9,192,631,770 radiation cycles in atomic clocks measuring International Atomic Time (TAI)*. While you read the previous sentence, 400,000 billion neutrinos from the sun passed through you*. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, you will have inhaled nitrogen atoms that were also inhaled by dinosaurs 65 to 230 million years ago*.
In the last minute the world consumed 56,060 barrels of oil*, 42,000 plastic bottles, 350,000 aluminum cans*, and 1 million plastic bags*. 26 hectares of forests were cut and cleared, the equivalent of 37 football fields*. 582 cattle, buffalo, and calves; 2,283 pigs; 1,512 sheep and goats; and 81,811 chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese were slaughtered as livestock*. 3.5 million bar codes were scanned1.
110 people died in that same time span*, 31 of them died of cardiovascular disease*, 13 died of cancer*, eight died of smoking-related illness*, six died of diabetes*, five died of AIDS* while 11 people contracted HIV*, three died of lung cancer*, two died and 95 others were injured in car accidents*, and one died from small arms fire*. One woman died from complications in pregnancy or childbirth*. Five newborns died*. 12 children died of hunger*, and two children died of polluted water and inadequate sanitation*. 11 people and one child went blind*.
The United States’ National Debt grew by $1.3 million dollars*. The world debt grew by $9.9 million dollars*. The world spent $2 million on its militaries*.
In the last twelve minutes a plant or animal species went extinct, vanishing from the Earth forever*.
245 people were born in the last 60 seconds*. 49 of them were born in India, 34 in China, and 8 in the United States. 389 women became pregnant*. 540 Viagra tablets were dispensed*. Each child born right now will see an average of 3.5 million minutes in their lifetime.
The world produced $124 million in goods and services, as well as 33 million kilowatt-hours of electricity*. The United States contributed $4,851 to the immediate alleviation of humanitarian emergencies worldwide*. $250 thousand dollars in student aid was distributed*.
184 thousand e-mails where sent, 76 thousand of which were spam*. 138 thousand people queried Google.com in 90 languages*. 120 new blogs appeared on the Internet*. Two books were published*.
At this moment there are 366,000 people flying in airplanes all around the globe*.
Over the last 60 seconds, the 6.5 billion human hearts currently beating on planet Earth pumped a combined total of 32.5 billion liters of blood*. These same human bodies produced 903.5 quadrillion new red blood cells* and burned 10.8 billion calories of energy*.
Just now, lightning struck the Earth 100 times*.
Every minute it took you to read this article, the Earth traveled 1117 miles of its yearly orbit around the Sun, the Sun traveled 9,320 miles of its orbit around the Milky Way, the Milky Way traveled 22,369 miles relative to the average velocity of the Universe, and the Universe expanded 11 million miles in all directions* *.
As George Harrison of the Beatles wrote, “…and life flows on within you without you.*”
1. Everything is Miscellaneous. David Weinberger, Times Books, 2007.
Cross Posted at GO.
Science Etcetera JD 2454430
Monday, November 26th, 2007 Mauve Stinger Photo by Richard Lord |
 Moebius Transformations |
Global Dimming – Yet Another Complication in Climate Modeling
Sunday, November 25th, 2007 Detail of Chris Jordan’s Jet Trails Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours. |
This research is old news, and complicates the whole Global Warming debate even further. Air pollution might be behind observations that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface has gone down drastically over five decades of observations:
“There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me.” Intrigued, [Dr. Gerry Stanhill] searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.
Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.
Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the 1950s and the 1990s. (source)
I really don’t appreciate the overly-dramatic score and alarmist tone of the BBC Documentary Global Dimming, and Real Climate has some valid criticisms of the science (such as birds drinking from evaporation pans), but it does explain the science behind global dimming phenomena fairly well:
[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=39520879762623193&hl=en]
One of the most shocking bits of data covered in this documentary comes at 31:51 minutes into the program, and deals with a one-degree Celsius temperature spike that occurred in America in the three days after 9/ll, when there were no jets in the sky, and therefore no jet contrails to reflect sunlight back to space. This leads to the possibility that as we improve our air quality, we also increase the effects of global warming.
Just another variable in the immensely-complex system that is the Earth’s climate to be considered with methane release in melting Siberia, cosmic rays, cloud coverage, and myriad other complications.
Happy Evolution Day!
Saturday, November 24th, 2007 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Photo by J. Cameron, 1869 |
On this day, 148 years ago, Charles Darwin first published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (wikipedia). Although the book and specifics of Darwin’s orginal theory have been improved upon, as the evolving body of scientific knowledge perpetually works out the myriad details of the proccess, natural selection, the mechanism or algorithm Darwin proposed as the driving force behind the fossil record’s clear-cut revelation of life’s increasing complexity, remains the dominant explanation for human origins and the origins for all life on Earth.
You can read the complete text and all of Darwins other works at the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online website…
…or you can download the complete 6th edition of the text in a variety of formats you can read on your cellphone at Project Gutenberg.
…or you can download the complete text in audiobook format from Librivox
For a more advanced schooling in evolutionary theory, I highly recommend Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene,” where he explains why Nice Guys Finish First in survival of the fittest.
Note: This is not to be confused with the flaky, New Age evolutionday.com, which comes up first in Google Searches on this subject. (Some friends and I are cleansing some crystals and enlisting some psychics for an Astral Projection karmageddon assault on the website’s owners to make them relinquish the domain name.)Cross-posted at GO.
Science Etcetera Links JD 2454427
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
200 Year Old |
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State of Fear
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 LOLQuack Michael Crichton |
So I found a copy of Crichton’s book, State of Fear, in a box labeled “Free Books!” at the Coast Guard base, and figured I should go ahead and read it. I’ve read most of his other fiction, which is equally disposable, but usually a fun and brainless way to burn some time.
State of Fear “received strong criticism from climate scientists, science journalists, and environmental groups, for inaccuracies and misleading information,” but did receive “the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) 2006 Journalism Award (source). Crichton has also made regular appearances on the Rush Limbaugh show, where he is referred to as the “great American author” and is allowed to criticize Global Warming Theorists unchallenged.
The book’s first 30 pages includes a cryptic scene at a fictional place called the “International Data Environmental Consortium (IDEC)”, which is conducting a Department of Homeland Security-style data mining operation, surveying chatter on the Webbernets. They’ve discovered a great deal of interest from the hacker-community in topics like, “Cellular Encryption,” “Controlled Demolition,” “Flood Mitigation,” “Missionary Diaries of the Pacific,” and “Rain Forest Disease Foundation (RFDF) (Crichton, 32-33).” From this, the Institute, Consortium, or whatever it is (Department of Homeland Security), knows that a “serious Alpha extremist group” is planning something mysterious and foreboding.
Right off the bat my suspension of disbelief is suffering. I want to be entertained, but my reason and intellect are all ready seriously offended. So I put the book down for a few days.
When I picked it back up, things just got worse.
Crichton’s Bizarro World
There are no Exxons offering $10,000 to any scientist who would dispute Global Warming, no funding disinformation factories like the American Enterprise Institute, or a the Republican-controlled White House editing out global warming conclusions from research reports in Crichton’s State of Fear. These real-life events are completely omitted.
No. In Crichton’s fantasy world, it’s those powerful environmentalists using their incredible monetary wealth to intimidate scientists into distorting the facts to support global warming so they can scare the public into donating money to environmental organizations, which are a front for the global eco-terrorist operation, ELF, which is executing their nefarious plot to generate global catastrophes that will scare people into donating more money to environmental causes.
No wonder he fits right in on the Rush Dimbulb show.
Crichton, who wants his readers to believe he is of the scientific mindset, makes the glaring mistake of using the word “theory” the way non-scientists do in everyday language:
“No, it is a theory,” Balder said. “Believe me, I wish it were otherwise. But in fact, global warming is the theory that increased levels of carbon dioxide and certain other gases are causing an increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere because of the so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’” (Emphasis Crichton’s, 81)
In the scientific lexicon “theory” is almost synonymous with “fact.” So, if Global Warming is just a theory, then so is Evolution and Gravity. Crichton’s abuse of the world makes sense if he’s purposefully trying to bamboozle his readers.
Crichton’s agenda makes for really lousy storytelling. The whole book reads like one of those after-school specials from the 1950s, where the kid gets lectured on the importance of aluminum or agriculture or hydroelectric power. Only in this case we have Attorney Peter Evans, who gets talked down to by everyone he meets for naively accepting the scientific consensus on Global Warming:
“But Mr. Scientist sir,” Peter Evans’ voice cracked, “I thought CO2 emissions were warming the Earth through the Greenhouse Effect.”
The scientist laughed condescendingly, “Nonsense Peter. The only scientists who say they believe in Global Warming are just trying to get Federal Grants.”
“Golly gee wilikers Mr. Scientist Sir!” Peter Evans said, “I guess I was just plumb all wrong about the threat of Global Warming! It’s just a bunch of liberal poppycock! Thank you so much for setting me straight!”
“My pleasure Billy–er, Mr. Evans. Be sure to tell all your friends.”
Much of the 567 pages is exactly this kind of dialogue.
 Manufacturing Debate about Global Warming |
Crichton gets points for using references in his work, which is impressive for fiction, and admirable because it does push his work into the Hard SF genre, no matter how badly he mangles his sources or cherry picks them. Rush Dimbulb’s two works of “non-fiction” have no references at all.
The problem is that Crichton so obviously works backwards in thought, coming up with a fictional plot device and then trying to support it, often resorting to fringe studies and discredited sources to make his square pegs fit in reality’s round holes.
“We spliced the Dinosaur DNA with frog DNA!” was Crichton’s explanation for how scientists filled in the missing genetic information when cloning dinosaurs (Not a direct quote from Jurassic Park), but as Daniel Dennet pointed out, this makes no sense. Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than frogs. Heck, even humans are more closely related. It’s this sort of laziness in Crichton’s research that really bother’s me, and State of Fear delivers this in droves.
Crichton’s State of Fear references include mischaracterizations of Robert Aunger’s challenges to memetics (which Crichton calls a “trendy quasi-scientific idea (p.584),” books attacking “elitist egos of Western environmentalists (p.584),” “intellectuals” who invariably worsen complex situations (p.587), discredited climate change articles from the 1970s, and the stage magicians Penn and Teller–I know whenever I’m immersed in academically-published research tackling a complex scientific conundrum, I always make sure to check with someone who can pull a rabbit out of their hat or saw a scantily-clad woman in half.
Yet his references don’t back up the outrageous claims Crichton makes. Where are the names of all the professors from all the prestigious Universities and Institutions that will dispute Anthropogenic Global Warming (Crichton, 90)? Where are all the peer-reviewed journal articles published proving it’s not true (Crichton, 93)? Crichton makes the ludicrous claim that organizations like PETA, the Audubon Society, and Sierra Club fund eco-terrorist groups like the Earth Liberation Front (Crichton, 182), and he can get away with it because this is purely a work of fiction, no matter how many spurious footnotes he puts in his bibliography, he can’t be sued for slander.
Dittoheads have been clinging to this book like a polar bears to a shrinking iceberg, and Crichton has made the most of it, making the talk show rounds, regular appearances on the Rush Dimbulb show, and raking in the $$’s, all the while standing outside the actual debate on Anthropogenic Global Warming. The one place you won’t find Crichton, is engaged in the actual scientific discussion.
Crichton compares the present scientific consensus on Global Warming to a supposed scientific consensus on eugenics in an Appendix hypocritically titled, “Why Politicized Science is Dangerous.” It’s hard to believe a person as moderately intelligent as Crichton doesn’t recognize that comparing Global Warming theorists to Nazis might be just a tad political.
The real hypocrisy here is that Crichton portrays environmentalists as money-grubbing, lawsuit-happy fanatics, less concerned with the environment than with fear-mongering and celebrity-promotions to draw attention to their cause (Crichton, 154-160), but State of Fear is just one long fear-mongering, manipulative, over-hyped work of Science Fiction meant to popularize NeoConservative talking points.
Hilary Clinton puts the smackdown better than I can:
History will remember Michael Crichton’s State of Fear the way it remembers McCarthyism and Reefer Madness.
Science Links JD 2454425
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007
E8 Rotation |
Space Elevator |
The Cosmic Boondocks
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007I hate living in the boonies. No, I’m not referring to Northeastern North Carolina, I’m referring to our location on a scope that surpasses geography and ventures into cosmology.
Our sun is one of about 200 billion stars swirling around in a galaxy that’s a 100,000 light years across. If only 10 percent of those stars have planets, and 10 percent of those planets can support life, and 10 percent of those life-supporting planets develop life, and 10 percent of that life evolves intelligence, and 10 percent of that intelligent life produces technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space, then that’s still 20 million intelligent civilizations waving great big “We Are Not Alone” signs in just our Milky Way galaxy alone.
This collection of “ifs” is known as the Drake Equation, and no matter how you tweak the variables, it still comes out to a really big number of aliens in our cosmic neighborhood. When I’m not using my home computer, it goes to work analyzing radio signals from space for the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, which has yet to produce conclusive evidence of space aliens in 47 years.
Why is that? I think it’s because our solar system is located on the outer edge of a tiny stream of stars called the Orion spur, stranded between the rivers of stars in Perseus and Sagittarius spiral arms. If Perseus and Sagittarius are Tidewater and Raleigh, then the Orion Spur is Elizabeth City, and our Sun is a farmhouse out in Weeksville.
 You are on the edge of the Yellow Dot Image Courtesy of Wikipedia |
Human beings are the slack-jawed yokels of the Milky Way galaxy. Rednecks, hillbillies, bumpkins, wahoos… choose your pejorative. I’m allowed to use all of them, I’m half West Virginian.
The point is that, from a cosmological standpoint, all the really exciting stuff, the bright lights and big to-do’s, are happening hundreds of light-years away, places so distant we can only fantasize about the technologies it would take to travel out there.
Or for them to travel out our way, and for what purpose would they want to visit us? Just imagine a gray–one of those classic bug-eyed aliens from The X-Files and Close Encounters of the Third Kind–saying to another gray, “I thought I might go check out that pale blue dot out there in the darkness, orbiting that tiny yellow star. You know, the one the inhabitants call Soil, or Dirt, or Mud, Or something like that.”
Their friend’s antenna would quirk curiously, as if this were one New Yorker announcing to another their intention to visit Currituck, “Why would you want to do that?”
It seems obvious to me. Civilizations living in the Milky Way’s fast-lanes have much brighter night skies that are also much more uniform and boring. The skies way out here in this sparsely-starred zone of space are much darker, like the skies out in the country, when you get far away to where the city’s light pollution can’t block out the awesome view of our Galaxy’s river of stars spilling across our night sky.
We sometimes forget there’s a whole beautiful Universe to look at over our heads, pulling us out of ourselves with a down-to-earth perspective of our place in it. Colder weather brings clearer skies, take a moment to appreciate it.
Cross-posted at GO.
