Anecdotes are not science

by Aaron Escobar
The World’s New Jungles:
[Via Ed cetera]

Here is an interesting story. The New York Times reports that much of the land in tropical countries is reverting to nature after having been farmed or logged. The article neglects to say that the same thing has happened over the past 75 years or so in the United States. A few years ago I took a car trip through New England, and I was surprised to be driving through miles and miles of forest–not what we in Washington state would think of as a real forest, because the trees were so small, but still a forest. Much of it had once been hardscrabble farms. They had been run out of business by more economic farmers in other regions.

What this tells me is that the environmentalist line about the world being in crisis is oversimplified. It doesn’t mean the greens are totally wrong, or even largely wrong. They could have much truth on their side–but still, they have been giving us only part of the story, the part that suits them. We get a cartoon movie, like Wall-E–which was an entertaining movie, but with a message that this New York Times story undercuts.

Anecdotes and stories do not substitute for facts and data. Using Wall-E as an argument abut the reality of global warming is like using Murphy Brown as an argument about single parenthood. They are stories we tell ourselves, and while they may spark some discussion on matters, they do not substitute for reality.

The reality is that the Earth will be around regardless of what we do. and so will life. No matter what we do or don’t do to the climate. The biosphere has survived eras where perhaps 90% of all life died off and yet here life still abounds. There have been times that every land animal over 50 lbs in size diasppeared. But life came back. After millions of years.

The point is not anecdotally that trees can grow somewhere given the opportunity. It is not that some form of life will be happy in an environment. It is not that Wall-E represents anything other than a cautionary tale.

It is that we have 6 billion people on this Earth because of a certain climate; one that readily provides life for most of them. An altered climate may allow trees to grow quite well in some locations, but the climate would still be totally unable to sustain human life at the levels we see. Rainfall patterns can change. Fresh water availability can change. The growing regions can move northward meaning that growing seasons are altered. Drought can enter regions used to water. Tens of millions of people could die. Those are the possibilities.

The best places to live today may be changed completely. The worst places may become hell holes.

That is the disaster people should talk about. Not whether trees are growing in New England. Or a cartoon robot represents the arguments of environmentalists.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Ebola and Pigs

by Dr. Frederick Murphy

Pig farmer infected with Ebola virus:
[Via News at Nature - Most Recent]

Health officials in the Philippines confirmed last week that a worker at a pig farm has contracted the Ebola Reston subtype of Ebola virus.
[More]

Well, luckily, the form found is the Reston strain of the virus, which has not been shown to be lethal in humans. The African form is the lethal one.

But the worry is that pigs can act as a pool for the virus. Four workers were exposed to this form. Reston is believed to have an airborne route of infection (at least for monkeys) in addition to the normal one from handling infected tissues. The ability of pigs to harbor even a non-lethal form of the virus is cause for concern.

The African Ebola strain is the ultimate ‘hot’ virus with human mortality sometimes approaching 90%. The immune system is not effective at stemming the infection and the body may well respond in ways that are eventually detrimental, with death being due to organ failure or loss of blood. In outbreaks, it generally kills people too rapidly for the virus to spread very far. Luckily the African strain can only be spread by fluid contact and is not airborne.

Ebola is very simple, less than 19,000 nucleotides in length, coding for only 8 proteins (7 structural and 1 non-structural). But the effects of those viral proteins on a human’s body can be devastating. Vaccines might be on the way but the emergence of new forms may make this problematic. Additionally, in experimental settings with animal models, as few as 3 amino acid changes can change a non-lethal strain into a lethal one. Let’s hope an African form never gets into an Asian pig.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

Changing species rapidly

from Wikipedia
The Fastest Way to Change a Species: Start Eating It:
[Via ScienceNOW]

Human hunting alters organisms’ size and breeding schedule three times faster than natural forces.

The PNAS article is entitled Human predators outpace other agents of trait change in the wild. It includes these sentences in its abstract:

Accordingly, harvested organisms show some of the most abrupt trait changes ever observed in wild populations, providing a new appreciation for how fast phenotypes are capable of changing. These changes, which include average declines of almost 20% in size-related traits and shifts in life history traits of nearly 25%, are most rapid in commercially exploited systems and, thus, have profound conservation and economic implications.

I bet it could have profound implications. Their work indicates that harvested animals become smaller and breed earlier than previously. Just as we breed really remarkable looking pigeons with directed selection, we appear to be doing similarly with the species we eat.

Eventually we will alter these species in ways that make them less likely to be harvested. That is what happens with out of control prey-predator settings. Will we then change our harvesting patterns to go after smaller and younger forms?

Technorati Tags: General, Science

Something to remember

Quotable quote: Eleanor Roosevelt on discussing ideas:
[Via elearningpost]

Eleanor Roosevelt: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

Nothing to add.

Technorati Tags: General

Bad news in PNAS

by lisa**

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science has a pretty discouraging paper out. Since it is Open Access you can read the whole thing – Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions.

It seems that simply stopping further increases in CO2 emissions will not see the climate return to ‘normal’ anytime soon. Even if we stopped now, it might take a thousand years before all the C02 we have already burned is wrung out of the system. The effects will still be seen, including droughts throughout most of the temperate regions of the world, where most people live.

I write more at Path to Sustainable but since this report is authored by the woman who lead the expeditions to the Antarctic to investigate the ozone hole and whose data was critical for the banning of CFCs, she might be someone to listen to.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Sustainability

Turbines for all

by vaxomatic

Check out my post at Path to Sustainable about residential wind turbines where I do the number crunching.

Essentially, a company is building turbines, which can be put on residences, that cost about $500 and can generate 40 kWh a month. This does not sound like much but, after doing some number crunching, if every residential user of electricity in Seattle placed one of these on their home, they would produce electricity equal to about 5% of the total electricity usage in Seattle.

If Seattle had to build a new hydroelectric power plant to generate this much electricity (which is the cheapest electrical production method), it would cost about $1000 per resident.

So, City Light could buy and install a turbine for every resident and it would still be cheaper than building the equivalent cheapest electric power plant. And if the utility could get the turbines cheaper, it could put up 2 or more and still save money.

Now there are some things that need to be verified (such as the 40 kWh number) but it is these sorts of approaches that can help us do better with our energy uses.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science, Sustainability

Too much fun with photos

I’ve been having so much fun with this gigapan photo. A photogrpher clamped a robotic arm on to a rail and used it to take 220 photos during Obama’s inauguration speech. After stitching them together, he had a 1.5 gigapixel panorama.

You can zoom in so far that you can see that both Clarence Thomas and Hillary Clinton have their eyes closed, that there are snipers on the large buildings across the way (I think the Rayburn building), that Lynne Cheney has nifty red gloves on, that Michelle was apparently sitting in a folding chair while Dianne Feinstein was in a comfy padded one, that there some some really goofy hats that are not Aretha Franklin’s and mostly worn by men.

You can see people inside the windows of the White House taking pictures, Newt Gingrich with his legs straight out in front of him, the notes on the bassoonist’s sheet music, and the people casually sitting all over the Artillery Group to the left of the Grant Memorial.

Just to the left of the Grant Memorial can be seen a gentleman holding up a Texas State Flag. You can’t miss it.

The other thing that is cool is people can set up snapshots of the areas they like best. There are almost 500 of these. Some of them help identify some people. Like Michael Jackson? Bill Gates? Yo-Yo Ma and Iztak Perlman? Denzel Washington?

With a little help, I bet almost everyone could be identified.

Technorati Tags: Politics

Split Infintives

Op-Ed Contributor: Oaf of Office:
[Via NYT > Opinion]

The fumbling in the administration of the presidential oath of office to Barack Obama was likely blowback from Chief Justice Roberts Jr.’s habit of grammatical niggling.
[More]

This is the best explanation for the flub the Chief Justice made in the oath. He is a well-kown pendant on proper language and it probably has come up in discussions before that the oat of office is grammatically incorrect. At least to those who harken to the myth of the split infinitive.

The oath says “will faithfully execute.” Any grammar police know it should be “faithfully will execute” or “will execute faithfully.” I imagine that the pressure of the moment and his attempt to memorize it all caused a momentary lapse to the default grammarian thus causing the confusion.

It is one thing to change a Bob Dylan lyric in order to make it conform to proper grammar. But I hope we have seen the last of the stubborn ‘no split infinitive’ malarkey. I will hope so certainly. I certainly will hope so. With certainty, I will hope.

Technorati Tags: General, Politics

Eating anything you want

Trying to be fat:
[Via BBC News | Health | World Edition]

Why do some people never seem to put on weight?
[More]

A nice little discussion of an experiment with people who are skinny and have a hard time putting on weight. Some interesting details and it was a small group. Increasing calories and decreasing exercise resulted in some weight increase but it was easily lost.

There was one intriguing person who gained over 10 pounds but whose metabolic rate increased 30%. Almost all the increased weight went to muscle, not fat.

As we are seeing, weight is a much more complicated thing than just eating.

Technorati Tags: Health

Media mangles science

by daisybush
Autism, Testosterone and Eugenics:
[Via BPSDB | The Lay Scientist -]

The media’s all too often shabby treatment of neuroscience and psychology research doesn’t just propagate bad science – it means that the really interesting and important bits go unreported. This is what’s just happened with the controversy surrounding a paper from the Autism Research Center (ARC) at Cambridge University – Bonnie Aeyeung et. al.’s Fetal Testosterone and Autistic Traits. For research published in a journal with an impact factor of 1.538 (i.e. not good), it’s certainly attracted plenty of attention – but for all the wrong reasons.

[More]

A nice discussion of how a reasonable paper gets altered into something completely different by the press. A paper describes the results of a small study where the production of testosterone by fetuses is correlated with the self-reporting questionnaires of the mothers taken 8 years later.

First the correlation, if there really is wrong, is not the strongest and has a lot of noise. So looking at testosterone levels could not be used to screen for autism.

And secondly, none of the children developed autism, so there is no data in the paper for the levels of testosterone produced by a fetus who actually did develop autism. SO I am not sure what the data really shows a correlation to.

But that does not stop the papers, who ended up having discussions on a huge range of things that reality had little support for.

Par for the course.

Technorati Tags: Science

Path to Sustainable blog

I’m on the board of the Sustainable Path Foundation (formerly the Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation). We just went through a rebranding which included the creation of a new website, which was actually a wonderful exercise. One of the aspects of this that I am interested in is trying to use new technologies to increase our ability to meet our objectives.

One objective is to serve as a convener/collaborator for topics dealing with human health and sustainability. In addition to providing grants and putting on a very successful seminar series, we have also started Idea Club, a free-form forum for open discussions of relevant topics. I have discussed the upcoming one.

Because the new tools allow an individual to take come control, I have been working on content for a blog dealing with the matters of interest to Sustainable Path. It reflects my personal viewpoints and is only connected with Sustainable Path by my membership on the board.

But I hope its content will stimulate discussions that can carry over to Idea Club or the Seminar series. I hope I can bring together an online community that can harness digital Web 2.0 approaches as well as the Sustainable Path Foundation harness in person approaches.

So, let me introduce Path to Sustainable.

Yes, I know the name sounds odd but I wanted to convey that we are on a path TO someplace. A path to a sustainable world, sustainable state, sustainable community, sustainable economy, etc. We want more than just the ability to be sustainable. We want to BE sustainable. And that is the path we are on.

Technorati Tags: Economy, General, Science, Sustainability

HIGH-FIVE INAUGURATION!

more about "HIGH-FIVE INAUGURATION! from Almost T…", posted with vodpod

Not only is this funny but it is a hoot trying to figure out who everyone is.

Plus, now I know how to embed other video types. other than just Youtube.

DIMEs

Dense Inert Metal Explosives in Gaza:
[Via Booman Tribune]

It seems Gaza was a weapons testing lab for the use of a particularly toxic form of weapons: DIME weapons More from Al Jazeera English: Medics working in the Gaza Strip have condemned Israel’s use of suspected “new weapons” that inflict horrific injuries they say most surgeons will not have seen before. Dr Jan Brommundt, a German doctor working for Medecins du Monde in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis, described the injuries he had seen as “absolutely gruesome”. [...] When detonated, a Dime device expels a blade of charged tungsten dust that burns and destroys everything within a four-metre radius. Brommundt also described widespread but previously unseen abdominal injuries that appear minor at first but degenerate within hours causing multi-organ failure. “Initially everything seems in order… but they will present within one to five hours with an acute abdomen which looks like appendicitus but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all of their organs,” he said. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles at around 1×1 or 2×1 millimetres that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” The doctors said many patients succomb to septicaemia and die within 24 hours. Dr Erik Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon who worked at the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also told Al Jazeera there was a significant increase in double amputations. “We suspect they [Israel] used Dime weapons because we saw cases of huge amputations or flesh torn off the lower parts of the body,” he said. “The pressure wave [from a Dime device] moves from the ground upwards and that’s why the majority of patients have huge injuries to the lower part of the body and abdomen.” I can’t add much to that. I don’t know what to say, frankly.

I had never heard of these types of munitions before. It appears that they were developed to reduce the overall size of a destructive blast radius and thus the collateral damage. Instead of possibly killing and maiming a lot of unnecessary people with a large blast radius, it reduces the radius but also increases the lethality within the zone. It is a bomb you can walk away from but then be dead 24 hours later.

So they are better targeted and perhaps more lethal than normal bombs. I can see the wish for this sort of weapon. It holds the possibility of reducing overall casualties. But it also means that someone can walk away healthy and be dead in a day. And the material is possibly quite carcinogenic, so there may well be severe outcomes that do not appear until years later.

There is something about surviving an attack but then succumbing to it some time later that causes more mental anguish than just being killed immediately. At least for me. When reading about Hiroshima, I was more upset with reading accounts of people who survived the blast but dies from radiation poisoning later. Or the early workers with radiation, such as Louis Slotin.

I think there is a visceral repugnance towards something that leaves a person conscious but knowing that they are already dead. It may be why deadly viruses, such as Ebola are of more interest than the flu even though they kill far fewer people.

Technorati Tags: Science, Technology

Because its funny

The Immortalizers:
[Via BAGnewsNotes]

If the NYT found this an amusing moment to profile on Thursday’s front page — perhaps to tide us over until a one-day-old White House gets its footing — it functions symbolically, as well (at the expense of these photographers), as an indictment of the media, and its tendency to become overwhelmingly focused on the politically trivial.

(image: Doug Mills/NYT. January 21, 2009)

Is this post-ironic? I love the three different angles. Do the Pulitzers give an award for Best Photo of an Inanimate Object? And the political paparazzi are complaining because they are not being given the same access to Obama as the official White House photographers are. I can see why the administration might want to limit access. Who wants to see pictures of the new drapes taken by 5 different photojournalists?

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Politics

Steven Chu speaks

Steven Chu Addresses the National Labs:
[Via Cosmic Variance]

The new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, addressed the national labs in an all-hands video transmission today. I was not there, but my colleague and friend Rob Roser at Fermilab was there, and sent me a very nice bulleted summary. So, you are getting this second hand, and people who were there can add nuances in the comments, but here goes:

Read the whole list but here are a few highlights.

• Energy is the defining issue of our time.
• Addressing the environment is the major reason Chu took on this job.
• These problems provide a tremendous opportunity for the DOE, but it comes with a burden: we can not fail.

Getting energy under control is critical for almost everything else. I just worry about the time frame for this sort of change.

• The DOE can quite literally “save the world” by developing a sound energy policy going forward, and invent new science that will provide new technologies.
• Our current use of energy not sustainable – have to move forward.
• We are facing something society has never been asked to do before: to deal with ominous problems with climate change. If half of the things climate science tells us are half true, we have a huge problem on our hands and the DOE has to work to provide those solutions.

Sustainable energy use will require a huge change in our outlooks and expectations. There will be a lot of foot dragging.

It will take a true collaboration of government research labs and entrepreneurs to accomplish these tasks. We had better be up for it.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science