Value of a human life = another human life?
National Review responds to a recent proposal in Nature:
The editors of Nature are well aware that this proposal might seem a little ghoulish, and they have two suggestions for making it seem less so. The first is that “death” be redefined. The law currently treats someone as dead if he has experienced an “irreversible cessation” either of all the functions of the brain or of both the circulatory and respiratory systems. These tests indicate that the person can no longer function as an integrated organism. Since people can pass those tests without, in the editors’ view, “being alive in any meaningful sense,” and since those people can be sources of working organs, the editorial proposes changing the definition. It does not specify what the new definition should be, but it is clear that the direction of the change should be toward relaxation. Problem solved: Fresh organs can now be removed from a patient deemed to be dead, and the procedure can’t, by (new) definition, kill anyone.
Existing law does not prohibit anyone from writing a living will which effects exactly what Nature suggests—for himself. What does not follow is that because a man can freely decide to do a good thing on his own, the state should force people to do the same act—the same way law does not require me to save someone from danger even though it would be virtuous of me to do.
But then, I guess to liberal academics, there is little difference between an act of kindness brought by compassion and voluntary will and a beneficial act enforced by the state. Just remember. This is supposed to be humor, not real life:
Hand-picked data good for politics, but is it good for science?
Well, so the climate change truthers "won a battle" (via Slashdot), and I can't wait for the full range of data to be available.
In the meantime, we will have the liberals and environmentalist nuts gloating and claiming,
One particularly striking set of images - selected from the 1,000 photographs released - includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
which is pretty inconsistent with their previous claims. Weren't they claiming that global warming was destroying the Earth for decades? What's ice doing near an Alaskan port in 2006? Couldn't it be that 2006 was an extremely cold summer, and the photo in 2007 is actually how it should look like (and how it looked like) for last century or so? And why are we comparing 2006 photo only to 2007 photo? What about 2008? 2005? or 2004? Don't they want to show the systematic and chronological retreat of the ice from the port, to support their claim that we are melting the polar cap down?
Even if we were to accept their premise that even a few degree of rise in global average temperature is extremely harmful to the condition of human life (which I doubt, given the conditions in which we were supposed to have evolved from, all without the benefit of modern technology and the incredible mobility we enjoy today), if they are hand-picking their data for what best supports their position, well, how can we trust them?
Yet another evidence Earth can handle way more CO2
John Timmer writes for Ars Technica:
The scenario should sound familiar. The amount of carbon in the oceans and atmosphere changes suddenly and dramatically. The oceans are acidified and significant extinctions result. On land, global temperatures increase anywhere from five to nine degrees Celsius, causing widespread habitat disruptions. Despite the sudden onset of the event, its impact lingers for 100,000 years.
This might sound like a worst-case situation for the current anthropogenic influences on climate, but it's actually an historic event that the public is generally unaware of: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, which occurred about 55 million years ago.
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The final option is that although the PETM may be the best analog for the current changes, it's not actually a great one. The atmospheric carbon started out much higher, the continents and oceans were in a different arrangement, etc. Still, the results suggest that digging deeper into the PETM is likely to turn up plenty of interesting information.
Yes, I'm sure. More data point is always better, and it's easier to correct for perturbations arising from different shape of the ocean than to calculate the complicated dynamics of increased CO2 levels and other greenhouse gases (notably water vapor).
But that'll help only as long as we are willing to fit our theory and opinions to the data, and not the other way around, and it sounds like Mr. Timmer, unfortunately, has made up his mind about the matter already. For one, he ignores any complications in the favor of the alarmist position
An alternative is that there are additional feedbacks lurking in the system. Small temperature increases do things like melt reflective ice and put more water vapor (another greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere; as a result, they have a larger impact than might be expected.
Guess what you get when you have water vapor in the atmosphere? Clouds! You know, I'm not an astronaut, but from the satellite images of Earth, clouds look pretty much like polar caps, which Mr. Timmer claims helps the earth cool with its white reflectivity. How could melting polar caps hurt the Earth while more vapors, which leads to more clouds, also hurt the Earth? Of course, the matter isn't that simple, because water vapor that don't condense into cloud do trap the heat in—and that's part of the difficulty of the problem.
In any case, Mr. Timmer brings up a good point: before this age of massive extinctions and all, the atmospheric carbon levels were way above 1000 ppm. Current levels stand below 400 ppm, and at least using simple extrapolation from this, we get an increase of less than 2 ppm per year. Earth's biosphere was robust enough to endure carbon dioxide level of 1000 ppm, so that means we have at least 300 more years before anything really bad happens (and we got millennia, if we want to wait until extinctions of hopefully nonhuman species to occur), provided that we don't increase our current exhaust levels too drastically.
I know people of Noah's time said the same thing, but, well, based on the best understanding of our world, isn't this too early to panic? At least let's wait 5 years to see if the polar caps melt away like the alarmists claim.
Millions and Millions Dead
As the body count continues to rise, a shaken nation is struggling to cope in the wake of the mass deaths sweeping the world population. With no concrete figures available at this early stage, experts estimate at least 250,000 U.S. citizens have died in the last month alone, with death tolls across the globe reaching into the millions.
When the strength of Men fails, doubting Evolution and the all powerful Nature, god of Hittites, Babylonians, and Persians, She re-asserts herself and makes herself known to us all.
Blessed be Evolution, whose power extends through the ages, killing all those who do not deserve her!
Obama To Reverse Bush Limits On Stem Cell Work
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Associated Press: "Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science, President Barack Obama plans to lift restrictions Monday on taxpayer-funded research using embryonic stem cells. ... Under President George W. Bush, taxpayer money for that research was limited to a small number of stem cell lines that were created before Aug. 9, 2001, lines that in many cases had some drawbacks that limited their potential usability. But hundreds more of such lines — groups of cells that can continue to propagate in lab dishes — have been created since then, ones that scientists say are healthier, better suited to creating treatments for people rather than doing basic laboratory science. Work didn't stop. Indeed, it advanced enough that this summer, the private Geron Corp. will begin the world's first study of a treatment using human embryonic stem cells, in people who recently suffered a spinal cord injury. Nor does Obama's change fund creation of new lines. But it means that scientists who until now have had to rely on private donations to work with these newer stem cell lines can apply for government money for the research, just like they do for studies of gene therapy or other treatment approaches."
"Reversing an eight-year-old limit on potentially life-saving science..."
I think it's missing a couple modifiers. To make it a fair and balanced fragment, one must say, "Reversing an eight-year-old funding limit on potentially life-saving science that uses murdered fetuses as fodder..."
Is it O.K. to kill one innocent person so that 2 may live? Or how about one person so that 10 may live? 100? 1,000? One million? When does it become O.K. to kill an innocent life in cold blood ("in the name of Science") so that others may live in his stead?
One could argue that limiting federal funding for this immoral source of "medicine" did two marginally good things: 1) it encouraged development of work with adult stem cells which do not have these moral issues (or for that matter, rejection issues that foreign cells, stem cell or not, must cause); 2) it stopped the public money from bleeding into this morally dubious endeavor and let each investor and company decide whether they want to fund this crime against humanity themselves (and the devil found enough friends, as the article states).
It was good 8 years while it lasted. One can only hope that we can redress this giant step backwards when Obama steps down, ooh, in less than 4 years now.
Edit: For anyone still stupid enough to believe that Obama is some kind of saint or Savior.
Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God
Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week's Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: "They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance."
Geez. This was as informative as some prick blabbering about how a homeless person yelled "Fuck you" at him.
From scientific point of view, creationism is less than worthless, the way physics is absolutely banal from the ... shall we say, poetic, or literary point of view. And frankly, I don't care much for the crackpots trying to push religion onto science.
But do you know what I care even less for? Atheists who are riding on the coattails of science to insult millions and billions who believe in God (or a god, or many gods). Science is silent is on the matters of religion, period. Anyone who suggests otherwise (one way or another) has an agenda to push.
Personally, I believe in God, and I do believe that God created the world. But that's my personal belief and I don't think I have any right to let that interfere with my work—no more than an atheist with an agenda to prove non-existence of God does.
Wronger Than Wrong
Scientists are no slouches when it comes to pitching invectives at colleagues. Achieving almost canonical status as the ne plus ultra put-down is theoretical physicist Wolfgang Pauli's reported harsh critique of a paper: "This isn't right. It's not even wrong." I call this Pauli's proverb.
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Reality exists, and science is the best tool yet employed to discover and describe that reality. The theory of evolution, even though it is the subject of vigorous debates about the tempo and mode of life's history, is vastly superior to the theory of creation, which is not even wrong (in Pauli's sense).
Yes, he's right. Creationism is not even wrong, although I wouldn't say Darwinian theory of evolution, as taught in high school classrooms, is far off—the whole thing is filled with tautologies and untestable statements; where is the experimental evidence and testable predictions?
Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."
Somebody should tell her: "You never bet that the world will end; you should always bet that the world will not end."
If the anthropogenic "global warming" is so serious that it can't be slowed or reversed, what's the point of her study? Let's panic and kill ourselves? On the other hand, if all this fear-mongering turns out to be exactly that, she will have years of ridicule to endure (and if that does prove to be the case, I do hope she has no future career in science).
In any case, we got these fear-mongerers by the short tail now. Either they were truthsayers and we are doomed some years from now (as I said earlier, let's wait 5 years and see if polar cap goes away), or they were despicable monsters that scared the public for their 15 minutes of fame. And now they actually said that it's irreversible!
One nice thing about betting that the world won't end is, if it does end, no one will collect on the bet. 
Edit: Actually, with her strange theories about the ocean soaking up heat and carbon dioxide, I see the brighter side of her "study":
We have the ocean as a buffer. The earth can take a lot more! Let's burn all the fossil fuels so that the future generation doesn't have to worry about putting carbon out of the earth into the air!
Now, why does she think that all the heat and carbon dioxide will come out from the ocean in some cataclysmic event? Doesn't she believe in the second law of thermodynamics?
Nuclear free world?
"Goal must be nuclear-free world":
In response to “Public Affairs Report Examines Nuclear Weapons Policy” (APS News, November 2008): The report appears to stress how to reinforce the US Nuclear Arsenal and how to induce other nations to reduce their Nuclear Arsenal. Such a biased approach can only lead to a catastrophe in the long run. One should start by stating that large Nuclear Arsenals are the foremost menace to the survival of humanity, and given that fact all nations should contemplate how to converge towards a world without Nuclear Weapons. That will necessarily involve the cooperation of all present and future Nuclear Powers.
Complete nuclear disarmament is a ridiculous goal. All that a nation can ensure with complete certainty is whether she will have nuclear arsenal or not.
Sure, U.S. can get rid of her "arsenal of freedom", but what can we do, after we rid the world of nuclear weapons, a rogue country, say, Germany, develops its own nuclear arsenal? What options do we have, then? Are we completely so sure of our own power that we think we can stop all the nations from attempting to build their own nuclear device without fail in 100, 200 years?
There is only one practical way to risk-free nuclear disarmament: make nuclear weapons ineffective. Trying to make nations get rid of their nukes against their selfish interests for the "common good" is nothing but communism—you know, don't reap what you sow, for the "common good". The only way a nuke will look unattractive to ALL the nations is another technology to neutralize it.
What science has wrought, science will destroy.
P.S. Or, we can always take up Prof. Kaczynski's advice and destroy the very infrastructure and technology necessary for such development. It's not like a mom-and-pop operation can mine enough uranium and enrich them to construct the bomb, and find that effort worthwhile to destroy another family living 100 miles away.
Once existing infrastructure and technology is shattered to bits, it will be hundreds of years before anyone can build it up again, and at least for that long, the humanity will be safe from another nuclear holocaust.
Is Obama an enlightened being?
Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.
This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae - or no antennae at all - to all those who just don't understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama's aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.
This reminds me of a Nature podcast that claimed "Obama just seemed more attuned to science". Never mind that he was too busy campaigning that he did nothing as the Democratic congress butchered the generous science budget Bush administration proposed.
All kinds of crazy people were (and still are) projecting all kinds of crazy things on this less than ordinary man.
I suppose I should be happy. As they say, the higher the rise, the bigger the fall.