The Hound Of Ulster

I probably should not be flippant, but this language seems more appropraite to Jonah than to the scientific community.

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won’t have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

I love the fire ants bit. It just seems so…random, and so childish. “Oh, so you don’t believe in global warming? Well, just wait ’till the fire ants show up. That’ll teach ya.”

It feels like wolf-calling on a massive scale.

No, I’m not talking about the fact that my house is no longer freezing cold. I’m talking about the continuing Global Warming controversy, fueled even more by THIS sort of thing.

Claude Allegre, one of France’s leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

…

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in l’ Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro’s retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. “The cause of this climate change is unknown,” he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the “science is settled.”

Talk about “inconvenient.” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

THIS isn’t helping, either. More “inconvenience.” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself again. And HERE is the trailer.)

The Anchoress has a nice COMPILATION of things on the matter.

I was talking about this very issue with a friend of mine over the weekend. And I am increasingly frustrated by how political this whole thing has become. I’m not against the notion of Stewarding the Earth, by any means. That’s been “in the cards” since Genesis. And I do think it’s fair to say that there is more that we could do on that particular front. (Of course, that’s true about pretty much everything.)

But the amount of dishonesty in this issue is appalling. And it makes it nearly impossible to think clearly about the matter. I react strongly to folks who say that “the science is settled,” since it’s not. And I react just as strongly to folks who want to make it the “moral issue of our times.” Those are simply not true.

(Oh, and my house is no longer freezing cold, which is really, really nice.)

I’m sure I can’t be the only person that finds THIS dreadfully amusing:

HOUSE HEARING ON ‘WARMING OF THE PLANET’ CANCELED AFTER ICE STORM

That’s the way Drudge DESCRIBED the situation. And California Conservative’s Gary Gross JUMPS on it with both feet. And jack-boots.

Bonus:

SAVE IT FOR A SUNNY DAY: Maryville Univ. in St. Louis area cancelling screening of Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ because of a snowstorm…

I do not see how THIS can possibly be helpful.

The execution is “tragic and reason for sadness,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi said, speaking in French on Vatican Radio’s French-language news program.

In separate comments to the station’s English program, Lombardi said that capital punishment cannot be justified “even when the person put to death is one guilty of grave crimes,” and he reiterated the Catholic Church’s overall opposition to the death penalty.

But perhaps more importantly, I do not see how it can be true.

I don’t disagree with the first paragraph, of course. Despite WFB’s attempts, I cannot feel happy and Saddam’s death. It is tragic for many reasons - his actual death, the incredible evil he practiced during his lifetime, the combination of the two causing one to wonder how ready he could possibly be to meet his Maker, and many other things - and I found myself moved to tears by the pictures of the aftermath for reasons that I cannot completely comprehend.

But to say that capital punishment “cannot be justified even when the person put to death is one guilty of grave crimes?” That’s just not right. Take a look at a COUPLE LINKS From the CCC:

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.

2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

Saying that Saddam’s death does not fit this criteria would be one thing. I’m not sure I’d agree, but I could understand the objection. But that’s not what Father Lombardi is saying. He’s saying capital punishment cannot be justified, no matter who is being put to death. That’s a universal statement, not a particular one - and it’s flat-out contradicted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. #2266 and #2267 lay out specific ways in which it is allowed, while stressing that its necessity is “very rare, if not practically non-existent.” That seems to carefully avoid saying it cannot be justified.

To characterize the Church as as holding a position of “overall opposition to the death penalty” seems fair enough. John Paul II had prudential reasons for opposing the death penalty in every case, and it was closely tied into our culture’s nearly total disregard for the sanctity of human life. But it was an effort to correct a problem by “bending the stick backwards;” to “err” on the side of concern for human life. It was not based on the fact that there is never a valid (or logical) reason for capital punishment.

Am I missing something really basic here? Or could there be issues of context? Heaven knows the media likes to pit us against ourselves. Maybe that’s part of the problem here.

I hope.

…only THIS one is from a very different kind of source.

Cuban President Fidel Castro is very ill and close to death, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said yesterday.

“Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer . . . months, not years,” Negroponte told a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters.

Interesting.  Not sure it will have a significant impact on the way things are run over there - it’s just “transitioning” to his brother, after all.  But Fidel is a known commodity, and his brother is not.  Not quite.

A slight REVISION appears to be in order.

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.

…

The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in.

It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun.

…

The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels.

The report states that snow cover in mountainous regions will contract and permafrost in polar regions will decline.

However, Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, urged governments to be cautious. “There needs to be better data before billions of pounds are spent on policy measures that may have little impact,” he said.

Besides, it’s not even our FAULT.

Burning fuel to produce fertilizer to grow feed, to produce meat and to transport it - and clearing vegetation for grazing - produces 9 per cent of all emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. And their wind and manure emit more than one third of emissions of another, methane, which warms the world 20 times faster than carbon dioxide.

OK, so that doesn’t say it’s not our fault. Cause the whole “fertilizer for feed, producing the meat and transporting it” stuff is still “on us.” But it’s nice to see someone being fair to the car for a change. And the methane bit is pretty interesting. We might be causing the high number of cows, but I’m pretty sure they’d be omitting methane without us. (And I’m also shocked to see that “ranching is the major driver of deforestation worldwide.” Shocking indeed.)

Hawking has SPOKEN:

Returning to a theme he has voiced many times before, the Cambridge University cosmologist said today that space-rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology popularised in Star Trek would be needed to help Homo sapiens colonise hospitable planets orbiting alien stars.

I love the Star Trek bit.

I know, I know. I’m being a hypocrite. I dislike intentionally slanted reporting when it comes to political matters, so I should object to this, as well. Putting Star Trek there serves no purpose other than to make Hawking’s suggestions look silly. It’s not fair, and not necessary.

Plus his words look odd enough without any journalistic “help.”

The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe.

There isn’t anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star.

If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light.

However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, and reach speeds just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn’t seem so long for those on board.

First off, why should we expect to exist after some asteroid collision?

And secondly, how does this work?

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that scientists still have “some way to go” to reach his prediction in his bestselling A Brief History of Time that mankind would one day “know the mind of God” by understanding the complete set of laws which govern the universe.

This set of laws, which will probably rely on theory that requires more than three dimensions of space and one of time, could be uncovered within 20 years, not least because next year the giant LHC atom smasher will go into operation in the CERN nuclear physics laboratory in Geneva to provide new information for that quest by simulating conditions not seen since the birth of the universe as well making antimatter in a special factory.

Sometimes I have a hard time telling where science stops, and the science fiction begins. Maybe it’s because they look so much alike in this instance.

The life of Alexander Litvinenko might well have been sensational. But his DEATH certainly was.

A former Russian spy who was mysteriously poisoned has attacked President Vladmir Putin in a statement made on his deathbed.

Putin SAYS there there was no proof it was a “violent death,” though the potential PRESENCE of “a large quantity of radiation, probably from a substance called Polonium 210″ would certainly suggest otherwise. I’m pretty sure that’s not the kind of thing you can ingest accidentally. It’s not the sort of substance usually found lying around the kitchen.

And THIS doesn’t make the death any more likely to have been “accidental,” though it seems that there are any number of non-Putin suspects.

Mr Litvinenko had recently been investigating the murder of his friend, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another critic of the Putin government.

Russian dissident Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel and friend of Mr Litvinenko, maintained that the poisoning had been the work of the Russians.

The Russian security service had “sent a man with a poisonous pill to Britain”, put a pill into Mr Litvinenko’s tea and killed him, he told BBC News.

Intelligence analyst Glenmore Trenear Harvey said Mr Litvinenko had “made a lot of enemies” when he had been tasked with fighting corruption during his time with the Federal Security Service (FSB) - the KGB’s successor.

Mr Harvey also said the poisoning could have been carried out by the “Russian mafia”, made up of former-KGB men who had formed the group when the service broke up.

“So I think that while one could say they were trained by the KGB this is not in any way a Russian intelligence service hit,” he told BBC News.

HERE is Mr. Litvinenko’s statement in its entirety:

I would like to thank many people. My doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are doing all they can for me; the British police who are pursuing my case with vigor and professionalism and are watching over me and my family. I would like to thank the British government for taking me under their care. I am honored to be a British citizen.

I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.

I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds.

But as I lie here, I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.

You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed.

You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value.

You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilized men and women.

You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.

What a strange situation. Once again, truth is stranger than fiction - often a great deal stranger.

DETAILS.

Saddam, shaking and defiant, was sentenced in Baghdad today after being found guilty of ordering the murder of Iraqi civilians.

“Allahu Akbar!” (God is Greatest) and “Long live the nation!”, he shouted, pointing defiantly at the judge as the verdict was delivered.

Tonight George Bush said: “Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.

“It is a major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy and its constitutional government.”

…

Saddam was convicted of ordering the deaths of 148 Shia men and teenage boys in the town of Dujail in 1982.

The killings followed a failed assassination attempt against him and were intended to act as a grim warning to others not to oppose him.

Amnesty International was not impressed, apparently. (I guess they liked the “you are no dictator” judge better.)

He had wanted to face a firing squad - that request was refused.

Celebratory gunfire echoed across Baghdad while fighting broke out in the north of the city.

Saddam’s lawyer said the former president urged Iraqis “not to take revenge” on the US coalition and to “unify in the face of sectarian strike”.

Sporadic violence has been reported in other parts of the country.

What a strange situation.

For REAL. Maybe.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

A couple quick thoughts. First, why is the London School of Economics involved with this? And why would we trust economists on the future of the human race? They seem to have enough trouble predicting the economy.

Second, why will our “dependence on technology” lead to our decline? Curry says we’ll become pets. or something like that.

Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

I wonder what the justification is for that? Sounds interesting enough, but a bit far-fetched. Course, we could always invoke the Darwin principle. We’re talking about ” a really long time,” remember? So that should explain it.

And lastly, we seem to be drifting towards “less choosier about sexual partners,” not the other direction.

Then again, maybe the economists are WRONG.

And the notion of two subspecies in a hundred thousand years is frankly daft. As Voltaire put it, history is the sound of silken slippers descending the stairs, while hobnailed boots march up them. Humans are mobile and becoming more so, in terms of miles, cash and sex; and basic evolutionary theory tells us that new species can only arise in isolation as defined by distance or mating preference – and isolation is the one thing that we lack.

The Time Machine, a work of art as much as of science, has a clever twist. The evil Morlocks are in fact the rulers, the sensitive Eloi their mere domestic animals. H G Wells’ message was a political one and he wrote before politics became quite as terrifying as it is today.

As someone interested in world affairs as much as biology, I can make a more immediate, confident, and cheerless forecast than any moral psychologist, evolutionary or otherwise; that history will not end with a Darwinian whimper in some distant dysgenic future, but quite soon and quite suddenly, with an emphatic Einsteinian bang.

Myself, I have to agree with that second paragraph. There is nearly nothing scientific about Wells. He mostly wants to make political points. (Remember War of the Worlds? Very political, really. Nearly completely political. And interestingly enough, nearly completely different politically that Spielberg’s version. But that’s a discussion for another time.) When he isn’t making political points, he’s making absurd scientific claims - claims that have proven to be wrong again and again.

Agreeing with Wells’ science should be a perfectly good reason for rejecting your own theory. Maybe the economists should look at their allies a bit more closely. It could be quite instructive.