Mega Hyper Double Lunch Post 2: Climate Change

The ever-skeptical commenter B-I-L responded to my last NASA tongue-lashing with this comment:

Come on now; it happens to be that there is a large number in the scientific community that are part of your “denialist” group.

B-I-L then points to this link, where a dissenting group of 650 scientists argue that there is little persuasive evidence for global climate change.

First, this is a link to a Republican blog, and the article is written as an attack on Al Gore, supporting the tie I have suggested between the Republican party and climate change denialism.

Second, I'd hardly call 650 scientists a "large number in the scientific community." There are literally millions of scientists on earth. Even if the petitioning scientists were actually all climatologists, they would only be a small fraction of the total number of climate scientists who have studied this phenomena in detail.
One of the lauded "scientists" who is directly quoted is Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever. Giaever has not authored a single paper on climate change or weather. He received his Nobel Prize in physics for doing research in the 60's on the electronic tunneling in superconducting materials. That makes him a bigshot at computer engineering conferences, but has literally nothing to do with the weather. Just because a person has achieved greatness in one area does not qualify them as a reliable expert in another. This is why even the finest actors should be completely ignored when they go hang out with Hugo Chavez and call themselves political geniuses.
Also quoted: a paleontologist, a geologist, a Japanese professor who believes recycling is a waste of energy, and many others who are highly accredited in their own field but have little knowledge in global atmospheric studies.

The partisan problem here is that if any study or report comes out supporting of global climate change, the Democrats go "SEE!!!!!!!!!!" and wave it in our faces, then the Republicans answer with their own opposing study or report and yell "SEE!!!!!!!!" and wave right back. And so a Democratically controlled Federal government will of course give NASA all the funding it needs to shoot a bunch of satellites into space that will help them with their next moment of yelling "SEE!!!" regardless of the fiscal irresponsibility of such an activity.

Personally, I do not know for sure if global warming is real or not. I tend to believe it is. But part of me thinks we're just still emerging from the last ice age. Humans have a short term memory, and climate change (even anthropogenic) happens slowly. When people say "wow it is cold this winter, so much for that global warming thing" I want to smack them because they just don't get that climate change doesn't happen over a weekend. And people don't realize that "global warming" can actually cause regional cooling (see my posts here and here).

The problem as I see it is not in the truth or falsehood of anthropogenic climate change. The problem is that human behavior is incapable of changing radically enough to create a zero impact situation. Even if we aren't yet at a population density/level of wastefulness required to destroy the Earth or and make it uninhabitable, we will be eventually, with the explosive population growth going on all over the globe. And everyone wants everyone else to be the one to change. No one has the courage to do the right thing. Short of a massive population decrease via pandemic or world war, I see us headed in the wrong direction with no brakes.

However, I do have one thought for the denialists. If you are right (which you very well may be), and the world has not yet felt the effects of humankind's prolific spread from pole to pole, wouldn't it behoove you to propse legislation now to aggressively curb the chance that in the future we will reach a point of environmental destruction that could in fact harm the earth? Doesn't it make sense to stop the future global warming before it starts? If the amount of pollution caused by the 7 billion people currently on Earth is not enough to cause climate change, doesn't it make sense to enact legislation that curbs the amount of crap dumped into the air to the current level, so we can forever stay in the equilibrium zone? We would not have to legislate the reduction of anything! We just need to legislate that there must not be any increase in carbon emissions from today forward.

Then the denialists could forever be right...as long as the world went on at that level, and the climate moved in its natural patterns, the denialists could smile and say "see, we were right, the temperature changes aren't human made." and then the environmentalists could smile back and say "and thanks to your brilliant legislation, they never will be."


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Mega Hyper Double Lunch Post 1: Birthday Trivia

TAE celebrates his birthday this Sunday, March 8th. Because of the current economy and Federal government (and its makeup), I thought there were three bits of interesting March 8th trivia I would share.

1. On March 8th, 1655, John Castor became the first legally recognized slave in the future United States in the case of Johnson vs. Parker. So began a long, difficult battle for equality that, in my opinion, was capped a month ago when a black man took the oath as President of the United States. (Side note, also on March 8th, but in 1775, Thomas Paine published "African Slavery in America" calling for immediate emancipation of slaves, and heavily influencing some of the language Thomas Jefferson used when writing the Declaration of Independence.)

2. On March 8th, 1817, the New York Stock Exchange opened for business, setting up modern capitalist investing on a whole new, wondrous (and in some cases vile) scale.

3. On March 8th, 1917, the U.S. Senate enacts the "cloture rule", whereby a supermajority of Senators can block filibusters. This is relevant because during the November election it was speculated whether or not the Dems could achieve the necessary 60 members to obtain a supermajority. At it's origin, the supermajority required a 2/3rds vote, which would mean 67 votes. But in 1974 that rule was changed, as the Democrats had 61 members and wanted a supermajority. So they passed it, but as in order to appease the dissenters, they agreed that each Senator must be present and accounted for in order to vote...Senator Kennedy could not vote against a filibuster from the safety of his hospital bed.


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More on Human Population Control

Yesterday I referred to antiquated religions (read: catholicism) as unhelpful and actually detrimental to society in their stoic refusal to modernize and acknowledge that at least some forms of birth control (and rarely, abortion) are acceptable given the state of the world.

Well, the disgusting, awful awful proof is in the gross, bizarre, criminal pudding.


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NASA OVER BUDGET! SUPRISE OF THE CENTURY!

Wasn't it just the other day I was ranting about NASA blowing 600 million pointless dollars on a telescope to find exoplanets we'll never visit nor actually know anything about beyond the fact that they are there?

Well surprise of the century, it turns out that NASA is completely incapable of staying within its estimated budgets. In the last year alone, NASA has blown its budget by $1.1 billion. This is a continual problem, so much so that NASA's former chief resigned last year and wrote an op-ed about how the money shifting at NASA had driven him out.

Here, NASA auditors found that NASA had 9 major projects...all over budget. Included in this list is my favorite, the Kepler planet finding telescope. NASA is currently a whopping $97.3 million over budget on that single piece of equipment.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of talking about NASA and their intense overspending of taxpayer dollars for projects that won't fundamentally help America in any tangible way other than the "gee whiz factor". But what I really want to point your attention towards is back in that first article, where it says that because of NASA's budget woes, the Federal Government is giving them $1 billion to help out. That money will come out of the latest stimulus that just passed.
So instead of cracking down on NASA's fiscal waste like was done under the Bush administration, where they were put under the same rules as the Defense Department (any projects that go 15% or more over budget require Congressional approval. Any projects that go over budget at all require committee notification.), instead we will now just give them more money and let them continue their ways. Part of the reason for this surely is that many of the current NASA projects are aimed at proving human-made climate change is a real problem, which is classically a thorn in the eye of the denialist Republican party, so the Democrats of course are going to continue funding those projects, with whatever money it takes.

Don't get me wrong. I love space, and sweet new technology. But I love fiscal responsibility, and low taxes just as much, if not more.


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Human Population Control

I heard this morning that two states, including Missouri, are considering legislation to limit the number of embryos that can be implanted in a woman's uterus in a single implantation, mostly to prevent another "Octomom."

This is a terrible idea. Legislating birth rate is a short step from legislating family size, which China has proven to be an absolutely brain-dead policy that leads to a small working population supporting the needs of a massive retired population. Of course, in China the purpose was population reduction not homeostasis. If the government said each married couple can only have 2 kids, things might go better. Divorce and remarriage, of course, would throw a wrench in the system.

It would be much better if people would realize that this isn't the 80's; we just can't have families with 8 kids anymore. The population of the United States has grown nearly logarithmically since then, and though it's hard to see here in the spacious breadbasket states, our nation is near its supportable limit. Add in the influx of immigrants (legal and illegal), and we quickly have a problem. I'm not above the law, though. I would love to have a lot of kids, I love the daughter I have and I enjoy being a father. My wife (one of four siblings) and I do plan to have another child. But we also acknowledge that Earth has limited resources and though my job might provide enough money to support a family with several kids in it, we all can't do that, can we? Having a lot of kids nowadays, to me, reeks of elitism: "My DNA is superior, I must pass it on as much as possible, to get as many of my progeny on the Earth as possible, regardless of the negative consequences." Or it seems hopelessly antiquated: "My religion refuses to acknowledge global problems, so we won't bend one of our fundamental rules."
Where a hundred years ago, large families were borne out of necessity to overcome infant mortality, now there is no real need in America to have so many children. Fewer and fewer infants and children die. Do we really want our kids to someday be like the Boomers, and stretch Medicare and Social Security at its seams? Or do we want to practice prudent progeny production, and ensure the security and well-being of the next generation?

Obscenely large family size, to me, is a classic example of something that people should be doing on their own, and the government wouldn't have to legislate it.

And don't get me started on how the TLC television channel has romanticized stupid-large families. Seems like I've dealt with this issue before?


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Waller's Law of Collapsing Nations

Russian Scholar: U.S. will collapse next year.

U.S. Scholars: Oh yeah? Well, Russia will collapse 18 years ago.

We've heard this Russian drivel before. Panarin isn't exactly Nostradamus, he may simply have waited for the paperback version of Orlov's Reinventing Collapse to come out before he read it, and pretended the ideas were his own.

And isn't it just like a Russian to eviscerate the U.S. and predict its downfall for the exact same reasons that Russia is itself in risk of collapse? And then to vehemently deny that Russia is having those problems?

So in conclusion, I've developed TAE's Law of Collapsing Nations: Russia will always fall before the U.S. falls.
And TAE's Corollary #1 to TAE's Law: The closer Russians are to economic collapse, the harder they deny they have a problem. Or simply put, as Russia's economy approaches zero, their denial approaches infinity.

Write those down, I'll probably be famous for saying them someday.


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Finding another Earth that we'll never visit.

Friday NASA will launch a new telescope whose sole purpose is to search for exoplanets. Here, I discussed that Earth-like exoplanets may be far more numerous than previously believed. I also discussed that the statistical chances of finding those planets is relatively good, but the prospects of finding intelligent life there is virtually nil.

So I appreciate NASA's push to find another Earth, but unless they have an end-strategy to move humans there in the form of colonists, I see no reason to spend $600 million dollars on the new Kepler space telescope to find those planets. Especially in the current economic climate. $600 million could be better spent elsewhere, if you ask me. Commenter "B-I-L" remarked to yesterday's post that rather than more stimulus, the government should consider more effectively rebudgeting and moving money around at the current budget. Here is a shining example of where that could effectively work.

Because really, what good will it do us to know that there are "earth-like" exoplanets? We won't know if they contain a single drop of water. We won't be able to know if they contain basic life, or intelligent species (the latter especially would be rare, since these are all planets around stars we have already tested for radio transmission). Some of the "earth-like" exoplanets will be so far away that it would take thousands upon thousands of years for our probes to reach them. None of them will be close enough to visit in less than ten lifetimes.

To me, the entire exploration of deep space is a philosophical depression. It's as if NASA has this mission to look away from Earth, ignore Earth, and try to keep us excited about the possibilites beyond Earth. NASA, it would seem, exists to spend money off Earth. Frankly, $600 million could pay for future AIDS vaccines for most of Africa, or for clean water facilities for much of that entire continent. Or for free college tuition for every middle and lower class college student for a year. Or for upgrades to public schools across the country. Or for shoring up the health care system. Or for paying for med school for new doctors and nursing school for new nurses.

No, we'll be using that $600 million to lob an 8 ton colossus of copper and mirrors into space, hope that it functions correctly, and spend millions upon millions later to service it and keep it in orbit as long as possible. And we'll pray the Russians don't ram it with one of their satellites in the mean time.


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