Month: March 2008

Contributed by: filbert Monday, March 10 2008 @ 01:02 PM CST

Canadian scientists are still in doubt[*1] as to the cause of global warming:

EDMONTON – Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.

The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.

(Yeah, I said “global warming,” not “climate change.”  Anybody who grew up and spent 40 years living in South Dakota, as I did, is intimately aware that the climate changes all the time.  Twenty years of dry, then ten years of wet, then another ten years of not-so-wet.  Such is life on the Middle Border.

It’s much, much, much, much, much, much, much (yes, six degrees of much) easier to determine “the climate is changing” than it is to determine the root causes.  The ecosystem is a marvelously complex system.  The models which predict the most dire effects . . . aren’t.  The scientists are divided, and there is no clear picture of what is really happening, and why.

More science, less politics, please.
Via the Heartland Institute[*2] .

Contributed by: filbert Saturday, March 08 2008 @ 01:56 PM CST

Hungarian researcher resigns from NASA after his supervisors try to suppress his research into climate change.

Work of the Deniers?  Not quite . . .

DailyTech[*1] :

Miskolczi’s story reads like a book. Looking at a series of differential equations for the greenhouse effect, he noticed the solution — originally done in 1922 by Arthur Milne, but still used by climate researchers today — ignored boundary conditions by assuming an “infinitely thick” atmosphere. Similar assumptions are common when solving differential equations; they simplify the calculations and often result in a result that still very closely matches reality. But not always.

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference … but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

NASA refused to release the results.  Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple.  “Money”, he tells DailyTech.  Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research.  Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, “Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate.  My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

Some wacko Hungarian kook, you say?  Well, how about this, from the same article:

The conclusions are supported by research[*2] published in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year from Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, who gave statistical evidence that the Earth’s response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated.  It also helps to explain why current global climate models continually predict more warming than actually measured.

The equations also answer thorny problems raised by current theory, which doesn’t explain why “runaway” greenhouse warming hasn’t happened in the Earth’s past.  The new theory predicts that greenhouse gas increases should result in small, but very rapid temperature spikes, followed by much longer, slower periods of cooling — exactly what the paleoclimatic record demonstrates.

More science, less politics, please.

Contributed by: filbert Friday, March 07 2008 @ 08:50 AM CST

Is anybody but me suspicious that oil prices are spiking just when it seems that the American economy is slowing down?

Nope.  Others are suspicious as well–Environmental Republican[*1] :

Most economists have been saying that it’s been speculation, not demand that is driving higher prices. Americans have been using less fuel of late and that alone should have reduced prices by several dollars a barrel.

I keep thinking about how George Soros broke the Bank of England.  I’m trying hard not to be a tin-foil-wearing conspiracy theorist, but dang it, sometimes it’s hard.

Contributed by: filbert Friday, March 07 2008 @ 08:36 AM CST

Reason magazine[*1] :

Instead of an increase in violence, adoption of Florida-style concealed carry policies has been followed by a decline in violence. The extent to which that decline can be attributed to more guns in the hands of law-abiding people in public places remains a matter of much controversy. But one thing seems pretty clear: The fears stoked by opponents of concealed carry liberalization were unjustified. Are there good reasons to think their dark predictions about guns on campus will be any more accurate?

The easy, knee-jerk reaction is to say “well, of course there shouldn’t be guns on college campuses.”  But what we know know, much to our sorrow, is that easy reaction leaves an entire community virtually defenseless against those among us who get pushed over the edge.

The solution here isn’t to perpetuate the defenselessness of good people when the crazy ones attack.  But that’s what gun bans essentially promote.  Law enforcement can’t be everywhere, and can’t respond fast enough to deal with imminent, deadly threats to the community.

This country was built on the concept that political power comes from the people, and portions of that power are delegated to the government.  Gun bans are an instance where, at a fundamental level, that delegation can not, will not ever keep us as safe as we would be if we allowed responsible members of our society to fill the gaps that law enforcement in a free society will inevitably have.

Gun bans are, in short, a good idea that simply doesn’t work in the real world–unless you’re willing to tolerate a level of police intrusion into our daily lives that, God willing, Americans will always reject.

Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, March 05 2008 @ 01:59 PM CST

South American frog secretions stimulate insulin release[*1] (Science Daily):

The paradoxical frog, Pseudis paradoxa, secretes a substance from its skin which protects it from infection. But the molecule, pseudin-2, may have another use for humans. Researchers found that it stimulates the release of insulin, the vital hormone which is deficient in diabetes sufferers.

Which brings to mind the vision of millions of diabetics and pre-diabetics getting into the whole toad-licking thing.  And yeah, I know that toads and frogs are different, and that diabetes is nothing to laugh at.

Still . . .

Contributed by: filbert Wednesday, March 05 2008 @ 01:56 PM CST

Professor Gerard Hodgkinson[*1] says “go with it!”

Prof Hodgkinson believes that all intuitive experiences are based on the instantaneous evaluation of such internal and external cues – but does not speculate on whether intuitive decisions are necessarily the right ones.

“Humans clearly need both conscious and non-conscious thought processes, but it’s likely that neither is intrinsically ‘better’ than the other,” he says.

As a Chartered occupational psychologist, Prof Hodgkinson is particularly interested in the impact of intuition within business, where many executives and managers claim to use intuition over deliberate analysis when a swift decision is required. “We’d like to identify when business people choose to switch from one mode to the other and why – and also analyse when their decision is the correct one. By understanding this phenomenon, we could then help organisations to harness and hone intuitive skills in their executives and managers.”

I mean, really, how can you NOT believe someone named “Professor Gerard Hodgkinson?”

Contributed by: filbert Monday, March 03 2008 @ 11:49 PM CST

I see my good and dear friend Terry Vandrovec[*1] has put me in his blog roll.  Thanks, Terry.  (Well, OK.  I introduced myself to him.  Once.  In Shreveport, LA.  Terry must be pretty easy, blog-roll-wise.)

Yeah, I’m a South Dakota State University fan, and a pretty rabid one at that.  I run the SDSUFans.com[*2] site, which you can go to here.  (Hey, you can go ANYWHERE from here.  Heh.)  SDSUFans.com has a discussion board, where all the action is.  The board is here[*3] .

Medary.com is my own personal blog site, where I post things of interest and/or amusement that I come across, as I come across them.  I’m basically of the “leave me the heck alone” political persuasion, who at least recently has identified more with the Republicans than with the Democrats.  I’m open to change, however.  Other issues I post about concern global warming/climate change (still a skeptic, but not quite a “denier” yet), the Iraq War (for it iniitally, and while that might have been a mistake, we’re there now and since we are, we might as well win it), politics in general, and science-stuff that happens to catch my eye and interest me.

Oh, I also travel.  A lot.  Sometimes to SDSU basketball and (less frequently) SDSU football games  Sometimes around the world.  If my wife (Snookums) has her way, the Round-The-World stuff will be posted tomorrow.  After I drive home from Brookings to beautiful, wonderful, somewhat-warmer-than-Brookings Lee’s Summit, Missouri.

If you want to contact me, you can assemble my e-mail address by figuring out medary (at-sign) medary (dot) com, and putting that into your e-mail client of choice and asking very nicely for an account here at medary.com.  Then you can post comments here (and, for all I know, blog articles, too, I haven’t really paid much attention to that).

Greetings, enjoy, and Go Rabbits!