Monthly Archives: November 2012

Once we all had gills (free book chapter)

Uncategorized

Have you heard of the book “Once We All Had Gills: Growing Up Evolutionist in an Evolving World“?

Here’s a summary:

In this book, Rudolf A. Raff reaches out to the scientifically queasy, using his life story and his growth as a scientist to illustrate why science matters, especially at a time when many Americans are both suspicious of science and hostile to scientific ways of thinking. Noting that science has too often been the object of controversy in school curriculums and debates on public policy issues ranging from energy and conservation to stem-cell research and climate change, Raff argues that when the public is confused or ill-informed, these issues tend to be decided on religious, economic, and political grounds that disregard the realities of the natural world. Speaking up for science and scientific literacy, Raff tells how and why he became an evolutionary biologist and describes some of the vibrant and living science of evolution. Once We All Had Gills is also the story of evolution writ large: its history, how it is studied, what it means, and why it has become a useful target in a cultural war against rational thought and the idea of a secular, religiously tolerant nation.

Courtesy of the National Center for Science Education, you can have a FREE CHAPTER of this interesting book!

Strip Violating Religious Institutions of Tax Exempt Status

Uncategorized

There is a petition making the rounds which is getting some real support, and that you should sign:

Enforce the tax code, and strip violating Religious institutions of their tax exempt 501(c) status.

Religious institutions across our great nation serve an important role in community building & out reach, helping the poor & disenfranchised, among many other noble actions.

Our forefathers had the foresight to see that for our nation to succeed, we would need to enforce an unparalleled freedom of religion. However, they also understood the imperative need for a legal separation between church & state.

In recent years, the IRS has turned a blind eye to offending Religious institutions that mix religion with politics. By not enforcing the qualifications & disqualification’s of 26 U.S.C. § 501(c) of the United States tax code, the IRS is doing a diservice to both the American people & the vision of our forefathers.

We ask that you enforce the letter of the law.

There are two things the petition does not mention but that you need to know:

1) Many religious institutions carry out activities that are generally done by businesses that pay taxes, and they compete. Mega churches are often conference centers. Churches often run supportive housing facilities that bring in profits, or build social service facilities that dome with guarantteed developers fees. I know of a church that got a government grant to build a housing facility, subcontracted the work, and had a guaranteed $500,000 profit for their effort, and now runs the facility in the black with no taxes to pay. There may be nothing wrong that any of that. You just need to know that the tax exempt status is worth mucho dinero for any church.

2) Many religious institutions carry out a defacto political policy even other than supporting specific candidates, so even churches that stay within the letter of the law are busy being very political.

Please sign the petition HERE.

Photo of megachurch by Flickr user rauchdickson.

A Few Good Science Toys

Uncategorized, ,

Dinosaur Toys?

Glendon Mellow was asking the other day where to get “realistic” or “scientifically accurate” dinosaurs for kids to play with. There are a LOT of “realistic” dinosaur sets out there, but they are for the most part realistic in that they really look like the imagined dinosaurs of the last century and a half, and not the reconstructed dinosaurs of present day paleontology. I’m not sure if you can even get those. The 12 piece Large Assorted Dinosaurs – Toys 5–7" Larger Size Dinosaur Figures exemplify the results of an Interent search for “realistic dinosaur.” Yes, they are realistic but they are not so much revised. Among the highest quality but maybe not very toy-like are the Schleich models. The Schleich Dilophosaurus Dinosaur and other Schleich dinos such as the Schleich Triceratops and the Schleich Velociraptor are all very “real” looking but I don’t see much in there that is taking into account ALL of the more recent revisions.

In the absence of scientific accuracy one might go for fun. For this you can’t do much better than dinosaur finger puppets. Little kids love stickers, and really, they hardly pay any attention to detail as long as they are sticking them on as many inconvenient places as possible. I don’t see any feathers in the Realistic Dinosaur Playset, but there are brilliant colors and the details are glossed enough that they might suffice, plus they are cheap. The Papo Running Tyrannosaurus Rex is the scariest one of all that I’ve seen, so that’s good. And if you have a spare few hundred bucks, you might as well go for the Pleo Robotic Dinosaur because it is a robot!

Chemistry

Chemistry sets are great for the right kids. I’ve often recommended this book for serious home chemistry. The current best chemistry set is probably buying everything individually on the Internet and then dealing with Homeland Security. If you are going to do that you might have a look at this: 16 Piece Deluxe Organic Chemistry Glassware Set. Inspiring.

The Scientific Explorer’s Mind Blowing Science Kit for Young Scientists is highly ranked on Amazon for little kids (4 years old) and I’ve heard people rave about the various The Magic School Bus sets. The chemistry set that probably represents best the one many of us had when we were kids and that is currently highly ranked may be the Thames & Kosmos CHEM C2000 (V 2.0) or the Thames & Kosmos CHEM C3000 (V 2.0), depending on how much money you want to spend.

Life Science

Everybody needs a good dissection set. Here there are a few ways to go. One can get a reasonably good dissection set like this one, or one can get a kit with a specific critter to dissect that comes with some tools such as the Carolina Pig Anatomy Kit with Dissecting Set. Generally, materials from Carolina or Wards are going to be higher quality than randomly chosen items off the internet.

There are dozens of kits and toys you can get that let you grow an organism and keep it alive for a while. I hate most of these kids. I recommend getting a 10 gallon aquarium from your local fish or pet shop, an external box filter (easiest to clean) and an aerator (yes, both) and then just go to your local swamps and ponds and scoop up mud and stuff and put that in the aquarium, along with water that has been properly handled or processed. Stuff will spontaneously generate from the mud, don’t worry. If it doesn’t work just get some more mud, clean it out, and try again (don’t use cleaning chemicals). You will learn to make it work over time … by doing science!

Geology and Rock Collecting

The best “Kit” for geology is a good book on geology that introduces you to some of the basic techniques, and then you go and find the parts you need around the house and at your local stores, although you might not find a proper geology hammer. Having said that, it is a good idea to get a hardness set of minerals (e.g. Mohs Scale of Hardness w/ Diamond Rock Mineral). But, “rock hounding” and “geology” are not the same thing. Someone interested in collecting rocks and minerals should visit rock shops and shows, talk to people there, and learn from them where your local collecting areas might be and learn the ropes from the people you meet along the way. If geology, no specifically rock collecting, is what you are into, try finding good books and geological monographs for areas you can get to and visit those areas with the books and the maps that come with them (a good book on the geology of an area will have good maps, or it is not a good book on the geology of an area!). A great if sometimes difficult to use resource is the roadside geology guides often put together for geology conferences or courses. These are travel routes that take several hours at most, often several in one document, that bring you to individual road cuts or other sites and explain, often in technical terms, what you are looking at there. Try Googling “geology road guide” and then a state or region name. You’ll find stuff.

Can we please have a scientific cormorant policy in Minnesota?

Uncategorized, , , ,

After hundreds of studies, it has been difficult to link fish predation by cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) to the reduction of fishing quality in Minnesota lakes. It appears that game fish such as walleye and northern pike make up from less than 1% to nearly 3% of the bird’s diet. They eat only small fish. Many of the fish they eat are perch, which prey on walleye, and it is even possible that by culling small walleye or northerns, they increase the growth rate for those fish in two way. One is by reducing competition between fish for food, and the other is by exerting selective pressure for faster growth.

When cormorants were heavily culled on Leech Lake a few years ago, the Walleye fishing got better. The fishermen and resort owners hailed the killing of the birds as a great thing and attributed the improved fishing to the culling policy. However, the lake simultaneously underwent a very aggressive restocking, and slot limits had been imposed at the same time. The fisherman and resort owners are, sorry to say, being stupid about this, rejecting the science, and possibly shooting themselves in the foot.

Two Minnesota Congressmen have been behind changing federal law to allow widespread killing off of cormorants in the state. This, I believe, is unbecoming of a member of Congress who have the responsibility of paying attention to the science, and of being stewards of our national resources at a level greater than a few local whiny mayors and resort owners.

This issue has been brewing for a few years and will continue. I am hoping that the recent focus on the importance of science in developing public policy will mean a more intelligent, less immature and misinformed cormorant policy in Minnesota over the next few years.

Sources and resources on Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus):

<ul>
  • Most-hated bird in the world: Sanctioned killing of cormorants continues unabated in Minnesota (MinnPost)
  • Expert Linda Wires on MPR
  • DNR Cormorant page
  • Audubon Minnesota position paper on cormorants
  • House Bill HR 3074 sponsored by Representative John Kline (Rep-MN2)
  • Photographs of Double Crested Cormorants

    • Climate Change from the Biotic to the Exotic

    Climate Change, Uncategorized

    How will climate change affect the flavor of wine? Are warming oceans responsible for the recent global jellyfish outbreak? Do we know how a rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide will affect poison ivy, tobacco, or even sea anemones? NCSE climate change project director talks about what the research shows and future questions to be answered. Sponsored by the Bay Area Skeptics.

    Time might actually be Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey…Stuff

    Uncategorized, , ,

    BaBar data recently analyzed might confirm that time is wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

    If you are a B meson, time may not run the same in both directions for you. This is based on a report in Physical Review Letters called “Observation of Time-Reversal Violation in the B0 Meson System” which has this abstract:

    I had to use a screen shot because I can't type in all that wiggly wobbly formula stuff.

    Nature Blogs’s Eugenie Samuel Reich explains this HERE. If that is not clear, just watch this video:

    A Book about Taung and "the Hobbit"

    Uncategorized, , , , , ,

    The Fossil Chronicles: How Two Controversial Discoveries Changed Our View of Human Evolution is by a scientist Dean Falk, who has contributed significantly to the study of evolution of the human brain, and who has been directly involved in some of the more interesting controversies in human evolution.

    Back when I was a graduate student I was assigned by my advisor a set of literature to absorb and comment on. The mix of published and soon to be published papers included a series of papers written by Ralph Holloway and Dean Falk. These represented a fight over the interpretation of early hominid brains as studied through endocasts. Endocasts are fossilized casts of the inside of an animal’s brain case or the artificially produced version made of casting material poured into a skull. Either way, you get a roundish blob that resembles the exterior of the original brain. Endocasts are of limited value, as layers of tissue in a living mammal separate the brain from the skull, attenuating detail. As Falk point out in her book, endocasts are a rather “surficial” view of a brain, but are not without their uses.

    Fossil endocasts are compared to endocasts made from the skulls of “living” primates and humans, which in turn are understood via Continue reading A Book about Taung and "the Hobbit" →

    A probabilistic quanti?cation of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming

    Uncategorized, , , , ,

    ResearchBlogging.orgA probabilistic quanti?cation of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming is a paper just out that examines an important conflict in the conversation about climate change and global warming. Before getting to the details, have a look at this graph from the paper:

    This is temperature increasing on the earth over a century or so. Notice that there is what looks like a warming around 1940 on top of an otherwise mostly warming trend, followed by a bunch more warming.

    The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC, in 2007, referring to data that ran up to 2005 inclusively, said the following:

    Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.

    Later, in a congressional hearing, Patrick Michaels, a climate science denialist (one of the meteorologists famous for his rejection of the data and science demonstrating a human induced warming trend) said to a congressional committee, of the statement by the IPCC:

    … greenhouse-related warming is clearly below the mean of relevant forecasts by IPCC … the Finding of Endangerment from greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency is based on a very dubious and
    critical assumption.

    A probabilistic quanti?cation of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming examines both claims and concludes that Michaels is wrong. From the abstract:

    This paper examines in detail the statement in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” We use a quantitative probabilistic analysis to evaluate this IPCC statement, and discuss the value of the statement in the policy context. For forcing by greenhouse gases (GHGs) only, we show that there is a greater than 90% probability that the expected warming over 1950–2005 is larger than the total amount (not just ‘‘most’’) of the observed warming. This is because, following current best estimates, negative aerosol forcing has substantially offset the GHG-induced warming. We also consider the expected warming from all anthropogenic forcings using the same probabilistic framework. This requires a re-assessment of the range of possible values for aerosol forcing. We provide evidence that the IPCC estimate for the upper bound of indirect aerosol forcing is almost certainly too high. Our results show that the expected warming due to all human in?uences since 1950 (including aerosol effects) is very similar to the observed warming. Including the effects of natural external forcing factors has a relatively small impact on our 1950–2005 results, but improves the correspondence between model and observations over 1900–2005. Over the longer period, however, externally forced changes are insuf?cient to explain the early twentieth century warming. We suggest that changes in the formation rate of North Atlantic Deep Water may have been a signi?cant contributing factor.

    Not only is the IPCC assessment correct according to this new paper, but it is a bit of an understatement.

    So much for that little bit of climate science denialism.

    Wigley, T., & Santer, B. (2012). A probabilistic quantification of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming Climate Dynamics DOI: 10.1007/s00382-012-1585-8

    Fukushima Update: Radioactive Fish, Conflicts of Interest, and Filtered Vents

    Uncategorized, , ,

    On March 11th, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex suffered damage from an earthquake and ensuing tsunami that caused multiple nuclear reactor core meltdowns and melt-throughs, explosions, and major releases of radioactive material into the air and the sea. In addition to the reactor meltdowns and melt-throughs spent fuel storage tanks were also damaged and probably contributed to the release. It took about a year for the plant to reach a condition that was stable enough that we stopped checking it every day to see if new bad things were happening. Heroic efforts were implemented by the utility and the workers, but in the end, very little that was done aside from the initial flooding of the reactors with sea water really had much effect. Basically, the plant just cooled down and stopped being as dangerous because the nuclear material in the plant escaped into the environment or just settled down to a less reactive level over time.

    A handful of news items have come up recently mainly pertaining to contamination and other issues, so we thought an update was in order.

    Conflicts of Interest Involving Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency and Other Stakeholders

    There have been a number of points where it looked like conflicts of interest between the regulators and the regulatees (as it were), or at least the appearance thereof, were in effect since the time of this disaster. It is happening again. Continue reading Fukushima Update: Radioactive Fish, Conflicts of Interest, and Filtered Vents →

    Success of Climate Science Denialism

    Uncategorized, ,

    One of the reasons that we have not, as a species, as a group of nations, dealt effectively with Anthropogenic Global Warming is the effectiveness of climate science denialism. There are denialists in Congress, on the Internet, and everywhere. They have not succeeded in making a valid scientific argument regarding Global Warming, but they have kept the rhetoric in the foreground, which has allowed interests protecting Big Oil to keep the hapless Main Stream Media focused on a false balance between scientific consensus and unreasonable doubt. As a result, the last decade or so has been a wash when it comes to international action on Carbon emissions and other ameliorating action. As a result, the idea that we could keep global temperature rise from going past the 2 degree C mark. Now, it is increasingly understood that we are heading for much warmer conditions, and this has the World Bank worried.

    The World Bank just commissioned an analysis by scientists at the Potsdam Institute looking at the consequences of a 4°C rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels by 2100. And the report appears to have unnerved many bank officials. “The latest predictions on climate change should shock us into action,” wrote World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in an op-ed after the report was released Monday.

    The analysis is available here as a PDF file.

    The analysis suggests that there is a 20% chance that temperatures will warm to more than 4°C by 2100, possibly reaching g 4°C by 2060. This would result in sea level rise of up to 3 feet, maybe more. If the warming reached 6°C, which is possible, sea level rise would be in the range of a dozen feet or more. The report also discusses the uneven distribution of imacts:

    • Even though absolute warming will be largest in high latitudes,
      the warming that will occur in the tropics is larger when compared to the historical range of temperature and extremes to
      which human and natural ecosystems have adapted and coped.
      The projected emergence of unprecedented high-temperature
      extremes in the tropics will consequently lead to significantly
      larger impacts on agriculture and ecosystems.
    • Sea-level rise is likely to be 15 to 20 percent larger in the tropics than the global mean.
    • Increases in tropical cyclone intensity are likely to be felt
      disproportionately in low-latitude regions.
    • Increasing aridity and drought are likely to increase substantially in many developing country regions located in tropical
      and subtropical areas.

    The report is sobering. Let us hope it is also inspiring. You should have a look at it.

    Update on Dennis Markuze, and Thank You to Tim Farley

    Uncategorized, , ,

    Tim Farley has this on his blog:

    On Friday, November 16, 2012 Dennis Markuze was once again arrested by the SPVM (Montreal Police) for violating the terms of his May 22 suspended sentence. It took many people many months to track him down and convince the police to arrest him. This is the story behind that…

    Read the rest of that post here.

    I would like to thank Tim for his diligent and effective efforts. And, I have a few other things to say.

    The whole Dennis Markuze/Dave Mabus thing is an interesting case where we are required to ask ourselves about or attitudes and reactions to the activities of individuals with mental illness. This is an issue that I think needs a lot more discussion and consideration. Mental illness does not mean stalking or potential violence and other annoyances. It is a much larger thing with many aspects, and it is a problem individual people have that can bleed out into the lives of others around them to greater and lesser degrees. In my view, society is pretty bad at dealing with that one (small) branch of mental illness that involves threatening or very anti-social behavior. Having said that, I think the Atheist and Skeptics community has done fairly well with this rare but unfortunate intersection of personal behavior of a mentally ill individual and our own sense of safety. People are not calling for the worst punishment for Dennis, or for his permanent incarceration, which is saying a lot about a community that is often willing to “ban people for ever” simply because they disagree on some issue or another. I think most people are willing to see the Canadian authorities deal with Dennis as a person in need of help, but in a way that firmly requires that he receive that help. I don’t think anyone is really able to say, mainly due to lack of information but also due to the nature of this sort of situation, if Dennis is a “true threat” to others or just a person who is very very annoying.

    Regarding him being annoying: I found his latest form of harassment to be in some ways worse, in some ways not as bad as, his previous behavior. Prior to his first arrest many of his missives included clearly threatening language, with phrases such as “all Atheists must die” (I paraphrase). His second round of harassment contained no such language of which I’m aware, but he became more annoying in other ways. For instance, he discovered the Twitter tradition of Follow Friday (#FF). For a couple of weeks, every time I carried out the act, a form of mutual aid, of #FF, Dennis would then spam all the recipients of the minuscule largess that this constitutes. That meant that for me to be “nice” to a fellow Tweeter, I also inadvertently annoyed them by drawing them into Dennis’s crosshairs. Assuming that his previous threats involving all Atheists ending up dead were just hot air, this second round was much worse, directly interfering with our beloved Social Networking Activities (Snorking).

    Finally, I want to say this: Tim Farley and I have had our differences. We fell into different, opposing camps in certain key issues and argued about that in the Social Networking World. But never for a moment did these differences bleed out into Tim’s thoughtful and effective campaign to represent all of us in this matter, and for my part I’m more than happy to appreciate his efforts and I sincerely thank him for that. The ability to work together even when we disagree is, or should be, a hallmark of real skepticism. The inability to do so is the hallmark of cliquish behavior and mean spirited Internetitude. Here, I think we did well.

    Thanks again time.

    And do go read his post, it is epic.

    ________________________________________
    Pick up your eCopy of the novella Sungudogo, a new origin story for the Skeptics Movement! (Bloggers and reviewers, contact me for a review copy)