Category Archives: Science

Interesting Research paper

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So here a link to a report that I found interesting.

The basic upshot is that this scientist, Wolfgang Knorr, did a study to see what has happen to the atmospheric fraction of carbon dioxide over the last 150 years. The assumption is that increasing fractions of carbon dioxide will drive a ‘greenhouse effect.’

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

I found that very interesting.


Denialist – the sly ad hominem

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One thing I hate in debate is the scoundrel’s technique of the ad hominem. I have no troubles with people who disagree with me. Hell, most of my friends disagree with me on a number of issues. That is fine and dandy, but insults to the person making an argument is simply a tool of bullies.

In the current debates on climate change and if mankind is a major contributing factor in any clime change the charge of denier gets thrown at people who express doubt about man-made global warming.  This is really nothing more than a sly ad hominem attack. The most cultural known use of the term denier in political debates is of course for those who would deny that the Holocaust occurred during WWII. By referring to doubters of AGW (Anthropomorphic Global Warming) as deniers, supporters of AGW are trying to achieve to things.

The first is subliminally place doubters in the same emotional space to most people as deniers of the Holocaust. The second thing they are trying to do is establish AGW as a fact as firmly rooted in reality as the Holocaust itself.

The Holocaust is a fact. It is not a theory, it is not a hoax, it was the systematic murder of Jews, gays, Gypsies, and others by the NAZIs.

AGW is a hypothesis, it is not a fact. It’s not even a theory. In science a theory is a hypothesis that has withstood rigorous testing over an extended period of time. The Atomic Theory of matter is a theory, the Germ Theory of Disease is a theory, General Relativity is a theory. All of these started their scientific lives as a hypothesis and became theory as they proved themselves to be the best current description of how the world works.

The world is warming. I think there is enough evidence to support that statement. After all the Hudson River used to freeze solid enough that you could drag cannons across it and they used to hold winter fairs on the frozen Thames in England. Clearly we don’t get that cold anymore. That does not mean that AGW is true.

Mind you I am not saying that AGW is not true in the post. It might be the best hypothesis for describing the current climate and the apparent changes we are seeing, but it is not the only one. The Earth has been much cooler in the past and it has been much warmer in the past without any help from mankind at all. There are good and reasonable people – scientists and lay-people alike – who have serious questions about AGW. These people might be right, they might be wrong.

What is wrong is to call these people deniers as though they were apologist for Hitler, or flat earthers pretending we never went to the moon. Calling them names is nothing but an attack on the person. (I will grant you that not all people who questions AGW do so from a serious doubt of the science. There are many venal and frankly manipulative people who takes their positions purely out of the politics of the situation, but that applies to both sides.)

Show me facts. Show me testable experiments and simulations.

Do not call me a denier simply because I think the GCR hypothesis might explain thing as well as the AGW hypothesis.

LosCon Report The First

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So this weekend is LosCon 36, the annual L.A. area science-fiction and fantasy convention. Time is short for me this morning so this will be a brief report on the first day of the convention. (Which was Friday, yesterday.)
We left San Diego about 9 am and got to the hotel about 11 am. It was a pleasant drive we passed the time with conversation and a few thorny problems in firearms and armor in an SF environment.

The first panel was SF Horror films, but it really turned into a conversation on SF films in general. Still it was entertaining.

After lunch I was at SF Economics with the Kolin brothers on the panel. They wrote ‘The Unincorporated Man’ something I need to read after I write Cawdor.

We ended the day with Bridget Landry of JPL and her Cassini probe presentation. Always worth seeing.

Sweetie-wife and I walked several blocks for dinner at a little Greek place. It was decent. Then we came back and hit a couple of parties.

About 9pm I stopped by something called MEN INTO SPACE 50 years later. Turns out it was about a TV program that tried very hard to do stories about a US space program. It was really not bad at all.

I ended the night with a Zombie movie premier, Bled White. Not bad, it was about student film school level in quality but I watched the whole thing, and then was off to bed.

Things we will not do with alien life

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So as I have been working on Cawdor and doing my research and planning it has sparked a desire to write a quick essay about what we will not do with alien life.

Popular media has given us some of the bad ideas about what might happen when we get out into the stars and land on worlds with alien biomes and ecosystems. Star Trek is the worst offender with the character of Mister Spock. Mister Spock is the half-breed offspring between a human woman and a Vulcan man.

RULE ONE: We will NOT breed with it.

The process of creating sperm and egg is a delicate and sensitive process prone to all manner of error and failures. A significant number of pregnancies self terminate in human/human coupling because of chromosomal issues. We can not cross breed with apes our closest evolutionary cousins. In no way shape or manner are we going to successfully cross-breed with the product of a totally alien evolutionary process.

(Yes, I know late in Next Gen they brought out the idea that the galaxy was seeded by a forerunner race and this why all the aliens can interbreed. Balderdash! We have the clear proof of evolution here on earth in the DNA of the biosphere. Even if someone went around and seeded the same DNA on dozens and hundreds of worlds the unique paths and changes that occurred would insure no capability for cross-breeding.)

I am not saying that there will not be a few, very very few,  sick individuals who may try to breed with something alien. After all we have people who have sex with animals and corpses right now, but there will be no offspring.

Next up on the hit Parade is Michael Crichton  and The Andromeda Strain. It is the story of an alien disease that comes to Earth and threatens all of humanity. It’s a fun read and the original film is worth seeing. (I own it.) Still, as an example of that SF trope, the bad space bug, it is sill.

RULE TWO: We will NOT catch diseases from it.

Diseases are finely tuned parasitical organisms and molecules. (I add molecules because a Virus is very special and not really a living thing, More like a natural nano-machine.) To infect their host they need very careful conditions. They need the right pH balance, the right temperature, and the right receptors on the host. Malaria is a parasite that infects red blood cells, if the cells are not shaped just right, it has a very hard time infecting. Disease are matched to their hosts. There are thousands and thousands of viruses on this planet that can’t hurt a person at all. Go to an alien planet with an alien ecosystem and nothing will match up. It would be worse than diving into a foreign junkyard and grabbing parts at random and hoping that they would fit your american car.

The final thing on my list is something SF writers have ignore for decades. The truth of the matter is that biology is often the forgotten science of science-fiction. Oh there plenty of fiction about advances in biological sciences and what that might mean to us, but alien biology is mainly restricted to unusual animal and their traits. An alien ecosystem will be truly alien and it will not support terran life.

RULE THREE: We will NOT eat it.

Most people do not think about the process of eating and how it works. Food goes into your mouth, chomp chomp chomp, drops to your stomach, you get fed, and then the leftovers are ejected out the backside.

It’s not really like that.

In your stomach there are numerous acids and more importantly enzymes that make digestion possible. Think of the molecules of food as being locked boxes. You have to unlock the box before you can open it and get the sugary goodness inside.  Enzymes are the keys that unlock the boxes. If you do not have the right keys, you will never get that box open. This is why you cannot eat just anything. You do not have the keys to break down most plant matter and quite a bit of animal matter too. (Eating bones generally won’t help you.) That’s just life you evolved with too.

Alien life will have molecules that evolved along different lines. Their locks and your keys will not go together. It will not nourish you.

Most ‘hard SF’ skips right past this problem. People on alien worlds eat the fruit and animals just like they were exploring the North American continent. It won’t be like that at all.

This plays into Cawdor and now it will play into a new story that is forming in my mind set in the same universe.

The Future of Medicine.

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So I gave my thoughts on health care reform, now some quick thoughts on the future of medicine. (I am a science-fiction writer after all.)
Three basic scenarios in my opinion. All of these are looking at the state of medical science about the year 2050.

Scenario One: The Conservative Nightmare.
Financial crash due to bloated spending and regulatory overload kills innovation and development. We haven’t progressed much beyond where we are now. Very little research being done as nearly all medical science dollars are consumed in treatment. With or without healthcare reform the government is buried under a crushing load of debt and bills to care for its population.

Scenario Two: The Liberal Nightmare.
Breakthroughs lead of significant advances in health and life extension, but the costs are high. The processes can not be made cheaper by economy of scale or mass production and only the well-off can afford top-end care. For the wealthy life is very good. Disease and morbidity are things that happen to other people. As side from trauma, there is little to fear health-wise and maybe even aging itself can be prevented. For the poor and most of the world it’s a game of watch as the rich go on and on while you get sick and die. Expect vast social upheaval and disruption as this is not a stable system in my opinion.

Scenario Three: Medical Transformation.
The way computer sciences changed our world, advances in medical science make the world of 2050 as unlike todays as our computers are to roman numerals. Quick and easy genetic testing and treatments means that everyone get treatment and drugs designed for their unique genome. Treatment of disease is cheap and plentiful. Healthcare for all is taken for granted because it costs so little. People live long and productive lives without the infirmities and indignities of old age today. Our decedents look upon our medical treatments of today the way we look on witch-doctors and leeches.

The question is — which scenario will it be?

New Solar Data

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060307084500For the last couple of years the sun has been showing fewer sun-spots than expected. There has been some concern that the sun could be entering a new phase of lowered activity as it did in the 17th century when it went into what is called the Maunder Minimum. This coincided with the little ice age a time of global temperature decline that radically changed world history.
Now there is some evidence that the sun has not entered a new Maunder Minimum.