By SteveP, on January 9th, 2011%
Crossposted at ByCommonConsent.com
What is Science? A school kid’s definition goes something like this: Find a hypothesis (from somewhere); make sure it is falsifiable; test it against reality; if it fails, discard it; if it doesn’t, published it. Rinse and repeat. We’ll call this SKD view of science for shorthand.
There is some truth in it. In the same way that, being a good tennis player means, being able to hit the ball really hard, keeping your knees bent, and keeping your eye on the ball. While that’s got some things right and that seem to lean somewhat in the direction of what it means to be a good tennis player, there is much that could be taken away and gobs of stuff that could be added to give a richer and more accurate description of the concept. Continue reading Why science is so darned powerful
By SteveP, on January 3rd, 2011%
 There are many ways to get into trouble visiting foreign ports of call. I seem to find them. For instance millions of people go to Vietnam a year and do not come down with killer bacterial brain infections (see ‘My Madness’ in the side panel). I am unlucky I fear. I tried to come out of the womb backwards and have been doing the same (metaphorically speaking) ever since.
Here is the tale. It is a story about fear actually, but I’ll get to that. On a Thursday back in March we drove to Sally. A small costal city in Senegal where there was a company that flew mini-helicopters that we were thinking of using to drop sterile male tsetse flies over wide areas (you know—to make it hard for a female tsetse to find a good man). Continue reading Don’t eat puffer fish
By SteveP, on October 5th, 2010%
It turns out that getting the science right matters. We live in a wondrous age in which a breathtaking understanding of our universe is possible. We understand the nature of life though DNA and how structures arise though protein construction during embryonic development. We are discovering possibly inhabitable worlds at distances measured in light years. We have mapped the interior of our own planet and explored its oceans from deep under its waters and scanned them from above with orbiting satellites. This is not to say that science will answer all our questions, or provide all sources of value in all areas of meaning. But ignore it at your peril. Continue reading Why Science Matters
By SteveP, on June 20th, 2010%
A friend asked me how I was going to feel when I discovered that anthropogenic climate change (ACC) was not real, when science was proved wrong. Continue reading The myth of global cooling
By SteveP, on June 11th, 2010%
Everything living depends on ecology. The planet’s hydrologic cycles provide the water that we use for agriculture and industry. Everything you’ve eaten today depended upon soil ecologies, the carbon cycle–driven largely by photosynthesis, insects, and countless other ecosystem processes. Consider, for example, the things made of wood around you right now. Continue reading Ecology and Economics: Betting against science
By SteveP, on June 4th, 2010%
Oceans are acidifying, due to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, (for details see this site by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)). We can see this right now from multiple studies. This does not mean that the oceans are actually becoming acidic (which would mean that pH had fallen below 7), but rather that they are becoming less alkaline, moving from a pH of 8.2 to 8.1. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’s huge if you are an ocean dwelling creature. Continue reading Bye, Bye Sponge Bob: Ocean Acidification
By SteveP, on May 29th, 2010%
Alas, the Alaotra grebe has gone extinct. Scientists (including me) have not seen extinctions on this scale since the dinosaurs disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous.
It joins a rather heartbreaking list.
Here is a list of some bird extinctions since about 1500. Continue reading Goodbye Alaotra grebe, it was nice knowing you
By SteveP, on May 14th, 2010%
BYU’s own Jack Sites has for over thirty years documented the decline of lizards due to climate change. Check out the recent paper he coauthored in Science and the write-up and video at BYU.
Another example in the overwhelming landslide of peer reviewed published papers documenting worldwide ecological collapse due to anthropogenic induced . . . → Read More: BYU herpetologist documents declining lizard populations due to climate change
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