November 2007 Archives

Last weekend I mentioned a meeting in Montpellier intended to establish IMoSEB, an International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity. When I wrote the conclusions of the meeting weren't available. Now they are. The International Steering Committee

Invites the Executive Director of UNEP, in collaboration with the Government of France and other governments, the CBD (secretariat, SBSTTA and COP Bureaus) and the partners of the IMoSEB consultation process*, to convene an intergovernmental meeting with relevant governmental, and non-governmental organisations, including the relevant MEAs, academic institutions and civil society (including local communities and indigenous people) to consider establishing an efficient international science-policy interface....(source)

Thud.

The Daily Telegraph described the result this way.

The one concrete outcome of a consultation spanning five continents has been to request a further consultation....

Yesterday the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its synthesis report in Valencia. This morning I learned that there was another important international meeting happening not far away in Montpellier – the final international committee of the consultative process to establish an International Mechanism of Scientific Expertise on Biodiversity (IMoSEB).

The steering committee includes individual scientists, representatives of more than 20 governments (incuding the United States), and representatives from a variety of international, intergovernmental, and United Nations agencies as well as various non-governmental organizations and research initiatives. The consultative process began more than two years ago at the Paris Conference on Biodiversity. “The goal is to set up a worldwide network of expertise that, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will issue updated reports on the planet's biodiversity” (source)

Earlier today¹, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Synthesis Report from its fourth assessment. The Synthesis Report pulls together results from the first three reports (The Physical Science Basis; Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability; and Mitigation of Climate Change). “It provides an integrated view of climate change as the final part of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report.” The “Summary for Policymakers” is available from the IPCC website.² Here are a few points that I find particularly striking.²

(a) I've had trouble getting on the IPCC website this morning.¹ and (b) I just got tagged. Kira at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist tagged me for this meme.

4 jobs I've had

1. Sales clerk in a fly fishing shop
2. Sales clerk in a hardware store
3. Conservation plan writer for The Nature Conservancy
4. Professor of biology

4 movies I love to watch over and over²

1. Flock of Dodos
2. Star Wars – Episode IV
3. Star Trek – The Wrath of Khan
4. Alien

4 places I've lived

1. Burley, Idaho
2. West Yellowstone, Montana
3. San Francisco, California
4. Coventry, Connecticut

4 television shows I like³

1. The NewsHour
2. Washington Week in Review
3. The Bill Maher Show
4. 24

4 places I have been

1. Perth, Australia
2. Copenhagen, Denmark
3. La Fouly, Switzerland
4. Yokohama, Japan

4 websites I visit daily⁴

1. The New York Times
2. The Washington Post
3. The Times (London)
4. The Hartford Courant

4 foods I like to eat

1. Anything with dark chocolate
2. Potato chips
3. Squash soup
4. Sesame bagel with cream cheese, lox, red onion, tomato, and capers

4 places I'd rather be

4 blogs I tag⁵

1. Cells in Culture
2. Moss Plants and More
3. Sex, Genes, and Evolution
4. The Intersection

¹Their servers are probably overloaded, since the report was being printed Friday night. I just got through and I'm downloading the Summary for Policymakers right now.

⁵In alphabetical order

P.Z. Myers points out that the Discovery Institute has its predictable “rebuttal” of Judgment Day. Their eight-point rebuttal is, as he says, picking nits. But I think he's wrong about it missing the point of the program entirely.

Basically, the Discovery Institute's Center [for Science and Culture] was in the business of marketing--not research. It had a product to sell - intelligent design -- and was focused on doing whatever it could to sell that idea. (Conservatism's Unintelligent Design, Greg Anrig, Jr.)

The Discovery Institute's “rebuttal” isn't intended to rebut the arguments against intelligent design.¹ It's intended to rebut arguments that they aren't very good at marketing. They aren't in the business of doing science. They're in the business of marketing, and they're trying to protect their business – ineffectively.

¹If you want to see the Discovery Institute's response, P.Z. has a link.

Here's how to understand the Creation Museum:

First, imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we're not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we're talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.(Your Creation Museum Report, John Scalzi)

The horseshit of which John Scalzi speaks is, of course, creationism. Read the whole report. It's very well done. I'll point out only one more thing:

To be clear, the "horseshit" I've been speaking of is not Christianity, it's creationism, which to my mind is a teleological quirk substantially unrelated to the grace one can achieve through Jesus Christ.

Scalzi is explicitly not attacking Christianity or religious belief. He's attacking a “museum” devoted to to the preposterous belief that the world is only 6,000 years old.

I can't resist pulling one more paragraph, but you really should read the whole thing:

It is what it is: An attractive and diverting repository for a massive load of horseshit. And, well, let's be realists: That load of horseshit's not going away anytime soon. Might as put it somewhere that it's out of everyone else's way. The Creation Museum manages that well enough.

Pharyngula pointed out the report. You can find a link to an earlier one here..

Conflict between religion and science has rarely been of more concern. Whereas the rhetoric of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and others has little measurable effect, the outcome of a juryless trial in a two-bit Pennsylvania town in 2005 had a profound impact on how science is taught throughout the United States, and beyond. The parents of 11 pupils at the only high school in Dover launched a legal challenge to prevent the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution by natural selection. There followed thefts, fires, death threats, a media sensation and a robust verdict. (Adam Rutherford, Nature 450:170; 2007).

Judgment day tells the story of the Dover trial. It airs tonight at 8:00pm on most PBS stations.¹ Once again, Cornelia Dean getis it just right:

Though prominent intelligent design theorists and their allies speak on camera, and their testimony, like that of the scientists, is re-enacted (no cameras were allowed in court), the program as a whole recognizes that there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth. (“Battlefield Report From the Evolution War,” New York Times, 11 November 2007)

Let me put that last phrase in bold. It's worth repeating and re-emphasizing: “there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.”

Right on schedule the Discorvery Institute has launched intelligentdesign.org.² They're good at putting up websites, but they don't do science. Don't believe me? Here's what Philip “Father of Intelligent Design” Johnson has to say:

I also don't think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that's comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it's doable, but that's for them to prove...No product is ready for competition in the educational world. (from an interview with the Bereley Sceince Review, quoted at Panda's Thumb).

There you have it, from the father of intelligent design creationism himself: there is no credible alternative to the theory of evolution.

¹If you're in Connecticut, CPTV is airing it at 9:00pm. The NOVA at 8:00pm is about a family that walks on all fours. WGBH is airing it at 8:00pm.
²I'm not going to contribute to raising the Google ranks of those sites by linking to them.

Last week I pointed out that I am not closely related to Erik Holsinger, one of the producers of the Planet Bob video. Today I find it necessary to point out that I am not the Kent Holsinger referred to in this story from the Rocky Mountain News:

Builders say mouse-saving rule too costly

The government's effort to protect the Preble's meadow jumping mouse will cost the state's economy hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decades, Colorado home builders and developers said Monday.

Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the mouse will be delisted from the Endangered Species Act in Wyoming but will remain listed in Colorado.

Besides being an economic burden, delisting in Wyoming, but not in Colorado, could "run afoul of the U.S. Constitution," argues lawyer Kent Holsinger.

This notice just landed in my e-mail box:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public comment on an innovative new program designed to help federal agencies conserve imperiled species on non-federal lands. The recovery crediting system gives federal agencies flexibility to offset the impact of their actions on threatened and endangered species found on federal lands by undertaking conservation actions on non-federal lands, as long as the affected species receive a net conservation benefit.

I haven't read the draft guidelines yet, but they're available through a link at http://www.fws.gov/endangered/policy/oct.2007.html., or you can go directly to the PDF copy from today's Federal Register.

Apparently President Bush announced the proposed new policy in remarks he made on 28 October at the Patuxent Research Refuge. I don't recall seeing news reports of the announcement at the time.

Comments must be submitted by December 3, 2007 via mail to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Attention Recovery Crediting, 420 ARLSQ, Washington, DC 20240.Comments may also be faxed to 703/358-2175 or emailed to recovery_crediting@fws.gov.

I have to say that I am initially quite skeptical of the proposed change. This administration's record of environmental stewardship, especially with regard to endangered species,¹ is poor at best. I hope that the proposal is reasonable, but I won't believe that it is until I've read and studied it very carefully.

Click through for the full text of the press release from the Fish & Wildlife Service.