January 2008 Archives
Yale University has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 17% since committing to a steep reduction in 2005, President Richard C. Levin reported today in a speech at the University of Copenhagen. (press release)
Yale's goal is to reduce CO2 emissions to 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. That will require reducing emissions 43% from where they were in 2005, so they still have a long way to go, but they're moving in the right direction.
How are they doing it? From the press release:
- Installation of more efficient heating and cooling systems in 90 buildings
- New automated controls for heating, cooling and lighting
- Replacement of windows
- New and modified power plant equipment
- Achieving LEED Silver or better certification for all new buildings and major renovations
- Use of ground water for cooling
- A 10% yearly reduction in electricity consumption by students in Yale's undergraduate residential colleges achieved through a variety of measures
You can read the full text of President Levin's speech here.
The basic idea of natural selection is very simple. If some individuals have a trait that enhances their survival and reprroduction and if that trait can be passed from parent to offspring, then it will become more common in future generations. Darwin and Wallace formulated that principle 150 years ago, and it has been repeatedly tested and verified.
In Friday's issue of Science Jacob Gratten and colleagues point out that in Soay sheep dark coat color is associated with large size and that large size enhances both survival and reproduction (subscription required). The coat color difference (dark brown versus light tawny) is determined by alternative alleles at a single locus, with the dark brown allele being dominant to tawny. So you'd expect dark brown Soay sheep to become more common – and you'd be wrong. Over 20 years the dark colored phenotype has decreased at a rate of a little less than 0.4% per year.
What gives? Is the theory of natural selection wrong? No. You need to look a little closer at all of the traits that affect fitness.1
I've written before about how important it is that science should inform the policy choices of the next President of the United States, and I pointed out that Science provided analyses of the candidates views on science in a recent issue. But it's not enough to have a president that can appoint knowledgeable science advisers and who will listen to the evidence they present in formulating policies. We need congressmen and senators who will do the same thing
Yesterday, the Scientists and Engineers for America launched its Science, Health, and Related Policies (SHARP) network.
SEA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization with 501(c)(3) status. Our mission is to renew respect for evidence-based debate and decision-making in politics and at all levels of government. (source)
In addition to brief biographies, the SHARP website provides information on positions that congressmen and senators have taken on legislation related to education, energy, environment, global warming, health, innovation, research and research management, stem cell research,
The IPCC synthesis report concluded that “[a]nthropogenic warming could lead to some impacts that are abrupt or irreversible, depending upon the rate and magnitude of the climate change.” In PLoS One Brian Huntley and colleagues provide an example of such changes in the distribution and abundance of European birds. Their results are very sobering.
Current and future distribution of the grasshopper warbler in Europe (Figure 1 from Huntley B, Collingham YC, Willis SG, Green RE (2008) Potential Impacts of Climatic Change on European Breeding Birds. PLoS ONE 3(1): e1439 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001439. Click on the figure to download a larger TIFF image.)As the authors conclude, “many human activities exert pressures upon wildlife, the magnitude of the potential impacts estimated for European breeding birds emphasises the importance of climatic change. The development of adaptation strategies for biodiversity conservation in the face of climatic change is an urgent need; such strategies must take into account quantitative evidence of potential climatic change impacts such as is presented here.”
In last week's Science, Don Kennedy wrote in an editorial
We need to know the candidates' qualifications for understanding and judging science, and for speaking intelligently about science and technology to the leaders of other nations in planning our collective global future...But I do care about their scientific knowledge and how it will inform their leadership.
Also in that issue there is a News Focus on science and the presidency, in which the candidates' positions on science are described. Here are the links:
- Democrats
- Republicans
1Including Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, who withdrew after the Iowa caucuses.
From Defenders of Wildlife:
Good news! Larry and Bette Haverfield and other heroic ranchers finally won a long fight to bring endangered black-footed ferrets back to the Kansas prairie.After receiving more than 16,000 messages from Defenders supporters, U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials released 24 black-footed ferret kits on the Haverfields's private land on December 18th.
Add that to good news about recovery of the population in Shirley Basin, Wyoming,1 and the prospects for the black-footed ferret look better than they have in a long time.
1The Shirley Basin population had only five individuals in 1997. There were more than 200 in 2006.
It's a deal-breaker for me too. If a candidate cannot accept Darwinian evolution, then I simply lose all respect for him or her. I do not trust their empirical judgment, which means I don't believe their political decisions will be affected by, er, reason.
No, that wasn't written by some wacko, leftist atheist. That was the author of The Conservative Soul, Andrew Sullivan.
John Logsdon points out that Wired Science also has a good article on why a candidates views on evolution matter.
Huckabee, we are actually not asking you if there is a creator behind the cosmos. We are clear that you think there is. We are asking if you would weigh rational scientific evidence that has been peer reviewed and is reproducible in your most critical decisions about medical research, terrorist weapons threats, the environment, and education. My concern is that your answer to Bill Maher, “We just don't know [the age of the earth]” is an indication that you don't include science on your reference shelf. If you did, you would know that we do know the age of the earth. It's 4.5 billion years old.
I have a link to the debate video here.
I noted a couple of days ago that the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine released “Science, evolution, and creationism.” Catching up on my reading this morning I find that Francisco Ayala, who chaired the committee that produced the report, has an editorial about the report in the most recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Here are a few key passages:
Biological evolution is the central organizing principle of modern biology. Evolution provides a scientific explanation for why there are so many different kinds of organisms on Earth and gives an account of their similarities and differences (morphological, physiological, and genetic). It accounts for the appearance of humans on Earth and reveals our species' biological connections with other living things. It provides an understanding of the constantly evolving bacteria and viruses and enables the development of effective new ways to protect ourselves against the diseases they cause. Evolution has made possible improvements in agriculture and medicine and has been applied in many fields outside biology, including forensics and software engineering; it has stimulated chemists, for example, to use the principles of natural selection for developing new molecules with specific functions....
Biological evolution is part of a compelling historical narrative that scientists have constructed over the last few centuries. The narrative begins with the formation of the universe, the solar system, and the Earth, where conditions occur suitable for life to evolve. There are theories that seek to account for how life originated on Earth, but none of them has gathered enough supporting evidence to be generally accepted by scientists. But natural selection, discovered by Darwin, has been convincingly demonstrated as the process that accounts for the adaptive configuration and function of organisms (for their “design”). Darwin's greatest contribution to science is not that he accumulated evidence demonstrating the evolution of life, but that he discovered natural selection, the process that accounts for the design of organisms and their wonderful adaptations to survive and reproduce in the environments where they live, including wings for flying, legs for running, eyes to see, and kidneys that regulate the composition of the blood.
...
Science and religion concern different aspects of the human experience. Scientific explanations are based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world and rely exclusively on natural processes to account for natural phenomena. Scientific explanations are subject to empirical tests by means of observation and experimentation and are subject to the possibility of modification and rejection. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend on empirical tests and is not subject to the possibility of rejection based on empirical evidence. The significance and purpose of the world and human life, as well as issues concerning moral and religious values, are of great importance to many people, perhaps a majority of humans, but these are matters that transcend science.
Click on image to read or order online
The committee that produced the book was chaired by Francisco Ayala, and it included fourteen other scientists. In addition to chapters on evolution and the nature of science, the evidence for biological evolution, and creationist perspectives, the book also includes a list of frequently asked questions. Here are the first three questions answered in the FAQ:
- Aren't evoution and religion opposing ideas?1
- Isn't belief in evolution also a matter of faith?2
- How can random biological changes lead to more adapted organisms?
It is, as P.Z. Myers, puts it “is a genuinely excellent piece of work.”
Rather than basing policies on pre-conceived notions about what is or isn't true, the next President of the United States should base policies on evidence and reason. That's why I've complained loudly about Mike Huckabee's and Ron Paul's support of creationism. Their support of creationism shows that they do “not reach scientific conclusions based on evidence” (source).
More broadly, the world and the United States face many issues where science should inform the choices – global warming, stem cell research, loss of biodiversity, new diseases, subsidies for corn-based ethanol, and industrial competitiveness to name a few. The first results from the 2008 presidential campaign will come from tonight's Iowa caucuses, where ethanol subsides are an important issue.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a forum in which presidential candidates were asked to explain their position on these issues? This isn't a science quiz. It's a question about how candidates will make policy choices in which science plays a key role in providing information. If you agree, clck on the image to the left and sign on as a supporter of ScienceDebate2008, a non-partisan effort to encourage candidates to engage in such a debate.
UPDATE: Don Kennedy's editorial in the first issue of Science this year makes many of the same points.
A coalition of scientific societies and science teachers has conducted a national survey of likely U.S. voters to examine acceptance of evolution, attitudes toward science and scientists, and opportunities for promoting science education. Most of these folk who responded to the survey accepted that life evolved, many accepted that it evolved through natural processes, and more favored teaching evolution than creationism or intelligent design in science classes. The majority ranked "developing medicines" and "curing diseases" as the most important contributions of science to society. They also found that "promoting understanding of evolutionary science's contribution to medicine" was a convincing reason to teach evolution. The respondents viewed scientists, teachers, and medical professionals favorably, and most were interested in hearing from these groups about science, including evolution. These data suggest that the scientific community has an important role to play in encouraging public support for science education. (The FASEB Journal 22:1-4; 2008.)
Lew Rockwell posts a message from a reader complaining about the video showing Ron Paul denying evolution. The reader links to an unedited version on YouTube and seems to think that we should find it reassuring. Here's the new video:
I'm sorry. I'm not reassured.
