Friday, March 9, 2007
The Alaskan division of the Fish and Wildlife Service circulated
a memo instructing biologists not discuss global warming or polar
bears unless they have been designated to do so. Hmmm. A year
ago NASA's top climate scientist, physicist James Hansen, was
being pressured by a White House appointee to cool it on global
warming (WN 10 Feb 06) . NASA
chief Michael Griffin put a stop to that, issuing a policy that
allows scientists to speak their minds if they give their boss
notice. Science owes its success to a culture of openness in
which Nature is "The Decider." Anything else is just religion.
"Conservative Christian" sounds like an oxymoron to me, but there
is a split between the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)
which has expanded its agenda to include climate change and human
rights, and really conservative groups. These would include
James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer's Coalitions for
America and Tony Perkins' Family Research Council. Note: Real
conservatives aren't interested in conservation. The Christian
right wants to get back to fighting the real enemy sex. Sex
and drugs were the downfall of Ted Haggard, who was the President
of the NAE (WN 3 Nov 06) .
The commitment of physicists to the principle of openness was
tested this very morning in Denver at the APS March meeting, as
it has been every year for 108 years. Roy Masters, author of
"God Science and Free Energy from Gravity," was to deliver
"Electricity from Gravity" at 9:36 a.m. Anyone can deliver a
paper at the March Meeting. What if Masters actually succeeded
in using up our gravity to keep the lights on? Not to worry.
Even as Roy Masters was talking about generating energy from
gravity, George W. Bush was cutting a deal with President Luiz
Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to use ethanol. It made about as
much sense. We've been through this before: Brazil makes ethanol
from sugar cane. We grown corn. Corn is food. The diversion of
food to fuel, even at today's trivial level, has already inflated
the price of corn in Mexico, sending Mexicans north for better
paying jobs. Toxic waste from fermentation of sugar cane is
dumped in the Amazon. We don't have an Amazon. Because the
energy balance is precarious, sugar cane must be harvested in
Brazil by hand. That condemns vast numbers of laborers to
serfdom. We don't have serfs - yet. What we do have is lots of
people who are capable of running the numbers for the President
to see if ethanol is any kind of a solution. None of these
people seem to be in the White House.
|
