SkepticLance

iNow I did not make that claim. Sometimes the truth is somewhat elusive and slippery. Hence these long debates. All I am saying is that there are vested interests on both sides of this argument. If we are honest, we will recognise that fact.

Rev Please don't over-react. I was trying to introduce a bit of balance here. We get lots of people, enthusiastic about promoting the harm of global climate change, who accuse their debate opponents of being vested interests, or influenced by such. I am pointing out that there are, as always, two sides to any story. Just as there are vested interests in the oil industry etc., there are also vested interests in the newer industries that claim to reduce carbon emissions. Those whose careers depend on public interest in global climate change are also vested interests. This is not an attack on anyone. It is just introducing a bit of balance. There are two sets of vested interests, supporting two sides of the debate. Simple.

To particles If you know the scientific or generic name for the active ingredient in the drug, you can do a google search, and probably find out the minimum dose likely to cause an effect. A similar, but slightly lesser measure is known as the NOEL, and sometimes as the NOAEL. (no observed effect limit, and no observed adverse effect limit).

Actually, living past 30 as miracle is something of an urban myth. In prior, less medicalised, times, average life span has often been less than 21. However, the main contributor to low average life span has been high child mortality. Those who manage to live to adulthood had a pretty good life expectancy. The bible (ultimate authority!) says : "The span of a man is three score years and ten." That suggests that, about 2500 years ago, if a male reached adulthood, he had a very good chance of living to 70. Presumably the span of a woman was a little more - perhaps 75?

To particles 'Potency' is not the same as shelf life. So that question remains. You need to know how much of the drug is needed to trigger an effect, and also how much is ingested, to know whether it can cause that effect. My immediate reaction is to say it is not terribly likely. Most chemicals need a reasonable dose to have an impact, and a few dust particles are unlikely to do this, unless we are talking about a really potent substance.

To swansont and Rev There are literally thousands of people making careers out of climatology today. Once, as I pointed out before, it was an obscure little subject with a very small number of people supported by minimal research grants by a few universities. All is relative, and compared to that past time, climatologists today are doing very well, both in terms of supporting their careers, and in terms of status. It is rather biased to accept that a vested interest exists to oppose climate change, while refusing to believe that one exists to support it. My assertion is that both exist. If you refuse to believe that, you are being either naive or pig headed. And in response to swansont's statement about besmirching the reputation of scientists, you should be aware that this is a dirty trick played by both sides of the debate. I have seen, right here on SFN, some rather shocking attacks on climate scientists who are sceptical about the more extreme versions of climate change. You should be aware that the whole debate is a two sided coin, with both correct and incorrect views on both sides, and general nastiness coming from both sides.

Currently, cloning of humans has three main practical problems. 1. We cannot do it anyway. 2. If we could do it, it would lead to heaps of congenital problems in the new born. 3. If we could do it, it would require lots of women to volunteer as surrogate mothers, and most would suffer miscarriages. This is emotionally traumatic and women should not be subject to that. However, given anther 100 years of technological development, these problems should be overcome. The political problems will also fade away, along with general human silliness in opposing another way of making babies. My prediction is that in 100 years, cloning will be accepted as just another reasonable way of reproducing. After all, the end result is just a baby, and babies are generally a very acceptable result.

There is no clear answer since there are two unspecified variables. 1. How much is left, available for ingestion. 2. How potent is the drug. The first law of the science of toxicology is : "the dose makes the poison." This principle also applies to drugs, and it says that every substance has a dose that is sufficiently small for the chemical to have zero effect - positive or negative - on the organism ingesting it. If your psychoactive substance gets into the human body in small enough dose, the effect is zero. If in sufficient dose, it will have an effect. You need to specify the answer to the two wuestions.

Milk contains fat. Drink only low fat milk. Drink heaps of it. If you are caucasian, you belong to a human group that has been drinking cow's milk for some thousands of years - long enough to induce a genetic change from evolution. Caucasians (except for a minority) now have a gene that gives lactose tolerance, and allows us to metabolise lactose as a useful energy source. The downside of milk is : 1. Not a replacement for mother's milk for babies. 2. 'Normal' milk has too much saturated fat. 3. A minority of people are intolerant. If you are not a baby, drink only low fat milk, and are not milk intolerant, then you can drink plenty with only benefits to your health. Low fat milk is, regardless of what one contributor said, about the best source of easily assimilated calcium we can get, and a major tool in the battle against osteoporosis. It also contains vitamin D, which is often in shortage during the winter in colder countries, since we get less solar exposure. Lack of vitamin D has been shown to correlate with higher rates of many cancers.

To swansont There are vested interests on both sides of the debate. Since Rev has described the interests opposing restrictions on fossil fuel burning, I will describe those on the other side. There are many in both science and politics. Al Gore is a good example - making both $$$ and political reputation. Scientists who are into climate research are a very powerful vested interest. 30 years ago, climatology was an obscure little discipline ekeing out a scanty existence on meagre research funds. Today it is a gravy train. Billions of dollars are potentially available to anyone who credibly claims to be doing research into global warming. Many climate scientists write best seller books. Many others make big money on the lecture circuit. The benefits to those scientists who promulgate the global warming story - both truth and myth - both in money and reputation are very clear. Ditto for politicians and bureaucrats, especially in the UN. The big money feeds them at least as much as, and possibly more, than the climate scientists. These 'parasites' will oppose fervently any suggestion that they are not 'saving the world' since that is now their bread and butter. There are heaps of business people who see $$$$ in the 'fight' against greenhouse gases. Those who make wind turbines, or nuclear reactors, or act as carbon brokers etc. There is big money in global warming. Of course, having vested interests does not make you right or wrong. Those with something to gain, or something to lose, on either side of the debate, might be correct, or telling lies, or mistaken, or downright corrupt, or the exact opposite. Only good scientific data can show the difference.

In actual fact, all we need to do to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere is to cut down on the CO2 emissions. ie. Stop burning fossil fuels. Stop cutting down forests. Tidy up agriculture. And a few lesser changes. Once that happens, the excess will be removed by natural processes such as photosynthesis by plants, carbonate formation in minerals, and solution in the ocean. In due course a new balance will establish with much lower atmospheric CO2. Of course, getting off the carbon habit is easier said than done.

Chloroplasts are not a part of the plant cell in the same way that other inclusions are. The chloroplasts contain their own DNA and reproduce pretty much independently from the cells. The theory is that they started as photosynthetic bacteria and entered the early plant cell as a symbiote. It is probably realistic to think of them still, not as part of the plant, but as a symbiotic organism living inside the plant. To put these symbiotes into human cells might be tricky. You would have to genetically modify the chloroplast DNA to make them tolerant of animal cells. Then you would have to modify the animal DNA to make the animal cells tolerant of chloroplasts. After all that, you would have to find a way to introduce chloroplasts. And at the end, you would have a green human who could make some tiny amounts of sugar in his skin cells. Not much help, since the human would burn that sugar far too quickly and then go looking for a square meal!

To Mr Skeptic If a fossil fish were found in pre-Cambrian rocks, and intensive investigation showed it was genuine - not a fraud - then evolution would undergo drastic change, even if it was not dumped. There would be very serious questions asked, and answers would need to be found, or else evolution as a theory would get rather shakey. The whole point is that evolution is potentially falsifiable. Of course, the probability of any such thing happening at this point in time is close to zero. That is because the evidence for evolution, and for fish evolving later than pre-Cambrian, is so massive that we know the chances of a falsifying event is microscopically indistinguishable from that zero figure.

Evolution never stops. Humans have undergone evolution over the past few thousand years. A good example is the lactose tolerance that has evolved in Europeans, since they started tapping cow's milk as a food source. However, in the future, natural evolution is unlikely to play much of a role in future genetic change in humans. We will take care of that ourselves, as soon as we develop genetic technology sufficiently. I predict within 100 years we will be profoundly modifying ourselves with this technology. It will be for the better, since we are such incredibly fallible and imperfect beings, and major improvements are very obvious.

Mooeypoo Your basic idea is correct. Humans have not quite removed natural selection, and there are always certain factors being selected for. It is unlikely this selection will have much impact, though, since human society is changing so ridiculously rapidly. An evolutionary trend today may be reversed tomorrow. So we can say that evolution on our species is not significant at all right now. There is also the fact that harmful traits, that once would be removed from the gene pool, now can survive and increase. For example : it does not take much observation to note that intelligent and educated people have fewer children on average than those of lesser intellectual potential. Will this lead to a genetically dumbed down Homo sapiens? Will this evolutionary trend lower our average intelligence? In fact, these are all temporary trends. Evolution takes hundreds of generations. In human terms, thousands of years. Any trend such as towards lower IQ will not have time to have any real impact before the next major change in human society. The next big factor affecting our evolution is likely to be genetic modification of humans. I predict, within 100 years, human reproduction will be preceded by a little gene tinkering to make sure that the new offspring is good looking, athletic, intelligent, immune to lots of diseases etc. The net effect after very few generations will be a human population that is genetically 'superior' to the current one, in many profound ways. Give a few centuries and human society will be virtually unrecognisable, but probably much 'nicer' than what we have now. Some people claim that such tinkering will benefit only the rich. This will initially be true, but not for long. Development leads to new technologies becoming cheaper and more widely available. In time, even the poor can have their offspring genetically 'improved'.

To CDarwin The only way that a fish fossil could be found in pre-Cambrian rock is if evolution is wrong, or someone set it up as a fraud. I doubt that such a fraud could survive the intense scientific examination such a fossil would get. This is the reason evolution is true science and ID is false. True science requires falsifiability.

Mr Skeptic is correct. However, I am unaware of any amphibian species that are keystone. Maybe I am wrong, and someone can come up with such an example. If so, removing that species would have substantial and possibly very harmful consequences. Obviously, the extinction of all amphibian species is unlikely, unless the Earth is hit by a planet killer or similar, in which case we will not be around to observe the results. Practically, we have to ask a separate ecological question for each species. And at this point, I cannot see any single amphibian species being so downright vital to the ecology for its removal to have more than minor effects.

Swansont A question. When you say 8 C increase equals 80 ppm CO2 increase, are you talking about air or ocean temperature? This is significant since the ocean has warmed over the past few decades to a level that is a small fraction of the air temperature increase. I affirm the exponential nature of the relationship between CO2 and warming. It does not mean warming is linear, of course, since linearity results from one specific CO2 increase curve, and it is unlikely we would get exactly this curve. The last few decades have seen an exponential increase in CO2 and the average warming has been close, but not exactly, linear. Predictions are dangerous and usually wrong, but I have always dived in where angels fear, etc. I predict the next few decades will see further exponential CO2 increase, coming from the explosive growth in the economies of China and other nations. Warming should be once more close to linear. Another point. The exponential growth is actually all greenhouse materials together - not just CO2. To take a hypothetical example - imagine a planet with 100 ppm of methane and 100 ppm of CO2. The methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and CO2 much less potent. If the CO2 doubled in that case, the warming would be utterly trivial, since total greenhouse effect began at such a high level. On Earth, this principle is significant since water vapour is the most potent greenhouse material, and it varies enormously from place to place. So, if we began in a place with minimal water vapour - like the high Arctic - and increase CO2, the warming will be potent. However, if we began in a place with much more water vapour, such as the Amazon basin, and increase CO2 to the same degree, the warming will be quite minimal. We need to recognise that the degree of warming for a set CO2 increase depends heavily on how much water vapour is in that place.

Ophiolite proposes intelligent design (no capitals) as a scientific hypothesis. That is perfectly fine, and scientifically acceptable. However, there is a follow up to any hypothesis, which is absolutely compulsory. Carl Sagan called it prediction. Once you have formed a hypothesis, you must then use that hypothesis to make novel and testable predictions. This stage is where super-string theory falls down and is the reason why books have been written by reputable physicists denouncing super-string as non-science. ID is the same. Having made a testable prediction, you must test it using empirical means, with the intent (a la Karl Popper) of falsifying it if it is incorrect. It is this process that is failed for intelligent design. For evolution, I can and will make a testable prediction. "I predict that no fossil will be found in a rock stratum that is way older than the fossil should be. For example. There will be no clear cut fish fossils in pre-Cambrian rocks." This prediction has been under test to a truly enormous extent, for the last 100 years. It has passed every time, and passed the falsification principle. Intelligent design does not meet this scientific requirement.

To ttyo The changes would depend on the ecosystem, and each change would be different. For example : here in NZ, what would happen if Hochstetter's Frog became extinct? Apart from the loss of a very interesting animal, we probably could not even measure the subsequent ecological change. However, there may be other ecosystems where the change would be greater - perhaps an increase in flying insect population since their predator is gone. That might lead on to an increase in numbers of other flying insect predators etc. Each case would be different.

To CDarwin That is, undoubtedly, a correct way of explaining it. I prefer to think of it as attacking a point of dogma rather than a theological debate, since the latter accords too much respect to a rather silly belief.

I dunno about ceramics, but you could, in theory, make cement out of those two. Heat the eggshells to quicklime, and blend with the right volcanic ash. The ancient Romans discovered cement and built concrete structures. Their recipe involved heating ground up limestone for the quicklime and a local volcanic ash.

To Ophiolite If you use 'intelligent design' as an open theory, you are correct. However, I think we all know that is not, in fact, the case. ID is merely a more palatable coating for christian creationism, and fundamentalist at that. The ID people do actually believe in a perfect creator, even when they publicly espouse a more open ended ID theory. It is this core belief that is wrong.

Just to add fuel to the flames ...... I was looking at a graph of global temperatures over the past million odd years. There have been ten glacial periods and ten interglacials. There is an interesting trend in maximum interglacial temperatures. They seem to be rising. The last interglacial temperature actually reached a peak about 2 Celsius more than the present (or more). Perhaps, if the long term trend is real, the current interglacial was destined by 'natural' processes to get even warmer. http://www.geo.umass.edu/climate/papers2/francisetal2006a.pdf Actually, that does not explain current CO2 levels, but it may still be a good stick to stir certain people with.

iNow What a wonderful example of comparing apples and oranges! As far as action on climate change is concerned - yes we should be acting. However, what should we be doing? There is an infinite continuum of opinion on this. One thing I have personally emphasized is that any action needs to be well managed and cautious, based on science and practical economics, not politics. Some actions to date have been quite the opposite and very damaging. There are some things we can do now, without any harmful side effects, since these actions are based on tried and true technology, and techniques. Other actions being urged by those who are enthusiastic about mitigation of climate change are simply damn stupid. We need to know the difference, and apply that which makes sense. For example : new nuclear power stations for electricity, combined with introduction of electric commuter vehicles makes sense, since these are known technologies. Adding iron to the oceans to stimulate phytoplankton growth does not, since the consequences are unknown. A recent 'silly-bugger' idea is to add vast amounts of finely ground lime to the oceans, to absorb CO2. H20 + CO2 + CaCO3 = Ca(HCO3)2 I am sure it will not be the last.