Tag Archives: Evolution

The Old Astronomer*

3
by Education • Tags: , , , , , ,

Look, there’s a lot of different careers I could have had. Hell, had three different ones, three and a half, as it was. But if I ever manage to decide what I want to do with my life (and yes, that is a winged chariot you hear), astronomy is right up there as a possibility.

Oh, not really a possibility, with my lack of physics and mathematics abilities. I suppose my wishful thinking was always based on Herschel, hell Galileo, staring at the mysterious skies through a telescope and seeing, things never seen before, heavenly messengers.

We are of course, long past the time when amateurs could point a telescope from their backyard and make discoveries in the cosmos. Although, that said, it is from a backyard not a million parsecs from mine that a chap does keep making discoveries, most recently of bits of a comet crashing into Jupiter.

But my old eyes are too old anyway, these days, astronomy a young person’s game, these days. Besides, had my academic careers, working in zoology and archaeology. But it’s all the same thing, really, archaeology being part of zoology, and zoology a subsection of astronomy.

What was the question? Oh, you think I need to defend those suggestions? Well, if I must, it’s your blog.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” Carl Sagan of course, in a rather wonderful thought. We don’t need to go out to the stars, they have come to us. And not just to humans, but every living being on the planet, and the very structure of the planet we live on.

The other rather wonderful thought is that we, you and I dear reader, are related to every other human being currently on the planet, and all those who came before. And if that isn’t a wonderful enough thought, we, you and I, are also related to every other living being, animal and plant, on the planet. How good is that eh?

And not just related in the literal, direct genetic sense, but in an ecological one. As the first of the apes that would become human walked across the African savannah they began to adapt to different habitats to their nearest relatives, and to make use of different plants and animals in their diet. Their hunting will have subtly altered species compositions among their prey and plant foods. And eventually, as some groups shifted towards agriculture or pastoralism, their interactions with other species actually affected evolution, in a process we call domestication.

We study early humans in exactly the same way we study their relatives, through palaeontology, studying not only their bony remains, but, where possible, diet and behaviour. As we reach the creation of stone and other tools we call this branch of palaeontology “archaeology”, but it’s all one thing. And palaeontology is of course just one aspect of zoology.

Convinced yet?

But wait, there’s more. For a long time another branch of zoology (well, biochemistry, but really I’m in an imperial mood) has investigated the origins of life. Plenty of ideas, successful experiments in forming organic molecules in conditions approximating early Earth in terms of water, heat, electrical discharge, low oxygen, clay minerals etc. But all with the deliberately built-in, assumed requirement that organic had to come from an original inorganic chemistry on Earth. [This is, was, a necessary assumption. The nonsense from Hoyle and Wickramasinghe about life forms arriving on Earth from comet tails or whatever was not only mad-brained, but didn't affect the study of the origin of life, merely shifted the location to somewhere else where, obviously, organic must have still been derived from inorganic, and on a surface of some kind].

But the young lads and lasses of modern astronomy have shown in effect (and I never thought I’d find myself writing this phrase) that Fred and Chandra were sort of right. No, no, not in the sense of showers of frogs or beetles or bacteria from outer space, I haven’t lost my wits totally (nor my sarcasm). But what recent years of observation have shown us is that organic molecules of various kinds are common in space. Are produced, as I understand it, from dust clouds and the radiation from evolving and exploding stars. That it isn’t necessary to start from scratch to form life on this planet (and quite possibly also on Mars and moons like Titan and Enceladus), but that various organic molecules will provide a kind of kick start for electrical discharges, water, heat, clay substrates to go to work and develop the kind of self-reproducing complex organic molecules we call “life”. [This also, incidentally, makes it absolutely certain that many other millions of the planets the young astronomers are now also able to observe will also have life].

So, not just star stuff to build bones etc, but the very materials that can, in the right conditions, form life, come from out there. There is no gap between us and all the other life forms on this planet, and none between our organics and those spread throughout this awfully big universe. Another rather wonderful thought.

Oh, and of course no longer any need to distinguish between astronomy, zoology, and archaeology. And no need for me to plan (thank goodness) another end of life career – I always was an astronomer really, it turns out, just one studying the bits of the universe that happened to sit on this planet.

Not now, sadly though, a young astronomer but an old astronomer. Almost as old as the universe, I can feel it in my bones.

*see poem “The Old Astronomer” by Sarah Williams about a third of the way through my “Values” section, click tag above or http://davidhortonsblog.com/values/.

Political Gene-ius

3
by Education, Environment, Evolution, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I often think it’s comical
How Nature always does contrive 
That every boy and every gal,
That’s born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative!
(WS Gilbert “Iolanthe”)

When I, aged 30, first met my Father we didn’t discuss cricket, and I have no idea whether he was a fan or not. But then I had no idea he was a Shakespeare fan until I learned he had somehow carried a volume of the Collected Works in his army kitbag all through the Middle East and New Guinea in World War 2, so perhaps he did love cricket.

My grandfather (yes, the one in the photo top right) certainly did play, and love, cricket, and was, apparently, a very handy fast bowler, even up to being in his Forties. I once proudly owned, and wore, his cricket cap from when he played in the County Durham competition, 100 years ago, but lost it in circumstances which remain painful.

He died not long after I turned seven. Before I was old enough to seriously appreciate cricket, and long before television, let alone direct tv broadcasts of Test Matches, came to Perth. Cricket could be followed, from England, on the radio in the early 1950s, and that was that. One of my many regrets about his early death was never being able to watch cricket with him. Both of us would have relished the experience.

But with no direct transmission from either father or grandfather, how did I get my love of cricket?

What used to be called the “lower vertebrates”, fish, amphibians, reptiles, generally speaking, fertilise eggs, lay them somewhere appropriate, and then piss off. Consequently the young, when born, are equipped to completely fend for themselves. All of their behaviour patterns are encoded in their DNA, and on hatching they simply seek shelter, food, and eventually mates in ways that were innate, not learned. [It's worth noting though that some species in all these groups have separately evolved live births, and others, after laying eggs, guard them until hatching, and then guard the young for a while. In such species it is possible the young do learn some behaviour associated with, say, feeding, from the male or female parent].

The “higher vertebrates”, birds and mammals, show considerable variation. All the birds (and three of the mammals) lay eggs of course. But there are some, the cuckoo species, that dump their eggs into the nests of other species to raise. There are some, all ground living types (emus, chickens, ducks etc), who have “precocial” young, with down cover, born ready to move off with their mother. Most others have young born naked and totally helpless, needing total care in nest from parents until their feathers develop and they can fly (and even then care continues). They therefore have a mixture of innate behaviours and learned (or at least modified) behaviours

Mammals also vary. Some, notably the herd/flock species, are up and moving within a few hours of birth and following the mother in the rest of the mob. Others are born completely helpless, and remain so for long periods, weeks, months, even years. The ones who develop quickly have less chance (and need) to learn from parents (though they will learn a great deal), those (notably the apes, including us, learn a great deal from the parents and have fewer purely innate components (though far more than we realise).

Well, in brief, we are into the nitty gritty of the “nature-nurture” debate – what part of a species, say Homo sapiens sapiens, behaviours are genetic, inherited, what part are learnt? Not simple, as the evolutionary history above shows. Certainly there are fundamental things – eating, drinking, danger, comfort, athleticism – that are strongly genetically based. Then there are superficial things – religion, taste in music and art, social unit structures, political beliefs, and, yes, sport preferences – that are strongly based on the context in which you are raised.

But, on the one hand the genetic ones are modified by upbringing (eg particular food preferences, response to dangers, how fit you are), and on the other, even some of the superficial socio-culturally-based ones have some genetic basis it has been found. Studies of twins raised separately for example show some tendency for them to be similar in their strength of religious belief (though the form strictly related to household raised in). Musical abilities are well-known to often “run in families”. And more recently (for example) studies show tendency towards respectively right and left-wing political beliefs have some genetic component (though again, the particular form this might take being related to up-bringing). Wonder if the otherwise inexplicable gun love in the US is part of this inheritance?

Interestingly, though not surprisingly perhaps, both the religious and political tendencies are related to serotonin production and the brain’s response, and since music also causes serotonin reactions, it may well be that is also related to the abilities of, say, the sons of JS Bach.

Anyway, all of that may help to explain (though of course there would be many other factors), why a religious believer might suddenly appear from an atheist household, or a fervent Young Republican from a Democratic one, or a genius musician from a non-musical family. May also explain why musical ability is rare, why the irrational belief in religion persists to damage societies, and why roughly half of the voters in most countries keep voting for conservative parties that will damage their interests.

Oh, and it might just explain why I am watching a cricket match on tv while I write this! There being more things in heaven an earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy, or made a fault in our stars.

The sphere of private life

40
by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When theocracy comes back to western civilisation it might begin with three young women protesting in a church and being jailed for two years. Or it will ride in on a wagon outlawing same-sex marriage. Perhaps it will come from small fundamentalist religious schools keeping their students isolated from any other thoughts, including Darwin’s dangerous idea. Or maybe it will come from leaders who pray to an imaginary being for guidance before making decisions on war.

Maybe “witches” being burnt will provide a spark. Or the loud voices demanding that women cover up their bodies, and art work be destroyed which depicts nakedness. Could it be hiding under the cloak of those who called a young Olympic runner a “prostitute”? Or of those who are certain that women must never be allowed to preach to men?

Perhaps it’s coming in that mob of wild-eyed young men brandishing AK 47s in the air and screaming “god is great” in triumph at having slaughtered other young men. Or in the ones screaming abuse about homosexuality at people attending soldier’s funerals. Or in the hands of the ones screaming at young women attending family planning clinics, or blowing them up or shooting “abortion doctors”. Or maybe it’ll be riding in a plane being flown into a tall building, or a truckload of explosives smashing into a girl’s school.

Maybe theocracy will begin on old battlefield sites being labelled as “sacred ground”. Or on pieces of burnt toast with an imaginary face. Or in a row of fence posts imagined as a woman’s figure. Or in the ancient monuments blown up as impure. Or perhaps in those places where gullible sick people are prayed upon and preyed upon by those promising miracle cures in return for a little money.

Its arrival will be speeded up by those determined to smash science. By those who preach the dominion of man over nature. By the tax exemptions for religious institutions. By the prayers at the start of parliamentary sessions. By the growing role of religious cadres in schools, in hospitals, in military memorial ceremonies, in political lobby groups. By the politicians flaunting their religious beliefs as an incentive to vote for them. By the preachers blaming a drought or a tornado on people behaving “sinfully”.

It will come from the children indoctrinated, and sometimes mutilated, at ages far too young to give consent. It will come from cults shielded from scrutiny by threats of legal action, shielded from criticism by laws limiting free speech. Will come from the poor devils refusing medical treatment in favour of prayer. Will come from big businesses with religious fundamentalist owners using their power. Will come from fearful people, made afraid by shock jocks serving political masters. Will come from the deliberate conflating of religion and race by unscrupulous leaders. Will come from words written by deluded people hundreds, thousands of years ago, believed by deluded people now to have come from one imaginary being or another.

It is enabled every time the media calls it a “miracle” when someone is saved by the full application of five centuries of western science and medicine. Every time tv channels run “serious” programs about “psychics” or “near death experiences” or “ghosts”. Every time someone is said to have “passed” instead of died. Every time someone says they will “pray for you to get better” and you don’t say “how about donating to medical research instead?” Every time someone wears a “power band” or a “healing crystal”, or recommends homeopathy.

Brought nearer every time someone says “Oh, those New Atheists, so aggressive and rude, they really should respect the beliefs of religious people”.

The bible will arrive, everywhere, wrapped in the flag and carrying a gun. Theocracy is coming to a country near you, soon, and it will take you back to the Dark Ages. The only thing needed for religion to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

“Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life” (William Lamb, on hearing an evangelical sermon)

By special act

63
by Evolution • Tags: , , , , , ,

Questions for creationists:
1. Given anoxic conditions, water, variety of chemicals, electrical discharges, complex organic molecules arriving from space, how did/does “god” STOP life emerging on planets all over the universe?
2. Since all species are variable, how does “god” STOP evolution happening?
3. Since populations of species constantly become isolated geographically, how does “god” STOP speciation occurring?
4. Given two extreme genetic bottlenecks for humans – Adam and Eve (the latter being cloned from the former!), then “Noah’s family” – how do you imagine the human race became so diverse, and abundant,  in just a few hundred years?
5. If “all the animals” were each represented by a single pair on the Ark, how did they all become so abundant and diverse in a few hundred years
6. How did “Noah” collect animals from the then unknown continents of Australia, Americas, Asia, southern Africa, northern Europe?
7.  Why did Noah have an inordinate fondness for beetles?
8. If the whole earth was covered with water of sufficient depth to cover mountains, how did any plant species survive?
9. If any plant species did somehow survive, how did they reform complex ecosystems all over the world in a few hundred years?
10. Given that all the other people of the world had different ideas how they came to exist, and that none of them “remember” the Flood, what makes you think … oh, forget it, I know your answer to that one.

And here’s a bonus question, if you finish the others early:
11. Name any two of the hundreds of thousands of biological scientists who have worked on aspects of evolution since Charles Darwin. To make it easier you can include geologists and physicists. Struggling? OK, I’ll give you a start, Alfred Russell Wallace. Over to you.

To be hanged with the bible

57
by Atheism, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When the bible was written humans* didn’t know:
About bacteria and viruses and parasites
Blood circulation
Earth going around sun
More than 5 planets
About galaxies
There was a southern hemisphere
Earth round
What lightning is
That whales aren’t fish
What mental illness involves
About genes and inheritance
About Chinese, Aztecs, Zulus, Aborigines, Navaho, Japanese, Papuans, Bushmen, Mayans, Eskimo, Indonesians, West Africans, Britons
Composition of matter
Any history
Composition of moon
About fossils
There was a western hemisphere
The age of the Earth
About the great apes
About continental drift
About kangaroos, lemurs, opossums, emus, iguanas, alpacas, platypus, kiwi, gila lizards, sloths, tree frogs, humming birds, horseshoe crabs, peripatus, tasmanian tigers, rhinoceros

When bible written humans had never:
Flown
Travelled faster than a horse can run
Communicated except by speaking directly
Elected a government
Swum under the ocean
Read books
Looked through a telescope
Looked through a microscope
Warmed themselves by anything except wood fires
Been cured by antibiotics
Had a surgical operation
Seen a hospital, school or factory
Seen a town of more than few thousand people

When bible written humans were happy about:
Slavery
Women as chattels
Divine kings
Child marriage
War
Destruction of environment
Gods living on mountains
Child labour
Torture
Human sacrifice
Ghosts
Magic

And yet there are people in 2012 who believe everything written in the bible. There are people who use it to determine who to vote for, where to send their children to school, how they feel about burning environmental and social and economic and cultural issues. And if that wasn’t bad enough, incredible enough, we can’t just smile wisely and say “there there, one day you will grow up” as we might to a child who tries to live their life by, say, the Harry Potter books, because there are people who want to insist that the rest of the world obey these silly old books as well. There are people making all kinds of pronouncements about the environment, about bringing up children, about justice, about science, about art and literature, based not on some independent and rational analysis of an issue, but on what they think is said in the bible about it. And in turn appearing in the media, influencing politicians about it, indeed running for political office themselves. Some countries, notably Iran, Saudi Arabia, and America, are now theocracies run by people who know nothing except what someone has told them an old book says.

Angry? You betcha. The modern world is difficult enough, will become more difficult in the future, without the drag on political life from people living in the past. Can’t laugh at these people any more, this is serious.

*By “humans” in what follows I sometimes mean “the whole human race” and sometimes “the humans who wrote the bits and pieces of old manuscript that got collected together and called ‘the bible’”, which is which will be obvious and not of much importance anyway.

Kissing Cousins

7
by Evolution • Tags: , , , ,

[Note this was written to follow on from discussions which began in comments on post "When you wish" below and continued into those of "Extraordinary". One of my most regular commenters on this blog, Eric, is trying to understand evolution. I, we, are trying to help him. This post arose from Eric's comment that "I don’t get the 'every generation' being a transition between the species at all." So, Eric, let's try it like this.*]

I don’t know if you are interested in your family history, but let’s assume you are. And let’s assume that you know all your ancestors, way way back (will come to how way back soon). And let’s imagine that not only do you have photographs of your ancestors going back 150 years (when the camera was actually invented) but there was a previously unknown mechanism which enabled photos of all your ancestors going way way back.

So you start to arrange the photos on your table. Parents first, then grandparents, great grandparents and so on, back through the generations. And let’s assume (last assumption, promise) that you have not only told your immediate family what you are doing, but have told your more distant family of cousins etc, your community, and, through the internet, the whole world.

OK, with me? Right. You are putting your great grandparent’s photos on the table, your children remarking how much you look like them and you not being sure if it is a compliment, when in walks your second cousin and says, hey, they are my great grandparents. You chat for a while and keep working. Down go the photos generation after generation.

Back to six generations and a previously unknown cousin from Germany drops in and points out you share a great great great great great grandparent. He still lives in the same village your ancestors migrated to America from (I have a real example of that, a sixth cousin living just a few miles from the village in England my six times removed grandparents lived in).

I don’t really know your background so I will switch to me now. I keep adding more and more generations (roughly 4 per hundred years). Back a thousand years. All those people, all 45 generations look much like me – variation in hair colour here, different height there, shorter nose over this way – all residents of the English Midlands.

About a thousand years ago a bit of a change – more men and women seem to be of strapping solid build with red or yellow hair. Just as I am putting their photos out, trying to keep track of which generations I am up to, there is a knock at the door and a couple of strapping red haired gentlemen tell me that I have just identified some common ancestors of their’s which means I now have Danish and Saxon distant cousins.

Another 500 years back and a knock at the door tells me those dark haired olive skin ancestors are the reason I have Italian cousins. And so on, back thousands of years. Little differences between generations, but all recognisably the same group. Tens of thousands of years, still the same, and if you put any of them in modern clothes they could drink in my local bar unnoticed.

Oh there are changes, as you [that is me, "I" became awkward!] realise when you look back to your recent ancestors, and when you hear knocks on the door from people from Germany, Hungary, Turkey. But still, generation to generation, no obvious change. And then as more tens of thousands of years tick over you get vists from Australian Aborigines, Asians, South Americans, and finally Africans. Still no obvious change from generation to generation, but your ancestors are now recognisably different – shorter in stature, with curly hair and darker skin – from those ten or twenty thousand years later or those today. You realise if you put the photos in a bundle and flicked them like those old children’s moving picture books, you would see a gradual change over time to the present day.

And still you go back, ancestor after ancestor. You’ve lost all sense of time. What is it, a million years maybe, gosh, that’s, um, 2500 generations. Curious, you hadn’t noticed change, but these G G G G …. Grandfathers of yours are much heavier built, more muscly, bigger jaws, bigger brow ridges. Other cousins drop by from Indonesia, far east Russia. Similar but a bit different again.

And still we go on, another 2500 generations and another. Is it your imagination or do these ancestors seem shorter, darker, more, well, hairy? No it’s not. You look along the table, can’t see the change, until you jump forward a couple of million years (big table this) and compare. And then you get a phone call from zoo, chimpanzee there wants to tell you that you and he are 10,000th cousins, sharing a 9999 great grandparent. Seems odd, he looks quite different to you when you arrive at the zoo, but on a table he has arranged all his ancesors going back same number of generations as yours. You look at his photos and notice the same pattern. The later ones all look just like him, “typical chimpanzees”, but as you get further back you notice small changes – slightly shorter arms perhaps, jaws a little larger, hair colour a little different, slightly more upright. He points at another slightly different looking chimpanzee, and you discover that when your friend got back to about a million years ago he got a visit from a Bonobo chimp who said he was his long lost cousin, just like the calls you had along the way. By the time you look at his ancestors and yours from about, say, 9000 generations ago, there’s not much difference at all, and when you get back to the shared ancestor they are of course identical.

Seeing that you are a bit puzzled your Chimpanzee cousin points at you and points at the ground, then points at himself and then at a tree outside. Light dawns – your common 9999 great grandparents were mainly ground dwellers, but around 4 million years ago his direct ancestors were in a group that became separated from yours, and while your ancestors adapted more and more strongly to ground living, his were in an area where tree living was all the go. Adaptation proceeded in the two directions in different parts of Africa, and by the time conditions changed and the two groups were in contact again they had become different enough not to interbreed.

You go home, pleased to have discovered more long lost cousins, and keep working through your photos. Back to 7 million years, 17500 generations and another zoo call, this time the gorilla wants to say hullo to his cousin. Same thing. A line of photos on a table, call from a distant gorilla cousin (separated in east Africa), not much change from one photo to next, but change over longer time. Seems quite different to Humans and Chimps initially, but doesn’t look that much different to the common human-chimp grandparent perhaps 5 million years ago, and as you get further and further back they converge in appearance (and genetics of course) until they look more and more like a kind of generalised ape – Australopithecus (again with various cousins).

And… Well, you get the idea. You can continue generation after generation through the other apes, then back through the early mammals, the reptiles, the amphibians and so on. Not much evident change from one generation to next but over immense time substantial change. No modern species the direct ancestor of any other modern species, just like your cousins are not your grandparents, but all are cousins to some degree.

There you are Eric, evolution over four billion years in a short post – gradual adaptive change, and equally importantly, geographic separation of different populations forming new species. What a wonderful world that has such potential in it.

* I’d love to claim the credit for this idea of how to present evolutionary change, but saw it (in the marvelous illustrations by Dave McKean) and read it originally in Richard Dawkins 2011 “The Magic of Reality” Random House, London. However I have added the calls from cousins, and the zoo, as my own piece of originality.

When you wish

10
by Climate Change • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Once upon a time the question about life elsewhere in the universe was complicated by lack of basic information. From the time we knew that we lived in a galaxy and there were 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and that there were 200 billion other galaxies (so that’s, um, 80,000 billion billion stars as far as the telescope eye can see), it seemed likely that there would be many possibilities of life elsewhere.

But the unknown part of the equation was the number of stars which had planets. Then, recently, we began finding planets around other stars, but they were all uninhabitable gas giants, like our Jupiter and Saturn. Then smaller planets began to be seen as observations improved. Then smaller planets at right distance (the Goldilocks Zone – not too hot, not too cold) from stars. Now calculations show that on average every star has one or more planets. Billions of billions of stars – billions of billions of planets.

So now, almost overnight it seems, we know there are essentially infinite numbers of planets. What percentage could life have evolved on? Half? Quarter? Even if only 1% had the kinds of conditions that enabled life to emerge here we are still talking billions of occupied planets. And once you have life the Darwinian equations – variation + selection = adaptation; adaptation + isolation = evolution – mean that all kinds of interesting organisms are out there. Chances of high intelligence evolving? Very good, it has evolved many different times here.

It’s all just a matter of very high numbers and chance. Always was, but we didn’t know how high the numbers were before. Now we do there is no question but that there is a lot of life out there, and a lot of intelligent beings.

So, where are they? Well, a long way away. And unless physics is a lot odder than we think there aren’t going to be student exchanges or tourism between here and there and right over there. Certainly not before the dominant intelligent people here wreck this habitable planet (a long long way from the next one) by being unable to control their own CO2 emissions. I’m guessing there are other beings in the universe (Dolphin beings, or Octopus beings, or Crow beings, or Pig beings) who consider getting CO2 levels down as a definition of intelligence.

But hey – looking up at all the stars and thinking it’s a big lonely universe? So 2011. Now look up and picture all shapes and sizes of intelligent beings looking back at you from all directions. There, that feels better doesn’t it? But I wish there was more intelligence here too.

Sure and certain knowledge

12
by Atheism, Climate Change, Environment, Evolution • Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s an odd little misunderstanding, just a minor difference in the way of looking at the world, but it has played a disproportionately huge part in making seven billion people content to allow a few energy companies turn off the world’s support systems and let them all die.

So, what is it, this misunderstanding that has the people who know what’s happening talking past the people who need to know what’s happening? Well it is just a different use of words like certainty and probability – a scientific use and a common use.

The general public thinks that things for which they have little or no evidence, just anecdote or faith, are certainties. Scientists think that nothing is certain, that all we have is the probability that something is true based on amount of evidence.

The public will use all kinds of language based on nothing but gut feeling and personal ideology to express their belief that something is true “exactly right” “certainly true” “absolutely no doubt” “no doubt” “probably” “possibly” “don’t think so” “nah, don’t believe that” “c’mon, pull the other one, that one has bells on it”.

Scientists, recognising that the presence or absence of bells is a bit hard to define precisely have by contrast developed an exact measurement for the likelihood of truth based on assessment of number of observations. It is a mathematical concept in which you can approach (by repeating an experiment over and over) more and more closely to 100% certainty but never quite reach it. For practical purposes though a probability somewhere in the 90% plus level is thought of as being a pretty sure thing (although it depends on the discipline and particular kind of experiment, physics for example demands much higher certainty than, say, the social sciences).

As well as the mathematical component though, the idea of scientific probability represents the scientific mindset – no result can be certain because the very next experiment may overturn it in whole or in part. If a writer is only as good as his last novel, then a scientific theory is, in a sense, only as good as its last experiment.

For the public though lots of things are certain, have to be otherwise you wouldn’t get up in the morning. These certainties are based on religion, ideology, common sense, authority, repetitive observations. Sun rises in East, there is a “god” or two, capitalism is the end of history, some people have psychic powers, the Liberal Party is there for the battlers, vitamin C cures colds. Then there are uncertainties where the outcome is merely probable – will my football team win next week, am I having a drink with friends on Friday night, are UFOs real, can acupuncture cure cancer, is Kevin Rudd challenging for leadership or is it a media invention.

So, the stage is set. When scientists are asked about climate change in general or particular aspects of it, they reply, as good scientists do “well there is a high probability that X is the case”. When asked “are you certain?” they reply “well, no nothing in science is ‘certain’”. They mean by this that certainty can never, mathematically, reach 100%, and they are obliged to repeat this fundamental tenet of science endlessly, thinking to themselves “well, of course there is no such thing as 100% certainty in science, don’t these idiots know anything?” Or they formalise this the way the IPCC does, saying that the chances of Y event happening in Z time have a probability of “90%” or “95%”.

Now in both cases the scientists are also thinking, and assuming the listeners are familiar with the concept, that for all practical purposes the projected outcome is certain. Will almost certainly in fact (because the scientists are sick of being called alarmist) be much more likely than the probability being quoted which will have been deliberately set on the low side.

The scientist leans back and relaxes at this point, happy in the conviction that he has merely restated the bleeding obvious about the scientific method and that everyone will totally understand what he means – and get on with saving the planet which he knows with absolute certainty is under its greatest threat in millions of years.

The listener or reader however, Joe Public, hears something quite different. They hear that things aren’t certain, just probable, and they interpret the “probable” as their own version of that prediction. Climate change becomes, in their own minds, no more likely than, say, the reality of UFOs. And you wouldn’t want to spend billions of dollars defending against UFOs now, would you.

This continues on to the details. Is this particular massive storm; record-breaking drought; record high temperature; record flood, the result of climate change? “Oh, we couldn’t say that with certainty”, says the scientist. Joe Public hears this as “No”.

Now while the scientists are maintaining scientific purity on the questions of certainty and probability, there are people, with vested interests in the short-term outcome (we all have a vested interest in the long term outcome, but most of us don’t know that), who have absolutely no scruples in pretending that scientific “uncertainty” is real uncertainty and therefore no one would want to do anything when everything is uncertain. So they add in bits and pieces of questions and comments on the siting of thermometers, melting of glaciers, troposphere temperatures, mediaeval warming periods, the north west passage, deep sea temperatures, climate sensitivity, snowfall in Chicago, cosmic rays and the like. None of them mean anything much in themselves, none of them have the slightest relevance in general to the overall pattern of rising CO2 levels causing global warming and consequent climate change.

The scientific community, realising (in some cases very belatedly) the con trick being played on them and on the community at large, and seeing the consequent failure of politicians to take any meaningful action to pull back on CO2 production, have at last begun to fight back a little. Oh they still talk about uncertainty and probability, but a few brave souls have begun to say “the science is settled”.

To see what they mean by this it is worth exploring an analogy. The theory that explains how evolution occurs (involving variation, natural selection, and geographic isolation) was extensively debated in the years after 1859 (when it had been simultaneously proposed by Darwin and Wallace after they arrived at it from different data). Some scientists (like Thomas Huxley “why didn’t I think of that”) instantly recognised its validity. Others were more cautious, looking for contradictions, wondering about mechanisms for the variation (in the years before either genes or DNA were discovered), debating the religious implications and so on. But over the next few decades the science became settled. That is the truth of the theory was clear, and now research was mopping up the details (again genes and DNA in particular) relating to the exact mechanisms. And also investigating both the comparisons and relationships between living species and their fossil records with new eyes that greatly fleshed out the actual path that the evolution of living organisms had taken on this planet.

The science of evolution is settled. There remain arguments over details of particular evolutionary sequences, whether there are other speciation mechanisms apart from the dominant allopatric one, exactly how genes interact during development and so on. But the science is settled and forms the basis, directly or indirectly, of all the sciences to do with life on the planet, and conversely is supported by all the other sciences (notably geology, chemistry, physics). Oh there are one or two scientists, brains addled by religion, who purport to believe that there is evidence for god in bacterial flagellae. But their argument (that some feature is too complex to have evolved) was one that Darwin was familiar with, and has been demolished thousands of times in the subsequent 150 years. It is amazing how otherwise apparently smart people can have their brains addled by religion.

In exactly the same way the science of climate change is settled. The fundamental elements (Milankovitch cycles, greenhouse gases, sun activity, geography) have been known for decades (in the case of greenhouse gas not much less than evolution). The science forms the basis for all the other sciences to do with the surface and atmosphere of this planet, and in turn is supported by all the other relevant sciences. Scientists argue over details of exact time frames, precisely how some mechanisms interact, likely impacts on ecology, historical sequences, and so on, but none of that has any effect on the fundamental science. Oh there are one or two scientists, brains addled by libertarian and neocon ideology, who purport to believe that climate sensitivity is a bit lower, or that clouds are going to roll in to our rescue, or that there is nothing new in the astonishing warming of the planet over the last 3 decades, but their arguments have been demolished thousands of times. Amazing how otherwise apparently smart people can have their brains addled by libertarian and neoconservative nonsense.

Look I am a scientist, OK? I understand the need to maintain the fundamental core of the scientific process, that nothing is ever 100% certain. I get that, ok? And I know that scientists are naturally shy and reticent (me too) and reluctant to involve themselves in public slanging matches and political debates, wanting to remain pure and above all that. But listen, this is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the planet. Cast aside your Clark Kent clothes in a handy phone box. Start speaking out. There will be death threats. The last thing the ideologues and the energy companies want is for scientists to discover they have a voice – they have already been trying to discredit science as a whole in case you ever did start to speak out, but you are still just in time if you hurry. Make it clear that the science is, sadly, settled, the data in, the planet in really big trouble. You wouldn’t say “oh, nothing certain about evolution” so don’t do it about climate change. Whatever the fine details that remain to be sorted it is absolutely irrefutable that adding more and more CO to the atmosphere is warming the planet rapidly, changing the climate, buggering up the ecology, causing damaging weather events, and it is going to get so bad that we are, not to put too fine a point on it, stuffed as a species. Nothing more certain.

Say so.

Strange bedfellows

6
by Atheism, Climate Change • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Well, yesterday’s post went down like an iron (not as fast as lead but fast enough) balloon. Oh, Horton on about politics eh, been there, done that, boring. Very demanding lot you Watermelon visitors, thrill seekers of the blogosphere, one day mentally bunji jumping, the next the intellectual equivalent of rowing the Pacific. Always seeking new mental thrills and spills as each new day dawns.

There are some blogs where the pleasure seems to be in the old familiar comfortable slippers of topics and writing with no surprises. Sometimes I envy them – turn out yet another post on Peak Oil or the NSW Labor Party and you can rest content. Whereas for me each new day leaves me searching feverishly for some brand new topic, some radically different approach to everyone else in the world. Groan, moan, whinge. Come on, get a grip Horton.

I know you will all have been following, as keenly as I was, the Miss USA beauty pageant whose winner was announced yesterday. This is a major competition of course, with stringent standards whose scope and breadth would make competitors at the Hawaii iron man, or the international science olympiads, quail.

Miss USA contestants had to excel in three, yes, three, disciplines. These were swimsuit, evening gown, and questions. God knows how they had the energy to answer questions after the first two disciplines, but answer they did. And this is where we come in. Faced with the question “Should evolution be taught in schools” (and just the fact that this question could be asked in 2011 should send shivers down all your spines) only 2 of the 51 (get ready to shudder) could bring themselves to say yes indeed. Although some said “teach both” evolution and creationism.

Of the two who did answer well one just said yes, teach it in schools. The other, and the eventual winner, came out with this convoluted answer – “I was taught evolution in high school. I do believe in it. I’m a huge science geek … I like to believe in the big bang theory and, you know, the evolution of humans throughout time.” See, she likes to believe in evolution, some people like to believe in a 6000 year old earth, all just a matter of taste. But at least she did say yes. Was brave enough.

So the really frightening thing is that 49 of the contestants, either because of their own beliefs, ignorance, or unwillingness to offend the voters, are too frightened to say “teach evolution in schools”. This is what America has come to after decades of battering away by evangelicals, intimidation of teachers, home-schooling. Here is a country, once the most scientifically and technologically advanced in the world, reduced to a state where most of its citizens have beliefs last popular in western countries in 1859. This is what you can achieve if a small bunch of wild-eyed fanatics keep bashing away at the education system.

Our contestants were grappling with the question of whether to teach the results of 150 years of science research or the mythology of a sheepherder in the middle east 2500 years ago at the same time as the story broke about climate scientists in Australia receiving death threats. Yes, death threats, moved on from the screams of abuse to actual promises of physical harm.

Slightly different tactic to the US creationists but the same intention – shut these people up. They are saying things I don’t want to hear. They are saying things that go against my beliefs. They are saying things that logically mean a reduction in profits for some big business. Shut them up, We don’t want them saying these things any more, don’t want them reporting their findings, we are sick of science, the shock jocks have told me everything I need to know about global warming. Why can’t these scientists listen to Alan Jones and then they wouldn’t keep saying these things I don’t want to hear. But in the mean time, death threats should make them go silent.

Beauty contestants and climate scientists – strange bedfellows eh, but both subject to the medieval forces now rampaging through our societies.

Over the cuckoo’s nest

8
by Atheism, Climate Change, Media, politics • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Some 45 years ago, in my one-radio-station small rural town we university students used to avidly listen, with great amusement, to the broadcasts of an American evangelist, Garner Ted Armstrong. Quite mad, of course, in that American evangelical way, and he would rant and rave (what is the difference, I forget?) about sin and stuff and how everyone except those who sent money to his show were going straight to hell, not passing Go or collecting $200. We couldn’t get enough, exchanging, the next day, examples of his lunacy.

About 35 years ago, in the slightly bigger rural town I had then moved to, there was a chap who used to stand preaching in the central town square at lunchtime. Well, when I say “preaching” that doesn’t quite give the feel of it. He was a small neat man, but dressed, some 20,000km from Glasgow, in full Scottish kilt, long tartan socks, ruffled shirt and so on. And he didn’t preach so much as read inaudibly from something I presume was the bible (possibly John Knox’s personal copy) totally inaudibly, with absolutely no concern for, or eye contact with, the passing parade of secular Australians. He just read on and on in a whispering monotone, would be reading when you went to buy lunch, would still be reading when you came back half an hour later. I presume he had set himself the task of reading the book to Australia at the end of which the heavens would open or something and he would be raptured away to Brigadoon.

Incidentally I was delighted to read the other day that when another of those American millennial madmen was predicting the end of the world in May (presumably trying to beat the Mayans to the punch) that some American atheists (yes, I know, a precious few) were offering to take care of the pets of the rapturees. You know, afterwards – would be a comfort to know your cat and dog were being cared for while you were off lolling around in heaven. I suppose.

Before I became (very briefly, and ironically, I hasten to add, before you get the wrong idea here) a Garner Ted fanboy I remember going to one of those outdoor speaker’s corner locations. Forget where it was in Perth, the Esplanade perhaps? Years later I went to the equivalent one in Melbourne, but its location escapes me, one of my knowledgeable readers will help I am sure. I think they were in all Australian capital cities (was Sydney the Domain?) in the old days B.I. (Before Internet). There were people standing on soap boxes (probably literally in many cases) preaching to and/or shouting at the crowd who were, as part of the entertainment, shouting back. It was all based on the original Speaker’s Corner in London.

The speakers were self-elected prophets, political and religious, crying in the wilderness (well, crying in well-manicured parks actually, but wilderness is in the eye of the beholder), and they acted like so many pressure valves, letting off steam from the pressure cooker in which political, economic and social changes and issues were fermenting away. Each soap box, its occupant working up a sweat, was, metaphorically and in reality, letting off puffs of steam to prevent the community at large becoming overheated. Everyone accepted this function, and so the most outrageous, indeed lunatic, things could be said, often shouted, and the pairs of police, assigned to the easy duty of a stroll in the park, would smile complacently as they were accused of being the running dog hounds of world-wide capitalism, or communism, or fiends from hell. Then stroll on, hands behind backs, as if rehearsing for the old titles of The Bill, to the next eruption of fire and brimstone.

In my university vacation days I had a boss who was a young earth creationist and would attempt to gain the scalp of a young Darwinist without success. Later, as an archaeologist, I would spend time in country pubs (not much time, obviously, what did you think?) being harassed by elderly, educated in the school of hard knocks, and rather red-faced men who had seen a UFO, or knew what should be done to solve the Aboriginal problem, or were outraged that the government was poisoning us all with fluoride, or had proof that the moon landing was a fake, and by the way I did know that there was a CIA man on the grassy knoll, didn’t I? Would talk at you until the cows came home or the pub ran out of beer.

So these guys (almost always, something to do with the Y chromosome I expect) have been around a long time, even longer than me, probably back to the first human societies. If you didn’t have a village idiot it was because you had just lost one and were waiting for the new one to arrive. But in all these villages, these societies, the village idiots were recognised as being just that, a kind of tax on rational discourse. If you had freedom of speech then that included the freedom to hold ideas that a chimpanzee society wouldn’t have entertained for a moment. These little safety valves, letting off steam in pubs, or parks, or even workplaces if their delusions didn’t prevent them working, lived their own virtual lives while the rest of us got on with real life. You knew where they would be, could avoid soap box country on the street corner or pub corner. Nobody would have considered for a moment allowing, indeed encouraging, these nutters (I was searching for a word, but you don’t have to search far) to have some kind of a role in the governing of the country.

And yet here we are, in the internet age, and these fellows are clogging up every thread on climate change, ensuring that the Labor government is too frightened to undertake action on global warming, and the Liberals don’t want to. They are screaming about refugees, and Aborigines (still), and unwed mothers, and gay marriage, and guns, and “greenies”. Screaming loudly, but their voices no longer restricted to the back bar of the Black Stump Pub, instead on blogs from anywhere in the world, having an influence, their importance magnified not by the echoes of the pub toilet wall but by the world-wide web. The kind of people once represented by my lonely and inaudible Scots evangelist or my creationist boss, are now determining policies on drugs, social welfare, law and order, and, the biggie, education. My old boss would be delighted to discover that instead of his lonely path clutching a tattered book imported from America, being cheeked by a young biologist, he and his kind would now be running schools, demanding creationism be taught.

And further, not only are these people having individual influence in backroom chats with premiers or prime ministers, but they are getting elected to parliaments themselves, by hordes of their peers, suddenly seeing each other through a glass darkly, recognising the power in coordinated action. Suddenly there they are on the front bench of the federal opposition, waiting impatiently to take over the country. And there they are, with even more power, behind their own microphones in shock jock radio stations, writing opinion columns, and appearing on television.

Rational policies to deal with greenhouse gases, refugees, taxation, drugs, guns, land clearing, resources, social support, housing, terrorism, public education, health and all the rest of the conundrums facing modern governments, can no longer be reached because of the cacophony from the once soap box orators, now released, beyond the wildest dreams of their forebears, to run the country directly or by proxy.

Brave new world.