Recently in Science and Space Category

Please don't be alarmed. The non-existent disturbance in the force you didn't actually feel was the Earth reaching the closest point in its orbit around the sun. Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait has all the gory details.

George Will's decision to repeat in his column the lie that scientists largely believed in global cooling in the 1970s should have consequences.

TPM Muckraker is trying to get Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt to explain how a column could be printed with two false statistics at its core. Nate Silver does his regular outstanding job of showing, with charts and graphs, how the 1970s "global cooling" talking point is a huge lie.

As Ezra Klein notes, we should look forward to reading an appended correction: "This column was wrong about the scientific consensus of the 1970s and wrong about the only climate fact in the article. The Washington Post regrets the errors."

I doubt Hiatt or Will shall be held accountable. But now everyone should have all the information required to prove false this oft-repeated radical conservative talking point.

And I am so happy that my local respected business coalition decided to have Mr. Will be the keynote speaker last month at its most important function of the year. Sigh.

I thought Carl Sagan's classic observations about our place in the universe would prove a good way to start the New year.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. -- Carl Sagan

Because 2008 was such a fine year, we can be thankful it will be one extra second long. I hope you enjoy your leap second this afternoon (here in North America).

The extra second will happen at midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), as 2008 will end with 23:59:58, 23:59:59, 23:59:60, and then 2009 begins with 00:00:00.

The leap second is necessary because the earth's rotation is slowing. And you thought the economic crisis was worth your worry.

I found Joshua Klein's TED presentation absolutely fascinating when I heard it a couple days ago.

Despite what you may think by reading the news, Scientific American has a story on how homo sapiens are continuing to evolve -- and what that might mean for our species over the next millennium.

(Hat tip: Alexander Rose at the The Long Now blog)

Biologist and science blogger PZ Myers analyzes Gov. Sarah Palin's speech in which she advocates for special needs children while mocking the science research that could actually help them in the long run. He's rightly not very impressed.

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

Now that's some righteous anger I can believe in, my friends.

Scientists and Engineers for America have joined 18 other organizations in creating a list of seven questions for Congressional candidates about science and technology issues.

Now if only the media would decide to ask them rather than run horserace story after horserace story.

It's short, and it may not be what you think.

From IFTF's Future Now blog:

But I never thought I'd be afraid of sunscreen.

Why? Because there is new evidence that ingredients in the thousands of metric tons of sunscreen that washes off swimmers around the world each year is re-activating dormant viruses in the symbiotic bacteria that inhabit coral reefs.

Chris Mooney explains why the time has come to rethink the role of the president's science advisor:

Because formal US science advising was born during the Cold War, the emphasis often lay upon finding someone who intimately grasped nuclear security issues. The tradition lingers up to the present: The past four science advisers, including Marburger, have all been physicists. Yet while nuclear security issues remain vital, the science policy portfolio has dramatically diversified since the Cold War era. Environmental and energy issues like climate change, and biomedical and bioethical ones like embryonic stem cell research, have increasingly come front and center. Even security policy decisions have to encompass concerns about bioterror and biowarfare.

This is what happens when we fail to have a serious conversation about scientific matters in this nation. From Think Progress:

Shortly after taking office, President Bush announced a policy allowing federal funding of research only on existing stem cell lines, despite the urging of several of his advisers and the scientific community for expanded funding. Bush has nevertheless remained stubborn, twice vetoing legislation that would have lifted the restrictions.

In a new piece in Commentary magazine, Jay Lefkowitz — who advised Bush on stem cells — reveals how the President formulated his 2001 policy. While Bush heard from a variety of groups on both sides of the issue, the turning point appeared to come when Lefkowitz read from Aldous Huxley’s fictional novel, Brave New World, and scared Bush

Those 1932 books sure are scary. Well, then. I'm trying to be glad our federal government is basing its scientific decisions on such background materials. Somehow I just cannot muster the enthusiasm for such pathetic work.

This would also be a good time to support the call for an actual debate on scientific matters by the presidential candidates in 2008.

Yes, it should not be surprising at this point when the Bush Administration decides its political needs are more important than science and the law, but it is still worth noting. The Los Angeles Times' Janet Wilson reports:

The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored his staff's written findings in denying California's request for a waiver to implement its landmark law to slash greenhouse gases from vehicles, sources inside and outside the agency told The Times on Thursday.

"California met every criteria . . . on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers," said an EPA staffer. "We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts."

EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson announced Wednesday that because President Bush had signed an energy bill raising average fuel economy that there was no need or justification for separate state regulation. He also said that California's request did not meet the legal standard set out in the Clean Air Act.

But his staff, which had worked for months on the waiver decision, concluded just the opposite, the sources said Thursday. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the media or because they feared reprisals.

California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said she was also told by EPA staff that they were overruled by Johnson.

She said Johnson's decision showed "that this administration ignores the science and ignores the law to reach the politically convenient conclusion."

Nichols, who served as assistant EPA administrator overseeing air regulations under President Clinton, said she had helped write waiver decisions there, and "I know California met all the criteria on this one."

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to fight in court to overturn the decision.

Technical and legal staff also concluded that if the waiver were denied, EPA would very likely lose in court to the state, the sources said.

But if Johnson granted California the waiver and the auto industry sued, "EPA is almost certain to win," said two sources quoting the briefing document. They advised him to either grant the waiver outright or give California a temporary one for three years.

Instead, three sources said, Johnson cut off any consultation with his technical staff for the last month and made his decision before having them write the formal, legal justification for it.

Humans are still evolving, and studies indicate the evolution is getting faster.

Speaking of the Republican war against science, Chris Mooney has written an article to try to outline what is necessary to restore scientific integrity in Washington, D.C. As he writes on his blog:

My column from the latest issue of Seed just went up. It's a rather ambitious one, laying out a five step plan for restoring scientific integrity in Washington, D.C. You can read the piece to see all of the steps that I propose, but so far, it's clear that Congressional Democrats are excelling at one above all others: Investigations and oversight. By contrast, when it comes to the final step that I suggest--"Learn From Their Mistakes"--I don't see as much evidence as I would like that Democrats really get it.

We need to restore science in our policymaking. As Mooney notes, however, the effort cannot focus solely on exposing the GOP's excesses. Democrats need to lay out a positive agenda as well--and avoid overhyping the evidence from our point of view.

In addition to Mooney's blog, you can read his article here.