Tue, 31 Mar 2009
With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists fear Tipping Points in Climate Change, by Fred Pearce
I bought With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists fear Tipping Points in Climate Change
to investigate the concept of tipping points in climate change: how real are they, and
what ones might exist. A lot of points are labelled 'tipping points', such as the melting of the Arctic; but, if we successfully reduced CO2 to pre-industrial levels, would they revert, or would we have passed a point of no return?
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Mon, 02 Mar 2009
Titan, by Stephen Baxter describes a near-future manned mission to Titan, Saturn's moon, by Space Shuttle, no less.
This is the first book i've read by Stephen Baxter, and will probably not be the last. It's well written, the most science-based outer planets mission story i've read in since Arthur C. Clarke, though with a pessimistic edge. The story turns on a waning NASA using its remaining hardware on one big mission, to Titan, where life may have been discovered.
§ Most of the book concentrates naturally enough on getting to Titan, rather than what they found when they get there, but Baxters ammonia-based chemistry is intriguing. The physics of what it would be like to walk on the moon are a little underdone, though. Its an understatement to say that Titan is cold: serious work on insulation would be needed to stop your base melting the "permafrost" and sinking. While we don't know what life might be present, it would be good to imagine the real tasks involved in being there.
But it's his idea that NASA and others really don't want space that is most interesting. That the military want space as their baliwick, and would rather frustrate the development of technologies so that no other nations or groups interfere is well worth thinking about. To a degree, I would agree: frustrate, but not he puts it, stop. Sooner or later the technology has other uses on Earth to the point where even amateurs would launch their own satellites. The vast bulk of technology development for future space use will be done not only on Earth but for Earth use: the minaturization that NASA and the military did for the space race in the 1960's now happens for consumer electronics. 3 D fabricators are being built for prototyping, and the prospect of getting a self-contained space mission together (not reliant on Earth) draws closer. I fully expect private groups, rather than national efforts, will be the first to colonise outer space, assembling pre-existing technologies.
Mon, 08 Dec 2008
Storm World, by Chris Mooney is an account of the development of the science of Hurricanes and their links to Global warming, against the background of Katrina and the politics of global warming.
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Wed, 01 Oct 2008
The Night Sessions, Ken MacLeod's latest novel is set in the near future, after the "faith" (or oil) wars, when religion is barely tolerated by political society, disdained and tainted; and the police and state have a policy of 'official non-cognizance' of religious activities. It's a police thriller, where the victims are, apparently, being killed for their religious beliefs.
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Tue, 29 May 2007
Rare Earth proposes that Complex life is rare in the Universe. Paradoxically it first points out how abundant simple life is on Earth, in deep ocean vents, several km below the Earths surface, geysers: places that a few decades ago we would have considered completely inhospitable turn out to host life. But, they argue, complex animal and plant life (eucaryotic life) takes special conditions that they argue are probably unique.
This book is an excellent starting location for someone learning about the state of the art in astrobiology. It summarises well the myriad sciences involved in why life exists on Earth, from astrophysics (is our place in the Galaxy special), planetary development (why only Earth appears to have life in our Solar system), through aspects of geology and biology that we begin to understand. I well recommend this book to anyone interested in these fields. It also has a sufficient reference section to continue the discussion.
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Sun, 06 May 2007
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is an 'Atheism Consciousness-raising book', according to the author. It makes the case for Atheism, saying Atheists should stand up and be counted, and stand against the growing tide (in the U.S. in particular) of irrationality and belief. Although as one of Atheisms most visible proponents Dawkins has 'make converts' to the cause, in this book he is mostly speaking to the converted, presenting the evidence.
The book documents the main arguments in favour of God. These are dismissed fairly abruptly; while a lot of pages are taken up going into them, they are probably not a comprehensive list. A book by a theologian or believer would probably be a better source for such a list. Nevertheless, Dawkins as a scientist does consider and list the opposing arguments. As presented however, they are extremely threadbare and easily dismissed. Mostly they are backed up by a willingness for people to take God (and Theology!) seriously: since so many people believe in God, it must be taken seriously, or so the reasoning goes. Not so: the proofs of Gods existence don't stand up and should be dismissed.
Dawkins makes the case that we should instead of investigating God, investigate why people believe in God, given the lack of evidence. He gives some good hypotheses in terms of Darwinian thinking: reasons why faith, accepting what your parents said without evidence, has survival benefits, that in other circumstances lead people to believe nonsense stories with faith.
Another under-estimated problem is the different definitions people have for 'God' and 'religion'. Most people from a Christian / Judaic background have a habit of framing belief and Religion in terms of the religion they grew up in. They may accept that you have a different God(s), but still view God(s) as something you pray to, that intercede on your behalf, etc. By confusing all the different aspects given to 'God' in the Christian tradition, they think that if you have 'proved' one of them, all the rest follow. If you prove / claim that something created the Universe, and label that God, then, they imply, there must be one overall, kind, monotheistic God, Jesus died on the Cross for your sins, that God will change the laws of physics to suit you (miracles), etc. Not so: all you have done is label something, not proved your religion. Dawkins (rightly) dismisses Buddhism, etc. as 'principles for living' rather than religions for the purposes of this book, and we need to be careful what we call religion, too.
Dawkins also makes a good case against Agnosticism. He argues we should be more forthright and say we are Strongly Atheistic rather than Agnostic. Agnosticism was created by Thomas Huxley to explain his beliefs. He defined Athiesm is a positive belief in the lack of God, a proposition for which there is no evidence. He argued that, until we have proof that God does not exist, scientifically correct to consider ourselves 'sceptics' on this matter, and neither believe nor disbelieve in God. This sounds good, however in Science there are huge numbers of theories that in practice we have no evidence for either way that Occams razor mows down for us. We don't claim to be agnostic about them, we simply ignore them until they are actually needed to explain something.
Which, given modern science and Darwins explanation of evolution in particular, God no longer is.
The later chapters of the book cover whether, despite the lack of evidence, belief in God or Religion is a good thing, whether religion gives a moral purpose and direction to life, and defines a sense of "Good" that Atheists cannot have. For this he goes through the Bible with a disbelieving eye, pointing to the horrors of genocide that it promotes in the Old Testament, etc. He points out that we don't actually use the bible for moral guidance, but instead decide our own morality: we pick examples from the Bible a la carte to defend our choices. We don't decide, as an Old Testament interpretation would put it, that murder of an non-Jew is acceptable; that rape of an enemy is acceptable, that killing non-believers and witches necessary. Instead we pick examples to back up what we've decided already. If you're going to do that, stop pretending the Bible is giving you moral guidance and instead accept that we decide.
Dawkins underestimates the social and ethnic aspects of religion. He is overly critical of religion, blaming it for much of the worlds violence, genocides, etc. It would be truer to say that Northern Ireland, etc. are examples of ethic rather than religious strife. "God says so" is just the ultimate argument.
But conversely religion is a cohesive element in most societies. I suspect that a cause of the growth of christianity in the U.S. is that its proselytising nature goes out to be inclusive in Americas highly mobile society. When work, etc. causes people and families to move across the continent, they will find a church to welcome them into the community. Its against this background that atheists are the most distrusted minority. Shared beliefs, whatever those beliefs, bring neighbours closer.
James Lovelock, (co-creator with Lynn Margulis of the Gaia Hypothesis) proposes that atheists can treat Gaia as an alternative religion, something to celebrate and to give moral direction to life. This I have sympathy with, that life is important, and to be celebrated, but not to be confused with something to be prayed to, or imagine that it is biased towards towards our existence.
In these times when people are again using religion as a justification for war, claiming a "clash of civilisations", this is a book worth reading, but beyond deciding whether gods exist we need to understand why people believe. The Darwinian arguments are as Richard Dawkins points out, just a start, but I think more is needed to explain religion.
Sat, 17 Mar 2007
Looking for Earths: The Race to Find New Solar Systems is an excellent introduction book, as a scientific story of exploration and summary of the science of planetary discovery.
Alan Boss is a planetary scientist and adviser to NASA on the search for extrasolar planets. He has had a front-row seat in the revolution over the last two decades that has led to the discovery planets outside our Solar system for the first time, leading to 215 known planets at last counting.
The book is written in an first-person style that reflects the race to discover the first exoplanets in the 1990s. He describes historical searches for planets in the early 20th Century: the hunt for evidence of planets around Barnards Stara and the meticulous work over decades of Peter Van de Kamp, a good summary of the challenges in proving the case for planets in Astronomy, and explains the techniques used to determine other planets. The heartbreaking difficulties of proving the discovery are well expressed, as well as documenting the leaders of the field at the time. Along the way, he describes the discovery of the first Brown Dwarfs, the border cases between Stars and Planets, and the bureaucratic and other challenges involved in setting up large observatories such as the Keck interferometers capable of doing this work.
This is ironic, as the first discoveries were actually made by ground-based observatories. Boss describes the race between the main teams, Geoffrey Marcy and Paul Butler of Lick observatory. The race was finally won by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of Geneva Observatory, who discovered the first extrasolar planet around a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi, by looking at radial velocity measurements of nearby stars. This turned out to be a close race, as the planet they had found had a short period of 4.23 days, implying the planet was what we now call a "hot Jupiter", orbiting very close into the Sun. Most teams had been looking for copies of our Solar system, looking for large planets such as Jupiter with orbits of around a decade, and had hence not started to analyse the data they had in hand, expecting to need years of measurements: examining the data showed that, had they analysed data in hand, they could have won.
Looking for Earths does a good job of explaining the field of exoplanet research as it was evolving over Boss's careeer and particularly 1995-2005, with theoretical and computer models evolving as data arrived with new puzzles. In some places, the need to give a clear explanation of a topic such as the formation of planets from solar disks slows the pace of the biography, but the book does an excellent job of describing both the science and the life lived by those doing the work. Few books I've read have offered such a good summary of the field to date, along with a good bibliography and I would heartily recommend it both as an introduction to the field and as a model for science writing.