What's New Friday June 12, 2009

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 12 Jun 09   Washington, DC

1.  CARBON DIOXIDE: IAP STATEMENT ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION.
At a departmental colloquium 30 years ago the speaker assured the audience 
that carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere would be buffered by 
absorption in the ocean.  I kept waiting for that to happen. Of course, it 
was happening. According to a statement issued this week by the 
Interacademy Panel, whose 60-some members range from the Albanian Academy 
of Science to the Zimbabwe Academy of Science, a quarter of the CO2 
produced by human activity in the last 200 years has been absorbed in the 
oceans.  Unfortunately, excessive CO2 in the oceans is no more benign than 
that in the atmosphere.  Marine life that depends on calcium carbonate is 
particularl.  Moreover, ocean acidification is irreversible on a timescale 
of thousands of years.  The only way to mitigate ocean acidification is to 
reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.  Sequestration, that will at best affect the 
second derivative.  We must reduce reproduction.

2.  TOBACCO: SORRY, IT DOESN’T SEEM TO REDUCE REPRODUCTION.
Are there still people who smoke? One in five actually, and President Obama 
is one of them.  He has, however, promised to sign a bill giving the 
federal government sweeping powers to oversee tobacco products, just as 
soon as it reaches his desk.  You might think smokers would at least have 
the decency to die young from their addiction, thus helping to hold down 
the population. Not so, it can take years to kill them, and meanwhile they 
keep multiplying.

3.  LIBEL: BRITISH SCIENCE WRITER IS SUED BY CHIROPRACTORS.
Simon Singh, award-winning science writer and author of "Fermat’s Enigma," 
is being sued under UK libel laws for an article in the Guardian in which 
he called the claims of chiropractors "bogus." That sounds pretty tame for 
a treatment that has no plausible scientific justification. Harming the 
reputation of a chiropractor would seem to be a civic responsibility. In 
the United States plaintiffs must prove that the defendant’s statement is 
willfully false and defamatory. In the UK the plaintiff must show only that 
the statement harms his reputation. But under UK libel laws the burden is 
on Singh to prove he wasn't being libelous.

4.  INTELLIGENT DESIGN: TEXAS SCHOOL BOARD MAKES THE RULES.
The Texas school book market is so humongous that publishers must pay heed 
to new guidelines on what students should learn.  It has been a 
battleground for years with the National Center for Science Education under 
Genie Scott battling the creationists from the Discovery Institute in an 
increasingly conservative state. So far science has been winning but it's a 
close thing every year.  The latest round in this epic battle is described 
by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee in today’s Science.

5. COLD FUSION: SPEAKING OF NEVER-ENDING CONTROVERSY.
In the Wall Street Journal, June 6, 2009, Eugenie Reich discussed "the five 
best books on scientific fraud," including my "Voodoo Science" (Oxford, 
2000), which she referred to as "devastating" on the subject of "cold 
fusion."  Cold fusion 20 years later remains a curious mix of self 
deception and outright fraud. 

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
subscription process has changed. To change your subscription
status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1