Climategate Doesn't Change The Reality

I finally found a decent overview on "Climategate." It only underlines my frustration with this situation: we are heading for climate change. It's myopic to think that we won't have minimums and maximums. Our recorded history is less than 20,000 years. The period with decent scientific data is shorter than 200 years. We're going to blow through temperature thresholds with each generation-- if the Earth is warming, we will keep breaking records.
Did industry and fat Americans in SUVs cause this change? Or, are we fleas on the dog's back? I think we are too small to make change on the scale we are talking about. Also, human-caused warming may explain the temperature on Earth-- but what about Mars? How is the temperature climbing on other planets if we're the cause?
All of this hand-wringing about climate change and reversing it doesn't serve the situation. We are part of the ecology. Flora and fauna lose their niche. Humanity's virus like quality of spreading everywhere means we're hard to supplant. We can be put under hardship; but we can also find opportunties-- just as English vineyards in the time of the Roman Empire grew grapes but turned to hardier crops as the temperatures dropped. We shouldn't be making people pile into hot buses to fix the planet-- we should look for places to grow food; or places to drop solar farms to power our air conditioners. Evolution-- natural selection-- is a combination of random traits and how they find favour with the conditions. If there is no change, evolution will creep along. We're here because of thousands of environmental crises-- from massive glaciers to slow mountain lions-- our environment shapes the path of our species.
If anything, the debate about whether global warming is human-caused is causing most of the problem. Making a linkage to the cause means that if the cause is incorrect it erodes the data that supports that climate change is happening. We shouldn't focus on the cause, but on our ability to adapt. When bears face a warmer climate, they can't buy thinner pelts-- some of them die off and some of them breed offspring who may be capable of surviving and breeding their own adapted offspring. Unlike the forces of nature where generations of adaptation bring about species survival and evolution, we can do it within a generation by making our technology evolve and make that adaptation spread to all of the people who need that benefit.

Ooh You're Blue-- The Hold Your Spine Game!

This from IO9.com:

Turns out some mysterious chemical additives may not be all bad. The sports drink and Popsicle color additive known as "brilliant blue" might have some serious benefits for people who suffer from spinal injuries, a new study reports.

In the days after a spinal cord injury, a lot is happening, and not all of it is good for the injured party. ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which usually acts as a power source for cells, floods into the injury site. But instead of helping cell recovery, ATP can unintentionally bind with important receptors on some immune cells. This can restrict oxygen flow to the cells and lead to some of the serious damage associated with spinal injuries

This colorizing chemical, also known as Blue No. 1, serves to prevent ATP from wreaking this havoc. When administered very soon after spinal injury in rats, the blue dye helped the rats recover faster and more fully. The results, which are being reported in the July 28th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the blue dye could be used in humans for the same types of injuries.

The treatment seems to be pretty much side-effect free. Well, except for one unintended consequence: the dye treatment temporarily turns skin and eyes blue. But being blue for a few weeks is a small price to pay for spinal injury recovery. Even if it means blue skin, I'll gladly sign up for my Brawndo treatment.

Brilliant Blue For The Spine [via Science News]

(Photo: Takahiro Takano)

Dean Kamen and Water Purification

Dean Kamen wants to mass produce and distribute water purification systems. The net effect is to give 1.1 billion people clean drinking water. In short, it could cure half of the world's sick people: many of whom are dying from easily curable water borne diseases.

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Dateline 2011: Intelligence is Viral

I think that the most shocking discovery of our generation will be that intelligence is viral-- a bloom turns the motor-control, blood-cooling grey mass in the skull into a calculator/camcorder/philosophical super-device. I think is why animals in captivity do things that their all-natural cousins do not. I think we're infecting them with intelligence.
Don't believe me? Here's a piece on how chimpanzees that get human love and attention score better than other chimps.