Recent comments

I certainly don't rely on what celebrities say on TV talk shows.

I do rely on credible scientists reporting analysis in peer-reviewed journals and then speaking in public forums so that the scientific conclusions are available to voters and policy-makers. The most significant scientific dispute I have seen about the data for 2005 is that perhaps it is not significantly warmer than the previous record setter, 1998. I'm not an authority on how good records have been in the past, but scientists who measure such things as global average temperatures always report uncertainties and don't claim records unless the differences are statistically significant. The consider all kinds of variations, including limits to the instruments, the selection of sites in the datasets, changes in urbanization, etc. In short, they consider everything that reasonable people might use to discredit their conclusions.

Even with all that, the conclusions are remarkable. I am drawing this from memory, so it may be slightly off, but I think it is true that five of the ten warmest years of the twentieth century came in the 1990s, and the years since then have continued the pattern.

I believe it is irresponsible for people to distort or obfuscate the value of the emerging scientific consensus just because they have ideological or economic reasons to advocate the status quo. It allows people to indulge in wishful thinking instead of facing the real possibility of problems ahead.

Your message seems more like wishful thinking than ideology, but don't tell me I'm predicting gloom and doom because I think we need to face what science is revealing to us. I'm an optimist, and I have confidence that we can understand this problem and figure out the best way to deal with it. I'm against gloom and doom, which is why I favor paying attention to possible problems and acting to avoid them.

To get a sense of my attitude, read my book for young readers entitled Catastrophe! Great Engineering Failure--and Success, a Selector's Choice on the National Science Teachers Association list of Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children for 1996. When I sign the book, I usually include this message: "Respect the power of failure--and succeed!" I'd say that's a message of confidence in the future, not doom and gloom.

The book begins with the true story behind "Murphy's Law," which, when interpreted according to the original Murphy is that you can succeed by paying attention to what may go wrong and addressing it. What can go wrong will go wrong -- unless you act to avoid it.

As far as considering the past interglacial period, the current conclusions are pointing to dramatically faster changes in global climate in recent years than at any times in Earth's history, except for periods around "tipping points." That's what experts are beginning to say.

As a non-expert but a voter who is concerned about the future of our nation and the world, this is what I want my government to know: The signs of failure are beginning to appear, so it's time to respect what the data are telling us and act accordingly. Catastrophes are not inevitable if we pay attention to the warning signs.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

The fact that the light from the Sun reaches Earth in 8.5 minutes means that when we look at the Sun, we are seeing events take place that occurred 8.5 minutes ago on the it's surface. If we were to take a powerful telescope to the Sun and looked at the Earth, if we could zoom in close enough, we would be able to see events that took place 8.5 minutes ago. If we sent that same telescope 50 light years away and zoomed in on Earth, we could check out things happening in 1946.

Yeah, that idea is slower than the type looks... Who do you think has more contacts than anyone else, right now, to be in on the ground floor of any new technologies? I'll answer, sitting politicians! They see the grants, the fund requests, get briefings from the alphabet-soup agencies regarding research currently known and proposed not to mention first hand access to Darpa projects. I don't know any poor retired Senators come to think of it...

The question is not really how we can predict, but how well.

Science will always be limited, but I can list innumerable fields where our ability to predict has gotten better and better. This is certainly the case with weather and climate modeling. We have increasing amounts of data, improving computer models, and a great increase in raw computing power.

Among the most interesting of the many books on weather and climate I have reviewed or added to The Science Shelf archive over the past several years is The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan (Basic Books, 2000). It's more about history and culture than science, but it gives a good insight into how scientists have determined climate trends and what the implications are for the rest of this century.

In my opinion, probably the best popular book on the subject of climate modeling from a scientific perspective is The Change in the Weather by William K. Stevens (Delacorte, 1999). Even though that book is now more than six years old, it still is a great point to start understanding both the predictive power and the limitations of current science.

The thing that concerns me most is that the most extreme scenarios discussed in 1999-2000 are now considered much more plausible as the science gets better, i. e. improvements in predictive power, better data, better computational tools and models, and less uncertainty. No one hopes the worst case scenarios come true, but refusing to consider them will not make them less probable.

As I have said several times, I think Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science has a lot to commend it, even if it is quite partisan. One of its strongest points is the discussion of how ideologues misrepresent the scientific process, especially the role of uncertainty, to cast doubt on a growing consensus that they do not want to accept. These days, the ideologues doing that are mostly Republicans, but Democrats have been guilty of similar practices in the past. No matter who does it, the result is the muddling of the solid scientific consensus that good policy-makers need to consider.

When that happens, everyone loses.

Perhaps in the near future in airports we shall see screens showing live moving x-ray versions of the passengers before they board as well as their luggage
contents, such as those nuclear pocket rocket pals the ladies use!! Kinda like the Arnold movie 'Total Recall'. Should be easy to tell the natural chests from the manmade ones, too!
Too bad they're not trying to make energy from it. Probably some govt. lid on developing excess power sources until the oil run administration is out of office. Don't scoff, it's probably true!

I wanted to see what you thought of constant change that takes place currently but also in the past, and how we can't predict a single thing.

When calamatous changes caused world wide extinctions in earth's history, humans were not around. The earth has had times where it was not healthy, and many species died and it is only through blind luck that we even exist to talk about it. The current ecosystem of the world is completely different than it was even 50,000 years ago. Deserts, forests, grasslands, rivers and vast lakes have either dissapeared or been replaced by something completely different. The next ice age is forecasted to begin sometime in the next few thousand years.

My question is this. As complex as the earth is, and given its past history of major fluctuations, how can any human have any conceivable idea of how the earth really works when we can't even forecast the weather and natural disasters. When we can forecast the weather on a daily basis accurately, predict earthquakes and volcanoes, sun spots and tsunamis, then maybe we'll have a clue as to who is really right and who is really wrong, but our technology is far to primitive to know what is really the driving force. My guess is that the earth will still be here millions of years from now, we may not, but species as a whole will continue to thrive.

HAH! We're developing a model with 5 crystals that vibrate, for a closer neutron shave.

So long and thanks for all the fish...

I think part of the problem is that for the most part the models are NOT even plump.

They are called 'outsize' if they are a size 12 - that could be the girl in your office that's got the most enviable curves combined with a washboard stomach.

Calling such people 'bigger' or 'outsize' is plain ridiculous.

Secondly, 'bigger' models only make girls feel worse as they are usually stick insects with huge breasts and curvaceous hips.

This only makes us feel worse as girls are effectively being told either to aspire to a stick-thin physique or an unrealistic hourglass with surgically enhanced breasts and a miniscule waist.

Until the media portrays a more realistic scope of female form, the self-image problems will continue.

In the streets every day you see all shapes and sizes, but that's not the case on TV or in magazines.