How the world really shapes up

by VICTORIA MOORE - Last updated at 10:12am on 1st March 2007

We all know what the world looks like. But a new series of extraordinary maps shows our planet in a very different light.

Rather than defining each country by size, these computer-generated modified maps - or cartograms - redraw the globe with each country's size proportionate to its strengths, or weaknesses, in a whole series of categories.

For instance, when it comes to military spending, the U.S. appears bloated, but Africa is huge when HIV prevalence is mapped.

The cartograms were produced in a unique collaboration between the universities of Michigan in the U.S. and Sheffield. Here are images and more details on some of the most fascinating...

Alcohol Consumption (2001)

Click enlarge for bigger image

The average Western European drinks over a third more alcohol than the average person in any other area on earth. In some places there is practically no alcohol consumption, which is why many Middle Eastern countries are not visible on this map.

Ugandans drink the most alcohol per adult, closely followed by Luxembourg, the Czech Republic and Ireland.

The map shows the proportion of worldwide alcohol drunk in 2001. It does not take population density into account, so some countries, such as Australia, are unexpectedly shrivelled, while Britain is particularly bloated even though we not in the top ten.

HIV Prevalence

The map shows the distribution of all people aged 15-49 with HIV. In 2003, the highest HIV prevalence was in Swaziland, where almost four in every ten people, were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in central and southeastern Africa.

Click enlarge for bigger image

House Prices

The most expensive housing stock per person in the world is in Europe, the cheapest in the African regions and Southern Asia - despite taking into account that money goes further in these territories. Britain, with its non-stop housing boom, looks disproportionately large.

Click enlarge for bigger image

Military Spending

Aa the world's biggest military spender in 2002, the U.S. appears hugely bloated in this map, taking up 45 per cent of the world's land mass. It spent $353 billion on arms, out of a world total of $789 billion.

While America spent the money, it reaped hardly any of the consequences - the U.S. shrinks to almost nothing in the map of war deaths on the right...

Click enlarge for bigger image

War and death

In 2002, there were an estimated 172,000 war deaths worldwide, across 80 territories. The Democratic Republic of Congo (dark red) bore the brunt - 26 per cent - of the total figure.

Nine territories accounted for 70 per cent of all deaths. Burundi had the highest death rate owing to war at 1.2 people per thousand of the population.

Toy Imports

The following two maps demonstrate the passage of the world's toys from east to west. The U.S. (blue) is the world's biggest net importer of toys, followed by the UK and Europe (red). The lowest importer of toys is Africa (orange).

Click enlarge for bigger image

Toy Exports

As the world's biggest net exporter of toys, China appears on the map like a vivid green giant, attached to the paler green Hong Kong, the second largest net exporter. Britain's once-great toy export industry has all but disappeared.

Click enlarge for bigger image

Wealth of Nations (1500)

The big difference between 1500 and 2002 (next map) is that all that time ago, the vast bulk of the world's wealth was contained in European and Asian countries. Measured by Gross Domestic Product per person, the wealthiest regions were Eastern and Southern Asia.

Click enlarge for bigger image

Wealth of Nations (2002)

Today, 500 years on, the money has all moved west: 46 per cent of the wealth is in North America and Western Europe. Along with Japan, these are the regions with the most purchasing power per person, while the people with the lowest purchasing power are to be found in Africa.

Click enlarge for bigger image

reposted from: dailymail via clipmark
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Pursue pleasure: it's the natural way to do good in the world

by A.C. Grayling

Reposted from the Sunday Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1529869.ece

Claims that only religion can make you moral are misguided, writes the philosopher AC Grayling.

Nobody can have failed to notice that there is a noisy quarrel going on between religion and its opponents. The success of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion has raised the stakes between those who think religion is an important part of life, and those who see it as a hindrance to progress and truth. The different faiths, for their part, have become increasingly assertive in recent years, wanting public funding for their faith-based schools and new laws to protect them from satire and criticism.

One of the most significant aspects of the quarrel between religious and nonreligious people concerns morality. Religious people think that morals are undermined if they are not securely based on a belief in God. The more austere among them think the pursuit of pleasure and the desire for possessions have promoted selfishness and frivolity at the expense of moral principle: "the good life" has, they say, supplanted "living a life of goodness".

Is this true? Is "the good life" incompatible with a good life? Most people want pleasure, achievement and material comfort in their lives, and yet also want to live a morally "good" life: hence the success of Nick Hornby's novel How to be Good, and our enthusiasm for saving the planet. On the face of it there seems little reason why these ambitions should be inconsistent yet the prevailing view, based on religion, has been that "the good life" cannot be morally good, on the grounds that pleasure and the desire for material possessions undermine one's moral fibre — a view dear to the more conservative groups of Muslims and Christian evangelicals.

As it happens, people who seek pleasure and material comforts have often enough given religious moralists cause for concern — think of Roman banquets, Renaissance feasts and Regency excesses — but do we need religion to tell us what goodness is? For most of history people believed that human beings are quite different from the rest of nature because they possess reason and language. They unquestioningly assumed that humanity was created by God, who gave each individual an immortal soul. In medieval times humanity was seen as the central point between earth and heaven, standing at the pivot of the great chain of being that extended from the lowliest worm to God himself.

Given this view, it is no surprise that what was regarded as good was whatever would save man from his beastly physical nature and its appetites, in order to prepare him for the felicity of life after death. Pleasures and possessions were therefore dangerous, because they distracted his attention from his heavenly goal.

There is a great difference between this view and one that sees humanity as part of nature. This was what the ancient Greeks like Aristotle thought. They praised friendship, the quest for knowledge, and the appreciation of beauty, as the greatest human pleasures. The focus of their attention was this world and its benefits, and they debated intelligently about how to make the most of them.

The central part of their enjoyment of this-worldly pleasures was of course not congenial to religious minds, so it had to wait for the Renaissance to be rediscovered. The Renaissance thinkers argued that man is a part of nature, and that it is natural to celebrate what pleases the five senses — colours and tastes, scents and sensations, music and the lover's touch.

Today's science has confirmed this Renaissance intuition. We know from biology and genetics how much we are part of nature, and how much all the things that were once thought to distinguish humankind from other animals are in fact widely shared by them.

The first full realisation of this truth came with Darwin, and has since been overwhelmingly attested from a thousand different proofs. It tells us that the range of this-worldly things people find to appreciate in life and the things that give them pleasure and satisfaction are as natural to them as the desire for food and drink.

This is why there is nothing wrong with the pleasures and possessions of "the good life"; they are what people naturally seek and even need (provided they are not enjoyed at the expense of someone else, and so long as the business of acquiring them does not become an obsessive end in itself).

Contrary to the religious anxiety about "the good life", then, it is arguable that pleasures and possessions not only make life enjoyable, but they make other positive things possible too. The better things are in one's own life, the more good one can do in other people's lives. One of the best things anyone can have is successful relationships with friends, family and community. That is quite different from the mistaken picture of "the good life" as something selfish or debauched.

Here then is a way of deciding between the religious and nonreligious view of morality. The rich tradition of thought stemming from ancient Greece teaches that there is no conflict between "the good life" and a life that is morally good. The opposite view disagrees with this because it says that mankind should avoid being too much part of nature. This is the key disagreement in the debate about morality, religion and the good life, a debate still raging between the devout and the rest of us today. The question we each need to ask is: which side am I on?

Against All Gods by Anthony Grayling is published by Oberon on March 26, £8.99
reposted from: richarddawkins
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Sea level rise uncertain

clipped from www.newscientist.com Ice sheet complexity leaves sea level rise uncertain Ice shed from the giant sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland is responsible for just 12% of the current rate of global sea level rise, according to a new review. The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises. The remaining 88% of the current rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms, and melting from mountain glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland and Antarctica. Yet the shrinking of Greenland and Antarctica remains crucial because together they hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 metres, submerging vast swathes of land and displacing millions. The bases of the glaciers appear to be able to slip more easily at their basethan in the past, so they slide into the sea faster.

Ice shed from the giant sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland is responsible for just 12% of the current rate of global sea level rise, according to a new review. The authors emphasise that it is now clear that the ice caps are losing ice faster than it is being replenished by snowfall. But exactly why this is happening remains unknown, making it difficult to predict the extent of future sea level rises. The remaining 88% of the current rise is due to the expansion of water as it warms, and melting from mountain glaciers and ice caps outside Greenland and Antarctica. Yet the shrinking of Greenland and Antarctica remains crucial because together they hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 metres, submerging vast swathes of land and displacing millions. Over the past 10 years, satellite measurements have vastly improved the quality of data detailing changes in the ice sheets, say Duncan Wingham from University College London and Andrew Shepherd from the University of Edinburgh, both in the UK. Having reviewed the latest data, the pair conclude that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contribute 0.35 millimetres per year to the total rate of sea level rise, estimated at 3 mm per year. This contribution is close to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest estimate of 0.41 mm from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. According to the IPCC, measurements since 1993 show that the thermal expansion of water is responsible for 1.6 mm of the annual rise and other melting glaciers and ice caps for 0.77 mm. Ice flow The satellite data have revealed how the ice sheets are losing mass. "It has become very clear over the past five years that these sheets are not losing most of their mass through melting, they are losing it because the ice is flowing into the ocean faster than the snow is replacing it," Wingham told New Scientist (see Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean). The bases of the glaciers appear to be able to slip more easily at their basethan in the past, so they slide into the sea faster. And this is where uncertainties arise. In Greenland, it is possible that water from melting ice at the surface of the glaciers is boring holes through the ice sheets and lubricating their base. "It is at least possible," says Wingham, that global warming is causing this to happen now more than before. But Antarctica is much colder than Greenland, so there is no such melt-water to travel down to the base of the glaciers. "Most people don't realise that Antarctica is so cold there isn't much melting going on," Wingham told New Scientist. Whatever is causing Antarctic glaciers to flow faster than before, he says, it is not melting of their surfaces. Increased snowfall Wingham and Shepherd's review of recent research on Antarctica did find that four Antarctic glaciers that are retreating in unison share a common feature: they are all in direct contact with the sea. "Our assessment confirms that just one type of glacier in Antarctica is retreating today – those that are seated in deep submarine basins and flow directly into the oceans," says Shepherd. "These glaciers are vulnerable to small changes in ocean temperature, such as those that have occurred over the 20th century and those predicted for the 21st century. A rise of less than 0.5 °C could have triggered the present imbalance." Climate modelling predicts that snowfall on the ice caps will increase over the 21st century. But the researchers warn that the processes that are causing ice sheets to shrink – with surface melting in Greenland and changes in sea temperatures in Antarctica as possible candidates – could in the 21st century rapidly counteract the ice gained from increased snowfall. They say continued observations by satellite and on the ground in both regions are essential to improve predictions of sea-level rises. In a separate review paper, also in Science on 15 March, David Vaughan and Robert Arthern of the British Antarctic Survey agree that there are two main obstacles to predicting the future of ice sheets: more needs to be known about what is going on underneath the ice sheets, and what happens at their edges where they meet ocean waters. Journal reference: Science (vol 315, p 1529, p 1503) Climate Change - Want to know more about global warming – the science, impacts and political debate? Visit our continually updated special report.

clipped from: www.cosmosmagazine.com

---

SYDNEY: Part of the human ear evolved from jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors, according to a new mammal fossil find.

---

Three tiny bones found in the middle ear of all mammals are widely thought to have evolved from bones that in reptiles form part of the lower jaw. However, no fossil demonstrating the transition were known until now.

---

Researchers reported today in the British journal Nature that Yanoconodon allini, a newly-unearthed ancient mammal from China, has ear bones that appear to be at an intermediate stage.

---

"Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully-preserved fossil split on two rock slabs," said study author and evolutionary biologist Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural history in Pittsburgh.

---

It is remarkable that such tiny bones as those in the ear have survived 125 million years, said the study authors.

reposted from: cosmos mag via clipmark - wildcat
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Humans ear bones began as reptile jaws

Friday, 16 March 2007

by Sarah Bartlett

Cosmos Online

Yancodon was found split in half onto two mirror-image siltstone slabs. The 15-cm-long fossil has middle ear anatomy intermediate between reptiles and mammals. Image: Zhe-Xi Luo/CMNH

SYDNEY: Part of the human ear evolved from jaw bones of our reptilian ancestors, according to a new mammal fossil find.

Three tiny bones found in the middle ear of all mammals are widely thought to have evolved from bones that in reptiles form part of the lower jaw. However, no fossil demonstrating the transition were known until now.

Researchers reported today in the British journal Nature that Yanoconodon allini, a newly-unearthed ancient mammal from China, has ear bones that appear to be at an intermediate stage.

"Now we have a definitive piece of evidence, in a beautifully-preserved fossil split on two rock slabs," said study author and evolutionary biologist Zhe-Xi Luo from the Carnegie Museum of Natural history in Pittsburgh.

"This fossil, some 125 million years old, [reveals] the last stage of this most interesting evolutionary process," said Luo. "The middle ear bones have already acquired similar proportion and size to the modern mammal middle ear, yet the ear structure is still connected to the jaw."

Reptiles today have a single bone (the stapes) in their middle ear, while mammals have three (stapes, incus and malleus). These tiny bones act to amplify sound waves and transfer them from the air to the liquid contained in the inner ear's spiral-shaped cochlea.

Painstaking anatomical studies in the early 1900s suggested that the middle ear bones of mammals and the jaws of reptiles share the same origin. "We can trace this developmental process in developing mammalian embryos," said Luo. "In the early embryonic stage of modern mammals, the middle ear was still attached to the jaw. Later, the middle ear becomes separated from the jaw, and … starts the adult function [of hearing]."

Because of these differences in ear anatomy, reptiles today are not as sensitive as mammals in the higher frequency range of sounds. The unique hearing adaptation is thought to have been critical for nocturnal mammals to succeed, helping them to compete in a world of limited visibility. Today mammals have the best hearing of any vertebrates.

"The reptilian middle ear connected to the jaw can pick up the ground vibration, whereas the middle ear fully separated from the jaw is certainly much better at receiving the air-borne sound," said Luo, who collaborated on the study with experts at the University of Nanjing in China.

He argues that the fact that Yancodon's middle ear bones were still connected to the jaw structure might have made the species capable of hearing vibrations in the air and in the ground - "although not developed to the same high-pitch sensitivity as the modern mammal ear."

"This early mammalian ear from China is a Rosetta Stone type of discovery which reinforces the idea that development of complex body parts can be explained by evolution, using exquisitely preserved fossils," said Richard Lane, an earth scientist at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Washington D.C.

It is remarkable that such tiny bones as those in the ear have survived 125 million years, said the study authors.

The fossil find is very interesting, commented Graeme Clark, auditory scientist and founder of the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne. Though "the paper has perhaps drawn a few more conclusions than they should have" about how the fossil ear would have functioned in the living species, he said.

Yanoconodon - which would have been about 15 cm long – had a long body, short and sprawling limbs and claws that were ideal for either digging or living on the ground. It lived during the Mesozoic-era and likely fed on insects, worms and other small fauna.

More information:

Anatomy of the ear, Wikipedia

A new eutriconodont mammal and evolutionary development in early mammals, Nature

Zhe-Xi Luo, University of Pittsburgh

Are Americans the only insular nation?

An RSS News feed from the BBC should keep you up to date with whats going on in the world. eg BBC World

By Tony Long| 02:00 AM Mar, 15, 2007

The Luddite

A wire service story last week reported the results of a study that estimated the total amount of digital information floating around out there, adding ominously that we're running out of room to store it all.

The numbers, given in exabytes, aren't that important. The usual outlandish comparisons to tangible objects were intended as much to give you something to yak about around the water cooler as to provide any real perspective. My favorite: The amount of digital information out there is equal to 12 stacks of books, each reaching from the Earth to the sun. What Einstein dreamed that one up -- and what was he smoking when he did it?

Never mind. It doesn't matter, even if he miscalculated by a stack or two.

The point is taken. We have more information at our fingertips, by far, than at any time in history. And because of the internet we don't even have to stand up to go looking for most of it.

By digital information, the researchers were referring to everything from online videos to e-mail to instant messaging to web pages. I'd like to pay particular attention to this last one, especially those that focus on delivering the news.

Never before has so much news been within reach of li'l ol' you, tucked away there behind your keyboard. In an instant, you can be connected with news organizations the world over, soaking up the latest about the French presidential elections, or the price of tea in China. So how come you know so little of what's going on out there in the big, bad world?

Don't get huffy about it. You know what I'm talking about.

Americans have traditionally been ignorant of the world outside their own limited field of vision. It's a fact that drives other folks, especially Europeans, bonkers. It's also one of the reasons we get suckered into fighting wars in places like Vietnam and Iraq. I'd wager a month's salary that, four years in to our current unwinnable war, two-thirds of the people in this country still can't find Iraq on a map.

In any case, it's been two years since a presidential commission informed President Bush and the nation that there had never been any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet, as of January, fewer than 60 percent of us believed the Bush administration connived its way into war. Come on. You'd have had to have spent the last two years on a coroner's slab to still think we had any justification for invading a sovereign nation.

Is this willful ignorance or just plain stupidity on our part? Or is it just overweening arrogance? Whatever it is, it's a sure sign that we, the people, are still not paying attention. And in this day and age, that's especially unforgivable.

But there's another American tradition at play here as well: our historic aversion to facing bad news. In the land of milk and honey, where the streets are paved with gold, it's "annoying" (to use the current vernacular) to contemplate all the horror that surrounds us and, more and more, consumes us.

This is one of the aspects of news delivery in the digital age that really bothers me. Most news services, including this one, allow you to configure your RSS feeds and e-mail alerts to receive only the news that interests you. If you're an investor, for example, you can set up your feeds to deliver only financial news. If you swill Budweiser for a living, you may get no further than your digital sports section.

So, while you might be aware that the market took another dive, costing you a few bob, or that the Red Sox are pinning their hopes on a $160 million pitcher from Japan, you are, in effect, capable of shutting out the rest of the world. And why? Because you're too busy, or too uninterested, or too "annoyed" to deal with it.

Assuming you no longer read newspapers -- and studies suggest that more and more of you have dropped the habit -- you can actually go through life without having any idea at all what's going on in the wider world. (Watching TV news doesn't count, by the way. That's always been a joke, at least since Uncle Walter hung 'em up.)

Oh, the irony. All that information as close as your computer screen and there you sit, pondering the deeper meaning of Anna Nicole Smith's death because that's what your RSS feed has been told to deliver. The Chinese may be pouring across the Yalu River again, if that works as an economic metaphor, and the icecaps might be melting, but you'd never know. Or care.

Is it any wonder the world is in the process of blowing up, or burning up, or just plain giving up?

reposted from: Wired via clipmark - wildcat
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Movies provide new view of Mars

clipped from: news.bbc.co.uk

Two animations released by Nasa allow viewers to "hang-glide" over the terrain currently being explored by the US space agency's Mars rovers.

The animations were created using pictures taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

---

MRO used its HiRise camera to take images of the same site from different angles over several orbits.

This provided the 3D mapping data needed to animate a flypast over the Red Planet.

---

The animations were created to support the twin robotic rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, in their ongoing explorations of the Red Planet.

The movies reveal in exquisite detail the geology of the Columbia Hills, which are being explored by Spirit, and Victoria Crater, where Opportunity is currently based.

And they provide an impressive display of MRO's capabilities, backed up by the most powerful camera ever sent to Mars.

Worldometer

Education / Environment / Food / Water / Energy / Health Stats.

Watch the figures change in Real Time!

reposted from: Worldometer via clipmarks
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

UN Intelligent Design

reposted from: gasoline.com via Clipmarks
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Weather and Climate Conference in Oxford - TODAY

Weather and climate are news. As concern grows about extreme weather and climate change, scientists worry that we could lose sight of the science. On Saturday 17th March 2007 come and meet the experts whose forecasts shape policy.

The day will feature panel and audience discussions on a range of weather and climate issues. There will be a free buffet lunch, during which Peter Gibbs, BBC weather presenter, will read the weather for May bank holiday 2080 and climateprediction.net (the BBC climate change experiment) will demonstrate the world’s largest experiment in climate forecasting. To reserve a place, e-mail Sarah Crossman or call on 020 7478 4380.

Speakers include:

• Dr Bill Burroughs - author of eleven books on weather and climate
• Professor Chris Collier - expert in environmental remote sensing
• Dr Keith Groves - head of forecasting at the Met Office
• Professor Tim Palmer - IPCC panel member
• Professor Paul Hardaker - former Met Office Chief Advisor to Government
• Dr Geoff Jenkins - from the Hadley Centre and former IPCC panel member

Panel and audience discussion will include:

How are weather and climate predictions developed?
What we know about predicting the weather?
How do meteorologists make observations?
How is the weather modelled?
What do their forecasts mean?

Why are forecasts sometimes wrong?
Leading experts on hurricanes, severe winds and flash floods explain why they aren’t right all the time!

Predicting the future
How will global warming affect the UK?
Will weather become less predictable?
What are the dangers of climate change?

This symposium will launch the briefing document Making Sense of the Weather and Climate.

reposted from: senseaboutscience.org via bbc
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Caution urged on climate 'risks'

By Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent, BBC News

Both scientists believe that man's activities are causing global warming

Two leading UK climate researchers have criticised those among their peers who they say are "overplaying" the global warming message.

Professors Paul Hardaker and Chris Collier, both Royal Meteorological Society figures, are voicing their concern at a conference in Oxford.

They say some researchers make claims about possible future impacts that cannot be justified by the science.

The pair believe this damages the credibility of all climate scientists.

They think catastrophism and the "Hollywoodisation" of weather and climate only work to create confusion in the public mind.

They argue for a more sober and reasoned explanation of the uncertainties about possible future changes in the Earth's climate.

I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf Professor Chris Collier Q&A: Climate change

As an example, they point to a recent statement from one of the foremost US science bodies - the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The association released a strongly worded statement at its last annual meeting in San Francisco in February which said: "As expected, intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies.

"These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible."

According to Professors Hardaker and Collier, this may well turn out to be true, but convincing evidence to back the claims has not yet emerged.

"It's certainly a very strong statement," Professor Collier told BBC News.

"I suspect it refers to evidence that hurricanes have increased as a result of global warming; but to make the blanket assumption that all extreme events are increasing is a bit too early yet."

'Scientific basis'

A former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, Professor Collier is concerned that the serious message about the real risks posed by global warming could be undermined by making premature claims.

"I think there is a good chance of that," he said. "We must guard against that - it would be very damaging.

"I've no doubt that global warming is occurring, but we don't want to undermine that case by crying wolf."

This view is shared by Professor Hardaker, the society's chief executive.

We feel that the recent consensus statement of the AAAS Board of Directors speaks for itself and stands on its own AAAS Climate change: In graphics

"Organisations have been guilty of overplaying the message," he says.

"There's no evidence to show we're all due for very short-term devastating impacts as a result of global warming; so I think these statements can be dangerous where you mix in the science with unscientific assumptions."

The AAAS said it would not be commenting directly on the professors' remarks.

"We feel that the recent consensus statement of the AAAS Board of Directors speaks for itself and stands on its own," a spokesperson explained.

"The AAAS Board statement references (at the end), the scientific basis upon which the conclusions are based, including the joint National Academies' statement and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

The 'right thing'

Professor Hardaker also believes that overblown statements play into the hands of those who say that scientists are wrong on climate change - that global warming is a myth.

"I think we do have to be careful as scientists not to overstate the case because it does damage the credibility of the many other things that we have greater certainty about," he said.

"We have to stick to what the science is telling us; and I don't think making that sound more sensational, or more sexy, because it gets us more newspaper columns, is the right thing for us to be doing.

"We have to let the science argument win out."

The pair have contributed to a pamphlet called Making Sense of the Weather and Climate, which will be presented on Saturday at the Garden Quadrangle Auditorium at St John's College, Oxford.

The AAAS position on climate can be read on the organisation's website.

RELATED INTERNET LINKS

Royal Meteorological Society

AAAS - Climate

Making Sense of the Weather and Climate (PDF)

reposted from: bbc
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

AAAS Board Statement - Climate Change

American Association for the Advancement of Science - click for statement on Climate Change.

The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society.

Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years.

The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years. Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation match observed changes.

As expected, intensification of droughts, heat waves, floods, wildfires, and severe storms is occurring, with a mounting toll on vulnerable ecosystems and societies. These events are early warning signs of even more devastating damage to come, some of which will be irreversible.

Delaying action to address climate change will increase the environmental and societal consequences as well as the costs. The longer we wait to tackle climate change, the harder and more expensive the task will be.

History provides many examples of society confronting grave threats by mobilizing knowledge and promoting innovation. We need an aggressive research, development and deployment effort to transform the existing and future energy systems of the world away from technologies that emit greenhouse gases. Developing clean energy technologies will provide economic opportunities and ensure future energy supplies.

In addition to rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is essential that we develop strategies to adapt to ongoing changes and make communities more resilient to future changes. The growing torrent of information presents a clear message: we are already experiencing global climate change. It is time to muster the political will for concerted action. Stronger leadership at all levels is needed. The time is now. We must rise to the challenge. We owe this to future generations.

Google 15 - Motivation to lose weight - 5

best week for months. And All Day Breakfast lunch yesterday (rest of week was bananas and oranges!).

Hard run with Jazzie on Thursday am helps cancels out the Pasta with Dad and Sharon later.

Comprehensive Philosophy site

clipped from users.ox.ac.uk

[26 xii 04: Up-dated; now includes 188 philosophers.]

[Chronological Index]
[A-E] [F-K] [L-Q]
[R-Z]

[General Sites, including on-line texts]

(See also Journals devoted to individual philosophers or schools)

go to this clip

The Return of God? By John Humphrys. Lewis Wolpert debates William Lane Craig

Last Updated: 2:02am GMT 03/03/2007

A Hollywood director says he's found the bones of Jesus; thousands flock to a debate on divinity. John Humphrys, whose acclaimed radio series and writings on faith elicited a huge response, examines a surprising religious renaissance. One of the stone ossuaries claimed by some, James Cameron among them, to hold the bones of Jesus I've chaired enough conferences and public meetings over the years to know how difficult it is to get a decent crowd for a debate. You can tell the difference between amateurs in the business of organising events and professionals. The amateurs always put out a few extra chairs - just in case the crowd is bigger than they'd expected. "It wouldn't do to force anyone to stand up, would it?" they ask you anxiously as you stand in the wings peering out at row after row of empty chairs, a few dozen lonely people hunkered down at the back so far from the stage you need semaphore to make contact. Professionals - especially political party organisers - do exactly the opposite. They put out fewer chairs in the hall than they think they will need. What matters is filling every seat - and if a few people are standing at the back that's even better. The pro knows that half the people who say they will turn up probably won't bother - especially if they haven't had to pay for their tickets. Admittedly it's different if you have a very, very big name on the stage. Bill Clinton perhaps. Or Jade Goody. But William Lane Craig? I'll bet most of you reading this haven't even heard of him. And yet, on a wet and windy winter's night a few days ago, he filled Methodist Central Hall in London. And it's a big hall: more than 2,000 seats. I'm being a little unkind to the other speaker in the debate: Lewis Wolpert. Prof Wolpert is well known for his attitude to God.

You get the gist of it from the title of his latest book, Six Impossible Things, stolen from what the Queen told Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Wolpert has no trouble filling a lecture theatre at his university, but he's a modest man and would be the first to admit that he'd struggle to draw a crowd of well over 2,000.

No, it was William Lane Craig - with a little help from God. I can say that with confidence because I asked the audience to put up their hands if they believed in God and all but a handful - maybe five per cent - did so. They were there to hear Craig and Wolpert debate the existence of God, but Wolpert knew he was beaten before he got to his feet.

There's a lot of God in Britain these days. Only this week we have had the bizarre claim by the Hollywood director James Cameron that he has found the bones of Jesus. If that's true it means Jesus died just like anyone else and the Christian religion is based on a lie.

You will note I said if that's true. I wrote in these pages just before Christmas about the extraordinary response to a series of interviews I did for Radio Four (Humphrys in Search of God). I had thousands of replies and, four months after the broadcasts, they're still coming.

At the time, I put it down to the bizarre nature of the programmes: grumpy old sod best known for duffing up politicians (that's me) bares his soul and asks some of the world's leading religious figures to show him God. But I'm not so sure any longer. I've been researching a book I'm writing based on the interviews (In God We Doubt) and I'm convinced there is something interesting going on.

Could it be that all those letters were a symptom of something bigger and that religion, which has taken a bit of a hammering over the last few decades in this country, is staging a comeback?

Prospect - the intellectuals' favourite monthly magazine - seems to think so. It has an influence out of all proportion to its tiny circulation and a reputation for its rigorously highbrow approach and its front page recently carried the pretty unambiguous headline: "God returns to Europe".

Dr Eric Kaufmann of Birbeck College, who wrote the piece, based on largely demographic evidence, said there is a religious revival "that may be as profound as that which changed the course of the Roman empire in the 4th century". Heady stuff if you are one of the believers. Mildly worrying if you're not. Seriously worrying if you are scared that what has happened in the United States might possibly be happening here.

Admittedly, that seems unlikely. Until the last congressional elections almost half the senators and congressmen were claimed by the religious fundamentalists as their own. Even if the politicians had wanted to they could not disown the religious Right.

There were too many votes at stake. There are some small signs that church attendance in America has peaked, but it would take a very brave politician to adopt a stance directly at odds with the more militant wing of God's army.

Look at the way the would-be candidates for the presidential election next year are all rushing to reassure the voters that they'll scarcely pull on their socks (or tights) in the morning without seeking God's guidance as to which foot should go in first. And look at how the most liberal of them huff and puff when their views are sought on religious touchstone issues such as abortion and stem cell research.

In America it is the militant wing of the churches that is making the running on the big social issues of the day rather than the more gentle version of religion about which we were once (mildly) enthusiastic in this country. Church attendance here has been falling for decades.

The C of E has made a pretty half-hearted attempt to persuade us that it's not as bad as the empty pews on Sunday mornings might suggest, but the figures tell a different story. Except, that is, for the evangelical wing of the church - the charismatics and the happy-clappies.

They have been thriving for the past few decades and continue to do so. The phenomenally successful "Alpha Courses" were born at Holy Trinity Brompton, the sort of church where you may well be invited to "give God a clap". I went there once and hated it. They claim that more than eight million people have signed up for the courses.

But the militant Christians are not having it all their own way. Militant atheists are taking the battle to them. Witness the extraordinary sales of Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion and the battles on Britain's campuses for young hearts and minds. This is where William Lane Craig fits in.

I suggested to him that he is a sort of intellectual version of Billy Graham. He seemed happy enough with that description. He's actually an American evangelical academic who got one PhD from Birmingham University, another from Munich, is now Research Professor of Philosophy at a theological college in California and has built up a considerable reputation - hence that audience at Methodist Central - as a robust defender of his faith, desperate to take the battle to the atheistic enemy.

You may think I'm overdoing the military metaphors in this essay. But listen to what Craig says: "The average Christian does not realise there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as irrational or outmoded and millions of students, our future generations of leaders, have absorbed this viewpoint. This is a war which we cannot afford to lose."

Craig thinks the churches are filled with Christians who are "idling in intellectual neutral as Christians their minds are going to waste." If Christian laymen don't become intellectually engaged, he says, then "we are in serious danger of losing our children".

At first blush his approach is a million miles away from the evangelical rhetoric of hellfire and brimstone preachers, let alone the many millions of his fellow Americans who are proud to call themselves creationists. A tenth of all American religious colleges teach the literal truth of the book of Genesis.

God created the world 10,000 years ago and that's that. Dump Darwin in the bin along with all that stuff about fossils and fancy scientific techniques such as the dating of the ice core. Don't believe all that rubbish about dinosaurs roaming the planet 150 million years ago.

It's only 6,000 years since the divine creation of every kind of plant and creature so it follows that they could not have. My small son, who is one of the world's leading experts on dinosaurs, will be deeply disappointed, but the Bible is the literal word of God and that's that.

Well you don't get that sort of tosh from Professor Craig - though he is careful to draw a distinction between "young world creationists" (of whom he disapproves) and "creationists" of whom he is one. His approach, he insists, is based on reason and logic and not blind faith in a mysterious God. He even spends a great deal of time and effort explaining why the Big Bang is the only credible theory of how everything came into existence.

Given all this, you might assume that a debate between someone like Craig and someone like Wolpert - a Jew who lost his faith when he was 15 - would produce a riveting intellectual knockabout at least and a profound discussion of whether God is delusion or reality at best. Sadly it didn't work out like that. They might as well have been talking in different languages.

Here's the essence of Craig's case:

God created the universe. The proof lies in the premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist; therefore it has a cause. It was brought into existence by something which is greater than (and beyond) it. And that something was a "personal being".

God "fine tunes" the universe for ever. There is no other logical explanation for the way things operate.

Without God there can be no set of moral values.

The "historical facts" of the life of Jesus prove the basis for Christianity.

God can be known and experienced.

And here's the essence of Wolpert's rebuttal: it's all bunkum. Every bit of it.

Of course he had more to say than that and he said it with wit and growing weariness. But how can an atheist genuinely engage intellectually with a believer? If God created the universe, Wolpert wanted to know, what created God? An impossible and ridiculous question, says Craig, because nothing could have created God. God existed before time.

If you believe that, it seems to me, everything follows. If you don't, none of it does. What explanation does Wolpert have for the creation of the universe? He doesn't know and he's not the least ashamed to admit it. Craig insisted that it was incumbent on Wolpert to prove that God is an illusion. Wolpert insisted it was the other way around.

Yet here, facing Wolpert, was a great sea of mostly young faces. Bright young people, most of them at university and almost all of them more than happy to believe in God and everything Craig had to tell them. Doesn't that prove something?

Wolpert knew he had no chance of changing their minds. Nor, he suggested, did he particularly want to - because religion is not such a bad thing and it makes us feel better about ourselves. That's why we believe. And the propensity to believe is in our genes. None of it has anything to do with the existence of God.

I spent two hours on the morning of the debate talking to Craig (he's known as Bill) across my kitchen table. At times I felt like banging my head on it. We got to the stage, inevitably, of arguing about whether he knows there is a God or believes there is a God. I asked him if his arguments for the existence of God amount to proof.

He hesitated about that "because very often people associate proof with 100 per cent certainty or a mathematical certainty and I'm not claiming that. By proof what I would mean would be a cogent argument and a cogent argument philosophically would be an argument that is logically valid.

It has true premises and the premises are more plausible than their contradictories. And if you have those elements then I think there are good arguments for the existence of God." But if you style yourself, as he does, a "Christian philosopher who is an activist as a Christian" aren't you bound to believe that? Doesn't everything flow from your belief?

The most difficult question is: what created the universe? If the answer is God, then the second most difficult is: why? Craig's answer, when you've boiled everything else away, is that God did it for our benefit. That strikes me as strange for many reasons, not least because so many of us lead hellish lives. But apparently that's not the point. The point is that we are all going to experience the infinite love and mercy of God if we are prepared to accept him. Just as Craig has done.

And that's the nub of it, isn't it? At the end of the debate I asked him a hypothetical question. Assuming (big assumption I know) that Lewis Wolpert had been able to demolish his arguments, would that have destroyed his faith? His answer was no. That had to be his answer. If faith can be proved, then it's not faith. I know that bloody table exists; I don't believe it.

So how did he come by his faith in the first place? He found a girl. He'd "begun to ask the big questions in life" and didn't find any answers in his church. And then one day..."I sat behind this radiant, happy person. She was so happy all the time it just made me sick.

I asked her one day what she was so happy about and she said it's because I know Jesus Christ is my personal saviour." Then she told him: "He loves you, Bill" and he had "never heard that before and it just overwhelmed me."

So here is this man who can quote at length just about every philosopher you have ever heard of and (in my case) many you've never heard of. Who analyses their arguments in detail. Who talks about string theory and quantum mechanics with all the ease of an expert in the field.

Who seems genuinely to believe that his arguments prove the existence of God and who wants every Christian student in the land to get out there and deliver the message. And who came to it all because of a happy, smiling girl who sat in front of him in a German lesson 30 years ago.

No wonder Lewis Wolpert couldn't get a grip on him. You can't argue with the proof of a smiling girl.

That's fair enough. I suppose everyone comes to their faith in their own way. But it worries me when Craig says that without God life itself is absurd: "It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value or purpose."

The morning after the debate I read about a young woman called Josie Grove who had just died. She'd been a talented artist, a champion swimmer and, when she was 14, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. They did what they could for her but eventually she refused any more treatment because she wanted to die in peace at home. She was, by all accounts, a wonderful and very brave young woman. Here's what she said shortly before her death:

"If I have given courage to others suffering from leukaemia, then my life has been as full as if I had lived to be a hundred. The main thing in life is to help other people and I don't need to live to be a hundred to do that."

One has to respect Prof Craig's belief. But as a statement of what life is about, I'd prefer Josie's.

reposted from: daily telegraph
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Humanist Laureates

The International Academy Of Humanism

---

The International Academy of Humanism was established to recognize distinguished humanists and to disseminate humanistic ideals and beliefs. The members of the academy, listed below, (1) are devoted to free inquiry in all fields of human endeavor, (2) are committed to a scientific outlook and the use of the scientific method in acquiring knowledge, and (3) uphold humanist ethical values and principles.

The academy's goals include furthering respect for human rights, freedom, and the dignity of the individual; tolerance of various viewpoints and willingness to compromise; commitment to social justice; a universalistic perspective that transcends national, ethnic, religious, sexual, and racial barriers; and belief in a free and open pluralistic and democratic society.

Humanist Laureates

• Pieter Admiraal (medical doctor, The Netherlands)
• Ruben Ardila (professor of psychology, Universidad de Colombia)
• Kurt Baier (professor of philosophy, University of Pittsburgh)
• Yelena Bonner (human rights defender, Commonwealth of Independent States)
• Mario Bunge (professor of philosophy of science, McGill University)
• Jean-Pierre Changeux (College de France and Institut Pasteur)
• Patricia Smith Churchland (professor of philosophy, University of California, San Diego)
• Sir Arthur C. Clarke
• Bernard Crick (professor of politics, University of London)
• Richard Dawkins (New College Fellow, Oxford University)
• José Delgado (chairperson of the Department of Neuropsychiatry, University of Madrid)
• Umberto Eco
• Luc Ferry (professor of philosophy, Sorbonne and University of Caen)
• Yves Galifret (professor of physiology at the Sorbonne and director of l'Union Rationaliste)
• Johan Galtung (professor of sociology, University of Oslo)
• Vitalii L. Ginzburg (Nobel laureate, Academy of Sciences, Russia)
• Adolf Grünbaum (Professor and Chair, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh)
• Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel Laureate in physics, California Institute of Technology)
• Herbert Hauptman (Nobel Laureate and professor of biophysical science, SUNY at Buffalo)
• Donald Johanson (Institute of Human Origins)
• Sergei Kapitza (physicist, Insitute of Physics and Technology)
• George Klein (cancer researcher, Sweden)
• György Konrád (novelist, Hungary)
• Thelma Lavine (Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Philosophy, George Mason University)
• José Leite Lopes (director, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas)
• Paul MacCready (Chairman, AeroVironment, Inc.)
• Adam Michnik (historian and writer, Poland)
• Conor Cruise O'Brien (author, Ireland)
• Wardell Baxter Pomeroy (psychotherapist and author)
• Marcel Roche (permanent delegate to UNESCO from Venezuela)
• Richard Rorty (professor of philosophy, University of Virginia)
• Salman Rushdie (author, United Kingdom)
• Léopold Sédar Senghor (former president, Senegal)
• Peter Singer (Princeton University, United States)
• Wole Soyinka (Nobel Laureate in Literature, Nigeria)
• Svetozar Stojanovic (professor of philosophy, University of Belgrade)
• Thomas Szasz (professor of psychiatry, SUNY Medical School)
• Rob Tielman (copresident, International Humanist and Ethical Union)
• Alberto Hidalgo Tuñón (president of the Sociedad Asturiana de Filosofia, Oviedo, Spain)
• Simone Veil (former president, European Parliament, France)
• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (novelist)
• Mourad Wahba (professor of education, University of Ain Shams, Cairo)
• James D. Watson (Nobel laureate and co-discoverer of DNA, United States)
• Harvey Weinstein (co-chairman, Miramax Films, United States)
• G. A. Wells (professor of German, University of London)
• Edward O. Wilson (professor of entomology, Harvard.)

Deceased

• George O. Abell
• Steve Allen
• Isaac Asimov
• Sir Alfred J. Ayer
• R. Nita Barrow
• Sir Isaiah Berlin
• Brand Blanshard
• Sir Hermann Bondi
• Bonnie Bullough
• Francis Crick
• Milovan Djilas
• Paul Edwards
• Sir Raymond Firth
• Joseph F. Fletcher III
• Betty Friedan
• Stephen Jay Gould
• Sidney Hook
• Lawrence Kohlberg
• Franco Lombardi
• Jolé Lombardi
• André Michael Lwoff
• Ernest Nagel
• George Olincy
• Indumati Parikh
• John Passmore
• Octavio Paz
• Chaim Perelman
• Sir Karl Popper
• W. V. Quine
• Max Rood
• Carl Sagan
• Andrei Sakharov
• V. M. Tarkunde
• Richard Taylor
• Sir Peter Ustinov
• Lady Barbara Wooton

Secretariat

• Paul Kurtz (professor emeritus of philosophy, SUNY at Buffalo, editor in chief of Free Inquiry) President
• David Koepsell, Executive Director
• Vern Bullough (professor of history, California State University, Northridge)
• Antony Flew (professor emeritus of philosophy, Reading University)
• Gerald Larue (professor emeritus of archaeology and biblical studies, University of Southern California)
• Jean-Claude Pecker (professor of astrophysics, College de France, Academie des Sciences)

reposted from: Council for Secular Humanism
my: highlights / emphasis / key points / comments

Atheist - video