Stix Blog

An interesting car Air Power!

I know it kind of looks ugly, but hell you would never have to buy gas, so that is good thing.  No more oil money to those that want to destroy us.  It would be a good carto run around town, but I would never want ot take this thing on the highway.

This is the same company who, a few months back, came out with a car that costs only $2,500.00 new. (BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | India's Tata backs air-power car)

It's not available in the US, why does that not surprise me?

A non polluting vehicle that eliminates the reason to buy gasoline from off shore companies. How bad is that?

AMAZING AIR CAR!




The Compressed Air Car developed by Motor Development International (MDI) Founder Guy Negre might be the best thing to have happened to the motor engine in years.

The $12,700 CityCAT, one of the planned Air Car models, can hit 68 mph and has a range of 125 miles. It will take only a few minutes for the CityCAT to refuel at gas stations equipped with custom air compressor units. MDI says it should cost only around $2 to fill the car up with 340 liters of air!

The Air Car will be starting production relatively soon, thanks toIndia's TATA Motors. Forget corn! There's fuel, there's renewable fuel, and then there's user-renewable fuel! What can be better than air?





Check it out yourself and see - What A Cool Car! Enjoy! :)

This six-seater taxi should be available in India this year -2008!

Now If We Can Just Get It In The USA!

Honda Releases "Zero Emission" Vehicle

Honda is finally building their fuel cell cars and the lucky people getting them:

H/T to The Jawa Report

Film producer Ron Yerxa will take delivery of the first FCX Clarity in July. The remaining four early adopters for Honda’s next-generation fuel cell vehicle are author and actress Jamie Lee Curtis and her filmmaker husband Christopher Guest; business owner and car enthusiast Jim Salomon; actress Laura Harris; and Jon Spallino, already the world’s first retail fuel cell vehicle customer, who has been leasing the current generation FCX since 2005. Yerxa, Harris and Spallino attended the event in Japan.

I am just wondering what the price tag is on them????   It will be nice if they are affordable to the average person.

About the FCX Clarity
The FCX Clarity is a next-generation, hydrogen powered fuel cell-powered vehicle.  Propelled by an electric motor that runs on electricity generated in the fuel cell, the vehicle’s only emission is water, and its fuel efficiency is three times that of a modern gasoline-powered automobile. Based on the entirely-new Honda V Flow fuel cell platform, and powered by a highly compact, efficient and powerful new Honda V Flow fuel cell stack, the FCX Clarity marks the significant progress Honda continues to make in advancing the real-world performance and appeal of the fuel cell car. Significant advances over Honda’s previous generation FCX include:

·	an advanced new four passenger sedan design
·	a greater than 30 percent increase in driving range up to 280 miles1
·	a 25 percent increase in combined fuel economy to 72 miles/kg-H21 (74 mpg GGE <miles per gallon gasoline gallon equivalent energy>)
·	a 50 percent improvement in fuel stack power output density by volume
·	a 40 percent smaller and 50 percent lighter new lithium ion battery pack

Honda is responsible for the development of the world’s first fuel cell car (Honda FCX) to be certified for regular commercial use by the U.S. EPA and California Air Resources Board; the first deployment of a fuel cell car with a fleet customer; and the first individual retail customer for a fuel cell vehicle.

1  Based on official 2008 EPA estimated range and fuel efficiency values

The BMW GINA

Here is a cool concept car from BMW thanks to Ivy League Conservatives

The Grey Lady Gets It - ManBearPig is Hysteria

From National Review On-Line. 

Even The New York Review of Books Sees It   [Peter Wehner]

The current issue (June 12) of The New York Review of Books includes by Freeman Dyson, professor of physics emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He reviews two books on global warming: A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies by William Nordhaus; and Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto, edited by Ernesto Zedillo.

Professor Dyson, a renowned theoretical physicist and mathematician famous for his work in, among other things, quantum mechanics, believes in anthropogenic global warming. But he also believes that there is a dangerous tendency among an increasing number of advocates of global warming to be “dogmatic” and shut down the debate. In that context, the concluding three paragraphs of Dyson’s New York Review of Books essay are worth highlighting:

All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point.  The main point is religious rather than scientific.  There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible.  The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.  And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound.  Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists – most of whom are not scientists – holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future.  Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay.  This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet.  That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate.  Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment.  The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true.  Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists.  They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard. [emphasis added]

Source:  http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTJkZTYwODY5YzJmZTgyMDg5MDg2MDc5NzI3NDZmMzE=

Julia

New Element Discovered

Discovery-New Element

New Element Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element
yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (Gv),has one
neuron, 25 assistant neurons, 88 deputy neurons, and 198 assistant deputyneurons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons,which are
surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second can take from four days to four years to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; it does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neurons and deputy neurons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neurons, forming isodopes.This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an
element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Julia h/t to cousin Mike in Seattle

Boomdeyada! I Love the Whole World

Earthquakes in China, volcanoes spouting in Chile and Italy, stock market queezy, elections looming.  Enough bad news in the world.  Let this make your day lovely for a change.

Hat tip to The Anchoress at http://theanchoressonline.com/

Julia

Volcano erupts in Chile

Many people have been evacuated from the area as the volcano spews ash and lava.

May 4: Chile's President Michelle Bachelet, left, talks to Carlos Alvarado, a resident who refuse to leave his home, during a visit to Chaiten, Chile

Alternative energy

This is an interesting story about an alternative fuel.  Burning Salt Water.   This could be a great source of energy for our power plants, and it could also be used to drive our cars.   We will see if this will come around.  This would be great if we can actually get this to work on a bigger scale.

And guess what??? It would be better than the biofuels that we use now that raise the cost of food and are more harmful to the environment than regular gas.  And it was not done by the bureaucracy of the wasteful government.

Alert AlGore re: Solution to Global Warming

Finally - the answer to all our problems re:  Global Warming.  Alert AlGore; he's no longer needed.

Proposed Solution To Global Warming

2006-10-15

It is almost universally accepted now that the Earth is getting warmer. Simply looking at the statistics will tell you this - people who would argue otherwise tend to be the kind of tinfoil hat people who also believe that imminent magnetic pole reversal will kill everybody on Earth in 2030-something and that comets don't exist and so on and so forth. The real question that we should all be asking ourselves is not whether the Earth is getting warmer. The question is: how will this affect us?

Obviously there will be positive effects - for example, to delineate the new period of heat and sunshine, a new fourth season, provisionally titled "Sum-mer", may have to be introduced into the regular Spring-Autumn-Winter calendar in the United Kingdom, and the opportunity to consume ice cream all year round may also prove attractive. Also, who wouldn't want to live on the sunny Swiss coast? But, like any change anybody ever made to anything ever, there will also be negative effects, which will most likely outweigh the positive. As the equatorial regions of our planet grow hotter, vital industries serving the Western world from that region may diminish in capacity and - to put it bluntly - life will not be so cushy. People will have to relocate in the wake of extreme weather conditions like floods and hurricanes, which will cost the global taxpayer a stunning amount of cash overall. Granted, it may be that the changes occur smoothly enough that very few people actually perish as the Earth grows warmer, but we will NOT enjoy the transition period and the brave new world WILL prove relatively expensive to adapt to.

Overall, then, the prevailing opinion among scientists (although this is by no means as universally agreed upon as the existence of global warming itself) is that global warming would be a bad thing. It is only upon agreement of this point that we move on to the third question, which is "Can we reduce global warming?", and the fourth question, by far the most contentious, "What is causing global warming in the first place?"

Now, some people take the highly controversial view that global warming is a wholly natural event - the Earth is well known to have gone through phases of being warm and being cold in the past. The implication they take from this is that global warming cannot, or should not, be fought - we have no choice but to put up with it! (Note that this isn't actually a logically airtight argument. Mankind fights and generally wipes the floor with nature all the time.) Most of the people who put forward this point of view tend to be the kind of people whose corporations' factories' continously accelerating output of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are what most sane observers believe is the actual reason behind global warming. (GLOBAL WARMING IS PEOPLE! PEEEEEEEOPLE!)

I take a third point of view. I'm of a more scientific bent - I am a mathematician, a logician, a rational reasoner. I say that reducing CO₂ output wouldn't do the job - even if we reduced it to zero and planted trees to scoop up the excess - because that's not the CAUSE of global warming. We need to cut straight to the source.

The Sun is the cause of global warming.

We need to turn off the Sun.

Don't worry, I don't mean permanently.

Proposal

The average surface temperature of Earth's atmosphere is about 14°C or 287 Kelvins. This has been measured to increase by about 0.6 Kelvins over the last 200 years, or about 0.2% of its absolute temperature. Which means the Sun is giving out roughly 0.2% more energy than we need to keep it at the required temperature. Therefore, if we make it so the Sun gives out about 0.2% less energy, everything will be fine!

Thus I propose that we turn off the Sun for roughly 0.2% of each solar day, or two to four minutes every 24 hours.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Go to the source to see how this is going to be accomplished:  http://qntm.org/?global

Wasn't that simple?  The Brits have the answer to everything. 

Julia

Benedict the Science Guy Challenges ManBearPig

From the Cranmer blog in the UK, which is usually very snarky about Popes and such.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Pope: Global warming assessment must be based on ‘science not dogma’

It is something of a topsy-turvy world when a pope tells us to base our thinking on ‘science, not dogma’, and doubtless an aggrieved Galileo may feel somewhat vindicated, but here is a man on the world stage who is prepared express doubts about the ‘Green’ movement which is just as dogmatic in its assumptions as any religion. This declaration from the Pope is consistent with the man’s propensity to favour the virtues of rationalism, which he has already applied to interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

The Roman Catholic Church is not anti-scientific. While its treatment of Galileo may have been acknowledged to have been ‘an error’, Copernicus dedicated his famous heliocentric work, ‘On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs’, to Pope Paul III. Copernicus then bequeathed this work to Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran clergyman who knew that Protestant reaction to it would be negative, since Luther himself was not favourable to the new theory. And Kepler also found opposition among his fellow Protestants for his heliocentric views, yet found a welcome reception among a group of Jesuits who were noted for their astronomical interests.

And it is the Pope of Rome who is now challenging the orthodoxy of the political aspects of the global warming movement around the world. That, of course, is true acknowledgement of the scientific method: a world apart from the hysteria surrounding the half-baked theories of pseudo-scientists and ignoramuses like Al Gore. Here we have a pope who is defending the protestants of postmodernity, confronting head-on the climate change ‘prophets of doom’ with the warning that any solutions to global warming ‘must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology’.

He dismisses talk of man-made emissions melting the ice caps as ‘scare-mongering’, and demands that assessment ‘be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances’.

And now there has been a 'breakthrough' in Bali, with the administration of President Bush apparently conceding on the matter and now joined by Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, there is an inexorable spiritual drive to inculcate the population of the world with the worship of Mother Earth, to indoctrinate with the dogma of Gaia, against which the Pope alone declares: 'Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.'

posted by Cranmer at 12:10 PM

Source:  http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2007/12/it-is-something-of-topsy-turvy-world.html

Smart guy, that Benedict.

Julia

Reality-Based Scientists Have Their Say in Bali

Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference

December 11, 2007

From Senator Inohe's Website - some reality-based scientific info for the Bali meeting.

Posted By Marc Morano - Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov - 7:45 AM ET

Skeptical Scientists Urge World To ‘Have the Courage to Do Nothing' At UN Conference

BALI, Indonesia - An international team of scientists skeptical of man-made climate fears promoted by the UN and former Vice President Al Gore, descended on Bali this week to urge the world to "have the courage to do nothing" in response to UN demands.   

Lord Christopher Monckton, a UK climate researcher, had a blunt message for UN climate conference participants on Monday.

"Climate change is a non-problem. The right answer to a non problem is to have the courage to do nothing," Monckton told participants. 

"The UN conference is a complete waste of our time and your money and we should no longer pay the slightest attention to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,)" Monckton added. (LINK)

Monckton also noted that the UN has not been overly welcoming to the group of skeptical scientists.   

"UN organizers refused my credentials and appeared desperate that I should not come to this conference. They have also made several attempts to interfere with our public meetings," Monckton explained.

"It is a circus here," agreed Australian scientist Dr. David Evans. Evans is making scientific presentations to delegates and journalists at the conference revealing the latest peer-reviewed studies that refute the UN's climate claims.

"This is the most lavish conference I have ever been to, but I am only a scientist and I actually only go to the science conferences," Evans said, noting the luxury of the tropical resort. (Note: An analysis by  Bloomberg News on December 6 found:  "Government officials and activists flying to Bali, Indonesia, for the United Nations meeting on climate change will cause as much pollution as 20,000 cars in a year." - LINK)

Evans, a mathematician who did carbon accounting for the Australian government, recently converted to a skeptical scientist about man-made global warming after reviewing the new scientific studies. (LINK)

"We now have quite a lot of evidence that carbon emissions definitely don't cause global warming.  We have the missing [human] signature [in the atmosphere], we have the IPCC models being wrong and we have the lack of a temperature going up the last 5 years," Evans said in an interview with the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.  Evans authored a November 28 2007 paper "Carbon Emissions Don't Cause Global Warming." (LINK)

Evans touted a new peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists appearing in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society which found "Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK)

"Most of the people here have jobs that are very well paid and they depend on the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. They are not going to be very receptive to the idea that well actually the science has gone off in a different direction," Evans explained.   

[Inhofe EPW Press Blog Note: Several other recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. For most recent sampling see: New Peer-Reviewed Study finds 'Solar changes significantly alter climate' (11-3-07) (LINK) & "New Peer-Reviewed Study Halves the Global Average Surface Temperature Trend 1980 - 2002" (LINK)  & New Study finds Medieval Warm Period '0.3C Warmer than 20th Century' (LINK) For a more comprehensive sampling of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007 see "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" LINK ]

‘IPCC is unsound'

UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports since its inception going back to 1990, had a clear message to UN participants.

"There is no evidence that carbon dioxide increases are having any effect whatsoever on the climate," Gray, who shares in the Nobel Prize awarded to the UN IPCC, explained. (LINK)

"All the science of the IPCC is unsound. I have come to this conclusion after a very long time.  If you examine every single proposition of the IPCC thoroughly, you find that the science somewhere fails," Gray, who wrote the book "The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001," said.

"It fails not only from the data, but it fails in the statistics, and the mathematics," he added.

‘Dangerous time for science'

Evans, who believes the UN has heavily politicized science, warned there is going to be a "dangerous time for science" ahead.

"We have a split here. Official science driven by politics, money and power, goes in one direction. Unofficial science, which is more determined by what is actually happening with the [climate] data, has now started to move off in a different direction" away from fears of a man-made climate crisis, Evans explained.

"The two are splitting. This is always a dangerous time for science and a dangerous time for politics. Historically science always wins these battles but there can be a lot of causalities and a lot of time in between," he concluded.

Carbon trading ‘fraud?'

New Zealander Bryan Leland of the International Climate Science Coalition warned participants that all the UN promoted discussions of "carbon trading" should be viewed with suspicion.

"I am an energy engineer and I know something about electricity trading and I know enough about carbon trading and the inaccuracies of carbon trading to know that carbon trading is more about fraud than it is about anything else," Leland said. 

"We should probably ask why we have 10,000 people here [in Bali] in a futile attempt to ‘solve' a [climate] problem that probably does not exist," Leland added.

‘Simply not work'

Owen McShane, the head of the International Climate Science Coalition, also worried that a UN promoted global approach to economics would mean financial ruin for many nations.

"I don't think this conference can actually achieve anything because it seems to be saying that we are going to draw up one protocol for every country in the world to follow," McShane said. (LINK)

"Now these countries and these economies are so diverse that trying to presume you can put all of these feet into one shoe will simply not work," McShane explained.   

"Having the same set of rules apply to everybody will blow some economies apart totally while others will be unscathed and I wouldn't be surprised if the ones who remain unscathed are the ones who write the rules," he added.

‘Nothing happening at this conference'

Professor Dr. William Alexander, emeritus of the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, warned poor nations and their residents that the UN policies could mean more poverty and thus more death.

"My message is specifically for the poor people of Africa. And there is nothing happening at this conference that can help them one little bit but there is the potential that they could be damaged," Alexander said. (LINK)

"The government and people of Africa will have their attention drawn to reducing climate change instead of reducing poverty," Alexander added.

Related Links:

New UN Children's Book Promotes Global Warming Fears to Kids (11-13-2006)

Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears

New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears

Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived'

Newsweek's Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism

Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt

EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy' Career of Climate Skeptic

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus'

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids' Attempting to "Scare Each Other"

Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect'

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made Global Warming Hype'

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic's Guide To Debunking Global Warming"

# # #

Julia

Straight Talk from Stem Cell Researchers

The main scientists in the stem cell research world have now come out and said that experimenting on embryos was problematic for them and sparked the search for other ways to channel the wonderful promise of stem cell use.  The Corner at National Review on-line summarizes the crux of their thinking.  Boston Globe photo is a human embryo in the blastocyst stage which is destroyed when stem cells are harvested for research.     

Tuesday, December 11, 2007 Stem Cell Ethics   [Yuval Levin] When somatic cell reprogramming—the great advance that seems likely to end the stem cell debate—was announced last month, a lot of embryo research advocates insisted its development had nothing to do with any of the ethical issues surrounding the work, but was purely a matter of scientific efficiency and the like. But now the leaders of both teams of researchers involved in that advance have suggested that wasn’t all there was to their thinking. James Thomson, who led the American team involved in the work, told the New York Times last month he had always had some concerns about the the destruction of embryos and that “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” And in today’s New York Times the leader of the other team, Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, recounts why he first began to look for alternatives to embryo-destructive research. He tells of looking at an embryo under a microscope at a friend’s in vitro fertilization lab: “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University. “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.” Certainly questions of pure science had a great deal to do with Thomson’s and Yamanaka’s advance. They and the vast majority of other stem cell researchers are not pro-lifers moved above all by the ethical questions. But there is no question that the ethical issues, and the political turmoil that resulted from them (which led also to a major Bush administration focus on the alternative techniques in the past few years), had a lot to do with it too. 12/11 10:36 AM

Julia

Give Bush his Props for his Embryonic Stem Cell Stance

Charles Krauthammer has a great column on Bush's principled stance on embryonic stem cells and his current vindication by advances in technology by the very same scientist who first isolated human embryonic stem cells. 

Technology Vindicates Morality
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 30, 2007

"If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough."

-- James A. Thomson

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, Thomson was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells. Last week, he (and Japan's Shinya Yamanaka) announced one of the great scientific breakthroughs since the discovery of DNA: an embryo-free way to produce genetically matched stem cells.

Even a scientist who cares not a whit about the morality of embryo destruction will adopt this technique because it is so simple and powerful. The embryonic stem cell debate is over.

Which allows a bit of reflection on the storm that has raged ever since the August 2001 announcement of President Bush's stem cell policy. The verdict is clear: Rarely has a president -- so vilified for a moral stance -- been so thoroughly vindicated.

Why? Precisely because he took a moral stance. Precisely because, as Thomson puts it, Bush was made "a little bit uncomfortable" by the implications of embryonic experimentation. Precisely because he therefore decided that some moral line had to be drawn.

In doing so, he invited unrelenting demagoguery by an unholy trinity of Democratic politicians, research scientists and patient advocates who insisted that anyone who would put any restriction on the destruction of human embryos could be acting only for reasons of cynical politics rooted in dogmatic religiosity -- a "moral ayatollah," as Sen. Tom Harkin so scornfully put it.

Bush got it right. Not because he necessarily drew the line in the right place. I have long argued that a better line might have been drawn -- between using doomed and discarded fertility-clinic embryos created originally for reproduction (permitted) and using embryos created solely to be disassembled for their parts, as in research cloning (prohibited). But what Bush got right was to insist, in the face of enormous popular and scientific opposition, on drawing a line at all, on requiring that scientific imperative be balanced by moral considerations.

History will look at Bush's 2001 speech and be surprised how balanced and measured it was, how much respect it gave to the other side. Read it. Here was a presidential policy pronouncement that so finely and fairly drew out the case for both sides that until the final few minutes of his speech, you had no idea where the policy would end up.

Bush finally ended up doing nothing to hamper private research into embryonic stem cells and pledging federal monies to support the study of existing stem cell lines -- but refusing federal monies for research on stem cell lines produced by newly destroyed embryos.

The president's policy recognized that this might cause problems. The existing lines might dry up, prove inadequate or become corrupted. Bush therefore appointed a President's Council on Bioethics to oversee ongoing stem cell research and evaluate how his restrictions were affecting research and what means might be found to circumvent ethical obstacles.

More vilification. The mainstream media and the scientific establishment saw this as a smokescreen to cover his fundamentalist, obscurantist, anti-scientific -- the list of adjectives was endless -- tracks. "Some observers," wrote The Washington Post's Rick Weiss, "say the president's council is politically stacked."

I sat on the council for five years. It was one of the most ideologically balanced bioethics commission in the history of this country. It consisted of scientists, ethicists, theologians, philosophers, physicians -- and others (James Q. Wilson, Francis Fukuyama and me among them) of a secular bent not committed to one school or the other.

That balance of composition was reflected in the balance in the reports issued by the council -- documents of sophistication and nuance that reflected the divisions both within the council and within the nation in a way that respectfully presented the views of all sides. One recommendation was to support research that might produce stem cells through "de-differentiation" of adult cells, thus bypassing the creation of human embryos.

That Holy Grail has now been achieved. Largely because of the genius of Thomson and Yamanaka. And also because of the astonishing good fortune that nature requires only four injected genes to turn an ordinary adult skin cell into a magical stem cell that can become bone or brain or heart or liver.

But for one more reason as well. Because the moral disquiet that James Thomson always felt -- and that George Bush forced the country to confront -- helped lead him and others to find some ethically neutral way to produce stem cells. Providence then saw to it that the technique be so elegant and beautiful that scientific reasons alone will now incline even the most willful researchers to leave the human embryo alone.

Charles Krauthammer is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner, 1984 National Magazine Award winner, and a columnist for The Washington Post since 1985.

Source:  http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2007/11/30/technology_vindicates_morality

Hat tip to The Anchoress who also has some kind words about Bush; and even Republicans' failure to give W his due for the good things he has done under incredible pressure during his two terms.

http://theanchoressonline.com/2007/11/30/bush-embryonic-stem-cell-research/

Julia

Myths of Arabic Preservation of Greek Philosphy Debunked

There is a great long piece by Fjordman in Gates of Vienna addressing the false premise of Arabs sharing in the Greek-Roman heritage in philosophy and science.  In fact the West did not owe the preservations of Greek thought to the Arabs.  This multicultural myth has long been in place and is the basis of much of current Eurabian proposals for a Mediterranean basin-based culture that is supposedly based on this myth.  Here is a snippet that is a sample of a really interesting essay:

 

Friday, October 12, 2007

Islam, Christian Europe, and the Greek Heritage

by Baron Bodissey

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

This essay was originally published in three parts (in a slightly different form) at Jihad Watch. See part 1, part 2, and part 3.

[snip]

One of the most persistent myths so eagerly promoted by Eurabians is that of the “shared Greco-Roman heritage” between Europeans and Arabs, which is now going to lay the foundations for a new Euro-Mediterranean entity, Eurabia. It is true that countries such as Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Algeria were just as much a part of the Roman Empire as were England or France. However, the Arab conquerors later rejected many elements of this Greco-Roman era once they invaded these nations. Some Greek and other classics were indeed translated to Arabic, but Muslims could be highly particular about which texts to exclude. There was thus a great deal of Greek thought that could never have been “transferred” to Europeans by Arabs, as is frequently claimed by Western Multiculturalists, because many Greek works had never been translated into Arabic in the first place. Muslims especially turned down political texts, since these included descriptions of systems in which men ruled themselves according to their own laws. This was considered blasphemous by Muslims, as laws are made by Allah and rule belongs to his representatives.

As British philosopher Roger Scruton has explained, one of the most important legacies of the Roman Empire was the idea of secular laws, which were unconcerned with a person’s religious affiliations as long as he accepted the political authority of the Roman state. This left a major impact on Christian Europe, but was neglected in the Middle East because it clashed fundamentally with the basic principles of sharia, the laws of Allah. Scruton calls this “the greatest of all Roman achievements, which was the universal system of law as a means for the resolution of conflicts.” The Roman law was secular and “could change in response to changing circumstances. That conception of law is perhaps the most important force in the emergence of European forms of sovereignty.”

Iranian intellectual Amir Taheri states that “To understand a civilisation it is important to understand its vocabulary. If it was not on their tongues it is likely that it was not on their minds either. There was no word in any of the Muslim languages for democracy until the 1890s. Even then the Greek word democracy entered Muslim languages with little change: democrasi in Persian, dimokraytiyah in Arabic, demokratio in Turkish. (…) It is no accident that early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts but never those related to political matters. The great Avicenna himself translated Aristotle’s Poetics. But there was no translation of Aristotle’s Politics in Persian until 1963.”

According to scholar John Dunn, the word demokratia entered modern Western discourse in the 1260s in the Latin translation by the Dominican Friar William of Moerbeke of Aristotle’s Politics, “the most systematic analysis of politics as a practical activity which survived from the ancient world.”

William of Moerbeke was a Flemish scholar and prolific translator who probably did more than any other individual for the transmission of Greek thought to the West. His translation of virtually all of the works of Aristotle and many by Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria and others paved the way for the Renaissance. He was fluent in Greek, and was for a time Catholic bishop of Corinth in Greece. He made highly accurate translations directly from the Greek originals, and even improved earlier, flawed translations of some works. His Latin translation of Aristotle’s Politics, one of the important works that were not available in Arabic, was completed around 1260, and helped expand the political vocabulary in the West. His friend Thomas Aquinas used this translation as the basis for his groundbreaking work The Summa Theologica. Aquinas did refer to Maimonides as well as to Averroes and Avicenna and was familiar with their writing, but he was rather critical of Averroes and refuted some of his use of Aristotle.

Like Aquinas, William of Moerbeke was a friar of the Dominican order and had personal contacts at the top levels of the Vatican. Several texts, among them some of Archimedes, would have been lost without the efforts of Moerbeke and a few others, and he clearly did his work on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church. Moreover, one of the reasons why he did this was because the translations that were available in Arabic were incomplete and sometimes of poor quality. The Arabic translations, although they did serve as an early reintroduction for some Western Europeans to Greek thought, didn’t “save” Greek knowledge as it had never been lost. It had been preserved in an unbroken line since Classical times by Greek, Byzantine Christians, who still considered themselves Romans, and it could be recovered there. There was extensive contact between Eastern and Western Christians at this time; sometimes amiable, sometimes less so and occasionally downright hostile, but contact nonetheless. The permanent recovery of Greek and Classical learning was undertaken as a direct transmission from Greek, Orthodox Christians to Western, Latin Christians. There were no Muslim middlemen involved.

As a result, by the late 1200s, Saint Thomas Aquinas and early Renaissance figures such as the poet Dante and the humanist Petrarch had at their disposal a much more complete and accurate body of Greek thought than any of the renowned Muslim philosophers ever did. What’s more, many of the translations that did exist in Arabic had been undertaken by Christians in the first place, not by Muslims.

At the American Thinker, Dr. Jonathan David Carson dispels some of the hype regarding Islam’s role in the history of science. In his view, “The ‘Islamic scholars’ who translated ‘ancient Greece’s natural philosophy’ were a curious group of Muslims, since all or almost all of the translators from Greek to Arabic were Christians or Jews.” Moreover, most Greek texts “did not make the long journey from Greek to Syriac or Hebrew to Arabic to Latin, and Western Europeans preferred [surprise!] translations of Aristotle directly from the Greek, which were not only superior but also more readily available.”

In A History of Philosophy, Frederick Copleston says that “it is a mistake to imagine that the Latin scholastics were entirely dependent upon translations from Arabic or even that translation from the Arabic always preceded translation from the Greek.” Indeed, “translation from the Greek generally preceded translation from the Arabic.” This view is confirmed by Peter Dronke in A History of Twelfth—Century Western Philosophy: “most of the works of Aristotle, however, were translated directly from the Greek, and only exceptionally by way of an Arabic intermediary…translations from the Arabic must be given their full importance, but not more.”

As Carson sees it, “the great rescue of Greek philosophy by translation into Arabic turns out to mean no rescue of Plato and the transmission of Latin translations of Arabic translations of Greek texts of Aristotle, either directly or more often via Syriac or Hebrew, to a Christendom that already had the Greek texts and had already translated most of them into Latin.”

Moreover, the intellectual curiosity was entirely one-sided. J.M. Roberts put it this way: “Why, until very recently, did Islamic scholars show no wish to translate Latin or western European texts into Arabic? (…) It is clear that an explanation of European inquisitiveness and adventurousness must lie deeper than economics, important though they may have been.”

Much has been made of Spain’s glorious Islamic past, yet more books are translated in Spain now in a single year than have been translated into Arabic over the past 1,000 years. As I have shown, what existed of advances in sciences in the early centuries of Islamic rule owed its existence almost entirely to the infusion of pre-Islamic thought, and even at the best of times the translations from non-Muslim ideas and books could be quite selective. Later, even the limited debate of Greek philosophy was curtailed. Muslims were assured of their God-given superiority and did not bother to look into ideas from worthless infidel cultures.

Source:  http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/10/islam-christian-europe-and-greek.html

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.  Pass it on, save it to your hard drive for future reference; it's filled with history that debunks a lot of what you think you know from the drivel of multiculturalism with which we are bombarded.

Julia

PETA v AlGore - Vegans vs. Greens

Hysterical!   The Greens and the Vegans are now fighting each other.  Sounds like an episode of Star Trek.    ha ha ha ha

A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals billboard chides Al Gore.

Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change

By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH

Published: August 29, 2007

Correction Appended

EVER since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined.

The biggest animal rights groups do not always overlap in their missions, but now they have coalesced around a message that eating meat is worse for the environment than driving. They and smaller groups have started advertising campaigns that try to equate vegetarianism with curbing greenhouse gases.

Some backlash against this position is inevitable, the groups acknowledge, but they do have scientific ammunition. In late November, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization issued a report stating that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.

When that report came out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and other groups expected their environmental counterparts to immediately hop on the “Go Veggie!” bandwagon, but that did not happen. “Environmentalists are still pointing their fingers at Hummers and S.U.V.’s when they should be pointing at the dinner plate,” said Matt A. Prescott, manager of vegan campaigns for PETA.

So the animal rights groups are mobilizing on their own. PETA is outfitting a Hummer with a driver in a chicken suit and a vinyl banner proclaiming meat as the top cause of global warming. It will send the vehicle to the start of the climate forum the White House is sponsoring in Washington on Sept. 27, “and to headquarters of environmental groups, if they don’t start shaping up,” Mr. Prescott warned.

He said that PETA had written to more than 700 environmental groups, asking them to promote vegetarianism, and that it would soon distribute leaflets that highlight the impact of eating meat on global warming.

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

•

The Humane Society of the United States has taken up the issue as well, running ads in environmental magazines that show a car key and a fork. “Which one of these contributes more to global warming?” the ads ask. They answer the question with “It’s not the one that starts a car,” and go on to cite the United Nations report as proof.

Read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/business/media/29adco.html?ex=1346040000&en=afd55f3af97a69be&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

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Meanwhile, The Times of London thinks this is really funny and features a photo of AlGore.

August 30, 2007

The best way to tackle climate change? Vegetarianism

Poor Al Gore - a man who clearly enjoys his burgers - is under attack:

Ever since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined...

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

Really now, hasn't the man done enough for the cause already?

Murad Ahmed   

Source:  http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/08/the-best-way-to.html

Julia 

Poor Al Gore - a man who clearly enjoys his burgers - is under attack:

Ever since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined...

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

Really now, hasn't the man done enough for the cause already?

Murad Ahmed   

Source:  http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/08/the-best-way-to.html

The best way to tackle climate change? Vegetarianism

Poor Al Gore - a man who clearly enjoys his burgers - is under attack:

Ever since “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore has been the darling of environmentalists, but that movie hardly endeared him to the animal rights folks. According to them, the most inconvenient truth of all is that raising animals for meat contributes more to global warming than all the sport utility vehicles combined...

“You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” said Mr. Prescott, whose group also plans to send billboard-toting trucks to the Colorado Convention Center in Denver when Mr. Gore lectures there on Oct. 2. The billboards will feature a cartoon image of Mr. Gore eating a drumstick next to the tagline: “Too Chicken to Go Vegetarian? Meat Is the No. 1 Cause of Global Warming.”

Really now, hasn't the man done enough for the cause already?

Murad Ahmed   

Source:  http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2007/08/the-best-way-to.html

Flipper is alive

A dolphin that was thought to be extinct has been filmed in China

Aug. 30 - A sighting of a rare Dolphin, thought to be extinct, has been caught on camera in China.

A Chinese man has videotaped a large white animal believed to be the "extinct" Yangtze river Dolphin.   

Hayley Platt reports.

Al Reuters

Pesky Poles reject Utilitarianism in EU Document

Very Interesting post on an English blog called Cranmer about the new document that the EU is trying to get passed - it is essentially the same constitution that was rejected by France and some other countries.  This time they are calling it something other than a constitution and want to pass it in their legislature so the "people" won't have a say.   However, there is one provision added at the insistance of Poland. 

The post itself focusses on religious arguments, but the Comments are mostly about why people without any religious beliefs might be vehemently against some medical experimentations.  In particular a) Germany - whose Nazi regime did horrible things to people to gain scientific knowledge with the connivance of its health professions at the highest academic level and b) Poland - many of whose citizens were transported to Germany to serve as subjects for these experiments.  Great point I hadn't thought of:   there are lots of reasons why some Europeans are dead set against embryonic stem cell research and utilitarian excuses for supporting it that are not understandable to Anglo-Saxons who did not go through those same horrendous WWII experiences.

August 25, 2007

EU divided along religious lines

The Spectator carried an article a few weeks ago which fell under Cranmer’s aegis, yet more pressing priorities stole it away. It was concerning the role of religion in the formulation of ethical codes for scientific research, and it is evidence, if any were needed, that Europe’s divisions are and always have been deeper than mere issue of economics or politics.

While the focus remains on the impending not-a-constitution Reform Treaty of 2007, one minor footnote has been largely ignored: footnote 18 to the proposed draft wording for a replacement of Article 6 on fundamental rights. It is termed a ‘Unilateral Declaration by Poland’, and states quite clearly that the ‘Charter does not affect in any way the right of Member States to legislate in the sphere of public morality, family law as well as the protection of human dignity and respect for human physical and moral integrity.’

This is quite a significant issue to deal with in a mere footnote; indeed, it is of such great significance that it ought to have be included in the main body of text. One can only assume that those who drew up the not-a-constitution Reform Treaty intended that it would not be spotted, but (as ever) the Devil is in the detail.

The Spectator notes that ‘the protection of human dignity and respect for human physical and moral integrity’ is EU-speak for bans on new medical areas such as embryonic stem cell research, gene therapy and even the latest breakthrough, RNA (ribonucleic acid). The ‘Unilateral Declaration by Poland’ is designed to ensure that EU member states will remain free to ban such research, fearful, as they were (and are) that the new voting arrangements threaten to trample over their liberties to legislate upon such matters.

Opposition to controversial stem cell research usually emanates from the religiously conservative. For the vast majority of Jews, Christians and Muslims, an embryo is a person, or at least a potential person whose potential ought not to be extinguished for the sake of expedience. Since Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammed were at one time embryos, one might understand why Roman Catholic bishops have decreed that such research is ‘immoral, illegal and unnecessary’.

Yet for Roman Catholics it is universally taught and generally accepted that euthanasia, abortion, and the creation for research purposes of human embryos, are ‘evil’. This was the expressed opinion of John Paul II, and Benedict XVI has since added that the destruction of human embryos to harvest stem cells is ‘not only devoid of the light of God but is also devoid of humanity’. In those countries where Rome is strong, stem cell research will remain banned.

But the Roman Catholic Church, acting through staunchly Catholic countries like Poland, is not merely contending against the EU’s secular-scientific-atheism; Protestants generally have a much more utilitarian view of such ethical issues, as if there were some Kantian moral imperative with transcends the transcendent, and among the Muslims there are also divergent views, with the majority holding that embryonic stem cell research is permissible provided that the motive is the amelioration of human health. Cranmer could not help but smile at The Spectator’s principal observation:

Powerful opposition…coincides with a strong church. It should not therefore be surprising that a country such as Britain, with some of the most ineffectual religious leadership, has some of the most permissive research laws.

Protestant Europe and Catholic Europe will therefore contend against each other on this one. The irony, of course, is that the moment discoveries are made and cures are found in the Protestant parts, all of those Polish Roman Catholics will board their planes and fly to an EU country where treatment is legal. And it is mainly the wealthy who will be able to take advantage of the fact that EU citizens may elect to be treated wherever they wish, when denied treatment in their own countries. Where is the privilege for the poor in that?

posted by Cranmer at 9:58 AM 6 comments  

Source:  http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2007/08/eu-divided-along-religious-lines.html

Julia