Jeff Jacoby presents, in a style not unlike Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”, a story about a scientist, and the school that he applied to, that will amaze you.

DID YOU hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn’t simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled “Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John.” Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning,” he determined, it means 3988 BC.

So we have a young-Earth guy who seems really into this Christianity thing, and who is applying for a science job at a very prestigious university. Did he get the job?

Hire somebody with such views to teach physics? At a Baptist junior college deep in the Bible Belt, maybe, but the faculty would erupt if you tried it just about anywhere else. Many of them would echo Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, the prominent evolutionary biologist, who writes in “The God Delusion” that he is “hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. . . . It subverts science and saps the intellect.”

In today’s academic climate, things don’t sound promising for our intrepid physicist. Religion and science don’t mix, so they say.

But such considerations didn’t keep Cambridge from hiring the theology- and Bible-drenched individual described above. Indeed, it named him to the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics….

To find out who this guy was who beat all the odds to get hired, click here for the full column. (And if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may already know the answer. I covered it last month.)

Technorati Tags: science and religion, Cambridge, Christianity, young Earth, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, education

Tip o’ the hat to Slashdot for the latest medical breakthrough using adult stem cells; treating cornea disorders.

Technorati Tags: adult stem cells, cornea, medicine, science

The World Climate Report blog notes a report about the warming temperatures on Neptune, and how closely they correlate with Earth’s changes.

Neptune is the planet farthest from the Sun (Pluto is now considered only a dwarf planet), Neptune is the planet farthest from the Earth, and to our knowledge, there has been absolutely no industrialization out at Neptune in recent centuries. There has been no recent build-up of greenhouse gases there, no deforestation, no rapid urbanization, no increase in contrails from jet airplanes, and no increase in ozone in the low atmosphere; recent changes at Neptune could never be blamed on any human influence. Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship between the solar output, Neptune’s brightness, and heaven forbid, the temperature of the Earth.

Click on the link to find graphs of how changes in Neptune’s temperature, Earth’s temperature, and the Sun’s output are strangely similar; about a 90% correlation.

Technorati Tags: global warming, neptune, solar warming, Geophysical Research Letters

Our pastor’s sermon this week, as I imagine for many pastors, was regarding the Virginia Tech massacre. A one-sentence summary I’d use to describe it (that doesn’t do it justice) is “The problem with evil in the world is that it exists and is active, and this is a wake-up call to the church.” I want to touch on these two points, and riff off the post from Mark at Stones Cry Out. (UPDATE: Audio for the message can be downloaded here.)

What I read Mark as saying is that society wasn’t asking the right questions about what really is affecting our youth. There are surface issues that, I believe, are just symptoms, not the causes, Mark touched on; video games, movies, meds, etc. But in his post was an assumption he makes that I don’t think society accepts, at least not like it used to. And without that assumption, even his list of real issues can’t be addressed until this one is.

Chuck Colson, in a recent Breakpoint podcast, noted that in at least one society, we can’t even agree on this base assumption.

I witnessed an extreme example of this therapeutic thinking during a visit to a Norwegian prison years ago. Throughout the tour, officials bragged about employing the most humane and progressive treatment methods anywhere in the world. I met several doctors in white coats.

That prompted me to ask how many of the inmates, who were all there for serious crimes, were mentally ill. The warden replied, “Oh, all of them.” I must have looked surprised, because she said, “Well, of course, anyone who commits a crime this serious is obviously mentally unbalanced.”

Stated differently, there is no such thing as sin and evil, and the only reason why people might commit serious crimes is that they are mentally ill. Thus, the best-and perhaps, only-response to crime is behavior modification and all of those other up-to-date psychological techniques.

The assumption I refer to is the existence of evil, and of man’s predisposition to it. I know how some folks avoid church because they don’t want to hear that, but without understanding the very nature of our being, how can we ever hope to properly deal with it. Here’s how Jesus put it in Mark chapter 7.

He went on: “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ “

Jesus tells us that evil is primarily a spiritual issue, not primarily a psychological one. This is not to say that there are no psychological results of evil-there certainly are–and this does not absolve society, video game makers or Hollywood writers of their role in creating an environment where we marinate in and, in many cases, uphold that which is evil.

While we in American generally allow this idea to have some effect on our thinking, it has been less so during this generation. Colson notes that we’re not that much different from Norway, and we, like them and anyone else, have one real way out.

While the Norwegian approach would strike most Americans as very naïve, the difference between them and us is one of degree not kind. We also blame crime on external factors, like mental illness, culture, dysfunctional childhood, and the like.

We are uncomfortable attributing events like this to human evil, much less to a kind of evil that seeks to undo God’s creation-what Christians call the demonic.

Yet without this idea, events like this massacre can never be understood. We might learn that the killer was “mentally unbalanced” or on anti-depressants. But, absent evidence that he was clinically delusional, this knowledge will not explain why he walked onto a college campus, locked people in a lecture hall, and killed them

Events like this not only horrify us-they unsettle us. We think of sin and the demonic as not-so-quaint relics from a superstitious age. And even more destructive, random events like this remind us how little we know about ourselves and what we are capable of, as well. But failing to call evil evil misleads us about the world we live in and our need for God’s grace, the only real answer and hope for any of us.

We cannot save the house until we save the foundation, and only God, the Master Builder, who drew up the blueprints, knows what can be done.

The families and friends of the victims of the VT shootings, and even the family and friends of the shooter, deserve the most love and grace we can give them. Our desire to help them, grieve with them, and comfort them must come from the heart. But going forward, if we ever hope to rescue our society from further events such as this, we must remember what else Jesus said comes from the heart. It is the hearts of people that need God. The psychological, emotional and physiological will follow, but not until the hearts are changed. That’s the church’s mission; to bring the God that can change the heart to society.

(One thing I would want to note, lest an incorrect assumption be made; I don’t dismiss out of hand the science of psychology; not by any means. I believe it has an important contribution to make in understanding the human mind and how it can be helped. But, using my earlier analogy, modifying the house without understanding the foundation may, in some cases, give us relief from problems without dealing with the underlying flaws, keeping us from seeking the One who can truly help.)

Our pastor asked and answered the burning question: “How long will events like this continue to happen? As long as the church lets them.” The “salt of the earth” must not hunker down in its salt shaker. As it was used in the first century, it must be rubbed, not on, but into the meat before it rots any further.

Technorati Tags: Virginia Tech, evil, psychology, Chuck Colson, Breakpoint, Jesus, gospel of Mark, church

An amazing medical breakthrough reported in the London Times today. In a small trial of patients, 13 of 15 diabetics given injections of stem cells did not need daily insulin injection 3 years after the treatment. Truly remarkable. Now, there are 2 types of stem cells; adult and embryonic. What kind were these. The articles doesn’t say specifically, but it leaves it to the reader to deduce that.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

Unless we’re talking about fetal diabetics, the stem cells must be adult ones. Chalk up another win for stem cells that lack any ethical issues. But note that the writer is more than happy to bring up the other type of stem cells specifically.

Previous studies have suggested that stem-cell therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease. A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

By positioning these two paragraphs this way, the writer begs the reader to make the connection between this breakthrough and Bush’s refusal to have the feds fund embryonic stem cell research. Even the linked article about heart attack victims won’t use the word “adult” when talking about the stem cells. What’s worse, blatant media bias like this really works. Just read the comment section at the end (which I believe is in reverse chronological order) to find those who are against Bush’s position but fail to realize the distinction.

Interesting that a major medical breakthrough, promising hope to millions of Type 1 diabetics and their families gets overshadowed by a debate on morality….

…

If you’ve had to stick a needle into your 11 year old twice/thrice daily would you object to stem cell research? Get real this is the 21C. Blair n’ Bush should spend the war money on this research! Kids want fun/childhood, not adult ethics.

…

How sanctimonius some of the opinions on this discussion are. My brother and I have type 1 diabetes. I really don’t care what type of stem cells are used if it finds a cure for this disease. Do you really equate a bunch of cells with an actual child or adult life? Is that serious? You would condemn people like me & my brother and countless others to living with this disease for ever because you believe that embryos are so important. That isn’t moraility, its drivel.

And one fellow seems to think that if the government doesn’t pay for it, it doesn’t get anything.

You use your religious beliefs to prevent my tax dollars from funding embryonic stem cell research. Only adult stem cell research is funded, so only adult stem cell cures are produced. Then, you use the success of some adult stem cell research to deny the value of embryonic stem cells? What kind of twisted circular logic is that? Of course there aren’t embryonic stem cell treatments if the research isn’t funded.

All victims of media reporting. Finally, one commenter makes a great point. Follow the money.

Let’s not forget one of the biggest reasons that pharmas want to use embryonic stem cells. Money. If they use stem cells that come from a source other than a bonafide “Person”, they can patent it and make lots of money from the treatment. You cannot patent adult stem cells as they come from and belong to a particular individual.

Technorati Tags: stem cells, diabetes, science, media bias

Steve McIntyre, who’s done his own, unpaid, work discrediting the global warming “hockey stick” graph, notices some funny business when it comes to the reporting of historical temperature data. He’s noting that, in more recent reports, temperatures reported from the 1920s and 30s are lower than they were in earlier reports, while temperatures from the late 90s are being reported as higher now than they were then. The result is a larger reported temperature change during those 70 years. He’s also got a graph showing the changes in reported temperatures for each of the years, and it’s eye-opening.

Are the numbers being fudged by those with an agenda? It certainly looks like it.

Hat tip: Blogger News Network.

Technorati Tags: Steve McIntyre, global warming, climate change, science

Russ Neglia has created a new pro-life blog under the Townhall.com umbrella. He calls it “Pro-Life Pro-Logic”, and it’s aptly named. Each post is well thought out and logically and dispassionately presented. He doesn’t post every day, but you’ll understand why when you read his articles. These aren’t quick hits on topic, they are essays that take a little time to read. He’s covered topics such as embryonic stem cell research and did a two-parter on how the death penalty relates to abortion. Check it out.

Technorati Tags: Russ Neglia, pro-life, abortion, embryonic stem cells, death penalty

Robert VerBruggen at Blogger News Network takes a closer look at the UN climate report.

First of all, the scientists are 90 percent humans cause warming to what degree? I don’t think anyone has said that natural fluctuations don’t affect climate at all. If emissions cause 1 percent of warming, that’s not that helpful for solving the problem. Even if you’re 100 percent certain.

Indeed, that’s a key question. If all our efforts and our billions of dollars won’t make a dent, is it really worth the effort? Robert looks into the report for the answer.

To answer the question I read the report itself (OK, the policymaker summary, sue me). Soon after claiming a 90 percent chance that humans have caused more warming than cooling (page 3), the report claims that “most” of the warming is “very likely” (90-95 percent) to have been human-caused.

So of the warming that is happening, the UN panel says that >50% is caused by humans. Except that they’re less sure when they’re dealing with actual data than when they’re doing their predictions of the future.

Finally, take a look at the chart on page 7 of the report, where the researchers look at various trends — whether they occurred, whether human activity caused them and whether they’ll continue in the future. Somehow, the first two columns have “likely” and “very likely” popping up a lot, but the future predictions have two “virtually certains.” In every single category, the scientists are equally or more certain about the future than the past.

Tell me how is it, exactly, that the panel is better at predicting the future than at analyzing established data? For example, it’s “very likely” that there were fewer and warmer cold days in the late 20th century, and “likely” human activity contributed to it, but “virtually certain” this will continue in the future.

Good question. In the coming days, I expect more folks will be taking a closer look at this. If we really are causing most of the global warming–if we broke it–we should fix it. And in the meantime, there are so many simple things we can do to reduce our energy requirements (florescent bulbs, telecommuting, etc.) that there’s no real reason to ignore this.

At the same time, in the current not-so-scientific climate where people are being cowed into silence by man-made-global-warming proponents, you’ll have to forgive me for being a bit wary of any report from scientists who are in lockstep agreement on the issue.

Technorati Tags: global warming, Robert VerBruggen, United Nations, climate change, science, weather

Kim Rowe consolidated a number of news articles in her comment here on the scientific “consensus” on global warming. If it’s largely man’s fault on earth, why then is it also happening on:

Mars:

According to a September 20 NASA news release, “for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting a climate change in progress.” Because a Martian year is approximately twice as long as an Earth year, the shrinking of the Martian polar ice cap has been ongoing for at least six Earth years.

The shrinking is substantial. According to Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, the polar ice cap is shrinking at “a prodigious rate.”

“The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago,” reported Yahoo News on September 20.

Pluto (same link):

Sallie Baliunas, chair of the Science Advisory Board at the George C. Marshall Institute, said, “Pluto, like Mars, is also undergoing warming.” However, Baliunas speculated it is “likely not the sun but long-term processes on Mars and Pluto” causing the warming. However, until more information is gathered, Baliunas said, it is difficult to know for sure.

Triton:

Observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments reveal that Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, has warmed significantly since the Voyager spacecraft visited it in 1989. Our science editor Dr David Whitehouse reports.

“Since 1989, at least, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming – percentage-wise, it’s a very large increase,” said Dr James Elliot of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jupiter:

The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

Not all of these instances are necessarily directly tied to the heat of the Sun, though that is one explanation since the Sun has been getting hotter, and its changes mirror Earth’s temperature changes going back 3 centuries. The point is, though, that these things are happening throughout the solar system, and warming is happening all over. And even without Martian SUVs destroying the ozone. There are many natural processes–Solar Warming being just one of them–that are occurring. The fact that the Earth is getting warmer doesn’t mean there’s anything we can do to significantly change that.

UPDATE: But never mind all those natural causes. The UN has determined that it’s 90% sure that global warming is caused just by us.

PARIS (AP) — The most authoritative report on climate change is using the strongest wording ever on the source of global warming, saying it is “very likely” caused by humans and already is leading to killer heat waves and stronger hurricanes, delegates who have seen the report said Thursday.

Dozens of scientists and bureaucrats from 113 countries are editing the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in closed-door meetings in Paris. Their report, which must be unanimously approved, is to be released Friday and is considered an authoritative document that could influence government and industrial policy worldwide.

Three participants said the group approved the term “very likely” in Thursday’s sessions. That means they agree that there is a 90 percent chance that global warming is caused by humans.

So a UN report trumps the warming happening throughout the Solar System, and even trumps the Sun. Brilliant.

The report will also say that global warming has made stronger hurricanes, including those on the Atlantic Ocean such as 2005’s Katrina, according to Fields and other delegates.

They said the panel approved language saying an increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone strength since 1970 “more likely than not” can be attributed to man-made global warming.

The panel did note that the increase in stronger storms differs in various parts of the globe, but that the storms that strike the Americas are global warming-influenced. In 2001, the same panel had said there was not enough evidence to make such a conclusion.

And, as noted earlier, over 70% of environmental professionals don’t think they’re global-warming induced. Oh, and the Earth has it in for America, since it’s the ones that hit us that are due to global warming.

In the rather lengthy category of “Liberal Good Intentions Gone Bad”…

As the delegates hold their evening session, the Eiffel Tower, other Paris monuments and concerned citizens in several European countries were expected to switch off their lights for five minutes to call attention to energy conservation, heeding a call by French environmental campaigners.

Some experts said that while well-intentioned, turning the lights out could actually consume more energy than it would conserve by requiring a power spike when the lights turn back on _ possibly causing brownouts or even blackouts.

Too funny.

Technorati Tags: global warming, Mars, Pluto, Triton, Jupiter, solar warming, weather, climate, United Nations, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Back in November, the National Registry of Environmental Professionals asked 793 of their members from 47 states some questions about global warming; its existence and causes, public policy response, and how it affects their jobs. Here’s the existence and causes section.

The existence of global warming today

• 82 percent of professionals report they think global warming is a real, measurable, climatic trend currently in effect.
• 66 percent respond that the rate at which global warming may be occurring is a serious problem facing the planet.
• 64 percent attribute certain phenomenon such as rising ocean levels, increased storm activity, severe drought, massive habitat loss, depletion of the Earth’s oxygen sinks, i.e. rain forests and ocean plankton, to the effects of global warming.
• 68 percent agree that global warming is a trend that must be addressed as soon as possible.

The causes of global warming

• 59 percent respond that current climactic activity exceeding norms calibrated by over 100 years of weather data collection can be, in large part, attributed to human activity.
• 71 percent of environmental professionals, however, do consider the recent increase in hurricane activity in the Atlantic through 2005 and the Pacific through 2006, to be part of a larger natural cycle and not, for the most part, attributable to human activity.

82% is a pretty good number for considering the idea that global warming is happening. But beyond that, you can only get about two-thirds to agree on its affects and its urgency.

But it’s the causes that really show how little consensus there is. Only 59% believe that the warming that exceeds 100-year norms is caused largely by humans. Put another way, 41% of environmental professionals either disagree or are not sure that humans are a significant contributor to warming. Thus, skepticism of it is hardly in the same league as Holocaust deniers.

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to “Holocaust Deniers” and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program “The Climate Code,” is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their “Seal of Approval” for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

Further, 71% think that the heavy 2005/2006 hurricane season was generally just part of the normal, natural cycle of weather. The NOAA said that and they got targeted by environmentalists. Now, all this does not mean that a former Vice President, in the movie poster for his Oscar-nominated film, can’t try to draw a direct line between factories and hurricanes. It just means he’s bucking the consensus. [Irony alert!]

So when somebody says to you that the debate about human-induced global warming is over, just have them ask the professionals, not the politicians.

Technorati Tags: global warming, environment, National Registry of Environmental Professionals, Heidi Cullen, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, hurricanes, NOAA