World Cooled Over The Last Decade; Debate Concerning What It Means

Republican Punk is not a site to debate complex science (or pseudoscience, for that matter), so this post is not meant to argue over whether the significant fall in temperature since 1997, which was an El Nino year and thus naturally hotter, means that global warming is a hoax. Instead, we would like to point out a couple of significant lines from the article concerning this fall in temperature and attempts to rebuff the ensuing sceptics:

A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.

"Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen."

"These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability," Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. "It's easy to 'cherry pick' a period to reinforce a point of view."

The climate system is enormously complex, and while man is very likely affecting the temperature in some way, it is very unlikely that any measure we take as humans could unravel these effects. To believe otherwise is incredible hubris. Thus, while Republican Punk supports a carbon tax to fix the market failure created by the lack of a carbon price, it needs to be done in such a way that it doesn't destroy the economy, because we aren't stopping global warming, whether it was man-made or not. It is sad, but true, and there is no reason to mitigate the problems we fact by ignoring cost-benefit.

Also, liberals need to follow their own advice when it comes to not cherry-picking science. Accept that there is a debate. There is a majority viewpoint and a minority viewpoint, but it only takes one scientist to be right and these people aren't insane. There are arguments to be made on both sides, and policy makers are right to pay attention to both. While men like James Inhofe are wrong to ignore climate science showing carbon-caused warming, people like Barbara Boxer and Henry Waxman are just as wrong to ignore contrarian science and refuse to consider cost-benefit analysis when writing bills.

Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/74019.html

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated

The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person.

“You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”

Scary.

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html?_r=2

Fundamental Building Block of Life Found on Comet

"The discovery of glycine in a comet supports the idea that the fundamental building blocks of life are prevalent in space, and strengthens the argument that life in the universe may be common rather than rare," said Carl Pilcher, the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute in California, which co-funded the research.

Cue X-Files Theme

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE57H02I20090818