I am having a running conversation with a (very smart) friend on the subject of global warming.  He tends towards a healthy skeptism that humans have any important impact on the environment ("I think it is all about the sun").   I tend to believe the evidence that human CO2 emmissions are causing temperature increases -- so called "anthropogenic forcing" is pretty damn good.   Yesterday I sent my buddy the recent NSF study by a number of climatologists who have basically confirmed the strong probability that we are in a period of exceptional temperature increase.   One comment he passed back was:

What kind of credible fact based research uses the term 'Likely'???? - That research is "likely" true and is supported by more recent data, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member

In my view this sort of argument plays  directly to the "common sense" of lay people, who don't usually have a clear understanding of how science works and what the scientific method is.    The fact is, of course,  all scientific (as opposed to mathematical) "facts" about the world can be couched in terms of probabilities.   Every scientific fact we learn could have a "likely" in front of it.   Usually we simply drop it for convenience if we are pretty damn sure it is correct.   For example,  E is likely to equal MC*C, and all empirical evidence points to it being correct (in the real world as opposed to via the mathematics which derived it) to many decimal places.  still, we have to say it is only (very, very) likely to be true.   Evolution is overwhelmingly likely to be how human beings came to be on the planet earth, however it is possible that some advanced civilization (or a deity) created the earth and people more or less as we know it now 5000 years ago planting, for obscure reasons of their own, false evidence of billions of years of natural selection.

My brother Jon at his charity roast this past weekend by and for the Second Chance Foundation  in Las Vegas.   The second chance they are referring to is not the one you get after a bad beat, or in recovering from a gambling addiction, but rather that which thousands in need of a new organ get every year thanks to donations of people like you.   But although every day 70 people get organ transplants every day, 17 die each day waiting for a suitable donation.   More donations are needed and anyone in California can sign up online at the Donor Registry.   Most other states have or are creating similar registries.

The roast was a lot of fun: Jon is a well known political commentator in Nevada and plenty of folks took the opportunity for some good wholesome payback.  But it was  especially meaningful to Jon and me because exactly 22 years and 2 days prior to the roast I donated my kidney to Jon and he's led a normal life (or what passes for normal in Las Vegas) ever since.

Ok, few of you are worried about the flu.  Who is worried a giant meteor will come crashing to earth and end human dominance as effectively as it did that of the dinosaur's?

Just another simple poll.  Would sure be nice if we could insert Yahoo! polls into blogs...

Just wanted to take a poll:  who's worried about bird flu and the next worldwide pandemic  and who thinks it is an overblown panic fanned by the media?