Science

From an article by Claudia H. Deutsch in the NY Times:

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, unlike most chemical companies, has moved the quest for bio-based raw materials off the wish list and onto the to-do agenda. The company has allocated nearly 10 percent of its $1.3 billion research budget to extracting ingredients from carbohydrates... DuPont already makes 10 percent of its products from nonpetrochemical substances, and Charles O. Holliday Jr., DuPont's chief executive, expects to increase that to 25 percent by 2010... DuPont is working with the Energy Department to turn corn plants - the husks, the ears, the stems, everything - into vehicular fuel. DuPont is close to developing plant-based hair dyes and nail polishes that will not adhere to skin, surgical bio-glues that can stanch internal bleeding and a textile fiber made from sugar that will act and feel like cotton. This spring DuPont will open a factory in Loudon, Tenn., that will make propane diol - trademarked as Sorona - from glucose. For now the output is earmarked for carpet fiber, but DuPont is exploring whether it can work in rigid plastics for automobile interiors or de-icing compounds for airplanes. The company has already converted many labs that once worked on pharmaceuticals or textiles - two businesses DuPont has shed - to now search for ingredients to replace oil and gas. Next year, it plans to cluster them all in one building and move a marketing staff in with them. "Industrial biotechnology is an area in which we can differentiate ourselves, so we're spending a lot more than any other company on it," said Thomas M. Connelly, DuPont's chief science officer. DuPont's optimism has other chemical industry executives scratching their heads. Dow Chemical pulled out of a joint venture with Cargill to make polylactic acid, a component of food packaging, from corn. Eastman Chemical sold its stake in Genencor International, a leader in industrial biotechnology. "We really do believe that industrial biotech is critical to our evolution, but the technologies of the foreseeable future just do not give the returns we expect from our research dollar," said Andrew N. Liveris, chief executive of Dow, which is looking for ways to make polyurethane from soybean oil, but has put a higher priority on extracting ingredients from coal. Friedhelm Balkenhohl, senior vice president for bio-catalysis research at the BASF Corporation, echoes that view. "Raw material change is one of our hot topics, but even 10 years from now, renewables will account for less than 10 percent of our ingredients," he said. Some companies are shrugging off bio-based ingredients entirely, and concentrating solely on using petroleum ingredients more efficiently. "I'm glad that larger companies are spending their time, talent and money in such exotic areas, because they have left a wide-open field for us that we are fully exploiting," said Jeffrey M. Lipton, chief executive of the Nova Chemicals Corporation, which makes building-block chemicals like styrene and polyethylene.

From an AP article by Rachel Zoll "Disagreements over global warming hinder evangelical movement to confront climate change" in The Detroit News:

A top environmental advocate called it "a historic tipping point" when the Rev. Rick Warren and other prominent evangelicals joined a new drive to get their community to fight global warming. But activists banking on a quick shift in President Bush's environmental policies will be disappointed -- support from just any evangelical figure won't do. The movement is a diverse one, and some its most politically influential leaders still question the science behind climate change. Analysts agree that the new push, called the Evangelical Climate Initiative, is at least a noteworthy development. Years of activism culminated in the release Wednesday of the statement, "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action," which was signed by many leading conservative Christians including Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life," the president of evangelical Wheaton College, the national commander for The Salvation Army and heads of seminaries and megachurches nationwide. Several prominent black and Hispanic pastors were among the signers. The statement frames environmental protection as a Christian imperative, fulfilling a biblical command to care for God's creation. It urges federal lawmakers to approve mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, but to do so in a way that doesn't hurt businesses. Among the funders of the initiative, which includes TV and print ads, is the Pew Charitable Charitable Trusts. However, Christian leaders with close ties to the Bush administration have expressed skepticism about the initiative through their own group, called the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance. They said in a statement that "the science is not settled on global warming," and argued that most U.S. evangelicals do not back the call for regulating greenhouse emissions. Among the religious leaders who support the Stewardship Alliance are James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship Ministries and the Rev. Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant group.

On the Net:

Evangelical Climate Initiative

Interfaith Stewardship Alliance

From an article by Stephanie Simon in the LA TImes:

Those who believe in creationism -- children and adults -- are being taught to challenge evolution's tenets in an in-your-face way.

"Boys and girls," Ham said. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, "you put your hand up and you say, 'Excuse me, were you there?' Can you remember that?"

The children roared their assent.

"Sometimes people will answer, 'No, but you weren't there either,' " Ham told them. "Then you say, 'No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world.' " He waved his Bible in the air.

"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.

"God!" the boys and girls shouted.

"Who's the only one who knows everything?"

"God!"

"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"

The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn't engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views - aggressively.

He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions - and set forth enough persuasive arguments - to shake the doctrine of Darwin.

The science Ham finds so dangerous holds that the first primitive scraps of genetic material appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. From these humble beginnings, a huge diversity of species evolved over the eons, through lucky mutations and natural selection.

The vast majority of scientists find no credible evidence to dispute this account and a tremendous amount to support it. They've identified thousands of transitional fossils, such as a whale that lumbered on land; a bird with reptilian features; and "Lucy," a remote cousin of modern man who walked on two legs but swung from trees like a chimp.

Still, millions of Americans find evolution preposterous. Polls consistently show that roughly half of Americans believe the biblical account instead.

The Sunday before last was "Evolution Sunday." From this link:

On 12 February 2006 hundreds of Christian churches from all portions of the country and a host of denominations will come together to discuss the compatibility of religion and science. For far too long, strident voices, in the name of Christianity, have been claiming that people must choose between religion and modern science. More than 10,000 Christian clergy have already signed The Clergy Letter demonstrating that this is a false dichotomy. Now, on the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, many of these leaders will bring this message to their congregations through sermons and/or discussion groups. Together, participating religious leaders will be making the statement that religion and science are not adversaries. And, together, they will be elevating the quality of the national debate on this topic.

I've got to agree that people shouldn't have to choose between religion and modern science. To pose the situation as an either/or is a false dichotomy. I certainly haven't fully resolved in my own mind the apparent contradictions between what the Bible says and what modern science says about the origins of the universe.

On the one hand, it doesn't seem reasonable to believe the universe in all its glory, that my child's body and all its wonder, is simply the result of random processes and natural selection, no matter how many billions of years that Mr. Random has been wreaking his randomness. To me, if you choose to believe in a God or if you choose to believe in 13 billion years of random processes, either way you're placing your faith in something you can't possibly fathom.

On the other hand, I don't think the scientific observations underlying modern science's view should be lightly dismissed.

The task of reconciling the two is not a trivial one.

The open letter associated with Evolution Sunday makes the statement "While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook." In a sense I agree with it. In a sense I don't. I "...don't read the Bible [as I] would a science textbook." It's not a science textbook and was not intended to be. I don't read everything in the Bible literally because, like any means of communication, it includes content that wasn't intended to be taken literally. However, in general I do read the Bible literally.

It bugs me that political pressure is being wielded so prominently against the scientists at NASA. From a NY Times article by Andrew Revkin titled "A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA":

George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said. Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted. The resignation came as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was preparing to review its policies for communicating science to the public. The review was ordered Friday by Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, after a week in which many agency scientists and midlevel public affairs officials described to The New York Times instances in which they said political pressure was applied to limit or flavor discussions of topics uncomfortable to the Bush administration, particularly global warming. Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document. A copy of Mr. Deutsch's résumé was provided to The Times by someone working in NASA headquarters who, along with many other NASA employees, said Mr. Deutsch played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public. Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.