Reflections From a Murky Pond

As I’ve commented before, if one has a message that is in protest against someone or something, one should be cognizant of the imagery one uses. It does little or no good for one’s cause if the imagery you use to get attention actually provides a “positive” image of what you’re protesting.

Such was largely the case with the Surfrider Foundation’s 2011 “Oil Bikini” calendar.

Sorry, as much as I love the oceans and take issue with the wanton destruction of our maritime environment, this calendar is just not making me angry about the Gulf Oil Spill. If anything, the thought of pretty young women wearing nothing but oil strikes me as a “golden lining” in the situation, at least at the hindbrain level.

From Surfrider’s earlier Press release:

Last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico left a deep impression in people’s minds. To remember this catastrophe, we have a created a calendar with photos of young naiads covered in oil…This calendar, which will be offered to all members of Surfrider Foundation Europe, is also designed to help recruit new volunteers

By way of mitigation, the calendar was marketed as stress relief to current members of the organization; it wasn’t designed as a public push campaign. On the other hand, as proven by my posting of this, everything goes onto the internet and parts of it will stay there long after any thought of context has faded away.

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In the past decade huge advances have been made in the field of transgenic research, the study of transferring genes from one species to another. What was once limited to a small number of crops has expanded out into a broad spectrum of animals as well.

Transgenic Marmoset Expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP)

To date the highest order of animal that scientists will admit to having genetically modified by the inclusion of completely foreign genetic material is the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus).  The marmoset is a primate though and the changes they’ve made since 2009 have been genetically stable so there’s little in the way of technological hurdles left for them.

This, without even considering its use on humans, opens the door to some “interesting” possibilities.

Transgenesis 1:24 ( New Atheists Bible )

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I’m approaching this with a little humor, and not all of it ill-natured, because there is a definite potential benefit from creating transgenic organisms. Even the “sports,” which history tells us will be some of the first commercial applications, have the possibility of bringing people a lot of wonder and joy.

There’s, however, just so very much that could go wrong because scientists often ask, “Can we…” but rarely ask, “Should we…” and we really know very little about the interactions between genes or how transgenic creatures would affect the biosphere as whole.

I’m not even going to go into the nightmares this will cause when, not if, we start doing it with humans. Too many of the scenarios that instantly come to my mind are too deplorable and too plausible.

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Aristotle’s postulate, “The whole is greater from the sum of its parts” has become an axiom over the intervening 23 centuries since Aristotle wrote the various treatises that would later be compiled into the world’s first seminal work of philosophy, Metaphysics.

Of course “greater” means “larger”,  “more powerful” , or of “greater effect” as opposed to “better.” In the modern age nowhere is this more glaringly apparent than in the Warmists’ theories of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

The original for the images above can be found at Bishop Hill.

Firstly, the whole of the Warmists’ theories are greater than the sum of their parts. Poor data, small errors, and malfeasance early in the modeling process all combined synergistically  to create either a mistake or a fraud far more potent and “great” than any of it’s individual parts would normally be capable of.

Secondly, climate is, like all systems, far more and greater than the sum of its parts – and the Warmists won’t even deign to look at all – or even most – of those parts.

Fortunately, like all poorly crafted constructs fabricated from substandard components, the Warmists’ hypotheses and theories have collapsed under the weight of public scrutiny.

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