Taking a short break - no post this week

I'm taking a short break this week and expect to post again on Sunday, May 2.

Asking the right questions about human genetic engineering

It's refreshing to find a reporter capable of asking probing questions about the the dangers of human genetic engineering. The central question BBC reporter Zaria Gorvett asks is whether genetic alterations due to genetic treatments can make their way into future generations. (She asks many other questions, too.)

The answer researchers give is that they do not know. They believe they can reduce the likelihood over time, but could never reduce it to zero.

The first question you may ask is why passing on genetic alterations through procreation would be a bad thing if those alterations were meant to cure a genetic disease or alter an unfavorable trait. The answer is that it depends on what one means by "bad thing" and "unfavorable trait."

Climate change and the "law of acceleration"

When scientists reported that carbon dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere reached a new record last week, I thought of American writer Henry Adams whose 1918 Pulitzer-Prize-winning autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, included a chapter entitled "A Law of Acceleration."

Adams noted that "in the nineteenth century, society by common accord agreed in measuring its progress by the coal-output. The ratio of increase in the volume of coal-power may serve as dynamometer." He tells readers that the "coal-output of the world, speaking roughly, doubled every ten years between 1840 and 1900, in the form of utilized power, for the ton of coal yielded three or four times as much power in 1900 as in 1840."

Adams was the grandson of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States and the great grandson of John Adams, a celebrated Founding Father of the American republic and its second president. Henry knew something of the trajectory of American life and of the world as a whole.

Today, we mark both our progress and our peril through such observations. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is the keeper of what is known as the Keeling Curve which charts the rise in concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii from 1958 onward. That rise is, of course, due primarily to the burning of coal and other fossil fuels, something Adams tells us would be a barometer of improvement in his own age.

Geoengineering the climate: The zombie idea that just won't die

Just when you think the last boomlet for geoengineering the climate has expended itself and we might be rid of any serious consideration of it as a strategy for addressing climate change, it rises zombie-like from the dead and starts roaming the Earth again.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has recommended spending $100 to $200 million over the next five years to study the idea—its feasibility, possible unintended consequences, and an ethical framework for governing it.

The most important thing you need to know about geoengineering the climate is that we humans have probably been doing it since at least the dawn of agriculture. What we need now it seems is an intervention from TV talk show psychologist Dr. Phil to ask us his favorite question, "How's that working for you?"