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Offshore Wind Energy Makes a Splash
An interesting site called Offshore Wind shows the advances in wind technology and its application to power generation in the North Sea. It is a German effort, and it illustrates some major differences between Europe and the US in energy policy (or lack thereof.)
Locating wind turbines offshore is a logical type of effort, especially in areas where high ocean winds are the rule rather than the exception (and the North Sea certainly qualifies in that respect, although there are many such places on the earth.) In some ways, it’s a progression from the oil platforms that have dotted the North Sea since the 1960’s; in fact, the “German sector” for wind turbines is identical to the sector they had for oil exploration (see map at right.) The technology for doing this is very similar; lessons learned from petroleum production can and have been applied here.
One can see from the map that the German effort is extensive. As I noted just before the 2008 election, European countries have a more purposeful effort towards meeting their energy requirements. Unfortunately, we in the US do not, noises towards nuclear energy notwithstanding. If early opposition in Massachusetts is any indication, offshore wind won’t get any further in this country than offshore oil has: the Gulf of Mexico, and that’s not the windiest ocean we border. Trapped in our “…luddite, romantic vision of a country, once depopulated, being returned to its pristine state,” we can’t move forward so easily.
Then again, same Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to the Senate. Maybe we can. Maybe…
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The Old Colonies are Really an Improvement After All
A retired British diplomat finally breaks down and admits it:
On Sunday I got up and went to church. I can’t really call myself a regular churchgoer, but for some reason I am getting up about three hours earlier than normal while on holiday in the Bahamas, so it involved no real overcoming of sloth…
I don’t think the Bahamians would claim to be any better people than anyone else; there is crime, drunkenness, illegitimacy etc. here as much as everywhere. But their firm claim to be a God-fearing nation is perfectly genuine; and I don’t think it a coincidence that a God-fearing nation also happens to be a jolly nice place to live. God bless the Bahamas.
God bless the Bahamas, indeed! Having spent some of my childhood cruising the Bahamas (with experiences like this and this) I heartily agree, and put this in something I wrote (and probably quote too often) from this:
On coin and paper alike, British, colonial and Commonwealth currency customarily depicts the sovereign, as do many other currencies in the world.
“Knowing their hypocrisy, Jesus said to them: ‘Why are you testing me? Bring me a florin to look at.’ And, when they had brought it, he asked: ‘Whose head and title are these?’ ‘The Emperor’s,’ they said.” (Matthew 12:15b-16) Depending upon where we live, we only need to look at our pocket change to get some of the impact of what Our Lord was trying to get across.The use of Bahamian paper explains how many of the pounds, shillings and pence got on this page; it came out of having to learn how to count it and spend it while in the Bahamas. The good news was that this education could be had in a place with a warm climate and people. This also illustrates one of the characteristics of the old British Empire: many of the colonies were improvements over the mother country. Why else would two small islands be able to populate two entire continents with the people who either wanted or had to leave, to say nothing of the “expatriates” in places such as South Africa and India?
What I was referring to was having to learn the old British system of pounds, shillings and pence when first travelling the islands, before their independence.
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Rowan Williams and Evangelist "Bullies:" Save the Whining for the Atheists
Rowan Williams is at it again:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has condemned evangelist “bullies” who attempt to convert people of other faiths to Christianity.
Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.
In a speech at Guildford cathedral, Dr Williams criticised those who believed they had all the answers and treated non-Christians as if their traditions of reflection and imagination were of no interest to anyone. “God save us from that kind of approach,” he said.
Save the invective for the atheists.
It’s a common legend amongst many that the only people who want to “impose” their faith on others are Evangelical Christians. This legend is especially prevalent amongst those in what we would call in the US “Main Line” churches. Part of the problem is a turf issue: the Main Line churches (and Roman Catholicism) have lost a good portion of their membership to churches through such approaches, be they appropriate or otherwise. (Something tells me that, if they were as bad as His Grace portrays them, they wouldn’t be successful, but I digress…)
As is the case with many things in the Main Line churches, the world has passed them by. Today we have “evangelists” (the word implies good news, but the news isn’t always good) for many causes, and most of them, in addition to whatever rude bullying they might employ, also have in mind to gain for themselves the power of the state, which is the ultimate form of bullying.
Rowan Williams needs to present a credible form of Christianity and leave the discussion of appropriate methodologies of evangelism to someone else.
P.S. Evidently the Times’ copy editing is going downhill: I had to correct three errors in just the three brief paragraphs I quoted above. And that doesn’t take into consideration the UK/US spelling divide, as UK spelling is the “official” standard for this blog.
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The "Scientific" Administration Takes the Heat for NASA Cutbacks
U.S. President Barack Obama is trying to tamp down an uprising in politically vital Florida against a new strategy for NASA that has rankled space veterans and lawmakers and sparked fears of job losses.
Obama’s decision to kill NASA’s Constellation program to launch astronauts into orbit and return Americans to the moon has prompted soul-searching on whether the United States is prepared to cede a pre-eminent space role to Russia and China.
“As with all great human achievements, our commitment to space must be renewed and encouraged or we will surely be surpassed by other nations who are presently challenging our leadership in space,” Democratic and Republican members of the U.S. Congress from Florida wrote to Obama last week.
Like it or not, the space program has provided “spin-offs” that have improved life on earth. That was true during the moon program in the 1960’s and remains so today. Exporing the solar system around us is important; it’s where we live.
But the space program has been the bête noire of the radical left since the same 1960’s, as I mentioned in Remembering the Anti-Moon Luddites. As with so many other things, Barack Obama is actualising this agenda. The reality is that, these days, being scientific on the left largely amounts to “believing in evolution,” which is, in reality, a religious idea the way it’s presented.
That’s ironic in this case because, during the campaign, Obama promised to make government cool again. No agency has done a better job of that over the years than NASA, even though it, like any other agency, has had its high and low moments. He is at cross-purposes with his own purported objective, and the results will speak for themselves.
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Book Review: The Late Great Ape Debate
The subjects of evolution and creation are explosive ones, not only because of their scientific implications, but for their social and political ones as well. That’s been the case since Darwin first set forth the theory. It is certainly true today; for all of their protestations about the desire to be “scientific,” implementing whatever can be extracted philosophically from evolution or creation overshadows the impact each has on the course of science.
For Christians, evolution has been a difficult subject from the start, because it challenges (depending upon your hermeneutics) the Christian view of man. That’s a large reason why Christian organisations have been in the forefront of allowing the presentation of “creationisms” in the public schools, the aversion of the legal system notwithstanding. And understanding creationism in the plural is justified: contrary to its opponents’ representations, creationism is not univocal in many ways.
That diversity of opinion is in many ways the raison d’être of The Late Great Ape Debate, Bayard Taylor’s foray into the evolution-creation debate from a Christian perspective. He begins by taking the reader through two seminal events in the debate: the 2007 opening of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, and the 1925 Scopes Trial in neighbouring Tennessee. His treatment of the latter–which he picks up again later in the book–is that it a) was a set-up publicity stunt by the ACLU and their evolutionist friends, b) its coverage was larded (especially by H.L. Mencken) with the same high-handed, elitist snob contempt for William Jennings Bryan and the citizens of Dayton that we see today against “flyover country” inhabitants in the U.S., and c) the dramatisation Inherit the Wind is a propaganda piece which played fast and loose with the facts of the case.
From here he lays out the core of what he believes the Christian can and cannot believe about the subject. That core is surprisingly broad, a theme he carries throughout the book. From here he delineates the five lines of thought on the subject that are out there: young earth creationism, old earth creationism, intelligent design, theistic evolution and naturalistic evolution. He carries through his subsequent description of each of these in a laid-back fashion, using different types of apes and monkeys as monikers for each. In doing so he shows the strengths and weaknesses of each, how they relate to the Scriptures and science and how they relate to each other. Using a combination of charts and anecdotes, his presentation of the whole scene is one of the best and most succinct that I have seen anywhere.
In putting his own wrap on the subject, he makes two significant conclusions. First, he finds that those who a) profess and call themselves Christians and b) who adhere to pure naturalistic evolution are “surrender monkeys,” and his poster child for that is none other than Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, a bête noire of this blog for many years. His trashing of Spong is, for one of those who follows the Anglican-Episcopal world, one of the high points of the book.
The second is that he himself tends to gravitate towards intelligent design. In doing so, he points out that ID, far from being the monolithic cause its opponents caricature it as, is a fluid, open world with many different points of view. That made me rethink where I was at in this debate. One thing that Taylor’s book underscores is that the debate is constantly changing in response to the morphing scientific, political and legal environment that we find ourselves in.
He ends the book with a brief but trenchant section on how he thinks it best for Christian parents to introduce their children to the subject, and how Christians in general need to concentrate on what is essential and not get sidetracked in that which is not.
The Late Great Ape Debate is, IMHO, one of the best treatments of the subject I have seen, especially for the general reader, and it will be some time before it is bettered.
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Penalising Faith-Based Institutions for Scientific Activity
It had to happen sooner or later:
When board members and administrators from Baylor University and the Baylor College of Medicine were recently engaged in conversation about the possibility of strengthening ties between the two institutions, some suggested that the faith component of Baylor University’s mission would negatively affect the quality of the scholarship for which the Baylor College of Medicine is so well known.
As scientists and people of faith, we were troubled by reports in the media that characterized serious scientific research and a faith commitment as incompatible. We believe we speak for thousands of accomplished scientists when we say that this is a false dichotomy that reflects an ill-informed understanding of the way many of us perceive the wonder, mystery and revelation of God.
They should be troubled, but not necessarily surprised. The New Atheists have made it their signature cause that people with any kind of religious belief are incapable of scientific research and activity. This, in turn, leads to rumblings such as the Baylor University faculty have to stand against.
The core problem with New Atheism is that they do not understand the real conclusions of their own thinking. What counts in science are the results, and even then they don’t count because any purely materialistic system cannot attribute meaning to anything. If they succeed in discouraging or driving out people or institutions because of their religious convictions, they will set themselves up for another Trofim Denisovich Lysenko to come along and mow real science down with an ideologically based idea. Any time you put in place a “litmus test” that has nothing to do with the real objective, you open yourself up for people who, as Mao Zedong used to say, “put politics in command.”
That was the hard lesson of the world’s foremost atheist regime. To recall Marx, the first time it was a tragedy, so I suppose we’re looking for the farce this go around. We won’t have to look too far if the New Atheists have their way.
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 