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The Lewis wind farm and the need to compromise environmental values

The Lewis wind farm and the need to compromise environmental values

After steering the Lewis wind farm proposal though a six year development process, the Scottish Government has decided not to consent to the proposal. The Scottish Energy Minster is reported as saying that the proposal by Lewis Windpower to build a 181 turbine wind farm on the Western Isles of Scotland would have a ‘serious impact’ on the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area, which is the home to a number of rare and endangered species of birds (http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2008/04/21/afx4911829.html). These include Golden Eagles, Merlins, Dunlins and Greenshanks.

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What computer simulations can tell us about the success of international treaties

International negations on climate change
sometimes give the impression that a lot of hot air is raised for nothing:
Politicians, policy makers and scientists alike gain air miles on their way to countless
conferences, thereby emitting non-negligible amounts of greenhouse gases, only
to arrive at the lowest common denominator satisfying none of the parties. International
treaties resulting from these negations suffer a rather bad reputation.

Recent computer simulations may smoothen the
ruffled feathers of all those who see international regulations as the sole
remedy to global environmental problems. At the annual
meeting of the international research program SCOUT-O3 that ends tomorrow, researchers
presented simulation
results showing how the Montreal
Protocol – originally ratified in 1992 to reduce the emissions of CFCs and
other ozone-damaging substances –has contributed to a healthier environment
(see newspaper
coverage).

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Do we own our bodies? Should we?

There was a sad story last week about a young woman who died unexpectedly at the age of 19.   She was on the organ donor register, and her own mother was on the waiting list for a kidney donation, but the mother was refused one of the kidneys.  Even the transplant coordinator was ‘crying her eyes out’, but there was apparently no escape.  Rules were rules.  Cadaveric donations must go impartially and anonymously to the most compatible people at the top of the waiting list, and the authorities decreed that these organs must go to three strangers – whose identity the mother will never even know.

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Trading on Testosterone: Doping and the Financial Markets

Two cambridge researchers have found that  found that the amount of money a male financial trader makes in a day is correlated with his testosterone level. The pair – John Coates and Joe Herbert – also found that a trader’s testosterone at the beginning of a day is strongly predictive of his success that day, suggesting that testosterone causes improved stock market performance, rather than the reverse.

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Academic Integrity and Vioxx

Drug company Merck and its product Vioxx are in the news again. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has examined the documents from the legal proceedings against Merck in connection with the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market in 2004. From their analysis, a significant number of journal articles – mostly review articles rather than articles reporting clinical trials – were written in-house and senior academics were brought in late to be lead named author. At least one of these academics has disputed the accusations made in the JAMA article.

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Who’s this ‘we’, Dr Soon? Unconscious Action and Moral Responsibility

A paper in Nature Neuroscience by Soon, Brass, Heinze and Haynes has demonstrated that it is possible (in
the case of a simple decision about pressing buttons) to predict what the
decision will be and when it will happen several seconds before the decision is consciously “made”. Does this demonstrate that our free will is an
illusion? That depends on what we mean by "we".

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These are not the probabilities you are looking for

There has been an increasing buzz in the papers regarding the impending launch of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Some of this concerns the possibility that it will lead to a disaster which destroys the world. This certainly sounds unlikely, and people who seriously suggest this are typically brushed aside with official calculations about the chance that the LHC will indeed destroy the world in any of the ways that have been suggested. For example, it is said that the chance of it destroying the earth though the creation of a particle called a strangelet is only about 1 in 50 million and the chance of it creating a black hole which does not evaporate is much less than this. However, these are not the probabilities we are looking for.

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Three arguments against turning the Large Hadron Collider on

In response to Anders Sandberg’s post on the Large Hadron Collider.

The physicists responses to worries about the risks posed by the LHC make it unclear whether they understand the moral issue. They may have the power, but they do not have the liberty to hazard the destruction of all present and future goodness. Nobody does.

Professor Frank Close of the University of Oxford has been quoted as saying that "The idea that it could cause the end of the world is ridiculous." (here). Is it ridiculous because it is impossible, or because it is very unlikely? I don’t think he knows it is impossible, and being very unlikely is not sufficient to dismiss the risk. Yes, it’s very unlikely, but being very unlikely is not remotely unlikely enough and may be beside the point, as, I think, these three arguments demonstrate.

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The Pregnant Man, And Other Conceptual Curiosities

Recent weeks have given us several occasions to reflect on the nature of parenthood. First we had the unavoidably salacious reports about the first pregnant man, Thomas Beatie—who turned out to be a woman who has had a sex change operation (in fact, the operation only involved the removal of breast glands to flatten her/his chest). Thomas Beatie’s wife Nancy apparently inseminated him using sperm from an anonymous donor—after first being refused medical assistance by eight different doctors. In an interview Beatie said, “It’s not a male or female desire to have a child,” he said. “It’s a human desire. I have a very stable male identity.” And Mrs Beatie explained that “He’s going to be the father and I’m going to be the mother,” she said.

    

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