Nov. 2000 Vol. 221 No. 11  Editorial

Thomas R. Wright, Jr.,  Editorial Director

A global warmer changes stance

Not long ago, we quietly decided to forego the global warming (GW) discourse, because the topic had nearly achieved parity with religion and politics, i.e., nobody ever wins the argument. We say "nearly," since GW can be refuted by science, which, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to bother its adherents. Thus, GW discussions often escalate into arguments, ultimately making somebody mad. So, we quit arguing.

But now comes a revelation by one of the leading proponents of GW that the remedies set out within the Kyoto Protocol to cure the problem may be worse than the "disease" itself. It’s also surprising that the now two-month-old report has received little attention in the media.

Issued by NASA scientist James Hansen, "Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario" says that drastically reducing fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions to end GW could be risky and possibly even fruitless. The report says a less costly alternative might be to go after other emissions such as methane, CFCs, nitrous oxide, carbon soot, etc.

As pointed out by The Torch, a newsletter from the Society for Environmental Truth, the James Hansen defection from the roster of CO₂ limitation supporters is very important, given the Clinton / Gore "steady drumbeat of propaganda on the necessity to control CO₂ emissions to prevent" GW. Hansen’s change of heart just might help to counter the strategy of using executive orders and administrative rules to get around the U.S. Senate’s refusal to ratify Kyoto. Let’s hope so.

Renewable fossil fuels? An ordinary cow in Iowa could hold the answer to the dilemma that has worried industry observers for decades – what’ll we do when we run out of oil? That’s because "Bessie" is carrying the embryo of a gaur – a humpbacked, cow-like jungle animal native to India and Burma, which is officially listed as endangered. If the advances in cloning technology being applied with the gaur are successful, then extinction could be a thing of the past (pun intended).

According to an article on the web site of the UK-based newspaper The Independent, scientists have plans to bring extinct animals back to life. And the gaur calf – already called Noah – should be born this month. Noah was created using DNA from a skin cell taken from a dead gaur.

Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., also plan to try cloning giant pandas, but their most ambitious endeavor will be the resurrection of extinct species. They will begin with a Spanish mountain goat. The last known survivor died nine months ago, but some of that goat’s cells were preserved in liquid nitrogen. If a successful clone like the gaur is obtained, then a historic first of restoring an extinct species will have been achieved.

Armed with the above information, it shouldn’t take long for some genius to declare that we can replace our depleting oil and gas resources by cloning dinosaurs by the millions. Obviously, all we need is more fossils to produce more fossil fuels, right? Well, no, and fortunately, researchers say the technology won’t lead to a real-life "Jurassic Park." Although one would think that dinosaurs could be cloned by extracting their DNA from insects that died millions of years ago, DNA is a complex chemical that decays too much over such enormous periods to make cloning possible.

Despite the fact that we won’t be adding any oil reserves through cloning, the process could still produce revolutionary benefits for the industry – the most obvious being the possibility of developing resources where endangered species now live. Robert Lanza, vice president of medical and scientific development at ACT, told The Washington Post that "One hundred species are lost every day, and these mass extinctions are mostly our own doing. Now that we have the technology to reverse that, I think we have the responsibility to try."

According to The Independent, not all conservationists want to see the gaur experiment succeed. "There is a very hollow echo of a gaur in the birth of that animal to a cow in Iowa," said Kent Redford, with the Wildlife Conservation Society. "To say that it is a gaur disrespects all gaurs in the places where gaurs live. That animal will never live its life in true gaurdom, to wander in the forests of India and frolic with other gaurs and die and let teak trees grow out of it. That’s the gaur I’m working to save." And we gaur-antee you, nobody could have said it better than Redford did.

Latest stereotypes. Maybe it’s the popularity of the Dilbert cartoon, but we seem to be receiving more and more letters and e-mails that include jabs at engineers. And since a goodly number of our readers (and our editors) are engineers, we feel compelled to pass along a few of the better ones.

For example, do you know how to identify an extroverted engineer? Well, when he talks to you, he looks at your shoes instead of his own.

Know why engineers cross the road? Because they looked in the file, and that’s what they did last year.

Want to drive an engineer completely insane? Tie him to a chair, stand in front of him, and fold up a road map the wrong way.

And, engineers usually fit one or more of the following descriptions:

• Sales people at the local computer store can’t answer any of their questions.
• They have saved every power cord from every broken appliance.
• They look forward to Christmas so they can put the kids’ toys together.
• They still own a slide rule and know how to use it.
• They’ve tried to repair a $5 radio.

And their spouses don’t have the foggiest idea of what they do at work.