Comments

  1. Tabby Lavalamp says

    Apparently the most reasonable way to avoid nuclear war is to bomb the crap out of anyone who doesn’t already have nuclear weapons but is thinking of doing anything even vaguely nuclear. Particularly if we don’t currently like them.

  2. MAJeff, OM says

    I remember growing up in the 1970s, including being absolutely terrified after watching “The Day After” (I must have been like 9 or 10), and constantly feeling terror. I seriously did not think I would live long enough to be this old because we were going to destroy the planet.

    That kind of existential terror…well, I’m glad to see my students don’t have the same sort of growing up experience.

  3. kingl says

    As I look at the front page of todays newspaper, I struggle to find much optimism:

    India blasts: Death toll reaches 45
    The death toll after a series of blasts in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad has risen to 45.

    Islamic terrorists threaten Beijing Olympics
    Chinese police are questioning claims by an Islamic terrorist group that they were responsible for a series of bombings.

  4. Roger says

    >As I look at the front page of todays newspaper, I struggle to find much optimism< Is it enough to make you want to reach for your bible?!!!

  5. kcanadensis says

    “Is it enough to make you want to reach for your bible?!!!”

    Some of us are not comforted by fairy-tales.

  7. Roger says

    >Some of us are not comforted by fairy-tales< Indeed. But in the face of massive annihilation it's easy to understand why millions are

  8. says

    Yeah, there’s just nothing quite as comforting in the face of possible annihilation than a book that promises that the world will be annihilated and if you’ve missed the wrong bit of what you’re supposed to think about the world then you get to face an eternity of ongoing annihilation. Who needs a teddy bear when you’ve got Jehovah? He’s just like a plush toy, except he’s hard, unyielding, constantly pissed off and completely imaginary.

  9. Mirella says

    >Some of us are not comforted by fairy-tales

    Indeed. But in the face of massive annihilation it’s easy to understand why millions are

    As a justification to continue hurting other people?

  10. Matt says

    >Indeed. But in the face of massive annihilation it’s easy to understand why millions are

    It’s easy to understand why millions face massive annihilation at the hands of fairy-tale believers, too. The fact that an idea can influence apocalyptic behavior but also provide a psychological comfort for the death it prescribes does not redeem the idea in any way, shape of form.

    It’s one of those cases where the bathwater poisons the baby.

  11. steve norton says

    Thank you PZ for that clip of Carl Sagan. I am always reminded how much we need his voice of reason and compassion and how too soon he left life`s stage. he identified that fault line between rational and irrational thinking, gave witness to it and tried to build bridges over it, you know come on over the water is fine over here.it is only through that kind of education that we can keep the madness(authoritarianism, superstition and narrssistic fear)empowered by technology at bay.

  12. JoJo says

    For centuries there have been numerous attempts to outlaw various weapons. During the 14th Century, the Catholic Church declared crossbows to be “unchristian” and made their use a sin.* Everything that Sagan said about nuclear weapons is quite true. The question is, what do we do about it?

    I’ve made no secret here that I was a naval officer. A major part of my job was to protect the country “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” I served in two different ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). At the time, and still to this day, I believe that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was and is a viable defense against nuclear attack. Attempts were made to limit nuclear weapons were made, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties (SALT I and II) were successful in reducing the number of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

    One thing to consider about nuclear weapons is that world peace is in the hands of the country whose leadership is least stable. Whatever his other faults, Gordon Brown of Britain is unlikely to order missile launches without extreme provocation. Kim Jong Il of North Korea might blast Seoul or Tokyo just because he’s feeling extra cranky. MAD is a deterrent to keep Kim in check.

    One of my objections to the Bush administration is they decided to scrap the START III (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). Instead, they went with the Star Wars Missile Defense System, aka No Defense Contractor Left Behind. While the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) has reduced nuclear warhead inventories in both the U.S. and Russia, START III would have done more.

    As Sagan said in the video, producing nuclear weapons is actually rather easy. Any industrialized country has the capability of doing it. Delivery systems are more difficult. However, if I had only a nuclear weapon in the Middle East and wanted to destroy New York, I’d put it in an intermodal container and send it to the container port in Bayonne, New Jersey. Not as fast as an SSBN launch, but perfectly viable.

    Nuclear weapons are here to stay. All we can do is discourage their use.

    *The objection to crossbows was that they were relatively cheap and a peasant could be trained in their use in a few days. A crossbow bolt could penetrate a knight’s armor. So instead of the nobility being able to kill the peasantry without fear of repercussion, a peasant could kill a knight from a distance. The church naturally wanted to put a stop to that nonsense.

  13. OctoberMermaid says

    It’s ok. Jesus will rapture the good guys before this ever happens, so if we ever get really bored, we can have a nuclear war and enjoy the spectacle of Jesus making all the nukes disappear before impact.

  16. craig says

    “Whatever his other faults, Gordon Brown of Britain is unlikely to order missile launches without extreme provocation. Kim Jong Il of North Korea might blast Seoul or Tokyo just because he’s feeling extra cranky. MAD is a deterrent to keep Kim in check.”

    You’re saying that logic will dissuade a nutjob from being a nutjob?

    Sure, it may work in the case of a sociopath who wants power but wants to stay alive – but will it work if the nutjob doesn’t MIND dying and taking his country with him?

  17. FredCG says

    Thank you for this wonderful clip of Sagan. I too grew up during the height of the cold war. I remember elementary school drills where we were instructed to turn our desks over and sit under them to protect us from firestorms and fallout. We were also treated to tours of the subterranean basement of the school, where we would presumably survive the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Several of our neighbors built fallout shelters. All of this plus the apocalytpic 8mm film clips shown in school about nuclear war and how to survive in the radiation poisoned post-nuclear world gave me nightmares. Sagan’s beautifully spoken cautionary words remind us of the work we still have to do to survive.

  18. Sorry that this is off topic for this post says

    “And more: we’ll go to communion after that, we’ll hide the hosts one way or another and bring them home; and at lunch we’ll find some not very Christian use to which these abject symbols may be put.” …

    “Once we have ceased to believe in God, my dear,” I pointed out, “the profanations you have in mind become so much pure childishness, the worse for being useless.”

    “Childishness, yes,” she rejoined, “that I cannot deny. But they excite me mentally and for that I value them. … [T]he better part of Europe assigns a very holy significance to that host, to that crucifix, and that exactly is why I am fond of profaning them: I hit at public opinion, that entertains me, I vomit on the prejudices they strove to inculcate in me when I was young, I obliterate them, that excites me.”

    – From Juliette, by the Marquis de Sade, pp. 450-1 in Wainhouse’s translation

  20. negentropyeater says

    It is estimated that there are approx. 30,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled on the planet, of which 95% by two nations only, Russia (16,000+) and the USA (12,000+). The other 7 nations combined have less than 10% of Russia or the USA’s stockpile.

    Russia and the USA, seeing that this was a bit exagerated, agreed in 2002 in the SORT treaty to reduce their stockpiles to 2,200 warheads each by 2012.
    In 2003, the US rejected Russian proposals to further reduce both nation’s nuclear stockpiles to 1500 each. Many say that this refusal was a sign of US aggression and accuse the US of thus leaving the danger of US and Russia’s mutual destruction.
    In 2007, for the first time in 15 years, the United States built some new warheads. These were to replace some older warheads as part of the Minuteman III upgrade program.
    Russia is actively producing and developing new nuclear weapons. Since 1997 it manufactures Topol-M (SS-27) ICBMs.

    Needless to say, until Russia and the USA will have effectively reduced their stockpiles to a less threatening level of 3,000 to 4,000 warheads combined and stopped developping and producing new ones, I don’t think any nation with nuclear ambitions will be treating any of these two nations talk of nuclear non proliferation seriously.

  22. Laser Potato says

    “This is all so sobering that I feel the need to get drunk. Now.”
    I’ll drink to that!
    DOOK DOOK DOOK

  23. says

    Oh my.
    Who am I to contradict Carl Sagan?
    I’ll try anyway. Nukes are a very disgusting thing indeed, but I’m afraid I have to agree with JoJo @#12. Were it not for the aptly named MAD, we might have been in for sixty years, or possibly more, of all-out conventional warfare. And that, my friends, would have been nasty. I know I shouldn’t quote alternative-history fiction, but for a taste of what a decades-long total war would be like, read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Years of Rice and Salt”.
    Sagan’s right, however, in that it’s about time that we, as a species, take our heads out of our butts and act like responsible and sane adults. However, since it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon, I sleep much better knowing that the nukes are still there and operational.
    A sick thought, I know. But we live in a world that’s ruled by sick and insane people.

  24. phisrow says

    @ JoJo #12: As somebody once remarked in one of my history classes, the crossbow was a “weapon of class destruction” and hence banned.

  25. Jason Dick says

    You’re saying that logic will dissuade a nutjob from being a nutjob?

    Sure, it may work in the case of a sociopath who wants power but wants to stay alive – but will it work if the nutjob doesn’t MIND dying and taking his country with him?

    This is the concern, isn’t it? And, anyway, is MAD even a reasonable position to take? I mean, if we consider that the only reasonable situation under which a nuclear exchange will actually occur is by the action of a madman, would it really make any sense to nuke the hell out of the guy’s country? That would just add more death, destruction, and environmental disaster to an already horrible situation.

  26. Xander says

    Am I the only one who thinks Sagan sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix?

  30. says

    Our foreign policy has painted us into a corner. It reminds me of the story about the kid whose grandfather sent him up a tree after a wildcat. He climbed the tree, there was a lot of yelling and howling, and he called down; “OK Gran’pa, I got him! Now how do I let go?”

    We have been in a position for fifty years to change the world for the better and we’ve spent that time clutching oil drums to our chest and saying; “My Presscious!” and subverting small countries while building an arsenal that would be classed as a symptom in DSM-4.

    For starters we should unilaterally reduce our arsenal to, say, 100 bombs. Start supporting green energy as if our (grandchildren’s) lives depended on it. And as a basic heuristic, stop supporting countries that practice torture. Of course, that implies we stop practicing it ourselves.

  31. kent says

    A strong military in the US is only to protect corporate interests. If there were truly any desire to make the world a safe place to live for the majority of the population, the US government could make that happen. The money we spend on killing could be cut in half while still maintaining the ability to scare the hell out of everyone else on the planet. The leftover could be spent on life rather than death. We might even make a few friends around the world.
    In case nobody noticed, defending our corparate interests is one of the reasons terrorism found its way here.

  32. Roger says

    100 bombs, or 30,000 – does it really make a difference? People are, naturally, very stupid, short-sighted, ill- (or un-)educated. And led by fools, to boot.

    My feeling is that this is a beautiful planet, and that given it’s great geological history BEFORE humans evolved, it might become beautiful again. Once we’re all gone.

  33. says

    Come on now, Roger @#32, you shouldn’t say that sort of thing. Humanity, as such, is the greatest thing since sliced bread (now that I tkink about it, it even predates sliced bread). Maybe the planet would be even more beautiful if we all were gone, but who would be there to behold the beauty?
    Hm?

  34. Jesse, Dallas says

    Meanwhile, the Catholics are going ape-shit over a cracker.

    They just don’t see the point. If people can get that stupid over a piece of bread, how hard would it be to talk them into using a nuke?

    Seem like a stretch? Thing about how hard it was to talk the nation into a war in Iraq.

  36. JoJo says

    You’re saying that logic will dissuade a nutjob from being a nutjob?

    Sure, it may work in the case of a sociopath who wants power but wants to stay alive – but will it work if the nutjob doesn’t MIND dying and taking his country with him?

    You’re right. Nothing will deter a truly suicidal national leadership. Too few people know about Paraguayan president Francisco Solano López and the War of the Triple Alliance. If Solano López and Bartolomé Mitre, president of Argentina, had had nuclear weapons, most of South America would have become a wasteland.

  37. tim Rowledge says

    The problem with MAD is that it can only be of any value if both (all) sides actually
    a) believe that the other side(s) has more or less comparable military power,
    b) care about lots of people dying
    c) care if lots of their *own* people die
    d) have any sense of self preservation.
    Given the utter insanity of many religious wackaloons, how can we feel confident of this? If you believe that smiting the {insert nasty epithet for enemy here} must be destroyed in order to please {insert name of sky-fairy here} and that you will be rewarded with {insert afterlife fantasy reward here} then why would you pay any attention to the whole tedious concept of MAD?

    Like capitalist economics being based on the demonstrably wrong assumption that people are rational economic agents, MAD is based on the assumption that peope are rational about their survival. I don’t think the evidence is terribly comforting there, ether.

  38. says

    That kind of existential terror…well, I’m glad to see my students don’t have the same sort of growing up experience.

    Posted by: MAJeff, OM | July 27, 2008 8:41 AM

    I follow the advice of Taj Mahal, the legendary blues guy: “If you ain’ scared, you ain’ right!”

  40. says

    Roger #32: 100 bombs, or 30,000 – does it really make a difference?”

    Well yes it does; it’s the difference between a couple of devastated countries and a devastated planet. Between a cautionary tale and no one left to hear it.

    Sure it’s easy to be cynical and think that if all the humans were gone that would solve everything. But for some reason it isn’t a solution I find personally attractive. Much better if we used our brains to think our way out of the situation.

  41. says

    Sagan was one of those who truly “got” it, and had a podium from which to announce it.

    so they trashed him. You know Carl Sagan “INHALED”? And everybody knows pot-heads say crazy shit. Can’t believe a word they say. Mind-altered! Hippies!!!

  43. soboco says

    Nukes aren’t going away, and since that’s a fact, I’m glad that we have a bunch. I don’t trust, or take at face value, everything my government says, but I trust it more with our nukes than I do most other countries.

  44. Dustin says

    Nukes aren’t going away, and since that’s a fact, I’m glad that we have a bunch. I don’t trust, or take at face value, everything my government says, but I trust it more with our nukes than I do most other countries.

    onald Raygun is trolling from beyond the grave!

  45. Roger says

    >decrepitoldfool @#40:it’s the difference between a couple of devastated countries and a devastated planet

    I don’t think the fallout from nuclear weapons recognises national boundaries. We’d just die more slowly. I’m not suggesting that the removal of humans is in any way a “solution”; merely that we are probably only temporary custodians of earth anyway.

  46. JoJo says

    Like capitalist economics being based on the demonstrably wrong assumption that people are rational economic agents, MAD is based on the assumption that peope are rational about their survival. I don’t think the evidence is terribly comforting there, ether.

    Your comment about capitalism is such a vast oversimplification that it’s pretty well meaningless.

    Most people are rational about their survival, including national survival. Certainly most politicians are. It doesn’t do a lot of good having power if there’s nobody to be powerful over.

    MAD was a successful deterrent against the USSR for forty years. There’s a school of thought that, at the height of the Vietnam War, the USSR didn’t take advantage of the U.S. preoccupation with Vietnam to further its international endeavors. On paper, the late 1960s would have been the perfect time for the Soviets to invade West Germany. The U.S. had most of its military committed to Vietnam (in 1968 12 divisions or division equivalents were in Vietnam out of 19 divisions in the Army and Marine Corps). The other NATO countries didn’t have 12 divisions between them. The Group of Soviet Forces (GSF) in Germany had 24 divisions in 1968. So why didn’t the Politboro allow the GSF to overrun West Germany? Because the Soviet leadership realized that the U.S. could not respond to an invasion with conventional forces and would probably use nuclear weapons.

    As I said previously, MAD is not a deterrent against a suicidal national leadership. However, very few national leaders are or have been suicidal.

  47. Bill Dauphin says

    I remember growing up in the 1970s, including being absolutely terrified after watching “The Day After” (I must have been like 9 or 10),

    Now you’re just being cruel, Jeff: I watched it in the TV lounge of my dorm… at graduate school!

    Now if I could only remember where I put that Geritol…. 8^)

  48. Breakfast says

    Given that the world hasn’t been destroyed yet — in fact, there’s been no nuclear bombing I’ve heard of since 1945 — I feel pretty confident in the MAD defence. I’d say even wacky dictators do still have a sense of self-preservation. I doubt if anyone rises to power by just being homicidal; they have to cultivate power intelligently and they will want to protect it. Even if their entire regime is an exercise in insane narcissism, they’ll still have all the more reason to want to preserve themselves.

    And even if it’s not that effective…what’s the alternative?
    It’s a classic no-win prisoner’s dilemma situation. No country will benefit from reducing their armaments even if every country would benefit from the disappearance of all armaments. Moreover, pointing out the latter will mean nothing to nationalist, aggressive states whose goal is to take the upper hand rather than to maximize overall human success.

  49. says

    Roger: I can’t see anything on this planet that could evolve into something that is even remotely comparable to us – at least not when it comes to cognitive and mental capabilities, and surely not within the next couple of hundred thousand years. Stephen Baxter, who wrote some very nice SciFi called “Evolution” would probably disagree, but what the heck.
    Now I know I’m walking on pretty thin ice here, what with Professor Myers being a biologist and me being only a fairly well-educated layman, but: Unless there are environmental changes far worse than global warming, there is no need for humanity to dramatically evolve… biologically. That is to say, it is very unlikely that we sprout an extra arm or leg or brain – although the latter might be desirable.
    Now while individual humans can, by definition, not evolve and the human race is unlikely to do so, societies, political and economical structures and, consequently, individual minds can. And they must, if we place any value in the continued existence of sentient, self-conscious and thinking beings.
    And we do that, don’t we?

  50. says

    Sure it’s easy to be cynical and think that if all the humans were gone that would solve everything. But for some reason it isn’t a solution I find personally attractive.

    I think that is what some people would call “curing a disease by killing the patient.”

  51. Nick Gotts says

    Breakfast@48,
    There have been at least 3 occasions where we came to the brink of all-out nuclear war: the well-known one is the Cuban missile crisis, both the others I know of were in 1983 (google “Stanislav Petrov” and “Able Archer” for details. India and Pakistan also appeared on the brink not long ago – and a regional nuclear war would be disastrous enough. The alternative is the strengthening and extension of the NPT, with the eventual goal of abolishing all nuclear wepaons. Yes, I know previous attempts to abolish particular kinds of weapons failed, but for the first time in history we live in a world where global treaties are sometimes effective (e.g. the Montreal Protocol).

    Also, to cheer everyone up, I recommend:http://www.humansecuritybrief.info/figures.html Contrary to what many believe, the prevalence of armed conflict has been decreasing quite steadily since 1945, and is now at historically low levels and still falling.

  52. JoJo says

    Martin Van Creveld wrote in The Transformation of War:

    History has shown that there are two kinds of warfare practiced. The first is the use of military forces and tactics to obtain territory, power, or position. The principle assumption underlying such ‘power seeking’ warfare is that the participants will refrain from actions threatening their survival.
    The second, and much rarer, classification is ‘total warfare’. This has its goal as the total destruction of a rival’s military and political power. At times, total warfare may involve the total destruction of a specific culture or racial type, but the goal is still the total destruction of something.

  53. Dustin says

    Stanislav Petrov

    That’s the guy I was looking for. It’s adorable that so many people in this thread think that the only thing which could trigger a nuclear war is that one side wants to start one.

  54. says

    I think a lot of people have missed the point Sagan was trying to make, that the traditional excuse: “Other countries have it”, will only mean that more countries will see fit to obtain it in the future.

    He’s absolutely right, it is easy, and post AQ Khan, we have no idea how widely the Zippe type centrifuge design has been disseminated. I highly recommend the book Nuclear Weapons by Jeremy Bernstein if you do not already see the folly of it all.

    There are people who just don’t give a damn about how much the world suffers, who relish the thought of destruction, and for them MAD is sure victory.

    I feel like I’m restating the video now, but it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely if we reach a committed decision to do so.

    The idea that MAD will avert nuclear war in the first place is a tidy little assumption that we cannot afford to be wrong about. Oh, and the idea that we would have gone into all out war with the Soviets had we not had nukes is exceedingly difficult to justify. The Unites States is geographically isolated and as my history professor used to say, “The first rule of European warfare is: Do not invade Russia.”

    Somehow we managed to kill each other in large numbers anyway through proxy wars, and I suspect that the same thing would have happened anyway. You look at the balance of the situation and take the thousands killed in hot wars, and weigh it against the possible decimation of the human species, I’ll take the hot wars.

    BTW, what the fuck does the wafer thing have to do with this? I for one, and sick of the issue.

    Did I miss something or has it suddenly ceased to be “just a cracker?”

  55. says

    Roger: “I don’t think the fallout from nuclear weapons recognises national boundaries. We’d just die more slowly.”

    Yes and no; it is a matter of degree. There have been 711 nuclear tests in the atmosphere or underwater, and while the rate of leukemia increased worldwide, it wasn’t a species-killer for us. I think a couple hundred nukes would be horrible worldwide, but not the end. Several thousand? Very likely the end.

    And I don’t know if we’re “temporary custodians” of the planet. Temporary, yes, but custodian suggests someone put us in charge.

    JoJo: “As I said previously, MAD is not a deterrent against a suicidal national leadership. However, very few national leaders are or have been suicidal.

    Russian Roulette much? How many would it take?

    Breakfast: “Given that the world hasn’t been destroyed yet — in fact, there’s been no nuclear bombing I’ve heard of since 1945 — I feel pretty confident in the MAD defence.

    Reminds me of the joke about the guy who jumps off the Empire State building, and as he passes the 30th floor, says; “Well, I’m not dead yet!”

    I’m reasonably sure that sooner or later, there will be another nuclear war. Never mind crazy North Koreans; I’m not even that sanguine about the sanity of our leaders.

  56. Nick Gotts says

    On paper, the late 1960s would have been the perfect time for the Soviets to invade West Germany. – JoJo

    Another possible explanation for why they didn’t (two really): they lacked both the motivation to do so, and confidence in their capacity to do so successfully. To assume that the reason the Cold War never turned hot was the existence of nuclear weapons is unjustified: consider the long period without wars between the great powers from 1815-1866. Neither the USA nor Russia (“USSR” now looks like a temporary alias) had to destroy the other in order to survive, as the allies and Nazi Germany both did in WW2.

  58. amphiox says

    ac: it is inaccurate I think to talk about a “need” for evolving. Evolution follows automatically from the action of natural forces upon a population. Humans may one day be able to inject a modicum of intent/design into our own evolution one day, through genetic engineering, so that if you wanted your child to have, say a third arm, (maybe you have dreams of being a tennis parent or something) you might be able to. We shall see.

    Modern civilization has in some respects reduced selection pressure on our species, but this has been a recent phenomenon. There is already some good evidence that humans have been actively evolving in the near (historical) past at the very least. Reduction of selection pressure doesn’t mean its total elimination. And genetic drift, random mutation, etc are still at work. In fact, with reduced selection pressure, there is an increased likelihood of the accumulation of neutral variation.

    And if there ever is a nuclear war, selection pressure is going to go way up, and given the accumulation of variation during this civilized interlude, I’d wager that humans would start evolving pretty fast after that. In fact, there’s a fair chance we’d speciate in that scenario.

  59. Jors says

    I find this thread somewhat ironic, since it is likely that Sagan would completely oppose PZ’s social attitude. I posted the following in yesterday’s “I get email” thread (which was ignored, save for one person who misunderstood it).

    From Carl Sagan’s 1994 keynote address to CSICOP:

    What I’m trying to say is that the one deficiency which I see in the skeptical movement is an “us” verses “them.” A sense that we have a monopoly on the truth, those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons…or worse, and that…if you’re sensible you’ll listen to us, if not, to hell with you.

    That is non-constructive. That does not get our message across. That condemns us to permanent minority status. Whereas, an approach which from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of these problems understands that the society has arranged things…for very good reasons that skepticism is not well taught.

    By very good reasons I mean very good reasons for the protection of those in power. If skepticism is well understood, then who’s the skepticism going to be applied to except those in power. Those in power do not have a vested interest in everybody being able to ask searching questions.

    If we understand that then we have compassion to the abductees [persons who claim to have been abducted by aliens] and those who, startled, come upon crop circles and believe that they are supernatural, and then we have a much better chance of succeeding.

    I think it is key for us to make science and the scientific method more attractive, especially to the young. Because that’s a battle for the future.

    This is taken from around the 1:36 mark in the recording found here: http://www.pointofinquiry.org/ann_druyan_science_wonder_and_spirituality/

    I recommend listening to the whole speech before disagreeing with Sagan.

  60. Andy James says

    Considering so many climate scientists who say our climate is changing more rapidly than nearly all their models show, starvation and ecological collapse are more imminent than nuclear war.

    The interesting difference between the two is not the result, the end of civilization and most life on Earth, but the source of our peril. Nuclear war is committed between nation-state leaders as a single moment of decision. Climate change is pushed along by every single person on the planet who decides they require more carbon be pumped into the atmosphere for their own petty needs.

    Add to it the explosion of populations, and we have the recipe for utter disaster, and our only escape can be individual understanding of the scientific princpipals of climate change and its ramifications.

    Climate change is far beyond the capabilities of any god to produce or reverse, but not beyond the mind of all humankind.

  61. Dustin says

    I feel like I’m restating the video now, but it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely if we reach a committed decision to do so.

    And, because one of the smug peddlers of conventional wisdom tried to pass off the arms race as the only possible outcome due to the prisoner’s dilemma, this is a great time to reflect on the notion that game theory, as a theory, is designed to help you decide what to do. This isn’t a game with just one encounter, so it’s entirely possible and preferable for everyone to adopt a cooperative strategy in this case, and it’s simply a matter of being diplomatic and non-belligerent enough to convince the others that you won’t defect to encourage them to play cooperatively. There are also several players here, and punishment is an option, making the cost of defection for rogue states much too high to bear as long as most nations are playing cooperatively.

  62. amphiox says

    The scenario jojo described with regards to crossbows also occurred with early firearms. Pretty much everything that made the crossbow “bad” to certain authorities is ten times worse with guns. Several European states did in fact outlaw the use of guns.

    These pioneers in arms control ended up being overrun by gun-toting neighbours.

    Firearms were successfully eliminated in Togukawa-era Japan, after the unification of the nation under the shogunate, by a dictatorial regime with complete control over the entire area of a nation isolated from outside influence by natural boundaries. This persisted until Admiral Perry forced open Tokyo harbor with the threat of cannon fire, after which the Japanese readopted guns with gusto.

    So long as there is diversity in human society, advantageous weapons cannot be eliminated. There will always be someone nefarious to want it and resourceful enough to get it, whereupon everyone else will have to get it (or something that can neutralize it) to protect themselves.

    Given that a nuclear weapon can now be assembled off instructions from the internet, if you want the total elimination of nuclear arms, the only historically proven method is to establish a total world-wide totalitarian dictatorship with complete control over all resources, means of manufacture, and information systems. I think that would be worse than having the nuclear weapons.

    Alternately, one could through diplomacy and persuasion effect a voluntary global disarmament, but the voluntary aspect would have to be total. A single exception, and it won’t have to be a nation-state, would ruin it for everyone. This has never been accomplished in human history. If we actually manage to do this, I think then that we could justifiably claim to have evolved into a wiser species, and have the evidence to back it up.

    (There would still be the potential risk for the Simpsons scenario, whereby we get invaded by aliens wielding pitchforks, though)

  63. Dustin says

    Given that a nuclear weapon can now be assembled off instructions from the internet, if you want the total elimination of nuclear arms, the only historically proven method is to establish a total world-wide totalitarian dictatorship with complete control over all resources, means of manufacture, and information systems.

    When, in history, has it happened that nuclear weapons were totally abolished under a world-wide totalitarian dictatorship? Also, individuals typically do not have the resources to build a bomb, we’re talking about nations and, specifically, about arms races. Whether or not someone, somewhere knows how to buld a bomb is something different from whether two nations engage in an arms race, and there’s no reason to suggest that an authoritarian dictatorship could stop it at all, let alone that it is the only thing which could.

    Your logic leaves something to be desired.

  64. JoJo says

    The Chemist #55

    …but it is possible to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely if we reach a committed decision to do so.

    If everyone brushed and flossed their teeth each time they ate something, gingivitis would be notably reduced.

    The Chemist has expressed a noble sentiment. I’m sure none of us disagree in the least. However, like all idealistic ideas, application is a problem.

    As long as one country or one major socio-political group or even a large company decides they need nuclear weapons, they’ll have nuclear weapons. If Third World countries like Pakistan and North Korea can make nuclear weapons, then anyone can. The difficult part is delivery systems, not the warheads.

  65. Dustin says

    If everyone brushed and flossed their teeth each time they ate something, gingivitis would be notably reduced.

    Bad analogy. Brushing and flossing don’t have the structure of the game being played in nuclear arms races. There’s very little idealism in what is being suggested when disarmament is on the table.

  66. Andy James says

    I love Sagan, but toleration has been extended too softly and for far too long of the religious point of view.
    We need PZ, to show its ok to stand up against religion. More importantly, we need every person who feels similarly to do the same publicly, matter-of-fact-ly, in a matter that diminishes the actions of the religious but not their innate human intentions to do good.

    Religion must be dogged and ridiculed constantly. Its not OK to be wrong, not anymore. Its not ok to persist in fantasy that puts us all at risk. Religion persists in most minds not because of careful consideration of their surroundings, but because its the default explanation of our society. Public ridicule for religious beliefs can help to curb irrational attribution of natural and anthropogenic phenomena to a deity.

    God must not take credit for what science has accomplished (i.e. the Green Revolution, amazing medical understanding, not to mention our grasp of our place on Earth amongst the living things and in the universe as a speck). Doing so diminishes our progress as a species. Worse than that, god taking credit is a deception which is used to diminish the lives of all mankind.

    If god created “man”, then the universe is a puppet show put on for its entertainment. With god’s hand up your ass, who cares how things work.

    If we evolved, then we are the benefactors of a long line of survivors from grand antiquity. It becomes our duty to both thrive, and appreciate our state, but more importantly, to pass long a better world to forthcoming generations.

  67. Jason says

    #67 scores.

    The ‘simple kind-of life’ isn’t good enough to cut it anymore – the world has become exponentially more complex in the last century. People need to become more educated, and we need a world that will behave in a more intelligent way on all things.

  68. Al says

    The problem with MAD is that it breaks down when nuclear weapons get into the hands of those not associated with any one nation state, or come to that, any nation at all. Who do we hold hostage then?

  69. says

    Andy James #61: “Considering so many climate scientists who say our climate is changing more rapidly than nearly all their models show, starvation and ecological collapse are more imminent than nuclear war.

    You’re right of course. But wars are often fought over resources (Oil? Water?) I’d be very surprised if large-scale war didn’t follow ecological catastrophe.

    Nuclear war is committed between nation-state leaders as a single moment of decision. Climate change is pushed along by every single person on the planet who decides they require more carbon be pumped into the atmosphere for their own petty needs.

    Or who live in a society that all but requires owning a car, flying, etc. to function. There’s only so much one consumer can do. Alas, we tend to conceptualize ourselves as consumers rather than as citizens.

    Nuclear war is not a single moment of decision, BTW; it is years of preparation. We have a nuclear war infrastructure that exceeds the size of some national economies, paid for by us over a period of decades.

    Dustin #64: “Also, individuals typically do not have the resources to build a bomb

    Soon will. Biological, rather than nuclear, but in asymmetric warfare it will probably happen.

    There’s a saying; “If you want peace, work for justice”. In the future, that might be reworded as “If you want survival…”

  70. says

    Amphiox:
    I said that “unless there are environmental changes far worse than global warming, there is no need for humanity to dramatically evolve… biologically”. A world-wide thermonuclear war would certainly count as one major environmetal change; and I really don’t want to ruin my nice and quiet Sunday afternoon thinking about how it would force our species to adapt to radioactive wastes and, most importantly, to the sudden lack of anything that could be called civilization.
    Yes, there are genetic drifts; and yes, there are random mutations. I quite agree with you. It is, nonetheless, pretty hard for me to imagine any genetic drift or random mutation that would give an individual that extra chance of reproducing and passing on that particular trait on to the next generation.
    My point is that the environment we live in is more and more man-made. That’s a good thing, too, because for all I know, when it was only nature, unmitigated by urban civilization, that we were up against, it must have been close to hell on earth. Well, mostly. But think about how people died horrible deaths because there was no one who could set their broken leg straight and treat them with some anti-biotics, and you’ll know what I mean.
    Modern society sure does reward some traits such as intelligence and social skills, but these are not hard-wired into the DNA but acquired.
    So I maintain that evolution, nay, changes in human DNA do happen, but, at least for the time being, it happens on the software level, while the hardware setup remains unchanged. The emergence of civilization has given a whole new meaning to the terms “nature” and “environment”, as far as human evolution is concerned, and hey! I think we’re going to see some very, very interesting papers on that published in our livetimes.
    BTW, I have noticed that I’ve published my last post as “ac” instead of “acj” – so maybe evolution IS at work here and it wants idiots like me who can’t even spell their own name removed from the gene pool… ;)

  71. Grumpy says

    Xander #25: “Am I the only one who thinks Sagan sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix?”

    Not just you. As seen in this video:

    So naturally I imagined that someone had contrived the inverse, laying Agent Smith’s dialogue under the video of Sagan’s lecture.

  72. says

    #23

    for a taste of what a decades-long total war would be like, read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Years of Rice and Salt”.

    Or talk to anyone from Vietnam over forty.

  73. says

    Alternately, one could through diplomacy and persuasion effect a voluntary global disarmament, but the voluntary aspect would have to be total.

    There are plenty of examples of such voluntary disarmament, and integration of forces under a single agreed structure of command and control. Every nation state on the planet for one, the EU rapid reaction force and NATO for another.

    While this is a new order of scale, the same instruments of diplomacy and negotiation that created Bismarcks Germany, Washingtons United States and Whatisnames EU, will produce some future planetary congress.

    Either that or we are fucked of course. I’m rather hoping for the former. Detailed plan outlined below


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wxO0DfJZHg

  74. JoJo says

    A good number of years ago I wrote an essay on the Naval Disarmament Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s. I won’t reproduce the essay here (it’s quite long) but I’ll quote from one paragraph:

    These were agreements that did make a difference, as fleets actually were reduced. However, the treaties had some unintended results. Perhaps the biggest was that Japanese militarists would later use the treaties to argue that Japan had been insulted by relegation to a state of inferiority. Efforts at further significant reductions in naval armaments, which were made well into the 1930s, came to grief due to demands for “parity” by a militarized Japan and a resurgent Germany. Thus treaties aimed at reducing tensions and armaments eventually increased both. Disarmament does not always work out the way one would think it will. [emphasis added]

    I’m not concerned with the U.S., Russia or India starting a nuclear war. I do worry about a lot of small countries, some with names ending in “stan,” getting hold of nuclear weapons and deciding to get froggy. If they see everyone else disarming, they can try to become King of the Hill. As I said before: “…world peace is in the hands of the country whose leadership is least stable.”

  77. Dustin says

    Am I the only one who thinks Sagan sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix?

    Nope. But it wouldn’t amaze me too much if, in their big Baudrillardian wankfest, they were in a great big hurry to deliberately portray a popularizer of science as one of the “guards” of the cave.

  78. negentropyeater says

    Today, I think there is only one international organization that is still actively advocating total elimination of nuclear weapons :

    http://www.icanw.org/about-ican

    Problem is so far, they have been mainly succesful in reaching public opinion in countries that are not with nuclear weapons, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan…
    Until they make serious inroads in all 5 nuclear weapons states from the NPT, USA, Russia, France, UK and China, I don’t think much is going to happen.

  79. Breakfast says

    Dustin, #62:
    And, because one of the smug peddlers of conventional wisdom tried to pass off the arms race as the only possible outcome due to the prisoner’s dilemma, this is a great time to reflect on the notion that game theory, as a theory, is designed to help you decide what to do.

    Why would you say that? It is also an explanatory tool. In this case, it predicts that a self-interested party, in the absence of other motivators, would choose to escalate rather than draw back from an arms race, furnishing us with a great explanation for why something as insanely stupid as nuclear weaponry can persist in the world, much less have come into existence in the first place.

    This isn’t a game with just one encounter, so it’s entirely possible and preferable for everyone to adopt a cooperative strategy in this case, and it’s simply a matter of being diplomatic and non-belligerent enough to convince the others that you won’t defect to encourage them to play cooperatively. There are also several players here, and punishment is an option, making the cost of defection for rogue states much too high to bear as long as most nations are playing cooperatively.

    As I said, it’s obviously preferable for everyone to cooperate. However, I doubt the likelihood of it happening.

    “Punishment is an option”? Like, if North Korea nukes the United States, then all the cooperators will impose heavy sanctions? Invade and dethrone the government? I suppose an all-out violent invasion is pretty threatening. But if nuclear deterrence is at all more effective than the conventional kind, you can imagine why people would be sympathetic to keeping them around. (Especially if nukes would also give them a big advantage in the following armed conflict. Either against the forces themselves, or as a means of hostage-taking: “Continue the invasion and we’ll level San Francisco, too”)

    Al, at #69, mentions the scenario that strikes me as most immediately terrifying. A small group operating below the level of statehood has much less of an investment in world stability than, say, some well-established Evil Dictator. They are also much more difficult to target and deal with even in an all-out military retaliation (as 9/11 and its aftermath more than adequately demonstrated).

  80. Breakfast says

    That was pretty unclear, sorry:

    “…you can imagine why people would be sympathetic to keeping them (nukes) around. (Especially if nukes would also give them (North Korea or whoever) a big advantage in the following armed conflict.”

  81. DH says

    @#64:

    You are missing the point of the argument. It is not that nuclear weapons have ever been abolished under a world-wide dictatorship, it’s that it would take one to abolish them. The only time in history that a novel weapon with no comparable alternative has been successfully banned (i.e. guns in Shogunate Japan) is when they were banned in a relatively isolated nation with a very strong central government. Banning guns in European nations didn’t work because their neighbours had guns and simply took them over.

    Today, nowhere in the world is sufficiently isolated for a ban to be effective. The only way such a ban could be enforced is if the entire world was united under a strong central government. Which is unlikely in the extreme to happen.

  83. uncle frogy says

    thanks for the clip I actually got choked up watching it.
    Some thoughts in response to this thread.
    We have not had an exchange of city killer bombs is a fact. Is MAD (not the magazine) the only reason or are there other factors not the least of which was the death of Stalin. besides it has only been a mere 60+ years.
    It looks to me we fight with those who we see as the other, nationalism is the flag we fight under these days, could be a king or an idea or a God or a self defined cultural identity as easily, along with the lust for power.
    If we are ever to stop acting like that we will have to start seeing ourselves as all in the same group. I doubt that we will be able to do that as long as there are some countries seen as superior by others and themselves. When the US thinks of itself as the biggest,baddest and best, the leader of the world it will never happen. We can thank Shrub for advancing further the decline of the American Empire for helping to “level the playing field” world wide but not by helping to advance the rest of the world but by diminishing ourselves. If we can finally see all nations as more equal then we may have a chance of coming to an agreement. It is an agreement that is lacking.

    If not well there is a lot more time in the universe and more time in the earth. 500,000 years is nothing. “The laws of nature” have no vested interest in me, humans or earth.

    some truth in these lines from Macbeth “Out, out, brief candle!
    Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
    And then is heard no more. It is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing.”

  84. castletonsnob says

    Off topic, my apologies:

    To St. Michael,

    Perhaps you would like to respond to the questions I posed to you in an earlier post:

    I’m having a very difficult time following you, St. Michael.

    I asked how you would make PZ suffer, and you say you will pray for him. How does this work, exactly?

    You also mention you will pray for his conversion. To what do you hope he will convert?

    Can you offer any objective evidence that prayer is effective?

  86. DLC says

    Sagan had many things to say, and much of what he said carried wisdom with it. But, given that nuclear weapons are, as Sagan said, almost a cottage industry, how do we insure that no group of people open up shop to produce them ? You can’t stuff the nuclear genie back into the bottle.

  87. Strider says

    That line “…a world war II every second, for the length of a lazy afternoon.” has stuck with me since I first watched “Cosmos” when I was a freshman in high school. Pure poetry. We need someone like him advising the next president (hopefully, Obama). Thanks for the clip, PeeZed.

  88. Mark says

    Let’s not allow our fears to run away with us. The Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT), better known as the Moscow Treaty has been signed and has a goal of the reduction of to 1700-2200 operationally deployed warheads each by 2012.

    It’s not an ideal treaty. It has its flaws and problems. It’s a bit weak compared to START treaties. However, last year (2007) we cut our arsenal in half. And that order came from Warmonger in Chief, George Bush hisownself. He’s also proposing another 15% cut.

    Of course the world is still a dangerous place but we are inching our way toward sanity. Let’s try not to let the… heh, sum of all fears drive us?

  89. Naked Bunny with a Whip says

    Is it enough to make you want to reach for your bible?!!!

    I don’t understand how reading about the horrific things that happen in the Bible are any comfort after reading the news. I remember when I finally read that book in college. Let’s just say it was a good thing I was taking antidepressants at the time.

  90. Nick Gotts says

    If Third World countries like Pakistan and North Korea can make nuclear weapons, then anyone can. – JoJo@65

    It’s by no means certain North Korea has actually done so – their “test” appears to have had a yield of around 1Kt, which suggests it may have been a non-nuclear explosion: making a nuke with that low a yield is hard. It’s actually remarkable how little proliferation there has been so far, which suggests it’s not that easy to go nuclear-armed withjout unacceptable costs.

    It is not that nuclear weapons have ever been abolished under a world-wide dictatorship, it’s that it would take one to abolish them. – DH

    Why a dictatorship necessarily? Some form of common authority, certainly, but not necessarily even centralised; and even if centralised, not necessarily dictatorial.

  91. Blake says

    mmmmmno. making a nuke with a low yield is easy. it’s called a fizzle and it happened probably because they got their timing mechanism for the device’s explosive lenses wrong or they didn’t sufficiently purify their Pu-239 and the core predetonated.

  92. Naked Bunny with a Whip says

    it might become beautiful again. Once we’re all gone.

    It’s still beautiful. People who think the entire planet has become ugly need to look over the horizon. We do need to work to preserve the beauty that exists, but that doesn’t require human extinction.

  93. Nick Gotts says

    Blake@92 I understood it was hard to make a nuke that would both be useable as a weapon, and with that small a yield – that the 1Kt yield almost certainly meant it was not a successful test of a useable weapon. This could explain why they now appear ready to scrap their nuclear weapons progamme.

  94. DH says

    @#91 (Nick Gotts):

    Not a dictatorship necessarily, I will admit, but certainly a strong central government with enough coercive power to stop the nuclear armed plots or rebellions cold without having to resort to nuclear weapons themselves.

  95. says

    Jors @#60: That was done before Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, in which he pretty much pulls off the gloves and goes after religion and mysticism with a PZ-like fervor.

  96. says

    but certainly a strong central government with enough coercive power to stop the nuclear armed plots or rebellions cold without having to resort to nuclear weapons themselves.

    I’m not convinced a global goverment directly backed by force of arms is required, or even wise. What is needed is a nuclear agency able to drop in on anyone, anywhere without the right of refusal, backed by global laws passed by a global legislative body. The moral authority of such a body, with the option to request military secondments from nation states should be a sufficient deterent, as well as a firewall against a global authority becoming militarised.

  97. Benjamin Franklin says

    Mentality tells me that it would be great to eliminate all existing and future nuclear weapons.

    Reality warns me that it would be unlikely if not impossible to accomplish. There will always be one or more assholes (not to speak ill of the Ill)that will refuse to comply. Or one or more assholes that will lie categorically that they even have such weapons. (Do I hear the Horah playing in the background?)

    Then what is the alternative? Can anyone here imagine a scenario where the US is going to achieve concordance with, say, China, France, India, Russia, Packistan, and Kurzikstan? I’m not going to hold my breath till I see that day.

    The Genie is out of the bottle (Side note, on my vacation in Cape Canaveral, I noticed that they have a street ‘I dream of Jeanie Way’ – How cool is that?).

    If we want to sustain our existance and future on this pebble in the sky, we’re gonna need some sound thinkers to try and keep us out of planned extermination, and some luck to keep us out of being involved in the un-planned ones.

    This post brought to you by the good folks at Nukes for Jesus.
    …
    ..
    .

  98. Nick Gotts says

    DH@96,

    Systems of mutual surveillance can work in the absence of a strong central authority, and do so in many “social dilemma” situations concerning the exploitation of natural resources (google Elinor Ostrom). Building and maintaining nuclear weapons requires a lot of expertise and infrastructure, and a continuing supply of the right materials. If you could move by stages to a situation in which no country had immediately useable weapons, then to one in which it would take any country a year or more, and so on, a beefed-up continuation of the current IAEA inspection regime might suffice. Widespread civil nuclear power makes this more difficult, but still perhaps possible. Biological weapons may be harder to control. In any case, the other pressing problems we face mean we do need to move toward some global system of decision-making – for some issues, we really need to move toward one person one vote on a global basis, although this would clearly take a long time to achieve.

  99. LeeLeeOne says

    Prof. Myers, thank you for remembering Carl whose poetry and prose always left a lump in my throat. “Who speaks for Earth?”

  100. says

    In any case, the other pressing problems we face mean we do need to move toward some global system of decision-making – for some issues, we really need to move toward one person one vote on a global basis, although this would clearly take a long time to achieve.

    It could happen quite quickly, and it would be to the benefit of the worlds democracies to promote it. How long would one party rule in China last if their citizens were participating in planetary elections every 4 years? In principle, China is the last major democratic hold out, with the EU, US and India, plus South America, chunks of Asia and Africa, democracy is already the dominant political system.

    We don’t need a global government for global governance, but we do need a legislative body elected by the people. The EU manages just fine without a government as such.

  101. says

    St. Michael the Archangel, by his own admission banned troll Charlie FCCing Wagner, the asshat endungeoned for Wanking, Morphing, Stupidity, Insipidity, and Spamming, wrote:

    I have no desire to “make PZ suffer”. In fact, despite our disagreements, I kind of like him. If he was interested, I think we could even be friends.

    Time to update the killfile.

  102. Nick Gotts says

    Brian@102,
    I’d like to think you’re right, although I think there’d be a lot of resistance, and attempts at manipulation by national governments. It would be important that any such assembly is not elected on a national basis.

  104. Russell says

    Thank you for reminding us , as we face another round of hype,
    of the most wretched excess of pop science to date- Sagan’s attempt to scare the world into disarmament by an appeal to his own authority in the “nuclear winter fiasco”

    Given your distaste for apocalyptic myth mongering ,you might want to drive a rusty nail through the next copy of that hoary cold war tract, The Cold And The Dark , that comes to hand – history is full of prophets of doom that fail to deliver, and Sagan did the environment no good by putting the credibility of climate modeling at risk on the eve of the global warming debate.

  105. Nick Gotts says

    Brian@105,
    Thanks for the link. I’ll post a comment at your site (probably not tonight) – I have my own ideas for how global elections should be handled.

  106. Dustin says

    Apocalyptic myth-mongering? They’re nuclear weapons, shithead. If they aren’t apocalyptic, nothing is.

    This promises to be the most asinine thread since the neo-copperheads were running around in the comments on the Civil War video. With that, I am suddenly reminded of why I stopped commenting here. Toodles.

  107. says

    Is it too much to ask for you to leave the cracker induced talk in the cracker thread(s)?

    Barring that, maybe exchange emails?

  108. marktime says

    Surely the thermonuclear elephant in the room is Israel. While they have nukes, the goal for the Middle Eastern powers will be to gain some sort of parity, e.g. Iran. Israel will not permit this and bomb whatever facility it can find, further alienating its Arab neighbours. And like it or not, one nuke over Israel and the rest is history. How can a MAD scenario operate in this case? The aggressor would likely get a good pasting but of the two combatents it will survive, just. If there was ever a case for arms reduction it’s in this theatre but I don’t see the Israelies signing up in a hurry.

  109. says

    Sagan did the environment no good by putting the credibility of climate modeling at risk on the eve of the global warming debate.

    It seems odd to blame Sagan for making the best use of the technology of his time, while absolving the idiots in the present that reference the limitations of climate models from the 1970’s. Idiots that seem oblivious to the billion fold increases in modeling capacity and speed.

    Sagan did the best he could, these deniers have no excuse.

  110. JoJo says

    Nick Gotts #91

    It’s by no means certain North Korea has actually done so – their “test” appears to have had a yield of around 1Kt, which suggests it may have been a non-nuclear explosion: making a nuke with that low a yield is hard.

    There’s another possibility. Boosted fission weapons may have an unboosted yield in this range, which is sufficient to start deuterium-tritium fusion in the boost gas at the center; the fast neutrons from fusion then insure a full fission yield. Another possibility is the North Koreans may have tested the igniter portion of a fusion weapon.

    Benjamin Franklin #99

    Can anyone here imagine a scenario where the US is going to achieve concordance with, say, China, France, India, Russia, Packistan, and Kurzikstan?

    It’s worse than that. It’s almost certain that North Korea and Israel have nuclear weapons. Other countries working on nuclear weapons are Iran and Syria. South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are reported to have either destroyed or transferred their nuclear weapons. However, there is the possibility, especially with South Africa and Kazakhstan, that a few were kept.

  111. andyo says

    St. Michael,

    Sorry to break this to you, but you’re not an agnostic just because you can say that you are.

    You are not an agnostic. Look up the word.

  112. says

    If there was ever a case for arms reduction it’s in this theatre but I don’t see the Israelies signing up in a hurry.

    All the more reason for international agreements that ensure paraiah status, and even targeted sanctions, for those who don’t sign up once a threshold has been reached.

  114. castletonsnob says

    St. Michael the Archangel,

    You wrote:

    You must have me confused with someone else.

    If so, I apologize. I was referring to comment #44 from the “One goofy site” post in which someone who indentified himself as “St. Michael the Archangel” wrote the following:

    To Mrs Tilton:

    HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Are you kidding me?

    //Before you write this sort of thing publicly in future, you might wish to bone up on what is deemed per se defamatory.//

    Oh I believe and fully support all of what I said. I will not rest until he is fired. I will not rest until he has lost everything that he holds dear, if that is his wicked heart actually knows and understands love. I will not rest until this piece of filth suffers for every insult, every action, and every thing that he did to insult Christ, his church, and all of the Christians in the world.

    No I will not rest.. and neither will the other 1.1 billion Catholics when they learn what this little worm has done.

    If you are not the same St. Michael the Archangel, would you please refer me to the comments that are really yours?

  115. JoJo says

    Thanks for introducing yourself, Charlie. Now please either discuss nuclear disarmament or hie yourself elsewhere.

  116. Sili says

    Naïve, perhaps, but I’m inclined to think that breeder reactors are the way out of this mess.

    Fissile material is a very limited resource. The moment there’s a sufficiently large demand for it for energy production, won’t there be an economic insentive to dismantle bombs?

    Getting even more cynical – might the attempts at haulting Iran’s nuclear research be grounded in a desire to keep nuclear weapons from becoming unattractive(r) to the general public?

  117. Jors says

    Phoenix Woman @#97:

    Jors @#60: That was done before Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, in which he pretty much pulls off the gloves and goes after religion and mysticism with a PZ-like fervor.

    Page 300 of the paperback The Demon-Haunted World contains a very similar passage:

    And yet, the chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is in its polarization: Us vs. Them–the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you’re sensible, you’ll listen to us; and if not, you’re beyond redemption. This is unconstructive. It does not get the message across. It condemns the skeptics to permanent minority status; whereas, a compassionate approach that from the beginning acknowledges the human roots of pseudoscience and superstition might be much more widely accepted.

    If we understand this, then of course we feel the uncertainty and pain of the abductees, or those who dare not leave home without consulting their horoscopes, or those who pin their hopes on crystals from Atlantis. And such compassion for kindred spirits in a common quest also works to make science and the scientific method less off-putting, especially to the young.

  118. says

    I assure you it was not me. My real name is Charlie Wagner and I will no longer use St. Michael.

    Assurances from a lying sack of crap are worthless.

  119. says

    Now it’s getting kind of spooky here; what with trolls stealing other people’s identities… we should have some kind of identification system that prevents that kind of childish behavior.
    But speaking of childish behaviour, I got myself an eMail adress @catholic.org; which is one great thing to have when you want to invade certain Christian blogs and web sites.
    I wonder: Will this post make it through PZs filters?
    Only one way to find out!

  120. Mooser says

    That kind of existential terror…well, I’m glad to see my students don’t have the same sort of growing up experience.

    Holy Shit! It was the only thing which made life worth living. The only thing which gave it any savor or piquancy, at least one could fantasize about an escape from stultification.
    If today’s kids don’t have it, they should. But in our drive to continually infantialise them, we hide the truth, in that the danger of nuclear bombing is greater than before.

    It must be hell growing up without it in the USA. If I didn’t think that a nuclear holacaust was at least possible, if not probable, I most likely would have attempted suicide.

  121. Mooser, Bummertown says

    There’s no law which says atheists have to be as freakin dull and as uptight as religios. Why do you think God gave you an imagination?

  122. castletonsnob says

    “I was referring to comment #44 from the “One goofy site” post in which someone who identified himself as “St. Michael the Archangel” wrote the following:”

    Apparently some joker has stolen my pseudonym.

    There were several posts like that.

    I assure you it was not me. My real name is Charlie Wagner and I will no longer use St. Michael.

    Looking it at more closely, one used the full word “Saint” in his name, and the other, I guess you, Charlie, used the abbreviated “St.” Very confusing. But I hope now it won’t be an issue with the name change.

    JoJo wrote:

    Thanks for introducing yourself, Charlie. Now please either discuss nuclear disarmament or hie yourself elsewhere.

    That was actually my fault, JoJo; I’m the one who took things off topic.

  123. llewelly says

    MAJeff:

    That kind of existential terror…well, I’m glad to see my students don’t have the same sort of growing up experience.

    That’s the feeling I recalled when reading the 2004 debate between Bush & Kerry – when the first question was, more or less: ‘Will our children & grandchildren ever live in a world as safe as the world we grew up in?’ . I thought: HELLO! 200 million fucking prompt deaths from a nuclear exchange? Where the fuck did you grow up?

  124. says

    What’s with all of this “we can’t ever achieve nuclear disarmament” stupidity?

    We can, it’s just a matter, as I said before, of commitment. The same way we committed to end slavery. Of course slavery continues on a small scale. However unlike slavery, it’s really really hard to hide a nuclear program.

    We have already agreed with the Russians that Teller-Ulam devices and fusion boosted devices serve little purpose in achieving military objectives and are horrendously indiscriminate. This is not that big a stretch if there is a broader populist willingness to get rid of these weapons once and for all.

    We don’t need a Superman to round them all up and hurl them into the sun. It’s simple enough in principle, but it would seem there are too many people intent on complicating what is essentially a simple concept. In other words: The irony of it is that if there is any reason we can’t pull it off, it’s because of the people who insist devoutly we can’t.

  125. says

    Back to the actual debate:
    marktime @ #110 –
    So it’s Israel again. Mind you, I’m the first to agree that the various Israeli governments have made some bloody bad decisions, and that these bad decisions have sometimes been carried out even more badly by the IDF and the Israeli police…
    but imagine what the Middle East would be like without Israel. There would be not one democracy to speak of in the area, there would not be one state that cares a bit about free speach, freedom of and from religion.
    Can you imagine how long Israel would have lasted, had they not some nuclear bombs stored somewhere? About one minute, that’s how long.
    I would like to stress once again that I think nukes are an abomination, but once one nation state has them, it is vital for all other nations to have them as well – or at least be allied with someone who does.
    I can imagine a world, not too far in the future, that has come to its senses; maybe after some paradigm shift, nations and states will be abolished, and then we can dispose of all these nasty firecrackers. I think that’s what Sagan was trying to say.
    But until then, we’ll need our nukes. That’s a rather disgusting thing to say, so if you can prove me wrong, please do; I would really appreciate it.

  126. says

    I can’t help but say, I know that fallen tree! I see it all the time when I go hiking in the Cornell Arboretum. :)

    ~ Nick

  127. JoJo says

    Wagner Charlie #126

    It’s now 50 years later and the same discussion still rages and the threat lives on. How long does the world have to wait?

    There are three types of WMD, NBC or nuclear, biological and chemical. The U.S. has supposedly foresworn the use of chemical and biological weapons (although what’s happening at Ft. Detrick is anyone’s guess). Any attempt at outlawing nuclear weapons will also have to consider chemical and biological weapons. Unlike nuclear weapons, chemical weapons are relatively cheap and easy to make. When Wikipedia has an article on mustard gas you know it’s easy for any competent chemist to make. I don’t know about biological weapons, but I suspect the basic technology is available to any competent microbiologist.

    There is no easy answer to this.

  128. Pygmy Loris says

    JoJo,

    I believe you’re right that chemical and biological weapons are far easier to make/build, but all of the ones created so far don’t have the destructive power of a nuclear bomb and that’s the problem.

    Though many people are fond of pointing out how easy it is to make nuclear bombs, that’s obviously not true. Since there are at least seven (probably nine) countries with the technology and expertise to build nuclear bombs, but many more that want them, I would argue that nuclear bombs are more difficult to build than we have been led to believe.

    As for people who have commented on the lack of species that could evolve into something human-like (as in capable of talking about talking), there are several species of chimpanzee, gorilla and orang utan that most certainly have the possibility of evolving human-like consciousness under the right conditions.

    And I find it ridiculous that some people are arguing that we (Homo sapiens) are no longer under evolutionary pressure. Natural selection still holds true as long as there is differential survival to reproductive age. There are many anthropologists that study patterns of evolution in modern humans. I’m one of them.

    “The first rule of European warfare is: Do not invade Russia.”

    LOL, but I thought the first rule of European warfare is: Invade France :)

  129. Denis Loubet says

    What this reminds me of is the now typical scene in action movies where two characters are suddenly in the position of standing toe-to-toe, each holding a gun at the other’s head.

    In our situation, the characters are countries with multiple arms, and they’re all standing within a circle defined by the earth, holding guns at each other’s heads. Some of them are sawed-off shotguns that will surely kill their target, some are 22s that are likely only to wound, still other characters are armed only with sticks or stones that may only annoy or injure.

    Each knows that he can shoot first, and maybe his opponent won’t be able to return fire, but then again, maybe he will. Each eyes the other, looking for a weakness, or lack of attention that they can exploit.

    The ones with sticks and stones occasionally take a whack at some of the big gun wielders, knowing that a large caliber response is out of proportion. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes a small caliber response is offered.

    You can actually carry the analogy pretty damn far.

  130. Pygmy Loris says

    Denis,

    That’s a great analogy. Though I think a .22 is plenty able to kill. Especially if you’re a good shot.

  131. says

    @ acj,

    Ah, the perfect world argument. When unicorns and fairies roam the earth, and rainbows shoot out of my ass, I’m sure it will be time for us to get rid of our nukes. How original.

    As for your island of democracy argument, more nonsense. Sure, Israel is a democracy, if your definition of democracy encompasses their regular human rights abuses and restriction of the movements of a certain class of people. Israel is no more a democracy now than America was during Jim Crow.

    In addition to that, disincentives for democracy in the Arab world include security considerations for Israel. Israel may not be the sole reason for the lack of democracy there, but as an example: both the United States and Israel foster ties with a despotic Egyptian government despite the clear will of the people there to form a democratic government.

    Finally Israel DID last without a nuke for a long time. Their nukes were supposedly first made in 1979, three years after the last major Arab-Israeli conflict. GIYI.

  132. Adam K says

    Ok, I’m fairly certain that most of us are in the same boat when it comes to nuclear weapons; they f’ing suck. I also believe that most of us are against the forceful, “It’s our way or the highway” antics of the Religous or any other group that wants to sway free thinking. Having said that I need only ask what are we actually doing to stop or hinder these things? It seems to me that we all have these grand ideas of how things should be without realizing that we are not all the same, psychologically and physically speaking. For example, my vision of a peaceful world where we as conscious organisms decide to live on what we need in order to survive as long as all benefit, I also mean every living organism as well, instead of the selfish attitude of how can “I” benefit alone. But in so doing I would be committing the same thing that I loathe most; the damnation of free will. Now nuclear weapons are 100% wrong not because they are inherently evil, but because of intention. They are bombs and bombs are meant to destroy. Taken into the context of human history they are to destroy other humans and living things in general. So we now have a problem and that is where we need to delve deeper to solve this crisis. It is very critical that a message needs to be spread about ethical decision making when it comes to science and religion. It is apparent that this almost never occurs and ethics gets tossed to the side.
    Before I continue I am defining ethics as the standard of logical decision making where all people and things benefit and not just the individual (now if anyone would like to refute me my argument stands as all words are ever-changing products of human invention and I am exercising my right for this explanation alone). But I digress.
    Before we start getting frustrated on why things have happened in relation to current events transpired by history we have to decide on what matters most. Our own pride or survival of our species, other species, and our planet. The fact of the matter is that we need to come together on all sides under the banner of education and freedom of thought. Just because we do not know how the universe was created doesn’t mean that it must be because of a Creator or absence of a creator, we just don’t know. The same applies for the advent of weapons meant to kill others just because they do not think like any particular group. But just the same waeapons are needed to protect from those very people with selfish intentions. I’m not advocating more weapons or even the dismatling of all weapons becuase we don’t live in that world that I or many others wish to see. Jefferson and Washington knew it when they decided to break free from the British Empire, go to war and be free or choose peace and suffer under the tyrants rule. The only way I can forsee some semblance of peace is through proper education of the coming generations of humans. We need some massive reform in the government when it comes to the education system in this country if we can even begin to put a dent in this colossus. Education on what science really is about per the great philosophers of history and even our time (these include advocates of peace across the board for all occupations, scientists and religious alike). Hell, I even like to say science is a system of checks and balances on people who claim absolutes without fully understanding what they are claiming.
    I know I’m ranting now so I’ll stop. Now I am going to throw some disclaimers out there so I am hopefully not misunderstood; 1) I am an atheist by choice. I also respect varying hypothesis on how the universe came to be only because I do not feel that there is substantial evidence to absolutely say that there is or is not a God (I’m not referring to god as the traditional thing that people think he is). 2) I believe in evolution. 3) I’m tired so some of this may seem incoherent. 4) I’m an advocate of peace. 5) I’m an advocate of inspirational education. 6) Free will, not of the biblical sense, but of our own conscious decisions without the idea of fate or destiny. 7) I love constructive criticism, but only if it lacks malicious intentions. Test my knowledge, not my patience.

  133. SC says

    Jors,

    I’ve seen that post a few times over the past several days. Preliminarily, let me say that it’s annoying for you to post the same comment repeatedly. I don’t really care if you want to know PZ’s response to your query. Neither he nor Richard Dawkins has responded to my repeated requests for a copy of TGD. What makes you so special? :)

    Seriously, though – First, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that there are “saints” around these parts. I’ve mentioned several times here that my personal heroes include Peter Kropotkin and C. Wright Mills. I’m offended when people misrepresent them, but I don’t consider them anything more than fallible human beings with whom I may disagree on any number of subjects. I’m also very much an admirer of Sagan’s, but this doesn’t mean his word was gospel. The quotation you present could provoke several responses: “I don’t think that was a general precept but a specific statement made about particular groups in particular circumstances”; “If it was a general precept, I disagree with it, for the following reasons:…”; “What he said made sense in that context, but not in the present context”; and so on. In any event, if Sagan appeared here to criticize PZ’s actions, there would be no shortage of people who would argue with him.

    That I consider Sagan, like others whom I admire, as a person who made difficult choices in difficult times makes me admire him all the more. I’ve never understood this desire on the part of Catholics, in particular, to see figures in Catholic history as superhuman. I want to understand what led people I admire to make the choices they did. Indeed, I want to understand what drove all sorts of people, from Teresa of Ávila to Emma Goldman. My research has involved studying the people involved in state security efforts historically. Understanding them and their motivations, which drives my work, does not stop my considering most of their actions shameful or horrific or from fighting them in the present.

    Second, as I intimated above, there’s a time and a place for everything. Tactics and strategy will vary depending on the situation, and specifically the opponent’s capacity to influence public policy, the danger they pose to human lives and liberties, etc. Sagan, if Wikipedia is to be believed, was arrested on more than one occasion for taking part in actions against the Vietnam war and nuclear tests. He did not limit himself to writing articles, but participated in civil disobedience. Moreover, you can pluck quotations, but – though a considerate man – Sagan pulled no punches against religion.

    Third, the idea – which I’m not attributing to you in particular but which seems to have threaded :) through much of the dialogue here in recent days – that there is some history of civil discourse in the US that PZ is violating is absurd. One of my great-…-grandfathers was among the “founding fathers.” I’ve read quite a bit about him and his times, and I can tell you that politics in American history has been no place for wimps. (As I attempted to explain to amateur social scientist and all-around doofus Chad Orzel several months ago, cocktail-party unionism is worse than useless; if you’re not willing to fight, then step aside.) Further, this idea of a narrow, polite “civil discourse” has been a key tool of the privileged and powerful. They set the terms of political life (originally through violence, maintained through coercion), and then define the boundaries in which these terms can be challenged. Don’t fall for it.

  134. Seraphiel says

    Since there are at least seven (probably nine) countries with the technology and expertise to build nuclear bombs, but many more that want them, I would argue that nuclear bombs are more difficult to build than we have been led to believe.

    The construction of the bomb itself is not that complicated.

    The tricky part is obtaining a sufficient quantity of material to create the core of the weapon. Uranium mines tend to have fairly heavy security, but a more pertinent problem is the security around refining facilities and even nuclear power plants.

  135. Grumpy says

    Dustin #77: …in their big Baudrillardian wankfest, they were in a great big hurry to deliberately portray a popularizer of science as one of the “guards” of the cave.

    I always assumed that Agent Smith talked that way because, as a sentient computer program, he had to deliberately slow himself down to act at human speed.

    Why did Sagan talk that way? Turns out he was stoned.

  136. Fernando Magyar says

    I don’t know about biological weapons, but I suspect the basic technology is available to any competent microbiologist.

    Well, I spent a good portion of this morning diving in the midst of a major biochemical battle zone namely my local coral reef near Fort Lauderdal, FL. I’m somewhat sad to report that not many of the corals seem to be very good at fighting off a nasty blanket of algae that seems to be more and more common on some of the reefs around here.

    Re: Nuclear weapons and the possibility of there being an all out nuclear war? If we can’t even seem to acknowledge that there is this lumbering white elephant, of exponential poulation growth in a world of ever more damaged ecosystems and diminishing natural resources then the disscussion about whether or not somebody is going to try to use Nukes may indeed be moot.

    We can’t even seem to get our collective minds around the enormity of the interconnected problems of Anthropogenic climate change and Peak Fossil fuels. I for one suspect that things could go very wrong in the not too distant future.

    I’ve been feeling especialy doomerish recently.
    Watch this lecture from Dr. Albert Bartlett on Arithmetic, Population and Energy http://globalpublicmedia.com/lectures/461
    Then go back and watch this video from Carl Sagan again and turn on your local news and see the pablum that passes for a discussion of the important issues that are being served up by our current presidential candidates. We need to drill for more oil so we can… ah fuck it what’s the point.

    Cheers!

  137. JoJo says

    Though many people are fond of pointing out how easy it is to make nuclear bombs, that’s obviously not true.

    The technology is well known. I’m a nuclear engineer and, while my training and experience are in nuclear power plants, I could give you the specifications and basic design for a U-235 bomb. It’s the manufacturing that’s difficult and expensive. The basic problem is that you want U-235. In nature, uranium isotopes are U-238 (99.284%), U-235 (0.711%), and other isotopes in even smaller amounts. Weapons grade uranium is 85% or more of U-235. Isotope separation (also called enrichment) is involved and energy intensive. Enriching uranium is difficult because the two isotopes have almost completely identical chemical properties and are very similar in weight. U-235 is only 1.26% lighter than U-238. The two most common forms of enrichment are gaseous diffusion and gas centrifuging. There’s also thermal diffusion, atomic vapor laser isotope separation (AVLIS), molecular laser isotope separation (MLIS), separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) and several other methods. Regardless, these are all heavy industrial processes.

    Nuclear weapons are both simple and difficult. But manufacturing them is within the capability of any industrialized country. A country capable of building an oil refinery could build a uranium enrichment plant.

    Note: I’m aware that isotopes are usually given in the form 235U. I didn’t use that form because I was feeling lazy.

  138. says

    Mr Chemist:
    Yes, the old perfect world argument again. I never, ever tire of using that one, you know. I realize the world will not and cannot ever be perfect, but a little bit of a normative utopia can’t hurt.
    FYI, I am completly aware that Israel did not have the bomb during the Six Day War. I wasn’t talking about 1967; I was talking about 2008.
    I know that when I post on Pharyngula, there’s always a certain chance I draw some friendly fire, but that GIYI wasn’t really necessary.
    Very funny, though! I didn’t know there was a web site of that name, but rest assured, I will make good use of it.

  139. Jors says

    SC #133:

    I’ve seen that post a few times over the past several days.

    You may have misunderstood. In #95 (was #97), Phoenix Woman made the claim that Sagan expressed a different view in Demon-Haunted World than he did in the 1994 CSICOP address I quoted. I responded by quoting a passage from Demon-Haunted World which was almost identical to the CSICOP quote. Therefore it was not a repeat post, but a refutation of Phoenix Woman’s claim.

  140. SC says

    Jors,

    It seemed to me when I read your post @ #59 that it was the third time. Perhaps it was only the second. It certainly wasn’t the first. :)

  141. amk says

    I has been suggested that the IAEA be given a global monopoly on uranium enrichment and radioactive products from nuclear reactors as a means to enforce global disarmament. IIRC Iran agreed, the US and Israel did not.

    If that doesn’t work, completely eliminating nuclear fission programmes may be necessary. This in turn would require an alternative power technology, such as fusion or orbital solar.

    This topic reminded me to watch Threads. As horrific as it is, I think it’s an over-optimistic estimate of the consequences of a major nuclear war. The expected length, severity and geographical reach of the nuclear winter given 1980s armaments have been increased since Threads was made – the northern hemisphere would be uninhabitable, and most likely the southern would too.

  142. amphiox says

    acj: I agree with much of what you say, but keep in mind that civilization is a temporary state. Our species has been around perhaps 150 000 years and we’ve had civilization for only 10 000 or so. There is no way to know how long it will last. If civilization should fall, selection pressure will go up even if the environment does not substantially change.

    Also, even if civilization persists and endures for long (evolutionary scale) periods of time, ask yourself this: does every child born today survive to reproduce? Is everyone in the world today equally successful in passing on their genes? Does the modern environment of the civilized world impact everyone equally? Are there no traits possessed by some people that make them more likely to succeed in modern society, are no traits possessed by some people that could possibly make them less likely to succeed? Can you conceive of any future civilization where the answer is “Yes” for every single individual for an a period of continuous time lasting several hundred thousand years?

    If the answer to any one of these questions is “No,” then natural selection will act on the human population, and we will evolve. The process may be slower because selection pressure is reduced, but it will still happen. (Peter Ward has basically argued that we’ll evolve so slowly that we’ll be de facto living fossils in 250 million years, assuming we’re still around. But even living fossils evolve. The modern coelocanth is not the same as its ancient ancestors. Ditto for the horseshoe crab, nautilus, shark, etc)

  143. amphiox says

    Dear Dustin,

    I thought my logic was clear. I was comparing nuclear weapons to firearms during medieval times. Both are weapons. Both were the most powerful and destructive weapons of their day. Many looked upon both with revulsion at the time. Someone wanted to ban both of them.

    Medieval Japan succeeded in completely eliminated firearms from their country for several centuries, even though guns played a vital role in their civil war prior to unification, and despite the fact that the japanese of that time had invested in guns to the point of being able to manufacture superior guns to the contemporary europeans, and use superior battlefield tactics. They did it because they had a totalitarian government that controlled all avenues of information dissemination, import/export of materials and manufacturing processes, within their borders. They succeeded because they were sufficiently isolated from the rest of the world for them to maintain their control. They finally failed when their isolation was punctured by new technology.

    Today the earth is one interconnected whole, but isolated as a single planet from the rest of the universe. The analogy is the best historical comparison we have. If we want to eliminate a destructive weapon, we have one precedent from history to emulate.

    I prefer attempting the alternative, even though it has not been proven.

  144. amk says

    The EU manages just fine without a government as such.

    The EU does have an executive consisting of the Council of Ministers and the Commission. It also makes policy by treaty, a frankly ridiculous system that bloats the Treaty of Lisbon to silly proportions and includes mutually contradictory instructions. IMO the EU would be much better off with a directly elected federal government, although there are certain practical considerations.

    There is a campaign for UN Parliament. George Monbiot’s comment.

  145. Pygmy Loris says

    Seraphiel and Jojo,

    I get that the basic design of a nuclear weapon is not difficult. Even in high school chemistry we were taught the basics (which were essentially what you have out-lined here) and it scared me that it was seemingly so easy to build a nuclear bomb. However, you both have pointed out that actually obtaining the raw materials and manufacturing the bomb are difficult. Therefore, making a bomb (from scratch so to speak) isn’t easy and not just anyone can do it.

    I’ve also heard that perfecting the firing mechanism is very difficult if you don’t have blue prints from existing bombs, but I don’t know anything about that.

    My basic point is that it is not easy for a country to have the inhouse expertise and technology to manufacture their own bombs. I believe the biggest threat in the nuclear bomb area is a rogue nation or group getting an existing bomb on the blackmarket. But that’s me and since we haven’t had a nuclear bomb dropped on humans in more than 60 years, it’s not something I really worry about day-to-day. (living relatively far from population centers helps too)

  146. amk says

    Brian Coughlan

    elections should ideally be list based

    Political parties tend to be horribly in-bred, including career politicians for whom party loyalty trumps public loyalty. I want to vote for an individual. I also want to register as detailed a vote as possible including down voting the nutters, requiring a preferential voting system. I also want to ensure that my corner of the world isn’t forgotten, requiring constituencies limited in size.

    I propose CPO-STV for legislative elections and either ranked pairs or Schulze for single winner elections. These are Condorcet methods. Good information on election methods here.

    These methods require much calculation (never mind for billions of voters…) so need to be computerised. Someone needs to sponsor an open source computerised election system.

    CPO-STV and RP are the work of the same man.

  147. says

    Jors, that canned passage aside — and the fact that it appears in almost identical form in two separate places bespeaks its “canned” nature — Carl Sagan was not really all that, erm, forgiving, all of the time. (And you did indeed quote that passage in a previous thread, not just in this one.)

    From the Carl Sagan Wikiquote page:

    — In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.

    — The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

    — The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.

    — There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.

    And here’s Sagan on religion:

    — (When asked merely if they accept evolution, 45 percent of Americans say yes. The figure is 70 percent in China.) When the movie Jurassic Park was shown in Israel, it was condemned by some Orthodox rabbis because it accepted evolution and because it taught that dinosaurs lived a hundred million years ago–when, as is plainly stated at every Rosh Hashonhan and every Jewish wedding ceremony, the Universe is less than 6,000 years old. [Carl Sagan, _The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark_, p. 325]

    — One prominent American religion confidently predicted that the world would end in 1914. Well, 1914 has come and gone, and – while the events of that year were certainly of some importance – the world did not, at least so far as I can see, seem to have ended. There are at least three responses that an organized religion can make in the face of such a failed and fundamental prophecy. They could have said, Oh, did we say ‘1914’? So sorry, we meant ‘2014’. A slight error in calculation. Hope you weren’t inconvenienced in any way. But they did not. They could have said, Well, the world would have ended, except we prayed very hard and interceded with God so He spared the Earth. But they did not. Instead, the did something much more ingenious. They announced that the world had in fact ended in 1914, and if the rest of us hadn’t noticed, that was our lookout. It is astonishing in the fact of such transparent evasions that this religion has any adherents at all. But religions are tough. Either they make no contentions which are subject to disproof or they quickly redesign doctrine after disproof. The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough- mindedness of the believers. But it does indicate, if a demonstration was needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry. [Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain]

  148. says

    @acj,

    Ah, you like GIYI? I to too. We use it over at chemicalforums whenever someone asks for a melting point or something equally mundane. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to introduce it here.

    What do you mean 2008? There is no existential threat to Israel I know of.

  149. says

    Thanks for that, PZ; Carl was, is, and always will be my hero.
    It’s always good to hear his voice of sanity and reason in “The Demon Haunted World”.

    Damn, but I miss him.

    N.

  152. amk says

    SC,

    Further, this idea of a narrow, polite “civil discourse” has been a key tool of the privileged and powerful. They set the terms of political life (originally through violence, maintained through coercion), and then define the boundaries in which these terms can be challenged. Don’t fall for it.

    This reminds me of Craig Murray’s most recent post.

  154. bgbaysjr says

    The concept of “Carl Sagan, shorter” is heartbreaking (blasphemy, if there were such a thing), but:

    “This is the world to love. There is no other.” Stephen Dobyns

  156. llewelly says

    No country will benefit from reducing their armaments …

    Because, if they want nukes, they need only go out to the nuclear weapon tree and pick a few, right?

    No matter how much you hear about the simplicity of the concepts underling nuclear weapon construction, the maintenance of nuclear weapons requires a variety of relatively precise and highly reliable devices. Think for just a moment about the impact of an accidental detonation. Keeping nuclear weapons systems in tip-top shape is extremely important – and expensive. A nation which forgoes nuclear weapons saves quite a bit of money – money which might be spent on things that might be useful more than twice in 63 years.

  157. John Scanlon FCD says

    acj, you wrote

    imagine what the Middle East would be like without Israel. There would be not one democracy to speak of in the area, there would not be one state that cares a bit about free speach, freedom of and from religion.

    I don’t think you can legitimately draw those conclusions from a contrafactual assumption. Without Israel (never founded? wiped out in ’48 or ’67 or ’73 or at some other time the US stopped giving them planes and tanks?), who can say what systems of government and other institutions would exist in the area?

    Yay Carl! I just watched the last episode of Cosmos on Ovation the other night, haven’t seen the whole series since it was first shown on Australia’s ABCTV (on Sunday nights, after Mass, just before I quit the church choir and hence any kind of religious practice for good).

  158. amk says

    Israel today is backed by the United States, which spends as much on its military as the rest of the world combined. If it made some policy changes it could surely join NATO, which has triple the military budget of the rest of the world. Israel does not need nukes to survive.

    Concerning the continuing evolution of homo sapiens someone needs to post the intro to Idiocracy, and it may as well be me.

  159. says

    It is inevitable that they will be used. Such things are not built to be stockpiled; it is not the way of mankind. It’s just a matter of when and how.

  160. says

    SC @ #133: Eggszacktly. :-)

    Carl Sagan was one of the most vocal and strident anti-woo persons out there. My last reply to Jors cited bunches of quotes of Sagan’s that were far more typical of him than the canned passage Jors keeps flogging from thread to thread.

  161. Jors says

    Phoenix Woman #147:

    Jors, that canned passage aside — and the fact that it appears in almost identical form in two separate places bespeaks its “canned” nature — Carl Sagan was not really all that, erm, forgiving, all of the time.

    No, it bespeaks of the fact that much of Sagan’s writings consist of edited transcripts.

    (And you did indeed quote that passage in a previous thread, not just in this one.)

    And indeed, I said at the beginning of #59 that I was quoting from a previous thread.

    You have quite missed the point, however. It is not Sagan’s opinion, but his attitude which is what I was getting at. The quotes you gave show his opinion (which we all know anyway). Here is a quote from the same chapter of Demon-Haunted:

    Have I ever heard a skeptic wax superior and contemptuous? Certainly. I’ve even sometimes heard, to my retrospective dismay, that unpleasant tone in my own voice. There are human imperfections on both sides of this issue.

    That is the difference between attitude and opinion.

  162. SC says

    amk @ #152,

    Thanks so much for the link. He really needs to get out of that racket. :S

    That is the difference between attitude and opinion.

    Horrors! I may swoon! What was your point, again?

  163. CarlSaganForPresident says

    We need to get a sample of Carl Sagan’s DNA, make a clone and force the clone to take the same educational paths as Sagan and them elect him to be president. Seriously, how refreshing would it be to have a president who actually cares about life. Not to mention, is educated and is a self proclaimed skeptic=)

  164. amk says

    It’s just occurred to me that having the ability to produce a nuclear weapon is itself an effective deterrent. Some Iranian (IIRC Khatami) reportedly said that Iran only needs the ability to make nukes, not actual nukes, in order to deter its neighbours from threatening it. It’s widely believed that Japan could produce nukes very quickly if its government chose to, and no doubt North Korea and China know this.

    Thus one lone rogue state with a bomb could not take over the world if everyone else disarmed.

  165. says

    Thus one lone rogue state with a bomb could not take over the world if everyone else disarmed.

    Consider that the notions of “state” and “government” might be the root of the problem. We are so acculturated by nationalism that very few of us can step back and realize that it’s a gigantic con-game. What I find sad is that many on this blog have fought long and hard to clear their brains of the medieval notion of religion — how much harder and longer will we have to struggle to get over the ludicrous notion that imaginary lines on the map mean we should prepare to battle eachother over them, or that we should be born into carefully constructed economic and political shackles that effectively make us the property of small handfuls of the political class?

  166. says

    Addendum: Nationalism greatly magnifies the problem – consider that as nations grow larger, with more powerful economies, they are capable of fighting increasingly destructive wars. In order to build the kind of nuclear arsenals the US and USSR built, you need gigantic economies. Nationalism, as it expands and solidifies into transnational power-blocs, becomes even more dangerous. Moreover, mankind faces challenges that are global in scope; how is it possible to respond effectively to global challenges when the political class are too wrapped up in preserving their personal dominion over territories based on imaginary lines on the surface of the planet? It’s madness.

  167. says

    Whether it is ridicule or civility, I think you can’t approach the matter dogmatically. It must be subservient to pragmatism. In other words it has to achieve the maximum desired effect to be justifiable.

    I hear a lot about humor or ridicule as a powerful weapon, that may be true in certain cultures and settings, these are not cultural universals. They may have the opposite effect in a different cultural setting.

    So I firmly stake my claim: It depends on the specific circumstances.

  168. Jors says

    SC #162:

    Horrors! I may swoon! What was your point, again?

    My point is found in the first sentence of my first comment on this thread: social attitude. The Sagan quotes I gave suggest he has a vastly different social attitude than that of PZ.

    Phoenix Woman confused attitude with opinion. Two people can hold exactly the same opinion yet conduct themselves completely differently. (Which itself could be called an opinion, but I hope you see the distinction I am trying to make.)

  169. SC says

    My point is found in the first sentence of my first comment on this thread: social attitude. The Sagan quotes I gave suggest he has a vastly different social attitude than that of PZ.

    a) Bullshit. You’ve failed to provide convincing evidence for that contention (or to explain what the hell you mean by “social attitude”).

    b) Even if true, so the fuck what?

  170. says

    @144
    IMO the EU would be much better off with a directly elected federal government, although there are certain practical considerations.

    My point wasn’t that the EU was perfect, but rather that it mostly works and thus is a viable methodology for global governance. Nation states are not simply going to hand over the keys of the kingdom, some kind of akward accomodation as has occurred in the EU, and in all constitutional monarchies will be required.

    Eventually the influence of the nation state institutions will wane (as monarchies tend to give way to popular parliaments) and we’ll be left with something simpler than the current EU rats nest of overlapping and contradictory institutions. In the meantime, I think most non nationalists would agree that something like the EU at a global level, nothwithstanding it’s structural shortcomings, would be far preferable to the current anarchical lurching from crisis to crisis.

    @146
    I propose CPO-STV for legislative elections and either ranked pairs or Schulze for single winner elections. These are Condorcet methods. Good information on election methods here.

    Irelands uses STV so I’m familiar with it. Really anything other than first past the post, and that largerly ignores the nation state would work for me.

  171. Jors says

    a) Bullshit. You’ve failed to provide convincing evidence for that contention (or to explain what the hell you mean by “social attitude”).

    The claim was self-evident. But just for fun, let’s take the first sentence of the first paragraph,

    What I’m trying to say is that the one deficiency which I see in the skeptical movement is an “us” verses “them.”

    Have you, perchance, noticed an “us” verses “them” mentality on this blog?

    …those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons…

    Do you think this blog reflects the attitude described above?

    b) Even if true, so the fuck what?

    It was just an observation. Incidentally, we might consider Sagan’s views on the matter. Perhaps they aren’t as fucking stupid as we think.

  172. SC says

    The claim was self-evident.

    That is a meaningless statement. I’m a sociologist. We expect terms to be clearly defined, and evidence to be provided in support of assertions. Neither of these conditions has been met here. Sagan wasn’t a social scientist, and your argument from authority is worthless in this context.

    Have you, perchance, noticed an “us” verses “them” mentality on this blog?

    Have you, perchance, read my comment @ #133? You’ve not responded to it.

    It was just an observation. Incidentally, we might consider Sagan’s views on the matter. Perhaps they aren’t as fucking stupid as we think.

    Neither I nor (I suspect) anyone here thinks Sagan’s views are/were stupid. Yours, on the other hand…

  173. SC says

    Sagan wasn’t a social scientist, and your argument from authority is worthless in this context.

    Especially given that he’s DEAD. Are you suggesting that he, able to see the future, analyzed Pharyngula before he passed away?

  174. Jason says

    @125

    Thats not really a fair assessment of Israel, the country that has almost always been the foremost agressor in the region.
    The United States actively supresses democratic movements in neighboring countries, ofter because they tend to have either left wing leanings (meaning the nationalization of privately owned American companies -so the money could build an economy and finance education rather than fund Halliburton), rational interests (China and India often offer better deals for oil than the U.S., but most attempts to take them up on the offer result in tensions with America and are met with supression), or simple anti-Americanism for aforementioned policies (as well as military bases, etc). And dont forget sinister policies of the past, like Operation Ajax, in which the United States wiped out a democracy.

    Israel aside, the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East are countries like Saudia Arabia, which are the least democractic in the whole region. United States foreign policy has always been to prefer a friendly dictator (often with a disregard to his atrocities) to a democracy that wont do what the U.S. tells it to.

    Isaerl is hardly a country in itself, but more an extention of the United States most agressive and imperialistic policies; and good supporting evidence can be shown by the UN voting record – just look up votes in which the vote was favoured by every country in the UN, with only two abstentions. Every time those abstentions have been the U.S. and Israel; including those that would bring about a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which the U.S./Israel wont settle unless they are left in total control of all the fresh water that would otherwise belong to Palestine).
    Israel has hardly been a shining beacon of democracy.

  175. says

    I’d recommend Robert Fisk for insight into Middle Eastern politics. He reports from Lebanon and Israel, been there for decades.

    Haaretz is pretty good, as well. An Israeli Newspaper.

    Anything printed in any major US newpaper is total garbage, the Isarelis themselves scoff at US reporting on the Middle East, strictly photocopy journalism from gov’t sources.

  176. mandrake says

    big Baudrillardian wankfest

    This gave me a chuckle in the midst of a fairly bleak thread.
    Thank you Justin; can I steal that?

  177. JoJo says

    Considering nationalism.

    Man is a social creature like cattle or wolves. Cattle congregate in herds while wolves live in packs. One major difference between herds and packs is that herds will allow anyone to join while packs are more selective in their membership. Man is a pack animal.

    Usually there’s little or no competition between herds for territory, mating, water holes, etc. Packs are usually territorial. A pack will try to drive off an invading pack. Herds are generally herbivorous while packs are usually carnivores. Most omnivores, like humans and bears, show their carnivorous side when it comes to the pack vs herd membership.

    There are various rituals and initiations involved in joining any human organization. A country club might require a large joining fee, a fraternity will have candidates undergoing a humiliating and painful initiation, etc. However, once you’re in then you’re in, unless you transgress social mores, then you’re out.

    Nationalism is similar. In most countries, being born inside the borders automatically gives citizenship. Immigrants can usually achieve citizenship by living in the country for a minimum period and undergoing a ritual swearing ceremony. Again, once you’re in then you’re in.

    I don’t see nationalism going away any time soon. I suspect it’s hardwired, part of the pack mentality. Since our packs are territorial, we protect our territory.

  178. Logicel says

    SC,# 174 wrote: Especially given that he’s DEAD. Are you suggesting that he, able to see the future, analyzed Pharyngula before he passed away?
    _____

    The most exalted Sagan is amazing so don’t put that possibility past him. In addition, he probably grasped the impending blog explosion and could, down to the last detail, place all of its outcomes, uses, and effects in his present approach. He was that good.

    And, don’t get me started on Abraham Lincoln. If we only had ole Abe, the exact same old Abe in the Oval Office, everything would be OK. No, he would not be confused by technology, he would grasp its meaning and implications immediately. Great people are like that, you know.

    Seriously, 167, The Chemist pretty much sums up my opinion.

  180. Logicel says

    And we must conclude also because of Sagan’s genius that he knew that Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would occur.

  181. Nick Gotts says

    If we can’t even seem to acknowledge that there is this lumbering white elephant, of exponential poulation growth in a world of ever more damaged ecosystems and diminishing natural resources then the disscussion about whether or not somebody is going to try to use Nukes may indeed be moot. – Fernando Magyar

    Except there isn’t. Global population is not growing exponentially. The global growth rate peaked in the 1960s at around 2.4% per annum. It is now around half that, and still falling. Absolute population growth (numerical increase in the total number of people) is slightly lower now than 10 years ago, so population growth is now not just subexponential, but sublinear. The factoid that global population is growing exponentially is amazingly persistent. I wonder why?

  182. negentropyeater says

    Yes but comment 167 by the chemist is so generic that it is always true. The key is in analysing pragmatism : agents of change are always biased when it comes to analysing their own actions, and that’s what often leads them to failure.

  183. says

    I don’t see nationalism going away any time soon. I suspect it’s hardwired, part of the pack mentality. Since our packs are territorial, we protect our territory.

    While this is true, it is simply a case of trampolining loyalty from one level to the next. From my nation state, to my region has been managed a few times, the US is a good example, so is India. The EU is a more interesting example, because loyalties still straddle a nation state and European identity.

    From my region to my planet is simply a question of facilitation and logistics, the technology for which has been around since the telegraph. The problem is that national governments constantly run interference for narrow local reasons.

    @Nick 182
    The factoid that global population is growing exponentially is amazingly persistent. I wonder why?
    I think it fairly obvious. Population continues to increase, and although the % relative to the current base may have fallen substantially, the system has an oil tanker load of inertia thanks to the staggering base of population new growth is emerging from.

    There were roughly 1 billion humans in 1800, now there are nearly 7 billion, and even with optimistic projections, there will be 10 billion or so by 2050. That is still pretty exponential, an entire roman empire of extra mouths every 3 or 4 years.

  184. negentropyeater says

    Brian,

    but that’s Nick’s point, people use terms they don’t understand.
    Even if the % growth was continuing to fall and the population was growing towards a maximum asymptote, would they still say that it is growing “exponentially” ?

  185. says

    but that’s Nick’s point, people use terms they don’t understand. Even if the % growth was continuing to fall and the population was growing towards a maximum asymptote, would they still say that it is growing “exponentially” ?

    Well I’m sympathetic to the accepted colloquial use of the word exponential, which roughly translates as “total shitloads” and communicates a much needed sense of urgency:-) This I think is true, I also wonder if taking a longer term perspective, growth could still be considered exponential even in the strict sense of the word? Growth was exponential for example in the 20th Century, what does that make it over the last 150 years?

    Sure, if you consider growth from 2007 to 2008 then it all looks better, and it is, but the problem has been building for a lot longer than that. Meh … I probably object to the downplaying tone of Nicks post, I don’t think we can be complacent about population growth just yet, not until the Catholic Church starts making some sense anyway:-)

  186. Jors says

    SC:

    That is a meaningless statement. I’m a sociologist. We expect terms to be clearly defined, and evidence to be provided in support of assertions. Neither of these conditions has been met here. Sagan wasn’t a social scientist, and your argument from authority is worthless in this context.

    I’m afraid you have chased down a few red herrings here. If you believe this blog does not exhibit the “one deficiency” which Sagan described in #59, then perhaps we merely have a difference of opinion. To me, it is self-evident that it does.

    There is no argument from authority. Only a suggestion that it might be worthwhile to consider Sagan’s opinion.

  187. Nick Gotts says

    Brian@183,
    Actually the UN Population division’s 2006 medium projection for 2050 is just under 9.2 bn http://esa.un.org/. The “high variant” gives just over 10.75 bn, the “low variant”, just under 7.8bn, the “constant fertility variant” nearly 11.8 bn; so “optimistic projections” by experts are for <8bn. And “pretty exponential” is just nonsense.

    neg@184,
    I suspect that’s only part of it. People use “exponential growth” to mean “accelerating growth”, which is incorrect, but I suspect Fernando Magyar, for example, does (or did) believe population growth is still accelerating, as (in my experience) most people do. But it isn’t. It really, really, isn’t.

    The “elephant in the room” trope, and similar, are routinely used (I’m not saying Fernando is necessarily doing this) as a distractor: when some course of action or change in behaviour is suggested that would be inconvenient or ideologically unacceptable, respond by saying “no-one ever talks about the real problem – exponential population growth!” Diverts attention from the uncomfortable topic, and shows what a deep-thinking, hard-headed realist you are, at one go. It’s also often used (and I’m certainly not accusing Fernando of this) as a covert racist signal, meaning: “It’s all the fault of these [insert racist term here] breeding like rabbits!”

  188. SC says

    So I firmly stake my claim: It depends on the specific circumstances.

    I actually thought that was a joke. Having reread the sentences prior, though, I guess it wasn’t. My mistake.

  189. Nick Gotts says

    @187 “optimistic projections are for” -> “optimistic projections are for under 8 bn” (I unthinkingly used a “less than”)

  190. Nick Gotts says

    Brian@185,
    I’m certainly not advocating complacency about population growth. The thing is, no-one who knows anything about the problem would say that global population is growing exponentially. It’s like claiming, on this blog, that there are no known instances of speciation. It’s crap, simple as that, and anyone who does know anything about the question will recognise it as such. Nor is the suggestion that we look at the longer term useful to your case. Up to the 1960s, global population had been growing superexponentially for centuries, probably millennia. Since then it has been growing subexponentially and more recently, sublinearly. If you take any starting point and endpoint you choose, you can of course calculate a constant growth-rate that would have produce the same increase, but that doesn’t mean it’s a useful thing to do.

    There is a converse problem to complacency: fatalism. If people wrongly believe no-one is trying to halt population growth, or that the efforts made have had no success, they can and do use that belief to justify all kinds of shortsightedness, stupidity and selfishness.

  191. says

    Actually the UN Population division’s 2006 medium projection for 2050 is just under 9.2 bn http://esa.un.org/.

    Thanks for the link, its been a while since I’ve looked at this and things certainly have improved. Now, if we could get the catholic church to shut up, we’d be laughing.

  192. SC says

    I’m afraid you have chased down a few red herrings here. If you believe this blog does not exhibit the “one deficiency” which Sagan described in #59, then perhaps we merely have a difference of opinion. To me, it is self-evident that it does.

    There is no argument from authority. Only a suggestion that it might be worthwhile to consider Sagan’s opinion.

    Among the many other arguments I made earlier was the point that you have not demonstrated that Sagan’s “opinion” or “social attitude” [!] was as you describe. You cannot know what his opinion would be on this specific matter. But it’s totally irrelevant. If you want to make an argument about PZ’s actions or the views of commenters here and their relative constructiveness, then just make it (and at least try to back it up with evidence*). Even if you could demonstrate that Sagan would likely have agreed with you, it wouldn’t affect the validity of your argument in the slightest.**

    *How much easier my job would be if I could simply adopt your approach! “Data? I don’ need no stinkin’ data! It’s self-evident!”

    **And I’ll note once again that Sagan was a science popularizer and educator – not a social scientist or an expert on social movements (like I am :)).

  193. says

    There is a converse problem to complacency: fatalism. If people wrongly believe no-one is trying to halt population growth, or that the efforts made have had no success,

    Well certainly I would be happy to join you in disabusing people of that notion.

    they can and do use that belief to justify all kinds of shortsightedness, stupidity and selfishness.

    Your point is taken, fundamentalist christians being exhibit A in this regard.

  194. paz says

    Thanks for that wonderful, enlightening clip by the always excellent Carl Sagan. I have the Cosmos DVD set and nary a month goes by that I don’t pop one of the discs in and spend some time with this highly missed sage. I only wish posts like this could result in 1000+ comments, like catholic crackerlust can.

    paz

  195. Jors says

    SC,

    I actually don’t disagree with what you said. They would be valid counter-arguments, if I made the arguments you presume in the first place.

    But in spite of what you inferred, I was speaking broadly, in general terms. Of course one cannot prove whether it applies to this or that specific instance. I never made such claims.

    The point was to gleam the overall message of the quote in #59, to consider the extent to which it could apply to oneself and/or this blog. It’s an exercise in introspection and emotional intelligence. That is all. Good day.

  196. SC says

    I find this thread somewhat ironic, since it is likely that Sagan would completely oppose PZ’s social attitude.

    The Sagan quotes I gave suggest he has a vastly different social attitude than that of PZ.

    The claim was self-evident.

    What I’m trying to say is that the one deficiency which I see in the skeptical movement is an “us” verses “them.”

    Have you, perchance, noticed an “us” verses “them” mentality on this blog?

    …those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons…

    Do you think this blog reflects the attitude described above?

    It was just an observation. Incidentally, we might consider Sagan’s views on the matter. Perhaps they aren’t as fucking stupid as we think.

    It’s an exercise in drawing conclusions about the attitudes of a historical figure based upon flimsy evidence and making blanket, unsupported generalizations about the beliefs of a blogger and a collectivity and calling it introspection.

    There. Fixed.

  197. Longtime Lurker says

    Anybody else have “The Merry Minuet” running through their mind?

  199. Jors says

    SC,

    Our little exchange here is pretty much exactly like those I have with ID proponents. Every criticism must be met with a kind of hyper-defensiveness, no matter what the content. Arguments are subdivided into minutia until, inevitably, a discrepancy is found as the overall meaning becomes lost. IDists do this because they cannot address the actual issues, so instead they parry and jump around, hoping to score a pin-prick, upon which time they celebrate.

    The actual issue is that the nature of this blog, generally and on the whole, is “us” verses “them.” And generally, on the whole, the attitude here is “those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons”. And generally, on the whole, Sagan believed this outlook to be non-constructive.

    What is my proof? Well, I could classify the past two hundred threads according to whether they confirm, deny, or are neutral to my statements above. I would then do the same with all the comments. Would that be sufficient? What would actually satisfy you?

    I do see these observations as being self-evident. If you do not then, well, OK. At this point I would suspect ideological blindness and move on to more worthwhile conversational partners, such as brick walls.

    And do not think for a second that I am sympathetic to religion or any other nonsense. I am as atheistic and free-thinking as they come. I am an equal-opportunity despiser of ideology and tribalism.

  200. SC says

    And do not think for a second that I am sympathetic to religion or any other nonsense. I am as atheistic and free-thinking as they come. I am an equal-opportunity despiser of ideology and tribalism.

    I never implied that, nor did I think it. Talk about hyper-defensive. In any case, I don’t care whether you’re an atheist or not. I’m taking issue with your arguments, not you.

    Every criticism must be met with a kind of hyper-defensiveness, no matter what the content.

    Look, if you want to make a criticism of PZ or the commenters here, go ahead. There’s no need to keep bringing Sagan into it. He hasn’t expressed any views on the “matter” because he has been dead for several years. The statements that you quote were made in a different context. His assessment of the state of the skeptical movement in his day may or may not have been accurate, and the same goes for his ideas about constructive approaches. Further, Sagan, like PZ, both promoted science education and openly mocked ridiculous religious beliefs. These are not mutually exclusive.

    When you introduce your initial post on a thread with “I find this thread somewhat ironic, since it is likely that Sagan would completely oppose PZ’s social attitude,” my argument-from-authority radar goes off. It was also a stupid thing to say – PZ could agree with him about the dangers of the nuclear arms race and disagree with him about movement tactics, as could anyone else.

    I object to your trying to characterize what was in fact a criticism of PZ and “this blog” as introspection. Introspection means self-examination. I don’t have the slightest idea who you are, and your characterization certainly doesn’t apply to me.

    What is my proof? Well, I could classify the past two hundred threads according to whether they confirm, deny, or are neutral to my statements above. I would then do the same with all the comments. Would that be sufficient? What would actually satisfy you?

    It would be a start. You would have to define very precisely an “us vs. them” attitude and a “those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons” attitude and develop a valid and reliable means of measurement (and especially one that distinguishes references to specific people being morons from blanket statements). This would not be as easy as you may think. You would also need to show that these sorts of statements were not only made by a certain subset of posters, but by the preponderance of commenters. Then, you would need to do the same for your broader contention concerning counterproductivity – demonstate empirically that expressing such attitudes on this blog works against some well-defined larger goal(s). Until you’ve done this, there’s no reason for me or anyone else to accept your characterization or criticism. (I told you I’m a sociologist. What kind of answer were you expecting?)

    The actual issue is that the nature of this blog, generally and on the whole, is “us” verses “them.” And generally, on the whole, the attitude here is “those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons”.

    A blog doesn’t have an attitude. PZ has various attitudes, as do the different commenters here. Frankly, I think the belief in transubstantiation is profoundly stupid. I also want the Catholic Church and its crazy and baseless ideology out of my laws and my body. That institution is contrary to human liberty, dignity, and health and it needs to be fought.

    Some of the religious people who post here are highly intelligent and reasonable (like religious people among my friends and family); others are not only dumb but antagonistic. I don’t make any blanket judgments about all religious people. Some here do, others don’t. From what I’ve seen, it’s a mix. You see it differently, which is fine. But no matter how many times you claim something is self-evident it doesn’t make it so. My unscientific take on the matter is as valid as yours, and accusing those who see things differently of “ideological blindness” when you have done nothing but make unsupported assertions does nothing to help your credibility.

    I’ve argued in the past when PZ and others have made claims about the historical role of religious beliefs and organizations. I made the arguments and left it at that; if people didn’t engage with them, I didn’t raise them over and over and over. You’re free to do the same, and I think it would be more productive – argue with specific points people are making about beliefs or religious people or suggest fruitful strategies for action. But don’t expect people to listen to you or to be convinced without something to back up what you’re saying.

    (And if I see further evidence to suggest that you’re another of the various J incarnations, I will cease to converse with you.)

  202. amphiox says

    re jojo #177:

    the goal then, as I see it, is to convince everyone that we are all one pack, and the entire earth is our territory.

  203. amphiox says

    I don’t understand the israel-bashing I’m seeing in some of the comments here.

    Possibly things might have been better if the UN never established Israel in its current location in the first place, but the fact is that Israel is here.

    They were not the aggressor in the majority of the wars they fought, though they did provoke a large number of the smaller skirmishes.

    Their neighbours made their destruction a matter of foreign policy from the moment of their inception.

    Their borders are militarily indefensible in the event of invasion from any neighbour with anything even close to technological parity. (So how easily can you trust any potential peace partner at a border if a single surprise attack can wipe you out in a day?)

    Of course they’d want to keep control of that fresh water, because if they ceded it they’d have almost none left of their own. (Another point with regards to the idiotic shortsightedness involved in the establishment of Israel and its territory in the beginning) So again it is a question of trusting someone else to provide you with access to a resource that is as close to a legitimate causus belli as anything that exists.

    They treat their own citizens (all religions) better than any other regime in the region.

    Ultimately, they will have to come to peaceful terms with their neighbours if they want to continue to exist. Their technological edge will not last forever. Nor can they count on the protection of the US forever. But their position is not enviable.

  204. bezoar says

    In the words of the folk that live roun hyar, “God will provide”. Yep, he provided us with the knowledge to build the damn things in the first place.

  205. Nick Gotts says

    I don’t understand the israel-bashing I’m seeing in some of the comments here. – amphiox
    Maybe something to do with their defiance of international law (settlements on occupied territory are illegal – simple as that), and the number of Palestinians and Lebanese they’ve killed recently?

    They were not the aggressor in the majority of the wars they fought, though they did provoke a large number of the smaller skirmishes.
    Of the 6 major wars, they have been the aggressors in 4: 1956, 1967, 1982-2000 and 2006; not in 1948 or 1973.

    They treat their own citizens (all religions) better than any other regime in the region.
    Mordecai Vanunu might disagree with you if he was allowed to speak to foreigners.

  206. negentropyeater says

    Amphiox,

    if you mention the UN establishing the state of Israel, may I remind you that the resolution 181 that was passed on November 29, 1947 on the partition of the british mandate of Palestine, called for the establishment of two states, one Jewish, one arab.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_Palestine

    Well, maybe the Israel bashing comes from the fact that to this date, more than 60 years later, this arab state still doesn’t officially exist !

  207. says

    #26 “Am I the only one who thinks Sagan sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix?”

    No. The producers deliberately wanted Agent Smith to sound like Carl. It is no mistake.