Richard Zurawski

NASA has just this past week landed a spaceship on the planet Mars, the first time that it has been able to do a controlled descent to the planet’s surface in thirty years. What better illustrates the enormous challenge of space travel than the fact that fewer than half of the missions to Mars have ended in success. The others have crashed and malfunctioned.

NASA scientists and technicians were justifiably concerned as they waited to hear from the spacecraft, that it had in fact landed safely and was performing its functions and experiments as planned. This mission to Mars is a precursor to a manned (peopled?) mission in the not too distant future, and its success is a large step to getting people to the surface of the planet.

It is a remarkable step to be sure, but is it one that should lead to an expedition of astronauts? I am as romantic as the next sci-fi dreamer, but I have to wonder whether it will ever be possible to have people travelling to the planets. A trip to the moon to gather rocks is one thing. The moon is a paltry ten times the diameter of the Earth away and we literally and figuratively run circles around the globe constantly. But a trip to the planets is another issue. Mars is more than 100 times as far from the earth at its closest approach and a trip would take months if not years, instead of days and it would expose astronauts to gamma rays, solar radiation and an isolation that even the past Antarctic explorers couldn’t imagine. Then assuming the travellers landed safely after enduring this most arduous of journeys, they would then have to perform their functions and then face the dangers of getting off the planet without the incredible NASA backup and venture back again! This is not Star Trek folks. The chances of astronauts being able to accomplish this successfully borders on the slim and slight.

Whatever successes we have had in space have come at the hands of the incredible technology we have developed. That technology has lead to new materials, computers and robots that are light years ahead of what we thought was possible even a few decades ago. In comparison, our bodies have remained the same, vulnerable, expensive to maintain and easily damaged by even the most benign of what space travel has to offer. In addition space probes and the like have not need to give up lives, breathe, say good-bye to families and endure what I cannot imagine. If they malfunction, its just so much metal and plastic sitting in the red dust. We have plenty more to send. And once there they don’t have to come back. It’s a one-way deal that they are only to happy to make.

So, why I ask, the rush to send people to Mars or to any other planet for that matter? There is no comparison in history to this trek. There is no hope of riches or wealth or other people or anything else that our robots can’t do for us. The vast journeys of the past whether to the New World or to Antarctica pale in comparison to what we intend with the red planet. What’s that expression? Fools rush in……

This is my favourite time of month, because this is when one of my favourite magazines arrives on my doorstep. Scientific American has been a staple of mine for the better part of four decades and my virtually complete library of back issues is a glorious information source. 

I can watch the march of science through its pages and read about the incredible successes from the scientists themselves, who prepare articles for this prestigious periodical’s educated layperson, who may or may not be an expert in a given field. Though I skim every article from the first page onward, I really dig in and settle into my favourites, physics, meteorology and paleontology, like an easy conversation with an old boyhood chum. Always well written, prepared and presented, they summarize the world of science like to other periodical. In addition to the sceince articles, like every other good news organ, Scientific American also has editorials and commentaries, which are always rich and rewarding. I especially like Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic, and regular contributor to Sci Am. 

This month, Michael’s article pertained to his perspective on the interview he did with Ben Stein, who produced the  documentary marketed to Christian Fundamentalists called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. Ben set up an interview to query Michael on his views on Darwinism for inclusion in the documentary. Apparently, the interview didn’t go as planned from Ben’s viewpoint. 

His viewpoint? Stein draws a ridiculous line that Darwinism leads Atheism, to evil, and can be traced to the Holocaust and other travesties of the 20th and 21st century. Because of this perceived connection, Ben’s central thesis is that the Intelligent Design premise or by any other name, Creationism, is the only viable alternative. Cut in the pseudojournalistic mold of Michael Moore, Ben Stein’s directed approach to enquiry is galling. I urge you to read Shermer’s article and see the machinations that Stein goes through to mislead, obfuscate and distort. Its not about information, understanding or clarification. Its about creating doubt, trying to trip up and hide the hidden agenda that Stein has. Questions are traps, hoping to lead the unwary into saying something that will unwittingly bolster the premise of Creationism.

It’s such a shameful exercise and in a nutshell shows the problems that we now have with vested interests. In this time when we have so many problems to solve, problems that threaten our way of life and the life on the planet, it is so sad to think that so much effort is wasted combating supercilious and spurious arguments whose sole purpose is to give credence to unsupportable and wrongheaded ideas whose only support comes from a conglomeration of ancient myth. 

We need to seriously examine another unspeakable travesty in the making, one that could be even worse than the awful genocides perpetrated by the vile evil regimes of the past. Obfuscation and distortion in the name of fundamentalism is as wrong as the eugenics of our bygone eras and bear the same stamp of pseudoscience and ethical masquerades that led us to the holocaust. Is it time to make this type of distortion a crime when so much hangs in the balance and so little time left to act? 

The past ten years have seen an amazing transformation in the media and entertainment world. The internet has turned everything on its head. Newspapers are losing money, closing down and laying off writers and other production staff, book sales are down worldwide, the music industry still hasn’t adjusted to the new world order and now the great and powerful television and movie industries are beginning to feel the not so nascent and growing power of the wired world.

This shaking up of the world information, communication and entertainment industry has been forecast for a decade and though there are been a few false starts it looks like the shakeup is finally here. Fewer and fewer people are watching the great and powerful networks. The same thing that happened to the music industry, through the free download debacle of Napster and other peer to peer music trading sites is now happening to video, television and the movies. The first inroads were made through Utube, but now the increased bandwidth, the proliferation of movie and TV free download sites is in full swing. And frankly, I have no idea how this latest play will end. When I consider the pap that passes for entertainment that is available to me on the TV dial, or at the latest Hollywood offerings, I see why this is all happening. Why wade through endless commercials, edits in content to fit the production into the TV time slot or just the insipid, low brow shows, I am not surprised that its primarily the blue rinse set and the remote controlling couch bound who make up the dwindling TV audience. And the bad news for the networks is that like big tobacco, the quest for a new younger user is coming up goose eggs.

I tasted for the first time last week what is available out there on demand, sans commercials, watching what I wanted, when I wanted from an offering that boggles the mind. Fifty years of TV production from all genres available at a click of a mouse. The cost zero, the convenience infinity. 

So far I have only logged into one web site, though I have found many others that offer the same service at the same price. Is it legal? I can’t imagine that it is, though the disclaimers claim so.

How long will these sites stay up and running before the authorities step in? Hard to say. Look what happened to the music industry. Napster was the cutting edge, the first wave of peer to peer trading and downloading and it revolutionized how we listen to music and where we get our music. In the end Napster was shut down, but dozens of clones still exist and do pretty much the same thing. The fallout was that many retailers felt the pinch and some even went out of business. Now it is the turn of broadcasters and purveyors of video. We are used to free programming and like the inexorable flow of water down a hill peer to peer free downloads, will erode the networks and broadcasters. Where this will all go and what it means to copyright, programming and how entertain ourselves is the new $64-billion question.

Yet again we hear the bleating people and groups complaining about the cost of fuel for our heating, transportation and agriculture. 

We pontificate, complain and conjecture as to why this is happening, how we have to become active to stop it and how we have the right to continue doing what we want because that is what we want.

We have had warning that for one reason or another the end to cheap fossil fuels was coming, that we were living on borrowed time. Did we look at the facts, listen to the geologists, environmentalists, actuaries and geophysicists who told us that we were playing into the hands big oil and the enriching the Middle East, as well as pushing our planet headlong into thermageddon?

I’m afraid we did just the opposite. We went out and bought the biggest gas-guzzling behemouths we could find, fell in love with urban sprawl and empowered our military to become an arm of big oil and transportation interests. Did we finance alternate energy, look at reduction or put a hold on our runaway consumption and population? Not a chance.

And today as the price of gasoline spirals ever upwards do we slow down, consume less, stretch each litre of fuel? The maddening race continues as we rush ever faster hither and yon and complain that fuel taxes and big oil are gouging us blind. Every highway has almost all driving faster than ever ignoring the simple laws of science that govern consumption.

Imagine what the world might look like today, if we didn’t burn fossil fuels, if we had developed renewable energies, perfected the hydrogen economy when the first oil crisis hit in 1973.
Imagine if we didn’t flow trillions of dollars a year to people half a world away bent on financing our destruction with our own dollars, impoverishing our middle and lower classes while at the same time enriching the greedy elite. 

Or go even further back and look at the antics of General Motors, Mac Truck, Standard Oil, Firestone, along with the duplicitous governments in Ottawa and Washington and the like, who illegally destroyed our rail network so that we would become addicted to the automobile.

So here we sit stewing in a pot of hubris of our own making, having traded the future for plush, wheeled parking lots called SUVs. 

Bring on the higher fossil fuel costs, bring on the shortages, bring on the taxes. The sooner we get past the idea that we can do what we want because we can, the sooner we can get back to our senses and stop unlimited growth.

We take so much for granted. When we look at the seas and the oceans we limitless expanses and forget that even something as seemingly endless are not immune to our effects. Even they have begun to change because of our numbers and industry. The latest studies seem to to be telling us that climate change, a warming of the atmosphere is also going to interfere with the oceans’ ability hold oxygen.

The more scientists study the oceans, the more there is for them to find. And one of the more disturbing finds is that parts of the oceans are becoming anoxic zones, that is, areas devoid of oxygen. Not good news at all if you live in the ocean and breathe oxygen. That includes, fish, corals, sponges, lobsters, squids; just about anything that crawls or swims in the ocean waters. So what happens to oxygen breathing creatures in these anoxic zones? Pretty simple. Whatever relies on oxygen and happens to live there dies. And some of the regions are huge. There is a zone just off the west coast of Africa, almost as big as Belgium that has been studied for years as it gets bigger and more consistent.

In the anoxic zones, anaerobes, creatures that do not require or even like oxygen, thrive. The famous “red tides” caused by red algae, are an example of these types of creatures and what happens when the move into a region. Red algae, a phytoplanktonic organism, require very little oxygen and also release toxic chemicals that kill pretty much any organisms that come in contact with them, fish, birds, mammals and even people. The red algae then consume their kill, which in some cases can number millions of individuals, rivaling humans in their ability to destroy vast regions of the ecosystem. 

Today, more and more of these dead zones are cropping up in the oceans. Most are along coastal areas where effluent and agricultural runoff deplete the oxygen and devastate coastal shelf life, opening a new niche for anaerobes and other anoxic creatures. The eastern coast of North America has in recent years been the scene of shellfish poisoning, because the shellfish are filter feeders that ingest the phytoplankton toxins and then pass the toxins on to us when we consumed the shellfish. That led to the deaths of many people and even many of those who survived were left with permanent disabilities.

As long as we continue to pump effluent into the oceans, as long as we treat them like open sewers we will have a harmful effect on not only the creatures in the ocean, but ultimately ourselves. When we close an environmental niche to one group of species, life somehow finds a way to sooner or later populate that empty spot with another group, which very often may not be the friendliest or compatible to us or the creatures we rely on.