First steps of US on Global Warming

After a week of heated argument (and "boos") with other countries in Bali, US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky finally agreed to an amended compromise statement. According to the NY Times,

The agreement notes the need for "urgency" in addressing climate change and recognizes that "deep cuts in global emissions will be required." Still, it does not bind the United States or any country to commitments on reducing greenhouse pollution.

CNN:

The EU wanted an agreement to require developed countries to cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. The United States opposes those targets, along with Japan and Canada. The latest draft of the agreement removes the specific figures and instead, in a footnote, references the scientific study that supports them.

BBC:

The US and the EU earlier agreed that industrialised countries would not set firm emissions targets at this stage. The "Bali roadmap" initiates a two-year process of negotiations designed to agree a new set of emissions targets to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol.
...
The document coming out of the meeting, the "Bali roadmap", contains text on emissions cuts, the transfer of clean technology to developing countries, halting deforestation and helping poorer nations protect their economies and societies against impacts of climate change such as rising sea levels and falling crop yields. The roadmap sets the parameters and aims for a further set of negotiations to be finalised by the 2009 UN climate conference, to be held in Denmark.

So as far as I can tell, this is again an agreement with no teeth. The US has agreed to no tangible results whatsoever. It's progress in that we've agreed that Something Needs To Be Done and therefore are acknowledging that global warming is taking place, but all we've agreed to so far is to continue talking. Well, better that than nothing.

Australia bans incandescent bulbs

Awesome, Australia has decided to ban "normal" incandescent bulbs, in favor of CFLs (compact fluorescent lights). [BBC, CNN Video]

The motivation is that saving the electricity will save CO_2 production, and therefore slow global warming. That's great, but I have a couple questions still: (1) What about all the mercury going to landfills? and (2) can physical science teachers still obtain incandescents for demos? :-P

PEAR Labs closes/relocates

Thanks to Sclerotic-Rings for the head's up. Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research Lab is closing due to lack of funds, 28 years after its inception.

The group studied whether consciousness affected random events on a large statistical scale. They found minute but statistically significant influences from human thoughts, or (take your pick) statistical anomalies in their data. They published peer-reviewed articles about their work, and also published later work that failed to confirm their original work.

In the end, they say they have proven that consciousness does play a role in random events, denying the current state of physics that allows for no mechanism for such an interaction. I say that they may have valid arguments against current physics, however they fail to do the thing that real scientists do: propose an alternate hypothesis that can be further tested. To me they are no better than those who support Intelligent Design. I agree entirely with IDers' claim that Darwinian Evolution has flaws - (1) Punctuated Equilibrium has supplanted Darwinian evolution, so they're really barking up the wrong tree, but (2) Irreducible Complexity is something that is not well-explained by any of our evolution models. However, by failing to propose an alternative scientific hypothesis that does fill in the gaps of evolution, ID fails to be science. Similarly, it appears that consciousness could affect random events, but the PEAR Labs researchers fail to to propose any mechanism by which it might do so.

Until then, I will remain skeptical.

And to round off this discussion with a little humor...