James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon Pt II

As we know in part one, Climate "sceptic" James Delingpole was made to look rather silly on the Horizon documentary about "Science under attack" by the royal society president Paul Nurse. Delingpole has been quite slow to respond on his blog about the affair. It really went belly up a bit for him and I think he has been stumped a bit by how badly it backfired for him* and has put up a few articles criticising Ben Goldacre for calling him a "penis" and attacking him for being an "intellectual coward" by supporting the consensus on AGW. Which I think is out of line against a man who could have been taken to the cleaners by the notoriously litigious poo lady and by exposing the murky underworld of the big medical companies and the AIDS denial in South Africa in the "Bad Science" book. He then attacks the mathematician Simon Singh** for being a bit of a bully for tweeting about our lone crusader:


Sorry, but @JamesDelingpole deserves mockery ‘cos he has the arrogance to think he knows more of science than a Nobel Laureate


Oh bloody boohoo. Delingpole, who ironically is not averse to resorting to a bit of playground abuse (libtards) is trying to set himself up as the victim of some kind of Twitter smear campaign of abuse for his noble stance on climate change. Now let me make it clear, I don't approve if he has received threatening messages, but bloody hell he can't half give it but is incapable of taking it. He has essentially used his blog to promote the idea that climate scientists are colluding in a scam to extort trillions of dollars from a gullible Joe Public. That he somehow has somehow he has seen through the tissue of lies that some of the most qualified climatologists in the world have failed to notice. These are big claims, so you might expect to get a bit of flack for stating it. Sorry James that's how the cookie crumbles mate. As I said he has taken a metaphorical cricket bat around the chops, and as everyone knows when the debate goes tits up resort to straw man arguments. Let's take a look at some of Jameses.


"Yet in the opinion of Singh, the worldwide Climate Change industry is the one area where the robust scepticism and empiricism he professes to believe in just doesn’t apply. Apparently, the job of a journalist is just to accept the word of “the scientists” and take it as read that being as they are “scientists” their word is God and it brooks no questioning or dissent"


This shows James has little understanding of how either to critically appraise scientific research properly and what scepticism is. Possibly it is the result of those with a journalistic background being attracted to holding contrarian views from what they perceive as an aloof "elite" Delingpole appears to believe "scientists" are some monolithic cult who dictatorially decide from on high what is scientifically orthodox and what isn't. The vigorously researched evidence for AGW was simply not obtained in that manner. It is not unreasonable for a qualified scientist to take at face value the "views" of an unqualified layman who doesn't appear to know what science is.


"There’s a “consensus” on global warming. It’s immutable and correct. And anyone who disputes it is a vexatious denier informed by nothing but ignorance and who deserves nothing other than to be hounded and bullied and abused by the Guardian, the Independent, the BBC, Simon Singh’s Twitter mob, Ben Goldacre’s Twitter mob, and the shrill nest of paid-for trolls who infest the comments below this blog not to present a reasoned case but merely to disrupt and offend."


There is a consensus amongst scientists, a very rigorous one supported by shitloads of evidence to back it up. I shall repeat this again loud and clear.


SCIENTIFIC CONCENSUS IS NOT THE SAME THING AS CONVENTIONAL WISDOM OR DOGMATIC ORTHODOXY. NOT AT ALL!!!


Thanks for listening!


Well you can split hairs over what you think the motives of the AGW sceptics may be, but I take the philosophy of Johann Hari. All people deserve respect, all ideas don't. Oh and don't accuse your opponents of trying to rubbish the cause; and then do just that in the same paragraph.


"Well I’m sick of it."


Blog about something else then.


"What sickens me is the hypocrisy of people who claim to be in favour of speech, claim to believe in empiricism, claim to be sceptics yet refuse to accept room for an honest, open debate on one of the most important political issues of our time."


Nurse had a debate with you my friend. Horizon asked you on to do that and you fucked it up. Want some credibility, stop relying on shitty research.


**"My case is not that I “James Delingpole have taken a long hard look at the science of global warming and discovered through careful sifting of countless peer-reviewed papers that the experts have got it all wrong.”


If you are going to accuse the folks who wrote these papers of some sort of cover up, I suggest you start swatting up a bit. Bloody hell if you want to stick your neck out, do the homework.


"What I am saying, and I say almost every day, is that the evidence is not as robust as the “consensus” scientists claim; that there are many distinguished scientists all round the world who dispute this alleged “consensus”;"


How would you know? You haven't read the bloody evidence. You just bloody admitted it!


"that true science doesn’t advance through “consensus” and never has;"


Well quite possibly. But it's a bloody good sign of an accurate theory. Newtons third law works just as well today as it did in old Isaacs time.


"that there are many vested interests out there determined and able to spend a great deal of money by making out that the case for catastrophic, man-made global warming is much stronger than it is."


Yeah because high petrol prices and and end to cheap flights have always been real vote winners. Anyway if a scientist did discover that AGW wasn't occurring it would be the find of the century. You'd be lauded, showered with cash and grants from the oil companies. There sending the Nobel Prize your way as well. Real life isn't like a Michael Chrichton novel.


"and because they are not issues which require an exclusively scientific knowledge to understand. They just require the basic journalistic skill of being able to read and analyse."


But a sciencey background sort of helps. Anyone can read a scientific paper, but an unqualified journalist can make mistakes with scientific papers. Melanie Philips for instance didn't realise that Cochrane papers were specifically designed to criticise scientific papers, so she jumped to the wrong conclusions over what was said about the quality of Andrew Wakefields detractors findings. That is why I am all for opening science up to the greater public and journalists who have to report scientific stuff to their readers, but often fail to do so very well.


"Yet despite apparently knowing nothing more about me and what I do than he has learned from a heavily politicised BBC documentary, and maybe heard from his mob of Twitter bully chums or read in the Guardian, Singh feels able to decide that Paul Nurse is right on this issue and I’m wrong. Well I don’t call that an evidence-based argument. I call that dishonest, thoughtless and – given the high ethical standards Singh claims to represent – outrageously hypocritical."


Yes, as just because you haven't actually read the peer reviewed papers on the subject, doesn't necessarily mean you can't loftily proclaim that it's all one huge con by the people who wrote them, and have people give you a round of applause for it.


"“If my cause is really so powerful and right and true, how come its response to any kind of criticism is not to engage with it through argument but merely to try to silence it with censorship, appeals to authority, crude character assassination and establishment cover ups?”


This reasoning is how; inevitably- these kinds of things can self sustain themselves. If they do take you on, they are the scary "establishment" trying to bully the heretics. If they don't take you on, they are trying to hush you up and censor you. The MMR causes autism and Intellegent Design proponents trot this very same argument out, and because it is so superficially plausible on one level, that is why pseudoscience can be so persist ant on the flimsiest of evidence to actually support it. So it is with trepidation that I quote Delingpoles closing words on the whole affair*


"This has been a bruising week for me. But in the long term, I have a strong suspicion, it is going to do far, far more damage to the BBC, to Sir Paul Nurse (and, by extension, to the integrity of the Royal Society) than ever it has done to me."


Pseudoscience, the gift that keeps on giving.

James Delingpole Makes a Grade A Tit of Himself on Horizon (Part I)

It's unbelievable! I go away for a few days (hence why this one follows on a bit later than the actual interview I am posting about) and I get confronted with a feast of fertile blogging fodder that I had no idea was going on as I haven't been on the web at all during the duration, (not always an entirely bad thing to do now and then.) or looked at a newspaper the whole time. Melanie Philips has pissed off almost everyone on Twitter with a bizarre and ill thought out column about the "gay agenda" pushing homosexuality to schoolkids via special awareness topics in their lessons, designed to "destroy the concept of traditional sexuality". Jesus! Two sports pundits given the boot for slagging off a lady ref. A hard line Christian GP who has been appointed to the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs. This is a pretty impressive list of potential topics, but old news is no news, so I have decided to retrospectively comment on the story that has the most personal interest to me of which I have only just found out about this past day as a result of my self imposed news blackout. A story involving a well known climate change skeptic who ended up looking like a complete berk on a BBC documentary. This was one of the most embarrasing interviews ever to grace the box that didn't involve Bill Grundy and any member of the Sex Pistols.

The Horizon documentary titled "Science Under Attack" was presented by the President of the Royal Society; Sir Paul Nurse. In it Nurse was concerned about the discrepancies between what Scientific consensus has to say about - in particular -climate change; GM crops and the nature of the HIV virus, and the general views about these issues in the eyes of the lay public. The programme was good and I genuinely encourage you watch it on I-player (link provided) if you haven't seen it. It focused primarily on climate change, and I was a bit disappointed the other topics took perhaps as much of a backburner as they did as they are all interesting topics in themselves. But as I said climate change is probably the most obvious contemporary scientific topic that creates a controversial divergence between the scientific consensus of climate scientists (around 97 percent agree man made climate change is occurring) and the layperson (half of Americans and a third of Britons think ACC is being deliberately exaggerated) It is unsurprising then that Professor Nurse interviews a climate change denier to find out why this is so, and into this steps James Delingpole, the Daily Telegraphs resident "ACC is bollocks" blogger. The interviews with him in the documentary are stunning, not because Delingpole puts in a good performance, but because; in American parlance - he got his ass handed to him on a plate, a big silver platter even. It is pure car crash stuff. Delingpole is edgy and clearly out of his depth even before the fun starts. Delingpole dismisses "scientific consensus" as unscientific (I presume he makes the mistake of thinking it is just the same as conventional wisdom. Delingpole makes broad sweeping statements throughout the interview but never elaborates, so you can see why we may have to speculate on what he means). Nurse disagrees and says that this amount of consensus over such a long period of time is a healthy sign that the evidence is very strong, and that as scientific superstardom results from demolishing established theories, it must have been pretty robust or it would have been disproved. The killer blow is landed when Nurse proposes a hypothetical scenario to Delingpole and his "consensus is not science" stance. Say he was suffering from cancer and the doctors had come to a unanimous consensually conclusion about his treatment plan, (which happens often) would he reject this treatment for one that hadn't, as happens every once in a blue moon, if that? Delingpole is floored by this. He visibly looks like he wants to stop the interview and hastily tries to change the subject onto the East Anglian e-mails thing. I know some editing goes on with this kind of thing, but my god Delingpole comes off badly on this one. Nurse has stumbled upon what i think is the best way to combat pseudoscience, or conspiracy theories. Point out the bleeding obvious flaws in their logic. People like Delingpole cherry pick data (and ACC involves lots of figures to selectively shove into an article), and quote figures out of context to bolster and inflate the validity of their "stance". They never go for the biggy, disprove the warming effects of carbon dioxide, demolish the whole ACC theory to a chorcoally pile of dust at it's root. They can't. Nurse however is in the position of being able to quietly and calmly attack the major flaws of their arguments without turning it into a slanging match involving the "evil establishment" against the lone Galileo figure in the eyes of a layperson, or looking like a dusty old don being one upped by a polemicist pulling out all the logical fallacies to make his point look one hundred times better than it actually is. It's like calmly explaining to a moon hoaxer who says they had to remove all the stars from the photos, thus why they are not visible; that thinking that not one astronomer or scientist looking at those photos would notice that the stars suddenly being missing was a bit dodgy - is so monumentally fucking stupid that anyone who thinks this shouldn't comment on opening a loaf of bread, let alone expect anyone to take them remotely seriously. The interview also shows (and I am aware of post production editing) to some extent that Delingpole can dish it out on his blog (sometimes in quite a dubious manner) with the largely receptive audience, but is a little squeamish at taking it himself. Hell if as a non-scientist; you want to dismiss 97 percent of respected climate scientists as liars, expect to have to face the harsh questions from a critical point of view. Let us hope we are reclaiming some of the "war against science." Point out the major flaws of the key arguments the pseudoscientists are peddling, and not let them cherry pick on their own terms, and perhaps; perhaps popular perceptions of science will improve. Here's hoping anyway.

Turn in to part II tomorrow where we look at James Delingpoles take on the whole interview.

*POSTSCRIPT. Although the hypothetical question posed by Paul Nurse and Delingpoles response are the point the interview jumped the shark, this doesn't even take into account the lofty claim on his behalf that the entire peer review process has been trashed by the "climategate" affair. How? Again he makes lofty announcements and never backs them up with evidence, or indeed anecdotes. He even admits that it is really a political and not a dispute about scientific research. The admission that he hasn't the time or the scientific know how (Mr. Delingpole has a degree in English) to read peer reviewed research papers on climate change is astounding for a man who spends about 95 percent of his blog "proving" how ACC is made up by communists or whoever. How can he know that the peer review process is irrevocabally damaged by the East anglia broohaha if oh... he hasn't read a fucking peer reviewed paper on the damn subject. Christ in heaven, what was he thinking in this interview? Then he pulls the coup de gracé by saying his job isn't to interpret the data, it is to interpret the interpreted data. Or as it is known in every day terms, "Just having an opinion on stuff". Watch it, it truly has to be seen to be believed.

I Appear to Have Completely Missed the Boat.

A few weeks ago I posted here on the findings of some research that appeared to show a link between certain gene fragments in kids, and kids who had been diagnosed with ADHD. This had been broadcast in some sections of the news of new "proof" that ADHD was genetic and not just the end result of lousy parenting and naughty kids getting away with murder. This spurred me to write a piece muling on the hypothetical consequences to our society and notions of morality and deviancy - if it was discovered that genetics was the largest factor in determining a persons behaviour. I thought it would perhaps lead to a greater understanding (though would be very contentious to many people) of both mental disorders, and in the case of something like ADHD, and fringe autists - that it was not just a case of youngsters being difficult for the hell of it, or being "a bit of a weirdo". That or society may realise that people could be victims to a genome that they had no say in coding, and where would we go with that, with our assumption of a largely free will concept of personal behaviour. So I was both surprised and depressed by a post I read on Ben Goldacres peerless Bad Science blog. I've put up the appropriate parts of the posting in the quotes below, and it seems that if we are to believe the research into people who believe that genetic determinism is the major cause of mental issues, that it far from induces a more understanding attitude to those afflicted. It seems that I missed the boat with my previous post, and not just slightly. This stuff is pretty damning.

and Harre explored attitudes among first year undergraduate psychology students, with questionnaires designed to probe belief about the causes of mental health problems, and responses on 6-point scales to statements like “I would be less likely to become romantically involved with someone if I knew they had spent time in a psychiatric hospital”. People who believed more in a biological or genetic cause were more likely to believe that people with mental health problems are unpredictable and dangerous, more likely to fear them, and more likely to avoid interacting with them. An earlier study in 1999 by Read and Law had similar results.

In 2002 Walker and Read showed young adults a video portraying a man with psychotic symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, then gave them either biogenetic or psychosocial explanations. Yet again, the “medical model” approach significantly increased perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability.

In 2004 Dietrich and colleagues conducted a huge series of structured interviews with three representative population samples in Germany, Russia and Mongolia. Endorsing biological factors as the root cause for schizophrenia was associated with a greater desire for social distance.

And lastly, more compelling than any individual study, a review of the literature to date in 2006 found that overall, biogenetic causal theories, and labelling something as an “illness”, are both positively related to perceptions of dangerousness and unpredictability, and to fear and desire for social distance. They identified 19 studies addressing the question. 18 found that belief in a genetic or biological cause was associated with more negative attitudes to people with mental health problems. Just one found the opposite, that belief in a genetic or biological cause was associated with more positive attitudes

That is pretty depressing findings. That people who are prone to a genetic view of human behaviour are more likely to distance themselves from people with mental issues, and worse seem to think that on some level people so afflicted are "prisoners of their genes." or potentially unreformable and lost causes - prisoners of their own DNA, and seen as more dangerous than people who don't subscribe to the genetic view, who may not be as willing to write them off.

Now I want to say that I don't take the view of our hypothetical "genetic" person above, in regards to those who are suffering from disorders such as these, but I think Ben's closing statements should be heeded.

"Blaming parents is clearly vile. But before reading this research I think I also assumed, unthinkingly, like many people, that a “biological cause” story about mental health problems was inherently valuable for combating stigma. Now I’m not so sure. People who want to combat prejudice may need to challenge their own prejudices too."

Seconded.

Peter is the Gift that keeps on Giving

Last post, I touched upon the findings of the possible genetic link to ADHD, and what that could mean for our societies outlook on behavioural problems, and indeed criminality and deviance. I said that religious people may have difficulty swallowing this, as columnists such as Peter Hitchens have shown when they have reacted in their columns on the issue. The Judeo Christian concept of sin and fallen man and free will explaining away theodacity are contradicted by genetic theories of behaviourism in humans, and we know which trumps which in the reasoning of the devout. It could go someway to explaining why someone like Hitchens who believes that evil, and souls and sin are physically manifest -is resistant to this sort of stuff, as well as his dislike for anti - depressant use. So it is no surprise that he gave his tuppenceworth this week in response to the findings. As it is quite short I'll reproduce it here:

"The latest propaganda for the non-existent complaint ‘ADHD’ was torn to shreds on Radio 4’s Today programme by Oliver James, despite highly unhelpful interruptions by the presenter Justin Webb, who gave the pro-ADHD spokeswoman a free run. ‘Evidence’ of a genetic link is nothing of the sort.

(THAT TODAY DEBATE IS HERE AT 2:21:00 INTO THE PROGRAMME)

Even if it were, the fanatics who want to drug normal children and excuse our society’s selfish, horrible treatment of them, have to solve this problem. How can you have a ‘genetic link’ to a complaint for which there is no objective diagnosis? What is it linked to?"

"Evidence" he is very reticent to highlight in the article, and that James does not cite the sourse of in the interview. He is right it isn't "evidence" of a direct link between the gene studied and ADHD, just that there was a possible causal link discovered, which the researchers have admitted. Hitchens has only a rudimentary grasp of how science works, in his mind it must either be a direct link or not at all. All or nothing, which is pretty much counter to the way the incremental scientific method often operates.

"What is it linked to?" he asks, in regards to something that has no concrete objective diagnosis. Well the answer to his rhetorical question is the criteria put down by comparing case study notes of disorders like this, to come up with as close as a set of coherent symptoms to identify and provide diagnostic criteria for a disorder that has certain common similar behavioural patterns in different people. It's actually quite common that scientific terms may not have a cast iron objective definition that encompasses them all. For instance there is no fully objective criteria to identify something as a metal, and no rigid set of properties that define a celestial body as a planet, but we don't just say "fuck it, they don't exist then." Hitchens absolutist stance on everything shows how little he actually grasps what science is.

I just really get so hacked off with these pundits who play all these ad hominem, straw men - bum brained philosophical parlour games to make themselves look cleverer than they are, about stuff they know nothing about. It's purely because ADHD and genetic theories of behaviour don't fit into Hitchens world view, nothing more - that he opposes them and calls those who dent this view as "fanatics". Should stop trying to make out that his articles are something they aren't

Don't hold your breath!

A Brief Post on the "Genetic ADHD" Findings.

Which can be summarised as:

"ADHD Genetic Faults Link – One child in 50 is suffering from ‘attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADHD), a problem whose causes are not well established and could be partially of genetic origin, according to a study released this week.

This condition, which leads to fidgeting, inattention, difficulty concentrating, impulsiveness, causing problems at school and affects more boys than girls. Symptoms appear within the first year of life.

The reasons advanced are varied: lax parents, food too sweet, biochemical disorders on neurotransmitters.

Genetic causes, are also mentioned since the risk that the child is hyperactive is increased if a parent is and that if an identical twin is hyperactive, the other has 75% chance of being well. A study published by the British journal Lancet shows for the first time direct evidence that goes in that direction.

Researchers led by Anita Thapar, Professor of Genetics at Cardiff University (Wales), compared the DNA of 366 children with hyperactivity and that of 1047 did not suffer. They then found that hyperactive children were more likely to have in their genome into small fragments of DNA double or absent.

These fragments, variations of copies of a gene, or CNV-role control valve on genes, their absence or duplication may alter gene expression.

They also found that these fragments were found in locations such as chromosome 16, which are involved in schizophrenia and autism, a disease that has some similarities with hyperactivity, such as difficulty in learning.

For researchers, one can imagine a biological basis common to both diseases.

“This is the first time we’ve found that children with ADHD have chunks of DNA that are either duplicated or missing,” explained Anita Thapar."

So we have a possible link between DNA oddities and ADHD that has evidence of positive correlation between both. But the article is keen to point out the following:

“Hyperactivity is not caused by a single genetic change, but probably several, including CNV, interaction with unidentified environmental factors,” said another researcher, Kate Langley."

This article has had a fair amount of coverage. ADHD is of course a concern for many parents so that isn't quite unexpected. It is also a controversial issue as there are those who believe ADHD is little more than a fictional disorder designed to exonerate bad parenting and just put a fancy label on naughty kids. But if the link has validity then this does raise interesting questions, and I do think it could (if there is a definite causal link) have a profound effect on societies thinking on both how disruptive individuals should be treated, and indeed our current consensus on ethics and understanding of human nature and the innate sense of good and bad humans have.

The potential consequences of discovering that the composition of the genome may be a dominating factor in the makeup of a persons character would throw our established notions of behaviour and the way we deal with "antisocial" traits quite literally out of the window. It is generally believed that a person, say a naughty child or a thuggish hoodie or a criminal deviant has chosen to be like that. They have decided to rebel from society. To not play by the rules. They are misguided at best, at worst downright evil. Parental issues and the person in questions background do generally come next in line in common consensus reasons for [negatively sanctioned] deviancy and antisocial behaviour. Our laws, both civil; workplace and school, criminal trials and general societal sensibilities reflect this. Diminished responsibility of course can be taken into account, but most trials assume at least some form of sound mind and active; freewill motivated cause of antisocial behaviour, and who is to say that at present that is our best understanding of how to deal with this sort of thing? But if inherited genetics was proven to be a big (and possibly the biggest role) in creating disruptive and antisocial behaviour what then? No-one chooses their own genome, like some organic computer program. That would render our established method of dealing with this sort of thing - completely obsolete. We would have to move from away from pure or largely free will; motivated theories of individual behaviour to one of a high degree of genetic influences. That is why if you think about the potential conclusions that can lead from these findings - this story could be so groundbreaking to our society. And contentious too.

If, hypothetically speaking, genetics was found to be the prime motivator for human behaviour and "bad" behaviour in particular, then we would see society having a hard time accepting it as nothing more than "do-gooder" shrinks and scientists making excuses for bad behaviour. Right wing columnists would go to town claiming it was all down to bad parents and feral youth, not arbitrary genetics. A genetically based prime motivator would also be extremely controversial and hard for the main religions to swallow. I think it would be as controversial as creationism, and could possibly be the next science / religion battle ground. "Free will" and "soul" are trumpeted by evangelicals and others, the former in particular being used to get God off the hook in regards to bad stuff people do under his "perfect" watch. Neither of these sit well with genetic theories of behaviour, and this is partly why; say Mel Phillips and Peter Hitchens are so "hostile" to things like ADHD.

There would also be the issue of being able to screen genes of embryos to spot these "troubled" genes. This of course brings the inevitable ethical questions of potential programs of "eugenic terminations", and the results that would follow. In Stephen Baxter and Aurthur C Clark's novel "The Light of Other Days" the characters [set in the future] notice that there are fewer hard discipline scientists and musicians than there used to be, as things like Aspergers and Manic Depression had been screened out and "treated" at birth. Could "purging undesirable" traits become closer to reality? And where could it lead?

I'm not for one minute saying that genetics is the sole factor in determining someones behaviour. I don't think that (neither do the researchers in the article), other stuff influences it also. But have put a hypothetical situation that could distort our held beliefs in such a radical way. A smallish research study that could have enormous consequences down the road.

Good News About the Ozone Layer

The UN scientists who undertook the "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion 2010" have stated that the Montreal protocol of 1987, when 196 countries phased out the use of CFC's has meant that 2010 is really the first year when the thinning of the ozone layer, which led to the "hole" over the Antarctic discovered in the 80's - has not increased, but not yet decreased either. Hopefully this reduced level of CFC's means that the worst of the damage has been prevented. And that a concerted collective effort to curb a pollutant has been (so far) successful.

The CFC's creating the hole in the ozone layer was one of the most famous popular environmental focal points of the 1980's, yet was and still is rather misunderstood by many. It was a tragic tale of a very promising bunch of compounds having the ability to unleash a terrifying chain of events under the right conditions, which would lead to one of the most surprising examples of scientific unforeseen consequences. The hole in the ozone layer was a big concern in the 80 and 90's and led to Montreal being enacted to curb but not fully stop CFC's as well as things like freon and halon fire extinguishers dumping this stuff into the stratospheric ozone layer. As I said it does still remain a not well understood phenomena in parts of the lay population. The hole (it is actually more of a zone of depleted ozone, than a literal hole in the sky.) is sometimes blamed on man made climate change, whilst it is really a different topic altogether. Though the two do have some interlapping points, which really take us on other trajectories elsewhere. Was this why the Daily Star proclaimed that this story "proved" Global warming [their words] was just "hot air"? Many of the comments on the Expresses report of the story seem to confuse the two issues as one. So what is all this ozone malarkey then?

This will be only a summary of what the "ozone thingy" is all about. I mean who the hell am I, a bloody science teacher? About 20 to 30 kilometers up, in the stratosphere there is a diffuse band housing 90 percent of the planets ozone in a layer called the ozone layer. Ozone is essentially 3 chemically linked oxygen molecules, rather than the two linked ones you normally get in atmospheric oxygen. At this height the thinner air allows more UV radiation to saturate the molecules up there. This means that the UV can slice individual oxygen molecules off which attach to other paired up oxygen molecules, creating ozone. This ozone is also chopped up into normal oxygen by UV, which can then have other single molecules latch on and create some more ozone. This effect, with its interactions - also has the useful ability to shield the surface (and all us lot) from the most harmful levels of UV radiation such as UVC and the most dangerous wavelengths of UVB, so we get suntans and plant food, and not cancers and sterilized single celled lifeforms. A natural radiation shield that stops us getting zapped by our own suns less welcoming side. The molecules being chopped and shifted in the layer mean that it is constantly seeing ozone created then destroyed, then created again, all in a level of finely tuned equilibrium, and it is this equilibrium where CFC's do the damage.

CFC's or chlorofluorocarbons (or bromocarbons) were created in the late 19th century for use as refrigerants and propellant gasses and expander aerosols. They were initially seen as the saviour of this kind of chemical product. They took over from stuff that was either flammable or poisonous or both together. CFC's were neither. By using halogens rather than hydrogen bonded to carbon, they didn't burn, and lacked the unpleasant properties of older stuff used fo their new purposes. They were also very stable, well they were down on the ground. In the 1970's and 80's it was noticed (by amongst others James "Gaia Theory" Lovelock and others) that the ozone layer was thinning. It became known that CFC's which had been pumped into the atmosphere for 60 plus years, were themselves starting to degrade by UV bombardment in the upper atmosphere, it had just taken a while to degrade them. Single chlorine and even worse - bromine atoms were energised and broke free where they could interact with the ozone and "steal" the third atom, which could go on to eat into more ozone molecules. It is reckoned that through this and further catalytic reactions, one of these radicals could devour 100 000 ozone molecules, throwing the equilibrium to a sharp deficit of ozone to oxygen produced. Montreal was implemented to prevent the CFC's from overwhelming this layer to an unsalvagable level.

For me if the report singles out that the damage to the layer has been stemmed, then this is a great success story for evidence based scientific assessment and damage limitation of a serious problem. That perhaps a situation caused [unintentionally] by man on the planets ability to sustain life as we know it, can be rectified by reasoned collective action led by scientific methodology to prevent a positive feedback point of no return. It provides hope that a workable solution plan to counter man made climate change (which is different to this phenomena I might add.) is achievable in a reasoned and pertinent timescale. We may get ourselves unwittingly in these scrapes, but we can get out of them if the will is there.

*I'm pretty sure some bright spark somewhere is going to comment that if we aren't all going to get "cooked" by the ozone hole (usually worded "well they used to say that the ozone hole would kill us all.") after all then perhaps it should follow that man made climate change won't be such a big deal after all. Let us remember that it took a concerted effort to remove the CFC's. It didn't magically mend itself. Which I'm sure will be forgotten by the writers of this kind of stuff.

Prince Charles and Hot Air

The Prince of Wales has delivered an interesting speech at Oxford university, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies, of which he is patron. I don't say that the speech is interesting because of the prose and the quality of what was said. It is pretty typical Charlie fayre. Boring, long winded, repetitive and veering on random tangents, almost haphazardly. And very ... VERY long!! (TRANSCRIPT HERE). Although Charles appears to be an advocate of a certain school of postmodernist thought, that decrees "Western Empiricism" (the dreaded hegemony.) is just one (very horrid) paradigm, and an "innate" Eastern Spirituality is another equally valid way at looking at the world. Thus the world is divided into immutable and exclusive blocs of thought, which I just think is slightly patronising, but that's just me. It is ironic therefore, that as this picture below points out, perhaps the one universal constant, that can surpass any intelectual boundry of thought is that Charles is a bit boring.

The speech focuses on [what he sees as] the need to apply the wisdom of "Traditional Spirituality" to combat climate change. The talk isn't a call to arms to follow Islamic practices to combat climate change as some have claimed. But is a discussion on the need to heed "traditions" which emphasised the unity of man and nature , to allow us to live in harmony with our environment - not just relying on the "materialistic rationality" of the contemporary scientific method, which elevated man beyond nature (most biology textbooks would disagree!!) and caused the problem in the first place, by borrowing from ying; to pay yang .... or something.

Now I don't have a problem with such a well known figure highlighting climate change, and indeed the perverse way the third world bears the brunt of it. Good on him for not being put off by the vocal deniers as well. However like many speeches he gives on scientific things like climate change; medicine, and technology -he has to pepper the few sensible points he makes with a lot of rather strange concepts about "soul" and "wisdom of nature." He seems to have this idea that nature has some "essence" or "spirit" that Western thought has forgotton (or hubristicly chooses to ignore.) but our ancestors, and the mystic cultures of the "East" still recognise and nurture. What he fails to grasp is that when he berates science and its "empiricism" for ignoring the "soul", is that science is (by definition) under no obligation to do so. He's making that same mistake about science. That it is just another ideology and belief, and is there to provide an all encompassing world view. It isn't! Science is just a (very effective) means of studying the world. There is no onus in factoring in unfalsifiable things like the soul, that is just a matter of opinion, and that is what Charles should be told before he sounds off.

Here's a few excerpts of what he said;

" Over the years, I have pointed out again and again that our environmental problems cannot be solved simply by applying yet more and more of our brilliant green technology – important though it is. It is no good just fixing the pump and not the well. When I say this, everybody nods sagely, but I get the impression that many are often unwilling to embrace what I am really referring to, perhaps because the missing element sits outside the parameters of the prevailing secular view. It is this “missing element” that I would like to examine today. In short, when we hear talk of an “environmental crisis” or even of a “financial crisis,” I would suggest that this is actually describing the outward consequences of a deep, inner crisis of the soul. It is a crisis in our relationship with – and our perception of – Nature, and it is born of Western culture being dominated for at least two hundred years by a mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us. So I would like you to consider very seriously today whether a big part of the solution to all of our worldwide “crises” does not lie simply in more and better technology, but in the recovery of the soul to the mainstream of our thinking. Our science and technology cannot do this. Only sacred traditions have the capacity to help this happen."

He tacitly admits it is just an opinion of his here. The speech is loaded with gratuitous self pity that no-one takes his received wisdom at anything more than face value (I'd say he was being generous to himself. I doubt many listen to practically anything he has to say on this matter.) He doesn't seem to understand that no one is obliged to take an unsubstantiated opinion at more than face value, and usually people don't. It's pretty much a rant about how everything would be great if it wasn't for horrid old technology.

"In general, we live within a culture that does not believe very much in the soul anymore – or if it does, won’t admit to it publicly for fear of being thought old fashioned, out of step with “modern imperatives” or “anti-scientific.” The empirical view of the world, which measures it and tests it, has become the only view to believe. A purely mechanistic approach to problems has somehow assumed a position of great authority and this has encouraged the widespread secularisation of society that we see today. This is despite the fact that those men of science who founded institutions like the Royal Society were also men of deep faith. It is also despite the fact that a great many of our scientists today profess a faith in God. I am aware of one recent survey that suggests over seventy per cent of scientists do so. I must say, I find this rather baffling. If this is so, why is it that their sense of the sacred has so little bearing on the way science is employed to exploit the natural world in so many damaging ways? I suppose it must be to do with who pays the fiddler. Over the last two centuries, science has become ever more firmly yoked to the ambitions of commerce. Because there are such big economic benefits from such a union, society has been persuaded that there is nothing wrong here. And so, a great deal of empirical research is now driven by the imperative that its findings must be employed to maximum, financial effect, whatever the impact this may have on the Earth’s long-term capacity to endure. This imbalance, where mechanistic thinking is so predominant, goes back at least to Galileo's assertion that there is nothing in Nature but quantity and motion. This is the view that continues to frame the general perception of the way the world works and how we fit within the scheme of things. As a result, Nature has been completely objectified – “She” has become an “it” – and we are persuaded to concentrate on the material aspect of reality that fits within Galileo’s scheme."

The empirical based view of the world he complains about is the only view science can take. BECAUSE IT IS A METHODOLOGY NOT A BELIEF SYSTEM!! Ditto for religious scientists (70% sounds WAY too high, but he doesn't quote the source.). They don't apply the two together, because they are two different things! As for a decline in the belief in souls, and an increase in secularisation with tech / science. That tends to happen. People rely less on supernatural explanations, as things can be explained objectively. Most of the time anyway.

"I hope you can just begin to see my point. The utter dominance of the mechanistic approach of science over everything else, including religion, has “de-souled” the dominant world view, and that includes our perception of Nature. As soul is elbowed out of the picture, our deeper link with the natural world is severed. Our sense of the spiritual relationship between humanity, the Earth and her great diversity of life has become dim. The entire emphasis is all on the mechanical process of increasing growth in the economy, of making every process more “efficient” and achieving as much convenience as possible. None of which could be said to be an ambition of God. And so, unfashionable though it is to suggest it, I am keen to stress here the need to heal this divide within ourselves. How else can we heal the divide between East and West unless we reconcile the East and West within ourselves? Everything in Nature is a paradox and seems to carry within itself the paradox of opposites. Curiously, this maintains the essential balance. Only human beings seem to introduce imbalance. The task is surely to reconnect ourselves with the wisdom found in Nature which is stressed by each of the sacred traditions in their own way."

The only view of "our deeper place in the world" that gets unfashionable is Charles opinion of humans place in it. Look in one of the many good books on popular biology / nature, for a good (and well researched too) narrative on humans role in nature. It's a zillion times more interesting than the iffy new age cobblers, based on nothing but his royal opinions, on offer here.


"Such instruction is hard to square if all you do is found your understanding of the world on empirical terms alone. Four hundred years of relying on trying and testing the facts scientifically has established the view that spirituality and religious faith are outdated expressions of superstitious belief. After all, empiricism has proved how the world fits together and it is nothing to do with a “Supreme Being.” There is no empirical evidence for the existence of God so, therefore, Q.E.D, God does not exist. It is a very reasonable, rational argument, and I presume it can be applied to “thought” too. After all, no brain scanner has ever managed to photograph a thought, nor a piece of love, and it never will. So, Q.E.D., that must mean “thought” and “love” do not exist either!"

Oh Charlie! What shall we do with you! Any study of animal / human behaviour will show evidence for love (or more accurately some kind of altruism / getting ones rocks off combination that we would class as "love" ) Ditto anything written, spoken and published, kind of hints that something we call "thought" exists. Both may be subjective terms, but science can show that the brain / hormones produce an empirically observed sensation, which can then contribute to sensations that can be called these things by the philosophers and poets. etc.. The evidence for God is bit more thin on the ground though.

"The Modernist ideology that has dominated the Western outlook for a century implies that “tradition” is backward looking. What I have tried to explain today is that this is far from true. Tradition is the accumulation of the knowledge and wisdom that we should be offering to the next generation. It is, therefore, visionary – it looks forward.

Tradition is a broad school. A bunch of customs and idioms passed down through the generations. It can be visionary, profound, or complete bollocks. Starting something that becomes a tradition may be an attempt to look forward. But respecting traditions is - by the nature of tradition, "backward looking". Where the hell else are we supposed to get them from?

The entire speech (and there is a ton more of it) is pretty much in the same vein. Berating science for becoming to big for it's boots, and for technology and secularism making us lesser people, whilst materially better off. He also accuses scientists of putting profit before principle, which isn't very nice. Now perhaps our more materialistic world has made us greedier and less in tune with nature (though we seem these days to increasingly value environmental issues and technological innovations to curtail the damage man has inflicted on the planet. I also don't recall that our "spiritual" ancestors had a green party either.). If the cause of some of the damage is by the products of science and technology (and can also be objectively analysed. You can't do that with a spirit, which negates his point about science pursuing that line of action. Hey I didn't write the speech!!), then can we not use the same instruments to assess and negate the damage? Shouldn't Charles have a bit more grace, and explain that it is only his opinion that our "spirits" being out of kilter is the root cause?

For all Charles' self deprecating grumbles about how he is the shunned rebel spouting the unfashionable and unorthodox. I doubt he would have the self awareness to admit that this is all just his opinion on how to tackle these issues, and that he doesn't expect anyone to give him any more intellectual credence with that in mind. I think he would be saddened to learn that a) In a scientific context, his arguments are bunkum, and show he doesn't understand what the scientific method is.. Which is a bit a bummer if you have a lecture that goes on for 30 years about the abuse of the scientific method. b) he just isn't a good speaker, or polemic. I truly am being generous to him with my criticisms. It really is shooting fish in a barrel. Every line in that speech is utter dross. It is hard to argue with Johann Hari, when he says that the only reason any of his stuff gets airtime at all is due to his royal status. Even with all the trappings his role entails him too, that we don't have, he still has trouble with what he says getting airtime! It is testament to the appalling quality of his writing, that someone as high profile as the heir to the throne can write this, without seeing the forest for the trees. I really would stick to opening supermarkets!

"I am slightly alarmed that it is now seventeen years since I came here to the Sheldonian to deliver a lecture for the Centre that tried to do just this. I called it “Islam and the West” and, from what I can tell, it clearly struck a chord, and not just here in the U.K. I am still reminded of what I said, particularly when I travel in the Islamic world – in fact, because it was printed, believe it or not, it is the only speech I have ever made which continues to produce a small return!"

Michael Hanlon. How do you do it?

Michael Hanlon must have the most thankless job in Fleet Street. The mails science editor. I suppose that must sometimes feel like being the president of Al Quiedas LGBT society. Paul Dacre and science aren't exactly bedfellows. Scientists are only too often portrayed as sinister authoritarians who want to poison our kids (MMR scare), want to perform freak experiments on animals, or grotesque ambitions to change the face of humanity as we know it (any scare story on genetic engineering; cloning, or embryology.) A dangerous cabal of zealots who want to play god, you know the spiel. That great scene from the comedy, "The IT crowd" where they fool the women about "the elders of the Internet." is an apt parody of some sections of societies view of science (and computers) as a closeted Freemason like sect, unknowable and following its own secretive agenda. But I also noticed something else when I read Michael Hanlons new blog (it's very good as well.), as well as other articles he has done in the past. He is a very good popular science writer (and we need more of those), and he actually knows about science, rather than being a journalist who has to explain as best they can, science stories via secondary information. He should be perhaps better known; publication wise - to the public than he is. However it is striking reading his work - and now his blog as well; how much he can "get away with" in his articles. Stuff other columnists wouldn't.

The tales of Dacre's controlling nature in his editorial role are pretty infamous. He is obsessed with every sentence in the paper toeing his party line. Even something as innocuous as the film reviewer, Chris Tookey seems to be possibly being memoed to write shrill fire and brimstone "video nasty" reviews of films like "Kick Ass.", which aren't actually reviews at all, but "ban this filth" polemics. Suspicious Dacre soundbites appear in seemingly unrelated articles. He runs a tight ship, like some ultra controlling patriarch, dictating every aspect of his families lives to an obsessive degree. Hanlon however doesn't seem to be under as much scrutiny. He has produced sensible and well argued articles on climate change, easily shrugging off the deniers "claims". He has dismissed scare stories his own paper has pushed. He has only published about 5 blog articles so far. But is striking how much of it runs counter to the papers official "stance". His article about the vast clean up of the seas around Britain, highlight (supportively) the EU's role in bringing about legislation that allowed that to happen. Whilst simultaneously he damns the privatised utilities for putting profit ahead of public well being (isn't that what Dacre would call socialism?) He supports tax payers money funded manned space missions, and thinks it serves a more profound, emotional purpose to humanity, than just for military or commercial profit. He wonders why many scientists are left liberal, and astonishingly for a Mail writer; doesn't hold this against them. He is critical of the decay of scientific funding and prestige under Thatcher (ironically a PM with a science degree!), and the contempt the Bush government had for science. There's more! He defends Craig Venter, the biologist who created the "syntia" bacteria, by constructing its genome in a lab and transplanting it into a prokaryote. He doesn't denounce him as a monster who is building hideous new megabacteria to wipe out mankind, and puts what he achieved in context. That we aren't at a stage where a new life form can be built totally from scratch. This is bordering on heresy! I reckon by next week, we may have articles on the benefits to the scientific community of an experiment in which Paul Dacres mother is hit in the face with cricket bats; by two professors in lab coats, and that scientists have discovered that conservatives are more likely to have lower IQ's, smaller penises and uglier wives than liberals.

Is it possible that Dacre feels that science is such a fringe interestsw to his readership that he gives Michael Hanlon carte blanche to publish anything he likes? Does he even know who Michael Hanlon even is? Is Hanlon forced to work in a closet under the stairs. Has anyone in the Mails office even had contact with him in the past 5 years? Does he exist at all? Is he a Tyler Durden like figure existing only in Max Hastings mind? I have a feeling Michael Hanlon is so marginalised at Mail HQ, that he can be found at the papers Christmas party standing glumly on his own, sadly staring at the vol au vents, wondering when the alcohol will start to kick in and it doesn't matter that no guests wants to talk to him, and don't even know who he is. For that my friends is the status of science in our wonderful mass media. Bastards.

MMR Scare. The Swan Song.

As we know Andrew Wakefield, the doctor who was the driving force for the now infamous Lancet paper that looked at a dozen case studies of the children of parents who believed that their kids who showed varying degrees of autistic spectra, had been afflicted by bowel problems caused by the MMR vaccine. I'll give a few details of what happened, as a much more in depth, and knowable summary, that I could never produce on the topic, has been done by the wonderful Dr. Ben Goldacre of "Bad Science", which can be found on this link. The case study designed to look for a link between two isolated things (not to see if A caused B. A point often overlooked by the so-called "MMR sceptics") and the report concluded that:


"We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described,"


However the authors did say in the article that they believed thier was a possible link between MMR and the bowel problems and autism. That is LINK, not a causation. But from this point onwards, possibly the mother of all health scares in the last 30 years was unleashed. A health scare that had next to nothing to justify the furore that eventually ensued.


In an ideal world, Wakefields team should have published their work, the BMC should have taken one look at it, told them it was parp, and to actually rely on the bricks of scientific research, rather than the straw of anecdote, and a personal hunch. But no! - This is the real world. Wakefield held a press conference, where he said (and this is the smoking gun for the anti-MMR camp.) that he had doubts about the MMR (fair enough. More research before saying that to the media though.) vaccine, and that he believed that single vaccines should be used instead. And that is the clincher. HE SIMPLY HAD NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS TO JUSTIFY THAT CLAIM. THEIR IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A POSSIBLE LINK, AND A PROVEN ONE. It was; for any intent and purpose -an opinion, just that. He wasn't; as some have claimed -a martyr, or Galileo figure, standing up to the soulless minions of scientific orthodoxy. He was a man with an opinion. And he should have expressed that more. But by then it all kicked off in the press. The numbers of children who had been vaccinated dropped from 92% in the year before the press conference to 79% in 1998. Some figures put the vaccination levels at as low as 60%. Confirmed cases of increased levels measles were reported, and two infant deaths ascribed to measles as well. In the media storm, it was overlooked that subsequent research had failed to reproduce the link. 13 of the authors of the paper had disowned it's findings. Much larger studies in Japan and Finland failed to show any correlation between MMR vaccines and increased levels of autism. Nor did later findings by the GMC about Wakefields conduct in his "research" do much to dent his "martyr" status in some sections of the press. You know boring stuff like:


*Performed unnecessary and painful tests on children without proper consent. Extracting spinal cord fluid from Lumbar puncture, and invasive bowel and colon examinations without any surgical need to do so.


*Paying young children at a birthday party £5 a time for samples of their blood.


*He had not disclosed that he had received money from solicitors to fund studies to confirm the fears of parents who believed that their children had been harmed by the vaccine, and had vested interests in those funding MMR alternatives.

This should have been a cautionary tale of a rogue doctor who told all and sundry that they should not use a vaccine, knowing that he had no evidence to back up his warning. And what was worse was that he had performed invasive surgery on children under false pretences at times, and appears to have done so to promote a rival vaccine. There are few things more he could have done to have broken every standing rule of his profession. So no folks he ain't a martyr. No one in any profession would (and should) have walked away scott free.

It is hard to disagree with Ben Goldacre when he says that Wakefield isn't solely responsible for this whole debacle. It is regrettable that those in the media who went along with this scare (whether through scientific illiteracy or cynicism without any evidence to back it up.) will likely walk away from the whole affair without the full role of their guilt in perpetuating the scare being made apparent. Wakefield may have set the ball rolling, but those in the media from the BBC to (especially) the Mail, who took this stuff at face value without checking its accuracy. I'm sure Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips, the two pied pipers of this pap, slapped themselves on the back in how polemic and dangerous they were being in standing up to those science bullies. Perhaps they should have done the research into the topic (medical affairs tend to be quite important. Especially when childhood health care is concerned. Objective analysis doesn't count for a whole lot to many parents, in regards to their young kids.) before nailing their colours to the mast. I don't want to sound pedantic, but shouldn't someone have pointed out to the likes of Fiona Phillips, Jenny Mccarthy, Jim Carrey, Carol Vorderman and Lynda Lee Potter that there is an important distinction between the scientific method, and having "a bit of a bad feeling" or "I'm a Mum, I know whats good for my kids" about analysing the MMR vaccines safety. I don't blame the parents [who believe MMR vacines were the cause] of autistic kids. It's very easy to believe that their child's affliction had a root cause other than blind bad luck. The delivery of the injection at the age when symptoms of autism would start to manifest, injection or not, can seem to provide a post hoc explanation for their autism, and worse - and perhaps why the MMR thing was so emotive, because the parents feel that they are to blame for their child's autism, in allowing the triple vaccination, in spite of objective evidence. This can explain comments like this:

"I saw my son deteriorate before my eyes after MMR in 1989. No one will ever convince his father and I that the MMR was not to blame for his on-going problems and, remember. when a child is disabled in effect the whole family is disabled as everyone's lives are affected for the worse. Dr. Wakefield deserves praise for his efforts."

This heartfelt comment exemplifies why, I think; Wakefield got his martyr status in some circles. Without the objective evidence of the MMR link to autism, parents who unconsciously (wrongly) blame themselves for their child's disability, rather than just plain bad luck, can transfer this feeling to anger towards "evil pharma", and a "medical cover up" that hid the dangers of the vaccine. The media cheerleaders of Wakefield were guilty (IMO) of compounding these parents misery, by pushing this story. We needed perhaps more salient medical experts pointing out that the comments above whist heartrending, are based on grief and emotion, not any scientific validity, or merit. The importance of collective herd immunity in cutting childhood diseases and the dangers to unborn by the measles infection should have been more vocal at the time. Especially in this more cynical age, where these kind of large projects are seen as by their very definition, dodginess embodied.

Fortunately the affair is over for now. I don't think Wakefields disgrace will dent his fully converted hard core following, but I doubt their ranks will swell much more, after the full extent of his malpractice is laid bare. I also expect his friends in the media will see this as the next "Gallileos retraction" before the orthodoxy, if they cover the outcome of it. The uptake of MMR vaccines is rising again to pre-scare levels, and although the deaths of the kids was terribly tragic, we are fortunate it was not higher. But this affair lays bare the dangerous levels of scientific illiteracy in society at large, and the extent that objective evidence is held in contempt, vis a vis emotive analysis. It highlights that baseless scares could manifest again, and next time the effects could be far worse, to a society that doesn't have the facts at hand.

Happy 20th. Hubble (For Tomorrow)

As you may know (and if you've seen the art work on todays Google homepage, you probably have an idea.) today is the 20th anniversary of the Hubble telescope being launched into space to give us practically all the spectacular (an understatement) "real view" (that is what a human would see, not infra red or x ray images.) images of space that are ingrained in popular circles. Yes Hubble is the embodiment (but not the first) of an idea by a bloke called Lyman Spitzer in 1946. Spitzer, like every other astronomer, knew that whilst the atmosphere was very useful for the act of breathing, and keeping us warm, and safe from cosmic radiation, was a bit of a pisser for stargazing. That murky turbulent wall of gas, just gets in the way of taking good pictures, distorting images, and blocking out more distant and harder to see stuff. But stick a telescope in orbit and you kill two birds with one stone. Firstly there is no atmosphere (well hardly any. It's about 350 km up, depending on orientation. There's a trace of atmosphere which will eventually drag it down to burn up point in a few decades time. There is a mission planned to artificially do this in about 2014.), so you can get crisp images, and don't have to worry about clouds, turbulent flow and physical pollution and secondly there is no light pollution, so you have optimal viewing conditions. This is music to every astronomers ear. Although not the first, Hubble is the most well known space telescope. There is something about the way it shows us the grandeur of the cosmos, in human terms, rather than a radio or microwave construct of the cosmos, that probably accounts for it's endearing appeal to the layman. It is no exaggeration to say that Hubble is probably the most well known artificial satellite to the general human race. Stop someone in the street, anyone; they'll know what Hubble is. Everyone remembers the dodgy mirror that had to be replaced. We all know it looks like a big domestic hot water boiler (it's about the size of a single decker bus) covered in tin foil, or a big packet of biscuits with two solar panels attached. Hubble, and it's images have become an icon. It's in Naked Gun 2. The Disney world ride "Mission to Mars", as an object everyone knows what it is. It's images (mistakenly called photographs. Hubble doesn't have a giant reel of film in it!!) of stunning nebula's, and pillars of gas light years high, that are more beautiful and weirder than any SF effects artist could dream up alone, are used for space shots in sci fi films. (Babylon 5 used a lot of the images for nebula effects.) Sombrero Galaxies, storms on Neptune Aurora on Saturn (a favourite of mine and pictured.) Dust clouds that result in the birth of stars. What perhaps people don't know is how appropriate the name Hubble is for a device that has opened up our knowledge of space, and given us perspective on how the universe is physically composed. Edwin Hubble, the astronomer who it is named after; is largely remembered for showing us that the universe consists of more than the Milky Way galaxy, than was originally thought. He also went a long way towards implementing the "smearing of light" that fast moving object (like galaxies) obtain, and using it to calculate how far away they are. He gave us a key ability to define the shape of the universe, our place on it, and the sheer scope of it. It is a sweet irony that the telescope that bears his name continues his work, and allows us to peer further than we thought possible.
Hubble telescope has; in my mind done us all a favour by promoting public awareness of astronomy. Anyone can request to take up some of Hubbles extremely rationed time to look at whatever bit of sky they wish (though how far your request might go to be submitted is another matter). Hubble owes its continuing functioning existence to it's fans. Nasa had to reject their original plan to let it run its course in orbit, by not servicing it after the Shuttle Columbia was destroyed in 2003. It seems likely that it will continue; from its fourth service in 2009 to be our roving eye in space til 2014, when the larger and more sophisticated James Webb telescope is put into action. Sadly Hubble won't be retrieved by a shuttle and put on display in the Smithsonian Institute, after it's operational life is over, as the shuttle is due to be canned. But still, what a career though.