No denying climate change

by Greg McDonald

The news that the Arctic ice could melt and become open sea by 2020 should shock world leaders at December’s UN Climate Change Conference into radical action to address the man-made crisis which threatens human existence.

British polar explorer Pen Hadow predicts that the Arctic’s summer ice cover will be entirely lost, destroying species, warming the planet, raising sea levels, creating millions of refugees, and threatening human life.

There is no doubt now, among scientists, politicians or the public, about global warming. It’s real, we made it, and its catastrophic threat to continued human existence is imminent.

Yet while the tools to deal with climate change exist, and public support for their use is overwhelming, our leaders are failing us.

The best chance for the planet is the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December, at which scientists will demand radical and immediate action to alter the energy economy and rebuild ecosystems, warning that soft targets and delays will have disastrous consequences.

Hadow’s revelation of the shocking disappearance of the Arctic in our lifetimes must silence the madness of climate change deniers and end the greed of polluters alike, and spur our leaders at Copenhagen to understand that inaction is inexcusable.

Forever young?

by Greg McDonald

If you’re planning on doing anything risky before 2028 you might want to reconsider, because those of us still here in twenty years are going to live forever.

Yes, according to American scientist Ray Kurzweil, technology is accelerating at such a rate that we’re just two decades away from immortality as nanobots first halt and then reverse the ageing process.

And if you imagine Kurzweil is a crack-pot whose mum still irons his Star-Trek pyjamas, beam this up: twenty years into our mortal past the world laughed at some of the professor’s other crazy predictions: mobile phones, the collapse of the USSR, and the internet you’re reading this blog on.

It doesn’t stop there either: Kurzweil’s immortal cyber-men run fifteen minute Olympic sprints without drawing breath and dash off novels in minutes.

And if talk of modified super-beings sounds crazy, look around you – from Madonna to dear old Anne Robinson, technologically modified eternally youthful immortals already walk amongst us.

And it’s not just celebrities: at the UN rumours abound that Gordon Brown’s Youtube smile was actually a programming error in early nanobot technology, while leading members of the EU fear Peter Mandelson has already drunk the blood of eternal undeath.

So there it is. Start saving ready to put your nano-feet up on Jupiter as we enter the immortal age. Just whatever you do, don’t get hit by a bus in December 2028.

Space travel begins at home

by Greg McDonald

As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landings, the crew of Apollo 11 are right that we earthlings must not lose the urge to explore ever further – and right that we must find the will to save our own planet from ourselves.

Some questioned the moral justification for the space race between the USA and the USSR which, though it ultimately led to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins’ “giant leap for mankind”, cost billions of dollars and many lives.

But Armstrong is right today to say that the race “allowed both sides to take the high road with the objectives of science and learning and exploration”.

Yet, marking the ruby anniversary of their achievement with a reunion and a series of addresses, the three not only dared to dream of reaching Mars by 2035, but rightly reminded us of more pressing challenges back on terra firma.

Michael Collins’ calls for better treatment of the Earth, and particularly for improved environmental controls, is a reminder that the Moon landings ultimately taught us just as much about the value of our fragile planet as they did about outer space.

While the first Moon landing remains perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most iconic, moment in human history, the Apollo 11 crew are right that we must now set our sights on equally challenging goals – finishing on Mars, but beginning with the Earth.

Growth spurt

by Alan Tyers

Arguing about whether or not something is sperm: not necessarily one to ponder while enjoying your lunch, but that’s the debate exercising some of the country’s top boffins and eggheads this week.

The good people at Newcastle University reckon, in the interests of infertility research, they have managed to produce some sperm from a human stem cell.

Their rivals at the Universities of Sheffield and Cambridge say they know sperm when they see it, and they’re pretty sure that whatever the people at Newcastle have grown in that little dish, it’s not the real McCoy.

Whether they’ve cracked it this time or not, it seems pretty likely that sooner or later, humankind will be able to grow sperm from stem cells, and that we will then have the capability to grow a human being in a laboratory.

This is not the Newcastle scientists’ stated aim, but once the technology is there, there is the chance, maybe the inevitability, that it will be used.

There is talk of legislation to control what could and couldn’t be done with the created sperm, but – like abortion or euthanasia – not every country will construct the same laws. One country might outlaw it, another might be growing humans like prize marrows.

Just as Einstein regretted the breakthroughs that allowed mankind to develop the nuclear bomb, once the techniques are perfected, it won’t be possible to unring this spermy bell.

Unfortunately, that’s the price of progress, and those who say it’s immoral to (possibly, maybe) grow a human are wrong. For science and medicine to develop, humankind needs to take risks, both moral and practical.

The use of stem cell technology and its offshoots could save billions of lives and cure previously terrible diseases. Distant, as-yet-unspecified sci-fi nightmares about clones shouldn’t stand in the way.

All hail Darwin, the Shakespeare of science

By Greg McDonald

On his 200th birthday, and 150 years after On the Origin of Species told us for the first time where we come from, we should recognise Charles Darwin not only as the most influential scientist of all time, but as one of a small handful of Brits who could lay serious claim to being our country’s greatest achievement.

While the work of Isaac Newton may be more brilliant, it’s precisely the simplicity of Darwin’s “natural selection” theory that makes it, in his representative on earth Richard Dawkins’ phrase, “arguably the most powerful idea ever”.

In the centuries that have followed, work on genetics and DNA has confirmed Darwin’s rightness, but nothing since has so turned reality on its head. Yet all these years later Darwin’s simple idea remains socially, if not scientifically controversial, as schools in his homeland continue to teach religious myths as a viable alternative to science.

With recent polls showing a shocking number of us don’t believe in natural selection at all, what would a man of Darwin’s courage have made of our society’s failure to face down the flat-earthers? Perhaps, with his remarkable insight into the enormity of time, Darwin would have accepted that our culture simply needs a little longer to adapt to the truth.

Two centuries after his birth, Darwin’s work stands besides Shakespeare’s as the greatest British achievement. And like Shakespeare, Darwin’s greatness ultimately rests on the fact that he told us who we are.

Back from the dead

By Greg McDonald

It’s too early for an April fool, so you better believe it: remarkable DNA advances are making extinction a creature of the past and could bring long-dead species back to life. The decoding of the genome of a 60,000-year-old woolly mammoth raises the prospect of Jurassic Park-style animal resurrection.

Ethical issues abound, and while the old “playing God” line has been flung hysterically at every human advance since the first cave painter meddled with the dark forces of chalk, there are genuine animal welfare issues where “surrogate” all-too-living species are required.

No such anxieties for New Scientist magazine, however, which has already chalked up a wish list of prime extinct steak. And while dinosaurs are off, topping the professors’ menu is getting Neanderthal Man back to babbling primitive nonsense and dragging his missus around by her hair. Though surely we have Jim Davidson for that already?

And why put scientists through all those late nights in the lab resurrecting the Giant Ground Sloth when Chris Moyles walks the Earth?

Surely it’d be better to bring back something more useful? A resurrected Moses might remind his followers in Tel Aviv that when the God of the Jews told him “thou shalt not kill”, bombing schools wasn’t exactly what either of them had in mind.

Albert Einstein – no sloth in the lab himself – once said that “any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction." As unsustainable capitalism plunges the world into recession and the climate into meltdown, our leaders would do well to resurrect such ideas.

Go go gadget Teasmade!

By Greg McDonald

A new consumer poll has named mobile phones our favourite gadgets – but while foot spas have walked away with the title of most useless gadget, surely they simply can’t cut it alongside these laser-guided office scissors.

Of course, after a tiring day of laser guided cutting at the office, most of us have no time for new gadgets – we just want to turn on the Virtual Guard Dog, change the baby’s toupee, curl up in our Wearable Sleeping Bags and put on our Pillowigs for the night.

When it comes to needless technological innovation, we in the West used to think we had nothing on the Japanese, whose inspired creations include the Musical Toilet. But this Christmas we no longer need feel left behind, now we can enjoy this singing festive toilet paper.

Among the several drawers of gadgets (and chargers, and leads, and manuals) we love to accumulate, I’m voting sat nav my most useful toy – but what do you think? Has your mobile changed your life? And what’s the most useless invention you’ve been bought?

For those of you who remember the days when it was possible to have a cup of tea without eBaying a replacement rechargeable battery for the voice-operated remote control for the electronic Teasmade, maybe all the hours we work and money we spend on new gadgets seems like madness. But then again, maybe you’re just one retro mobile phone handset attachment away from fulfillment.

Music downloaders under threat

By Greg McDonald

The music industry’s latest anti-online piracy measures, which involve sending warning letters to illegal downloaders, aren’t only toothless - they’re a breach of our rights.

The internet has made intellectual property effectively commercially worthless, and the music industry can do nothing about it. That’s already spelled the end of much of the business, and the rest may follow.

But don’t think for a moment this is bad news for music or musicians, for whom the net has opened up a world of opportunity never before available. The internet revolution has democratised art in a way undreamed of six or seven years ago.

And it’s been so sweeping that while 10 years ago a ”YouTube” - or rather, U-tube - was something you swore at when the sink got blocked , we now curse at our computer screens if we can’t stream Doctor Who on a Thursday afternoon. There’s no going back.

But there is a sinister element to the music business’s new measures. The internet founders’ vision was of a web free of government regulation. However, the agreed deal which obliges Internet Service Providers to monitor illegal downloads is the equivalent of asking the Post Office to open our letters and check we’re not sending each other home-copied Oasis CDs.

This unacceptable intrusion  puts our freedom under threat. But for music business bosses, the days of inflated CD prices are gone forever. The music revolution wasn’t televised. It was streamed free on demand.

Database: error

By Alan Tyers

Some genius at the Home Office has come up with a plan to create a database of every phone conversation and email in the country!

An estimated 3 billion emails are sent every day, and 57 billion text messages a year. So let's round all that up in a big old electronic filing cabinet. What could possibly go wrong?

This staggering volume of information will, natch, keep us all safe in our beds at night from The Terrorists and other criminals.

The "sleepwalking into a Big Brother State" argument hardly needs making. But what about the vast potential for cock-up?

This is, after all, a government whose record with setting up (and managing not to lose) databases is, let's say, "modest".

One shudders to think how much it will all cost.

One final point: why don't these power-mad control freaks just bog off and, I don't know, sort out public transport, or the economy, or the NHS - rather than snooping into the lives of their unfortunate citizenry?

How much is too much surveillance?

Posted by Greg McDonald

Banksy’s latest work is a protest against Britain’s surveillance society which, while typical of the artist’s tendency for crude publicity-seeking, nonetheless raises the debate about the balance of liberty and security which has become skewed in Britain.

Britain today is not just one nation under CCTV, but one under information databases, an unelected House of Lords and undemocratic Royal powers, and one under internet surveillance with which the Home Office has the power to check that you’re reading this blog.

If the Government gets its way, we will soon be one nation under 42-day detention and ID cards too. Every society requires a balance between liberty and security. We’ve lost ours. As technology increases the ability of the state to monitor individuals, we require more protection of privacy simply to stand still.

And while it’s true that Britain is not East Germany in the 1980s, it’s also true that the Stasi never had the kind of databases the British authorities have today.

Britain has a choice. A CCTV-free long-term future of equality, in which the days of terror threats and a knife-wielding underclass are ended by an integrated, pluralist, rationalist, ethical society with a culture of full employment?

Or the current path, a society run for the wealthy, of long-term joblessness for the poor, unethical lapdog foreign policy, fear, cameras and ID cards?