Polemics

How Earth-like are the 8.8 billion Earth-like planets from a recent estimate?

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Previously, I blogged about a few of the minimum requirements that a planet must satisfy in order to support complex life.

Here they are:

  • a solar system with a single massive Sun than can serve as a long-lived, stable source of energy
  • a terrestrial planet (non-gaseous)
  • the planet must be the right distance from the sun in order to preserve liquid water at the surface – if it’s too close, the water is burnt off in a runaway greenhouse effect, if it’s too far, the water is permanently frozen in a runaway glaciation
  • the solar system must be placed at the right place in the galaxy – not too near dangerous radiation, but close enough to other stars to be able to absorb heavy elements after neighboring stars die
  • a moon of sufficient mass to stabilize the tilt of the planet’s rotation
  • plate tectonics
  • an oxygen-rich atmosphere
  • a sweeper planet to deflect comets, etc.
  • planetary neighbors must have non-eccentric orbits

Now what happens if we disregard all of that, and just classify an Earth-like planet as one which only has to potentially support liquid water at the surface? Well, you get a very high estimate of Earth-like planets.

Science journalist Denyse O’Leary responds to a recent estimate based on this questionable criterion, which placed the number of Earth-like planets at 8.8 billion.

Excerpt: (links removed)

A current official definition of habitable planets is “in the zone around the star where liquid water could exist,” but the ones discovered so far are unsuitable in many other ways.

Then a new cosmology term hit the media, “super-Earths.” It means “bigger than Earth,” but smaller than gas giant Neptune. Super-Earths could be the most numerous type of planet, in tight orbits around their star — which is actually bad news for life.Nonetheless, some insist, they may be more attractive to life than Earth is. Indeed, the Copernican Principle allows us to assume that some are inhabited already.

In reality, even the rocky exoplanets (known as of early 2013) that are Earth-sized are not Earth-like. For example, the Kepler mission’s first rocky planet find is described as follows: “Although similar in size to Earth, its orbit lasts just 0.84 days, making it likely that the planet is a scorched, waterless world with a sea of lava on its starlit side.” As space program physicist Rob Sheldon puts it, Earth is a rocky planet but so is a solid chunk of iron at 1300 degrees orbiting a few solar radii above the star. In any event, a planet may look Earth-like but have a very different internal structure and atmosphere.”

David Klinghoffer notes that the study is estimating that 8.8 billion number, but the actual number of Earth-like planets we can see is much lower.

He writes:

The study is supposed to be a major step forward because of its unprecedented accuracy:

For the first time, scientists calculated — not estimated — what percent of stars that are just like our sun have planets similar to Earth: 22 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 8 percentage points.

Oh! You see, they calculated. They didn’t just estimate.

Because there are probably hundreds of planets missed for every one found, the study did intricate extrapolations to come up with the 22 percent figure — a calculation that outside scientists say is fair.

Oh. They calculated in the sense of “extrapolating” to “come up” with a figure. In other words, they estimated. The figure of “8.8 billion stars with Earth-size planets in the habitable temperature zone” comes down a bit too when you talk about actual planets that have been observed instead of being merely conjectured and “calculated.”

Scientists at a Kepler science conference Monday said they have found 833 new candidate planets with the space telescope, bringing the total of planets they’ve spotted to 3,538, but most aren’t candidates for life.

Kepler has identified only 10 planets that are about Earth’s size circling sun-like stars and are in the habitable zone, including one called Kepler 69-c.

Ah hah. So from the initial, trumpets-blaring figure of 8.8 billion we’re down more realistically to 10. Not 10 billion, just 10. Meanwhile the silence from space continues absolutely unabated.

That’s the way it tends to go with stories like this, the blaring headline and the inevitable letdown.

One part of the AP press release makes the point that the estimate does not include all the minimum requirements for life. For example, you need an atmosphere, as I stated above. Do the estimated 8.8 billion Earth-like planets have an Earth-like atmosphere? How about an oxygen-rich atmosphere, do the 8.8 billion Earth-like planets have that?

NO:

The next step, scientists say, is to look for atmospheres on these planets with powerful space telescopes that have yet to be launched. That would yield further clues to whether any of these planets do, in fact, harbor life.

You know, after the whole global warming hoax, you would think that these headline writers would have learned their lesson about sensationalizing wild-assed guesses in order to scare up more research money. But a lot of true-believing naturalists are just going to read the headline and not the rest of the article, and they will never know that they’ve been had. Again. I love experimental science, but I don’t love the politicization of science. 

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American health care: does it cause poor life-expectancy and high infant mortality?

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Probably one of the best health care policy experts writing today is Avik Roy, who writes for Forbes magazine.

Here is his latest column, which I think is useful for helping us all get better at debating health care policy. (H/T Matt from Well Spent Journey)

Excerpt:

It’s one of the most oft-repeated justifications for socialized medicine: Americans spend more money than other developed countries on health care, but don’t live as long. If we would just hop on the European health-care bandwagon, we’d live longer and healthier lives. The only problem is it’s not true.

[…]If you really want to measure health outcomes, the best way to do it is at the point of medical intervention. If you have a heart attack, how long do you live in the U.S. vs. another country? If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer? In 2008, a group of investigators conducted a worldwide study of cancer survival rates, called CONCORD. They looked at 5-year survival rates for breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, and prostate cancer. I compiled their data for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and western Europe. Guess who came out number one?

Here is the raw data:

Health care outcomes
Health care outcomes by country and type of treatment

Click here to see the larger graph.

So, what explains this?

The article continues:

Another point worth making is that people die for other reasons than health. For example, people die because of car accidents and violent crime. A few years back, Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa asked the obvious question: what happens if you remove deaths from fatal injuries from the life expectancy tables? Among the 29 members of the OECD, the U.S. vaults from 19th place to…you guessed it…first. Japan, on the same adjustment, drops from first to ninth.

It’s great that the Japanese eat more sushi than we do, and that they settle their arguments more peaceably. But these things don’t have anything to do with socialized medicine.

Finally, U.S. life-expectancy statistics are skewed by the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have one health-care system, but three: Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance. (A fourth, the Obamacare exchanges, is supposed to go into effect in 2014.) As I have noted in the past, health outcomes for those on government-sponsored insurance are worse than for those on private insurance.

To my knowledge, no one has attempted to segregate U.S. life-expectancy figures by insurance status. But based on the data we have, it’s highly likely that those on private insurance have the best life expectancy, with Medicare patients in the middle, and the uninsured and Medicaid at the bottom.

I know that my readers who like to dig deep into economics and policy will love the links at the bottom of the article:

For further reading on the topic of life expectancy, here are some recommendations. Harvard economist Greg Mankiw discusses some of the confounding factors with life expectancy statistics, citing this NBER study by June and Dave O’Neill comparing the U.S. and Canada. (Mankiw calls the misuse of U.S. life expectancy stats “schlocky.”) Chicago economist Gary Becker makes note of the CONCORD study in this blog post. In 2009, Sam Preston and Jessica Ho of the University of Pennsylvania published a lengthy analysis of life expectancy statistics, concluding that “the low longevity ranking of the United States is not likely to be a result of a poorly functioning health care system.”

The funniest thing I have found when talking to people from countries with socialized health care systems, like Canada and the UK, is that they are woefully uninformed about American health care. They literally do not know about free emergency room care, which is free for anyone regardless of insurance – including illegal aliens. They do not know about our expensive Medicaid program, which helps people who cannot afford health insurance. And our very very expensive Medicare program, which provides health care to the elderly – including prescription drugs. I get the feeling that foreign critics of American health care are getting their views from amateur documentaries produced by uneducated Hollywood propagandists, or maybe from TV shows on the Comedy Channel. They certainly are not getting their information from peer-reviewed studies by credentialed scholars from top universities, like the ones cited above.

I have literally spoken to Canadians who think that people in the USA without insurance do not get treatment and just die in the streets from stab wounds. They don’t know about the emergency room rule, or about charity care, or about Medicaid and Medicare. There is a lot of ignorance up there – wilful ignorance, in some cases. And keep in mind that the average Canadian household is paying over $11,000 a year for this substandard health care! They are paying more for less, and that’s not surprising since a large chunk of the taxes that are collected for health care go to overpaid unionized bureaucrats. Naturally, when their left-wing politicians need treatment, the first place they go is to the United States, where they pay out of pocket for the better health care. But that doesn’t stop them from denouncing American health care when they are talking to voters.

Higher infant mortality rates?

One of the other common arguments you hear from uninformed people outside the USA is the higher infant mortality rates argument.

Here’s an article by Stanford University professor Scott Atlas to explain why the argument fails.

Excerpt:

Virtually every national and international agency involved in statistical assessments of health status, health care, and economic development uses the infant-mortality rate — the number of infants per 1,000 live births who die before reaching the age of one — as a fundamental indicator. America’s high infant-mortality rate has been repeatedly put forth as evidence “proving” the substandard performance of the U.S. health-care system.

[…]n a 2008 study, Joy Lawn estimated that a full three-fourths of the world’s neonatal deaths are counted only through highly unreliable five-yearly retrospective household surveys, instead of being reported at the time by hospitals and health-care professionals, as in the United States. Moreover, the most premature babies — those with the highest likelihood of dying — are the least likely to be recorded in infant and neonatal mortality statistics in other countries. Compounding that difficulty, in other countries the underreporting is greatest for deaths that occur very soon after birth.

[…]The United States strictly adheres to the WHO definition of live birth (any infant “irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, which . . . breathes or shows any other evidence of life . . . whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached”) and uses a strictly implemented linked birth and infant-death data set. On the contrary, many other nations, including highly developed countries in Western Europe, use far less strict definitions, all of which underreport the live births of more fragile infants who soon die. As a consequence, they falsely report more favorable neonatal- and infant-mortality rates.

[…]Neonatal deaths are mainly associated with prematurity and low birth weight. Therefore the fact that the percentage of preterm births in the U.S. is far higher than that in all other OECD countries — 65 percent higher than in Britain, and more than double the rate in Ireland, Finland, and Greece — further undermines the validity of neonatal-mortality comparisons.

You can listen to a podcast with Dr. Atlas here, from the Library of Economics web site.

If you want to read more about how American health care compares with health care in socialized systems, read this article by Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Scott Atlas. And you can get his book “In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care” from Amazon.

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Gay activist Dan Savage: abortion should be mandatory for the next 30 years

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Gay activist Dan Savage thinks that we should murder every single child born on the planet for the next 30 years, against the will of the parents, in every single country in the world.

The Daily Caller explains what happened. (H/T Mysterious Wes)

Excerpt:

Self-styled anti-bullying advocate Dan Savage told a giggling and applauding audience in Australia that “abortion should be mandatory for 30 years” on Monday during a panel discussion on Christianity, marriage and sex.

Savage made his remarks during a program titled “Q&A, Adventures in Democracy” broadcasted from the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on Monday in response to the question: ”Which so-called dangerous idea do you each think would have the greatest potential to change the world for the better if it were implemented?”

“Population control: There’s too many goddam people on the planet,” Savage said as the audience burst into applause at his predictable response. “You know, I’m pro-choice. I believe that women should have a right to control their bodies. Sometimes in my darker moments, I’m anti-choice. I think abortion should be mandatory for about 30 years.”

Savage, creator of the “It Gets Better” viral video anti-suicide crusade on behalf of gay teens, takes a hateful, violent pro-death position toward everyone who irritates him, from unborn babies to hapless Green Party candidates standing in the way of total Democratic domination.

“I wish [Republicans] were all f***ing dead,” he said on liberal comedian Bill Maher’s HBO show “Real Time” in 2011 during the debt-ceiling brouhaha.

Back in 2006, Savage called for the barbaric murder of a Green Party candidate, angered by the threat of third-party candidates to spoil the Democratic Senate victory of Bob Casey.

“Carl Romanelli should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope,” Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian, alluding to the 1998 torture and death of hate crime victim James Byrd, Jr.

Voters thinking of casting a ballot for Romanelli should be “beaten,” said Savage, who had previously used the beating death of 21-year-old gay teen Matthew Shepard as blog post fodder.

Remember, this is just what he says in public. Can you imagine what his real views are?

The Obama administration is a big fan of Dan Savage:

President Barack Obama himself supports Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign, devoting a page of WhiteHouse.gov to it as a civil rights issue.

Obama appears to share Savage’s view on abortion as well: During his tenure in the Illinois state legislature, Obama spoke and voted against a version of the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act,” which would have made it illegal to kill a living, breathing, defenseless child that survived an abortion.

It’s very important to take a close look at what gay activists say and do. Below are a couple of examples of what gay activists do.

From the leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

A satellite church affiliated with controversial Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll was vandalized early Tuesday (April 24) and a group calling itself the “Angry Queers” has reportedly taken responsibility.

Stained glass and other windows were broken at the Mars Hill Church, according to a post on the Facebook page of Pastor Tim Smith.

“Neighbors of the church reported seeing several young adults in black masks throwing large rocks into the windows,” a church news release said. “Police stated that a bank in the area was also vandalized in the same way and that they believe the vandalism was planned ahead of time, most likely by an activist group.”

On Tuesday, KPTV FOX 12 reported it had received an email from someone using the name “Angry Queers” and claiming responsibility.

Mars Hill Portland opened last October. During the first service, protesters gathered in front of the church and yelled obscenities at worshipers to speak out against the church’s stance on homosexuality.

Here’s part of the e-mail written by the gay activists responsible for the attack:

The e-mail, which is peppered with foul language, berates the Q Center, a local LGBT activist organization, for engaging in a dialogue with the Mars Hill’s leadership. “What we have to say to the Q Center is this: F—K YOU, you don’t represent us. You are disgusting traitors who prioritize social peace and the bourgeois aspirations of rich white cis gay people over the more pressing survival needs of more marginalized queers.”

“F—k dialog with people who want us dead,” the e-mail read. “The only dialog we need with scum like Mars Hill is hammers through their windows.”

“We hope this small act of vengeance will strike some fear into the hearts of all of Mars Hill’s pastors, and warm the hearts of our friends and comrades (known or unknown). It may not get better, but we can certainly get even,” it concludes.

You can read about a few more examples of gay activism here and a more recent example of gay activism here.

And of course, we can’t forget the prominent gay activist Floyd Corkins, who was convicted of domestic terrorism for his attack on the Family Research Council.

The man accused of opening fire and shooting a security guard at the conservative Family Research Council headquarters last August plead guilty to three charges in a D.C. federal court Wednesday.

Floyd Lee Corkins, II of Herndon, Virginia entered guilty pleas to a federal weapons charge as well as a local terrorism charge and a charge of assault with intent to kill, according to news reports.

The Washington Post reports that, according to the plea agreement Corkins signed, he told FBI agents on the day of the shooting that he “intended to kill as many people as possible” and planned to “smother Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.”

Investigators found additional magazines and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack on the day of the shooting.

Following the guilty plea the FRC issued a statement placing a large portion of the blame for the shooting at the feet of the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, which had listed FRC as a hate group. FRC noted that prosecutors discovered Corkins identified his targets on the SPLC’s website.

“The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarter and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a ‘hate group,’” FRC president Tony Perkins said in a statement, which went on to demand that SPLC stop attacking organizations that have a different opinion on gay rights.

The Human Rights Campaign, a very large and influential gay rights group favored by Democrats, joins the SPLC and the convicted domestic terrorist Floyd Corkins in condemning the FRC as a “hate group”. Gay activists continued to condemn the FRC after the terrorist attack had occurred.

You can read more about the views of Floyd Corkins here, and note this:

Corkins told the FBI he found the FRC building as his target using a “hate map” on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the shooting. SPLC still lists FRC as a hate group and continues to maintain a map to FRC’s office building on the SPLC website.

Now read this quotation from Dan Savage:

Dan Savage often speaks on college campuses and on television as a liberal commentator. He often makes controversial remarks, such as saying that Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, in opposing homosexual behavior, contributes to gay suicide.

On Sept. 27, 2012, Savage told a student audience at Winona State University, “[E]very dead gay kid is a victory for the Family Research Council. They argue that the gay lifestyle is sick and sinful and dangerous and they point to the suicide rate, and then they turn around and do everything in their power to make sure that suicide rate does not come down and to drive it up.”

“Tony Perkins sits on a pile of dead gay kids every day when he goes to work — and he calls himself a Christian,” said Savage.  “I don’t understand how real Christians let that little f–ker get away with that.”

What does the FRC do? They put out research papers showing the importance of mothers and fathers to children. That’s what gay activists consider to be “hate”. It’s very important to understand what gay activists actually say. I have no doubt that if you ask gay activists like Dan Savage and Floyd Corkins whether they are tolerant people, they would say “of course we are tolerant”. So you have to look for yourself at what they say, and what they do, and judge for yourself whether they are as tolerant as they want you to believe.