What Caught My Eye Today: Presidential Election, Fracking, God

Presidential Election - Fred's Note: We're less than 6 weeks to Election Day, though early voting is now underway. Sort of a good news/bad news deal for both candidates. For Romney the bad news is that there has been a lot of bad news. The good news is that in terms of Electoral College votes, Romney is pretty much in the same situation as he was a couple of weeks ago, though several poll suggest that he's losing ground in a few swing states, making the path to the White House much more challenging. For Obama, the good news is that his polling numbers are on an upswing. The bad news is that polls aren't the same thing as actual votes. Another bright spot for Democrats is that they might just manage to keep their majority in the Senate, if only by the skin of their teeth. Bring on the debates.

Fracking - So far in 2012, carbon dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years, down 14% from their peak in 2007. No way. Wait, I know why. With unemployment being so high, fewer people have jobs to drive to. And with fewer people working, they are buying less, which obviously means factory output is down. In other words...this too is an indictment of the failed policies of the incumbent President. What that's you say...too much hubris? Yeah, well turns out there is an actual logical explanation for the decrease in emissions. Thanks to the natural gas boom created by drilling into shale formations - the process known as "fracking" - the U.S. has cut way back on its use of coal to generate electricity, and shifted to gas, which emits 45% less carbon dioxide. As a result, the nation's emissions dropped by 500 megatons per year, about twice the total impact of the Kyoto Protocol on emissions throughout the rest of the world. Two reactions here. First, damn, we create a lot of emissions. A mere 14% decrease on our part amounted to the combined reductions of most of the rest of the world over several years. Of course the rest of the world didn't include China or India either. Second thing is while this is all well and good, does anyone have a clue what the long term impact of all this fracking might be? Neither do I

Fred's Note: If the presidential election doesn't provide enough dinner time fodder for you, we'll end this post with a philosophical question on the existence of God. Nothing controversial there.

God - Science can be said to have gradually chipped away at the traditional grounds for believing in God. Unless, of course, you are one of the few enlightened ones who has truly embraced creationism. Much of what once seemed mysterious can now be explained by biology, astronomy, physics and other domains of science. My daddy says all that science talk is hokum. Some scientists say there's good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever. Physicists have observed that many of the physical constants that define our universe, from the mass of the electron to the density of dark energy, are eerily perfect for supporting life. Alter one of these constants by a hair, and the universe becomes unrecognizable. Theologians often seize upon the so-called "fine-tuning" of the physical constants as evidence that God must have had a hand in them; it seems he chose the constants just for us. Let me see if I've got this straight. God is a a cosmologist? Even if cosmologists manage to explain how the universe began, and why it seems so fine-tuned for life, the question might remain why there is something as opposed to nothing. Dude, I was so thinking about that very conundrum right before I sat down to write this. Is that spooky or what? To many people, the answer to the question is God. I came up with a slightly different answer myself -- 4.8. Psychology research suggests that belief in the supernatural acts as societal glue and motivates people to follow the rules; further, belief in the afterlife helps people grieve and staves off fears of death. Simply put, "We're not designed at the level of theoretical physics." Psychology huh? Now that's what I call hokum.