Craig Venter’s IPO

[level_head]

Craig Venter’s IPO doesn’t exist, in fact. But this eight-page story in New York Times Magazine is full of such adulation for the man that it seems most lilkely a build-up for an investment offering. Perhaps Dr. Venter is seeking private investors, and needed a boost in visibility. (It’s unfortunate that Facebook has soured the public notion of

Comments

[deckardcanine]

So a Mr. Venter is both concerned with the atmosphere and full of hot air. I notice you wrote "Crag" in one place, which brings to mind volcanic fumes.

[level_head]

Not intentional, though "Crag Venter" does sound amusing. I'll fix it. And it's Dr. Venter; he has a Ph.D. from San Diego.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[shockwave77598]

"Fallen Angels" by Pournelle and Niven.

In the future, we've stopped the CO2 production outright and greens have taken over the industrialized world. This leads within years to a new ice age and starvation. And the handful of people living on a space station have it only marginally better than the folks on Earth. When a pair of astronauts are shot down while air-skimming to replenish atmo in the station, a very unlikely savior comes to their rescue -- the only ones who care enough and are organized enough to work as an army, but also nearly invisible.

It's a fun read. The Phoenix line still makes me crack up even after alllll these years.

[level_head]

I was acquainted with several of the characters in that story; some were written in using their real names, and some using thin pseudonyms. One of them was the fellow who introduced me to Steeleye Span, whom I've enjoyed ever since.

And a few of them are advocates of the Space Frontier Foundation as I am - Gary Hudson's Rotary Rocket tests were re-broadcast from my office in California.

Gary just became president of Gerald O'Neill's Space Studies Institute, the creators of the O'Neill Colony concept. Hudson is one of three trustees, the other two being Freemon Dyan and my friend Lee Valentine.

Gary Hudson is quite a character, in all senses:
Gary Hudson at SpaceFuture

All of this added to making Fallen Angels, as you said, quite a "fun read." I've never been deeply connected to the SF fan community, but many of them were also space enthusiasts (no surprise) so the membership in OASIS and L% and Planetary Society and Space Frontier Foundation (the most effective of them all) overlapped.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[polaris93]

You're right about the danger of overdoing CO2 drawdown. The damn mainstream media somehow never talk about this angle of CO2 and global warming. CO2 is plant food, after all, but you'd never know that from the MM reporting on this issue.

[level_head]

We get so close to a fatal low feedback during glaciations - I've never seen it discussed just how dangerous that low-CO2 situation is. Plants evolved with an order of magnitude more CO2 in the air, and they are starving.

But the air is so poisoned - the political air - that it can't be publicly admitted how much good the extra CO2 is doing. That is foolish, and it is a tremendous harm to science and its credibility.

===|==============/ Keith DeHAvelle

[polaris93]

Which is why I despair of humanity's survival -- not to mention that of complex life on Earth: the mass media are promulgating a culture of scientific ignorance, and because of it, the public is so misinformed that they have no idea what's important, and what not, and why.

[polaris93]

BTW, drawdown of CO2 by blue-green algae and the like apparently caused two "snowball Earth" events during the Proterozoic. Those were busted up by geological processes, but who knows how many organisms became extinct during the second one due to the glacial global cold? That's the danger: that in ignorance we might precipitate our own extinction, and that of countless other organisms, due to excess CO2 drawdown.

from the Drones-for-Supper-Dept.

[acertaindoebear]

well darn, give people too much freedom and just look what happens *waggles eyebrows*

Re: from the Drones-for-Supper-Dept.

[level_head]

What do you mean by that? I know the notion of "too much freedom" is being touted at lots of universities, but I'd like to understand better what you're suggesting.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

Re: from the Drones-for-Supper-Dept.

[acertaindoebear]

Just musing on your musings on Craig Venter trying to mitigate CO2 being possibly catastrophic being an example of giving people 'too much freedom'...

Total freedom would be complete lawlessness...

Complete control would be various varieties of totalitarianism...

In between are where you and I like to live with our various controls on certain freedoms and responsibilities...

Re: from the Drones-for-Supper-Dept.

[level_head]

Total freedom would be complete lawlessness...

What an odd bunch of Belief System.

In a lawless environment, you are not free (for example) to travel, as you may not have a place when you return. You cannot do anything outside the home as it reduces your ability to protect your home by force, the only thing that works in a society of total lawlessness. Anarchy is not much different in practice from a totalitarian government; the difference is that local warlords tend to become the local totalitarians.

You might try reading some Hayek to get a better sense of this. It's not an American issue.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle

[rowyn]

Heh, my first thought was "But we *have* organisms that consume CO2 and produce fresh air. They're called 'plants'." XD

[level_head]

Yes, but all that outputting of O2 must be exhausting. (A better word than they chose, anyway.)

An airborne particulate algae or cyanobacterium would be interesting - but we'd be making only part of a new ecosystem. There is a short story that comes to mind: "A Message to the King of Brobdingnag" (besides my own little "Greenspace") that talks of such unintended results.

===|==============/ Keith DeHavelle