Category Archives: environment

Yes, but can you do THIS?

Posted on Mar 26, 2010 | 3 comments

Years ago—maybe ten or twelve years in fact—I read an amazing article in Scientific American about a dolphin which had learnt to do the dolphin equivalent of blowing smoke rings. It was able to make ring-shaped air bubbles in the water, which it would then play with. The article described such scenes as a researcher blowing smoke rings one side of the glass, and the dolphin reciprocating with its air rings. Creating a ring and then breaking a piece of it off to make a smaller ring. Creating a ring and then swimming through the middle of it. To justify its presence in Scientific American I think there was some discussion of the physics of how the bubbles were able to persist in the water.

Frustratingly, I lost the copy of Scientific American after taking it to work to show someone. But I was intrigued by the article and always wished I could see the dolphin in action.

Well, here it is. And I think you’ll agree that what it’s doing is pretty amazing and makes human-blown smoke rings look very crude in comparison–leaving aside the fact that no horrible carcinogenic smoke is involved either:

How many people do you know who can do that? Probably the number of humans who’ve learnt that skill is approximately the same as the number of dolphins who’ve published papers about fluid dynamics.

I found this video quite by chance: my copy of Opera 10.10 updated itself to 10.51, much less successfully than is usual for an Opera upgrade. So, after rather a long absence, I visited the Opera forums in search of anything which might help me sort out the problems. While I was there I visited a friend’s blog which I’d not seen for a while, and there was the video.

So, two sets of thanks are in order:

  • to Yulia, for posting the video, and
  • to Opera, for messing up their upgrade so I would visit their site and find the blog post.

Update: It seems that humans can blow these circular bubbles quite easily after all. The clip on this page about vortex rings from ABC television in Australia includes someone doing just that. It also explains some of the physics, and has shots of some more ring-blowing dolphins. Thanks to Andrew Mitchell for the link.

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Posted in environment, general

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Christians and the environment

Posted on Apr 14, 2009 | 7 comments

The environment as a moral issue

As you’ll know if you’ve read my About page, one of my interests is the relationship between sane religion and honest science. By that I mean religion which lives in a real world, and science which is allowed to be itself and not bent to fit some religious viewpoint.

Many current findings of science, of course, concern human impact on the environment. Christianity hasn’t always done a brilliant job environmentally. All you need do is read the beginning of Genesis for its ideas—not as as the pre-scientific science it was never intended to be—to see the difference between its vision and the role we have acquired. The Earth is meant to be “fruitful” and is “very good”. Our position of power over other living things, recognised in Genesis, gives us an obilgation to look after them, delighting in creation’s goodness and living in harmony with it.

Historically the church has largely forgotten this, seeing the Earth as being there simply for human beings to exploit as we like. So we’ve become alienated from it (another theme of the stories!), becoming agents of destruction rather than creation.

Personally I see environmental damage as a major moral issue for followers of a religion which believes in the goodness of God and sees God as the source of all existence and of all life. Harming the Earth is wrong for the same reason that harming people is: it is created and loved by God. [1] We should should be giving life to our part of creation and building it up, not destroying it.

So it’s good to know that there are Christians—and members of other religions—who are taking this seriously.

Christian Ecology Link

One organisation working to bring such people together and encourage those in the church to care about the environment is Christian Ecology Link. I’ve been a regular recipient of their email newsletter since well before the world went green (or at least, wanted to look green).

In keeping with the organisation’s name, the newlsetter is largely a collection of brief news items linking to information about organisations and events. Below are the links from the latest issue. Hopefully this will give you an idea of the breadth of material it covers. The wording is mine, not taken from the newsletter:

And I’ve not included the items which had no web address but just a person to email, or the final item which gave links for help on public speaking. Also, since it wasn’t in the newsletter, I’ve not mentioned a joint event with the London Islamic Network for the Environment . . .

If this kind of news is of interest to you, visit the CEL website and sign up for their newsletter.

Note

[1] Creation is a word which sometimes carries misleading overtones. Not helped, in fact, by the existence of creationism. People think of a moment in time when God made everything.

As far as I’m concerned creation isn’t a moment in time. Neither is it an alternative process to the one science sees, with God bypassing the laws of physics and designing every little detail of, say, the human appendix. When I say God is creator, I mean that every part of space and time exists because God makes existence possible; the laws of physics, or any deeper laws that explain them, exist because of God; the process of evolution that produced life exists because of the way those laws are. If God controlled the process, it would no longer be a free one and the universe wouldn’t really be God’s creation, just be an extension of God. Neither would there be any room for free will, or for spiritually aware life (such as us) to respond freely to God. Back

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Posted in environment, religion, science/maths

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