2005's Scientific Milestones

With a US court ruling Intelligent Design as religion dressed up as science here's a review of how well science served us in 2005.
With this in mind, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has declared discoveries about evolution the 2005 winner of its annual list of top 10 breakthroughs.

"Today evolution is the foundation of all biology, so basic and all-pervasive that scientists sometimes take its importance for granted," Science concludes.

Huge numbers of studies in this field are generated annually. But "2005 stands out as a banner year for uncovering the intricacies of how evolution actually proceeds", it says.

The genetic code of a chimpanzee named Clint was deciphered this year, for example, revealing that 96 per cent of our DNA is identical to his.
Other top 10 scientific breakthroughs include discoveries in how miswiring of the brain occurs, climate change events, earth's origins, nuclear fusion, cellular biology, the nature of neutron stars, secrets of flowering, cell communication, voyages to the planets.

It is hugely impressive that mankind has been to the outer rings of Saturn, and landed the European spacecraft Huygens on Titan to find a world where liquid methane rains down to create valleys and lakes. And yet humbling to know that our DNA is 96% match with that of chimpanzee-kind. It is impossible not to admire the minds that discovered that our cells communicate with each other using a chemical network as complex as the Internet, and hard not to feel despair for human beings who ignore the signs and pace of global warming.

Social and political debate

Over the past several years, increased awareness of the scientific findings surrounding global warming has resulted in political and economic debate. Poor regions, particularly Africa, appear at greatest risk from the suggested effects of global warming, while their actual emissions have been small compared to the developed world. At the same time, developing country exemptions from provisions of the Kyoto Protocol have been criticized by the United States and Australia, and have been used as part of the rationale for continued non-ratification by the U.S. In the Western world, the idea of human influence on climate has gained wider acceptance in Europe than in the United States.

The issue of climate change has sparked debate weighing the benefits of limiting industrial emissions of greenhouse gases against the costs that such changes would entail. There has been discussion in several countries about the cost and benefits of adopting alternative energy sources in order to reduce carbon emissions. Organizations and companies such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and ExxonMobil have emphasized more conservative climate change scenarios while highlighting the potential economic cost of stricter controls. Likewise, various environmental lobbies and a number of public figures have launched campaigns to emphasize the potential risks of climate change and promote the implementation of stricter controls. Some fossil fuel companies have scaled back their efforts in recent years, or called for policies to reduce global warming.

Another point of debate is the degree to which newly developed economies such as India and China should be expected to constrain their emissions. China's gross national CO2 emissions are expected to exceed those of the U.S. within the next few years, and may have already done so according to a 2006 report. China has contended that it has less of an obligation to reduce emissions since its per capita emissions are roughly one-fifth that of the United States. India, also exempt from Kyoto restrictions and another of the biggest sources of industrial emissions, has made similar assertions. However, the U.S. contends that if they must bear the cost of reducing emissions, then China should do the same.