Jeff,

I thought I was going to have to put another smack-down on "Skep" who now claims to be a lifelong progressive, all the while hating poetry, Youtube and Michael Jackson.  I suppose next he'll be trying to tell us that he's the chairman of the board @ PETA, yet his favorite food is steak tartare. 

HILARIOUS...not.

But before I continue, excuse me a minute Jeff...seems I've got some gum on my shoe.  Hey schlep...I mean Skep.  Bush is out of office.  Didn't you get the memo?  And did you notice, Palin's out of office too.  Hello?  Welcome to the planet.  And just a refresher, repeat after me:  I will not watch FOX News ever again.  You can do it--I know you can!  And by the way, if you expect me to believe for one minute that you're anything but a Mossad-CIA lovin', corporate-whore wannabe, you're totally barking up the wrong tree.   For it is abundantly apparent that you're just another right-wing, psych-op malaka, who's ideas are just as shriveled and rotten as a meth-head's teeth.  You speak the language of the Machiavellis, and they are long banished from the Kindgom.  When hell freezes over, is when I will contemplate your science.  But of course, hell would have to freeze over before your so called ‘less energetic' theories make any goddamn sense.  And by the way old chap,  insult my poetry if you will, but to challenge my intellect is pure folly.  So I'll just leave it at that, 'cause Jeff already jacked ya ass up...ever so friendly.

Hi Jeff ;-) I'm back.  Now as I was saying, having said also in prior comment to your prior comment, you raise some very interesting points. 

Simply put, my take on this runs parallel to yours.  In so far as, we just don't know what kind of pandora's box we're dealing with.  So, if nothing else, we definitely need to proceed with extreme caution; especially now that credible scientific data is becoming widely available on this subject.

Red flags are being raised.  This is a real concern.

I need some help with your radiation energy figures.

As I said, this goes back to basic high school physics, but I'll give it a try.

What do you mean by ‘less energetic” ?

The amount of energy contained in a photon of electromagnetic radiation is determined by something called Planck's law.  This law basically says that the amount of energy increases as the wavelength decreases (or the frequency increases — same thing).  UV light has a higher frequency than visible light, so therefore UV has more energy — it's "more energetic".  Visible light is less energetic than UV, but it's more energetic than infrared.  Infrared is more energetic than microwave radiation (the "high end" of which is used in microwave ovens and the "low end" of which is used for cellular communication), which is more energetic than TV and radio waves.

The frequency with the minimum amount of energy to break atomic bonds is UV (a fact known since about 1905).  Yes, infrared (heat) can burn your skin, but it does not disrupt or alter cells at the molecular level.

If a 100watt light bulb uses/emits (in some wave form from heat to light) 100 watts of energy, wouldn’t a 1200 watt microwave oven emit 1200 watts of energy (in some wave form from heat to light)?

A watt is a measurement of energy conversion or energy usage.  It's not a measurement of the amount of energy contained in a photon as discussed above.

Are you suggesting that you would put your head in a microwave oven just like you would put your head next to a light bulb?   How is it that a microwave makes hamburger fry?

An incandescent bulb of the same wattage as a microwave oven, enclosed in similarly small space as a microwave oven contains, would probably do more damage in a shorter period of time:

Imagine a 1200 watt bulb.  You know how hot that would get.  It's producing a great deal of infrared radiation.  While IR still does not have enough energy to break molecular bonds, it does cause molecules to vibrate.  It's basically transferring its energy to those molecules.  This vibration increases the heat in those molecules.  If you touched a 1200W incandescent bulb for one second, enough energy would be transferred (and the molecules in your epidermis would vibrate to such an extent) that your skin would begin to burn.

Microwave radiation, on the other hand, is much "less energetic" than IR.  It doesn't have enough energy to make molecules vibrate.  It does, however, have enough energy to cause water molecules to spin.  This creates enough heat to cook most foods, yet not enough to really "burn."  This is why microwave ovens are not really used for baking or browning foods.  Do you really "fry" hamburgers in a microwave?  Doesn't sound very appetizing.  Anyway, the same one second exposure to microwave radiation to your fingertip would probably not even be felt.
 

Got to go, I smell burning toast...

You should have used a microwave.

Have you ever seen radar knock a seagull out of the sky fried?

No, have you?  Number one, I'd like to see some evidence that this occurs.  Number two, if it does, I'd like some information on the frequency used (radar can typically use radiation anywhere from the radio to the microwave part of the spectrum).  Number three, I doubt radar would be of much use if it used the same frequencies as microwave ovens because all the ovens in the region would cause an unacceptable amount of interference.

And by the way, DNA can be split a bunch of ways, including mechanically and chemically, as well as electron bombardment.
 

Indeed.  However, I'm certain you're not claiming that cell phones are breaking DNA bonds mechanically.  How?  With nanobots?  Similarly, there's no chemical agent at work in the phones, right?  And, yes, electron bombardment could certainly disrupt a DNA molecule, but you're surely not claiming your cell phone is acting as a particle accelerator.  That must use one huge battery!

Of course, having just discovered the helix a few decades ago, we know everything about it by now.

Yes, the discovery of the DNA molecule is comparatively recent.  However, it's not the complete understanding of DNA that's required here.  For the purposes of this issue, all we need to know is how atoms and their nuclei behave, and this is accomplished by the theory of quantum mechanics, which has been tested and confirmed for over a hundred years.

By the way, the link to Science Daily is interesting.  However, each of these articles refer to "recent studies," etc.  Nowhere do they actually describe the studies.  How the studies were conducted could affect their validity or reliability.  For example, how was cell phone usage determined — by measuring minutes, or did the subjects self-report? (ETA: Or were the studies even done on humans?  I recall one of these "recent studies was done on rats.)  Also, were the findings replicated by follow-up studies?  Finally, were other possibly significant factors controlled for.  Correlation does not equal causation.  As far as we can tell from some of these news stories, there seems to be a correlation between cell phone usage and certain cancers.  But just because there's a correlation does not necessarily mean one causes the other.

To give a crude analogy, suppose a study found that people who wear Browns sweatshirts had a higher rate of knee injuries than people who wore plain sweatshirts.  Is it reasonable to assume that wearing Browns sweatshirts causes knee injuries?  No.  Perhaps people who wear Browns gear are also more likely to be sports fans, and sports fans are more likely to be active, making them more likely to sustain injuries than less-active people.  Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.  We need more informetion to make a judgement.

So, given that  a) there's a lot of missing information about these cell phone "studies" in the media, and  b) science is pretty clear on the fact that cell phone "radiation" cannot break the molecular bonds necessary to induce cancer, it is not reasonable to assume that cell phones are causing cancer.  Rather than panic when incomplete information is presented in the media, be skeptical and dig a little deeper.  You'll feel better.

Yours truly,

skepticalthinker

Thanks for the link.  Interesting article.  Then too, I have to wonder how much money is being spent by the cell phone companies, just like the big tobacco, coal and the insurance companies, to prohibit the FULL truth--all independent scientific data-- from reaching the light of day.

In reading the linked article @ Science Daily, it's encouraging to know that research is being done, But again, how much have we not been told?  Where is the hidden hand of the trillion=dollar, global, cell phone industry in all this?

Eternity

dwebb,

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with me and the entire RealNeo audience.  People need to hear these kinds of anecdotal stories; testaments of certain grim realities that are part and parcel to some of societies technological advances.

I'm glad to hear the plate has been removed and the pain is gone.

Be careful--stay safe.

Eternity