What are the odds?

The most fatuous statement of the day comes from Professor Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz regarding the odds of there being life on a recently discovered planet orbiting the star Gliese 581:

Personally, given the ubiquity and propensity of life to flourish wherever it can, I would say, my own personal feeling is that the chances of life on this planet are 100 percent.

This is rather interesting.  Unfortunately, Gliese 581 is a red dwarf star, which means that it is very cold, prone to sudden shifts in output, produces mainly infrared and very little ultraviolet light, and may lack certain vital elements.  The planet in question is three times the size of Earth, has an orbital period of 37 days, which means that it is certainly tidally locked.  Thus, one side always faces the sun and therefore the sunward side roasts, the dark side freezes, and the atmosphere (if there is any) is frozen. Even if it isn't and the planet rotates, it has a calculated mean surface temperature of minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then, of course, there's the little matter of no free oxygen or even water detected on the planet.  Never mind a dozen other obvious criteria that can't even be addressed based on so little data. No information is given about orbital eccentricity or inclination, for example.

And finally, the kicker:  Since the number of inhabited and inhabitable planets we have observed comes down to a big, fat incidence of one, it is clear that Professor Vogt is pulling his odds out of an orifice located somewhere in the vicinity of his trouser seat.