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No Human Could Get A Permit To Do What Beavers Are Doing To Alaska

No Human Could Get A Permit To Do What Beavers Are Doing To Alaska

Jan 04 2023 | comment(s)

A decade ago there was controversy over allowing oil drilling in the gigantic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The people living there all wanted it because they knew what the area the drilling would occur was like - the moon more than the earth we love. Activists nonetheless showed pictures of caribou munching on grass far below where the actual drilling was.

It wasn't even explored until the 1950s, that is how remote much of it is. There are no roads into it. It's been a political football since the 1970s. A Senate bill forced President Trump to approve two leases while President Biden issued an executive order halting development - and then a few months later was criticizing oil companies for not producing enough oil during the Russian-Ukraine War.
EU COST Action Hopes To Replace Impossible Standards With Risk-Based Meat Inspection

EU COST Action Hopes To Replace Impossible Standards With Risk-Based Meat Inspection

Jan 04 2023 | comment(s)

Vegetables have had a lot of foodborne outbreak scandals, but two times since the 1980s they have also impacted meat in a big way. 

Mad Cow disease in 1986 and Listeria in 2019 killed people. Mad Cow disease was due to poor quality control and a lack of coherent meat-chain understanding - the annual Burns Supper is coming up but you still can't buy haggis from Scotland - while more recent Listeria was just sloppy controls. Those can happen anywhere in the food chain but there may be ways to reduce the risk without making the perfect the enemy of the good. 
Scientific Wish List For 2023

Scientific Wish List For 2023

Jan 03 2023 | comment(s)

Another year just started, and this is as good a time as any to line up a few wishes. Not a bucket list, nor a "will do" set of destined-to-fail propositions. It is painful to have to reckon with the failure of our strength of will, so I'd say it is better to avoid that. Rather, it is a good exercise to put together a list of things that we would like to happen, and over which we have little or no control: it is much safer as we won't feel guilty if these wishes do not come true. 
Electric Car Range Declines By 40% In The Cold - But Companies Hide That

Electric Car Range Declines By 40% In The Cold - But Companies Hide That

Jan 03 2023 | comment(s)

You may not drive 250 miles back and forth to work but you may drive 125 on a trip, and that could be all you are getting in an electric vehicle when it is cold. Electric car efficiency plummets below moderate temperature, 40 percent or more, but just like government will go after conventional fuel companies who get their emissions wrong, now electric isn't without scrutiny. And they are getting penalties for not being more truthful about their limits.
Activism Or Outreach - A Call For New Ways To Communicate Climate Change

Activism Or Outreach - A Call For New Ways To Communicate Climate Change

Jan 03 2023 | comment(s)

Critics of scientists and science writers who speak plainly usually note it is better to be more neutral in tone, informational - 'show them some slides.'

Yet very little actually gets done that way. A few places can stay in existence writing 'the universe is mysterious' articles but environmentalists know how to move the needle, financially, politically, and cultural. And it is not by being informational. Though their work is often hyperbole and misinformation around a kernel of scientific truth, they see positive results as the goal, not science.
Sorry William, No Conquering Now: EU Red Tape Prevents Construction Of A Replica Ship From 1066

Sorry William, No Conquering Now: EU Red Tape Prevents Construction Of A Replica Ship From 1066

Jan 02 2023 | comment(s)

In 1066, Duke William of Normandy left France on a fleet of ships to fight his cousin and competitor for the vacant English throne, Harold Godwinson, and at the Battle of Hastings, the matter was settled. Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon claimant, was dead, and a new age for England began.(1)

Had the EU existed then, he'd have never had the chance. Given current EU red tape, efforts to make a replica of La Mora, the ship Williams used to become The Conqueror, mean it may still not be ready for the 1,000 year anniversary. Unless Great Britain, having shucked off their two-decade experiment in the EU, build it for them.
Patents Are Bad For Science, Says Taxpayer Funded Academic

Patents Are Bad For Science, Says Taxpayer Funded Academic

Dec 29 2022 | comment(s)

We don't get many new antibiotics in America despite there being a great need. The reason is simple; though 85% of American drug spending is for "generic" - it is off patent, so anyone can make it without doing any work - a lot of people want everything to be generic. And cheap. Big Pharma is hated.

There is nothing cheap about science, so companies who don't want to spend $1 billion and 10 years for a new antibiotic only to have some grandstanding populist in Congress declare that medicine should be free. Instead they will tackle more obscure drugs that are less likely to get attention.
CNN Joins ABC In Not Endorsing A Carcinogen On Its New Years Eve Telecast

CNN Joins ABC In Not Endorsing A Carcinogen On Its New Years Eve Telecast

Dec 28 2022 | comment(s)

Neither CNN nor ABC will have hosts like Ryan Seacrest and Anderson Cooper firing up cigarettes during this year's New Years Eve broadcasts, watched by millions across the U.S. 

Wait, they did that last year? Of course not(1) but another class 1 carcinogen - determined when the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) was still a legitimate epidemiology group and not the modern grift for ban-everything trial lawyers - was on the air last year.

That carcinogen is alcohol. 

It makes no sense that we fear cigarettes and the impact on young people if they even appear in movies but the next greatest lifestyle killer is promoted on CNN, basically being endorsed by news personalities like Anderson Cooper.
Chaya Raichick Is Wrong , Science Says LGBT People Are Born That Way, Not Groomed To Be Gay.

Chaya Raichick Is Wrong , Science Says LGBT People Are Born That Way, Not Groomed To Be Gay.

Dec 28 2022 | comment(s)

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Chaya Raichick also known as LibsOfTikTok on Twitter has stated that LGBT people are evil and want to recruit children to be gay. This is not a matter of opinion, but much science has been done looking into the causation of LGBT identification. It is clear that the LGBT mating strategies found in humans are a matter of biology and neurology not just psychology and sociology. All those sciences, yes all of those are science, play a part. For instance, biologically transgender people are born (largely) one sex or the other. At the same time biologically and neurologically transgender people are born with brains that execute the mating strategy (gender) of the opposite sex.

The Renewable Energy Paradox - When Everyone Gets It No One Will

The Renewable Energy Paradox - When Everyone Gets It No One Will

Dec 28 2022 | comment(s)

Unlike US environmentalists, Belgian greens didn't flip and suddenly regard hydropower as a bad thing, they regard it as a viable part of their renewable energy strategy. All options are on the table, 50 percent of their electricity is even nuclear.  That's smart, nuclear is 2 times the energy capacity of natural gas and obviously an order of magnitude greater and more reliable than wind and solar.
Electricity, America, and Grids

Electricity, America, and Grids

Dec 28 2022 | comment(s)

Hasn’t it been cold lately! Here in the South of England, so far we have only had about a week of days going down to –5°C around sunrise, but our news bulletins have been showing conditions in North America.  Even Tallahassee has been down to —8°C (data: Accuweather)


I used to listen to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, and I am reminded of  conversation with a New York Taxi Driver, on a cold and windy day, beginning with the driver:

No More Ugly Solar Panels - Toward Alternative Energy That Blends Into The Landscape

No More Ugly Solar Panels - Toward Alternative Energy That Blends Into The Landscape

Dec 27 2022 | comment(s)

Going to an area where there are a lot of wind vanes can be shocking. The noise and environmental blight for so little energy isn't worthwhile, and needing to get exemptions from endangered species laws due to deaths of avians like eagles make them a real negative.

Solar panels have a little better cultural response but can still be unattractive. If you are a wealthy elite who doesn't like the appearance, or a government building using taxpayer funds, you may be able to turn architectural constraints into alternative energy without ruining the aesthetic. The archaeological park of Pompeii and the Portuguese city of Evora are creating solar panels that look like ancient Roman tiles or terracotta bricks to match the skyline.
This Counterpunch Monsanto Conspiracy Theory Article Is Just A Veneer For Paid Gambling Sites

This Counterpunch Monsanto Conspiracy Theory Article Is Just A Veneer For Paid Gambling Sites

Dec 26 2022 | comment(s)

An account going by the name of Andy Hsieh, there is a lot of astroturf in the anti-science community so it's hard to know if it's even a real blogger, wrote one of those predictable screeds endorsing their political allies, this time against agriculture.

It could have been cell phones or vaccines or nuclear energy - 84% of the time if you see any of those you know every political and scientific position they hold(1) - and the conspiracy tale would be the same.

Nineveh: When The Capital Of Assyria Was The Most Dazzling City In The World

Nineveh: When The Capital Of Assyria Was The Most Dazzling City In The World

Dec 25 2022 | comment(s)

Archaeologists in northern Iraq, working on the Mashki and Adad gate sites in Mosul that were destroyed by Islamic State in 2016, recently uncovered 2,700-year-old Assyrian reliefs. Featuring war scenes and trees, these rock carvings add to the bounty of detailed stone panels excavated from the 1840s onwards, many of which are currently held in the British Museum.

Chocolate: When Money Did Grow On Trees

Chocolate: When Money Did Grow On Trees

Dec 24 2022 | comment(s)

Advent calendars with hidden chocolatey treats, huge tins of Quality Street and steaming cups of hot chocolate festooned with whipped cream and marshmallows are all much-loved wintry staples at Christmastime. But how many of us stop to think about where chocolate actually comes from and how it made its way into our culinary culture?

The story of chocolate has a compelling, rich history that academics like me are learning more about every day.

‘Peer Community In’ May Accomplish What Open Access Could Not

‘Peer Community In’ May Accomplish What Open Access Could Not

Dec 22 2022 | comment(s)

In 2017, three researchers from the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), Denis Bourguet, Benoit Facon and Thomas Guillemaud, founded Peer Community In (PCI), a peer-review-based service for recommending preprints (referring to the version of an article that a scientist submits to a review committee).

The service greenlights articles and makes them and their reviews, data, codes and scripts available on an open-access basis. Out of this concept, PCI paved the way for researchers to regain control of their review and publishing system in an effort to increase transparency in the knowledge production chain.

Genetically Rescued Organisms: My Comment To USDA On Restoring The American Chestnut Tree

Genetically Rescued Organisms: My Comment To USDA On Restoring The American Chestnut Tree

Dec 21 2022 | comment(s)

'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire' is in a popular Christmas song, but a lot less common now than when it was written. That is due to an invasive species from Asia. It was once common for environmentally woke people to introduce species from Asia in their opposition to chemicals, because they believed all nature is better than any science, but from California (Bradford pear) to Vermont (the American chestnut) what the science community warned them about doing came to pass. Devastation.
Christmas Trees Are The Definition Of Sustainable - Why Do Environmentalists Oppose Them?

Christmas Trees Are The Definition Of Sustainable - Why Do Environmentalists Oppose Them?

Dec 21 2022 | comment(s)

The pandemic must be over because activists are back to complaining about Christmas trees, which means they will also be back to being anti-vaccine as soon as Republicans stop being idiots and it is once again a safe space for progressives to own. Just like every year from 1998 to 2020.
Tomb Of Salome Found In Israel

Tomb Of Salome Found In Israel

Dec 20 2022 | comment(s)

Inscriptions on the walls and crosses in a grotto first found by grave robbers in Lachish national park of the Judean lowlands west of Jerusalem have led archaeologists to conclude it was dedicated to Salome, associated with the birth of Jesus Christ in early Christian accounts.  The Jewish burial chamber and ossuaries dating back to the Roman period became part of a Christian chapel during the Byzantine era until the region was captured by the Rashidun Caliphate in the middle of the 7th century.
Glioblastoma: Genetically Modified DeltEx Drug-Resistant Immunotherapy Gets Phase II Clinical Trial

Glioblastoma: Genetically Modified DeltEx Drug-Resistant Immunotherapy Gets Phase II Clinical Trial

Dec 20 2022 | comment(s)

From insulin to lowering environmental strain to grow food, genetic engineering is one of the marvels of the 20th century. In the 21st, CRISPR-Cas9 or something else may achieve the same lofty status but genetic engineering isn't done yet.