Here I debunk an article in the Financial Times - although by the title it is supposedly about myths about green technology and renewables, it actually perfectly highlights most of the scientific and even financial myths about renewables propagated by some economists who claim that green growth is impossible.

I am annotating this article with Hypothes.is - the academic online web commenting tool. You may be able to read my annotations online here:

The cutting-edge method of growing clusters of cells that organize themselves into mini versions of human brains in the lab is gathering more and more attention. These “brain organoids”, made from stem cells, offer unparalleled insights into the human brain, which is notoriously difficult to study.

But some researchers are worried that a form of consciousness might arise in such mini-brains, which are sometimes transplanted into animals. They could at least be sentient to the extent of experiencing pain and suffering from being trapped. If this is true – and before we consider how likely it is – it is absolutely clear in my mind that we must exert a supreme level of caution when considering this issue.

“Witch hunt” – it’s a refrain used to deride everything from impeachment inquiries and sexual assault investigations to allegations of corruption.

If you have a minute to spend watching something really cool, why not having a look at the completion of the installment of GEM detectors in the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, ***RIGHT NOW*** (6PM CEST Oct 24th) ?

A National Academy of Medicine report released today says that a third to a half of physicians and nurses say they feel burned out, and that is even higher for medical students and residents at nearly 60 percent.

That could obviously affect patient care and, with lawyers waiting in the wings to sue, health care costs. 

The report says key issues will be:

Tackling clinician burnout early in professional development.

Fixing electronic health care record systems that increase frustration and stress.

Lowering administrative burdens and distracting clinicians from the care of patients.

Though a CBD supplement huckster was just convicted for selling synthetic marijuana and CBD oil is the culprit behind untold numbers of vaping illnesses and deaths, and a chiropractor was just lambasted by FDA for claiming his CBD supplement can fix everything from autism to Alzheimer's, if search engines are any indication, marijuana is not stopping.

ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope in Chile has detected a freshly made heavy element, strontium, in space, in the aftermath two merging neutron stars. 

That sounds obscure but it means that the heavier elements in the Universe can form in neutron star mergers, a clue in the puzzle of chemical element formation.

Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., of Berkeley is the kind of anti-science "truther" that even most west coast activists steer clear of, because he makes all of the social sciences look bad by association. Worse, he is a "social" psychologist, which for the last 20 years has been beset by fraud and retraction. 

But at Scientific American, which has become the home of activist crazies, he fits right in.

Few topics arouse as much interest and controversy as sex. This is hardly surprising. The biological continuance of the species hinges on it – if human beings stopped having sex, there would soon be no more human beings. Popular culture overflows with sex, from cinema to advertising to, yes, even politics. And for many, sex represents one of the most intimate forms of human connection.

Despite its universality, sex and its purpose have been understood very differently by different thinkers. I teach an annual course on sexuality at Indiana University, and this work has provided opportunities to ponder sex from some provocative angles, including the body, the psyche and the spirit.

A new study has found that the switch from coal to natural gas hasn't just reduced greenhouse gas emissions from energy, it has reduced water usage. That is even factoring in water used during hydraulic fracturing - fracking - and shale gas generation.