Science

Another ‘Too Big to Fail’ System In G.M.O.s

July 16, 2015 Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, www.nytimes.com Educate! GMOs, Science

By Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Nicholas Taleb in NY Times - Before the crisis that started in 2007, both of us believed that the financial system was fragile and unsustainable, contrary to the near ubiquitous analyses at the time. Now, there is something vastly riskier facing us, with risks that entail the survival of the global ecosystem — not the financial system. This time, the fight is against the current promotion of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s. Our critics held that the financial system was improved thanks to the unwavering progress of science and technology, which had blessed finance with more sophisticated economic insight. But the “tail risks,” or the effect from rare but monstrously consequential events, we held, had been increasing, owing to increasing complexity and globalization.

Scientists Urge Governments To ‘Commit To Our Common Future’

July 11, 2015 CFCC15 Scientific Committee, www.commonfuture-paris2015.org Resist! Climate Change, Environment, Science

By CFCC15 Scientific Committee in Common Future Paris - Climate change is a defining challenge of the 21st century. Its causes are deeply embedded in the ways we produce and use energy, grow food, manage landscapes and consume more than we need. Its effects have the potential to impact every region of the Earth, every ecosystem, and many aspects of the human endeavour. Its solutions require a bold commitment to our common future. Because warming from carbon dioxide persists for many centuries, any upper limit on warming requires carbon dioxide emissions to fall eventually to zero. A two in three probability of holding warming to 2°C or less will require a budget that limits future carbon dioxide emissions to about 900 billion tons, roughly 20 times annual emissions in 2014. To limit warming to 2°C, emissions must be zero or even negative by the end of the 21st century.

Call For Sanity On 60th Anniversary Of Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9, 2015 Emanuel Pastreich, www.fpif.org Resist! History, Nuclear War, Science, Wars and Militarism

By Emanuel Pastreich in Foreign Policy In Focus - It was exactly 60 years ago that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered together with a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they denounced the dangerous drive toward war between the world’s Communist and anti-Communist factions. The signers of this manifesto included leading Nobel Prize winners such as Hideki Yukawa and Linus Pauling. They were blunt, equating the drive for war and reckless talk of the use of nuclear weapons sweeping the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, as endangering all of humanity. The manifesto argued that advancements in technology, specifically the invention of the atomic bomb, had set human history on a new and likely disastrous course.

Why It’s So Hard To Regulate Fracking

June 30, 2015 Justin Miller, www.prospect.org Educate! Environment, Fracking, Law, Science

By Justin Miller in Prospect - Without a clear mandate from the EPA, regulations at the federal level may well remain limited, though the Obama administration has made some moves to regulate fracking. This March the president announced new safety regulations for fracking, a first at the national level. However, given the limits of unilateral federal authority the restrictions can only apply to federal and tribal land and have no impact on the vast spectrum of state and local laws. Despite the relatively small scope of the rules, that didn’t stop two oil industry groups from immediately suing to challenge the regulations. Nor did it stop 27 Republicans, including Republican Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, from swiftly introducing legislation that would kill the policy.

Naomi Oreskes, A Lightning Rod In A Changing Climate

June 23, 2015 Justin Gillis, www.nytimes.com Educate! Climate Change, Popular, Science

By Justin Gillis in New York Times - Dr. Oreskes is fast becoming one of the biggest names in climate science — not as a climatologist, but as a defender who uses the tools of historical scholarship to counter what she sees as ideologically motivated attacks on the field. Formally, she is a historian of science. Informally, this diminutive woman has become a boxer, throwing herself into a messy public arena that many career-minded climate scientists try to avoid. She helps raise money to defend researchers targeted for criticism byclimate change denialists. She has become a heroine to activist college students, supporting their demand that universities and other institutions divest from fossil fuels. Climatologists, though often reluctant themselves to get into fights, have showered her with praise for being willing to do it.

Stanford Engineers’ Plan To Convert U.S. To 100% Clean Energy

June 17, 2015 Bjorn Carey, www.news.stanford.edu Create! Education, Engineering, Science, Solar Energy

By Bjorn Carey in Stanford News - One potential way to combat ongoing climate change, eliminate air pollution mortality, create jobs and stabilize energy prices involves converting the world's entire energy infrastructure to run on clean, renewable energy. This is a daunting challenge. But now, in a new study,Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and colleagues, including U.C. Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, are the first to outline how each of the 50 states can achieve such a transition by 2050. The 50 individual state plans call for aggressive changes to both infrastructure and the ways we currently consume energy, but indicate that the conversion is technically and economically possible through the wide-scale implementation of existing technologies.

100 Canadian, U.S. Scientists Call For Halt To Oilsands Projects

June 13, 2015 Bob Weber, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Environment, Oil & Gas, Science

By Bob Weber in The Canadian Press - A group of 100 leading Canadian and U.S. scientists has issued an urgent call for a moratorium on new oilsands development and listed 10 reasons why no more projects should be permitted. "I believe we have a duty to speak up,'' said Mark Jaccard, an energy economist at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University who spent more than a year drafting a letter to make sure it was scientifically sound. Jaccard was a co-author of a 2014 essay in a scientific journal that made a similar argument. But the current letter, released Wednesday, represents a much wider cross-section. Economists, biologists, climatologists and political scientists have all signed the text, which has been sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and all members of Parliament. The signatories include 12 fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, 22 members of the US National Academy and a Nobel Prize winner.

Editor-In-Chief Of Renowned Medical Journal: 1/2 Of Literature Is False

May 25, 2015 Arjun Walia, www.globalresearch.ca Educate! health, Media, Medicine, Science

In the past few years more professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world. Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false. “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”

Wyoming Criminalizes Photographing The Environment

May 17, 2015 Justin Pidot, www.slate.com Educate! Environment, Human Rights, Media, Science

Imagine visiting Yellowstone this summer. You wake up before dawn to take a picture of the sunrise over the mists emanating from Yellowstone hot springs. A thunderhead towers above the rising sun, and the picture turns out beautifully. You submit the photo to a contest sponsored by the National Weather Service. Under a statute signed into law by the Wyoming governor this spring, you have just committed a crime and could face up to one year in prison. Wyoming doesn’t, of course, care about pictures of geysers or photo competitions. But photos are a type of data, and the new law makes it a crime to gather data about the condition of the environment across most of the state if you plan to share that data with the state or federal government.

Government Suppresses Research On Pesticides & Bees

May 11, 2015 Reynard Loki, www.truth-out.org Resist! Bees, Food and Agriculture, Research, Science, USDA

Following reports that scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture are being harassed and their research on bee-killing pesticides is being censored or suppressed, a broad coalition of farmers, environmentalists, fisheries and food-safety organizations urged an investigation in a May 5 letter sent to Phyllis K. Fong, USDA Inspector General. "The possibility that the USDA is prioritizing the interests of the chemical industry over those of the American public is unacceptable," states the letter, which was signed by more than 25 citizens' groups concerned that a forthcoming report by the White House Task Force on Pollinator Health, which is co-chaired by the USDA, will be compromised. The signatories include the American Bird Conservancy, Avaaz, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Farmworkers Association of Florida, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Green America, Organic Consumers Association and Sierra Club.

Great Barrier Reef Campaign: Scientists Against Coal Projects

March 23, 2015 Oliver Milman, www.theguardian.com Educate! Biodiversity, Coal, Environment, Ocean, Science

Australia’s leading coral reef scientists have called for huge coalmining and port developments in Queensland to be scrapped in order to avoid “permanent damage” to the Great Barrier Reef. The Australian Coral Reef Society (ACRS) report, compiled by experts from five Australian universities and submitted to the United Nations, warns that “industrialising the Great Barrier Reef coastline will cause further stress to what is already a fragile ecosystem.” The report notes that nine proposed mines in theGalilee Basin, in central Queensland, will produce coal that will emit an estimated 705m tonnes of carbon dioxide at capacity – making the Galilee Basin region the seventh largest source of emissions in the world when compared to countries. Climate change, driven by excess emissions, has been cited as the leading long-term threat to the Great Barrier Reef. Corals bleach and die as water warms and struggle to grow as oceans acidify.

Nat’l Academy Of Sciences: Geoengineering Not The Answer

February 12, 2015 Cole Mellino, www.ecowatch.com Educate! Climate Change, Science

Yesterday, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) affirmed previous researchers’ findings with the release of two reports on climate intervention through geoengineering. Its conclusion: “There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change.” The reports look at two geoengineering technologies: Carbon dioxide removal and albedo-modification. Carbon dioxide removal involves enhancing or mimicking the “natural processes that already remove about half of the world’s carbon emissions from the atmosphere each year.”

As Climate Disruption Advances, 26% Of Mammals Face Extinction

January 8, 2015 Dahr Jamail, www.truth-out.org Educate! Climate Change, Science

A recently aired Smithsonian Institute documentary titled Mass Extinction: Life at the Brink provided a frightening warning of how we humans are racing toward our own destruction, taking the rest of the planet with us. The documentary also predicts a global temperature increase of between 9 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, which is dramatically higher than even the worst-case IPCC prediction. Lastly for this month's dispatch, a special analysis carried out by the prestigious Nature magazine has sounded the alarm that a staggering 41 percent of all amphibians on the planet now face extinction, and 26 percent of mammals and 13 percent of birds face the same threat.

Parent Alert! NSF Awards Grant For Data Mining Children

October 16, 2014 Diane Ravitch, www.dianeravitch.net Educate! Education, Science

The National Science Foundation has awarded grants of $4.8 million to several prominent research universities to advance the use of Big Data in the schools. Benjamin Herold writes in Education Week: “The National Science Foundation earlier this month awarded a $4.8 million grant to a coalition of prominent research universities aiming to build a massive repository for storing, sharing, and analyzing the information students generate when using digital learning tools. “The project, dubbed “LearnSphere,” highlights the continued optimism that “big” educational data might be used to dramatically transform K-12 schooling. “It also raises new questions in the highly charged debate over student-data privacy.

Building Bridges Between Ancient Wisdom And Modern Science

October 16, 2014 Ann Butler, www.durangoherald.com Create! Education, History, indigenous, Science

The Powerhouse Science Center is one of three science museums in the country, along with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, to participate in Native Universe, whose goal is to build bridges between the two diverse approaches to understanding our world, particularly in evaluating and dealing with climate change. It is the successor to a previous four-year project, Cosmic Serpent, that began the collaborative process. “This is so beneficial to us,” said Sarah Margoles, director of education at the Powerhouse. “We serve such a diverse community with so many Native American neighbors. How can we say we serve the whole Four Corners region when we only use this one specific way of learning, this one specific way of teaching, which is from the perspective of Western science?”

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