Vox, who has been reporting some evaluation of cow "emissions," and doing a little panic-mongering into the bargain. The problem? They predictably get almost everything wrong. [On the "Climate Realism" website, the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy's Linnea Lueken has the receipts]<https://climaterealism.com/2024/12/no-vox-measuring-burps-and-farts-will-not-save-the-planet/).

A recent article at Vox, titled “Scientists are measuring burps and farts. It could help save the planet,” claims that methane produced by farm animals is causing dangerous global warming, and thus that reducing agriculture-related methane is critical to limiting warming to the 1.5°C target established for political ends in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. This is false. Animal related methane is not a threat to the environment, contributing little if anything to global warming.

Part of what Vox doesn't understand (and that's a lengthy list) involves the nature of methane and its half-life in the atmosphere - which, one would think, would be something that should be added to the evaluation.

Although methane is, as Vox says, a “powerful” greenhouse gas with much more warming potential per molecule than carbon dioxide, it has a short atmospheric life as so plays a relatively minor role in the atmosphere when it comes to long-term warming. NASA, one source for Vox’s story admits as much. What Vox and NASA neglect to mention, however, is that methane’s absorption bands occur at wavelengths that the most powerful and abundant greenhouse gas, water vapor, making up as much of 97 percent of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, already covers. Methane, a small trace gas, is a very minor player despite alarmism surrounding it. //

But beef production only represents 2 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and is beaten out in emissions by crop agriculture, which contributes 10.2 percent of U.S. emissions. These numbers are likely similar in most western countries. Climate Realism has covered these facts multiple times before, here, here, and here, for example. The facts haven’t changed, yet climate alarmists arguments are never revised or improved.

To be clear, there really are 12 black dots in the image. But (most) people can’t see all 12 dots at the same time, which is driving people nuts.

"They think, 'It’s an existential crisis,'" says Derek Arnold, a vision scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia. "'How can I ever know what the truth is?'" But, he adds, scientists who study the visual system know that perception doesn’t always equal reality.

In this optical illusion, the black dot in the center of your vision should always appear. But the black dots around it seem to appear and disappear. That’s because humans have pretty bad peripheral vision. If you focus on a word in the center of this line you’ll probably see it clearly. But if you try to read the words at either end without moving your eyes, they most likely look blurry. As a result, the brain has to make its best guess about what’s most likely to be going on in the fuzzy periphery — and fill in the mental image accordingly.

""It’s an existential crisis.""

That means that when you’re staring at that black dot in the center of your field of view, your visual system is filling in what’s going on around it. And with this regular pattern of gray lines on a white background, the brain guesses that there’ll just be more of the same, missing the intermittent black dots.

Brian Mays says:
January 13, 2015 at 2:40 PM

By the way, I wonder in what world funding for global warming research can be called “enormous”.

Welcome to the world of R&D for advanced reactor concepts! If only a tiny fraction of the money that has been wasted on deeply flawed, ideologically driven “climate studies” (keep in mind that I used to be part of this world when I was in graduate school) had been spent on genuine nuclear R&D … well … I’m sure that the DOE would have wasted most of it … but the remainder that went to those of us who just want to make a product that we can sell would have resulted in some very substantial progress.

But the reality is that I’ve just been tasked with tidying up and documenting the calculations that I performed to better understand severe-accident analysis of advanced gas-cooled reactor designs. This is work that resulted in a couple of published papers, but the budget for this cleanup/documentation work is $0, because there is no budget. There wasn’t even enough budget to get the papers done in the first place. That’s what nights and weekends are for. Fortunately, my day job manages to pay the bills.

Gee … I wished I worked in a field so flush with money that they’d fly me to Bali or Peru to discuss my latest “research” (or the made-up crap that I call “research”). I was fortunate enough to go to the last year’s meeting on new nuclear power plants (ICAPP’14), but that’s only because it was in Charlotte, NC, and I could drive there. I have nothing against Charlotte, but it’s no Bali.

The amount of money that has been, and still is being, wasted on the Climate BS is truly obscene, and those who refuse to see it are the real “deniers.”

Human Health and Welfare Effects from Increased Greenhouse Gases and Warming
-- John Dunn and David Legates

Claims that global warming will have net negative effects on human health are not supported by scientific evidence. Moderate warming and increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon-dioxide levels could provide net benefits for human welfare, agriculture, and the biosphere by reducing cold-related deaths, increasing the amount of arable land, extending the length of growing seasons, and invigorating plant life. The harmful effects of restricting access to fossil fuel energy and subsequently causing energy costs to increase would likely outweigh any potential benefits from slightly delaying any rise in temperatures. Climate change is likely to have less impact on health and welfare than polices that would deprive the poor living in emerging economies of the benefits of abundant and inexpensive energy. //

As this chart shows, by a wide margin, the Gasparrini et al. study illustrates that cold extremes kill far more people that heatwaves—and by a wide margin. They concluded:

Our findings show that temperature is responsible for advancing a substantial fraction of deaths…7.71% of the mortality…. Most of the mortality burden was caused by days colder than the optimum temperature (7.29%) compared with days warmer than the optimum temperature (0.42%). So cold produced 17 times the number of heat deaths.7 //

Underlying the concept of Net Zero is the LNT [Linear No Threshold - nuclear radiation] philosophy laid down more than three decades earlier: no net emissions of greenhouse gases are acceptable. There is no threshold that allows some net production of greenhouse gases such that at any level, the net emission of greenhouse gases at any non-zero level is detrimental to the environment and must, therefore, be stopped. The belief is that since urgent action must be taken to avoid any additional warming of the planet, greenhouse gases must be removed from the atmosphere.71 When “emissions released by human action are taking a catastrophic toll on our planet and propelling us further into an irreversible climate crisis,” no threshold is acceptable.72 //

Linear No-Threshold theory began in 1927 when H. J. Muller examined phenotypical damages in fruit flies resulting from x-ray exposure, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946.78

Ibid.
It was introduced in radiological risk studies in 1959 and subsequently into general cancer risk. Consequently, the U.S. National Academy of Science recommended use of the LNT model to the induction of radiation-related mutations in somatic cells and, subsequently, to the study of cancer initiation.79

Edward J. Calabrese, “Cancer Risk Assessment, Its Wretched History and What It Means for Public Health,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, Vol. 21 (2024). 
In low-energy radiation, The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation based its radiological protection system on the assumption that the radiation-induced risk was directly proportional (i.e., linear) to the dosage, with no dose threshold below which no risk exists.80

Dominique Laurier et al., “The Scientific Basis for the Use of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) Model at Low Doses and Dose Rates in Radiological Protection,” Journal of Radiological Protection, Vol. 43 (2023), 024003.

About a decade after receiving the Nobel Prize, Muller admitted that he did not discover small mutations in fruit flies with the x-ray exposure for which he was heralded; rather, the high-energy radiation nearly obliterated large portions of their chromosomes. However, his Nobel Lecture argued that no safe radiation dose existed and that the LNT model must replace a threshold-dose-response model.81

Ibid., and Edward J. Calabrese, “Flaws in the LN Single-Hit Model for Cancer Risk: An Historical Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 158 (2017), pp. 773–788; Edward J. Calabrese, “From Muller to Mechanism: How LNT Became the Default Model for Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Pollution, Vol. 241 (2018), pp. 289–302; and Edward J. Calabrese, “Ethical Failures: The Problematic History of Cancer Risk Assessment,” Environmental Research, Vol. 193 (2020), 110582.

A Better Rule. An obviously better rule than LNT (and to net zero and other greenhouse gas–reduction strategies) is that of Paracelsus, a Swiss physician and alchemist of the 16th century: “All things are poison and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison” (Sola dosis facit venenum).82 //

Eighty percent of modern energy is produced by burning petroleum, natural gas, or coal to turn the turbines inside electricity generators. (See Chart 2.) Running 24 hours a day and seven days a week, a traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear plant requires about 12.5 acres per megawatt of electricity. By contrast, solar (43.5 acres per megawatt) and wind (70.6 acres per megawatt) arrays occupy vastly more land area and have a much larger negative impact on the local habitat and its environment.93

Collins frets about the politicization of science, but largely conflates science with his own political agenda. //

But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”

Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.” A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.

Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”

For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late. //

The most serious flaw is Collins’ core message. He frets about the politicization of science and the growing distrust of claims made in the name of science. He wants to restore public trust in “science” and the experts.

The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him “science” has become a convenient club to bludgeon people who disagree with him. //

His “pre-bunking” is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it. //

Collins also suggests listening to people with whom you disagree. Unfortunately, he has spent much of his career doing the opposite.

In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond? Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he derided them in private as “fringe” figures and told subordinates: “There needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his “intemperate” language, but says he has “no regrets for the point I made.”

In other words, he really hasn’t learned anything.

It’s precisely because Collins has insulated himself from fellow experts who disagree with him that he finds it so easy to caricature the viewpoints he opposes.

That is not the road to wisdom. It’s a road to folly.

In reporting on a radiation study, a nearly universal practice of the 'experts' is to show us only the subjects' total doses. They do this despite the fact that usually what is measured is the dose rate profile, often in the form of daily doses. The total dose is computed by adding up these daily doses, and then tossing aside everything but the total. Analyzing radiation harm by only looking at total dose is like an electrical engineer attempt to analyze a complicated circuit by only looking at the annual energy input.

The human body is an extremely complex circuit. It has to be analyzed dynamically. The essential element of SNT [Signmoid No Threshold] is not the shape of the acute dose response curve, it is chopping the dose rate profile into repair periods, and analyzing each period separately. //

Where would we encounter 1 and 2 mSv/d dose rate profiles for decades? That's an easy one. Space travel. The astronauts in Low Earth Orbit get between 0.5 and 1.0 mSv/d, with occasional spikes during solar flares. High Earth Orbit or a trip to Mars will about double that. If LNT were valid, the shielding requirements would be prohibitively expensive.

NASA can't afford LNT. That's why it ignores all the EPA and NRC limits. The EPA says more than 1 mSv per year is unsafe. NASA says 1 mSv per day is routine. That's the difference between the top and bottom of Figure 1.

NASA is not the only entity that cannot afford LNT. Space travel is a luxury that humanity may or may not be able to afford. The benefits of manned space travel are at best speculative. The benefits of cheap nuclear electricity are undeniable and cornucopic. If we can correctly trash LNT to go into space, surely we can junk this counterfactual hypothesis to get cheap nuclear.

This study, which involved putting 95 children struggling with gender dysphoria on puberty blockers, was led by Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a physician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles who has long been involved in promoting experimental medical treatments for minors.

It would seem that the study, which followed the children for two years, didn’t have the results Olson-Kennedy was looking for.

“The leader of the long-running study said that the drugs did not improve mental health in children with gender distress and that the finding might be weaponized by opponents of the care,” states the article’s subhed.

That’s a major finding—and one that the public deserves to have access to.

After all, the argument for providing these experimental medical treatments for children is that they will help the children’s mental health. That was seen as a pro that for some outweighed the cons of puberty blockers, which pose health risks along with the unknowns about the long-term effects of delaying a young person’s development. //

But this data won’t be released because “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states, one of which will soon be considered by the Supreme Court,” writes New York Times reporter Azeen Ghorayshi, summarizing Olson-Kennedy’s reasoning.

In other words, when it comes to how to medically treat children suffering from gender dysphoria, it’s not about the science. It’s about the ideology—and ensuring that ideology triumphs in American law and all states. //

At a bare minimum, we owe it to kids and their parents to give them the latest scientific data about these medical experimental treatment for gender dysphoria.

It’s a shame that the Left is prioritizing politics over science—and the rights of parents and children to make informed decisions.

NASA uncovers 50 ‘areas of concern’ including leaks and cracks on the 25-year-old space station. //

Over the past two decades, the ISS has been a hub for groundbreaking scientific research. The microgravity environment has enabled significant advancements in studying diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, asthma, and heart disease. The unique conditions allow researchers to observe cellular and molecular changes impossible on Earth.

Without the interference of Earth’s gravity, Alzheimer’s researchers have studied protein clusters that can cause neurodegenerative diseases. Cancer researchers studied the growth of endothelial cells on the space station.

Endothelial cells help supply blood in the body, and tumors need that blood to form. Space station-grown cells grow better than those on Earth and can help test new cancer treatments.

Why do this in space? Studying cells, organoids, and protein clusters without the influence of gravity – or even the forces of container walls – can help researchers get a clearer understanding of their properties, behaviors, and responses to treatments.

Four golden lessons -- advice to students at the start of their scientific careers.

-- Steven Weinberg

Nature, Vol 426, 27 Nov 2003

Musaiga
6 hours ago
"This stuff cost too much to make. We need to recoup our investment. Screw logic, let's have actual Human Beings Beta-test this shit."

Isn't that the long and short of it?

I worked in Human Blood and Plasma manufacturing. I assisted in the processing of all that "donated" blood plasma. Also worked in R&D with Hemoglobin.
We had a whole testing facility, detached from the main factory by about a football field. Sterile, albino Rabbits were bred especially for testing. By "sterile" I mean they were raised in a 100% sterile environment, no viruses or bacteria. Each rabbit was injected from a separate lot of product to determine whether or not it would cause a fever in the rabbit.

Therein lies the "test". Mandated by THE FDA!
Used all caps there so the readers from PETA could grab a Kleenex.

They seldom die. But alas, they cannot be given away as pets. Besides the obvious ambulance chasing theory, there's this. They have no antibodies, to anything. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Like AIDS in Rabbits, only more accurately BFZI (Bred for zero immunity). This means they would last a week maybe, in the real world.
I'm going in to all this, because I loved your explanation Ward. Thought I'd add a direct example here.
In those days employees could sign up for tours of our "animal facility". The explanation I just gave was pretty much from the mouth of the Department Manager, who was leading the tour. This was the late 1980s. A biological "She" manager who knew her stuff, and showed real affection towards them critters.

Thalidomide was developed originally as a mild sedative and worked very well in this application. In the 1950s, the main body of scientific thought was that drugs would not cross the placental barrier, so when thalidomide was discovered to be very effective in dealing with morning sickness, doctors in Europe began to prescribe it for that purpose. The results are well known; many children exposed to this substance were born with horrible deformities.

The anti-animal research claims regarding thalidomide are simple; the research done with animals did not predict the teratogenic (birth defect) effects of thalidomide. A common claim in the animal rights community is that rats, mice, and hamsters did not show any teratogenic effects when thalidomide was in pre-clinical trials. This is a blatant falsehood. Several research projects demonstrated teratogenic effects in rats, mice, hamsters, and primates.

So, the truth is somewhat different. An objective analysis of the thalidomide tragedy reveals just the opposite of what the anti-animal-research people claim. The problem was, in fact, insufficient animal testing. Indeed, thalidomide was never approved in the United States, precisely because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) felt that insufficient pre-clinical (animal) testing was done. //

Ironically this same property of thalidomide, namely bonding to developmental DNA, is making it useful in treating cancer patients. //

The question to be posed to the anti-research people at this juncture is simple: "Please explain to us how the lack of application of these highly predictive tests before the release of thalidomide in the European market translates into a failure of animal research, rather than a failure to apply sufficient animal research." //

This is but one example. It's also important to note that animals are currently used not only in research but in the production of medical products; for instance, the production of insulin is generally batch-tested in animals genetically engineered to be diabetic, although in recent years there has been a lot of work done towards a cellular-level test that doesn't involve an animal subject. //

C. S. P. Schofield
6 hours ago
Question for the ‘Animal Rights’ ninnies; are you prepared to take the place of experimental animals? //

frylock234
7 hours ago
Husband works in animal pharma, and they do have to use animals for testing. Basically, the companies seek to reduce their dependence on animal testing whenever possible because it is very expensive among other things, like being a PR issue no matter how humanely you try to conduct the testing. Every national/international entity they conduct business with inspects for test animal treatment among many, many other things although some countries care more about it than others.

Hubs got challenged by an activist once, and he shut her down by asking her when the first live animal test should take place, "In controlled circumstances on a test animal, or the first time your vet injects it into your beloved dog?" //

wildmlm
7 hours ago
Lab testing of animals was inhumane decades ago. All labs receiving federal grants, and most state grants, require institutions to have an Institutional Animal Care Committee (IACUC). All use of animals, including field research, requires an Animal Use Protocol (AUP). The committees are rigorous because violations of requirements can cost the institution millions. The AUP is a pain but understandable. I spent my entire career doing animal field research. The focus on AUPs didn’t ramp up until the late 1970s.

In mid-November 2023, a disastrous SpaceX launch, which saw the explosion of not one but two rockets, offered a rare opportunity to study the effects of such phenomena on the ionosphere.
A study by Russian scientists revealed how this explosion temporarily blew open a hole in the ionosphere stretching from the Yucatan to the southeastern U.S.
Although far from the first rocket-induced disturbance in the ionosphere, this is one of the first explosive events in the ionosphere to be extensively studied. //

November 18, 2023, wasn’t a great day for the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX. While testing its stainless steel-clad Starship, designed to be the company’s chariot to Mars, the spacecraft exploded four minutes after liftoff over the skies of Boca Chica, Texas. //

This new study confirms that the ionosphere experienced a “large-amplitude total electron content depletion,” likely reinforced by a fuel exhaust impact of the Super Heavy rocket engine, which also exploded a little more than a minute earlier at lower altitude once it separated from the Starship. The research team collected this data from 2,500 ground stations scattered across North America and the Caribbean and found that the hole extended largely from Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula and the southeastern U.S., though the exact size of the hole is unknown. //

scientists report that this Starship-induced ion hole caused by “catastrophic phenomena” closed up after 30 or 40 minutes. But these kinds of interactions are still poorly understood, and that’s concerning considering how central the ionosphere is to global technologies—not to mention human health.

Science is all too often wielded as a weapon. Whenever anyone claims, "science says," they are betraying a very real lack of understanding as to how the scientific method works; science is not a body of people or an authority — it is a tool, a method of looking at data, drawing conclusions from that data, forming hypotheses, testing those hypotheses, and seeing if others can reproduce the results. And when new data becomes available, all of the conclusions previously drawn must be evaluated, dispassionately, against that new data. Science should not — must not — be cited in support of an agenda, as that drives people claiming to be doing science to act in contradiction to the scientific method — working backward from a conclusion, discarding inconvenient data, and so on.

All of these things are happening right now in the arena of climatology.

On his Substack, science journalist Roger Pielke Jr. has described five such cases, and they merit consideration, as they show how science is being abused in pursuit of this particular agenda. Let's look at a couple.
... //

Too many people, especially people with an agenda, are not interested in the scientific method. They aren't interested in the truth. They aren't interested in decoupling science from politics. That's how we have come to this pass, where a loud, vocal, and at some times criminal element is demanding economic ruin, the end of our modern, technological society, and the return of mankind to the 19th century, all in the name of human-caused climate change that the data just doesn't support. The problem here lies not with the people who are doing science; it lies with the Al Gores, the John Kerrys, the Greta Thunbergs, the people who wave the term "science" like a battle ensign, and the vast majority of whom, like Al Gore, like John Kerry, have the carbon footprint of a medium-sized Third World nation.

This isn't science. This is the opposite of science. And these people are willing to destroy our modern lifestyle because of this — because of the bugaboo of anthropogenic climate change. //

anon-201n
8 minutes ago
More recently, scientific theories have become bandwagons, on which research grant grifters jump to get money. Right now, a lot of scientific research in the U.S. is being dominated by the paradigm of human-caused climate change. Into this maelstrom, faulty data and outright falsehoods are being swept around, and overwhelming responsible scientific research which attempts to find truths about earth's ecosystems. Without a framework of adherence to truth, scientific research is crowded out by political pressure exerted by ignorant advocates. //

C. S. P. Schofield
an hour ago
Sadly, science is often like this; called in to support a pre decided position. Or, an old theory hanging on in the face of new data until the men whose reputation were built on the old theory have retired; continental drift is supposed to have been adopted only father a mechanism for it was established, but the truth seems to be that it was accepted by the young blood, and became official after the old guard were no longer blocking it.

My late father was a Professor of the History of Science and Technology, so I gat a lot of this over the dinner table.

Yes, in theory, when the data contradicts theory, the theory gets junked. Seldom happens that directly, though.

Climate Change activism is a particularly squalid case. It doesn’t help their case that their proposed ‘solutions’ are mostly fairy tales. Wind, solar, and battery powered cars will not help, and may cut ally harm the environment more than what they are supposed to replace. I would, in particular, like to see somebody, ANYBODY, taking a hard look at what having wind and solar farms taking energy out of the environment does in terms of side effects. The enviroweenies act like that energy is free, and There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. //

COUltraMAGA
an hour ago
There are so many “climate science” articles that are almost immediately outdated by real-world observations it’s almost funny.

Case in point: I just ran across a recent study that showed that the Great Barrier Reef had rebounded from its 2009 lows to an unprecedented level (30% higher than standard levels of coral colonies) in just 15 years. Remember how all the coral was “dying” and being “bleached” because of CO2 and ozone blah blah blah? Not so much.

Turns out those lows in 2009 (and they were pretty low then) were due to a cyclone that passed almost directly over the entire GBR a year before. Causing widespread damage to the corals (which happens from time to time).

Rest assured, the GBR is not going anywhere, and in fact seems to be sticking a big middle finger to the climatistas by rebounding to far greater numbers than were thought possible. //

C. S. P. Schofield COUltraMAGA
an hour ago
Some decades back I made the observation that at least half the ‘environmental emergencies’ talked about would vanish if we executed the board of directors of The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the like. I think a fair proportion of the others - runaway wildfires spring to mind - could be solved by taking large tracts of land away from various governments and making them privately owned. In the developing world, too much damage is done because the companies working the land have leases from the government instead of owning, and know they have to make all the money they are going to get before tge lease runs out.

Einstein dedicated his time between 1905-1915 to develop general relativity (GR). It seems strange to me that no other physicists attempted to tackle this problem in this ten-year period. After all, developing a relativistic theory of gravity superseding Newton's should have been the holy grail of physics at that period. How come none gave it a shot?

"Ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected... and treat it accordingly." //

“When we're talking about amputation behavior, this is literally the only case in which a sophisticated and systematic amputation of an individual by another member of its species occurs in the animal kingdom,” said co-author Erik Frank, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “The fact that the ants are able to diagnose a wound, see if it's infected or sterile, and treat it accordingly over long periods of time by other individuals—the only medical system that can rival that would be the human one."

Newton's flaming laser sword (also known as Alder's razor) is a philosophical razor devised by Alder and discussed in an essay in the May/June 2004 issue of Philosophy Now.[6] The principle, which addresses the differing views of scientists and philosophers on epistemology and knowledge, was summarized by Alder as follows:[6][jargon]

In its weakest form it says that we should not dispute propositions unless they can be shown by precise logic and/or mathematics to have observable consequences. In its strongest form it demands a list of observable consequences and a formal demonstration that they are indeed consequences of the proposition claimed.

The razor is humorously named after Isaac Newton, as it is inspired by Newtonian thought and is called a "flaming laser sword", because it is "much sharper and more dangerous than Occam's Razor".[6]

Scientists find a "mitotic stopwatch" that lets individual cells remember something. //

How does something as fundamental as a cell hold on to information across multiple divisions?

There's no one answer, and the details are really difficult to work out in many cases. But scientists have now worked out one memory system in detail. Cells are able to remember when their parent had a difficult time dividing—a problem that's often associated with DNA damage and cancer. And, if the problems are substantial enough, the two cells that result from a division will stop dividing themselves.

A scan of archives shows that lots of scientific papers aren't backed up.

Back when scientific publications came in paper form, libraries played a key role in ensuring that knowledge didn't disappear. Copies went out to so many libraries that any failure—a publisher going bankrupt, a library getting closed—wouldn't put us at risk of losing information. But, as with anything else, scientific content has gone digital, which has changed what's involved with preservation.

Organizations have devised systems that should provide options for preserving digital material. But, according to a recently published survey, lots of digital documents aren't consistently showing up in the archives that are meant to preserve it. And that puts us at risk of losing academic research—including science paid for with taxpayer money. //

The risk here is that, ultimately, we may lose access to some academic research. As Eve phrases it, knowledge gets expanded because we're able to build upon a foundation of facts that we can trace back through a chain of references. If we start losing those links, then the foundation gets shakier. Archiving comes with its own set of challenges: It costs money, it has to be organized, consistent means of accessing the archived material need to be established, and so on.

But, to an extent, we're failing at the first step. "An important point to make," Eve writes, "is that there is no consensus over who should be responsible for archiving scholarship in the digital age."

A somewhat related issue is ensuring that people can find the archived material—the issue that DOIs were designed to solve.

Evidence shows that shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change minds. //

But in all my years of working with the public, I’ve found a potential strategy. And that strategy doesn’t involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method. //

The word pseudoscience means “false science,” and that’s where my definition starts. Pseudoscience is a practice, a mode of investigation, that looks like science but misses the point. Or, as I like to phrase it, pseudoscience has the skin of science but misses its soul. //

The skin of science is visible to non-scientists; it’s what science looks like from the outside. That skin usually involves some combination of advanced jargon that’s generally indecipherable, the wielding of sophisticated mathematical tools for describing nature, and, of course, the fancy technical gear for making measurements and observations.

But these are just the tools of science; they aren’t what makes science so uniquely powerful. That's the scientific method. We’ve all learned the basics of the scientific method (make a hypothesis, test it, repeat), but it’s only in scientific training that you can acquire the skills necessary to put that method into practice. This—the scientific method and the skills to put it to use—is the real soul of science.

It involves skills like rigor, where we take our own statements seriously and follow them to their full logical conclusions. Or humility, where we learn to accept that any statement can be proven wrong at any time. There’s also fundamental skepticism, in that we allow the evidence to dictate our beliefs. Science is characterized by a spirit of openness, by requiring that methods and techniques be shared and publicized so that others can critique and extend them, and connectedness, which is a sense that statements we make must connect with the broader collection of scientific knowledge. Lastly, science persists in a constant state of evolution, where we always refine our beliefs and statements given new evidence or insights.

These qualities together make the scientific method work on a day-to-day basis. And while any individual scientist will fall short at one or more of these qualities for at least some—or, sadly, the entirety—of their careers, the practice of science is to always strive for these noble goals. //

The world is harsh, confusing, and unfair. Pseudoscience gives comfort, explanation, and predictability. //

So, the first step when confronting a pseudoscientific belief is to not bother arguing it. I have a personal rule: Unless someone asks me directly for my opinion, I don’t offer it. I’ll admit that sometimes I just can’t hold my tongue, but in the vast majority of situations, I’d rather preserve a relationship than drive a wedge into it just because someone isn’t adhering to strict scientific thinking. People believe all sorts of weird things, and the likelihood of me changing their minds—on UFOs, homeopathy, or whatever—is so small that it’s simply not worth the effort.

Instead, I try to practice what’s known as radical empathy. This is empathy given to another person without any expectation of receiving it back in return. I try to see the world through someone else’s eyes and use that to find common ground. Why do they believe in UFOs? Is it because they want mystery and wonder to be alive in this world? Hey, me too! Why do they buy homeopathic medicine? Is it because they desperately wish they could do something about their medical condition? Yeah, I hear that. Why do they get a palm reading? Is it because they could use some guidance through their complicated lives? Couldn't we all.

We need to find common ground and leverage that to share the joy, power, and beauty of science. //

Instead, if we’re going to win hearts and minds, we need to find common ground and leverage that to share the joy, power, and beauty of science. The worldview offered by science is breathtaking in its scope. One of the reasons I love the scientific worldview is its ability to see the inner workings of nature and understand the deeper levels that bring about our daily experiences. Science opens up the world and makes it knowable. Yes, there is always uncertainty; our beliefs are always provisional. That is a small price to pay for freedom, for the ability to change your mind when the evidence demands it and see the world with new eyes.

The scientific worldview is a gift. I’ve learned to not bother trying to convince someone to turn against their pseudoscientific beliefs. It rarely works, and it just makes science look bad. Instead, by finding common ground, admitting the limitations of science, and showcasing how science is a powerful force in the world, I hope to generate a positive image of science and its role in society.

Instead of getting into an argument, I would rather find a way to get someone to see the world the same way that I do: as a Universe filled with mystery and wonder, revealed by a powerful toolset for investigating those mysteries. I would rather people see behind the skin of science and understand, appreciate, and celebrate its soul. I believe that’s the only way to build trust—and hopefully help people listen to scientists when it really matters.

“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles” - Thomas Edison

Edison was dreaming big when he said that. //

Belgium was dreaming big when they built the Atomium. It took 18 months to design and another 18 months to build. //

J'ai vu le futur. “I have seen the future.” These words are displayed inside the structure like a mantra for humankind. It’s not wrong. Consider the structures we admire the most: the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, the Easter Island heads, etc. We do not argue that these structures are too big. We visit them because they are so big, to marvel at their bigness.

For much of human history, we have tried to show our greatness, or to celebrate that which we have believed to be greater than us, through constructing large monuments.

So why are large-scale projects now so heavily criticised?

It may not surprise you that the idea that big is bad came from an anti-growth, anti-technology activist.

E F Schumacher wrote Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered in 1973. The book argues in favour of what Schumacher calls small, “appropriate” technologies as a superior alternative to the general ethos of "bigger is better". The latest edition of the book features a foreword by depopulation and degrowth activist Jonathon Porritt.

The book is a holy text for degrowthers, anti-progress activists, and Malthusians alike. It suffers from the recrudescence of the common fallacy of man versus nature, as Schumacher argues that “The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.” //

What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it. Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.”

Consider that last statement. “Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live.” And yet we have heating, lighting, telephones, the Internet, shoes, glasses, clothes, and so on, thanks to science - not Shakespeare (though I take no umbrage with the Bard). The greatest irony of this statement is that we only have books like Schumacher’s and Shakespeare’s thanks to science and technology.

That a prophet of such pessimism and blinkered thinking has influenced our ideas of large-scale technology ought to concern us. While activists argue against large-scale technological projects, note that when they consider the structures to be works of art the same argument is seldom made. For example, the construction of the Sagrada Família, the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world, began in 1882 and continues to this day. For the most part, people do not cry “it’s too big!” or “what about the cost?!” regarding the church. They allow it to be built. They want to see it finished. Similarly, the Notre-Dame is being rapidly rebuilt after it caught fire in 2019. //

The fact is that we need one - power plants - to have the other - the Sagrada Família, Notre-Dame, etc.

Back to the Atomium. With this single structure, Belgium depicted its love of physics through art. The country wanted to highlight and promote the post-war ideal of peacefully applying atomic research and other advancements in technology, and with over 600,000 visitors per year, the Atomium has achieved this aim. //

Schumacher and I do agree on one thing. He wrote: “To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now.” Indeed, we should act now and start building. Large-scale nuclear energy is needed to displace fossil fuels, and committing to it represents the veriest foresight. Without new power plants, we cannot hope to overcome the vicissitudes of tomorrow and maintain the progress that led us here, and beyond. Sometimes we need to dream big and build big. Or, to put it less elegantly, we should go big or go home.