Month: October 2015

Yep, polluting corporations will sue any government that forces them to reduce emissions, and they’ll win.

Originally shared by Glenn Murray

Yep, polluting corporations will sue any government that forces them to reduce emissions, and they’ll win. Then other govs will be too scared to do it. And remember, this is from a Nobel economics laureate, not a tree hugger.

http://grist.org/news/trans-pacific-partnership-could-undermine-climate-regulations-top-economist-warns/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

You can thank Ronald Reagan for starting this tendency to label all actions by government as “Socialism”.

You can thank Ronald Reagan for starting this tendency to label all actions by government as “Socialism”. This started off as a rhetorical way of taking things off the table. We all believe in free enterprise, right? Socialism is scary. Socialism means waiting in long lines for a sausage. Socialism means waiting 18 years to buy a trabant.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant

That was the 1980s and today we live with this thought bubble taken to it’s logical conclusion: a world completely dominated by private money and democratic governments with their hands tied. If “Socialism” is what you call government even when it lifts its little finger, then maybe this whole Socialism thing is not so scary after all. Free enterprise is still good but its mainly for the non-life and death stuff.

Originally shared by mathew

http://usuncut.com/climate/bill-gates-only-socialism-can-save-us-from-climate-change

“Indonesian officials are scrambling to contain fires that, one researcher estimates, have released more carbon…

Originally shared by Ferdinand Zebua

“Indonesian officials are scrambling to contain fires that, one researcher estimates, have released more carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (in a week ~ed) than Japan does in a year by burning fossil fuels — emissions so voluminous that on several days this year they have surpassed the daily emissions output of the entire U.S. economy. The burning has generated a toxic haze that has settled not only over parts of Indonesia but Malaysia and Singapore as well, and has killed at least 10 people.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/10/26/indonesias-climate-crisis-rages-as-its-president-meets-with-obama-on-monday/?postshare=7511445913400313

And this is supposed to make me feel better?

And this is supposed to make me feel better? I’d be feeling a lot safer if there was an order of magnitude or two between these two figures.

Originally shared by Buddhini Samarasinghe

Red meat and cancer risk

The news is awash with stories about how red and processed meats have been classified as carcinogens in the same category as tobacco. But what exactly does this mean? Let’s unpick this a little bit before throwing out the bacon with the bathwater. 

There have been several excellent bits of writing that explain what this means – the first is by Ed Yong (http://goo.gl/br9OU7) and the second by CRUK* (http://goo.gl/ELDzCI). These are well-worth a read if you want to learn more. 

Basically, the key bit of information to remember is that this is not a risk assessment, it is a hazard identification. A great analogy (stolen from the CRUK article above) is to think of banana skins – they definitely can cause accidents, but in practice it doesn’t happen very often, and isn’t as severe as being in a car accident. But under the hazard identification approach, banana skins and cars would be in the same category because they both definitely cause accidents. The severity of the accident is not discussed, and that’s where we tend to get lost with the breathless press releases on this topic. 

So should you stop eating red and processed meat? The answer is all about the dreaded, boring M word – moderation. If you’re always eating red and processed meat, over years and years, then that’s probably not good for you. But meat in moderation (i.e. not too much and not too often) is still okay, and is definitely not as bad as smoking is. The thing with diet and disease is that reality is often rather boring; there are no miracle diets or magical juice cleansers that will give you eternal youth. There are no superfoods that offset the damage of binge-drinking every weekend. That’s just not how our bodies work. 

What you can do to prevent cancer is eat plenty of fruit and veg with lots of fibre while cutting back on things like alcohol, salt, red and processed meats. And definitely avoid sunburns and smoking. 

*In the interest of full disclosure, I work at the charity CRUK as a science communicator. 

#ScienceEveryday  

Imagine what it will be like when television is common.

Imagine what it will be like when television is common. Political discourse will become so superficial and trivial! Politicians will behave almost like vaudeville entertainers or moving picture stars!

Interesting things to note about this picture: the “televisor” set depicted is based on Logie Baird’s mechanical television. The device used a “Nipkow” disc which span rapidly and had a series of holes near the outer edge arranged in a gentle spiral. When the disc rotated, the holes swept lines across the screen on the right and produced a vertical raster. A light bulb behind the screen modulated its brightness according to which part of the image had was being scanned by a hole. Nipkow discs could only produce a tiny image relative to their radius so the screen was usually made bigger by using a magnifying lens.

Interesting analysis of the Great Power plays regarding the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea.

Interesting analysis of the Great Power plays regarding the “Hermit Kingdom” of North Korea. Nothing is ever as it seems in these things with six countries locked together in a stand off preventing each from moving on its preferred objectives. The reason for the stalemate? Nukes of course but the missiles are not necessarily pointed where you might expect them to be.

In order to demonstrate his willingness to go the extra mile in outreach to the United States as well as secure his rule, Kim Jung-un inaugurated his reign by executing the DPRK’s point man for PRC relations, Jang Sung-taek. Kim was taking a leaf from the Burma rapprochement playbook; in Burma’s case it killed a dam, the Myitsone project funded by the PRC, in order to show it was ready to distance itself from the PRC for the sake of better relations with the US.

Jang’s demise apparently yielded little in the way of improved US-North Korean relations, so I have a picture of Kim drumming his fingers impatiently as he looks around the conference table saying, “Sheesh, who do I have to kill to get better relations with the US?” and everybody sliding nervously in their chairs and trying to avoid eye contact.

http://chinamatters.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/recalculating-north-korea-equation.html?m=1