Environment
Climate has always shifted but concerns about faster changes brought on by the modern world have led the authors of a new paper to worry that current high-volume sources of apples could lose their apex status to other areas.
The paper in the pay-to-publish journal Environmental Research Letters analyzed over 40 years of climate conditions they correlate to the growth cycle, bud break to fruit, of apple trees. They sound the alarm that the largest apple-producing counties in the US (Yakima in Washington, Kent in Michigan and Wayne in New York) have already been impacted.
The question has…
Hank |
A recent epidemiology paper links common weedkillers to prostate cancer and further claims four of them cause death.
Obviously they can't show that, there is no plausible biological mechanism, no increase in prostate cancers, and no evidence any of the people who got prostate cancer had contact with the pesticides at all.
That's the great thing about epidemiology, at least if you are a trial lawyer who wants to sue farmers and agricultural companies. It needs no science, it just needs to find correlation in a spreadsheet.(1) The problem with the approach, and the reason it isn't trusted…
Hank |
Once upon a time, environmentalists embraced biotechnology as key way to reduce pesticide use. Rachel Carson, author of "Silent Spring", was a fan of genetic engineering. That was before we all learned that environmental groups are only 'for' something if it means they can raise money being against something. Biotech was great - until it was real. Then they hated it. Along with hydroelectric power and natural gas, and how they will want to tear down solar energy, once it stops being a government gimmick.
Genetic engineering has caused pesticides per calorie to plummet, in sharp contrast to…
Hank |
New mothers are under a lot of pressure. They are told they have to breastfeed and if they don't, the formula they use may cause their child to have worse grades in school. And if the government shuts down formula factories for no coherent reason and imports aren't allowed because the identical product in Europe hasn't spent a billion dollars and 10 years to get FDA approval, that is a worry. And that was after being told American women who have a glass of wine will have a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome, though European women won't.
It can all be pretty depressing. If that isn't enough,…
Hank |
Prior to the takeover of environmentalism by Earth Day's overt communist malcontents (1) it was devoted to clean water and neighborhoods in cities, where the poorest lived.
To get attention and money from other wealthy elites, it pivoted to rural rivers and streams and minorities were marginalized in the rush to control government that would control conservation and "endangered" species(2) and clean water for people of colors stopped being important.
A new study shows it is still not important, not for the $3 billion environmental juggernaut or the politicians they lobby. The analysis found…
Hank |
Activists who just happen to take donations from competitors to normal farming - e.g. organic industry trade groups, corporations, and foreign nationals laundering money through offshore donor-advised funds - get paid to claim farming is a problem.(1)
Forget that even a San Francisco judge - the city environmental lawyers love to file lawsuits in because they lead the U.S. in anti-science beliefs - throws out meta-analyses that were clearly manufactured to get media attention for a potential juror as junk science.(2) Or that organic food means more toxic chemical in European kids. Or that…
Carbon capture and storage (CCS), the process of separating, treating and transporting carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial sources to long-term storage locations, is on the cusp of reaching unprecedented scale. This process has been driven by government policy efforts such as preferential financing and schemes to give cash and tax incentives for capturing carbon pollution, and national decarbonization targets that have pushed investments into low-carbon energy technologies such as CSS. In the United States, storage tax credits are under section 45Q of the U.S. tax code, which was greatly…
Hank |
Is glyphosate damaging essential microbes in soil? A multi-year study sought to answer the question using real-world conditions.
Glyphosate (e.g Roundup) is the most popular weedkiller in the world, and that has made it a target for some disreputable competitors, primarily those in the organic food segment, who promote their own chemicals as alternatives. Their chemicals, they claim, don't harm soil but glyphosate does.
Their concerns proceed from a kernel of scientific truth but what they do with it is just plain deceptive. Glyphosate kills weeds by targeting the shikimate pathway, the…
Hank |
Urban/local/small ag is a feel-good fallacy.
There is nothing wrong with wishful thinking and aspirations, we all have harmless beliefs that get into our brains. Some home ag is clearly ridiculous - a $150 machine to grow $0.25 worth of herbs is a gimmick for the rich - but mostly it's good, slow exercise or at least good to not be on a tablet watching TikTok videos so China can harvest your personal data.
Your windowsill herbs are not saving the planet, though. The "anti-" community - you know who they are, trial lawyers and groups in Russia and China sending money to US '…
New York City makes no sense on paper. It is expensive to get into, expensive to live in, yet crowded and dirty. The heat is overwhelming in the summer while in the winter the wind effect among all those buildings cut can through your parka.
There is no way to undo its monocentric development now, like California, New York is suffering a wealth and marriage diaspora for better tax and family environments, and “polycentric” spatial patterns may solve both those problems.
By distributing the density of urban cores and curb the sprawl of impervious, heat-absorbing surfaces, polycentric…