Environment
Hank |
In the modern environmental era, activists are mostly among a political tribe that opposes activities like hunting but they should not be. Hunters, fishers, and others are terrific stewards of nature and a natural world humans are banned from experiencing is a natural world that loses funding. Activists should want people experiencing nature.
Hunters are terrific allies. A new estimate (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98282-4) finds that hunting also reduces CO2 emissions.
And it could earn people over $180,000. Getting paid to hunt while saving the planet? It sounds wonderful.…
Hank |
A new analysis finds that if there ever was a "Beepocalypse", it hasn't been during this century.
Using data since 1961, they found that the number of managed honey bee colonies has risen by 85%. Managed colonies are the only way to create reasonable estimates, that is how surveys of losses are done annually, but in the past activists trying to create a new fundraising target leveraged blips in averages to claim that a Colony Collapse Disorder was being caused by...farmers.
You know that averages are created so that high and low outliers are not exaggerated in importance. Anyone…
Hank |
In the midst of wildfires that occur with more severity because environmentalists block responsible logging and tree management in California, environmentalists who have blocked water infrastructure now say we don't need the infrastructure voters passed into law...or it would already have been built.
California is likely to undergo a drought, which happens about once a decade. Severe ones occur on a vicennial schedule. Since we know droughts will happen, why is there still shock and surprise and rationing when they roll around again? The Romans knew how to prevent lack of water over 2,000…
Mining is a messy process. It takes a lot of effort to break open rocks to get the materials needed to keep our current technological level on earth. The march of technology has produced some massive leaps and bounds in communication and quality of life improvements. However, most of these are predicated on the availability of difficult-to-find elements. From smartphones to microwaves, and even electrical power plants need large volumes of minerals. Anglo American explains that biomining, also known as bioleaching, is a process that uses microbes to extract minerals from the earth. The…
Earth shifted from an anaerobic atmosphere to an aerobic one early in its life. However, for a long time, the question as to how it got there was still unresolved. A recent paper in Nature Geoscience proposes to explore the link between the length of the earth's day and the amount of oxygen produced by cyanobacteria to offer a possible solution. Earth scientists have tried to figure out for some time how the earth's atmosphere shifted gears. This proposal gives evidence that could change the way geoscientists view that transformation and may hold the key to future attempts at terraforming.…
Conservation areas have been one of the most successful methods for the modern world to ensure we preserve biodiversity. By declaring areas as protected, the biodiversity (both flora and fauna) is safe from hunting. Even in these areas, however, the problem of illegal hunting and poaching exists. Protected and conservation areas are the best attempt we currently have to keep the world's biodiversity alive. Campaign for Nature mentions that the wealthiest nations of the G7 agreed to the establishment of the 30 x 30 movement, aimed at preserving 30% of the world's biodiversity by 2030. However…
Hank |
A targeted systemic pesticide treatment like neonicotinoids, based on nature's defenses against bugs, are great for agriculture because it protects plants from pests when they are most vulnerable and without mass spraying, but it's impractical for tropical forests.
A lab-bred mosquito that cannot successfully reproduce offspring, however, is ideal. They still mate, so nature is helping solve the problem, but the offspring do not live.
Hank |
Some ecologists who have again taken to claiming there is some special "balance of nature" and engage in butterfly effect speculation about ecosystems. They insist that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are not ecologically useless, they are even necessary, but there is nothing positive they do that the 3,500 other known species of mosquitoes could not do, without killing millions of people per year. No new organism would magically appear in its niche and be even more effective at spreading diseases. Such claims that the cure would be worse than the disease were debunked as "metaphorical" concepts…
Hank |
If you were born prior to 1980, you likely had a parent say that you needed to eat your dinner because people were starving in Africa.
And it was true. The Malthusian boom and bust lamented by Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, and other doomsday prophets in the 1970s had gripped journalists and therefore popular culture.(1)
Yet beginning in 1980 scientists began to run the table on breakthroughs that have headed off starvation. Now no progressive seriously discusses mandatory sterilization or abortion and a Planetary Regime to enforce them the way Ehrlich and Holdren did in "Ecoscience"; the worry…
Diapers are not what you'd think about first when you consider recycling. The CBC estimates the number at billions of disposable diapers entering landfills in North America. With this much waste, recycling these absorbent plastics might seem like a good idea. The super-absorbent material inside diapers is made up of long-chain polymers. Unfortunately, they don't get put into recycling bins because the composition of these materials is too complex to break down and recycle traditionally. The problem with diapers is that we haven't found a way to recycle them into something useful. At…