Environment

This article is scaring people, with the usual “all going to be extinct soon ” hype that we have had so many stories about this year. It is running in many news sources. I am not singling out the BBC as such but many people have come to rely on the BBC as a respected source on such matters so I'm taking them as an example. Similar remarks apply to most journalism in this topic area recently. In this case most of the articles were more measured, and the BBC one unusually was the most click bait of them all. This not true. It was a clickbait title and the article itself was also misleading by…

When we think of agriculture, we don't think of nomadic hunter-gatherers who simply followed nature rather than harnessing it.  But they engaged in trade also. Millet, originally domesticated in China, was likely consumed at low levels by pastoralists inhabiting the far-flung regions of Siberia and southeastern Kazakhstan, possibly as early as the late third millennium but with the expansion of trans-regional networks across the steppe, when objects and ideas were first regularly exchanged over long-distances, millet consumption began to increase.   A thousand years it was a…

This is scaring so many people, but is full of mistakes and has no scientific credibility. It's written by a couple of businessmen, with a foreword by a retired admiral, and no scientific peer review. For instance they misunderstood a paper about "lethal heat" which was referring to the heat waves we have at present, 30% of the world population experience this every year already, e.g. Europe this summer. It is only lethal in the sense that 1 in 10,000 can die if they don't take the precautions you should take during heat waves such as drinking plenty of water, finding shade in the middle of…

Palm oil is being blamed for a lot but two academic conservationists note that those who ask to boycott all palm oil due to its contribution to deforestation should also consider boycotting coffee, chocolate and coconut if they wish to be consistent. Are you against or really against palm oil?  Ask anyone who has followed any environmental news related to palm oil if they are for or against it and they will most likely say 'Against.' They'll mention destroyed orangutan habitats and rainforests disappearing. What is less widely recognized is the extent to which this industry has benefited…

You have probably seen the headlines “One million species threatened with extinction and humans to blame” and such like. But did you know, the UN study that lead to those headlines analysed the reasons we continue to lose species to extinction, and found a solution? Not only that, they found a solution that is practical, feasible, makes economic sense, and has preliminary government interest too, to the extent that over 100 governments were happy to sign off on their conclusions as a “summary for policy makers”. This was the central point they wanted to present to the world. They said so…

Almost nobody seems to report the positive side of our recent climate change action. It’s remarkable what we’ve done in two years, which gives us much hope that we can indeed rise to the challenge. I have never in my life seen such a coming together of nations worldwide to solve a problem. Three years ago, after the slow progress of the Kyoto protocol agreement, all this would have seemed impossible. There is a lot of publicity about what we aren't doing yet, but hardly anyone talks about what we have already done. That's the key to success, to build on what we already have and what we have…

Zooey Deschanel, whose picture could be in the dictionary under "adorkable" thanks to starring roles in "Elf" and "New Girl", isn't well regarded in science, and hasn't been since for as long as she's been undermining it, which is as long as people have known her name. That's now a long time, since "Almost Famous" is about to turn 20. But such vitriol directed at her may not be fair. She is actually a rather moderate rich white elite, only guilty of telling people they shouldn't eat fruit and vegetables unless they can afford to eat the way she does. She may not always realize that she is in…

Am debunking this page because it makes a scary prediction of a 10 °C rise by 2026. It is very very silly. By far the silliest post I’ve seen on climate change, and that’s saying something, I’ve seen some ridiculous posts, but this takes the biscuit. I can’t find out anything about Sam Carana who runs this blog, but he would flunk high school maths and physics if he gave material like this in answer to exam questions. This is not about the IPCC report which is often misunderstood as saying something similar. For the journalistic misunderstandings of the 2017 IPCC report see my What The IPCC…

There are various groups that claim to care about the environment and put on expensive seminars with corporate sponsors (i.e. FoodTank) that just happen to align with the ideological goals of their industry friends (i.e. FoodTank with organic food) and then some misguided agricultural and food companies also spend money hoping to buy some cultural goodwill. That won't work, they are in a war of extinction against regular farming. What will work is showing how biology can lead to reduced spoilage, and therefore less food waste. Chemists, I get it, we will always need chemicals, you can leave…

If you want to know how great American air quality is, making EPA efforts to regulate more businesses into the ground all the more baffling, there are maps for that. If you want to know how great American air quality is, making EPA efforts to regulate more businesses into the ground all the more baffling, there are maps for that. If you want to know how great American air quality is, making EPA efforts to regulate more businesses into the ground all the more baffling, there are maps for that. If you want to know how great American air quality is, making EPA efforts to regulate more businesses…