Environment

Two weeks after people were sickened by E. coli on romaine lettuce, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control told the entire country to throw theirs out, which alarmed people for little reason and cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars. People shouldn't have been alarmed because most people would have thrown it out anyway. Up to 94 percent of people throw out lots. And that's not as alarming as media reports are making it sound. We are constantly told to eat less "processed" food and more of the fresh kind, which aside from statistical correlation has never been shown to be valid health…

Many journalists have penned exaggerated, click baity but inaccurate articles about the IPCC report on climate change. One of the worst is the one published in the NY Times. It doesn’t have that many out and out mistakes, but it is a highly respected source, and so its mistakes, particularly the confusion of carbon costs and carbon pricing, and not being clear about what happens in 2040, in 2075 or 2100, confused many people. Journalists - please take especial care when you cover scenarios that scare people such as climate change. I am contacted by so many people who are panicking over your…

Dams keep the boom and bust of flooding from being too severe, they prevent water shortages, they make human existence better. But they clearly change nature. Why is a human building a dam unnatural but a beaver building a dam natural? Only an environmentalist can figure that out, but what was a great idea 10 years ago - hydroelectric power and storing water - is now the enemy of the paid activism community, and politically sympathetic researchers have increasingly begun to curry media attention by writing papers to prove them right, as has happened again in Nature Sustainability, a journal…

A new study in Nature Communications suggests that climate change could pose a threat to male fertility by increasing the number and severity of heat waves which damage sperm. The authors contend that climate change is already having an impact on species populations, including climate-related extinctions in recent years. The authors suggest that sperm function is an especially sensitive trait. Sperm function is essential for reproduction and population viability, and so they sound a warning that biodiversity is already collapsing. But is it? No, not so far. While biodiversity may be lower in…

Before the arrival of European immigrants to the western United States, up to 12 percent of it would burn each year. Somehow, even though science is well aware of that fact, political media today claim that wildfires are unprecedented and we are doomed.  A new study notes again that the amount of wildfire occurring in the western U.S. remains far below the acreage burning when native Americans were not managing the ecology. The context is not to debunk modern beliefs about how superior native Americans were, but to talk about water. Most immigration into the west happened because…

The basic message of the IPCC report is that we need to act now before 2040, to avoid more expensive mitigation measures in the last 60 years of the century. The worst effects are for 2100. And that if we aim for 1.5°C, it is far better than 2 °C. All countries worldwide except the US (which is withdrawing) have committed to pledges already. their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC’’s),. The idea of the Paris agreement is that these contributions are voluntary, and they ramp up on their pledges year on year. The next meeting is on December 2nd to 14th in Poland, and this new IPCC report…

California has banned plastic bags in grocery stores, a giant subsidy and mandate for the cloth bag industry. When government isn't manufacturing problems to solve, corporations often do it themselves. Some companies ban plastic straws now, when it is only a matter of time before environmental groups pushing paper straws claim the chemicals in those cause birth defects, and after the homeopaths behind the 'endocrine disruption' craze got corporate media to scare people about BPA - which only binds to estrogen 1/20,000th as well as actual estrogen - I was not surprised ConAgra took…

This is scaring some people - because they describe dramatic things that could happen like floods tens of meters deep, and the world too hot for humans. Most of this is for far into the future. The sea rising 10s of meters would be thousands of years into the future - many of the news stories didn’t make that clear. SHORT SUMMARY The article is mainly about things that could happen centuries to thousands of years into the future. It doesn't really conflict with the IPCC who have already concluded that these tipping points may have significant but probably minor effects before 2100 - because…

Though countries like the United States and Ireland have far more forest than they did a century ago, professional environmentalists insist there needs to be more. From butterflies to bees, some groups insist more of the modern world must be reverted to nature, even when it comes to formerly ecologic wins like hydroelectric dams.  Large ecosystems bring stability, they insist. But that isn't really true. Instead, stability and diversity happen when the ecosystem is complex, not just because it is large. And he branching complexity of rivers are absolutely vital in affecting regional…

American cities nationwide, riding a wave of populism brought about by media attention, are looking to ban straws, claiming they will save the planet doing so. Companies are naturally following suit - companies always will, because consumers pay the cost and if they are happy paying more while giving marketing departments something to promote it is an easy choice.It is a cultural placebo that will make people feel like they did something important but it is meaningless. Instead, pollution is up because the world is wealthier, rich and relatively poor alike, than ever before.  Straws…