The segment below is a very amateur correlation to draw. The lack of micronutrients in food is more likely related to the lack of microbiology in the soil along with conventional growing techniques that offer macronutrients but seldomly bioavailable micronutrients. Organic matter and carbon content in soil is continuing to be depleted with conventional farming despite easy solutions at hand and food, in turn, lacks nutritional value due to disturbing the organic regulatory systems that allow the plant to uptake vital minerals and nutrients. Please dig deeper before publishing null and confusing "scientific" points. Co2 actually enhances plant yields if proper nutrition is available. A factor in why plant and soil life is a massive carbon sink and natures way of regulating Co2 which we are currently inhibiting. These "experts" should give up and find something of interest. As to not convolute the truth...
"Nutritional depletion from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, is another risk to the healthfulness of the American food supply, according to some experts. Dr. Samuel S. Myers, principal research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues linked significant reductions in zinc, iron and protein in staple grain crops like rice and wheat and smaller reductions in protein in legumes to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air."
It's my bet that there's not a person reading this that has a carbon footprint so small that, if replicated for every human on earth, would not result in catastrophe for the planet. Oh yes, we will change, but only out of necessity and after much suffering.
2
Yes it IS easy to ignore the parallels between the London tragedy and "climate change!"....in fact I don't see any at all! One was a fairly-localized extreme pollution problem being exacerbated by normal weather events ....a situation that was very predictable (even with 1952 tools) precidented and preventable. The other, "climate change" is a situation that has existed since our atmosphere was formed, is (according to the many climate scientists who DON'T practice "science by consensus", not attributable or affected by anything man has or can do and is not predictable nor preventable, despite all the money and resources that have been expended trying to convince the population otherwise. Please use your writings and outlet to educate people how they can help clean up our air, water and soil through their own personal, daily decisions rather than promoting activism and pushing for government interventions that would do little beyond putting even more money in the pockets of the few at the top of the heap!
1
The world disagrees. Of course climate change existed since our atmosphere was formed. How do you know that? From the same scientists that have reached a consensus on man-driven climate change. The top of the heap already has the money.
5
Maybe your world disagrees, Gerry.....mine mostly agrees. And since climate change has existed since our atmosphere was formed....which is scientific knowledge backed by my own logic....what's the big panic about?! And no....not all ( and no where near 97%.) scientists have reached the consensus you refer to. There are still many out there who recognize that "science by consensus" isn't science at all.
Larry, the International Panel on Climate Change, which surveys thousands of peer-reviewed scientific articles per year, has repeatedly denied the claims that you make. Using "your own logic" is ok in daily matters; when it comes to large-scale meteorology, it's not clear why you have more confidence in "your own logic" over that of the IPCC. As regards "science by consensus" -- that's just science. All science is done by consensus, but the consensus, again, has to be on the part of experts, not laypersons like yourself (or me, for that matter). Why do you not regard the IPCC as a qualified group of experts, judging the work of thousands of other qualified group of experts, with doctoral degrees and research labs. It seems odd to ignore the pronouncements of such people -- literally every few years, if you look it up -- and trust instead "your own logic" and those of the people "in your world", few or none of which are of the same quality of expertise as the IPCC.
4
I am a scientist and I take my scientific work very seriously as most of my colleagues do. I have also accepted that some of my fellow citizens prefer to remain ignorant rather than educating themselves on specific issues informed by science. There are a lot of ignorant Americans and the biggest one is in the White House, unfortunately!
8
Scientists have sold their souls fo so long that when one comes along saying a thing is bad another says it’s good, for money. Nobody trusts these “scientists”, so they don’t trust “science”, only their own version of science. Give me spots on apples, but leave me the birds and the bees~and don’t roll out a “scientist” to tell me birds and bees are destroying our planet.
Yes, SOME scientists sold their souls to defend tobacco and sugar. But it's idiotic to lump all scientists into this category, just as it's idiotic to claim all immigrants are criminals or that "nobody" trusts science.
8
Perhaps society is not totally accepting of "scientific fact" because scientists themselves have often equivocated and sometimes outright rejected their previous missives of "absolute truth".
Dietary fat will kill you. Wait, fat may not be so bad. Hold on, some fats are really good for you! Coffee's bad, coffee's good. Thalidomide is a wonder drug-oops. Etc., etc.
Science is complicated, and evolution from theory to fact is oft times a tortuous process, with many twists, turns and contradictions. Until science can remove the "maybe", "might lead to", and "may be a factor in" from their discussions, their theories will likely be received with appropriate skepticism.
JimF from Sewell
The inertia of our environmental problems is now unstoppable. For 50 years we knew that mercury plagued the ocean. It’s way worse now. More plastic particles than plankton. Every time we wag polyester we dangle the ocean though the simple fix would be a polyester filter on all washing machines. Shampoos and other cosmetic soaps and products that “leave you silky smooth” are poison.
Think your fish oil and healthy foods are the path? Well yeah but the fish and fish oil will diminish over the years ahead. Crops will diminish. Water more scare. Desalination? Very hard and you have the left over salt. Eat small fish because less mercury? Yes except now they have plastic particles. Coffee will be super expensive in 5 years and in 10 maybe from greenhouses at 60 dollars a pound. “Marvin Gaye sang Mercy mercy me , the ecology” a prophecy of what we now can’t stop.
Off season fruit we get from countries further south will diminish. Stephen Hawking said we have 90 years left unless drastic actions are implemented. The global warming inertia is unstoppable. As the poles melt the earth will get unbearably hot. Worse than the San Fernando Valley. With Trump, Pruitt,Mulvaney and the rest they see no problem. Markets up. Well we won’t be able to eat and drink the dollars or cool the planet but rather avoid the reality hiding behind money.
6
“Must it take a calamity ... to awaken Congress to the dangers that lie ahead and goad it to protect the citizens it was elected to serve?”
Well, yes. Even a calamity would not move this administration. Unless Mar-a-Lago started flooding on a regular basis.
5
Simply put, changing “the way this place works” (a phrase I often heard at UC Berkeley back-in-the-day, usually right after hearing “we aren’t going to do this”) presents burdens often verging on the impossible. It costs money. And it creates new winners and new losers.
Usually, the losers are well ensconced (although “entrenched” is probably a better metaphor) in positions of high authority that they refuse to give up. One need only look at the senior leadership in Congress — both Houses, both political parties — to get a sense of how myopic, ruthless and vicious the relentless struggle to accumulae power becomes.
Important scientific discoveries don’t come gift-wrapped, without strings. They arrive on the backs of potential challengers to an existing political order that serves established special interests. In London’s toxic fog example it was the coal mining and transportation industries nationalized by the Attlee government only a few years arlier. Unsurprisingly, a nation state owning coal production and distribution defended itself, and its capital, to the bitter end oblivious to risk and deaf to reason. In our current Washington public policy impasse the Trump Administration’s bureaucracy is controlled by political appointees drawn from the very industries now destroying Americans’ health and environment. That concession was their price for supporting Trump’s Oval Office bid, also why they are determined to keep him there. They understand the science but don’t care.
7
WHY DO PEOPLE IGNORE SCIENCE? Good question. The answers have to do with attachment and trust. No single human being could possibly master all of the highly complex and sophisticated understanding of all scientific specialties. So believing in science involves, inherently, a leap of faith. If the messages are mixed, like, you can't trust these guys, then questions arise. The dilemma with the questions of those who take a leap of faith are twofold: first they are unfamiliar with all of the information needed to make a logical inference and, second, they receive messages in the media that are misleading. For example, the number of lives that have been saved by vaccines worldwide numbers in the millions, if not billions. But how do you prove a negative? Meaning, if people get vaccinated and don't get sick, how can that fact be attributed to the vaccine? Of course, nothing is 100%, so people will not get a disease for reasons other than the vaccination. What is required are double blind studies, where those who are vaccinated are evaluated separately from those who are not. If the vaccinated group has a significantly lower rater of the disease than the unvaccinated group, the the efficacy of the vaccine has been demonstrated. But double blind studies are expensive, take a long time and are difficult to get funded, leave alone complete. And there will predictably be a small number of recipients who experience negative side effects from the vaccine. Have trust!
2
John Smith,
Your analysis, though discomfiting, is largely correct IMHO. However, if one has a modicum of what Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon calls "scientific meta-literacy" (blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2013/02/scientific-meta-literacy), one needn't rely solely on faith:
"[But] there’s an important lesson here about how we decide which scientific statements to believe and which ones not to believe. Those of us who are trained scientists but who do not have enough personal literacy to independently evaluate a particular statement do not throw up our hands in despair. Instead, we evaluate the source and the context...We scientists rely upon a hierarchy of reliability. We know that a talking head is less reliable than a press release. We know that a press release is less reliable than a paper. We know that an ordinary peer-reviewed paper is less reliable than a review article. And so on, all the way up to a National Academy report. If we’re equipped with knowledge of this hierarchy of reliability, we can generally do a good job navigating through an unfamiliar field, even if we have very little prior technical knowledge in that field."
Again IMHO, secondary schools should emphasize general scientific meta-literacy over detailed literacy on particular topics. Yet too many US school systems are failing to provide the most basic education in the principles of science, required for informed collective decision-making in a nominally democratic republic.
3
Scientists should have their say, but I still believe we live not in a technocratic society, but in a democratic one. For example, I believe the decision to ignore climate change is wrong, perhaps catastrophically so, but people in a democratic society have the right to interpret and act on scientific facts as they see fit. (That assumes we can all agree on a basic set of facts, a tall order.)
I was at a local government meeting where elected officials grappled with how to construct a facility for some toxic waste. The most conservative scientific estimates said that a wall of "X" thickness would withstand a 100-year storm (by which time the toxins presumably would have degraded). The elected officials weren't having it, and voted to spend enough to have a facility twice as durable and expensive, despite the scientists' objections that it just wasn't necessary. The officials and the people they represented exercised their right to listen to the scientists, understand their work, and decide for themselves what to do.
2
So, to make your local government example more similar to our Federal Government's response to climate change, it would be as if the government heard the scientists' recommendations for a concrete wall thickness of 'X' and instead chose to build a cardboard wall of thickness 1/100th 'X'. Or worse yet, heard the advice and said, "I don't believe in toxins" and then did nothing.
6
And in a country where education is not supported or valued, democracy begets incompetent policy.
7
In other words, people have a right to be ignorant and stupid, and they will exercise that right, regardless of consequences.
5
Timely article alerting us to the gross negligence of sitting idle while we go on, unperturbed, contaminating the environment; the food we eat, water we drink, air we breathe, is becoming more hazardous. And natural disasters have been noted to increase in frequency and severity, be it fires, droughts or flooding. And here come two distinct brutus ignoramuses named Trump and Pruitt, willful climate deniers in spite of ample empiric evidence, and trampling on the recent sensible measures taken to minimize the harm. Stupidity, it seems, is in ample supply. And deadly when in a position of power...and it's indiscriminate abuse. Do we need to wait for these unscrupulous thugs to see a direct blow to their golf courses...before acting rationally, and doing something positive for a change?
5
People are wedded to their personal technology -- the basics of which were developed by SCIENTISTS. But in the usual ignorant American's split brain,they trust the technology implicitly but don't trust the scientists who are observing, following, recording, and analyzing climate change in order to provide the basics for technology to invent ways to reduce and offset the things that are human injected into the atmosphere causing climate change? What? They don't like breathing clean air? They don't like being well? They like living petri dishes for dangerous organisms? Dumb and dumber are leading us.
5
Actually, ignoring scientific advice isn't such a bad thing. Years ago I went to a dentist who told me I had TMJ, which causes a clicking when you move your jaw and, he said, would soon cause my jaw to lock and I'd then require emergency surgery. Well, that seemed pretty out there, did some reading, soon learned that TMJ syndrome was the au couranat diagnosis used by dentists and they were trying to connect it to just about every syndrome known to man. So, I passed. It's been decades sense, the clicking went away, my jaw never locked.
When I was in grad school a group of professors that called themselves the genius group (had a nobel laureate and other big names from various depts) announced we would run out of oil within ten years. That was around 40 years ago...
In short, anyone who takes the advice of scientists without thinking it through is a fool. Often scientists are wrong or they are just going along with the zeitgeist. In short, just like with social media, people need to become intelligent consumers of science and the pronouncements of scientists. Sure, the scientific method is the best thing we've got going to make sense of the world, but scientists often get it wrong (although science usually self corrects over time) and they are fallible humans subject to jealousy, ambition, greed and all the other maladies that beset mere mortals.
In short, just because someone claims to be a scientist does not make every word they utter truths from the heavens.
2
You ignored clinical advice, which is different from scientific consensus. Clinical advice is dramatically often corrupted by the profit motive, and secondarily, the pressure of speed requirements for a given practice. As for the "genius" group, surely you have their statement garbled. No projections at any time have come close to "10 years, no oil." At any time! They would have been so far off the scientific consensus as to be the "wingnut group." And may be that they were! (Wingnuts.) Of course, no one would disagree with your statements about fallibility and divine correctness. In fact, science is the opposite of those characteristics!
6
Ralphie,
You're right that "just because someone claims to be a scientist does not make every word they utter truths from the heavens." As you observe, scientists are humans, and "out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made" (I. Kant).
But genuine skeptics who aren't themselves expert in a topic will acknowledge that there may be genuine experts, who know more about it than the skeptic does. The challenge for genuine skeptics is to distinguish genuine from fake expertise.
As a first cut, you'll get a much clearer picture of the truth if you listen to what scientists are actually saying in their peer-reviewed venues, rather than what politicians, bloggers and other motivated parties want you to think they're saying.
And despite what some pseudo-skeptics might insist, peer consensus matters in science, because scientists are trained in competitive skepticism. Even disciplined empiricists can still fool themselves, so all empirical findings require "intersubjective verification, or "peer review" in the broadest sense. That's what makes science self-correcting: peers don't let their peers fool themselves!
It follows that the stronger the consensus of specialists for a scientific claim, the less likely it is that new evidence will contradict the claim. It should also be clear that without consensus, there can be no scientific progress. Even the great Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
1
How about the delayed reaction to the microbial theories of infection, first empirically validated in the 1840s? President James Garfield received a gunshot wound in 1885 that was serious, but which today likely would have been treated in an E.R. and a minimal stay in a hospital. Garfield's personal physician did not "believe" in microbes, did not "believe" in hand washing, and probed the President's wound with an unwashed finger. Garfield died many weeks later of sepsis.
7
So, "Must it take a calamity.....?" The author of this piece answers in the paragraph that comes immediately after that question. Our collective history says yes, yes it does.
We may be an intelligent species, one so brilliant as to be able to perceive and surmise the nature, if only in the broadest strokes (so far), the Universe (a tip of the hat to the late great Hawken's), but we are also amazingly low-brow, unwise and stupid when we choose, and I say choose because that is what we are collectively doing, to ignore the facts of a situation.
Ignoring the facts and data does not mean their impact goes away. Far from it. When we so blithely ignore all the warning signs, and do nothing to mitigate the probable impact of those warnings, we waltz ourselves into calamity time after time after time. How intelligent is that, eh?
I have every confidence that with climate change, and all the warnings emitting from our collective scientific leadership class about it, we are setting up to dance our way into peril yet one more time. We never learn, do we?
So it goes.
John~
American Net'Zen
4
Facts don’t help change the minds of those who are troubled by the truth revealed. For example, the residents of Villages in India who continue to use the field to releave themselves rather than indoor toilets, residents of poor communities in the Far East who threaten healt officers whom enjoy smoking cigarettes
2
Or for another example, citizens of affluent countries who don't wish to know they've socialized the climate-change costs of every BTU of home heat, every gallon of gasoline, every kW-hour of electricity they've bought in their lives.
1
Willful ignorance is not a new phenomenon.. think of the Roman Catholic church completely ignoring and even punishing by burning at the stake, people who dared question the "wisdom" of the church's misunderstanding of how the universe worked... Copernicus, Galileo, many others were mercilessly persecuted because many people chose to remain ignorant, rather than simply look objectively at the evidence and logical analysis that was presented to them by hard-working individuals who actually LOOKED at, and diligently studied the natural world instead of just parroting what their ancestors believed. There has always been a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in our society - sadly, it it is still strongest with religious "conservatives" who sadly seek to "conserve" a regressive, downright INSANE view of the way the world and the universe at large works - such as completely ignoring nearly ALL the evidence we have, and instead taking a stubbornly literal interpretation of Biblical accounts of creation and "the flood", which is posited to have taken place only 2500 years B.C.: we have written records convincingly dated back to before 3000 B.C., and there is ZERO geological evidence to support the notion of a great worldwide flood... yet because the Bible tells a story of such an event they chose to cling to that instead of using the brains God gave them, and actually LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE with an unbiased, open mind!!! Don't even get me started on climate change.....
7
Beautifully written. Dr. James Powell, the inventor of superconducting Maglev, and I have been writing about the enormous difficulty of reaching a political consensus on solutions to global warming for nearly 3 decades. When we give a talk about the global warming and go through the issue a fact at a time we get a good audience response. Introducing this piece with the "killer fog" along with the story of how difficult it was to get political action was brilliant.
I am concerned that we are losing valuable time and the huge opportunity there is in evolving the World economy to fossil fuels. The challenge is huge because established and influential interests are putting up a vigorous resistance to evolving our economy to a non-fossil energy source.
I hope to meet you and get your ideas on how we can strengthen our case for some very creative technical solutions for making the transition to a non-fossil energy future. Our most recent book, "Silent Earth" was written to describe a very practical pathway to this new future. We wrote it to share with the policy community but so far our main idea of creating very cheap electric power with a system of space solar satellites launched to geosynchronous orbit by a Maglev launcher that can put payload into orbit for 1% of chemical rocket launch has not caught on. The satellites are designed to beam low energy microwaves to antennae fields on Earth to feed the World's electricity distribution grids has not yet been recognized.
2
Ms.Brody has descended into climate hysteria -- I hope she feels better soon.
6
Alternatively you could be wallowing in climate denial. Scientists, what do they know - right?
5
Ironic that the NYT does not mention that we also ignore biology. And yes, I am referring to the the fact that the pseudo-science of gender identity and trans-sexuality has for instance trumped the hard science of male vs female.
8
Huh? I don't think so. Sex is biologically speaking a spectrum. Gender is a social construct. What is your point, exactly?
5
Well, Rosamaria, biologists will be the first to tell you it's more complicated than you imagine. The science of male vs female isn't any harder than the science of male early in life and female later, or vise versa, or something else entirely.
Whenever you think you 'know' something like "the hard science of male vs female", ask yourself how you know that, and if there might be more to it than you know.
5
Sorry, Someone. Biologically speaking sex is fixed, like age, in your cells and your DNA. It does not matter what you or society thinks.
1
The Donora and London disasters were not the same. In Donora the toxic agent was hydrogen fluoride emitted by a local factory. In London it was coal smoke and sulfur oxides, emitted by fireplaces burning high sulfur coal.
What they had in common was an atmospheric inversion that trapped the pollutants. Other than the general fact that an inversion traps pollutants, and that therefore their emission should be minimized, no lesson could be learned from Donora that would have prevented the disaster in London.
4
Wait. Donora was a warning of what could happen when atmospheric thermal inversion colludes wiht pollution. And I guess that nothing like that had occurred before. Thus, it is obvious that it should have been a warning to the one of the most - the most? - polluted cities of the time, e.g., London.
3
Funny, I can think of a number of steps that could have been taken from Dorona and applied to London.
1. stop burning, or at least minimize toxic fuels during an inversion
2. send sensitives out of the area
3. Long term, research and implement solutions that avoid using fuels with highly toxic emissions.
The first is mentioned in the fourth paragraph explicitly Jonathan, but it takes no thought at all to stop burning when the exhaust is pointed right at your personal air intake. As for the effects, they were well understood long before 1952, so we could go back a half century at least to see strong recommendations on what to do in similar situations.
It may be a lack of imagination or an inability to see general classifications. The lesson is not 'many deaths during air inversions from chemical x', but 'poisons are concentrated when trapped by any condition and can be fatal'. That mistaking a wide resource as being infinite is a common error and comes from an inability to count combined with the mistaken assumption that resources are infinite. We live in a closed system and are re-breathing everything over and over. The problem is most urgent near the sources, but put enough toxins into the atmosphere, water or ground and they build up until people sicken and die.
Or maybe the problem is you're not old enough to remember Lake Erie dead and rivers on fire. It wasn't that long ago.
4
Of course it will take a calamity to change direction so long as we live under a system that permits the economic self-interest of a very few to overwhelm the interests of billions and the planet itself.
18
The problem is one of incommensurability.
The scientists often have the goal of assessing risks, with the secondary goal decreasing human suffering and environmental damage based on those risks whenever possible.
Policy makers often have the goal of assuaging and facilitating their financial supporters for the secondary goal of political gain. Scientific knowledge that contradicts their goals simply isn't relevant to them. Indeed, it is potentially dangerous.
As a consequence, those policy makers and their supporters also actively pursue the cultivation of ignorance and doubt, something that historians of science have conclusively shown to have occurred at least since the 1950s. (For starters, see Naomi Oreskes, "Merchants of Doubt.")
Perhaps the best solution would be a law requiring policy makers to do what would most benefit public and environmental health in the same way that corporate managers and boards of directors are required by law to do what most benefits a company's finances.
In short, it is time that we draw a legal line between government and business that obligates government to "we the people" in the broadest sense and make it possible to invalidate the decisions of government leaders who refuse to accept scientific facts because it contradicts the goals of their political supporters.
12
There are almost no disasters that were not predicted, with credible evidence, by someone. The problem, as always, is that the people with wisdom have no power and the people with power have no wisdom.
20
In the noise of our problematic current politics it can be overwhelming to decide where to put our time and raise our voice. I chose to work on climate change, not only because it has implications for all the other issues that concern me (health, environment, food, economy, animals) but because there is a great solution. Carbon Fee and Dividend, as described by citizensclimatelobby.org is fair, straight forward, and politically viable.
If you’re curious how carbon-pricing-done-right would affect you, try this simple tool https://citizensclimatelobby.org/calculator/ to check what a carbon fee and carbon dividend would mean for your household. Most will break even or come out ahead, while we reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels. And remember, there is a cost to doing nothing, and we can’t afford it. Let your legislators know. https://citizensclimatelobby.org/write-congress-about-climate-change/#/7/ Acting on climate will give you hope. Pass it on.
5
At this stage of the game, all we have to look forward to, is a major environmental catastrophe that will slap the country hard and wake everyone from their stupor.
12
Certainly some human beings are actually able to perceive the future in some small way, by looking at the past and the present and by looking past their own noses.
However, I would argue that MOST human beings have never been, and will never be, able to fully look into the future, anymore than could the dinosaurs when the climate began to change around them.
In 15-20 years, statistics says, I will be dead. So while I care about life on the planet now, why would I care about the future of the planet, other than the fact that a small minority of humans seem to think that this is the right way to think?
Schopenhauer explains the fundamental problem well when he stated (paraphrase) that life is always lived in the present. No one has ever lived in the past, nor will any person ever live in the future.
3
Jay David,
Beware of over-extended analogy. For one thing, climate changed at least an order of magnitude more slowly in the geologic past than it's changing now. OTOH, it was almost certainly a sudden event, the impact of a six-mile wide asteroid on the Earth, that dealt the death blow to the dinosaurs; although to be fair, that in turn had a disastrous effect on global climate for the next few hundred years. Speaking for myself, I'd prefer global mean surface temperature to change on Milankovich ("ice age") timescales, rather than at its current rate of approx. 0.2 degrees C per decade. And we can only hope to avoid another giant bolide impact.
That minor quibble aside, thank you for your candid admission that you care nothing for the future of the planet. I'm afraid you're correct that a small minority of humans does, though few of the uncaring majority would willingly admit it.
7
In your first paragraph, you deny all science beyond simple observation, by one lone individual, of strictly local phenomena. In the second paragraph you state that (I guess unlike you) most people are as incapable of memory, deduction, or rational thought as the average dinosaur. In the third paragraph you seem to be genuinely puzzled by the idea that you should care about any other member of humanity or even humanity itself other than during the brief span of your life.
I feel very sorry for you. Don't you ever get lonely?
6
Mal, at numerous times during even the past 25,000 years the climate has changed much more rapidly than it is changing today. For example, look into Dansgaard-Oeschger events.
Science is under threat. Deniers have always been with us. They are no threat to researched,repeatable science. The bigger threat to science comes from political correctness,especially in psychiatry, psychology, anthropology and social sciences where assertions are made to fit leftists ideology and programs under the guise of science that cannot be repeate.
3
Scientific Knowledge is not under threat - ignorance is - though big money enablers delay this translation to the detriment of all of us.
3
Ignoring science is based upon expediency and the notion of “if it doesn’t mean ‘me’, it’s meaningless”.
5
Google 'Burning coal may have caused Earth’s worst mass extinction Dana Nuccitelli'. The Permian extinction killed 90% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial life. It's been long suspected that the Siberian traps touched off this event (volcanic outgassing on a massive scale). However, recent geologic evidence (specifically the presence of mercury and lead in geologic deposits from the boundary layers, as well as an excess of C12 versus C13 in same) have led some geologists to a surprising conclusion: burning coal may have doomed Earth. The Siberian traps ignited large long-buried coal deposits about 30,000 years after the traps started erupting.
2
Ironic that the NYT publishes the perils of ignoring science when they are complicit in ignoring weight science, specifically the true effects of dietary restriction and exercise for the purpose of weight loss (opposed to taking an intuitive eating and health at every size approach that emphasizes behaviors for wellness regardless of a change in weight). I don't disagree with what you write here but wish you would be consistent by NOT perpetuating weight bias and NOT ignoring the science behind it.
1
"Last March, Scott Pruitt, newly appointed to head the Environmental Protection Agency, rejected the previous administration’s proposal to ban agricultural use of a Dow Chemical Company pesticide, chlorpyrifos. The agency’s scientific advisory panel had concluded in 2016 that children risked irreversible brain damage and neurodevelopmental problems from very low levels of exposure to food residues of the chemical, which continues to be widely used on fruits and vegetables."
And yet parents focus on imagined dangers of important vaccines. Maybe they ignore the science because they feel they have more control over vaccines while they have no control over the actually dangerous poisons being administered to us behind our backs, out of sight. And the current administration is removing what little oversight we-the-people have over pesticide manufacturers, all in the name of getting 'the government' (namely, us) off our backs.
12
Replacing fossil fuels FAST is now imperative.
Two hard-to-believe breakthrough technologies have been born. The first is 24/7 green power – a cost-competitive alternative to intermittent solar panels and wind. See aesopinstitute.org
The second is water, fresh or salt, as fuel, replacing gas and diesel to run engines. See Moving Beyond Oil on the same site. Imagine the implications for vehicles - ranging from cars to trucks, aircraft and ships.
New science is only slowly accepted, as Kuhn pointed out, funeral by funeral. We do not have that luxury.
Trolls viciously attack, seriously compounding the difficulty of attracting small sums needed to accelerate the launch of worldwide production of 24/7 cheap green solar energy - and abundant supplies of cost-competitive water from the atmosphere - a huge untapped source of both.
Margaret Mead once observed, a few determined individuals can make a real difference.
As Apple, Amazon & Tesla have demonstrated, extremely rapid change is possible. Innovative enterprise can perform apparent miracles of unanticipated achievement.
No need to wait for governments to act, although they can be helpful.
The need to reverse our present course is increasingly obvious.
You can change the world. Why not study the possibility and make the effort?
4
Interestingly, according to the IPCC AR5 report, there has not yet been an increase in droughts or floods, and the Antarctic ice cap is growing while the Arctic one shrinks.
This ignorance of the actual science is disappointing in an article encouraging us to listen to scientists.
1
The mighty Southern Ocean Circumpolar Current prevents warmer ocean water from reaching the Antarctic sea ice zone, helping to isolate the continent. The winds within that ice zone keep the water extremely cold, enabling the sea ice cover to grow in recent years even as global temperatures have risen markedly.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31052016/why-antarctica-sea-ice-level...
3
Yes, one would have expected a NYT story on climate to acknowledge that and not wrongly claim that both ice caps were shrinking.
What many forget is that science is imperfect but is, if allowed, is self-correcting. My caveat, if allowed, is the problem of humans wanting to deny facts uncovered by the scientific method. Humans don’t like facts — truth — if they conflict with religion, culture, or wealth. Thus the sand looks to be a better place to one’s head, especially in the these days of unbridled capitalism, than to face up to the fact our planet is beyond its carrying capacity of humans.
So better to deny facts, smear truth tellers, buy like-minded politicians and their votes, and whistle our way to, if nothing else, a seriously degraded environment, dead oceans, social upheaval, war, and mass species extinction. And we continue to flatter ourselves with our technology, intellectual power, and so-called morality. Brilliant.
11
Who's surprised that the same country that elected DJ Trump president has a "head in the sand" problem? Something in the American culture has always preferred myth to truth and faith to facts. Only 50%, you say? Science is hard - almost impossible - for some folks, and a theology that says "therefore ignore it" is a balm. Educational science is up to the task of improving this situation, but that would be accepting the science. Uh Oh.
9
Yes, it must take a calamity to awaken Congress and even then, it seems like calamity is not enough. It's been statistically proven what gun safety measures are effective and save lives and yet Congress does nothing while men, women, and children continue to be to gunned down in cold blood. Our craven Congress is the biggest calamity of all.
8
Ignorance of the nature of science is perilous.
Science is the best natural current explanation for observed natural phenomena based upon the best currently available natural information data. The main method of science is double-blind controlled tests that provide predictable repeatable results.
2
Wow. Ron your comment is typical of one of the big problems in our country: people can't see past their own noses. The thought, "If it works for me, must be good for everyone else" is just silly. Please continue to think about how other people, besides maybe you and your family, are impacted by global warming.
12
I think politicians and their families should be enclosed in a room for a week with these chemicals if they decide to inflict them on other Americans. So tired of this “protected political class” making stupid decisions that harm the rest of us and our earth for years to come.
22
"Must it take a calamity, like an outbreak of food poisoning that kills tens of thousands or a deadly epidemic of an infectious disease, to awaken Congress to the dangers that lie ahead and goad it to protect the citizens it was elected to serve?" The answer, of course, is YES. Congress . . . let's be frank, the Republican Party . . . will continue to ignore the danger until disaster hits. The question is this: Do they really not believe the scientists, or are they just claiming not to believe because their base doesn't want to believe? If it's the former, they're ignorant and like their boss, Trump, don't ever want to learn anything. If it's the latter, they're craven liars. I'm not sure which is worse.
15
Yes, they will ignore the evidence until disaster hits, then they will blame that disaster on the democrats in general and Obama and Clinton in particular.
6
Republicans ignore the environmental degradation and climate disasters that are killing us now. Republicans and the billionaires funneling money to them are sick - so consumed by their own greed and quest for power and money - that they condemn their own children and grandchildren to life on a rapidly dying planet. By 2100, when a child born today would be 82 years old - the heirs of the richest - will be confined to biospheres - unable to leave and left wondering how their grandparents and parents once roamed the entire beautiful Earth.
2
"Must it take a calamity, like an outbreak of food poisoning that kills tens of thousands or a deadly epidemic of an infectious disease, to awaken Congress to the dangers that lie ahead and goad it to protect the citizens it was elected to serve?"
In a word, yes--when "small-government" Republicans run the show, it's a most-resounding "YES!" What rust-belt Trump voters/supporters don't understand (since Fox News never goes there) is that the choice isn't "Big Government" versus "Small Government," but rather, WHO is the government working FOR? One choice is the average American, and another is the billionaire donor class. Guess which one owns and runs Congress? It really is that simple.
23
While I, as a scientifically trained person, agree that climate change is happening in the warming of our planet's atmosphere, I still question how much of that change can be blamed on human habitation.
Earth has gone through a number of episodes of cooling and warming in times where humans did not have the footprint of these modern times.
To blame humans, specifically governments, for the total change is wrong. I would like to see a study that separates the effect of human habitation from normal cyclic variation. None has yet been pointed out to me.
2
The changes now are happening much, much faster than a normal natural cyclic process. We must conclude that humans are the cause for this accelerated change.
4
Bill, look up carbon-14 cycle and concentration in the atmosphere. With a mere half life of 50,000 years, the oil in the ground has no C14. When burned no additional C14 is introduced into the atmosphere. When a tree burns, C14 hasn’t decayed and is introduced into the atmosphere. Now compare with the C14 concentration in the atmosphere over time that is declining. Pretty good evidence that it is from fossil fuels.
7
Actually, the climate changed much more rapidly at many times in the recent past than today. For example, look at Dansgaard-Oeschger events. Admitting that one doesn't know the details of the causes of current changes is part of responsible science -- after all it was the "Intelligent Design" folks who justified a specific unproven cause just because they couldn't think of any other.
What a horrible, gay-inspired picture to lead the column. Not many people will read the article because of it. It's a shame can't stop promoting their own agenda because climate change is the most important topic of the day.
Good gracious! "gay-inspired"?? Me thinks that springtime doth protest too much. For a person to look at that drawing and see a gay agenda says more about the looker's insecurities than anything else. I'm a gay man, and I can honestly say that it never occurred to me that anyone would see a sexual subtext in a drawing depicting the willfull ignorance of a man hiding his head in the sand.
32
It never even occurred to me: it just looks like a guy with his head buried in the sand, like the proverbial ostrich. I think it's just you.
30
Just imagine two metaphorical ostriches, like most of us did, and you will be fine
3
That man with his head in the sand reminds me very much of President Donald Trump and global warming!
20
I could not agree with the thrust of this article more.
I would add that science is our True North and should be devoid of politics, certainly well designed, replicated studies are. The problem arises when scientific fact flies in the face of belief. As in the case of the unquestioned nature of sexual dimorphism. We saw an engineer at Google dismissed for stating what real scientists believe as fact. This wasn't the only time this has occurred.
Science isn't a cafeteria, where you choose your findings.
22
"...stating what real scientists BELIEVE as fact." Well, have they demonstrated it as fact in replicable studies or have they not? The conclusion belies the premise of what you wrote. Back to skull measurements and eye color charts as predictors. Or maybe phrenology.
1
I think it's quite obvious that there are differences between the sexes; many have been scientifically studied.
And similarities as well. Moreover, there is much diversity in each gender and trying to create stereotypes of what a gender is (or should be) unhelpful.
3
As we move into the area of AI(artiicial intelligence) we will still have to deal with GI(genuine ignorance)!!!
15
Jane,
Thank you as always for informative, thoughtful, and important articles - even frightening ones such as this one.
Many years ago the phrase "ugly american" was used to describe us traveling in foreign countries for perception that Americans are all loud, arrogant, boorish, mean, ignorant, etc.
This may not have been true of most Americans but now this phrase fits our leaders starting from our president, his cabinet and our congress. All UGLY, a VILE, DISHONEST, DESTRUCTIVE, UNCARING, MONEY GRABBERS.
They are working overtime and often in quiet to destroy most important laws to protect us - clean food, water, air and safequard our environment world wide. They don't care because they have their tax bill to make them rich. They don't GAF for the rest of us - the other 99%
VOTE in midterms, vote these people out of office. Change congress.
Then new and tighter protection laws can be passed.
Then common sense gun laws can be passed.
Then, and only then, can Americans become less ugly in our world.
61
How about governments that went along with those who claimed that being mentally ill and homeless was a choice that people had a right to make so it was a good thing to close down psychiatric hospitals.
5
that was Ronald Regan in California. (in the 70s.). It had nothing to do with their rights, but an economic decision that proposed that housing them locally would be cheaper. But as they closed the mental institutions to save money, they never ponied up for local care. So now we house them locally in cartons.
24
Yeah, hard to believe that I grew up in an America where I never saw panhandlers. Till Reagan.
17
Yes! I am 66 now and I also never really saw panhandlers until Raygun.
2
Well ! 500000 people die of smoking related issues and we have not banned cigarettes!!Encourage and bring back breast feeding then the infant formula issues should be moot.We have met the enemy its us!!
4
The billionaires are in charge now. Facts are irrelevant. Wait for the approaching disaster.
23
Recent Arctic News data indicates we have entered a little recognized moment of extreme emergency.
Abrupt climate change threatens to end all human life within 5 years.
Survival requires replacing 80% of fossil fuel use in what one writer has called in a recent Yale publication, a "frantic" global effort.
Hard-to-believe breakthrough technologies have been born. See Moving Beyond Oil at aesopinstitute.org for two of them.
However, as Kuhn pointed out, new science is only slowly accepted, funeral by funeral. We do not have that luxury.
Trolls viciously attack, seriously compounding the difficulty of attracting the small sums needed to accelerate the launch of worldwide production of 24/7 cheap green solar energy - and abundant supplies of cost-competitive water from the atmosphere - a huge untapped source of both.
A few bold individuals, as Margaret Mead once observed, can make a real difference.
As Apple, Amazon & Tesla have demonstrated, extremely rapid change is possible. Innovative ventures can perform what seem to be miracles of unanticipated achievement.
There is no need to wait for governments to act, although they can be helpful.
A few bold, determined, individuals need to examine the data indicating the imminent threat - and take wise action to help combat the coming Climapocalypse.
The risk of continuing on our present course is increasingly obvious.
Wake up folks! The lives you save might include your own, as well as those of everyone you care about.
5
I think the "Aesop" name in the link says it all...
A brief review of the history of medical science reveals a few examples of the fallibility of science. Arthroscopic surgery for osteoarthritis was popular in the late 1990's. Millions of these procedures were performed until it was abandoned after randomized trials showed no benefit. Bone marrow transplant for breast cancer was done in the 1980's costing up to 400,000 dollars each. After a couple of decades, medical studies showed the procedure had no merit and it was abandoned. Vioxx, a painkiller launched in 1999, was one of the most heavily promoted drugs in history, with sales in 80 countries. The drug was withdrawn after it was found to cause 140,000 heart attacks and over 50,000 deaths. Premarin, a horse estrogen FDA approved in 1942, caused an estimated 15,000 cases of endometrial cancer. Many people have forgotten about the disaster of DES, Diethylstilbestrol, the first synthetic hormone invented in 1938. Approved by the FDA and given to millions of women from 1940 until it was banned in 1975 when it was shown carcinogenic. The first report of cervical cancer in the daughters of DES treated women was published in April 1971 in the New England Journal of Medicine. For more see: http://jeffreydachmd.com/2014/03/medical-conspiracies-came-true/
5
So....you’re point is that Science is imperfect? But, as you clearly show, it is self correcting when the proper experiments are actually done. Even still, how does this relate to the climate change debate?
19
and what does this have to do with climate science and global warning? Yu are talking about drug companies and doctors making profits on bad science.
7
It would be more accurate to describe medicine as practice informed by science. It was hard for a time even to get convincing data on the health impacts of smoking which does have a fairly significant effect-- harder still if something is less common or easily teased out of data complexity.
Climate science, in contrast, is convincing because of findings that either successfully reproduce, or overlap significantly from those in related areas.
5
The anti-vaccination movement is another example.
27
Science is anathema to our current president and his co-conspirators. He is determined to undermine any rules that protect people, including children. My contempt for him grows each day.
29
"Must it take a calamity.... to awaken Congress to the dangers that lie ahead and goad it to protect the citizens it was elected to serve?"
We have seen calamities and they have not made a difference. Some of us thought Hurricane Katrina would be a wake-up call. Superstorm Sandy. The accumulation of billion dollar disasters that can be collectively linked to climate change through attribution science.
We have seen school shootings accumulate even when we thought the very first one would be the "wake up call".
I no longer believe there is even a rational calculus going on in the heads of Republican members of Congress. I can only believe now that they are either complete morons or lazy, amoral nihilists responding only according to some least-effort motivation. There will be no "awakening". These people are soul-dead.
29
All I can say is I did NOT vote for Donald Trump.
10
I highly recommend "The March of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman.
7
We are in an era when everyone believes they are entitled to their own facts. The triumph of confirmation bias over empirical evidence. All it takes is some trolls to fan the fires of the madey-uppy fantasies that appeal to those who have no curiosity, only deliberate ignorance, and the stage is set for disaster. The severe and relatively sudden change in climate is only one enormous harm that confronts us. To those who despair that all any one of us can do are small drops in the big bucket, I say, save your despair. Most citizens of the USA are far too selfish and self interested to realize that we will need to act collectively to make a difference. So many in the United States have decided to ignore or oppose the right to collective action by doing something as simple as voting in an election there is no possibility of avoiding a climate calamity. Catastrophic weather events are now assured. Increasing numbers of people will die or be made destitute by the events. Conflicts will escalate to war in many places in the world. If it makes you happy, buy an electric car rather than one powered by IC. But if you want to make the most difference, don't agonize over whether or not to fly to an S-hole country or anywhere else for business or vacation, vote the S-holes out of having control of your government.
10
A great article. However, it's like the elephant is in the room when you don't mention that animal agriculture is one of the worse factors in promoting climate change. And it is also negatively affecting our finite resources, particularly water and land. Instead of just advocating healthy diets, be precise, give the facts that are needed. A whole food, plant-based diet will enable you to truly strive for optimal health, will cut greenhouse gasses down immensely and will save billions of gallons of water and stop the ravaging of the Amazon Rain Forest and other places due to land needed for cattle production. Google whole food plant-based or vegan doctors and start reading the great material on the web sites of Dr. Michael Greger, Neal Barnard, Linda Carney, Joel Fuhrman, Milton Mills, Michael Klaper, John McDougall, Caldwell Esselystn. Some day Jane Brody, I hope you will refer to some of these great doctors who are trying to teach people how to live without chronic disease and how to cure the chronic diseases they have, especially type2 Diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and autoimmune diseases. Check out Happy Vegan Couple on YouTube or Facebook for cooking videos and knowledge on plant-based nutrition.
7
Science has produced some harmful inventions, however, without millions of scientific discoveries, humans would still be living in the stone age. Even early improvements in tools, weapons, clothing, shelter, discovery of healing herbs, and other life necessities, depended on the "scientific" method of careful observation and experimentation.
Many (mostly Republican) politicians and wealthy big business people seem
determined to roll back numerous laws and regulations which protect the water, air, food, soil, weather balance, and general health and well-being of millions of human beings.
These "profit-is-the Holy-Grail" people seem blind to the fact that their war on many logical, hard-won environmental and health protections will risk their own well-being, as well as the well-being of their progeny.
Also, if you own a coastal area oil refinery or other valuable business or residential property, the value plummets as increasing green house gases cause ice melt and sea level rise. Oh, My!
9
You anguish over whether or not you should put that teaspoon of sugar in your coffee (probably not). But the choices you make regarding your health may well have less effect on your well-being and longevity than the policies set by our government that determine what chemicals can find their way into our air and food supply.
17
Is the reference to lax food safety regulation in the EU correct, I live in Ireland and don't have a sense that they are?
3
One can abuse science related medicine on both ends of the spectrum.
In a de facto criminal health care system that we have in this country, money rules, not the health of the citizen. With every new "advancement", one has to look at it whether it will help or just make money for the billionaire drug/HMO czars.
On the opposite end you have England. A total socialistic medicine country mired in red tape, delays, money problems.
The right answer is a blend of the two like Canada and many other countries. A national, affordable, quality system regulated by gov't but still in the private enterprise sphere.
4
But, "we love the poorly educated." They have prevailed and the world will suffer the consequences.
6
The true narrative is that we WERE heading towards a calamity, but that Trump's victory headed that off. Hopefully, with Trump we can get America back on track and "great" again.
A start is to recognize that American culture IS the superior culture and all others are inferior to it. We do NOT need immigrants in this country, and certainly not those that import their religions and languages.
God bless America and God bless Trump!
1
Dream on, Steve. Your man trump has no interest in anything other than himself and his ego. Everything in his world exists to stroke his ego or his manhood or both. A man so vain, so insecure, hardly has the ability to improve our wellbeing as a nation. And catering to bigots such as yourself, trump and his craven enablers in Congress serves only weaken us as a whole. Nothing is superior about bigotry.
7
An "informed public opinion" is necessary for the functioning of democracy. Our federal government, and many state governments, are doing their best to insure that such an informed public opinion does not exist and that expertise is considered subversive.
A nation gets the government it deserves.
The United States as we knew it no longer exists.
6
In suburban neighborhoods, the speed bumps are put in place only after one or more children have been killed by speeding car, despite the prior pleadings of some worried residents.
That is just human nature.
Same deal with GWACC (Global Warming and Climate Change). When enough people are badly hurt by GWACC, GWACC will then be taken seriously by enough people to force action.
But like the children killed before the speed bump goes in, it will already be too late for hundreds of millions of humans.
3
Planet earth is now giving us this warning: It is telling us that if we continue on the present path, like any other organism that alienates itself from the Biosphere, we will be rejected.
The reason: Our Axial Age is in a state of exhaustion. It is approaching its end. It also could be our end.
Here is where we went wrong: With the Axial Age we moved from the internal horizontal veneration of the MIND of GOD that had been a part of our evolution for well over one million years to an external vertical veneration. That verticality separated us from our planet and what we now call “Nature.”
We then began to destroy each other and all other life and non life on the planet. As a result, the biosphere now after eight/six thousand years of destruction is turning against us. The conclusion we can draw is that we have to change the way we think and the way we live. If we refuse; as with any other life form that defies the implicate order of the Cosmos, we are finished.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
3
They don’t care. The no-nothings will either be in their dotage or dead when the results of their actions and inactions come to fruition.
I pity future generations for what they’ll try to deal with; if there are any future generations. Fortunately for me, I’ll be long gone.
3
Stop the wanton destruction of America.
Vote all Republican and Democrat incumbents out of Congress next November.
Insist in 2019 that the new Congress immediately impeach, convict and remove Trump from the presidency he has besmirched and misused, on the counts of bribery, abuse of power, obstruction of justice and treason.
Undo every destructive executive order and law passed under the Trump administration, e.g. most of them, e.g. including nearly everything the crooked Pruitt has ever done at EPA.
39
Not all incumbents are evil. I would submit to you attention Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, my representatives in Massachusetts, just for starters. So is Bernie Sanders, if that's where you're coming from.
Pragmatism is not evil of and by itself.
18
@Susan Anderson:
As Clinton loyalists repeatedly chanted (while mindlessly helping elect Trump): Sanders is not a Democrat.
As for Warren nor Markey, neither is not up for reelection this year. Both have time to embrace pragmatism, which is the opposite of the now apparently forever spineless and hapless Democratic party.
1
Correction to my prior post: Warren and Markey are BOTH NOT up for reelection this year. (One can only vote incumbents out of office if their terms are up, and one might indeed anyway make an exception, at least for Elizabeth Warren, one of the few remaining forlorn hopes for reality and effectiveness in the Democratic Party nowadays.)
Yes, it must take a calamity.
13
We are all living in a calamity more severe than ever in human history.
It's called greedy-capitalism.
3
Got rid of my car three years ago that I was hardly using; only walk, bicycle (primary mode) or take public transportation; take train to corporate meetings rather than fly, insulated house; installed 16 solar panels & high efficiency furnace; eat mostly plant food; work to promote bicycling in the city - these are my personal voluntary efforts but they are only a grain of sand on the beach. To get others on a similar track we need economic incentives. A revenue neutral fee on carbon emission fuel sources would do the trick. Citizens Climate Lobby is working on that. Join up.
65
We are in the midst of a deliberate process by the federal government to degrade the value and power of scientific research. The consequences are being accelerated because we are not only not listening to the warnings but we are ignoring the scientific data measuring the damage. These human and planetary caused perturbations are not random variations in nature.
101
I do not agree with the blanket denunciation of the federal government—many devoted and talented federal employees are still trying to do their best under increasingly difficult circumstances
Instead: look at Betsy DeVos trying to destabilize or destroy public education; Scott Pruitt doing all he can to undermine environmental protections; Seema Verna taking direct aim at Medicare and the elderly; Ben Carson wiping out efforts to ensure decent housing for the poor; and today putting a spy in charge of diplomacy and the State Department. The list goes on!! I’m sure all readers can think of other examples of Trump appointees and family who care for nothing and no one except themselves and their pocketbooks.
And then there is a GOP-dominated Congress—equally at fault for mistrusting or opposing science in favor of just staying in power until the country becomes a polluted, haves versus have-nots in a banana republic.
6
Kathy, thank you for clarifying my comment. I agree with you completely.
4
Not "by the federal government", rather by the Republican Party and its oligarch donors. Let's put the blame where it belongs.
3
What is being taught in schools these days to raise understanding of science?
20
Creationism
4
Nothing.
American students rank in the bottom 20 of students of science all over the world.
4
My niece is a second grade teacher and every year her class does a project on some topic like water or petroleum. It’s pretty amazing to see what they do. I’ve even learned things from them.
The Neoliberal/Washington Consensus (both Rs and Ds) approach to healthcare: "If you're going to get sick, either be rich or die quickly." Bernie Sanders/Progressive Democrat approach to healthcare: "Medicare For All."
13
That's the Republican approach to Healthcare, obviously, as everyone knows.
"Kill Medicare", "kill food stamps", "kill Social Security", etc., etc.
2
NRA members and gun holders seem to believe that they are safe from villains because they hold guns. But I think contemporary villains that threaten their or our lives seriously are toxins/toxicants that farmers use for pesticides/herbcides, or excess sugar/ high fructose corn syrup that food/beverage industry uses for processed foods. How many doctors can help these NRA members and gun holders or us from the health hazards. Nearly none except those doctors practicing functional medicine.
In order to live in healthy way, we need lots of right knowledge that will become our weapon.
How many people know cellular level detoxification?
17
Warmer ambient temps would mean an increase in outdoor activity, such as biking and walking, and help to reduce metabolic disease. Warmer temps would also extend the growing season for plants, a more environmentally sustainable source of food than animals.
3
A staggering misrepresentation, as if nobody but you can think, and you need to reduce your thoughts to the lowest common denominator. Sad.
45
Perhaps so, although without any proof, but in any case, ignoring the fact that warmer temperatures will certainly DECREASE outdoor activity, kill plants that can't stand the hot weather and desert-like environment, etc., etc. Obviously you live in a cold climate; but not everyone does. Heat has in the past, and soon will in the future, cause mass extinction. MASS EXTINCTION. Facts: try them for once.
13
Warmer ambient temperatures might extend “jogging season” earlier into March and later into December, but they will also increase the number of days when it is too hot to run.
Warmer temperatures can make life easier for plants... in a greenhouse. But in the wider world, they also make life easier for insect pests, fungi, and plant viruses — not to mention increasing evaporation from soil and stress on soil microbes.
15
"Climactic" vs "Climatic" -- the latter, please.
12
"Important" vs "Importantly" - the latter, please. I disagree with you. But let's not be too concerned about differences that don't really make a difference.
Haha, maybe it’s a pun.
Same story for gun control and gun deaths:
https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/38/1/140/2754868
The data is clear. Everything else is magical thinking.
31
The world is full of dangers. Risk management is about tradeoffs.
2
My computer is black. It runs on electricity.
Of course, we would all wish that we had ignored the advice to replace saturated fat with trans-fat. Its not hard to find situations where scientific advise was wrong either because the science was wrong or the suggested cures were worse than the disease.
The battle over climate change has nothing to do with science. It is an argument over competing interests. The Koch brothers and other fossil fuel supporters deny climate change because it serves their interest in undercutting solutions that would reduce demand for their products.
If someone had suggested rationing airplane flights and automobile tripe, the airline industry and auto industry would be joining in questioning climate change. Along with some of those scientists and advocates flying around the world to discuss the problem. Its time to stop talking about climate science and start talking about who has the burdens from potential solutions. If there were no cost, no one would be debating the science.
8
The implacable resistance to knowledge and well organized pushback for short term profits is not going away in favor of rational solutions.
This post is too eager to blame the people working on the problem and trying to find solutions, though I get the drift and agree we already know enough.
Please get out on the front lines, since you agree with me that it's time for action, and see if you can push towards action. Complaining about the stalwart efforts of scientists and advocates only adds fuel to the fire.
To act, you need to first remove the blocks to action, and those are legion.
Try Jane Mayer's Dark Money. The organzation and power that the Koch billionaire network and others have deployed starts in local communities where local authorities have been replaced with those who will enable the continued looting and poisoning of our communities for profit.
It shouldn't be a battle, but it has everything to do with trying to get past lies and help people understand the urgency of real action now.
It's only all our lives and futures.
35
"This post is too eager to blame the people working on the problem"
I think you missed the point. The "problem" is not an intellectual challenge to find solutions and has nothing to do with science. It is a political problem. There are lots of solutions but they all come with a cost and they vary in who pays that cost. Its easy to support solutions that put the burden on someone else.
My understanding is that a single plane flight creates a months worth of the typical households' carbon emissions. Yet people who own an electric car to reduce their carbon footprint will think nothing of flying off to a conference to discuss the problem of global warming. Or to take a vacation.
This is not a "holier than thou" issue. Its a question of who makes what sacrifices. There are lots of people who think raising the price of fossil fuels is a great way to solve the problem as long as they can still afford it. Essentially, the problem can be solved on the backs of those who lack the resources to buy themselves out of the burden. On the other hand, those same folks would be outraged if you rationed fossil fuel usage so that they could no longer fly whenever they pleased.
23
The people I know about do "think twice" or more about flying around, and are well aware of the tradeoffs and compassionate about people just trying to get through the day. It's a knotty problem, and my objection to your approach is the way you reduce it to a relatively simple complaint. I don't disagree with you, I'm just tired of all-or-nothingism, especially directed at the hardworking people trying to open a road to mutual understanding. I probably overstated my point.
I'm tired of people being blamed for losing to the wholesale attacks of organized opposition as described, for example, in Jane Mayer's Dark Money, and exemplified by our president and his cabinet of destructive kleptocrats.
That said, thanks for engaging, and as I said I don't really disagree with you.
20
Our leaders need to remember above all that promoting "the general welfare" was an obligation embedded in the first paragraph of the Constitution. Our welfare as a people was cited as part of the very reason for establishing a government. We may sometimes regard that commitment as a burden or nuisance, but it is also a primary reason our nation has been regarded as a desirable place to live.
54
Since the current administration is in the process of bankrupting the country to justify terminating the "handouts" of social security and medicare, ignoring science and causing early deaths to help reduce the number of "needy" IS their intention. Their "ignorance" is coldly calculated to ensure the deaths of millions. More cash for the surviving billionaires...
111
Perhaps a regular series of concrete examples (“envirobites”?) could make an impact on people who are oblivious to such experiences.
Nice article.
28