In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
There is no question that increased use of natural gas has been good for the atmosphere - energy CO2 emissions are down to early 1990s levels in America and coal is at early 1980s levels of emissions, just like we all said we wanted.
Enhanced extraction methods like hydraulic fracturing - fracking - have also been good for the local economies in places like Pennsylvania. But as with any industry, Not In My Backyard (NIMBYism) occurs in residents of Pennsylvania just like it does yacht owners in Massachusetts.
Reuters gets dinged for being off-kilter journalistically when it comes to politics; to the current generation of independent voters they became famous for their Mid-East coverage last decade by retouching photos to make Israelis look bad and Arabs look persecuted, adding in smoke from explosions that didn't exist, etc. Editors and journalists at other corporate media companies never noticed, but bloggers tripped them up.
While the United States is now back at early 1990s levels of CO2 emissions, thanks to a switch to natural gas in the energy sector and a moribund economy, that doesn't apply to Asia. The middle class in China alone has a population that exceeds the entire USA and they all want, and are getting, cars and air conditioners and a better life and the emissions to go along with it. Globally, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise but warming, the telltale sign of climate change, has not.Since 2000, global warming has tapered off and virtually no one in the climate science community predicted that could happen.
In 2013, stem cell therapy is touted as the future of
medicine by proponents in Europe and Asia while scientists in America urge
caution. Contrast that to a decade ago, when the concern was that American
President George W. Bush was holding back progress because he limited federal
funding for one form of stem cell research. In 2012, Governor Rick Perry of
Texas not only believed in stem cell research, he declared that he wanted to
make his state the home of American stem cell science.
Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) collaborators are reporting what could be a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) signal at the 3-sigma level. In common parlance, that is 99.7 confidence - which sounds high. But to physicists it really means they have 3 bumps in their data that could be a WIMP, which means it might be a hint of dark matter.That sounds like a lot of qualifiers but particle physics is conservative that way. Data means what it means and not much more. But certainly not less, and that is pretty important too.
If you're not a researcher, you probably don't use Mendeley a lot, I don't have an account there even though I have written lots of pieces about their stuff. But it's popular among researchers and in the early days of Science 2.0, when I had the Science 2.0 name itself reserved for a collaboration tool, I always assumed we would buy something like Mendeley or something like Mendeley would buy us, depending on who got biggest first. Other than a few emails with the CEO when he had something interesting to share, I have no involvement with the company.
The Environmental Protection Agency has always been a political beast - it is political appointees accountable to whatever administration is in power, not the electorate. President Richard Nixon created it, that should tell you something.
For an administration that promised to 'restore science to its rightful place' and that is run by a man who calls himself 'scientist in chief' there is sure a lot of anti-science activity going on.
Food so cheap that poor people can be fat is a miracle only dreamed about by philosophers ad economists throughout history. It was previously believed that the labor force needed to produce enough food would outstrip the food they could produce, something like how trying to exceed the speed of light adds too much mass.
Alzheimer's research is always big news. The reason is simple: people are living longer and they also want to be living better. While progress in general health issues for seniors marches on, the brain remains trickier stuff. Instead of less Alzheimer's than in the past, we have more, thanks to better diagnosis and greater longevity. Once you reach a certain age, you are almost certain to have someone in your family with it.
Since today is a celebration of St. Patrick, the religious figure who 'drove the snakes out of Ireland' (meaning Paganism), a whole lot of people got drunk last night. Yeah, Protestants getting drunk the night before before a Catholic religious festival makes as much sense as anything else about St. Patrick's Day. In addition, kids in California get something magical in their shoes, which puzzles me too. I never heard of that when I was a kid but the rural area I grew up in was a delightful mix of people descended from residents of Scotland and Eastern Europe so there weren't a lot of magical pots of gold lying around - if an Irishman came along asking about our shoes the reply was going to be sent at muzzle velocity.
Being Pope may mean good things in the afterlife but here on Earth, it doesn't count for a lot on the Internet. On the day Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis, over 600 domain names were registered by cybersquatters. They must be evangelicals.
Even mistaken names like Francis I were taken.
So Popefrancis.org is not available to the Roman Pontiff, along with most of the country-specific domains, like popefrancis.fr. Even popefrancisi.com was scooped by someone.
Oddly, at the time of this writing, his Argentina country-specific domain was still available - so if you want to grab Popefrancis.ar.com, you still can. Look for domain company GoDaddy to have scantily-clad nuns stripping in the enclave advertising that one real soon.
