HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
Are you worried about getting cancer from a light bulb? Probably not, but if someone conspiratorially intones that 5G wireless towers are emitting radiation and you are a woman or a milllennial, you are a lot more likely to worry than men or Generation Z to be concerned, according to a new survey. Even though the radiation is the same.
New York's Indian Point nuclear power plant was banned on April 30th of this year - because the ruling political party and the environmental lobbyists who guide decisions convinced themselves that solar was ready to fill the gap.Now the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has told residents they need to shut off their air conditioners during a heat wave, because they don't have enough electricity. At the state level, alleged serial sexual predator Governor Andrew Cuomo is deflecting from his scandals by appealing to his base with another ban on energy - making the state one on natural gas using hydraulic fracturing permanent.
In 2019, Biogen announced that it was abandoning its late stage drug for Alzheimer’s, aducanumab but then in 2021 they got FDA approval for it.
Major droughts in California happen every 20 years and smaller ones more frequently, yet northern California has not built major water infrastructure since the 1960s while the population has doubled. Environmental lawyers block any infrastructure improvements so no new water storage can be added and regulations about water flow in rivers were based on an optimistic guess. During the current drought California is sending so much water to the San Francisco Bay, which doesn't need it, that they have to issue warnings for people on the rivers.
Honeybees die each year in great quantities and some years are worse than others. Since they are a big business, primarily as roving pollinators for crops that need them at a certain time (like almonds(1) there is always a concern about how to keep losses low.Causes of death were once a moving target. For as long as records of bees have been kept, there have been reports of extraordinary die-offs, recorded all the way back to the Dark Ages. Now we know the big problem are pests like varroa mites but there are also concerns about harsh winters, land use, and some environmental groups even try to raise money claiming it might be pesticides used on crops.
One little-known secret in the medical community is that it is not greedy doctors or insurance companies or hospitals that made health care so expensive. It is unnecessary tests and procedures doctors and hospitals must do in order to check off the boxes for the inevitable lawsuit. They are waiting to pounce on doctors and hospitals while wrapping themselves in the flag of 'holding the medical establishment accountable' and that keeps doctors and hospitals doing some things twice. And some things doctors know are unneeded but must do.From neurosurgery to dermatology, nearly all doctors practice this "defensive medicine" and it isn't, as conspirators claim, to make more money - it is to avoid blame if something goes wrong with a patient that was basically unavoidable.(1)
There are lots of advertisements for 5G cellular service but it still isn't available in most places, and devices that take advantage of it are in relatively low use. Better quality cat videos on a 5-inch screen are not all that compellingSooner rather than later, people are going to want the haptic internet - a virtual reality tactile experience far more advanced than a vibrating Xbox controller - and businesses will want holographic conferencing and both will require more mobile edge computing - mini-clouds closer to users than current centralized storage. Those will require the next evolution in the terahertz band - 6G. It is blocked out to be from 95 GHz to 3 THz.
Over 26 percent of the western US is in exceptional drought while 72 percent is in severe drought. That has not stopped the federal government from dumping so much water into rivers it creates hazardous conditions for people in them.
In 2016, after over a half century of fighting, the communist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gave up. The revolutionaries had hidden in the Andes-Amazon region and the occupied rainforest remained under-developed for obvious violent reasons: if you want to have a successful takeover, you can't make people happier, you have to make them miserable and hope they blame the government. It didn't work, and instead simply created multi-generational terrorism. The only winner during the attempted overthrow was, strangely, the environment, according to a new paper.
Old age is the biggest risk factor for most diseases, but if you have solid nutrition your health is likely to be better throughout all periods of life. Including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the USDA dietary guidelines produced every five years won't tell you how to optimize nutrition for where you are at in life. They are one size fits all for broad swaths of age and gender, and that needs to changeThe dietary guidelines were created to make sure consumers are kept in touch with the latest science and that taxpayer-funded programs like school lunches are properly feeding developing brains.
Animals can cause diseases in humans. That won't surprise you. What may surprise you is to read that these diseases can be prevented by eating less meat.
In the early days of agriculture, everyone was somewhat equal. While one farmer could work harder or longer than another, it wasn't by an order of magnitude. Oxen and other beasts of burden changed that. A farmer with an ox was doing the work of 7 humans, and that meant a huge advantage over someone who didn't agree with progress - that the old ways were the only way to have "real" food. Thus began economic disparity, as did modern civilization. When not everyone had to hunt and grow their own food, they didn't. They could become craftsmen and priests and mathematicians. Culture was born.
