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.
On Saturday, June 2nd, 2018, I gave the commencement speech for the North Penn-Liberty class of 2018, 35 years after I graduated. While much has changed, the basic challenges young people will face have not. A number of attendees asked me for a copy and I didn't have a clean one, mine was half-typed, half hand notes, so it is presented below. At least as it was written. I went off book in a few spots, including at the end. So even at my age I have new things to learn: Like always listen to the experienced speechwriters.###Home
The days when environmental litigation groups like Earthjustice and Farmworker Justice had friendly voices in EPA and the White House seem like two years in the past. Because they are two years in the past. Where once environmental groups could write entire documents for the White House to repost in the name of the U.S., now they cry foul if organizations like Heartland even have email exchanges with EPA.
If I had to pick one consistent complaint from the public about scientists it's that people feel like those who should know the most about a topic are often the least able to give people a straight answer. Instead of providing the answer they know to be true, they hedge and qualify. When scientists without media training show up to talk, its easy to feel like you will hear or read "on the other hand' so many times that researchers are an alien species full of tentacles.
The American Chemical Society is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. That doesn't keep their editors from lobbying against science and common sense, like when a team of authors in Environmental Science&Technology, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, are allowed to terrify Americans by scaremongering the American barbecue grill the weekend before Memorial Day.
If you are a scientist who received their PhD/MD within the past 10 years you can apply for the 2018 Sartorius&Science Prize in Regenerative Medicine and Cell Therapy by October 1, 2018. The Sartorius Group is a pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment provider. The grand prize is $25,000 and a publication of your essay in Science while the Grand Prize essay and three runners-up will be published in Science Online.
In 2009 the U.S. government attended the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and pledged to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent by 2020.
With the cancellation of "The Dr. Oz Show", his alternative medicine audience should not think of it as a time to mourn. but instead should take a moment to celebrate the man who created all their worst fears; they should rejoice a guy who wore medical scrubs during a show in which he suggested apple juice was as dangerous for children as plutonium, who taught concerned viewers to fear chicken and to love juice cleanses. They should applaud that for a decade (or whatever) we had a place to learn The Secrets Of Plus Size Models, that we had someone on television not afraid to do an episode called "Charlie Sheen Heads to Mexico."
To the relief of the real science community everywhere, the era of Chris Wild is almost over at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). That means maybe they can get back to finding carcinogens rather than manufacturing them.
Center for Food Safety, a controversial litigation group that has been shown on numerous occasions to be conspiring to manipulate the public about American agriculture, is in the news again. This time for paying former Democratic Congressman, former race-baiting Cleveland mayor, and current Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dennis Kucinich to promote organic food and products by undermining the competitors of CFS clients.
The Christopher Wild, Ph.D., regime as director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is coming to an end and the epidemiology community that would like to be regarded as more than statisticians data dredging to find new things to claim give us cancer are relieved. With recent rulings on bacon, coffee, and a weedkiller, all of which have come down in defiance of every legitimate science body, there were numerous calls for Wild to resign or be fired from the once-respected body - from everywhere except our own National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, where NIEHS Director and Ramazzini Institute member Dr. Linda Birnbaum has used her position to shield him from any criticism.
If you read corporate media journalism articles about epidemiology in the United States, you are not wrong for distrusting science more than ever. Using nothing more than statistics, every week some new trace chemical is an "endocrine disruptor", strawberries are bad for you (unless they're organic) and cell phones are causing cancer.
March For Science, an offshoot of Women's March, gave itself a positive name in 2017 but its motivations were not about science at all. It was about social authoritarianism and promoting a political agenda. And at the top of that agenda was being anti-Trump in much the same way the same groups eight and 12 and 16 years earlier were ant-Bush.But things may be different in 2018. A lot of the more culturally militant people have quit or been (ironically) marginalized because the science community sees the real opportunity for gain - if they can apply pressure while also being part of a solution.A lot less of this stuff from 2017
