ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 411

Most wood energy schemes are a ‘disaster’ for climate change

By Matt McGrath

Using wood pellets to generate low-carbon electricity is a flawed policy that is speeding up not slowing down climate warming.

That’s according to a new study which says wood is not carbon neutral and emissions from pellets are higher than coal.

Subsidies for biomass should be immediately reviewed, the author says.

Energy from trees has become a critical part of the renewable supply in many countries including the UK.

Critical role

While much of the discussion has focussed on wind and solar power, across Europe the biggest source of green energy is biomass.

It supplies around 65% of renewable power – usually electricity generated from burning wood pellets.

EU Governments, under pressure to meet tough carbon cutting targets, have been encouraging electricity producers to use more of this form of energy by providing substantial subsidies for biomass burning.

However this new assessment from Chatham House suggests that this policy is deeply flawed when it comes to cutting CO2.

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Every Day Is Sunday: As atheism rises, nonbelievers find one another

By Shelia M. Poole

Jeff Newport can cite the Bible chapter and verse.

He went to Christian schools, attended church every Sunday and delivered his first sermon at 13.

In 1996, he was called to pastor a small Baptist church in Jesup with a congregation of about 30 for Sunday morning services.

“Everything revolved around church,” Newport said. “We would not have even thought of missing a service unless we were ill. Family Bible reading and prayer were normal activities — we never had a meal, even in public, for which we didn’t say a blessing.”

Today, though, the 46-year-old Savannah man considers himself a nonbeliever.

He lost faith in faith.

It’s not easy being a nonbeliever or a skeptic in the Bible Belt South.

Move to a new city. Start a new job. Or meet a potential romantic interest.

One of the first things you’re asked is: Where do you go to church?

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Meet the frog that can sit on a thumbnail

By Helen Briggs

Four new frogs so tiny that they can sit on a thumbnail have been discovered in the forests of India.

Among the smallest frogs in the world, they live on the forest floor and make insect-like calls at night.

Three larger species were also found, bringing to seven the number of night frogs discovered in the Western Ghats.

The mountain range, which runs parallel to the western coast of India, is home to hundreds of threatened plants and animals.

Scientists discovered the new species after several years of exploration in the forests of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

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SpaceX Cargo Craft Fails To Dock With Space Station, Will Try Again

By Rebecca Hersher

Early Wednesday morning, a space capsule carrying 5,500 pounds of cargo approached the International Space Station.

The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship was scheduled to arrive at the station around 6 a.m. ET. If all went as planned, astronauts Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency and Shane Kimbrough of NASA would use a robotic arm on the station to reach out and grasp the ship, pulling it in and locking hatches with it.

But that cosmic embrace was not to be.

Around 3:25 a.m. ET, according to NASA TV, the navigation system on the unmanned Dragon cargo ship detected an error. A number was wrong in its GPS software. The ship automatically aborted its mission. It was about three-quarters of a mile away from the space station.

The docking has been rescheduled for Thursday morning.

“It did exactly what it was designed to do, breaking out of a rendezvous approach when it saw an incorrect value,” said NASA TV commentator Rob Navias.

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Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world’s most dangerous pathogens

By David Cyranoski

A laboratory in Wuhan is on the cusp of being cleared to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens. The move is part of a plan to build between five and seven biosafety level-4 (BSL-4) labs across the Chinese mainland by 2025, and has generated much excitement, as well as some concerns.

Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations. But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats.

“It will offer more opportunities for Chinese researchers, and our contribution on the BSL‑4-level pathogens will benefit the world,” says George Gao, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology in Beijing. There are already two BSL-4 labs in Taiwan, but the National Bio-safety Laboratory, Wuhan, would be the first on the Chinese mainland.

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Astronomers Find 7 Earth-Sized Planets Around A Nearby Star

By Nell Greenfieldboyce

A small, faint star relatively close by is home to seven Earth-sized planets with conditions that could be right for liquid water and maybe even life.

The discovery sets a record for both the most Earth-sized planets and the most potentially habitable planets ever discovered around a single star.

The strange planetary system is quite compact, with all of these worlds orbiting their star closer than Mercury orbits the sun, according to a newly published report in Nature.

“If you were on the surface of one of these planets, you would see the other ones as we see the moon, or a bit smaller,” says Michaël Gillon, an astronomer at the University of Liège in Belgium. “The view would be very impressive.”

The cool, reddish star is about 40 light-years away, in the constellation Aquarius. “It’s a very tiny star,” says Gillion, “10 times smaller than the sun.”

Until recently, no one was even looking for planets around so-called ultracool dwarf stars.

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Question of the Week- 02-22-2017

What do you think of the efforts to bring a mammoth-elephant hybrid to life, as mentioned in the above news item? Even assuming it can be safely done without harm or suffering to the creatures involved, what ethical, scientific, or other challenges do you think might arise?

Our favorite answer will receive a copy of Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins.

Woolly mammoth on verge of resurrection, scientists reveal

By Hannah Devlin

The woolly mammoth vanished from the Earth 4,000 years ago, but now scientists say they are on the brink of resurrecting the ancient beast in a revised form, through an ambitious feat of genetic engineering.

Speaking ahead of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston this week, the scientist leading the “de-extinction” effort said the Harvard team is just two years away from creating a hybrid embryo, in which mammoth traits would be programmed into an Asian elephant.

“Our aim is to produce a hybrid elephant-mammoth embryo,” said Prof George Church. “Actually, it would be more like an elephant with a number of mammoth traits. We’re not there yet, but it could happen in a couple of years.”

The creature, sometimes referred to as a “mammophant”, would be partly elephant, but with features such as small ears, subcutaneous fat, long shaggy hair and cold-adapted blood. The mammoth genes for these traits are spliced into the elephant DNA using the powerful gene-editing tool, Crispr.

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Unorthodox Doc Stanislaw Burzynski Faces $360,000 Fine and Probation

By Craig Malisow

The Texas Medical Board’s legal staff on Wednesday issued a proposed order that would place controversial cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski on probation and force him to pay $360,000 in penalties and more than $20,000 in restitution for violating standards of care in his treatment of patients between 2009 and 2013.

The proposed order, which will be voted on March 3, claims that Burzynski aided and abetted the unlicensed practice of medicine; failed to obtain informed consent; and failed to maintain adequate patient records. It also alleges that Burzynski also failed to disclose his ownership interest in the pharmacy located inside his clinic’s building.

But the proposal also notes that there was “insufficient evidence that any of [Burzynski’s] patients suffered actual harm to their health,” and that, “for almost 40 years, [Burzynski] has devoted himself to treating terminally ill cancer” with some unconventional methods that “have become more accepted and mainstream.” (Unfortunately, the proposal doesn’t state what those methods are.)

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The Immorality Of Evangelical Christians In The Age Of Trump

By Phil Zuckerman

On Dec. 14, 2012, a mentally unstable young man shot and killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. One of those kids, the youngest, was Noah Pozner. As a parent myself, I cannot come close to even fathoming the pain and suffering his senseless slaughter caused his parents. What could be worse than having your child murdered? Little else. And yet, the pain of the Pozners did not end there. In the aftermath of the massacre, a handful of lunatics began falsely claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting never happened — that it was all made up. And Noah’s father became the target of these cruel individuals; he has been taunted and tormented by their ongoing attempt to frame the murder of his son as a hoax. Leading this immoral, sadistic campaign is a heartless man named Alex Jones, who uses his media might to perpetually lie about Sandy Hook, claiming that the shooting was fake, and blatantly taunting the parents of the children who were murdered there.

And Alex Jones is supported and encouraged by our current president. In fact, just days after losing the popular vote by nearly three million votes and yet winning the electoral college Ponzi scheme, Donald Trump personally called Alex Jones to thank him for all that he does.

Such moral depravity is emblematic of Donald Trump. This billionaire blow-hard, this “pussy-grabbing” misogynist, is awash in immoral relations and immoral actions. He defends and respects Vladimir Putin, a despot who has personally ordered the assassination of men, women, and children. He appoints the most racist Senator in the United States — a man who spent his life fighting against civil rights and then lied about it only weeks ago in preparation for his confirmation hearings — as the nation’s Attorney General. His closest adviser, who is now virtually running the country, is a thrice-divorced, alimony-evading shill of white nationalists. His leading spokesperson daily peddles “alternative facts” — or what normal human beings refer to as bald-faced lies.

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