ELIZABETH KOLBERT, - The New Yorker
Stephan: Once again Elizabeth Kolbert says what needs to be said. The question is whether anyone in power is listening.
he chemist F. Sherwood Rowland is one of the few people in history about whom it can accurately be said: he helped save the world. In 1972, Rowland, a chemist at the University of California-Irvine, attended a talk on the compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons. At the time, these were being used as refrigerants, cleaning agents, and propellants in aerosol cans, and they had recently been detected in the air over the Atlantic. CFCs are unusually stable, but it occurred to Rowland that, if they were getting blown around the world, at very high altitudes they would eventually break down. He and one of his research assistants began to look into the matter, and they concluded that in the stratosphere CFCs would indeed dissociate. The newly liberated chlorine atoms would then set off a chain reaction, which would destroy the ozone layer that protects the earth from ultraviolet radiation.
Industry groups ridiculed Rowland’s findings-Aerosol Age accused him of being a K.G.B. agent-but other scientists confirmed them, and Rowland pressed for a ban on CFCs. As he said, ‘What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around […]
No Comments
DAVID EDWARDS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The ultimate irony.
Click through to see the video.
A British documentary that will air on Wednesday night claims to have DNA evidence that suggests Adolf Hitler unknowingly married a Jewish woman as one of his final acts before his death.
According to experts, strong circumstantial evidence suggests that a hair sample provided to the Channel 4 show Dead Famous DNA by relatives of a U.S. Army officer probably belong to Hitler’s wife, Eva Braun. The hair was found on a brush inside a cosmetics case with the initials E.B. that was taken from Braun’s apartment.
However, Channel 4 was not able to obtain a DNA sample from Braun’s living relative to authenticate the sample.
By sequencing the hypervariable region of the mitochondrial DNA, scientist found a genome within the mitochondria of the cell that is associated with Ashkenazi Jews. The cell is passed down from mother to daughter over generations.
Hitler was said to have done a background check of Braun to be sure she had no Jewish ancestry. But Channel 4′s experts speculated that not even Braun would have been aware of her Jewish connection.
‘In the nineteenth century, many Ashkenazi Jews in Germany converted to Catholicism, so Eva Braun is highly unlikely to have known her ancestry and – despite research […]
No Comments
JOHN PAUL ROLLERT, - The Atlantic
Stephan: Here is a good essay on how the idea of profit as the only useful social priority took root. My view, as I have written many times in SR and elsewhere, is that profit is fine as long as it occurs within a paradigm in which wellness from the individual to the planetary stands first.
Among MBA students, few words provoke greater consternation than ‘greed.” Wonder aloud in a classroom whether some practice might fairly be described as greedy, and students don’t know whether to stick up for the Invisible Hand or seek absolution. Most, by turns, do a little of both.
Such reactions shouldn’t be surprising. Greed has always been the hobgoblin of capitalism, the mischief it makes a canker on the faith of capitalists. These students’ troubled consciences are not the result of doubts about the efficacy of free markets, but of the centuries of moral reform that was required to make those markets as free as they are.
We sometimes forget that the pursuit of commercial self-interest was largely reviled until just a few centuries ago. ‘A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please God,” St. Jerome said, expressing the prevailing belief in Christendom about the relative worthiness of a life devoted to trade. The choice to enter business didn’t necessarily deprive one of salvation, but it certainly hazarded his soul. ‘If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way then drowning,” Iago tells a lovesick Rodrigo. ‘Make all the money thou canst.”
The problem of money-making was not […]
No Comments
ALEXANDRA SIFFERLIN, - Time
Stephan: We are literally crippling and killing our children so the few can become richer. It is a form of national insanity.
Click through to see video.
A new study offers strong evidence that environmental toxins play a role in the disorder. The report looked at birth defects associated with parental exposure to pollution and found a 1% increase in the defects corresponded to a 283% increase in autism
Several studies have shown a link between air pollution and autism, but a new study published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology is one of the largest to put the two together.
Researchers studied insurance claims from around 100 million people in the U.S., and used congenital malformations in boys as an indictor for parental exposure to environmental toxins. ‘Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country. This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong,” study author Andrey Rzhetsky from the University of Chicago said in a statement.
Every 1% increase in malformations corresponded to a 283% increase in autism in the same county.
Although the findings are still new, the researchers say they offer support for the theory that environmental pollutants, in addition to genetics, play a role in autism development.
No Comments
, - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: The lust for profit trumps everything, including good sense and self-preservation. If you have any doubt about the accuracy of this statement read this article. Oklahoma is a solidly Red value state and, I predict, will vote conservative, which is to say for the continuation of Fracking. As their houses fall down around their ears, the people of Oklahoma will align themselves with the Theocratic Right.
Between 1975 and 2008, Oklahoma recorded an average of no more than six earthquakes per year, yet now it is the second most seismically active of the contiguous United States, beaten only by California. Scientists have linked this surge in seismic activity to a parallel increase in oil and gas exploration, including fracking.
In 2009, there were almost 50 quakes in Oklahoma. The following year, that number leapt to more than 1,000. Most were not ‘felt” earthquakes – those of magnitude 2.5 and above, which can be detected by humans. However, the state’s annual record of 222 felt quakes, set in 2013, has already been broken this year, with 253 so far. Seismologist Austin Holland of the Oklahoma Geological Survey told Reuters: ‘We have had almost as many magnitude 3 and greater already in 2014 than we did for all of 2013… We have already crushed last year’s record for number of earthquakes.”
Earthquakes rarely cause damage unless they are of magnitude 4 or higher. A 4.3-magnitude temblor struck the same area near Oklahoma City on 30 March. In November 2011, the state suffered a 5.6-magnitude quake – the largest ever recorded in Oklahoma – which destroyed 14 homes.
Scientists have connected a […]
No Comments
