From The Globe and Mail: After the boomers, it's Generation Squeeze - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/after-the-boomers-its-generation-squeeze/article2205685/?utm_source=Shared+Article+Sent+to+User&utm_medium=E-mail:+Newsletters+/+E-Blasts+/+etc.&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
"That's soooo cool! I wish we could get apps on a computer."
I posit that Science (as a movement and eventual public policy) was borne (in part) of the inability of religious orders and their unsubstantiated posturing to satisfy the natural curiosity and insatiable thirst for knowledge of the people.
However, I sense "the people" are starting to feel the same skepticism and frustration as our ancestors once did, only toward "science" - after so many abusive ad campaigns such as those stating that "4 out of 5 doctors smoke camels", that "BPA is harmless", that pharmaceutical X is good, global warming, etc., who can really blame them (us) for not being satisfied with the answers we're being given.
This is making it increasingly hard for government scientists to convey the importance of certain problems and the benefits of the recommended measures (yes, measures, not "solutions").
Recent press releases from US EPA contain statements like "final" assessments, "science has proven" etc - are a (desperate) attempt to reassure the public - but any such reassurance will be short-lived and they'll be worse off the next time a paper is published that indicates something slightly different, which is what research is supposed to do. The core principle of science is that it does not 'prove" anything - it merely reports on what we can observe and measure now with tools and test methods currently available. Any attempts to convince the public that the science is clear/final/conclusive/etc will inevitably backfire.
Sure makes my job interesting - and I don't even work in communications. Meanwhile, the anti-global warming groups and anti-pharmaceutical groups are having a field day, dancing circles around frustrated well-meaning scientists whose rep has been, I fear, irreparably damaged.
The scientific era is coming to a close, after causing much excitement and advancing our quality of life to the point I can sit very comfortably in my air conditioned two-story house in front of a PC, leisurely typing this away on the internet for nobody in particular to read. Meanwhile, while power generating stations blithely devour fossil fuels that were safely tucked beneath the earth's surface for millions of years, and I know nothing more about my neighbors whose help I may need in the event of an inevitable catastrophe or societal collapse. Religious orders of old are probably shaking their heads, having tried to warn us against eating the forbidden fruit. (sigh) Oh well. I wonder who's winning at Farmville tonight.
Watch this first:
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Should hunters switch to 'green' bullets?
- Story Highlights
- Green bullets are those that don't contain lead, a toxic metal
- Last year, California banned lead bullets in the area where an endangered bird lives
- Copper bullets are the main alternative to lead
- Hunting and gun groups oppose bans on lead bullets, saying they pose no risks
By John D. Sutter
CNN(CNN) -- Three years ago, Phillip Loughlin made a choice he knew would brand him as an outsider with many of his fellow hunters:
He decided to shoot "green" bullets.
"It made sense," Loughlin said of his switch to more environmentally friendly ammo, which doesn't contain lead. "I believe that we need to do a little bit to take care of the rest of the habitat and the environment -- not just what we want to shoot out of it."
Lead, a toxic metal that can lower the IQs of children, is the essential element in most ammunition on the market today.
But greener alternatives are gaining visibility -- and stirring controversy -- as some hunters, scientists, environmentalists and public health officials worry about lead ammunition's threat to the environment and public health.
Hunting groups oppose limits on lead ammunition, saying there's no risk and alternatives are too expensive.
The scope of the trend is difficult to measure. Americans spent an estimated $1.08 billion on ammunition in fiscal year 2008, according to tax reports from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. But the bureau does not track ammunition sales by type.
Industry groups are tight-lipped about their sales figures. Manufacturers contacted by CNN declined to release specific numbers.
Barnes Bullets, which manufactures copper bullets because, the company says, they perform better than lead, is seeing increased interest in its non-lead products, said Jessica Brooks, the Utah company's spokeswoman.
Loughlin, of Union City, California, has noticed new manufacturers jumping into the green bullet game.
"They're definitely coming out. Winchester and Remington, all the big-name ammo makers are loading green ammunition now," he said.
Some firing ranges are banning lead for safety reasons. Lead bullets contaminate military training grounds across the country and are the subjects of many environmental cleanups.
California and other state governments have taken up lead bullets as a matter of policy. They worry that lead from the bullets contaminates ecosystems and could affect people.
Last year, California banned lead bullets in the chunk of the state that makes up the endangered California condor's habitat. The large birds are known to feed on scraps of meat left behind by hunters. Those scraps sometimes contain pieces of lead bullets, and lead poisoning is thought to be a contributor to condor deaths.
Arizona, another condor state, gives out coupons so hunters can buy green ammunition. Utah may soon follow suit.
In North Dakota, a hunter has raised concerns about lead's potential impact on humans.
Dr. William Cornatzer, a dermatologist and falconer, saw a presentation about the potential dangers of lead at a board meeting of the Peregrine Fund, a group devoted to conserving birds of prey. He decided to collect and test venison samples that were going to be donated to a local program for the hungry. About half of the 100 samples -- all shot by hunters -- tested positive for lead, he said. Food banks and shelters pulled the meat from their shelves after the report.
"When we did this, I about fell out of my shoes," he said. "The scary thing is these fragments are almost like dust in the meat. They're not like metal fragments you would feel when you bite down."
States in the area started investigating the issue after Cornatzer's findings.
Working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the North Dakota Department of Health ran a test to find out the health effects of lead-shot game. The agency compared blood-lead levels of people who regularly eat meat shot with lead bullets with the levels of those who don't eat much wild game.
The results were inconclusive. Those who ate the lead-shot meat had slightly higher blood-lead levels than those who didn't, but none of the 738 people in the study had levels above the government's threshold for danger.
Still, the health department recommended that children younger than 6 and pregnant women stop eating venison shot with lead bullets because those groups are at particular risk for lead poisoning, even at low levels.
The department also recommended lead-free bullets as the simplest solution to possible contamination.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources followed with its own study, which found that when lead bullets explode inside an animal, imperceptible particles of the metal can infect meat up to a foot and a half away from the bullet wound -- farther than previously thought.
More research is needed to tell for sure if lead-shot meat poses a risk to people, said Dr. Steve Pickard, an epidemiologist at the North Dakota Department of Health. But until that research is done, people should take sensible precautions, he said.
"There is no cause for alarm, but it is another source of lead in the environment," he said of lead ammunition.
Hunting groups say lead bullets pose no risk to people or the environment.
Available studies -- particularly the one from North Dakota -- prove that point, said Ted Novin, spokesman for National Shooting Sports Foundation.
"The CDC study confirmed what hunters have known for centuries: Consuming game hunted with traditional [lead] ammunition has never been shown to pose a health risk to anyone," he said.
Pickard said Novin's group is misrepresenting science.
The NSSF and the National Rifle Association say efforts to ban lead ammunition are veiled attempts to take guns away from hunters. They also point to the fact that lead's main alternative, copper, is more expensive and isn't available in all calibers.
Novin said the added expense will drive many people away from a sport that is part of American heritage.
"Many hunters believe lead is the best metal to be used for hunting," he said. "Add into that that it [lead] is very affordable and it is very available. We think this absolutely should be left up to hunters."
Dr. Joseph Graziano, interim department chair of environmental health sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, said the public should switch away from lead bullets -- even if the research is still developing.
"It's hard to imagine that you could make a bullet out of something more toxic than lead," he said.
Loughlin, who switched to green ammo and blogs on the issue, said that lead shouldn't be banned from hunting but that hunters and the public should be more aware of lead's potential to cause harm.
"Lead will get into you, and we need to be working towards getting it out of the system," he said. "I think it's something we could do away with over time."
Why does the public often pay more attention to climate change deniers than climate scientists? Why do denial arguments that have been thoroughly debunked still show up regularly in the media?
Some researchers from New York's Fordham University may have found some answers. Prof. David Budescu and his colleagues asked 223 volunteers to read sentences from reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The responses revealed some fundamental misunderstandings about how science works.
Science is a process. Scientists gather and compare evidence, then construct hypotheses that "make sense" of the data and suggest further tests of the hypothesis. Other scientists try to find flaws in the hypothesis with their own data or experiments. Eventually, a body of knowledge builds, and scientists become more and more certain of their theories. But there's always a chance that a theory will be challenged. And so scientists speak about degrees of certainty. This has led to some confusion among the public about the scientific consensus on climate change.
What Prof. Budescu and his colleagues found was that subjects interpreted statements such as "It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent" to mean that scientists were far from certain. In fact, the term very likely means more than 90 per cent certain, but almost half the subjects thought it meant less than 66 per cent certain, and three quarters thought it meant less than 90 per cent.
According to an article in New Scientist, the researchers concluded that scientists should use both words and numbers to express certainty. For example, the IPCC considers "virtually certain" to mean more than 99 per cent likely; "very likely" to mean more than 90 per cent certain; "likely" to be more than 66 per cent; "more likely than not" more than 50 per cent; and so on.
It's important to understand the distinctions. People who recognize the urgency of the situation are more likely to get behind solutions. And businesses and governments are more likely to work toward solutions when the public demands that they do.
And how urgent is the situation? The IPCC has concluded it is "very likely" that human emissions of greenhouse gases rather than natural variations are warming the planet's surface. Remember, that means they are more than 90 per cent certain. That's about as close to unequivocal as science gets. The IPCC has also concluded that the consequences could be catastrophic.
This is science that has been rigorously peer-reviewed and that has been agreed upon by the vast majority of the world's climate scientists, as well as more than 50 scientific academies and societies, including those of all G8 nations. There has been no peer-reviewed scientific study that has called into question the conclusions of the IPCC, which represents the consensus of the international scientific community.
So why does the debate still continue? Why are we fiddling while Rome burns? Well, as Prof. Budescu's research shows, some people don't really understand how science works. And people with vested interests, many of whom work with the oil and coal industries, are all too willing to exploit that lack of understanding by sowing confusion.
It's also true that many people fear change. We've seen examples of economic prosperity and job creation brought about by investments in green energy in places such as Germany and Sweden. And leading economists, including former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, have warned that not doing anything to confront climate change will cost us far more in the long run than acting now. But many people still fear that any profound change will upset the economy or diminish their quality of life.
We may never reach 100 per cent certainty on climate change and its causes – that's not what science is about – but one thing is certain: if we don't get together to work on solutions now we'll have a much tougher time dealing with the consequences later.
Take David Suzuki's Nature Challenge at www.davidsuzuki.org.
PLAINLY, A key to reducing violence is to reduce birthrates. According to Heinsohn, this could be achieved through widespread knowledge of birth control measures and the will to use them. Such an option, however, is unlikely because of religious opposition among traditional Muslims.
