Oops! Gene editing not as precise as advertised
Sometimes a headline gives you practically the entire story. Take this one: “Gene-Editing Unintentionally Adds Bovine DNA, Goat DNA, and Bacterial DNA, Mouse Researchers Find.”
Kurt Cobb
Mainstream gets religion on climate – 16 Sept 2019
We’re approaching a turning point on the mainstream’s attitudes towards climate change. // On climate, young Republicans now sound like Democrats // Over 170 news outlets vow to cover climate // McKibben in TIME: “Hello From the Year 2050. We Avoided the Worst of Climate Change — But Everything Is Different”
Genetically engineered honeybees: Not the dumbest idea ever, but close to it
Why not genetically engineer honeybees to resist those things which are undermining their health?
The real reason the climate movement has failed
In the last three decades since the climate movement has gotten active, the world’s economy has released more greenhouse pollution than in the years previously since the Industrial Revolution.
Clearly, whatever progress on public policy that the movement has made with governments and businesses, those governments and businesses have failed to take meaningful action.
Why?
Revolt of the high tech consumers – 11 Sept 2019
Technology is getting too complicated and user-hostile. Even the high tech people are complaining. / Why Nothing Works Anymore / 3 ways tech has gone astray / Buy a real Analog Oscilloscope PLEASE!
Climate awareness hits the mainstream – 9 Sept 2019
The New Yorker and other mainstream voices are spreading the message about the seriousness of climate change, and the possibility of an apocalypse. The Pope too says that the climate is in an emergency and asks the world to abandon fossil fuels.
Oil prices and the coming financial ‘Ice Age’
Tverberg claims that added debt cannot seem to provide oil and other energy sources at cheap enough prices for the economy to flourish.
Solar energy is renewable, but is it environmentally just?
Solar energy is a commodity that is produced, and that it requires extractive industries and chemical industries and landscapes, end of life management plans. It doesn’t inherently come with sustainability.
Trump and Greenland: America keeps looking for the next frontier
President Trump’s announcement that he thinks the U.S. should consider buying Greenland was widely ridiculed. But what he is proposing has a long pedigree in American history. And, he is tapping into very deep yearning in the American psyche.
Plastic, plastic everywhere
When we discard a plastic bag, an electronic device encased in plastic, a plastic pen emptied of its ink or any of the myriad plastic objects which populate our lives, we usually say we are throwing the object “away.”
I put “away” in quotes because if there were ever any piece of evidence to convince us that there is no “away,” it is the discovery of tiny particles of plastic in the Arctic ice, deep oceans and high mountains.
The wheels come off shale oil
Will shale oil rise again from the dead as it did after the 2014-2016 price decline? That will happen only if two things occur: 1) The oil price rises significantly and 2) investors have a serious bout of amnesia.
Accelerating climate solutions
When politicians set a lofty goal like zero emissions, engineers scramble. Platitudes may win elections, but it takes timber and nails to build bridges. Or willows and biochar to deal with our sh*t.