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Almost like clockwork

Australia's National Parks and Forestry and community Fire authorities use controlled burning and have never been prevented by "green regulation" from using it. Leading fire experts and former and current heads of fire authorities reject the claims that green regulation preventing burning off is to blame. Blaming environmentalists is a nasty political claim that has no actual substance. The forestry industry has long been antagonistic to those calling for forest protection and regulation that limits their access to State owned forest resources - hating greenies comes with the job. But I think conservative right politics has become especially antagonistic and inflaming those hatreds because those are the loudest voices on climate change, the message is cutting through and that issue is gaining popular support. Australian Greens have no policies that prevent hazard reduction burning - tending more towards promoting indigenous practices of controlled burning. They have never had enough representation to force policies on this. Livestock have been excluded from National Parks because their purpose is for native flora and fauna, not private grazing (a privilege widely abused when and where it was or is permitted); lots of Australians who are not "greenies" fully support that purpose. Reduced opportunities for burning off are more to blame for inadequate hazard reduction burning, as well as poor resourcing of National Park and Forestry management, that have to have teams and equipment on the ground to do it. Record and near record warm winters are making what was previously a relatively predictable and relatively safe activity - hazard reduction burning - unpredictable and dangerous. Fire authorities have always had all the authority needed, to conduct burning off but they also have authority to call a halt to burning off when conditions are making it too dangerous.They decide, not The Australian Greens. My own observation and speculation is that one of the crucial things that is changing with climate change warmer winters is lack of dew; my own observation was that previously, winter burning was often self limiting because cool conditions caused dew to form late in the night or early morning. Fires were lit in the previous afternoon or evening with a reasonable expectation they would go out. With warmer conditions there can be no such expectation; these activities are requiring ever greater vigilance, more people on the ground and more equipment. Around here - in the middle of recent fires - the last few winters would have allowed no more than 1 month of opportunity to fires to burn slowly with low likelihood of escaping containment. That is actually too short a time for large areas with high fuel loads; six weeks can be considered the minimum for a fire to burn out sufficiently to be declared "out" and slow burning trees and tree roots can still restart fires for longer periods than that. When I consider warming of 3C (at best I think) and possibly more than 5C (with the minimum levels of climate action that would be welcomed by Australia's current government) - it is properly terrifying.

I think this is misconception many folks have, and it is quite pervasive throughout Europe (i.e. it is not limited to the UK). I think there are several reasons for that, but I feel it is first necessary to contextualize the term racism a bit. Many folks see racism as the expression of racist attitudes or sentiments by individuals which range from stereotyping to harboring certain ideals of racial superiority (or inferiority). That in itself is not a issue in isolation, as that would be individuals being arseholes and you will find them in each society. What is different is mostly what is considered permissible (to state openly) , which in turn are obviously heavily influenced by respective histories. There is an obvious difference in black-white relationship due to the historic suppression of black African American communities up until very recently, for example. There are also different entanglements between certain races, social attitudes, influence of wealth and class and so on. It is relevant to state that most of our Western modern thinking about race and associated stereotypes are heavily influenced by enlightenment theories on human races, which, in turn, were strong affected by colonialist attitudes. As such you will find in quite a few Western countries, presumably also in the UK (where my knowledge is at best second hand) but certainly in Germany the stereotype that e.g. black folks are more physical and aggressive, for example. As such while there are interesting overlaps, the expression and permissibility of racist attitudes between countries is nuanced and it is easier to talk about the difference in form and impact rather than level. One cannot really state that racist attitudes are not as pervasive as they are in the US. Europe as a whole has many ethnocentric tendencies (which is far less nuanced in the US), which we see very prominent with the rise of popularism throughout Europe and movement such as Brexit have been heavily influenced by explicit and implicit prejudice. While not all of them are along racial lines, it is undeniable that these are strongly correlated. In Germany many folks make a distinction between ethno-Germans (sometimes semi-jokingly called Bio-Deutsche) and those with a migration background, but rather obviously the latter are singled especially if they are non-white. However, that is not the whole story and perhaps not even the important one. As mentioned racism as a phenomenon on the individual level is not a huge issue per se, but it begins to become an issue if they result in systemic effects. This is often why folks distinguish between racist attitudes within minority and majority groups as the latter can lead to issues that are more commonly discussed academically. These issues include racial discrimination and racial inequality. While it is easy to conflate these terms there are very different mechanisms at play. For example racist attitudes can be foundational in the creation of either racial discrimination or inequality, it does need to persist in order to continue. Often things like implicit bias rather explicit belief in racial superiority are important drivers or even just historic decisions that have not been questioned. Even something as simple as not addressing issues that are not deemed important by the majority but have significant impact on minorities can create racial inequality. In that light many parts of Europe do have similar patterns as the US. Some of them are borne by the fact that minorities traditionally (but less so in recent immigrants) have been working in low-skill jobs. But at the same time multiple studies have found discriminatory practices where certain minorities with same CVs are evaluated worse, for example or are less likely employed, have less social mobility than their equally poor majority counterparts and so on. A big difference is that since there is not such an overt historic conflict, it is rarely discussed as openly as currently in the US. There has always been the demand that minorities should assimilate and thereby become invisible as such, which obviously does not work well with visible minorities. What is different is potentially (but I am not well versed in UK politics) is that in the US there is a more concerted effort in suppressing the rights of African Americans. Such voter suppression strategies are, to my knowledge, not present in (most) European systems. However, historically (perhaps less so in the UK due to their empire) minorities in Europe often had little political engagement as a whole. Many, even those in the second or third generation were still seen as foreigners or immigrants rather than full citizens. But in recent years I have seen an attitude change (but, as noted, there are also strong countermovements). So here we have a needlessly long answer which could presumably be summarized that a) on needs to define more clearly what one means with racism and b) whatever it is, it is difficult to quantify except some of its effects and c) racism and its effects are different between countries but I am not certain whether I would subscribe that the US is more (or less) racist (again, which measures?) than the UK.

Nothing changes.

I don't think it is difficult to isolate a single atom. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2161094-a-single-atom-is-visible-to-the-naked-eye-in-this-stunning-photo/ There are many experiments done on single atoms. The wave function comes from theory and is confirmed by experiment (on particles of various types, including atoms, and the interactions of particles).

As we say in the atomic physics biz, "one atom good, two atoms bad" Couple of things to unpack here. The first is, what radius? The electron's distance to the nucleus is not a fixed value. What you end up finding is the most probable distance, but it's not like it's a fixed value, it's an average value Second is how would you isolate a single neutral atom? That's not an easy thing to do. You can trap neutral atoms, but the same force that lets you trap them (e.g. radiation pressure) affects all of them, so it's not easy to interact with one atom but not another. Even so, people have done it, but it's not easy. And then after doing something hard to get the atom by itself, it's another level of complexity to do an experiment on the atom — interactions tend to send the atom out of whatever confinement it's in. That's one reason why measuring the separation of a covalent bond, or a lattice separation, are used. They are things that you can do. It's a lot easier to trap ions, but then you aren't finding out information about the atom when you do that. The radius of an ion tends to be bigger or smaller, depending on whether you've added or removed an electron.

I assume because it is easier. The atoms in a crystal, for example, don't move much when we fire X-rays at them to perform crystallography. A single isolated atom is unlikely to have much effect on X-rays (and the radiation hitting it could knock it out of place) and so would be a hard thing to measure. (That is a bit of a guess.)

Countries that haven't the self-control to avoid shooting down passenger aircraft should certainly not be allowed nuclear weapons. Oh!, hang on... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655