CharonY

I suspect they are well aware of the differences. Whether they care depends on how they want to sell it. If they do it, it is a necessary investment for the betterment of all. If others do it, it is vulgar spending.

Q: When will politicians learn X? A: When it will get them votes.

Yes, that is the main gist of the paper. I.e. the documentary overselling evidence. In itself it is not a huge issue, but this one seemed to have become quite influential which, I assume, is quite frustrating for the experts in the field. So that is a bit tricky as, the last stages of the disease can occur (relatively) fast, but also with a decade or more of dormancy. There is evidence that this is driven by the immune status of the patients. For example in HIV positive patients, lesions started to occur in early-stage patients (5-15 weeks post infection). In otherwise more healthier patients lesions occur in the late (tertiary) stage which can happen after a year after infection but there are also reports of more than three decades of dormancy. The progression itself once it starts can be relatively fast, if not treated. It is unclear if the person in question was poor in health, which could have accelerated the timeline. IIRC for the most part of the infection process the bacterium in question does generally not have really high titer and it is also somewhat fragile. So flagellation may be a mode of transmission so unsure how likely it is. Of note, minor pitting of the skeleton can be mistaken for syphilis which was also criticized by the authors (i.e. how many of those were indeed syphilic?).

That was surprisingly interesting.

The problem is that fusion has always been just a few decades in the future. There have been many breakthroughs, but they were followed with setbacks. There have been leapfrog projects such as MIT's SPARC, but detailed calculations question how much of a leap these really are. As a whole scientists working on that basic research side of things are a bit more conservative in their assessment. From what I see it seems we are still in the learning phase of figuring what does not work and slowly inching towards the why. Once there the next steps could be more rapid, but I am not sure whether anyone of us will see it (perhaps the younger member of the board?).

It is one of the quirks I picked up in order to make my students less lazy. If I can find a reference for them, I expect them to be able to at least google it. Over time it spawns the habit of actually looking at and following up on resources. It combats the ongoing trend of looking at one link and think that is sufficient to understand the concept. They actually did: You can follow the provided references as to the details and uncertainties of the process. It does show, as a whole that the presented evidence is very weak or at least uncertain. The authors made an excellent point that as a peer-reviewed publication those weaknesses would have been picked up quickly and discussed. Whereas as a documentary the faulty information would circulate much longer. We actually can see that being used for all types of pseudoscientific claims, which is why a peer-review environment of formal publications are important as a discussion platform. Scrutiny of papers do not end with peer review. They start with it.

I am not sure whether that is the same video but I remember an interesting article criticizing documentaries on this precise question. I think Armelagos was one of the authors, must have it somewhere. Found it: Evol Anthropol. 2012 Mar; 21(2): 50–57.The Science behind Pre-Columbian Evidence of Syphilis in Europe: Research by Documentary The criticised doc is from PBS, which is a pity as I generally like their docs.

a) the issue is that improving carbon sinks is vastly difficult due to a list of complicating factors, of which several have been listed b) if you refer to the post where you suggest pumping up sediments, the issue is that you would feed the somewhat inert carbon into the active cycle again.

That is not what is happening. In short, biomass produced near the surface drops down with a given kinetic. During the descent of biomass they get degraded (and releasing CO2). However, the rate of that happening depends on amount of biomass relative to biological activity and the speed in which the biomass moves downwards. Once it is on the seafloor they still can be degraded, but due to low temperature the rate is vastly reduced. There, due to sedimentation and other mechanisms, carbon can be buried where only slow biological activities can occur. So carbon burial (as well as net O2 production) is the net effect of all these functions and depending on the actual system, they can act as sinks (in case low activity) or CO2 producers (in case of high activity). Just to clarify, you have the term dead zone quite a bit, but it is unclear how you think what the relationship is. Just to be clear, a dead zone refers generally to low oxygenized areas, which are depleted of oxygen due to (previous) biological activity. I.e. algae bloom are often a cause of dead zones as the increase in biomass and the following biological activity on that biomass depletes the oxygen. These areas are also rich in nutrients. Whether in those areas carbon would be effectively buried would depend on how much is produced vs consumed and the sedimentation rate (also movement of the sea floor, I imagine). So that is an aspect people are also worried about. More phytoplankton due to seeding with iron could feed animals. But if it leads to toxic blooms, they would expand dead zones and make areas inhabitable for more complex animals.

So this does not really work. The reason is that low oxygen zones are the middle zone in the ocean (200-2000 m or so) which are deoxygneated because of organisms feeding on the dropping nutrients. I.e. they do not have sufficient light to for photosynthesis, plus they are nutrient rich to begin with. Pumping more nutrients in would either decrease oxygen content further or have no effect if they are in surplus to the biological activity they can sustain. The layer beneath that deoxygenated zone has again more oxygen as it is delivered from oxygenated polar waters. The combination of cold and rather fast sinking reduces the amount of biological consumption oxygen (it still occurs, though). So low productivity zoned could be stimulated by nutrient addition. But as mentioned, if feeding includes sunk carbon, we would invariably release carbon. And as we established before, more CO2 does not mean that suddenly it would be also consumed at a higher rate by the Calvin cycle. Overall, factors increasing biological activity, such as warming ocean waters are likely to decrease carbon burying and hence, increase CO2 in the atmosphere, which is one of the feedback loops which folks are worried about. No, that is a fair point. The mean difference is really that what did and do has unintended consequences (such as global warming). These engineered systems would ideally have predictable outcomes. But it does seem to be really difficult. Among your other points, I would agree that temperature is a major player, it often defines the rate of biological activities. But I really know nothing about the ecology of the mangroves (you know more than I do), so being told that it is really an unique ecosystem is about the extent I can speculate on it. In the ocean to my knowledge most of the phytoplankton in the ocean are cyanobacteria and I suspect it must boil down to metabolic efficiencies over plants.

Maybe it is because I have not have watched Fox enough. While I agree that the news segment provides cover for the rest, I always found that at least pre-Obama, the news part was always a bit of a reinforcement, occasionally picking things up from the other shows and then report it as news. Now it seems that there is a bit of a break, mostly because the shows have gone all-in being propaganda pieces without really any pretense of objectivity and addressing the President with a level of submissiveness that is more fitting to an authoritarian state.

Aside from it probably not being true, I am now wondering who would be able to apply for patents. The facility is EU-funded and the researchers working on the technology are internationals from different institutions. I would think that patents would be held by the international consortium, depending on what the agreements are.

Even if we can manipulate current flow economically, there is a big issue in terms of the ecological effects. Say, if we were able to circulate from the ocean floor by magic means, then we would also move carbon back into the cycle. We could have more biological activity, but that also entails higher release of CO2. One of the reason why iron seeding was deemed attractive is that it would (in theory) target specific nutrient limitations, while leaving sunk carbon alone. In fact, the basic idea was that the newly produced biomass would sink before it can be oxidized. But it is still not clear whether that happens quantitatively. The other challenges of course is the interplay with existing currents. The deposition of carbon does not really happen locally. For example huge conveyor belts that move across the globe are instrumental in burying carbon, e.g. by downward movement of biomass rich warmer water once it moves to the colder region. In other words, effects are not only hard to impossible to contain, but sometimes it actually requires these long-distance transports to actually act as sinks. There are much more details to it but it would be way beyond my expertise. I admit that my eyes somewhat glaze over when they go full-bore on their research, but my takeaway from those seminars is always: "it's complicated" and "it is very global". The latter I suspect to justify all that travel for field work (and tans).

There is a good chance that if pressured he will say that it was a 'joke' or a slight 'hyperbole'. I would be (positively) surprised if an actual scientist working on it would come forward with such an announcement. Because then there would be someone more trustworthy who would put their credibility on the line. The cost for politicians misrepresenting science is not very high. While a commercial system would be game changing, it would not solve the current problems immediately. Even if we imagine a working system in 10 years (which is far beyond the even more optimistic estimates), an actual commercial system would take longer to develop and build. So it will still takes decades before we can actually start transitioning, which gives us plenty of time for challenges in-between.

I think there is correlation but not necessarily causation. Folks who are good at organizing knowledge are also good in scoring well in IQ tests. Does not mean that one causes the other. Especially if you see how different learning efficiency can change during the course of a standard college education. The most crucial factor related to knowledge breadth is the time factor. I.e. how much someone can dedicate to supplementary studies.

Yes, that is closer to what I actually meant. I guess it also depends a bit on the purpose of the interview. E.g. local news coming in for the opening of a shiny new institute often work off the press release and try to fill it with positive comments (Collaboration! Interdisciplinary! Tackling the BIG(tm) questions!). In such situations there are less discussions. However, if e.g. there is an actually topic which is supposed to be informative then there is much more back and forth (have experienced the latter only for print medium, though, just not famous enough).

So the problem is less the efficiency of translating photons into energy, but the issue is more regarding the carbon fixation process (i.e. the Calvin cycle). Such pathways are generally incredibly difficult and costly to set up in a cell-free system. So even if we could generate more net energy using PV system we still need to have something that actually integrates CO2 into hydrocarbons. There are efforts in creating that in an artificial system but I am only aware of ways to potentially increase efficiency of the cycle (which especially in so-called C3 plants is especially inefficient). But I doubt that there are actual artificial systems that come close to even that.

I find the opposite to be true. There are documentary style interviews which may be longer, but most quotes for news (print or TV) tend to be focused, condensed . For filming, most time is used to get the perfect shot as swansont mentioned. More prominent colleagues (essentially world famous folks in their respective field) have had interviews that took way longer, resulting in a minute or so of footage. Much of it was clarifying things so that neither the reporter nor they themselves looked like idiots and to get a clear sound bite of a given topic (the rest was taking up by setting the lighting, sweep across the lab to show students pretending to work). Newspaper interviews can be longer, but unless it is a researcher profile (which rarely makes it the "regular" news) it is also a few sentences that they need. I think a print interview I had lasted an hour and resulted in two quotes. In class it depends, seminars and special topic classes are more discussion-like, whereas in basic courses you'll have to get through materials. We do also have pub seminars for the public, though. I.e. we get invited to bars and present stuff and have discussion with folks afterward. That is usually very well received.

A big issue in using feeding to create carbon sinks is that it requires the biomass to essentially get buried in order for it be effective. Initial attempts at iron feeding were done with the hope that algae blooms would result in biomass sinking to the floor and thus remove carbon from the cycle. However, so far only one study found that desired effect. The other fear is of course that algae blooms can deplete oxygen and thereby create or expand dead zones in the ocean. There are also a host of other (mostly ecological) concerns with such strategies, you mentioned. There is also a healthy discussion regarding the types of nutrients that affect various increases in biomass (C, N, S) relative to iron and what impact shifting such cycles may have. As a whole the huge uncertainty with regard to feasibility and potential consequences make it a rather difficult proposition to follow up. At minimum, more research is needed.

So this is a tricky bit. The criminal justice is currently disproportionately affecting African Americans negatively because the implemented policies (at least individually) were race-blind. A key example is the high penalties for crack vs cocaine. And it works on all levels, African Americans are more likely to be stopped and searched, for example, and were more frequently convicted for possession of drugs, despite the fact that drug use is pretty much the same between black and white communities. The only policy managing to adjust it a little bit was to take those statistics showing that for similar offenses African American were more likely to be receive more severe punishments. On the policy level it has led to some adjustments, e.g. looking into how judges punish folks depending on ethnicity, for example. A criminal justice reform that does not explicitly address these biases could result in a reversal of these band-aid policies. In other words, just to reform the criminal justice system does not automatically benefit African American, especially if race is not a factor. Considering in the past the criminal justice system was able to overpenalize black communities without implementing race, I am not sure that enacting new policies will automatically improve the situation. Specifically, it is recognized that the system has systemic issues that run across racial boundaries and while laws (of course) where all race blind. What some suggest (and maybe that is what you mean) is to look into laws that are overapplied to African American (say prosecution of youths as adults for minor crimes). In that case it would benefit African American, but the changes would not be race blind per se. After all they would need to take the racial disparities into account in order to implement them properly. I.e. I do not see a way to address racial inequalities without targeting them specifically. However, if you mean with race-blind that the laws should not target race in language, then that is rather trivial, AFAIK laws are not allowed to discriminate by race so there should not be any to begin with. Affirmative actions are something else entirely and are only allowed under a relatively narrow legal window (specifically, allowing employers to create a diverse environment, should they choose so). Edit: I should also add that criminal justice specifically also overpenalizes Hispanics, which would be another factor to take into account.

As I mentioned, I think they are mostly unrelated (except to fuel arguments). That being said, there have been quite a few impeachment efforts, even if we limit them to the President. For example Jones tried to impeach Obama (mostly due to the drone program) but that resolution did not go above the Judiciary committee. A quick look shows that there were 13 of such including the current one. Essentially every President in the last few decades has faced a resolution, so we could at least rank what we are going to see along the scale, with Watergate probably going the furthest in the pipeline.

Wait, so you are saying that the law as interpreted by the courts or otherwise are arbitrary? I mean in very vague and general term, this would apply to many if not most laws. In this case there is precedence on what can be considered to be "of value" as well as what is considered to be "a contribution". So there is much less ambiguity around these issues. There are also other laws that are relevant involving foreign volunteers, so it is not that there is a vacuum around the interpretation of the law. So what is unclear to me is whether you mean that the specific cases involving Trump are ambiguous or that the law itself is. Some details can be found here and an analysis of the Trump tower meeting is published here, which kind of address both issues. So I think if we talk about specifics rather than the general law, the question probably boils down to how speech can be interpreted as something of value, which may indeed something that needs to be handled in court. That being said and going back to the topic of the thread (I admit I got sidetracked a bit), I think that law might apply to the Trump tower meeting, perhaps also to Ukrainian situation (the soliciting part at least), but I think neither are actually that relevant to the ongoing impeachment procedure. As mentioned before, the proceedings are political in nature the GOP is likely to close ranks regardless of legality of the issue. The Republican voter base has been galvanized to such a degree that reaching across the aisle would probably be political suicide (one can see the consolidation in US politics over the last decades). The apparent abuse of power from a sitting president may however sway undecided voters. It would be a bit early to tell, though. I would be interested to see whether folks would lay charges once Trump leaves office, though. As a side note, I find it interesting that the actual news segment of FOX news has been grilling WH officials on that matter, whereas the rest of the channel just pivots almost immediately after...

! Moderator Note Duplicate topics merged.

OK, so you are saying that if taken literally it could be an issue, but since it is not it is not? Well, fair enough I guess. But since they have been established previously, I am not sure how that applies to the current situation. I think it is worth re-iterating that for impeachment indictable offenses are not required (though politically helpful). I suspect that your partisan comment was aimed to convey that impeachment proceedings are generally partisan? It is probably true that a strong impeachment ground (such as an indictable offense) could increase the likelihood of folks voting non-partisan. During the Clinton impeachment a number of Reps voted with Dems, for example. And for Nixon the House Judiciary Committee had no hard partisan line (though clearly a slant), either. Since then partisanship has hardened in US politics, so it is becoming less likely to happen. Well, in order to make clear that it is not an abuse of power, more thoughtful folks probably wouldn't have used private lawyers for starters.

I think you are mixing up the essence of the message with the delivery. In the other cases appeals to our basic nature were made, yes, but they were also not based on well-established facts and science. Here, we do have an idea what is going to happen and thoughtful non-emotional arguments have been torpedoed successfully by specific groups such as the Koch brothers. I am not sure about the long-lasting effects of this campaign. However, we are well beyond fact gathering, that has been done to death. This part is about what we are going to do and if only one sides appeals to emotion, well you see where we are at on all these examples. One could argue that we should do away with all that and just be reasonable. But clearly that is not happening, nor has it in human history, I'd bet. It is just one of the things not only scientists struggle with. Just having the facts is rarely enough. You also need a pitch. It does not matter whether you look for investors, try to convince a funding agency or appeal to the public. I will say that I am quite surprised at the level of attention she got and even more, the vitriol she earned. It does show that she hits the nerve of the time, it seems.