The prestigious journal Nature has published a special supplement on traditional Asian medicine (free access). Financial sponsorship for it came from the Kitasato University Oriental Medicine Research Center and the Saishunkan Pharmaceutical Co, which is described as a herbal medicine manufacturer which aims to help people make the most of their natural powers of healing…Continue Reading…
Ryan Avent at the Economist gets my nostalgia award for the day with this romanticized dreck: But turn again to those living 100 or 500 years ago. How would they have viewed civilisation today? Think of all the animals, languages, and societies that have since gone extinct. Modern lives might seem like a vision of…Continue Reading…
My latest post at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media asks if the ratcheting up of climate fear will grab hold of a public already numb to such appeals. I think David Roberts at Grist makes a strong case for how it can work, but it rests on this assumption: what drives social…Continue Reading…
Is Marion Nestle stoking nanotechnology fears here? Or is she trying to head off an ugly variation of the GMO wars? I’m not sure, but this is what she advises: Companies using this technology should be telling the public more about it. Nanotechnology is technical, difficult to grasp intuitively, “foreign,” and not under personal control….Continue Reading…
Several weeks ago in Washington D.C., I met with a scholar whose work I find fascinating. My interview with Ed Carr, an archaeologist-turned geographer, is now up at Yale Environment 360. Here’s an excerpt: e360: Over the summer various commentators talking about the famine in Somalia and the drought in the Horn of Africa were making…Continue Reading…
I dip in and out of the comment threads at Judith Curry’s blog. The nesting style annoys me, so I rarely follow an actual conversation all the way through. But there are some commenters, such as Joshua, Martha, and Louise, and a few others on the skeptical side, who I find quite engaging. They usually…Continue Reading…
In the early 2000s, when the Bush Administration started formulating its domestic energy policy, they snookered U.S. environmental groups with a classic bait & switch. Bush & company made a lot of noise about opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which has long been a symbolic icon for green groups. Environmentalists promptly went…Continue Reading…
Someone I have a lot of respect for says all the Durban bashing is misinformed. To those who argue that the recent climate summit in South Africa produced nothing of consequence, Andrew Light counters: The fact is that not only did Durban produce a package of agreements essential for any hope of a meaningful contribution…Continue Reading…
Responding to the notion that future generations are going to be worse off because of the actions (or non-action) of those living today, a U.S. reader offers another perspective: By the time I graduated high school everyone personally not only knew someone who had “˜been to war’ but everyone knew someone who had been killed or maimed…Continue Reading…
Oh, this should be good for another noisy round of meaningless climate warfare: “Our biggest problem is to deal with the skepticism and denial of the cult-like lemmings who would take us over the cliff,” said [California Governor Jerry] Brown, a Democrat, eliciting cheers and laughter from an audience of roughly 200 policymakers, businessleaders, and…Continue Reading…