Collagen, a promising supplement for reducing skin aging?

Collagen is a fibrillar protein of the conjunctive and connective tissues in the human body, essentially skin, joints, and bones. Due to its abundance in our bodies, its strength and its relation with skin aging, collagen has gained great interest as an oral dietary supplement as well as an ingredient in cosmetics. Collagen fibres get […]

Read the rest here: Collagen, a promising supplement for reducing skin aging?

American Loon #2150: Jeanna Reed

Hardly a mover or shaker in the antivaccine autism quackery movement, Jeanna Reed primarily came to our attention through her role in the tragic tale (murder) of Alex Spourdalakis. Reed is affiliated with – or runs, we are not sure – Autism is Medical, an autism biomed quackery group with a website...

Read the full lunacy: #2150: Jeanna Reed Encyclopedia of American Loons

Osteopathic visceral manipulation: a new study fails to convince anyone

Osteopathic visceral manipulation (OVM) have been our subject several times before. The method has been developed by the French Osteopath and Physical Therapist Jean-Pierre Barral. According to uncounted Internet-sites, books and other promotional literature, OVM is a miracle cure for just about every disease imaginable. Most of us hearing such claims hear alarm bells ringing – rightly […]

Read the rest here: Osteopathic visceral manipulation: a new study fails to convince anyone

One of the best science journals just published one of the worst chiro-studies

Excellent journals always publish excellent science! If this is what you believe, you might want to read a study of chiropractic just published in the highly respected SCIENTIFIC REPORTS. The objective of this study was to investigate whether a single session of chiropractic care could increase strength in weak plantar flexor muscles in chronic stroke […]

Read the rest here: One of the best science journals just published one of the worst chiro-studies

SCAM for animals. Part 2

So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) for animals is popular. A recent survey suggested that 76% of US dog and cat owners use some form of SCAM. Another survey showed that about one quarter of all US veterinary medical schools run educational programs in SCAM. Amazon currently offers more that 4000 books on the subject. The range […]

Read the rest here: SCAM for animals. Part 2

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #8

Story of the Week... Opinion of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review...

Story of the Week...

World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of biodiversity

Plants, insects and organisms crucial to food production in steep decline, says UN

Organic carrot harvest in Germany. Organic agriculture makes up just 1% of global farmland. Photograph: Julian Stratenschulte/EPA

The world’s capacity to produce food is being undermined by humanity’s failure to protect biodiversity, according to the first UN study of the plants, animals and micro-organisms that help to put meals on our plates.

The stark warning was issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation after scientists found evidence the natural support systems that underpin the human diet are deteriorating around the world as farms, cities and factories gobble up land and pump out chemicals.Over the last two decades, approximately 20% of the earth’s vegetated surface has become less productive, said the report, launched on Friday.

It noted a “debilitating” loss of soil biodiversity, forests, grasslands, coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds and genetic diversity in crop and livestock species. In the oceans, a third of fishing areas are being overharvested.

Many species that are indirectly involved in food production, such as birds that eat crop pests and mangrove trees that help to purify water, are less abundant than in the past, noted the study, which collated global data, academic papers and reports by the governments of 91 countries.

It found 63% of plants, 11% of birds, and 5% of fish and fungi were in decline. Pollinators, which provide essential services to three-quarters of the world’s crops, are under threat. As well as the well-documented decline of bees and other insects, the report noted that 17% of vertebrate pollinators, such as bats and birds, were threatened with extinction.

Once lost, the species that are critical to our food systems cannot be recovered, it said. “This places the future of our food and the environment under severe threat.”

World's food supply under 'severe threat' from loss of biodiversity by Jonathan Watts, Guardian, Feb 21, 2019

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Opinion of the Week...

The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein’s Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists

In an exchange that went viral, the senator from California demonstrated why climate change exemplifies an issue on which older people should listen to the young.

Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux/h5>

One imagines that Senator Dianne Feinstein would like a do-over of her colloquy with some young people on Friday afternoon. A group of school students, at least one as young as seven, went to the senator’s San Francisco office to ask her to support the Green New Deal climate legislation. In a video posted online by the Sunrise Movement, she tells them that the resolution isn’t a good one, because it can’t be paid for, and the Republicans in the Senate won’t support it. She adds that she is at work on her own resolution, which she thinks could pass. Then, when the group persists in supporting the Green New Deal, which was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Feinstein responds, “You know what’s interesting about this group? I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I know what I’m doing. You come in here and you say, ‘It has to be my way or the highway.’ I don’t respond to that. I’ve gotten elected, I just ran, I was elected by almost a million-vote plurality,” she continued. “And I know what I’m doing. So, you know, maybe people should listen a little bit.”  

The Hard Lessons of Dianne Feinstein’s Encounter with the Young Green New Deal Activists, Opinion by Bill McKibben, New Yorker Magazine, Feb 23, 2019 

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Toon of the Week...

 

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• Fighting Climate Change: Structural vs individual action (Climate Adam)
• Prices are not enough (Frank Ackerman)
• Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2018 (Robert McSweeney)
• Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5 (Baerbel)
• New research this week (Ari)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #9 (John Hartz)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #9 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week...

 

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SkS Week in Review... 

• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #8 by John Hartz
• New research, February 11-17, 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
• Global coal use may have peaked in 2014, says latest IEA World Energy Outlook by Simon Evans (Carbon Brief)
• Studies shed new light on Antarctica’s future contribution to sea level rise by Robert McSweeney (Carbon Brief)
• A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate by Greenman 3610 (Yale Climate Connections)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7 by John Hartz

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American Loon #2149: James Redfield

James Redfield is the author of the novel The Celestine Prophecy, which has come to be viewed as something of a spiritual guide for the New Age by a substantial group of very silly people (“This book is very simply about how we get and use energy. When we get enough energy, in...

Read the full lunacy: #2149: James Redfield Encyclopedia of American Loons

SCAM for animals. Part 1: homeopathy

Ever since Samuel Hahnemann, the German physician who invented homeopathy, gave a lecture on the subject in the mid-1810s, homeopathy has been used for treating animals. Initially, veterinary medical schools tended to reject homoeopathy as implausible, and the number of veterinary homeopaths remained small. In the 1920ies, however, veterinary homoeopathy was revived in Germany, and […]

Read the rest here: SCAM for animals. Part 1: homeopathy

American Loon #2148: Ruth Reddens & Earl Fernandes

More anti-abortion activists. Ruth Reddens and Earl Fernandes are some of the local activists of Dayton, Ohio, involved for instance in the 2012 40 Days for Life prayer vigil in front of the Kettering abortion clinic (Reddens was the organizer). Now, anti-abortion activists have held prayer...

Read the full lunacy: #2148: Ruth Reddens & Earl Fernandes Encyclopedia of American Loons

Yang Sheng: another SCAM to avoid

Determined to cover as many so-called alternative medicines (SCAMs) as I possibly can, I was intrigued to see an article in the EVENING STANDARD about a therapy I had not been familiar with: YANG SHENG. Here is an excerpt of this article: When people meet Katie Brindle, they usually ask whether she does acupuncture. “In […]

Read the rest here: Yang Sheng: another SCAM to avoid

Osteopathic treatments for pertussis … what next?

Pertussis (whooping-cough) is a serious condition. Today, we have vaccinations and antibiotics against it and therefore it is rarely a fatal disease. A century or so, the situation was different. Then all sorts of quacks claimed to be able to treat pertussis and many patients, particularly children, died. This article starts with this amazing introduction: Osteopathic physicians […]

Read the rest here: Osteopathic treatments for pertussis … what next?

American Loon #2147: David Reardon

David Reardon is an American electrical engineer and anti-abortion activist with a bogus degree in biomedical ethics from Pacific Western University, an unaccredited, now-defunct diploma mill. He is the founder of the Elliot Institute, an anti-abortion advocacy group, and the author of a number of...

Read the full lunacy: #2147: David Reardon Encyclopedia of American Loons

A new acupuncture trial published in the ‘BMJ-Open’ seems to smell of scientific misconduct

Acupuncture is all over the news today. The reason is a study just out in BMJ-Open. The aim of this new RCT was to investigate the efficacy of a standardised brief acupuncture approach for women with moderate-tosevere menopausal symptoms. Nine Danish primary care practices recruited 70 women with moderate-to-severe menopausal symptoms. Nine general practitioners with […]

Read the rest here: A new acupuncture trial published in the ‘BMJ-Open’ seems to smell of scientific misconduct

Another meta-analysis of homeopathy shows how devastatingly negative the evidence truly is

Did we not have a flurry of systematic reviews of homeopathy in recent months? And were they not a great disappointment to homeopaths and their patients? Just as we thought that this is more than enough evidence to show that homeopathy is not effective, here comes another one. This new review evaluated RCTs of non-individualised […]

Read the rest here: Another meta-analysis of homeopathy shows how devastatingly negative the evidence truly is

American Loon #2146: Donny Reagan

Brother Donny Reagan is affiliated with the Happy Valley Church of Jesus in Tennessee. Like many, Reagan is worried about the status of the institution of marriage these days, but for Reagan the problems go far deeper than gay marriage. In a video recorded in 2013, Reagan railed...

Read the full lunacy: #2146: Donny Reagan Encyclopedia of American Loons

What can consumers do when they are confronted with confusing or contradictory evidence?

Simply put, in the realm of SCAM, we seem to have two types of people: those who don’t care a hoot about evidence; those who try their best to follow the evidence. The first group is replete with SCAM enthusiasts who make their decisions based purely on habit, emotion, intuition etc. They are beyond my […]

Read the rest here: What can consumers do when they are confronted with confusing or contradictory evidence?

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #7

Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS...  Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review...

Story of the Week...

16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Cheers 'Beginning of Great Changes' as Climate Strike Goes Global

Because "present and future on this planet are at stake," say teen climate activists, "we won't be silent any longer"

 

Students in Melbourne take part in a school strike for climate on November 30, 2018. (Photo: julian meehan/flickr/cc)

The world may be edging toward "environmental breakdown"—but 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg sees signs for hope.

Pointing to global walkouts planned for March 15, Thunberg—whose "school strikes for climate" helped galvanized similar actions worldwide—said, "I think what we are seeing is the beginning of great changes and that is very hopeful."

"I think enough people have realized just how absurd the situation is," she told the Guardian. "We are in the middle of the biggest crisis in human history and basically nothing is being done to prevent it."

In a sign of that realization, thousands of students from dozens of communities across the United Kingdom skipped class on Friday to join the ranks taking part in the weekly climate actions.

In fact, it's "incredible" that the movement "has spread so far, so fast," she told "Good Morning Britain." 

16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg Cheers 'Beginning of Great Changes' as Climate Strike Goes Global by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams, Feb 15, 2019 

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Editorial of the Week...

My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back

Across the country today, children left their classes to protest against climate change. This is my message to them

 

 Students take to the street in Brighton Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

The Youth Strike 4 Climate gives me more hope than I have felt in 30 years of campaigning. Before this week, I believed it was all over. I thought, given the indifference and hostility of those who govern us, and the passivity of most of my generation, that climate breakdown and ecological collapse were inevitable. Now, for the first time in years, I think we can turn them around. 

My generation and the generations that went before have failed you. We failed to grasp the basic premise of intergenerational justice: that you cannot apply discount rates to human life. In other words, the life of someone who has not been born will be of no less value than the life of someone who already exists. We have lived as if your lives had no importance, as if any resource we encountered was ours and ours alone to use as we wished, regardless of the impact on future generations. In doing so, we created a cannibal economy: we ate your future to satisfy our greed.

It is true that the people of my generation are not equally to blame. Broadly speaking, ours is a society of altruists governed by psychopaths. We have allowed a tiny number of phenomenally rich people, and the destructive politicians they fund, to trash our life-support systems. While some carry more blame than others, our failure to challenge the oligarchs who are sacking the Earth and to overthrow their illegitimate power, is a collective failure. Together, we have bequeathed you a world that – without drastic and decisive action – may soon become uninhabitable.

Every day at home, we tell you that if you make a mess you should clear it up. We tell you that you should take responsibility for your own lives. But we have failed to apply these principles to ourselves. We walk away from the mess we have made, in the hope that you might clear it up.

My generation trashed the planet. So I salute the children striking back, Opinion by George Monbiot, Comment is Free, Guardian, Feb 15, 2019 

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El Niño/La Niña Update...

February 2019 ENSO Update: El Niño conditions are here 

After several months of flirting, the tropical Pacific ocean and atmosphere appear to have coupled just in time for Valentine’s Day and now meet the criteria for El Niño conditions. Is it true love? Time will tell, but forecasters expect weak El Niño conditions to persist through the spring.

Say yes

For a few months now, the tropical Pacific has met the first two criteria of our “Is It El Niño Conditions?” decision tree.

 

Summary of decision process in determining El Niño conditions. NOAA Climate.gov drawing by Glen Becker and Fiona Martin.

That is, the sea surface temperature in the Niño3.4 region of the tropical Pacific Ocean has been more than 0.5°C above the long-term average, and models were predicting it would stay that way for the next several seasons.

Monthly sea surface temperature in the Niño 3.4 region of the tropical Pacific for 2018 (purple line) and all other El Niño years since 1950. Climate.gov graph based on ERSSTv5 temperature data.

What’s new over the past month is that we’re seeing signs of El Niño-related changes in the atmosphere, with increased clouds and rain in the central Pacific indicating a weaker Walker circulation. One measurement of the strength of the Walker circulation, the Equatorial Southern Oscillation Index, was -0.6 during January, indicating more rising air than average over the eastern Pacific, and less than average over the western Pacific. These changes are enough evidence that the atmosphere is responding to the warmer ocean, leading us to conclude we have El Niño conditions! 

February 2019 ENSO Update: El Niño conditions are here by Emily Becker, ENSO Blog, NOAA's Climate.gov, Feb 14, 2019

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Toon of the Week...

 

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate (Peter Sinclair)
• Studies shed new light on Antarctica’s future contribution to sea level rise (Robert McSweeney)
• Global coal use may have peaked in 2014, says latest IEA World Energy Outlook (Simon Evans)
• Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2018 (Robert McSweeney)
• New research this week (Ari)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #8 (John Hartz)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #8 (John Hartz)

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Poster of the Week...

 

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SkS Week in Review... 

• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7 by John Hartz
• New research, February 4-10, 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
• Climate Damages: Uncertain but Ominous, or $51 per Ton? by Frank Ackerman (Triple Crisis)
• A Duplicitous Minister? by Riduna
• On Buying Insurance, and Ignoring Cost-Benefit Analysis by Frank Ackerman (Triple Crisis)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #6 by John Hartz

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The Carstens Foundation: prime sponsor of SCAM in Germany

In 2004, my team published a review analysing the diversity of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) research published in one single year (2002) across 7 European countries (Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium) and the US. In total 652 abstracts of articles were assessed. Germany and the UK were the only two European countries to […]

Read the rest here: The Carstens Foundation: prime sponsor of SCAM in Germany

American Loon #2145: Joe Read

Joe Read was a member of the Montana House of Representatives, representing House District 15, from 2011 to 2013. He is most famous for his 2011 bill maintaining that global warming is “natural”, not man-made (“human activity has not accelerated it”), and “beneficial to the welfare and...

Read the full lunacy: #2145: Joe Read Encyclopedia of American Loons

‘Homeopathic medicine works in cancer treatment’ – this paper is seriously upsetting

The Journal of Experimental Therapeutics and Oncology states that it is devoted to the rapid publication of innovative preclinical investigations on therapeutic agents against cancer and pertinent findings of experimental and clinical oncology. In the journal you will find review articles, original articles, and short communications on all areas of cancer research, including but not […]

Read the rest here: ‘Homeopathic medicine works in cancer treatment’ – this paper is seriously upsetting

Robert Verkerk (Alliance for Natural Health) at his finest

Robert Verkerk, Executive & scientific director, Alliance for Natural Health (ANH), seems to adore me (maybe that’s why I kept this post for Valentine’s Day?). In 2006, he published this article about me (it is lengthy, and I therefore shortened a bit, but feel free to study it in its full beauty): START OF QUOTE PROFESSOR […]

Read the rest here: Robert Verkerk (Alliance for Natural Health) at his finest

A new study of homeopathy suggests that highly diluted remedies are better than placebos (and I cannot fault it)

Highly diluted homeopathic remedies are pure placebos! This is what the best evidence clearly shows. Ergo they cannot be shown in a rigorous study to have effects that differ from placebo.  But now there is a study that seems to contradict this widely accepted conclusion. Can someone please help me to understand what is going […]

Read the rest here: A new study of homeopathy suggests that highly diluted remedies are better than placebos (and I cannot fault it)

American Loon #2144: David Reaboi

David Reaboi is a wingnut, founder and senior vice president of the think tank Security Studies Group (SSG) and previously spokesperson for the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conspiratory-minded rightwing group focusing for instance on the myth of creeping sharia. The CSP has tried to prop up...

Read the full lunacy: #2144: David Reaboi Encyclopedia of American Loons

Acupuncture for children? … A little critical thinking would not harm!

An article referring to comments Prof David Colquhoun and I recently made in THE TIMES about acupuncture for children caught my attention. In it, Rebecca Avern, an acupuncturist specialising in paediatrics and heading the clinical programme at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine, makes a several statements which deserve a comment. Here is her article in […]

Read the rest here: Acupuncture for children? … A little critical thinking would not harm!

American Loon #2143: Sondra Ray

Yes, we have encountered her before, but Sondra Ray deserves her own, albeit brief, entry. Ray is an advocate of rebirthing therapy, a silly and not entirely benign brand of New Age psychotherapy, and proudly considers her profession to be spiritual guide, not scientist –...

Read the full lunacy: #2143: Sondra Ray Encyclopedia of American Loons

Why I changed my mind about Dana Ullman*

On this blog, many of us have been frightfully critical of Dana Ullman; some were even harsh and demeaning. Meanwhile, I have spent some time on-line to study the man more closely. And yes, I have changed my mind (despite all the insults he has hurled at me). Guys, we (and the US judge who […]

Read the rest here: Why I changed my mind about Dana Ullman*

New survey of SCAM-use in England: an expensive promotion of quackery?

If so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) ever were to enter the Guinness Book of Records, it would most certainly be because it generates more surveys than any other area of medical inquiry. I have long been rather sceptical about this survey-mania. Therefore, I greet any major new survey with some trepidation. The aim of this new […]

Read the rest here: New survey of SCAM-use in England: an expensive promotion of quackery?

American Loon #2142: Barbara Weber Ray

Barbara Weber Ray is a psychic, astrologer and Latin teacher, and the author of The 'Reiki' Factor in The Radiance Technique, which describes her version of the Eastern faith healing discipline Reiki, The Radiance Technique® (or TRT). As an astrologer, she is apparently...

Read the full lunacy: #2142: Barbara Weber Ray Encyclopedia of American Loons

The ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group for Integrated Healthcare (PGIH) have just published a new report – and it’s full of surprises

The PGIH (currently chaired by the Tory MP David Tredinnick) was founded in 1992 (in the mid 1990, they once invited me to give a lecture which I did with pleasure). Its overriding aim is to bring about improvements in patient care. The PGIH have conducted a consultation that involved 113 SCAM-organisations and other stakeholders. The […]

Read the rest here: The ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group for Integrated Healthcare (PGIH) have just published a new report – and it’s full of surprises

A 5-year strategy for UK chiropractors: not fit for purpose

The General Chiropractic Council (GCC) is the statutory body regulating all chiropractors in the UK. Their foremost aim, they claim, is to ensure the safety of patients undergoing chiropractic treatment. They also allege to be independent and say they want to protect the health and safety of the public by ensuring high standards of practice […]

Read the rest here: A 5-year strategy for UK chiropractors: not fit for purpose

American Loon #2141: Dennis Dean Rathman

The Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, which we’ve had ample opportunity to discuss before, contains signatures by what is overall and with only a few exceptions a pitiful group of non-scientists, conspiracy theorists and religious fundies teaching at religious...

Read the full lunacy: #2141: Dennis Dean Rathman Encyclopedia of American Loons

Mistletoe treatment for cancer is useless and should be discouraged

Mistletoe treatment of cancer patients was the idea of Rudolf Steiner. Mistletoe grows on a host tree like a parasite and eventually might kill it. This seems similar to a cancer killing a patient, and Steiner – influenced by the homeopathic ‘like cures like’ notion – thought that mistletoe should thus be an ideal treatment […]

Read the rest here: Mistletoe treatment for cancer is useless and should be discouraged

Homeopathy in Germany: desperate battles for survival generate desperate lies

Homeopathy has been criticised since it first emerged 200 years ago. First, people mocked its utter implausibility. More recently, critics have pointed out that, despite 200 years of research, there is no good evidence that highly diluted remedies are anything other than placebos. In some countries, this has led to a ban of the public […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy in Germany: desperate battles for survival generate desperate lies

American Loon #2140: John Ragan

John Ragan is a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, representing the 33rd District, which puts him in the company of deranged lunatics like Kevin Brooks, Jimmy Matlock and Stacey Campfield. Ragan is famous for believing that homosexuality doesn’t really exist: “A person is a...

Read the full lunacy: #2140: John Ragan Encyclopedia of American Loons

“Heal”, the documentary: nonsense and cruelty on health and disease

By Guest Blogger Carlos Orsi, Instituto Questão de Ciência – Brazil Elizabeth spent her whole adult life on yoga, follows a raw vegetable diet full of detox juices, studies acupuncture, and all of a sudden, in spite of this super healthy New age lifestyle, she is diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer, stage 4. After one […]

Read the rest here: “Heal”, the documentary: nonsense and cruelty on health and disease

American Loon #2139: John Rabe

John Rabe is a fundamentalist maniac and conspiracy theorist affiliated with Truth in Action Ministries (TiAM), and yes, we could really end this entry right there. Rabe is also a regular cohost, with Carmen Pate, of TiAM’s radio program Truth that Transforms, which is an instance of (the...

Read the full lunacy: #2139: John Rabe Encyclopedia of American Loons

Today is ‘World Cancer Day’ – let me therefore introduce you to a most valuable source of information

Today is WORLD CANCER DAY. A good reason, I feel, to remind everyone of the existence of CAM-CANCER, an initiative that I have been involved with from its start (in fact, I was one of its initiators). Essentially, we – that is an international team of CAM-experts – conduct systematic reviews of CAMs often advertised […]

Read the rest here: Today is ‘World Cancer Day’ – let me therefore introduce you to a most valuable source of information

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5

Story of the Week... Editorial of the Week... Toon of the Week... SkS in the News... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 

Story of the Week...

The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change

I was wilfully deluded until I began covering global warming, says David Wallace-Wells. But extreme heat could transform the planet by 2100

A forest fire burns on a hill in Monchique, Portugal, August 2018. Photograph: Filipe Farinha/EPA

I have never been an environmentalist. I don’t even think of myself as a nature person. I’ve lived my whole life in cities, enjoying gadgets built by industrial supply chains I hardly think twice about. I’ve never gone camping, not willingly anyway, and while I always thought it was basically a good idea to keep streams clean and air clear, I also accepted the proposition that there was a trade-off between economic growth and cost to nature – and figured, well, in most cases I’d go for growth. I’m not about to personally slaughter a cow to eat a hamburger, but I’m also not about to go vegan. In these ways – many of them, at least – I am like every other American who has spent their life fatally complacent, and wilfully deluded, about climate change, which is not just the biggest threat human life on the planet has ever faced, but a threat of an entirely different category and scale. That is, the scale of human life itself.

‘The devastation of human life is in view’: what a burning world tells us about climate change, Edited extract from "The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story Of The Future" by David Wallace-Wells, Environment, Guardian, Feb 2, 2019

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Editorial of the Week...

Why Can’t Rich People Save Winter?

Ski season is shrinking. Yet the people who love the sport aren’t doing enough to stop climate change.

 

Outside the Little Nell hotel at the foot of Aspen Mountain in 2015. Photo Credit: Morgan Rachel Levy for The New York Times

From the snow-dusted ridgelines of the Catskills to the rugged summits of the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Cascades, winter is slowly disappearing. And snow is receding with it.

We know humans are altering the climate. Temperatures in south-central Colorado have risen two degrees Fahrenheit on average since 1988. In California’s Lake Tahoe region, home to more than a dozen ski areas, warmer temperatures since 1970 have pushed the snow line uphill 1,200 to 1,500 feet. Winter season lengths are projected to decline at ski areas across the United States, in some locations by more than 50 percent by 2050 and by 80 percent by 2090 if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate, according to a 2017 study. Only about half of the 103 ski resorts in the Northeast will be able to maintain an economically viable ski season by midcentury, another study found in 2012.

In Europe, the cradle of ski culture, the problem is even worse. Half the glacial ice in the Alps has already melted; a study published two years ago in The Cryosphere, a journal of the European Geosciences Union,predicted 70 percent less snow in the mountains by the end of the century, threatening a $30 billion ski industry driven by more than 60 million tourists a year.

Why Can’t Rich People Save Winter?, Opinion by Porter Fox, Sunday Review, New York Times, Feb 2, 

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Toon of the Week...

 

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SkS in the News... 

In his article, AP FACT CHECK: Global warming hasn’t gone away despite cold, Seth Borenstein wrote:

Trump is cherry picking cold weather to ignore the larger picture of a warming planet, said John Cook, a professor of climate change communications at George Mason University.

“This myth is like arguing that nighttime proves the sun doesn’t exist,” Cook said. 

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• EVs: Crucial to Reducing CO2 Emissions (Riduna)
• Ocean heat content record (Dana)
• Global coal use may have peaked in 2014, says latest IEA World Energy Outlook (Simon Evans)
• Analysis: The climate papers most featured in the media in 2018 (Robert McSweeney)
• New research this week (Ari)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #6 (John Hartz)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #6 (John Hartz) 

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Poster of the Week...

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SkS Week in Review...  

• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #5 by John Hartz
• New research, January 21-27, 2019 by Ari Jokimäki
• A Green New Deal must not sabotage climate goals by Dana Nuccitelli (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
• SkS Analogy 18 - Cliff jumping and temperature changes by Evan & jg
• The Methane 'Time Bomb': How big a concern? by greenman3610 (Yale Climate Communications)
• 2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #4 by John Hartz

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Massage therapy: generally safe but not totally risk-free

Spinal epidural haematoma (SEH) is an uncommon but serious emergency condition. A team of emergency physicians reported the case of a SEH associated with traditional massage initially presenting with delayed lower paraplegia. A 20-year-old man was seen with bilateral lower extremity weakness and numbness, symptoms that had started three hours prior to presentation. He had […]

Read the rest here: Massage therapy: generally safe but not totally risk-free

Chiropractors have one more myth to add to their long list of bogus claims

Chiropractors believe that their spinal manipulations bring about a reduction in pain perception, and they often call this ‘manipulation-induced hypoalgesia’ (MIH). It is unknown, however, whether MIH following high-velocity low-amplitude spinal manipulative therapy is a specific and clinically relevant treatment effect. This systematic review was an effort in finding out. The authors investigated changes in […]

Read the rest here: Chiropractors have one more myth to add to their long list of bogus claims