Coal is only “clean” if you silence the scientists who say otherwise

Chalk up another black mark against North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory. His administration has been pretending that mountains of coal ash couldn’t possibly be contaminating drinking water in the state. Their obstinance has finally led to the resignation of one of the state’s leading scientists.

North Carolina’s state epidemiologist resigned Wednesday to protest her employer’s depiction that “deliberately misleads” how screening standards were created to test private wells near Duke Energy’s power plants.

Dr. Megan Davies’ immediate resignation after seven years on the job deepens a rift between Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration and some of the state’s top public health scientists. McCrory is a former Duke employee who is running for a second term as governor.

The millions of tons of coal ash stored at Duke’s power plants has contaminated groundwater under them. State tests last year found that cancer-causing chemicals were present in hundreds of nearby private wells, although Duke denies coal ash is the source.

So wait…where is the vanadium and hexavalent chromium, carcinogens that are found in relatively high concentration in coal ash, coming from? This is one that would be tough to blame on transgender men and women — they just don’t have the magic powers that would do that. If it’s not the coal ash, the only remaining possibility really is magic…which means we’re going to have to blame Jesus. Why does Jesus hate North Carolina? Logically, the answer must be that he hates them because they elected a wanker named McCrory.

“Apparitions”

Catholicism is weird. Every once in a while, stuff slips out that makes me think we’re dealing with aliens from another planet…like this discussion of how ‘apparitions’ are ‘approved’.

Many know about approved apparitions of our Blessed Mother. But only a handful realize that there were apparitions in Itapiranga, Brazil from 1994-1998 in which St. Joseph appeared along with Mary and Jesus.

In January 2010, after much study, prayer, reflection, observation and seeing the growth in the faith life of thousands, the local ordinary, Bishop Carillo Gritti declared a Decree of Worship favoring the Itapiranga appearances and in an earlier document called it of “supernatural origin.”

In another document he stated that considering the manifestations of the Virgin from 2005-10, who has called upon devotion to the three Sacred Hearts: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a first step has been taken to build a new sanctuary with the certainty that it will be a place for pilgrimages, and the conversions that only God by the intercession of Mary can operate has been thus far for him and enlightened souls, reason enough to see in these visions and messages the finger of God (translated form the Portuguese).

It’s simply taken for granted that we know what these apparitions are, but apparently, all it is is that some guy had a vision of Mary and Joseph, and later his mom claimed to have seen them too. So now a bishop has declared that it is OK for you all to see particular ghosts, presumably without risk of being declared a heretic.

I do like the Catholic version of the scientific method: much study, prayer, reflection, observation and seeing the growth in the faith life of thousands. I don’t think observation means going to Itapiranga to have a conversation with old Joe’s shade, though; most likely it involved noting that church attendance is up, and counting up potential revenues from a new shrine.

I wanted to know more about this mysterious method for divining the truth from the claims of Catholic zealots, but instead the rest of the article goes on at tedious length about the wonderful imaginary virtues of the imaginary saint. Catholics do live in a rich fantasy world, that’s clear.

But I will commend the Catholics for one thing: they can write voluminously about St Joseph, yet they didn’t use the word cuck even once, which was a relief.

I agree with this guy

I don’t agree with the two guys on the other side of this debate, but Nasser Dashti, arguing that the Islamic world must become more secular, is spot on.

I believe that the time has come for us to adopt the secular, rational, scientific approach, and to remove religion from public life and confine it to the private sphere. Every person is free to understand his religion as he sees fit, and he is free to change his religion, to adopt any school of thought or religion, and to spread his ideas in keeping with the modern rules of human rights.

—Nasser Dashti

Maybe once the Middle East becomes secular, we can start working on fixing the USA in the same way.

Important questions, I hope someone tries to answer them

Every four years, Shawn Otto and his ScienceDebate organization politely suggest that science, engineering, tech, health, and environmental issues deserve a presidential debate, and every four years they’re ignored — largely because our presidential candidates are never really competent to discuss science in any detail at all (can you imagine Trump trying to bluster his way through a discussion of science and education policy?). But one thing that does get a regular response is the list of 20 science policy questions. Now there are a lot of questions I’d like to see both campaigns address.

It’s a rather quixotic effort, but it’s important to keep the pressure on. Go sign the petition at Sciencedebate.org.

We are so screwed

It would be so nice to imagine that Donald Trump was a lone anomaly, and once he’s defeated in an election, the problem will go away. Unfortunately, the real problem is the dumbasses who are supporting him now — they’re just going to find more cocky fascists to prop up. Watch this and weep:

A little skepticism about an extrasolar planet is required

Okay. It would be really cool if there were an earth-like planet orbiting the star nearest us. Now there’s news dribbling out about a putative discovery of a rocky planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. Except, unfortunately, the story is grossly premature and unreliable. A few warning signs:

  • It’s a rumor published in Der Spiegel, a news magazine, not a scientific publication.

  • The discoverers are unnamed. What science publication uses unidentified sources?

  • The general source is the La Silla observatory, which previously claimed to have found an earthlike planet around Alpha Centauri B…a claim that was later retracted.

  • The story gets stuff wrong.

    Knowing that there is a habitable planet that a mission from Earth could reach within our own lifetimes is nothing short of amazing!

    Whose lifetime?

    The fastest spacecraft we’ve ever fired off, Voyager, is traveling at about 17 km/sec, which is fast alright — but it would still take tens of thousands of years to get there.

Fraser Cain, usually a reliable source, has already made a video about the ‘discovery’.

Nope, I still don’t buy it. There’s no evidence there. You could make the same video with generic science-fictiony images declaring that scientists have discovered little green men on Mars, and it would be just as convincing, that is, not.

The video also mentions Project Starshot, which would be one way of getting man-made objects to velocities somewhat closer to the speed of light. This scheme involves building 100-billion-watt laser arrays and firing them at laser sails hauling teeny-tiny chips with built-in micro-gadgets to do everything our regular space probes do and transmit the data back to Earth. Project Starshot is the baby of a Silicon Valley billionaire, so of course it must be a good idea.

You know, we’re kind of in a golden age of space exploration, with all kinds of information coming in from robots on Mars or flying around Jupiter. The real data is exciting, but these impractical fantasies are not.