The nuclear bomb that almost blew up

Sometimes old news deserves attention: Ari Berman, of the lively Notion blog at The Nation, posts that we recently nearly saw an accidental nuclear detonation at the one plant for decommission and retirement of nuclear weapons in this country, run by Pantex in Amarillo, Tex.

He writes:

In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

This emerged after a less-provocative-but-still-troubling story from Ralph Vartabedian at the L.A. Times, who revealed that the U.S. Department of Energy fined Pantex $110,000 for violations revealed after the incident, and has launched an investigation.

Sounds reasonable. But at the same time, the DOE declared that it had "confidence that Pantex will continue its outstanding work, while keeping stringent safety and security policies in place."

So why investigate?

Make your leftover Xmas sweets into something yummy

In my experience, even a calm and pleasant holiday results in a house strewn with bits of paper, empty boxes filled with styrofoam peanuts, a guilt-inducing list of thank-you notes to be written, and a fridge full of leftovers. Here are three recipes for "recycled" holiday desserts that turn less-than-enjoyable ingredients into actual treats:

Reductionist science is killing us

In my grad program, we've spent a lot of time talking about Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren's IPAT equation. It's pretty simple:

Impact = Population x Environment

English translation: A society's environmental impact is proportional to its population, its wealth, and its technological capacity to mitigate the impacts of its population and its wealth.

So how do you reduce impact? Well, it's too ethically and politically dicey to do a whole lot about population -- at least beyond educating women. Affluence? Let's put it this way: How would you like to be the one to tell El Salvador or Namibia to stay poor because the world has all the rich countries it can take?

‘Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change’–Not so

(Part of the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic guide)

Objection: In the geological record, it is clear that CO2 does not trigger climate changes. Why should it be any different now?

Answer: Given the fact that human industrialization is unique in the history of planet earth, do we really need historical precedent for CO2-triggered climate change before we accept what we observe today? Surely it is not far-fetched that unprecedented consequences would follow from unprecedented events.

But putting this crucial point aside, history does indeed provide some relevant insights and dire warnings.

Lots of talk, little action

The media is abuzz that Bush will unveil new energy proposals in the State of the Union address. But it really is a "dog bites man" story.

Has any president ever talked so much about a problem while doing nothing to address it? The President's sweeping rhetoric on energy independence, unfortunately, has never been accompanied by serious policies -- he has actually cut funding for the key energy-saving technologies -- which is one reason our dependence on imported oil has kept rising throughout Bush's presidency. So we should take any new words in the 2007 address with many, many grains of salt.

Here are the relevant excerpts about energy from Bush's previous State of the Union addresses:

Discuss

People talk about the "politicization" of science all the time, usually in the form of an accusation designed to paint an opponent as biased or corrupt. Let's take a moment to think about the term and what it means.

Science is a multi-layered, collective, and impersonal process consisting of three parts:

1. individual scientists working under the scientific method,
2. the results of the individual scientists undergo peer-review and are published for the community to evaluate, and
3. important claims are then re-tested in the "crucible of science" -- they are either reproduced by independent scientific groups or have their implications tested to insure consistency with the existing body of scientific knowledge.

She’s not into it

A couple weeks ago, Daily Grist noted Richard Branson’s $25 million prize, offered for some kind of widget that will...

Two great tastes that taste great together!

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Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Science

U.S. EPA shifts pollutant-review process, mixing policy with science The U.S. EPA continues to suck Big Oil’s dipstick: Yesterday, the...