Environmental News

... from the same people who declare that the Universe is only about 6000 years old:

"In the beginning about 6,000 years ago, Jesus Christ created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, or ex nihilo, ..."
The Final World: Renovation or New Creation? | The Institute for Creation Research

Creation Ex Nihilo Through Jesus Christ | The Institute for Creation Research

https://www.icr.org/article/our-young-solar-system/

I.e. the Institute for Creation Research hasn't changed its primary message since the days of Henry Morris and Duane Gish.

Sorry, but I haven't been able to believe anything they claim since reading a bunch of their materials in the late 1980s. Far too much of their "science" for which I have independent knowledge (mostly physics, astronomy, and cosmology) is seriously distorted, misstated, twisted out of context, and displaying many others sins.

 

When I was a grad student, there was a local guy who was a university employee—he worked in facilities maintenance, but being an employee was enough to be the "staff adviser" of a student creationist group, and about once a semester they would reserve a lecture room and he would give a public lecture using pretty much ICR talking points. (I hadn't heard of ICR before, but discovered them as I traced his talking points back.)

Mostly undergrads would attend, but there would usually be some curious grad students in the back of the room, and I remember some entertaining moments, like when he used a talking point about something biological science was still nowhere near figuring out, and some bio grad student in back raised his or her hand and said "we have an undergrad bio class where we assign the students to do that in one of their labs, which I grade, and most of them do just fine".

 

good news for birds

 

Air kill

 

look out birds!

 

& how not comforting is that

 

The Ocean Observatories Initiative, a deep-ocean observation system, is being dismantled, with more than 900 deployed instruments being pulled up this month. This system has been continuously collecting real-time science data for more than a decade, and had been intended to run another 10-15 years, but doesn't fit into this Administration's "strategy".

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-administration-to-dismantle-ocean-monitoring-system/

"(NYT) The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.

The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington state, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.

Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast.
..."


The EU is expanding their own system, but that won't help the people who were using the U.S.-zone data for monitoring fisheries.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/eu-invests-in-ocean-monitoring-as-us-cuts-funding/

"BRUSSELS (AP) — With underwater drones and ocean-focused satellites, the EU is expanding its monitoring network of Earth’s seas as climate change fuels heat waves and stronger storms and the Trump administration plans severe cuts to a similar system in the United States.

With an investment package of 92 million euros ($107 million) called OceanEye announced on Wednesday, the EU will be able to take the helm of global efforts to explore the depths of the planet’s vast oceans, said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
..."


P.S. See also:

Trump administration takes aim at crucial ocean monitoring network | Scientific American

Trump administration takes aim at crucial ocean monitoring network
The Ocean Observatories Initiative has been collecting data on physical, chemical, geological and biological conditions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for the past decade

 

Call it the version 1 system. Use the operational experience to replace it with a better one.

Yes, I regret the short term data loss but we’re dealing with vandals from the dark ages:


Bob Wilson