This is coming out on Monday, the day before the election.
(Picture via ChatGPT. So sue me.)
It’s appropriate, therefore, that the Cheese Ends here be presented in light of that important date.
The Orange Voldemort perversely loves coal in the same way he perversely loves the American flag. So, he’s been trying to shove coal down our throats whenever possible.
Back in September, the EPA announced a final plan that gutted the carbon pollution standards.
This comes as no surprise. Sure, it was the hottest summer on record. Sure, the southwest has record droughts. He likes Big Oil. He likes Big Coal. Therefore, CO2 coming from his donors has, according to him, no effect on the climate. Forget science. Forget evidence—whatever is percolating in that tiny mind is what must be fact.
The EPA is going to rescind “every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector.”
The only good news is that the EPA was immediately sued.
There is still time to submit public comments. Go and give your insight.
It also turns out that there’s a move inside the White House to give Russel Vought veto power over NIH grants. No science. No medicine. No evidence.
The idea that a political appointee might have direct veto power over NIH grants is so absurd as to be laughable except that is what is being discussed. He can have veto power over cancer research, public health, pandemic research, vaccine research—pretty much anything that will have an impact on your health, the health of your children, the health of your parents and other loved ones, will be subject to the whimsical veto of Mister Project 2025.
If the NIH wasn’t having a tough enough time, there is now a new agreement that the NIH will fund DOD research.
The NIH is the biggest source of funding for medical and health research on the planet. But its budget pales in comparison to the trillion dollars that backs up DOD. It’s not clear how much funding is actually going to transfer out of NIH but there will no doubt be some.
The mandate is quoted to “support the advanced development of medical countermeasures against pandemic influenza, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, and emerging infectious diseases.”
Hey. If this gets that research out from under Little Bobby’s thumb, it could be a good thing—unless, of course, Mister Project 2025 throws down on it.
But lest we leave out the oceans, NOAA has decided that conservation is getting in the way of making money. Remember, science is not real. It’s only academic opinion backed up by studies, evidence, and fact created by people who have given their lives in pursuit of understanding. We can now look forward to commercial fishing operations in the Mariana Trench. Go team.
Look, as long as there is evidence for a given policy that makes even a minimum of sense, I can support it. But these make no sense. Destroy fish stocks today so we don’t have them tomorrow? Toss out vaccine research until the DOD desperately retrieves it? Use the political whims of the moment to delete the research of decades?
No.
The rest of the world is waking up. NASA yanked its radar instrument from the European Space Agency’s Venus mission. The ESA is going to go it alone. Last year the Orange Voldemort shut down work on the US National Climate Assessment. After all, if you don’t know about it, it can’t be real, right? Nothing unknown can hurt you, right?
Well, other organizations have stepped into the breach. The American Geophysical Union and American Meteorological Society have created a place for researchers to compile the data. We’ll see how that goes. After all, having non-governmental institutions replacing government work is what the administration is all about, right? Surely, they won’t mind...
Look, voting is tomorrow. Go and vote. I’ve already done so. Let your voice be heard.
*sigh*
Okay. Here is something that came out a month or so ago. Better look it up before these goons destroy it.
Dinosaurs used to be considered nasty, brutish, and slow. That view has changed. But the problem has been or some time how to definitively show that.
Two researchers have come up with a novel approach using differential uptake of carbon and oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel. The temperature determines the ratio. Using this, they gave the T. Rex a body temperature between 35.9 and 37.3C—pretty close to mammalian body temperature. They compared it to crocodilians which gave a temperature of 30.9C—very much like modern crocodiles that maintain their body temperature by shuttling between basking and swimming.
They also looked at freshwater mussels in the same formation using the same technique and got a temperature of around 26C. Thus, T. Rex was maintaining its temperature above ambient.
But large animals can maintain body temperature behaviorally—see above crocodiles. And very large animals have enough heat inertia to maintain themselves without resorting to metabolism.
To figure this out, they first looked at the climate zone range that modern animals handle. Mammals and birds can cope with anything between -13C-43.6C without difficulty and maintain a similar ratio. Looking at the modern animals that have lethal limits to their ranges, they applied that to the regions of the Cretaceous and decided that if the temperatures they had deduced were correct, there were no lethal limits to the possible ranges where T. Rex could live. This means that there might be T. Rex fossils up in Alaska waiting to be found.
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