Today is the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
It is not over. Chernobyl spread radioactive particles across Europe and beyond. The fire in reactor #4 burned for over a month, releasing massive amounts of radionuclides which then would fallout and embed into the #ecosystem.
37 years later we still find food contaminated with Chernobyl fallout every year. Often with cesium-137 which is very adept at transporting in an ecosystem once the particle has deposited from the fallout cloud.
Just because you, as an individual, appear to have escaped harm, does not mean that your individual experience is equivalent to a scientific study.
Detecting the existence of genetic damage from radiation exposure in wild animal populations is difficult. Most present as stillbirths or mutations that never survive to adulthood & go unobserved.
Similarly radiation exposure in humans may trigger higher ...
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The presence of animal life near Chernobyl is not necessarily conclusive evidence of a lack of harm from radiation exposure. Long term radiation damage in wild animal populations is hard to track.
Radiation exposure in Russian soldiers deployed around Ukraine's radioactive sites has not been reported independently of Russian state officials. Their data is suspect.
I remain skeptical of narratives minimizing the dangers of radiation contamination. Especially if they come from Russia.
While the probability of cancer, sterility, etc may decline over time, that's not how humans evaluate risk. No one wants to be that 1 in 100 case of cancer.
Moreover, too many disinformation narratives originate from the media misreading scientific studies, and I'm very reluctant to add to existing malign influence campaigns saying ...
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I look forward to nuclear fusion development in a peaceful world.
Nuclear reactors are vulnerabilities in an unstable world with genocidal nihilists running a rogue state.
Putin's forces in Ukraine deliberately shelled nuclear power stations. They rely on electricity to operate cooling systems. The electrical grid in Ukraine is repeatedly attacked by Iranian drones.
Humans, like all peak predators, rely on an incredibly complex & diverse ecosystem and a collapse of that complexity may risk human survival as a species.
After the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo, nuclear fission was seen as a viable alternative. Several nuclear fission plants were launched at public expense.
As part of the nuclear disarmament effort, the oil industry inserted disinformation campaigns to erode support for nuclear fission reactors.
Helped by movies like "The Day After", "Silkwood", "The Testament", "Threads", & "China Syndrome", public sentiment turned away from nuclear towards...
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....subsidizing domestic oil production & harmful practices like fracking.
Public subsidies helped #KochNetwork grow into the politically powerful climate denialist machine it is now.
Accidents like 3 Mile Island & Chernobyl accelerated the rejection of nuclear fission plants & nuclear energy research shrank in hopes of slowing nuclear proliferation. It was only partially successful. North Korea. Iran. Pakistan.
The oil industry continues its malign influence campaigns against any...
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.... form of energy that threatens its hegemony. Including amplifying Fukushima. Denigrating hydroelectric dams & lithium mining. Wind, solar, & wave are relentlessly mocked as nonviable in shows like Yellowstone
The disinformation includes magnifying the dangers of military attacks on Ukraine's nuclear fission plants
Like OPEC and #KochNetwork, Russia wants to keep the globe addicted to its planet-frying toxic product; oil.
The attacks on Zaporizhzhia may have been part of that strategy
I've just read a very interesting — but disturbing — essay about the direct connection of historical colonialism to deforestation, desertification, pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Ugh.
My first reaction is to be appalled and disgusted (once again) with the incredibly poor "stewardship" shown by European conquerors of indigenous peoples. Time and time again, these "civilized" invaders proved far less capable of effectively managing precious natural environments and resources than had the original inhabitants. Damn them!
And my second reaction is to be fascinated by the suggestion that "Anthropocene" may not in fact be a suitable name for the geological epoch we entered at some point in the past few hundred years. This is because the prefix "anthro" suggests that ALL humans are responsible for the changes wrought by global industrialization, when in truth it was, and is, only a mere sliver of the population, that good old 1%, who are behind the drive to dominate nature and exploit the environment at whatever cost, so long as they can profit from it and solidify their positions at the top.
Here's a short excerpt which amplifies this point...
While the scientific community has been debating over which year the Anthropocene Epoch began, several Indigenous and Black scholars have shot back against the term.
The problem, some scholars say, is that the term assumes the climate crisis is caused by universal human nature, rather than the actions of a minority of colonialists, capitalists, and patriarchs. And the implication that the Earth was stable until around 1950, when the ‘Anthropocene’ supposedly began, denies the history of people who have been exploited by those systems for centuries.
Indigenous scholars have further addressed how the term stands for colonialist ideologies that sever the deep ties and interconnections between humans, plants, animals, and the soil.
“Instead of treating the Earth like a precious entity that gives us life, Western colonial legacies operate within a paradigm that assumes they can extract its natural resources as much as they want, and the Earth will regenerate itself,” said Hadeel Assali, a lecturer and postdoctoral scholar.
I hope you'll read the full essay, and then let me know what you think about its message.
Republican billionaire donors & Putin share the same nostalgia.
They miss their serfs & slaves.
They miss that master/slave gangrene from days of yore.
In their heart of hearts, they harbor "the peculiar institution" still.
"...But slavery is another matter -- the most vicious habit humans fall into and the hardest to break. It starts up in every new land and it's terribly hard to root out. After a culture falls ill of it, it gets rooted in the economic system...
...and laws, in men's habits and attitudes. You abolish it; you drive it underground -- there it lurks, ready to spring up again, in the minds of people who think it is their 'natural' right to own other people. You can't reason with them; you can kill them but you can't change their minds."
Heinlein
Too many Republicans buy into the "natural law" nonsense of Leo Strauss & Harry Jaffa.