From the endless annals of weakly based scientific truisms

Radiation exposure is the worst thing that ever happened, only apparently not really.  Wildlife near the truly awful Chernobyl disaster does surprisingly well, as does wildlife near the Fukushima evacuation zone.
What should we take from all this? That humans are more detrimental to animals' survival than nuclear radiation?
Not to mention human abandonment of their own pet animals.  And let me put in a word for the devastating impact of human poverty on both wild and domestic animals and, indeed, nature in general.  We're focusing on the wrong enemy here, as we so often do.

A sidenote on the subject of anti-science:  the level of public debate on vaccines is discouraging.  No wonder we have Michael Mann and Greta Thunberg.

6 comments:

ymarsakar said...

What should we take from all this? That humans are more detrimental to animals' survival than nuclear radiation?

Or the military classification over "nuclear" technology is more invasive and pervasive than anyone had ever thought....

Or in other words, they weren't telling the whole truth about radiation fallout half times.

After all, why could animals and plants grow just a few years after islands were nuked and places were irradiated?

A lot of this is bundled up with the 72 anomalies of water that modern scientists have been stumped by for some time now.

ymarsakar said...

And by grow, I don't mean mutated triple headed hammer head sharks. I mean non mutated growth.

People have watched too many sci fi shows and confused the fiction of space art with the concrete reality.

ymarsakar said...

Glenn Reynolds' knowledge if virology is behind mine. Not surprising, since much of humanity is backwards in many respects compared to Divine wisdom.

As far as I know, back when virology was first pioneered, people used electron microscopes or other observation tools to see certain apparently non living artifacts that they identified as viruses. They noticed these viruses, non living artifacts, being around living cells when people were sick. They then concluded that the viruses caused the sickness.

Wait a moment. Didn't people learn in high school or college that correlation is not causation?

So obviously they proceeded to human testing. Would putting these non living artifacts inside another person cause them to get sick? If yes, then this must be causing sickness?

Let's use some logic here, humans. If you put monkey, snake, and human blood into other humans, wouldn't they sometimes get sick and or die? Is this BLOOD then the cause of the sickness? Wouldn't that mean we should clean out the blood in the origin and they would get well too...

Come on, use that brain and logic people are so proud of.

So, further tested were conducted, on humans. What happened with the animal tests? Eh..., things weren't that regulated back then. No need to ask permission, of humans anyways. Animals are worth more when damaged. Oh that never happens people say?

Tuskegee... but that's actually pretty recent. People became more valuable over time due to the modern (serf/corporate slave) economy.

This phenomenon, mostly supported by the Veil, of Glenn and others getting the crackerbarrel bottom of intellectual discourse, and then taking this outlier to being representative of everybody else, is an interesting phenomenon. It reminds me of terrorism when they take people and say these are pro gun rights right wing militia terrorists, and then find out maybe it was Islamic jihad or some Left wing activist...

The point is, that extremist outliers are just that, outliers. They do not represent the statistical average or 68% normal curve. But when it plays to the prejudices of technocrafts or independent libertarians like Glenn R, then they easily accept it as indicative of... something. Something that reinforces their biases. Which is not his problem alone, it is humanity's general problem entirely.

A sidenote on the subject of anti-science: the level of public debate on vaccines is discouraging.

In so far as the Deep State and media gives you, yes. It's like saying the media picks the best 2nd Amendment defenses to fight against... no they do not. They cherry pick strawmen, and weak ones at that. Same with abortion. This behavior is present on both sides of factional disputes. It's a human condition, one more prevalent than virology and truer at that.

douglas said...

Most people have no clue how much radiation we're exposed to continually as a result of our natural surroundings (both cosmic and terrestrial), and the technology we use every day. The current education system isn't likely to help any, alas.

Texan99 said...

I've heard people talk about irradiated food as if the radiation were trapped in it and still emitting.

douglas said...

Don't tell them about the radiation emitted by their fancy granite countertops! They'll freak out.