Author: Art Diamond

During Black Death Only 7 of 21 Regions of Europe Had Catastrophic Decline in Agricultural Activity

(p. D4) In the mid-1300s, a species of bacteria spread by fleas and rats swept across Asia and Europe, causing deadly cases of bubonic plague. The “Black Death” is one of the most notorious pandemics in historical memory, with many experts estimating that it killed roughly 50 million Europeans, the majority of people across the continent.

“The data is sufficiently widespread and numerous to make it likely that the Black Death swept away around 60 percent of Europe’s population,” Ole Benedictow, a Norwegian historian and one of the leading experts on the plague, wrote in 2005. When Dr. Benedictow published “The Complete History of the Black Death” in 2021, he raised that estimate to 65 percent.

But those figures, based on historical documents from the time, greatly overestimate the true toll of the plague, according to a study published on Thursday [Feb. 10, 2022]. By analyzing ancient deposits of pollen as markers of agricultural activity, researchers from Germany found that the Black Death caused a patchwork of destruction. Some regions of Europe did indeed suffer devastating losses, but other regions held stable, and some even boomed.

. . .

Losing half the population would have turned many farms fallow. Without enough herders to tend livestock, pastures would have become overgrown. Shrubs and trees would have taken over, eventually replaced by mature forests.

If the Black Death did indeed cause such a shift, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues reasoned, they should be able to see it in the species of pollen that survived from the Middle Ages. Every year, plants release vast amounts of pollen into the air, and some of it ends up on the bottom of lakes and wetlands. Buried in the mud, the grains can survive sometimes for centuries.

To see what pollen had to say about the Black Death, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues picked out 261 sites across Europe — from Ireland and Spain in the west to Greece and Lithuania in the east — that held grains preserved from around 1250 to 1450.

In some regions, such as Greece and central Italy, the pollen told a story of devastation. Pollen from crops like wheat dwindled. Dandelions and other flowers in pastureland faded. Fast-growing trees like birch appeared, followed by slow-growing ones like oaks.

But that was hardly the rule across Europe. In fact, just seven out of 21 regions the researchers studied underwent a catastrophic shift. In other places, the pollen registered little change at all.

. . .

Monica Green, an independent historian based in Phoenix, speculated that the Black Death might have been caused by two strains of the bacteria Yersinia pestis, which could have caused different levels of devastation. Yersinia DNA collected from medieval skeletons hints at this possibility, she said.

In their study, Dr. Izdebski and his colleagues did not examine that possibility, but they did consider a number of other factors, including the climate and density of populations in different parts of Europe. But none accounted for the pattern they found.

“There is no simple explanation behind that, or even a combination of simple explanations,” Dr. Izdebski said.

. . .

“What we show is that there are a number of factors, and it’s not easy to predict from the beginning which factors will matter,” he said, referring to how viruses can spread. “You cannot assume one mechanism to work everywhere the same way.”

For the full essay see:

Carl Zimmer. “Questioning the Toll Of a 1300s Pandemic.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 15, 2022 [sic]): D4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay was updated Feb. 15, 2022 [sic], and has the title “Did the ‘Black Death’ Really Kill Half of Europe? New Research Says No.”)

The book cited above as over-estimating the death toll of the Black Death is:

Benedictow, Ole J. The Complete History of the Black Death. Martlesham, UK: Boydell Press, 2021.

The academic article co-authored by Izdebski and mentioned above is:

Izdebski, A., P. Guzowski, R. Poniat, L. Masci, J. Palli, C. Vignola, M. Bauch, C. Cocozza, R. Fernandes, F. C. Ljungqvist, T. Newfield, A. Seim, D. Abel-Schaad, F. Alba-Sánchez, L. Björkman, A. Brauer, A. Brown, S. Czerwiński, A. Ejarque, M. Fiłoc, A. Florenzano, E. D. Fredh, R. Fyfe, N. Jasiunas, P. Kołaczek, K. Kouli, R. Kozáková, M. Kupryjanowicz, P. Lagerås, M. Lamentowicz, M. Lindbladh, J. A. López-Sáez, R. Luelmo-Lautenschlaeger, K. Marcisz, F. Mazier, S. Mensing, A. M. Mercuri, K. Milecka, Y. Miras, A. M. Noryśkiewicz, E. Novenko, M. Obremska, S. Panajiotidis, M. L. Papadopoulou, A. Pędziszewska, S. Pérez-Díaz, G. Piovesan, A. Pluskowski, P. Pokorny, A. Poska, T. Reitalu, M. Rösch, L. Sadori, C. Sá Ferreira, D. Sebag, M. Słowiński, M. Stančikaitė, N. Stivrins, I. Tunno, S. Veski, A. Wacnik, and A. Masi. “Palaeoecological Data Indicates Land-Use Changes across Europe Linked to Spatial Heterogeneity in Mortality During the Black Death Pandemic.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 6, no. 3 (March 2022): 297-306.

So-Called “Progressives” Block Progress Toward School Choice

(p. A15) I was wrong to think that Democrats would support school choice to help their constituents out of poverty. Although polling consistently shows that a majority of minority parents want school choice, progressive politicians consistently oppose all such programs.

To understand why, consider who’s funding their campaigns: teachers unions. For unions, choice means competition, and urban public schools with low proficiency ratings can’t compete. Unions know the only way to keep their political power is to keep children trapped in failing schools. Give parents access to other educational options, and they’ll ditch the schools that take them for granted.

. . .

I have discussed school choice with Mr. Trump, and I’m encouraged by what he said. I’m likewise impressed by his actions to advance the cause in real time—namely, by endorsing several of the pro-school choice Republicans in Texas’s legislative primaries. If Mr. Trump uses his bully pulpit to build support for school choice across the country, as he did in Texas, I believe he’ll help improve the lives of many generations of Americans.

I’ve never given financial support to Mr. Trump’s campaign, and I don’t plan to. But on the issue I care about most deeply, the stakes are high.  . . .  . . . the choice is clear.

For the full commentary see:

Jeff Yass. “Trump Is Best for School Choice, Even if I Won’t Donate to Him.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, April 9, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 8, 2024, and has the title “Trump Is Best for School Choice, Even if I Won’t Donate to His Campaign.”)

Akunin Bravely Says Russians “Obediently Follow” the “Paranoia” of a “Deranged Dictator”

(p. A4) Hundreds of Russians packed an auditorium in central London on a recent warm evening to listen as Boris Akunin, the author of a wildly popular detective series, told them that when it came to the Ukraine war, “I believe that the actions of the Russian Army are criminal.”

Mr. Akunin’s series, set in late czarist times, made him rich and famous, but outspoken statements like that one have made him more infamous of late back home in Russia. The Kremlin recently labeled the author — who went into self-imposed exile in London a decade ago — a “terrorist” and effectively banned his works.

When President Vladimir V. Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mr. Akunin wrote on Facebook, “Russia is ruled by a psychologically deranged dictator and worst of all, it obediently follows his paranoia.” At that time, he began contemplating how cultural figures fleeing abroad might still reach their domestic audience and perhaps help to spur change at home. Being cut off from his own readers lent the project special urgency.

“I have to say, the amount of work and writing I’ve been doing over these two terrible years, never in my life have I written so much,” he told the audience members, who laughed when he said that a writing binge trumped a drinking binge. “It is a form of escapism.”

. . .

Born Grigory Chkhartishvili in Georgia, he grew up in Moscow, where his mother’s family were ardent Communists. As a boy, he once complained to his grandmother that he disliked porridge, and she told him: “You don’t have to like porridge, you have to eat it. You have to like Lenin and the Communist Party.”

. . .

Mr. Akunin’s lecture, on May 9 [2024], coincided with the release of the latest volume, “The Destruction and Resurrection of the Empire,” about the Lenin and Stalin years. His basic thesis is that Russia has considered centralized empire-building to be something sacred since the 15th century. The Ukraine war is Mr. Putin’s striving to do it again, he said.

. . .

In May [2024], he introduced an online platform where writers, filmmakers, theater directors, musicians and other artists could stream their work, charging viewers a small fee. He also expanded the website for selling his books to include many other authors banned in Russia. After he refused to stop selling “Heritage,” a new novel by the best-selling author Vladimir Sorokin, also living in exile, the site was blocked in Russia in late June.

For the full story see:

Neil MacFarquhar. “Exiled in London, but Still Focused on His Russian Audience.” The New York Times (Monday, July 15, 2024): A4.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed years, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 14, 2024, and has the title “From Exile in London, a Crime Novelist Works to Transform Russia.”)

Babies’ Curiosity Leads Them to Prefer Persons Who Inform

(p. C2) . . . Katarina Begus of Birkbeck, University of London and her colleagues . . . started out exploring the origins of curiosity. When grown-ups think that they are about to learn something new, their brains exhibit a pattern of activity called a theta wave. The researchers fitted out 45 11-month-old babies with little caps covered with electrodes to record brain activity. The researchers wanted to see if the babies would also produce theta waves when they thought that they might learn something new.

The babies saw two very similar-looking people interact with a familiar toy like a rubber duck. One experimenter pointed at the toy and said, “That’s a duck.” The other just pointed at the object and instead of naming it made a noise: She said “oooh” in an uninformative way.

Then the babies saw one of the experimenters pick up an unfamiliar gadget. You would expect that the person who told you the name of the duck could also tell you about this new thing. And, sure enough, when the babies saw the informative experimenter, their brains produced theta waves, as if they expected to learn something. On the other hand, you might expect that the experimenter who didn’t tell you anything about the duck would also be unlikely to help you learn more about the new object. Indeed, the babies didn’t produce theta waves when they saw this uninformative person.

. . .

Babies leap at the chance to learn something new—and can figure out who is likely to teach them. The babies did prefer the person in their own group, but that may have reflected curiosity, not bias. They thought that someone who spoke the same language could tell them the most about the world around them.

For the full commentary see:

Alison Gopnik. “Mind & Matter; Babies Show a Clear Bias—To Learn New Things.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016 [sic]): C2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Oct. 26, 2016 [sic], and has the same title as the print version.)

Begus’s co-authored academic paper is:

Begus, Katarina, Teodora Gliga, and Victoria Southgate. “Infants’ Preferences for Native Speakers Are Associated with an Expectation of Information.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 44 (2016): 12397-402.

Conservatives Are Better Than Liberals at “the Separation of Facts from Feelings”

(p. A13) I don’t know who’s going to win the presidential election, and neither do you. Neither, for that matter, does Nate Silver, notwithstanding his reputation as a political prognosticator. He is more accurately characterized as a forecaster, which is to say that he deals in probabilities, not outright predictions.

. . .

. . . since I first encountered his work in 2009, Mr. Silver has always struck me as an honest practitioner. Although he describes himself as a “center-left liberal,” he frequently provokes antagonism from fellow liberals when his data and analysis point in directions they’d rather not go.

. . .

Mr. Silver’s career as a political pundit is something of an accident. After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Chicago in 2000, he went to work as a KPMG consultant. Bored with his job, he started playing online poker, at first for fun. He says he “eventually deposited money at a real-money site and ran it up from 25 bucks to 15,000 bucks.” He quit KPMG and got a part-time job writing about baseball statistics, but 80% of his income came from poker winnings.

Then in 2006 Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which effectively banned online poker by making it unlawful for the sites to accept payments. “That killed my livelihood,” Mr. Silver says. “I started following politics. I had more time on my hands. I also wanted to see the people behind the bill ousted from office, which they were.” Its primary sponsor, Rep. Jim Leach (R., Iowa), lost his bid for a 16th term.

Mr. Silver still plays poker semiprofessionally—in person—and has earned $855,800 in tournaments, according to the Hendon Mob database. He has a new book out next week, “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” in which he interviews professional gamblers, venture capitalists, adventurers and others known for their “mastery of risk” and develops a philosophical framework around their insights.

The book touches only lightly on politics, but some of its concepts have obvious application. One of them is “decoupling,” which means, roughly, thinking with analytical detachment, including the separation of facts from feelings. Journalists used to call it objectivity, an aspiration that has fallen out of fashion in recent decades, especially in the Trump era.

A failure to decouple explains the widespread denial of Mr. Biden’s decline in the months before his withdrawal. Clear evidence became mistakable when distorted through the lenses of partisanship, ideology and antipathy toward Mr. Trump. There is no reason to believe people on the left are intrinsically more prone to this sort of error, but Mr. Silver thinks that “liberal bubbles are bigger than conservative bubbles.” Domination of big cities and influential institutions makes it easier for those on the left simply to ignore opposing views.

For the full interview see:

James Taranto. “The Weekend Interview; President Kamala Harris? What Are the Odds?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug 10, 2024): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date August 9, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “new book” by Silver mentioned above is:

Silver, Nate. On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything. New York: The Penguin Press, 2024.

Governments Often Deliver “Horrible Ideas Executed Terribly”

(p. A15) After the $320 million floating fiasco ran aground, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance tweeted: “The Gaza pier is a symbol of the Biden administration. A horrible idea executed terribly.”

. . .

Government is bad for your health. Whose idea was it to pay for gain-of-function research in Wuhan? Remember when the Food and Drug Administration delayed the rollout of Covid tests by, among other things, requiring applications on CD-ROMs? In 2020! The FDA interference, according to a Yale Law Journal 2020 Forum, was “possibly the deadliest regulatory overreach in U.S. history.”

. . .

Between the Covid-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan, the Paycheck Protection Program and the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program, the FBI reports almost $300 billion in fraud. It was so easy, tens of thousands reportedly filed applications from jail.

. . .

Why are governments so bad at execution? Accountability and incentives. There are no prices or profits, just elusive cost benefits estimated in simple spreadsheets any first-year investment banker could fudge.

But these public-works projects are well intentioned, right? Hardly. Good luck finding all the hidden agendas, political back scratching and paid-off donors. Or, in the case of student loans, bribes to voters. Getting re-elected is how politicians measure the success of government work vs. private-sector profits.

Those profits from each private-sector project or product provide capital that pays for the next important project. In perpetuity. Profits also provide guidance to markets that fund great ideas and kill off bad ones. It’s Darwinism vs. kleptocracy. Sadly, politicians and industrial policy will always fund dumb things like electric-vehicle chargers, high-speed rail and Neom—horrible ideas executed terribly.

For the full commentary see:

Andy Kessler. “Your Government at Work.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, June 10, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 9, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

U.N. Official Says Criminal Attacks on Gaza Aid Convoys May “Undermine Everything We’re Trying to Do”

(p. 9) A group of Palestinian men approached a United Nations warehouse in central Gaza last week and demanded access to aid stored inside. The gang wasn’t interested in food, fuel or medicine. It wanted something it considered far more valuable: contraband cigarettes hidden in the humanitarian cargo.

The incident, described by a U.N. official, is emblematic of a significant new impediment to aid deliveries in the enclave. Rampant cigarette smuggling—fueled by high prices for tobacco—has become the latest manifestation of a breakdown in law and order that is slowing the delivery of lifesaving assistance.

Aid trucks and storage depots have become targets for Palestinian smugglers seeking to retrieve illicit smokes stashed inside shipments by their accomplices, say U.N. and Israeli officials. Other local criminals are also attacking vehicles they suspect have cigarettes hidden somewhere on board, they say.

Cigarettes sell for as much as $25 apiece in isolated Gaza, so getting hold of even a pack can be enormously profitable.

. . .

Criminal attacks on aid convoys have become so severe that over a thousand truckloads of aid have been left sitting on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel. Even a daily Israeli pause in fighting along a critical supply route hasn’t been enough to get aid groups to move shipments. “This is threatening to undermine everything we’re trying to do,” a U.N. official said.

For the full story see:

Stephen Kalin, Dov Lieber and Fatima AbdulKarim. “In Gaza, $25 Cigarettes Make Aid Trucks Targets.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, June 20, 2024): A7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 19, 2024, and has the title “At $25 Each, Cigarettes Are Turning Gaza Aid Trucks Into Targets.”)

Pious Climate “Scare Tactics” Lead to Despondency and Bad Policy

(p. A15) Whatever happened to polar bears? They used to be all climate campaigners could talk about, but now they’re essentially absent from headlines. Over the past 20 years, climate activists have elevated various stories of climate catastrophe, then quietly dropped them without apology when the opposing evidence becomes overwhelming. The only constant is the scare tactics.

. . .

After years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible to ignore the mountain of evidence showing that the global polar-bear population has increased substantially.

. . .

For the past three years the Great Barrier Reef has had more coral cover than at any point since records began in 1986, with 2024 setting a new record.

. . .

Today, killer heat waves are the new climate horror story. In July President Biden claimed “extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the United States.”

He is wrong by a factor of 25. While extreme heat kills nearly 6,000 Americans each year, cold kills 152,000, of which 12,000 die from extreme cold. Even including deaths from moderate heat, the toll comes to less than 10,000. Despite rising temperatures, age-standardized extreme-heat deaths have actually declined in the U.S. by almost 10% a decade and globally by even more, largely because the world is growing more prosperous. That allows more people to afford air-conditioners and other technology that protects them from the heat.

. . .

Scare tactics leave everyone—especially young people—distressed and despondent. Fear leads to poor policy choices that further frustrate the public. And the ever-changing narrative of disasters erodes public trust.

Telling half-truths while piously pretending to “follow the science” benefits activists with their fundraising, generates clicks for media outlets, and helps climate-concerned politicians rally their bases. But it leaves all of us poorly informed and worse off.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Polar Bears, Dead Coral and Other Climate Fictions.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 31, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

In “An Entrenched Echo Chamber” the Highly Credentialed Slow Progress Toward an Alzheimer’s Cure

Centralized research funding (often centralized by government agencies) reduces the pluralism of ideas and methods that often lead to breakthrough innovations. The story of Alzheimer’s research, quoted below, is a dramatic case-in-point.

A secondary related lesson from the story quoted below is that Dr. Thambisetty, one of the outsiders struggling to make a difference, is trying to evade the enormous costs of mandated phase 3 clinical trials, by only investigating drugs that already have been approved by the FDA for use against other conditions. With his severely limited funding, and the huge costs of mandated phase 3 clinical trials, this may be a shrewd strategy for Thambisetty, but notice that by following it, he will never explore all the as-yet-unapproved chemicals that might include the best magic bullet against Alzheimer’s.)

(p. A25) What if a preposterous failed treatment for Covid-19 — the arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine — could successfully treat another dreaded disease, Alzheimer’s?

Dr. Madhav Thambisetty, a neurologist at the National Institute on Aging, thinks the drug’s suppression of inflammation, commonly associated with neurodegenerative disorders, might provide surprising benefits for dementia.

It’s an intriguing idea. Unfortunately, we won’t know for quite a while, if ever, whether Dr. Thambisetty is right. That’s because unconventional ideas that do not offer fealty to the dominant approach to study and treat Alzheimer’s — what’s known as the amyloid hypothesis — often find themselves starved for funds and scientific mind share.

Such shortsighted rigidity may have slowed progress toward a cure — a tragedy for a disease projected to affect more than 11 million people in the United States by 2040.

. . .

. . ., in 2006, an animal experiment published in the journal Nature identified a specific type of amyloid protein as the first substance found in brain tissue to directly cause symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s. Top scientists called it a breakthrough that provided a key target for treatments. The paper became one of the most cited in the field, and funds to explore similar proteins skyrocketed.

. . .

In 2022, my investigation in Science showed evidence that the famous 2006 experiment that helped push forward the amyloid hypothesis used falsified data. On June 24 [2024], after most of its authors conceded technical images were doctored, the paper was finally retracted.

. . .

In reporting for my forthcoming book about the disturbing state of play in Alzheimer’s research, I’ve spoken to many scientists pursuing alternatives. Dr. Thambisetty, for example, compares brain tissues from people who died in their 30s or 40s with and without genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s. He then compares these findings to tissues from deceased Alzheimer’s patients and people who didn’t have the disease. Where changes overlap, drug targets might emerge. Rather than develop new drugs through lab and animal testing, followed by clinical trials that cost vast sums — a process that can take decades — he examines treatments already approved as reasonably safe and effective for other conditions. Patent protections have lapsed for many, making them inexpensive.

Experiments have also begun to test the weight-loss drug semaglutide (sold as Wegovy, among other brands). Researchers hope that results due in 2026 will show that its anti-inflammatory effects — like Dr. Thambisetty’s idea about hydroxychloroquine — slow cognitive decline.

Ruth Itzhaki, a research scientist at the University of Oxford, stirred curiosity in the 1990s when she shared evidence tying Alzheimer’s to herpesvirus — a scourge spread by oral or genital contact and often resulting in painful infections. For years, powerful promoters of the amyloid hypothesis ignored or dismissed the infection hypothesis for Alzheimer’s, effectively rendering it invisible, Dr. Itzhaki said with exasperation. Research suggests that viruses may hide undetected in organs, including the brain, for years, causing symptoms divergent from the original infection.

. . .

Sometimes a disease stems from a single clear-cut origin, such as genetic mutations that cause deadly sickle cell disease. “But very few diseases of aging have just one cause. It’s just not logical,” said Dr. Matthew Schrag, a neurologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Working independently of his university, he discovered the 2006 research image manipulations.

. . .

“There is an entrenched echo chamber that involves a lot of big names,” Dr. Schrag said. “It’s time for the field to move on.”

For the full commentary see:

Charles Piller. “All the Alzheimer’s Research We Didn’t Do.” The New York Times (Friday, July 12, 2024): A25.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 7, 2024, and has the same title as the print version. Where there are a couple of small differences in wording, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Piller’s paper in Science, mentioned above, is:

Piller, Charles. “Blots on a Field?” Science 377, no. 6604 (July 2022): 358-63.

Piller’s commentary is related to his forthcoming book:

Piller, Charles. Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s. New York: Atria/One Signal Publishers, Forthcoming on February 4, 2025.

“Heavily Subsidized Renewables” Mostly Add to Total Energy Consumed Instead of Replacing Fossil Fuels

(p. A17) Despite extravagant hype, the green-energy transition from fossil fuels isn’t happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies is too costly. We need to change policy direction entirely.

. . .

Studies show that when countries add more renewable energy, it does little to replace coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of green energy, less than one unit displaces fossil-fuel energy. The Biden administration finds that while renewable energy sources worldwide will dramatically increase up to 2050, that won’t be enough even to begin replacing fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.

. . .

The current plan underpinning the green-energy transition mostly insists that pushing heavily subsidized renewables will magically make fossil fuels disappear. But such expectations are “misleading,” as a 2019 academic study concluded. During past additions of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources.”

What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that happened over the past five centuries, such as when farmers went from plowing fields with animals to tractors powered by fossil fuels. Invariably, the new energy source would be better or cheaper.

. . .

The way to achieve an eventual transition is to improve green-energy alternatives. That means investing much more in research and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, as well as storage, nuclear energy, and other possible solutions. Bringing the costs of low-CO2₂energy sources below those of fossil fuels is the only way that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not merely by a few wealthy countries.

When politicians say the green transition is here, they are really asking voters to support throwing more good money after bad. We need to be smarter.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “The ‘Green Energy Transition’ That Wasn’t.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 25, 2024): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date June 24, 2024, and has the same title as the print version.)

The “recent research” mentioned above is:

Rather, Kashif Nesar, and Mantu Kumar Mahalik. “Investigating the Assumption of Perfect Displacement for Global Energy Transition: Panel Evidence from 73 Economies.” Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy (2023) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-023-02689-8.

The “2019 academic study” mentioned above is:

York, Richard, and Shannon Elizabeth Bell. “Energy Transitions or Additions?: Why a Transition from Fossil Fuels Requires More Than the Growth of Renewable Energy.” Energy Research & Social Science 51 (May 2019): 40-43.

The study of 14 shifts in type of energy that was mentioned above is:

Fouquet, Roger. “The Slow Search for Solutions: Lessons from Historical Energy Transitions by Sector and Service.” Energy Policy 38, no. 11 (Nov. 2010): 6586-96.

“Large Citizen Science Projects” Use Data Mining to Explore Risk Factors for Canine Cancers

(p. 2) Every dog has its day, and July 14, 2004, belonged to a boxer named Tasha. On that date, the National Institutes of Health announced that the barrel-chested, generously jowled canine had become the first dog to have her complete genome sequenced. “And everything has kind of exploded since then,” said Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute, who was part of the research team.

. . .

In the 2000s, scientists identified the genetic underpinnings of a variety of canine traits, including curly coats and bobbed tails. They pinpointed mutations that could explain why white boxers were prone to deafness. And they found that corgis, basset hounds and dachshunds owed their stubby legs to a genetic aberration in a family of genes that also regulates bone development in humans.

These early studies “highlighted both the potential that we could learn from dogs, but also that we were going to need bigger sample sizes to do it really well,” said Elinor Karlsson, a geneticist at UMass Chan Medical School and the Broad Institute. And so, researchers began creating large citizen science projects, seeking DNA samples and data from dogs across the United States.

Pet owners rose to the challenge. The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, which began recruiting in 2012, has been following more than 3,000 dogs in an effort to identify genetic and environmental risk factors for cancer, which is especially common in the breed. Since 2019, the Dog Aging Project, a long-term study of health and longevity, has enrolled nearly 50,000 dogs.

Dr. Karlsson’s own project, Darwin’s Dogs, is at 44,000 canines and counting. (Some 4,000 have had their genomes sequenced.) Researchers are mining the data for clues about bone cancer, compulsive behavior and other traits.

For the full story see:

Emily Anthes. “Scientists’ New Best Friends.” The New York Times, Pets Special Section (Sunday, June 30, 2024): 2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “How Science Went to the Dogs (and Cats).”)