A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Diplomats and scientists are descending on the French capital Monday. They’ll try to save the world.

INTERPIXELS/Shutterstock

On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video below, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works.

The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds.

But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security.

Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement.

Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail.

Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go.

So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations.

At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1NyHSsD

Diplomats and scientists are descending on the French capital Monday. They’ll try to save the world.

INTERPIXELS/Shutterstock

On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video below, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works.

The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds.

But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security.

Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement.

Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail.

Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go.

So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations.

At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned.

from Climate Desk http://ift.tt/1NyHSsD

ESOC ground operations team ready for LPF

A happy and confident Ground Operations Team ready for LISA Pathfinder launch at ESOC! L-R (seated): Daniel Firre, our LPF Ground Operations Manager, Yves Doat, Guillermo Lorenzo, Fabienne Delhaise (standing): Gabriela Ravera, Justin Howard

LISA Pathfinder will ride into space on board a Vega rocket, expected to lift off at 04:15 GMT on 2 December from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou. LISA Pathfinder will separate from the final stage at around 06:00 GMT, moments before transmitting its first signals to the ground.

This is the team responsible for 'Acquisition of Signal' (AOS) - the first report from space from LPF. And it will be a challenge!

LISA Pathfinder Ground Ops Team Credit: ESA - CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

On launch day, grabbing the first signal from LISA Pathfinder will be particularly complicated because the spacecraft uses higher-frequency ‘X-band’ radio signals for its communications. This produces a much narrower beam than the traditional lower-frequency S-band radio waves normally used for missions to low Earth orbit.

“X-band is typical for a craft that will voyage 1.5 million kilometres from Earth,” says ground operations engineer Fabienne Delhaise, “but is not common for satellites in low orbit, which is where LISA Pathfinder starts out.”

She adds:

This means our ground stations must point especially accurately and use a special adapter to catch signals just after separation, when the craft is still near Earth.

An even more challenging part of the complex LEOP period will occur between four and ten days after launch, when the ground station teams, together with flight dynamics experts, will exercise carefully prepared strategies to re-acquire the spacecraft’s downlink signal after each of the apogee-raising manoeuvres. These may generate very large dispersions, meaning that the stations may not know precisely where to point to re-establish communications.

Later, once the LPF orbit orbit rises above about 45 000 km, mission controllers will use ESA’s powerful deep-space radio dishes in Australia, Spain and Argentina, which are designed just for such distant signalling.

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/21k4pxx
v

A happy and confident Ground Operations Team ready for LISA Pathfinder launch at ESOC! L-R (seated): Daniel Firre, our LPF Ground Operations Manager, Yves Doat, Guillermo Lorenzo, Fabienne Delhaise (standing): Gabriela Ravera, Justin Howard

LISA Pathfinder will ride into space on board a Vega rocket, expected to lift off at 04:15 GMT on 2 December from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou. LISA Pathfinder will separate from the final stage at around 06:00 GMT, moments before transmitting its first signals to the ground.

This is the team responsible for 'Acquisition of Signal' (AOS) - the first report from space from LPF. And it will be a challenge!

LISA Pathfinder Ground Ops Team Credit: ESA - CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

On launch day, grabbing the first signal from LISA Pathfinder will be particularly complicated because the spacecraft uses higher-frequency ‘X-band’ radio signals for its communications. This produces a much narrower beam than the traditional lower-frequency S-band radio waves normally used for missions to low Earth orbit.

“X-band is typical for a craft that will voyage 1.5 million kilometres from Earth,” says ground operations engineer Fabienne Delhaise, “but is not common for satellites in low orbit, which is where LISA Pathfinder starts out.”

She adds:

This means our ground stations must point especially accurately and use a special adapter to catch signals just after separation, when the craft is still near Earth.

An even more challenging part of the complex LEOP period will occur between four and ten days after launch, when the ground station teams, together with flight dynamics experts, will exercise carefully prepared strategies to re-acquire the spacecraft’s downlink signal after each of the apogee-raising manoeuvres. These may generate very large dispersions, meaning that the stations may not know precisely where to point to re-establish communications.

Later, once the LPF orbit orbit rises above about 45 000 km, mission controllers will use ESA’s powerful deep-space radio dishes in Australia, Spain and Argentina, which are designed just for such distant signalling.

from Rocket Science » Rocket Science http://ift.tt/21k4pxx
v

Trial of Mining CEO Blankenship: Quotes from Week 8 [The Pump Handle]

The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is in its eighth week. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette continues to provide updates from the courtroom, but far fewer now that most of the action is behind closed doors where the jury is deliberating.

Ward explains that Blankenship’s attorneys have yet again asked “the judge to declare the jurors deadlocked and order a mistrial.” Judge Irene Berger disagreed. Ward writes:

“Noting that the trial was lengthy and involved complicated charges, Berger said that the jury’s deliberation time to date was not unreasonable. ‘I think the jury has been stellar. They’re continuing apparently to talk.’”

Some of the families of the Upper Big Branch (UBB) miners share the judge’s patience. Ward quotes the sister of Howard “Boone” Payne, 53, who was killed in the mine explosion:

“We’ve been waiting for five and a half years, if it takes another couple weeks, that’s all right. We want justice. We don’t care how long it takes.”

The sister of UBB coal miner Dean Jones, 50, told Ward:

“I continue to believe in the process. I would’ve liked to have been done before Thanksgiving, but there are plenty of things to be thankful for.”

The Charleston Gazette’s Ward also recapped the written notes sent by the jury to Judge Berger. Early in their deliberations they asked: “how long do we deliberate.”

The jurors met all day on Monday and Tuesday of the holiday week until Judge Irene Berger dismissed them. She told them:

“Have a good and restful weekend and happy Thanksgiving to all of you.”

The jurors are scheduled to resume their deliberations on Monday, November 30 at the federal courthouse in Charleston, WV.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1MIA9Vr

The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is in its eighth week. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette continues to provide updates from the courtroom, but far fewer now that most of the action is behind closed doors where the jury is deliberating.

Ward explains that Blankenship’s attorneys have yet again asked “the judge to declare the jurors deadlocked and order a mistrial.” Judge Irene Berger disagreed. Ward writes:

“Noting that the trial was lengthy and involved complicated charges, Berger said that the jury’s deliberation time to date was not unreasonable. ‘I think the jury has been stellar. They’re continuing apparently to talk.’”

Some of the families of the Upper Big Branch (UBB) miners share the judge’s patience. Ward quotes the sister of Howard “Boone” Payne, 53, who was killed in the mine explosion:

“We’ve been waiting for five and a half years, if it takes another couple weeks, that’s all right. We want justice. We don’t care how long it takes.”

The sister of UBB coal miner Dean Jones, 50, told Ward:

“I continue to believe in the process. I would’ve liked to have been done before Thanksgiving, but there are plenty of things to be thankful for.”

The Charleston Gazette’s Ward also recapped the written notes sent by the jury to Judge Berger. Early in their deliberations they asked: “how long do we deliberate.”

The jurors met all day on Monday and Tuesday of the holiday week until Judge Irene Berger dismissed them. She told them:

“Have a good and restful weekend and happy Thanksgiving to all of you.”

The jurors are scheduled to resume their deliberations on Monday, November 30 at the federal courthouse in Charleston, WV.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1MIA9Vr

Were dinosaur nests buried or open?

This is the fossilized nest of a birdlike dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, from China. A University of Calgary team studied fragile dinosaurs nests by examining fossilized dinosaur eggs. Image via Kohei Tanaka.

In 2013, a team at the University of Calgary led by Darla Zelenitsky announced that a small, birdlike North American dinosaur incubated its eggs in a way similar to brooding birds. That research bolstered the evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs. This week, her team announced recent research on fossilized eggs by one of Zelenitsky’s students, Kohei Tanaka. Most of the dinosaurs he studied appear to have buried their eggs as crocodiles do today. Others built open nests on the ground, like today’s birds. The team concludes that the different nesting styles of dinosaurs may have contributed to the evolutionary success of birds.

The challenge, said Kohei Tanaka, has been that:

Dinosaur nest structures and nesting materials are usually not preserved in the fossil record. In the past, this lack of data has made working with dinosaur eggs and eggshells extremely difficult to determine how dinosaurs built their nests and how the eggs were incubated for hatching young.

These scientists examined tiny pores on eggshell surfaces, and were able to show a link between eggshell porosity and the different nesting types.

Under Zelenitsky’s supervision, Tanaka conducted an in-depth study of the egg porosity of 30 different dinosaur species.

He compared those results with the egg porosity of 120 species of birds and crocodiles, which are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs.

Eggshell fragments from a birdlike dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous of China. Image via Kohei Tanaka.

He found that most of the dinosaur eggs were highly porous, suggesting that they buried their eggs to incubate them. Writing at at the AAAS’s sciencemag.org, Sid Perkins explained why:

In crocodiles’ buried nests, the heat needed to incubate the eggs comes from decomposition of overlying organic matter or the sunlight absorbed by the soil. Plus, in buried nests airflow is somewhat limited, thus requiring eggs to be relatively porous to help increase the flow of oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the eggs. But birds that brood in open nests can get by laying eggs with fewer or smaller pores.

Perkins also explained that, although most dinosaur eggs were buried, this study suggests that:

… some of the dinosaur species in one group — a subset of well-evolved theropods considered to be the closest relatives of modern-day birds — laid low-porosity eggs, which suggests they incubated their eggs in open nests.

According to a statement from the team:

The study’s results show that most dinosaurs, including the long-necked sauropods, primitive meat-eating theropods and possibly plant-eating ornithischians, produced low porosity eggshells and therefore were highly likely to burry their eggs in nests much like their crocodile predecessors.

Advanced theropods like the maniraptorans, featured high porosity eggshells, suggesting that they laid and incubated their eggs in open nests in the similar fashion as their most closely related living birds.

The researchers concluded that it was probably not until modern-looking birds that open nests with fully exposed eggs came to be, meaning that there was a shift in the type of nest and probably incubation style of dinosaurs during their evolution toward birds. Referring to birds as the most diverse living species with more than 10,000 unique types, Zelenitsky said:

Because buried nests needed to be built and incubated on the ground, open nesting and brooding may have allowed advanced theropods – including birds – to incubate eggs in a greater diversity of locations and occasionally away from ground predators, potentially contributing to their evolutionary success.

With a large amount of data gathered though Tanaka’s diligent work on the eggs of living and fossils animals, we plan to dig even deeper on new questions such as how long it took for dinosaurs to hatch their eggs.

Artist’s concept of a duckbill dinosaur (left) next to its eggs buried in the ground. On the right, a birdlike oviraptorid dinosaur incubates its eggs in an open nest. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi via sciencemag.org

Bottom line: Scientists at the University of Calgary this week announced results of a study of fossilized dinosaur eggs. Measurements of the amount and size of tiny pores on the eggs’ surfaces revealed that most dinosaurs in the study did bury their nests as crocodiles do, but some left them open and exposed, like modern birds.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1QKUQ70

This is the fossilized nest of a birdlike dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous, from China. A University of Calgary team studied fragile dinosaurs nests by examining fossilized dinosaur eggs. Image via Kohei Tanaka.

In 2013, a team at the University of Calgary led by Darla Zelenitsky announced that a small, birdlike North American dinosaur incubated its eggs in a way similar to brooding birds. That research bolstered the evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs. This week, her team announced recent research on fossilized eggs by one of Zelenitsky’s students, Kohei Tanaka. Most of the dinosaurs he studied appear to have buried their eggs as crocodiles do today. Others built open nests on the ground, like today’s birds. The team concludes that the different nesting styles of dinosaurs may have contributed to the evolutionary success of birds.

The challenge, said Kohei Tanaka, has been that:

Dinosaur nest structures and nesting materials are usually not preserved in the fossil record. In the past, this lack of data has made working with dinosaur eggs and eggshells extremely difficult to determine how dinosaurs built their nests and how the eggs were incubated for hatching young.

These scientists examined tiny pores on eggshell surfaces, and were able to show a link between eggshell porosity and the different nesting types.

Under Zelenitsky’s supervision, Tanaka conducted an in-depth study of the egg porosity of 30 different dinosaur species.

He compared those results with the egg porosity of 120 species of birds and crocodiles, which are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs.

Eggshell fragments from a birdlike dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous of China. Image via Kohei Tanaka.

He found that most of the dinosaur eggs were highly porous, suggesting that they buried their eggs to incubate them. Writing at at the AAAS’s sciencemag.org, Sid Perkins explained why:

In crocodiles’ buried nests, the heat needed to incubate the eggs comes from decomposition of overlying organic matter or the sunlight absorbed by the soil. Plus, in buried nests airflow is somewhat limited, thus requiring eggs to be relatively porous to help increase the flow of oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the eggs. But birds that brood in open nests can get by laying eggs with fewer or smaller pores.

Perkins also explained that, although most dinosaur eggs were buried, this study suggests that:

… some of the dinosaur species in one group — a subset of well-evolved theropods considered to be the closest relatives of modern-day birds — laid low-porosity eggs, which suggests they incubated their eggs in open nests.

According to a statement from the team:

The study’s results show that most dinosaurs, including the long-necked sauropods, primitive meat-eating theropods and possibly plant-eating ornithischians, produced low porosity eggshells and therefore were highly likely to burry their eggs in nests much like their crocodile predecessors.

Advanced theropods like the maniraptorans, featured high porosity eggshells, suggesting that they laid and incubated their eggs in open nests in the similar fashion as their most closely related living birds.

The researchers concluded that it was probably not until modern-looking birds that open nests with fully exposed eggs came to be, meaning that there was a shift in the type of nest and probably incubation style of dinosaurs during their evolution toward birds. Referring to birds as the most diverse living species with more than 10,000 unique types, Zelenitsky said:

Because buried nests needed to be built and incubated on the ground, open nesting and brooding may have allowed advanced theropods – including birds – to incubate eggs in a greater diversity of locations and occasionally away from ground predators, potentially contributing to their evolutionary success.

With a large amount of data gathered though Tanaka’s diligent work on the eggs of living and fossils animals, we plan to dig even deeper on new questions such as how long it took for dinosaurs to hatch their eggs.

Artist’s concept of a duckbill dinosaur (left) next to its eggs buried in the ground. On the right, a birdlike oviraptorid dinosaur incubates its eggs in an open nest. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi via sciencemag.org

Bottom line: Scientists at the University of Calgary this week announced results of a study of fossilized dinosaur eggs. Measurements of the amount and size of tiny pores on the eggs’ surfaces revealed that most dinosaurs in the study did bury their nests as crocodiles do, but some left them open and exposed, like modern birds.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1QKUQ70

Natick Researcher Develops Turkey Bacon, Turkey Jerky

Tom Yang, a food technologist at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, is developing new turkey bacon, as shown here, and turkey jerky products for the warfighter. He is also working on a new version of hash browns with bacon, as shown here. The new, healthier version has osmotic beef that tastes like bacon but is pork-free. Photo by David Kamm, NSRDEC

It seems appropriate to discuss turkey and good nutrition the day after Thanksgiving. We found this gem of an article and wanted to share the great news, that more nutricious turkey jerky and turkey bacon is coming your way, thanks to Dr. Tom Yang.

By Jane Benson, NSRDEC Public Affairs

Natick researcher Dr. Tom Yang wants to talk turkey.

Yang is a food technologist in the Combat Feeding Directorate at the U.S. Army Natick soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, or NSRDEC. He is working on healthier forms of jerky and bacon made from turkey that he believes soldiers will gobble up.

Yang has been experimenting with osmotic meat technology, which was originally developed in France, to develop the new turkey jerky and turkey bacon products that taste great but are much lower in salt and fat.

The turkey, osmotic version of jerky stays moist and avoids the texture problems of commercial jerky, which can become brittle. It is also higher in protein. The turkey version of bacon allows all soldiers to enjoy bacon anywhere in the world because it does not contain any pork.

“This is new technology, and it is very energy efficient and is inexpensive,” Yang said. “The technology uses a principle called osmosis. So what we have now is a semi-dried meat. It has much less salt and stays moist.”

During the process, the meat is ground and made into a paste. It is then extruded onto a sheet, sandwiched between two layers of paper and put through a conveyor.

“The conveyor will take the sheet into an osmotic tank, which contains a high concentration of non-sugar solution,” Yang said. “Ninety-two to ninety-five percent of moisture will migrate from the meat into the solution. The whole process takes place at refrigeration temperature so any heat-sensitive nutrients will not be destroyed.”

In addition to turkey, this process can be used on beef, pork, chicken and seafood. The meat’s texture is somewhat moist, resembling the texture of prosciutto.

“The French eat the meat as is,” Yang said. “It’s safe. But Americans are used to a cooked-meat type of texture. So we toast it. We can then, according to the recipe, make a jerky or a bacon. The toasting is for two or three minutes at 350 degrees.”

Yang’s recipes add omega-3s and use lean, turkey breast. He sees applications beyond bacon and jerky.

“You could also use the meat as a wrap by wrapping the meat around vegetables,” Yang said. “This type of wrap would have a lot of protein as opposed to carbohydrates. And because the meat is lean, it is not greasy at all. It is a very healthy alternative. Soldiers need more protein as opposed to carbohydrates.”

In addition to working on healthier forms of bacon and jerky, Yang is also working to improve hash browns with bacon, a very popular item in the meals, ready-to-eat, or MREs. The new, healthier version has osmotic meat that tastes like bacon. It is pork-free.

“So soldiers will be able to have the hash brown and bacon that they like without pork,” Yang said. “It is healthier. There is no grease from bacon, and it is a good source of beef protein.”

It is important to Yang to develop cost-efficient, good-tasting, nutritious food for the warfighter. He plans to continue to find new uses for the osmotic technology and to continue improving his recipes.

“To see soldiers eat and like something that you have developed and see that it improves their morale and helps them perform their mission better – I think that is the most fulfilling my job as a researcher can get,” Yang said. “My mission is to know they are well-fed and well-nourished. They risk their lives to protect us.”

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Tom Yang, a food technologist at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, is developing new turkey bacon, as shown here, and turkey jerky products for the warfighter. He is also working on a new version of hash browns with bacon, as shown here. The new, healthier version has osmotic beef that tastes like bacon but is pork-free. Photo by David Kamm, NSRDEC

It seems appropriate to discuss turkey and good nutrition the day after Thanksgiving. We found this gem of an article and wanted to share the great news, that more nutricious turkey jerky and turkey bacon is coming your way, thanks to Dr. Tom Yang.

By Jane Benson, NSRDEC Public Affairs

Natick researcher Dr. Tom Yang wants to talk turkey.

Yang is a food technologist in the Combat Feeding Directorate at the U.S. Army Natick soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, or NSRDEC. He is working on healthier forms of jerky and bacon made from turkey that he believes soldiers will gobble up.

Yang has been experimenting with osmotic meat technology, which was originally developed in France, to develop the new turkey jerky and turkey bacon products that taste great but are much lower in salt and fat.

The turkey, osmotic version of jerky stays moist and avoids the texture problems of commercial jerky, which can become brittle. It is also higher in protein. The turkey version of bacon allows all soldiers to enjoy bacon anywhere in the world because it does not contain any pork.

“This is new technology, and it is very energy efficient and is inexpensive,” Yang said. “The technology uses a principle called osmosis. So what we have now is a semi-dried meat. It has much less salt and stays moist.”

During the process, the meat is ground and made into a paste. It is then extruded onto a sheet, sandwiched between two layers of paper and put through a conveyor.

“The conveyor will take the sheet into an osmotic tank, which contains a high concentration of non-sugar solution,” Yang said. “Ninety-two to ninety-five percent of moisture will migrate from the meat into the solution. The whole process takes place at refrigeration temperature so any heat-sensitive nutrients will not be destroyed.”

In addition to turkey, this process can be used on beef, pork, chicken and seafood. The meat’s texture is somewhat moist, resembling the texture of prosciutto.

“The French eat the meat as is,” Yang said. “It’s safe. But Americans are used to a cooked-meat type of texture. So we toast it. We can then, according to the recipe, make a jerky or a bacon. The toasting is for two or three minutes at 350 degrees.”

Yang’s recipes add omega-3s and use lean, turkey breast. He sees applications beyond bacon and jerky.

“You could also use the meat as a wrap by wrapping the meat around vegetables,” Yang said. “This type of wrap would have a lot of protein as opposed to carbohydrates. And because the meat is lean, it is not greasy at all. It is a very healthy alternative. Soldiers need more protein as opposed to carbohydrates.”

In addition to working on healthier forms of bacon and jerky, Yang is also working to improve hash browns with bacon, a very popular item in the meals, ready-to-eat, or MREs. The new, healthier version has osmotic meat that tastes like bacon. It is pork-free.

“So soldiers will be able to have the hash brown and bacon that they like without pork,” Yang said. “It is healthier. There is no grease from bacon, and it is a good source of beef protein.”

It is important to Yang to develop cost-efficient, good-tasting, nutritious food for the warfighter. He plans to continue to find new uses for the osmotic technology and to continue improving his recipes.

“To see soldiers eat and like something that you have developed and see that it improves their morale and helps them perform their mission better – I think that is the most fulfilling my job as a researcher can get,” Yang said. “My mission is to know they are well-fed and well-nourished. They risk their lives to protect us.”

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How far is a light-year?

The Orion Nebula, 1,500 light years from Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Stars other than our sun are so far distant that astronomers refer to their distances not in terms of kilometers or miles – but in light-years.

Light is the fastest-moving stuff in the universe. It travels at an incredible 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. That’s very fast. If you could travel at the speed of light, you would be able to circle the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in just one second!

A light-second is the distance light travels in one second, or 7.5 times the distance around Earth’s equator. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. How far is that? Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of kilometers (or miles) that light travels in one second, and there you have it: one light-year. It’s about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).

A light beam needs only 8 minutes to travel the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun to the Earth. Image via Brews OHare on Wikimedia Commons.

Few of us can comprehend such a humongous number. Is there any way for us mere mortals to really understand how far a light-year is?

As a matter of fact, there is. The 20th century astronomer Robert Burnham Jr. – author of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook – devised an ingenious way to portray the distance of one light-year. He did this by relating the light-year to the astronomical unit – the Earth-sun distance.

One astronomical unit equals about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Another way of looking at it: the astronomical unit is a bit more than 8 light-minutes in distance.

Quite by coincidence, the number of astronomical units in one light-year and the number of inches in one mile are virtually the same. For general reference, there are 63,000 astronomical units in one light-year, and 63,000 inches in one mile. This wonderful coincidence enables us to bring the light-year down to Earth. If we scale the astronomical unit – the Earth-sun distance – at one inch, then the light-year on this scale represents one mile.

The red star in the center of this picture is Proxima Centauri, our sun's nearest neighbor among the stars. A beam of light from this star takes about 4 years to travel to Earth. Image via hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu

What is a light-year?

The closest star to Earth, other than the sun, is Alpha Centauri at some 4.4 light-years away. Scaling the Earth-sun distance at one inch places this star at 4.4 miles (7 kilometers) distant.

Scaling the astronomical unit at one inch, here are distances to various stars, star clusters and galaxies:

Alpha Centauri: 4 miles

Sirius: 9 miles

Vega: 25 miles

Fomalhaut: 25 miles

Arcturus: 37 miles

Antares: 600 miles

Pleiades open star cluster: 440 miles

Hercules globular star cluster (M13): 24,000 miles

Center of Milky Way galaxy: 27,000 miles

Great Andromeda galaxy (M31): 2,300,000 miles

Whirlpool galaxy (M51): 37,000,000 miles

Sombrero galaxy (M104): 65,000,000 miles

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Astronomers measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using light-years. One light-year equals about 6 trillion miles. This galaxy is over 2 million light-years from Earth. Image credit: Adam Evans via Wikipedia

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The Orion Nebula, 1,500 light years from Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI

Stars other than our sun are so far distant that astronomers refer to their distances not in terms of kilometers or miles – but in light-years.

Light is the fastest-moving stuff in the universe. It travels at an incredible 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second. That’s very fast. If you could travel at the speed of light, you would be able to circle the Earth’s equator about 7.5 times in just one second!

A light-second is the distance light travels in one second, or 7.5 times the distance around Earth’s equator. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. How far is that? Multiply the number of seconds in one year by the number of kilometers (or miles) that light travels in one second, and there you have it: one light-year. It’s about 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.88 trillion miles).

A light beam needs only 8 minutes to travel the 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun to the Earth. Image via Brews OHare on Wikimedia Commons.

Few of us can comprehend such a humongous number. Is there any way for us mere mortals to really understand how far a light-year is?

As a matter of fact, there is. The 20th century astronomer Robert Burnham Jr. – author of Burnham’s Celestial Handbook – devised an ingenious way to portray the distance of one light-year. He did this by relating the light-year to the astronomical unit – the Earth-sun distance.

One astronomical unit equals about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Another way of looking at it: the astronomical unit is a bit more than 8 light-minutes in distance.

Quite by coincidence, the number of astronomical units in one light-year and the number of inches in one mile are virtually the same. For general reference, there are 63,000 astronomical units in one light-year, and 63,000 inches in one mile. This wonderful coincidence enables us to bring the light-year down to Earth. If we scale the astronomical unit – the Earth-sun distance – at one inch, then the light-year on this scale represents one mile.

The red star in the center of this picture is Proxima Centauri, our sun's nearest neighbor among the stars. A beam of light from this star takes about 4 years to travel to Earth. Image via hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu

What is a light-year?

The closest star to Earth, other than the sun, is Alpha Centauri at some 4.4 light-years away. Scaling the Earth-sun distance at one inch places this star at 4.4 miles (7 kilometers) distant.

Scaling the astronomical unit at one inch, here are distances to various stars, star clusters and galaxies:

Alpha Centauri: 4 miles

Sirius: 9 miles

Vega: 25 miles

Fomalhaut: 25 miles

Arcturus: 37 miles

Antares: 600 miles

Pleiades open star cluster: 440 miles

Hercules globular star cluster (M13): 24,000 miles

Center of Milky Way galaxy: 27,000 miles

Great Andromeda galaxy (M31): 2,300,000 miles

Whirlpool galaxy (M51): 37,000,000 miles

Sombrero galaxy (M104): 65,000,000 miles

Enjoying EarthSky? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Astronomers measure the distance to the Andromeda galaxy using light-years. One light-year equals about 6 trillion miles. This galaxy is over 2 million light-years from Earth. Image credit: Adam Evans via Wikipedia

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On vaccines and seeing “bullies” everywhere [Respectful Insolence]

Bullying. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Yes, I do so love to co-opt that famous line from The Princess Bride for my own nefarious purposes, but it’s so perfect for this particular topic, which comes up every so often when I’m writing about the pseudoscience behind the antivaccine movement. It usually takes the form of an emotional screed by some antivaccine parent or other complaining about how she’s being “bullied” by us nasty, evil, insensitive pro-vaccine, well, bullies. (They frequently repeat the word many times throughout the course of their little rants.) A newspaper prints a pro-vaccine article critical of antivaccine pseudoscience? It’s bullying. What about if a friend questions her antivaccine views? It’s bullying. How about if her school or daycare requires her child to be up to date on her vaccines before attending. Obviously it’s bullying. And heaven help any pediatrician who who tries to persuade her that her vaccine pseudoscience is pseudoscience and that she should vaccinated. Obviously he (and it’s almost always a he in these stories) is nothing but a big fat medical bully.

You get the idea. We’ve seen these sorts of rants from people like Katie Tietje, Cathy Jameson, and countless other antivaccinationists that I haven’t discussed. Just before Thanksgiving, I saw one by another of the merry band of angry antivaccine warriors over at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism. It’s by someone whom I don’t recall having heard of before, Dara Berger, and is entitled, unironically, Pro-Vaxxers Are America’s Acceptable Bullies.

Because I had never heard of Dara Berger before, I did a quick Google search to see what her connection is with the antivaccine movement (other than, apparently, blogging for Age of Autism). I quickly learned that she is a Board Member and Co-Chair of the Programming Committee for the National Autism Association NY Metro Chapter and is on the Advisory Board of a documentary being made called Documenting Hope that will “document” recovery from autism and other chronic conditions. Looking at the medical advisory committee, which includes Dr. Martha Herbert, Dr. Jay Gordon, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Frank Lipman, an acupuncturist, and a whole lot of other woo, I don’t have high hopes that his movie will be particularly science-based…obviously. After all, here we have a woman involved with an organization that believes vaccines cause autism, plus several others who have aligned themselves with the antivaccine movement, one of whom (Dr. Hyman) even co-authored a recent antivaccine screed with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. himself! Then there’s the National Autism Association, which until recently listed vaccinations as a cause of autism on its website.

Whatever her background, Berger is nothing if not melodramatic (not to mention grandiose). Note her conclusion after setting it up with a description of the problem of bullying in school:

Everyday we hear horrible stories about children being bullied in school. Some refer to it as an epidemic. The tactics are so much worse than when I grew up in the 70’s. You could not get an entire school to gang up on someone’s Facebook page or send a compromised picture or video of that person and have it go viral. You pretty much had only a few choices to hurt them. Whisper rumors about them to other people, which let’s face it takes time. One popular thing was to scribble something mean about them on the bathroom wall. Although you had to hope that people used the stall and actually noticed the writing.

Bullying is a horrible thing to live through especially when it involves a child. It can leave lasting physical and emotional scars. Children have even lost their lives to bullying as some get pushed over the edge and commit suicide. We here these stories everyday. Luckily there is more awareness and parents have some recourse. They can sue the school or do something more drastic like move or change schools to protect their child.

But what happens when an entire country is bullying individuals? I find that this is the case for Vaccine Bullying.

That’s right. It’s not just doctors. It’s not just pro-vaccine friends and nasty skeptics like myself. It’s the entire damned United States of America bulling her. One can’t help but wonder: What is the US doing to bully the brave Ms. Berger? Has it started a whisper campaign about her? Has it ganged up on her Facebook page? Has it scribbled mean things about her on the bathroom wall? Inquiring minds want to know!

Unfortunately, Ms. Berger is all too happy to explain. To her The Vaccine Bully is comprised of our entire government because the government doesn’t accept that “vaccines are hurting adults and children even though they secretly pay out billions of dollars in their not well disclosed Vaccine Court.” This struck me as a strange assertion. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a prominent, easy-to-find website, complete with lots of information, instructions on how to file a claim, and, of course, data and statistics easily accessible to anyone with a computer or smartphone. The latest statistics were even updated in October. I know, I know, just because there’s a website doesn’t mean that people know about the Vaccine Court, but Ms. Berger is clearly trying to insinuate that the government is trying to hide the existence of the court while referring to the government “secretly” paying out billions of dollars. It’s not much of a secret (at least not to me and most reasonable people) if figures as recent as last month are easily discoverable on the web on an official government website.

It’s not just the government, though. Oh, no. It’s those damned pediatricians. Ms. Berger tells a tale of woe about an encounter with a pediatrician:

I went to a new doctor on West 79th street. He was a highly recommended pediatrician. During the visit, I told him that I only wanted to do the Polio vaccine since I heard it was one of the more benign ones and that I was worried about giving vaccines to my 3 month old baby. He started to raise his voice and said that I need to give a more useful one like the DTaP. I said that I didn’t want to. He proceeded to speak much louder and told me “I will not stand by and watch you kill your baby”. He actually said these words to me! I left immediately as tears fired down my face. I marched right up to the receptionist and said “don’t even think of submitting this visit to my insurance, since this was not a proper doctors visit and I now have to go see another doctor”. Then I continued “tell him I will report the visit as fraud if he tries to get paid”. She looked at me shocked and kind of mumbled okay. I checked every explanation of benefits for the next 6 months. He never submitted it. I felt some vindication in my small way that I stood up to him and did not pay him for his lousy behavior.

My guess is that this is a rather—shall we say?—selective retelling of the tale. If the doctor truly behaved as described, that’s unacceptable, but I rather suspect that Ms. Berger is leaving some things out. For one thing, a pediatrician trying to maintain a practice on the Upper West Side is not likely to start yelling at a patient’s mother so easily. I know doctors who practice in New York City. It’s very, very competitive, and referral patterns are pretty tight and inflexible. A pediatrician who yelled at a patient’s mother like this would risk seeing his referrals and recommendations drying up. This would be doubly true for an affluent Manhattan neighborhood like the Upper West Side. Reading between the lines, having heard many similar stories from antivaccine activists like Ms. Berger, my guess is that Ms. Berger was a particularly annoying antivaccine parent and the pediatrician just got fed up. It’s understandable. I don’t know if I could keep my cool if I were a pediatrician facing my fourth or fifth parent like Ms. Berger in a day, which is why it’s a good thing I didn’t become a pediatrician.

Let’s accept that if the pediatrician did indeed yell at her (although from the story it sounds more likely that he probably raised his voice in exasperation) it was a bad thing. However, it’s not “bullying” to try to persuade a parent to vaccinated. Vaccination is standard of care medical practice, and parents who don’t vaccinate their children put not only their children in danger, but the children of others. A pediatrician who does not try to persuade parents to vaccinate is, in my not-so-humble opinion, committing at best medical negligence and at worst malpractice. Definitely, he’s failing to live up to the standards of his profession.

Ms. Berger also characterizes being required by school administrators to have her children vaccinated before they can attend school to be “bullying.” Of course, school vaccine mandates are the law, and school administrators are simply following the law by requiring proof of vaccination before letting children into school. By Ms. Berger’s standards, any government official or police officer who enforces the law is being a “bully.” That cop who pulled you over for going 20 MPH over the speed limit and wrote you a fat ticket? Shouldn’t you be allowed to drive as fast as you want? Definitely a bully! That parking officer who saw that your meter expired a half hour ago and wrote you a ticket? Super bully! Shouldn’t we be able to park wherever we want and for how long we want?

So fragile is Ms. Berger that to her any questioning of her antivaccine views or story is “bullying.” She relates a tale of how at dinner a cousin had the temerity to question her claim that vaccines caused her child to have a stroke, pointing out, quite reasonably, that “you can’t be sure it was the vaccine.” This led the fragile Ms. Berger to scream back at her “YES! I am sure” and ignore her the rest of the meal, concluding:

I felt very angry how she could even think to question me not once, but three times. If my son had broken his leg, she would never have asked me how I could be sure. It is her own brainwashed views on vaccines that caused her to try to bully me at a dinner party. It was both inappropriate and inexcusable. I have decided to forgive her ignorance for my own peace and sanity. It’s just incredible how pervasive vaccine bullying can be.

I don’t consider questioning a claim that vaccines caused strokes to be “bullying,” given that there is no good scientific evidence that vaccines do, in fact, cause strokes. That was a face-to-face encounter, though. Ms. Berger is even more fragile than I’ve shown thus far, as she concludes with an example of horrific online bullying that is terrifying to behold:

I recently had someone send me a link to a book called “Neurotribes” which is about how autism has always been around and it’s just better diagnosis. I haven’t read the book but watched three minutes of the author speak. I immediately closed the link and wrote my “friend” that I find the link upsetting. I said my son was vaccine injured like many children with Autism. The authors’s book undermines what has happened to so many children like my son”. This person ignored my comment. I was angry that he would not even acknowledge that the link upset me. I went at him again the next day. I explained further that “I live in a world everyday that pretends what happened to my son did not happen. I continued “when we were growing up there were not all these kids that could not walk and talk”. He again ignored my message. I felt silently bullied. So I pressed on with my third and final message the following day. Here is what I wrote verbatim: “that link was more upsetting than child porn would be to me. Your insensitivity explains why you are still alone. Most people just apologize when they realize they have upset someone even if it’s unintentional”. He finally said that he was sorry. I probably have not changed his views, but I believe he might think twice the next time he talks about vaccines and autism with a parent who has a vaccine injured child. And if he upsets them, maybe it won’t take 3 days to apologize.

Yes, you heard it. A friend sent Ms. Berger a link to a book he thought she might like. What was his reward for something he probably did out of kindness? Ms. Berger totally flipped out. So, as many people would do, he simply went quiet, no doubt hoping not to escalate the situation. Finally, after three angry e-mail responses from Ms. Berger, he appears to have apologized, most likely to get this ranting woman off his back. I might have done the same thing, although, to be honest, were it me I’d probably have issued a notpology along the lines of, “I’m sorry you’re angry because of this.” If Ms. Berger wonders why autism antivaccine activists are so commonly viewed as a bunch of ranting loons, perhaps she should look at her own behavior in response to an innocent, well-intentioned e-mail from a friend. To say her response was disproportionate to the perceived offense would be an understatement.

So what do we do about this fantastical problem of Vaccine Bullying (which, I note, Ms. Berger always capitalizes)? This, apparently:

So what do we do about the problem of Vaccine Bullying. I suggest always speaking up to a bully as long as it does not infringe upon you or your child’s safety. We could write more articles on the subject to educate people. There could be a task force created to counsel those being bullied. Most of all we can stand together and support one another for a cause that affects the entire community. You would think that the world would feel some empathy for parents who have a child with vaccine induced Autism, but instead we are persecuted for standing up and warning others.

May I suggest not badgering a friend who did nothing more than innocently recommend a book to her with three ranty e-mails demanding an apology? No? Oh, well…

Heather Barajas comparing her plight to that of Jews during Nazi Germany. This is also not what is going on when antivaccine activists are criticized for their antivaccine beliefs.

Antivaccinationists love to paint themselves as being “persecuted” and “bullied” for their beliefs. Frequently they take this persecution complex to ridiculous extremes, such as during the debate over the passage of the new California law SB 277, which will eliminate nonmedical vaccine exemptions beginning in 2016, when antivaccine activists routinely likened the law to fascism and themselves to Jews in Germany during the Nazi era, complete with offensive co-optation of the yellow Star of David badges that the Nazis forced Jews to wear. (Even Dr. Bob Sears couldn’t resist using such imagery.) Co-opting Holocaust imagery is not a new thing, either. Meanwhile, at AoA, Ms. Berger’s co-blogger, Kent Heckenlively, has been known to liken his struggle to that of Aragorn against the dark lord Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Aragorn faces the assembled hordes of the dark lord Sauron as the Black Gate to Mordor opens. This is also not what is happening when antivaccinationists face criticism for their views.

I suppose I should be grateful that Ms. Berger confined her rhetoric to just being bullied.

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Bullying. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Yes, I do so love to co-opt that famous line from The Princess Bride for my own nefarious purposes, but it’s so perfect for this particular topic, which comes up every so often when I’m writing about the pseudoscience behind the antivaccine movement. It usually takes the form of an emotional screed by some antivaccine parent or other complaining about how she’s being “bullied” by us nasty, evil, insensitive pro-vaccine, well, bullies. (They frequently repeat the word many times throughout the course of their little rants.) A newspaper prints a pro-vaccine article critical of antivaccine pseudoscience? It’s bullying. What about if a friend questions her antivaccine views? It’s bullying. How about if her school or daycare requires her child to be up to date on her vaccines before attending. Obviously it’s bullying. And heaven help any pediatrician who who tries to persuade her that her vaccine pseudoscience is pseudoscience and that she should vaccinated. Obviously he (and it’s almost always a he in these stories) is nothing but a big fat medical bully.

You get the idea. We’ve seen these sorts of rants from people like Katie Tietje, Cathy Jameson, and countless other antivaccinationists that I haven’t discussed. Just before Thanksgiving, I saw one by another of the merry band of angry antivaccine warriors over at that wretched hive of scum and quackery, Age of Autism. It’s by someone whom I don’t recall having heard of before, Dara Berger, and is entitled, unironically, Pro-Vaxxers Are America’s Acceptable Bullies.

Because I had never heard of Dara Berger before, I did a quick Google search to see what her connection is with the antivaccine movement (other than, apparently, blogging for Age of Autism). I quickly learned that she is a Board Member and Co-Chair of the Programming Committee for the National Autism Association NY Metro Chapter and is on the Advisory Board of a documentary being made called Documenting Hope that will “document” recovery from autism and other chronic conditions. Looking at the medical advisory committee, which includes Dr. Martha Herbert, Dr. Jay Gordon, Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Frank Lipman, an acupuncturist, and a whole lot of other woo, I don’t have high hopes that his movie will be particularly science-based…obviously. After all, here we have a woman involved with an organization that believes vaccines cause autism, plus several others who have aligned themselves with the antivaccine movement, one of whom (Dr. Hyman) even co-authored a recent antivaccine screed with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. himself! Then there’s the National Autism Association, which until recently listed vaccinations as a cause of autism on its website.

Whatever her background, Berger is nothing if not melodramatic (not to mention grandiose). Note her conclusion after setting it up with a description of the problem of bullying in school:

Everyday we hear horrible stories about children being bullied in school. Some refer to it as an epidemic. The tactics are so much worse than when I grew up in the 70’s. You could not get an entire school to gang up on someone’s Facebook page or send a compromised picture or video of that person and have it go viral. You pretty much had only a few choices to hurt them. Whisper rumors about them to other people, which let’s face it takes time. One popular thing was to scribble something mean about them on the bathroom wall. Although you had to hope that people used the stall and actually noticed the writing.

Bullying is a horrible thing to live through especially when it involves a child. It can leave lasting physical and emotional scars. Children have even lost their lives to bullying as some get pushed over the edge and commit suicide. We here these stories everyday. Luckily there is more awareness and parents have some recourse. They can sue the school or do something more drastic like move or change schools to protect their child.

But what happens when an entire country is bullying individuals? I find that this is the case for Vaccine Bullying.

That’s right. It’s not just doctors. It’s not just pro-vaccine friends and nasty skeptics like myself. It’s the entire damned United States of America bulling her. One can’t help but wonder: What is the US doing to bully the brave Ms. Berger? Has it started a whisper campaign about her? Has it ganged up on her Facebook page? Has it scribbled mean things about her on the bathroom wall? Inquiring minds want to know!

Unfortunately, Ms. Berger is all too happy to explain. To her The Vaccine Bully is comprised of our entire government because the government doesn’t accept that “vaccines are hurting adults and children even though they secretly pay out billions of dollars in their not well disclosed Vaccine Court.” This struck me as a strange assertion. The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has a prominent, easy-to-find website, complete with lots of information, instructions on how to file a claim, and, of course, data and statistics easily accessible to anyone with a computer or smartphone. The latest statistics were even updated in October. I know, I know, just because there’s a website doesn’t mean that people know about the Vaccine Court, but Ms. Berger is clearly trying to insinuate that the government is trying to hide the existence of the court while referring to the government “secretly” paying out billions of dollars. It’s not much of a secret (at least not to me and most reasonable people) if figures as recent as last month are easily discoverable on the web on an official government website.

It’s not just the government, though. Oh, no. It’s those damned pediatricians. Ms. Berger tells a tale of woe about an encounter with a pediatrician:

I went to a new doctor on West 79th street. He was a highly recommended pediatrician. During the visit, I told him that I only wanted to do the Polio vaccine since I heard it was one of the more benign ones and that I was worried about giving vaccines to my 3 month old baby. He started to raise his voice and said that I need to give a more useful one like the DTaP. I said that I didn’t want to. He proceeded to speak much louder and told me “I will not stand by and watch you kill your baby”. He actually said these words to me! I left immediately as tears fired down my face. I marched right up to the receptionist and said “don’t even think of submitting this visit to my insurance, since this was not a proper doctors visit and I now have to go see another doctor”. Then I continued “tell him I will report the visit as fraud if he tries to get paid”. She looked at me shocked and kind of mumbled okay. I checked every explanation of benefits for the next 6 months. He never submitted it. I felt some vindication in my small way that I stood up to him and did not pay him for his lousy behavior.

My guess is that this is a rather—shall we say?—selective retelling of the tale. If the doctor truly behaved as described, that’s unacceptable, but I rather suspect that Ms. Berger is leaving some things out. For one thing, a pediatrician trying to maintain a practice on the Upper West Side is not likely to start yelling at a patient’s mother so easily. I know doctors who practice in New York City. It’s very, very competitive, and referral patterns are pretty tight and inflexible. A pediatrician who yelled at a patient’s mother like this would risk seeing his referrals and recommendations drying up. This would be doubly true for an affluent Manhattan neighborhood like the Upper West Side. Reading between the lines, having heard many similar stories from antivaccine activists like Ms. Berger, my guess is that Ms. Berger was a particularly annoying antivaccine parent and the pediatrician just got fed up. It’s understandable. I don’t know if I could keep my cool if I were a pediatrician facing my fourth or fifth parent like Ms. Berger in a day, which is why it’s a good thing I didn’t become a pediatrician.

Let’s accept that if the pediatrician did indeed yell at her (although from the story it sounds more likely that he probably raised his voice in exasperation) it was a bad thing. However, it’s not “bullying” to try to persuade a parent to vaccinated. Vaccination is standard of care medical practice, and parents who don’t vaccinate their children put not only their children in danger, but the children of others. A pediatrician who does not try to persuade parents to vaccinate is, in my not-so-humble opinion, committing at best medical negligence and at worst malpractice. Definitely, he’s failing to live up to the standards of his profession.

Ms. Berger also characterizes being required by school administrators to have her children vaccinated before they can attend school to be “bullying.” Of course, school vaccine mandates are the law, and school administrators are simply following the law by requiring proof of vaccination before letting children into school. By Ms. Berger’s standards, any government official or police officer who enforces the law is being a “bully.” That cop who pulled you over for going 20 MPH over the speed limit and wrote you a fat ticket? Shouldn’t you be allowed to drive as fast as you want? Definitely a bully! That parking officer who saw that your meter expired a half hour ago and wrote you a ticket? Super bully! Shouldn’t we be able to park wherever we want and for how long we want?

So fragile is Ms. Berger that to her any questioning of her antivaccine views or story is “bullying.” She relates a tale of how at dinner a cousin had the temerity to question her claim that vaccines caused her child to have a stroke, pointing out, quite reasonably, that “you can’t be sure it was the vaccine.” This led the fragile Ms. Berger to scream back at her “YES! I am sure” and ignore her the rest of the meal, concluding:

I felt very angry how she could even think to question me not once, but three times. If my son had broken his leg, she would never have asked me how I could be sure. It is her own brainwashed views on vaccines that caused her to try to bully me at a dinner party. It was both inappropriate and inexcusable. I have decided to forgive her ignorance for my own peace and sanity. It’s just incredible how pervasive vaccine bullying can be.

I don’t consider questioning a claim that vaccines caused strokes to be “bullying,” given that there is no good scientific evidence that vaccines do, in fact, cause strokes. That was a face-to-face encounter, though. Ms. Berger is even more fragile than I’ve shown thus far, as she concludes with an example of horrific online bullying that is terrifying to behold:

I recently had someone send me a link to a book called “Neurotribes” which is about how autism has always been around and it’s just better diagnosis. I haven’t read the book but watched three minutes of the author speak. I immediately closed the link and wrote my “friend” that I find the link upsetting. I said my son was vaccine injured like many children with Autism. The authors’s book undermines what has happened to so many children like my son”. This person ignored my comment. I was angry that he would not even acknowledge that the link upset me. I went at him again the next day. I explained further that “I live in a world everyday that pretends what happened to my son did not happen. I continued “when we were growing up there were not all these kids that could not walk and talk”. He again ignored my message. I felt silently bullied. So I pressed on with my third and final message the following day. Here is what I wrote verbatim: “that link was more upsetting than child porn would be to me. Your insensitivity explains why you are still alone. Most people just apologize when they realize they have upset someone even if it’s unintentional”. He finally said that he was sorry. I probably have not changed his views, but I believe he might think twice the next time he talks about vaccines and autism with a parent who has a vaccine injured child. And if he upsets them, maybe it won’t take 3 days to apologize.

Yes, you heard it. A friend sent Ms. Berger a link to a book he thought she might like. What was his reward for something he probably did out of kindness? Ms. Berger totally flipped out. So, as many people would do, he simply went quiet, no doubt hoping not to escalate the situation. Finally, after three angry e-mail responses from Ms. Berger, he appears to have apologized, most likely to get this ranting woman off his back. I might have done the same thing, although, to be honest, were it me I’d probably have issued a notpology along the lines of, “I’m sorry you’re angry because of this.” If Ms. Berger wonders why autism antivaccine activists are so commonly viewed as a bunch of ranting loons, perhaps she should look at her own behavior in response to an innocent, well-intentioned e-mail from a friend. To say her response was disproportionate to the perceived offense would be an understatement.

So what do we do about this fantastical problem of Vaccine Bullying (which, I note, Ms. Berger always capitalizes)? This, apparently:

So what do we do about the problem of Vaccine Bullying. I suggest always speaking up to a bully as long as it does not infringe upon you or your child’s safety. We could write more articles on the subject to educate people. There could be a task force created to counsel those being bullied. Most of all we can stand together and support one another for a cause that affects the entire community. You would think that the world would feel some empathy for parents who have a child with vaccine induced Autism, but instead we are persecuted for standing up and warning others.

May I suggest not badgering a friend who did nothing more than innocently recommend a book to her with three ranty e-mails demanding an apology? No? Oh, well…

Heather Barajas comparing her plight to that of Jews during Nazi Germany. This is also not what is going on when antivaccine activists are criticized for their antivaccine beliefs.

Antivaccinationists love to paint themselves as being “persecuted” and “bullied” for their beliefs. Frequently they take this persecution complex to ridiculous extremes, such as during the debate over the passage of the new California law SB 277, which will eliminate nonmedical vaccine exemptions beginning in 2016, when antivaccine activists routinely likened the law to fascism and themselves to Jews in Germany during the Nazi era, complete with offensive co-optation of the yellow Star of David badges that the Nazis forced Jews to wear. (Even Dr. Bob Sears couldn’t resist using such imagery.) Co-opting Holocaust imagery is not a new thing, either. Meanwhile, at AoA, Ms. Berger’s co-blogger, Kent Heckenlively, has been known to liken his struggle to that of Aragorn against the dark lord Sauron in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Aragorn faces the assembled hordes of the dark lord Sauron as the Black Gate to Mordor opens. This is also not what is happening when antivaccinationists face criticism for their views.

I suppose I should be grateful that Ms. Berger confined her rhetoric to just being bullied.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1Tag4cb