SGU Episode 1032
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| SGU Episode 1032 |
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| April 19th 2025 |
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"Curious crow exploring its surroundings with a quirky find!" |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
B: Bob Novella |
C: Cara Santa Maria |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| SGU Forum |
Intro
Voice-over: You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
S: Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.
Dumbest Thing of the Week (00:12)
S: Today is Wednesday, April 16th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.
B: Hey everybody.
S: Cara Santa Maria.
B: Howdy.
S: Jane Novella Hey guys and the recently not doing taxes, Evan Bernstein.
E: Oh, so this is what? Sunlight.
S: Yeah, you forgot April 60th is one day after tax day, so now you get a little bit of a breather. Right now you still have like other stuff to do but.
E: Yeah, now we enter the second right, the extensions. It's fascinating because I become very immersed in the work. I mean just the the volume itself takes up all of my time. For example, I will get up at at and be out of the house at 7:00 in the morning every morning, if not earlier. And I in, in these later days leading up to April 15th, I'd be getting home at 2:00 in the morning, I kid you not, going right to sleep and then waking up and doing it again. And that's really how my last couple of weeks of the season was this year. So there is there is really not much else. It's it's amazing. I've actually made the podcast as often as I as I had because that's the only other thing I've been able to kind of squeeze in here. Haven't been doing which game first. I had to put that to the side for a little while, but I'm just coming out of the space now and it does take a little while to adjust. It's quite a feeling.
S: Yeah, it's hard maintaining a day job and doing the skeptical thing.
E: Just, you know, this seasonal work can be brutal. It can be. But I'm glad it's I'm glad it's over and very happy for April 16, one of my favorite days of.
S: The year and Kerry, you are in Hong Kong now.
C: Yeah, I'm still in Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong last week and now I'm in Hong Kong until Monday and then I'm going to mainland China and then I'm going to Vietnam after that, so.
E: Have you been to Vietnam before?
C: No, Vietnam will be new. I've been to Hong Kong and mainland China. I was there seven years ago, actually, with some of the skeptic organizations out here doing some events, some skeptics in the pub, you know, getting to know people. And I made some kind of lifelong friends. So now I'm back. But it's been great. My friends are so kind. They've like taken off of work to hang out with me and show me the sites. Been doing a lot of big hikes, going to really beautiful beaches, kind of exploring the natural side of Hong Kong. So it's very cool, that juxtaposition between the intense, intense city, amazing food, really kind to people, lots to do.
S: Cara, we talk every now and then about the SGU going out to either Hong Kong or Japan or just somewhere in Asia, but it's hard to get a read on how big like the skeptical movement is out there. What's your experience with that?
C: You know, when I was here last time, it was strong. Strong and mighty, but small. But it's hard to know, especially because you know how many people listen to SGU but wouldn't consider themselves part of some sort of movement where they're going to skeptical meetups, for example. But they like the podcast and they would want to come see the show. Obviously Hong Kong is a massive melting pot and it's got a huge expat community as well. There's a very large English speaking portion of the region. And I think we could say the same thing for a lot of places throughout the world. Like, I think about the European skeptics, I think about the upcoming eclipse, you know, places where we could travel to because it does seem to be the case that we've done most of our shows domestically in the US or where do we go typically? Australia. Australia. English. Speaking. Countries, but not even primarily English. Yeah, but not even all of them. Literally just UK and Australia and Canada. Yeah, but what about South Africa? What about other parts of Europe you know?
S: There was like one time where somebody from the South African skeptics contacted me said, hey, can we bring the SGU down here? We could get 20 people to show up to a meeting and like.
C: Yeah, that's the issue, right? We need to know that we can get it. What? What are we looking at? 203 hundred 500?
E: Oh, hundreds. Yeah, should be, Yeah.
S: I mean, to get us to travel internationally, we'd like to see 2 to 300 people show up at at our event.
C: At least, yeah, yeah. Otherwise that makes it way.
S: Too expensive, yeah, but again, but I agree with you like probably like a skeptics in the pub may not be the full measure of who we would get to show up at a right an event.
C: And I think what folks might not realize is it's not just the five of us, it's also Ian, it's also all of the logistics that are involved in it and.
S: And George?
C: And George, of course, and maybe Brian or you know anybody else who might be involved, but most of us do have jobs. And so the thing that we have to realize too is that when we do an event like that and we, it's one thing to go like, oh, we're going on vacation. We can't take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks off every single year. We have to be really strategic about how we travel and it's also work for us.
S: Right, I used almost all of my vacation time over the last 15 years, at least on SGU events.
C: Exactly, Yeah.
S: Very few like just straight up vacations, yeah.
C: Two or three events a year, that's it. That eats up all of our vacation time. And that's really, really hard if we are also paying out of pocket to travel and it, yeah, it just gets very expensive. So that's that's the hardest part of all of this is figuring out how to make it financially feasible because it's something we'd love to do.
S: Yeah, we love. We love traveling and meeting our listeners from around the world. We love holding events. It's great. But yeah, but we're kind of like right on that edge in terms of it being financially feasible.
C: Yeah.
S: So if you do want us to come to your part of the world having said all that, you know, then talk to us. But we also need to to know that, you know, there's enough people are going to want to come out and see us for sure.
News Items (05:45)
News Item #1 – Where Did Water Come FromNews Item #2 – EPA Data on EmissionsNews Item #3 – Is Your Red My RedNews Item #4 – Evolution of Complex LifeNews Item #5 – Crow Math Skills https://www.npr.org/2025/04/12/nx-s1-5359438/a-crows-math-skills-include-geometry
S: All right, well, let's get started with the news items. Actually, Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.
Who’s That Noisy (05:51)
None
E: I am going to, and for the sake of brevity, I'll spare everyone the song this time time, and I'll break it out next time. I'm going to put one or more of you on the spot, though, with a question to start this one. Cara. Name a story or a TV show or a movie or some other medium of fiction where a person was turned to stone.
C: You pick the person who doesn't watch fantasy. Wait, Medusa? Did Medusa turn people to stone? There you go, Bang. Thank you.
E: Very good Medusa. Yes, Perseus and the Medusa would look at people and turn them. To Stone very good. Bob, do you have one?
B: She took mine and I was gonna sit down and I was gonna say Sodom and Gomorrah, but that's a pillar of salt. That's not Steve. Yes, you can.
E: I'll, I'll. I will accept that though, because salt is sort of a form of mineral. Very good. Jay or Steve, you wanna one? Of like the gargoyles, I. Yes, but which? Which? Which cartoon series?
J: They're called gargoyles, yeah.
E: Cartoon series.
J: So they're the gargoyles turning into stone.
B: I could back Steve up on that. He's right.
E: Very cool, very cool.
J: Yeah, but I think somebody turned to stone in the original Star Trek series.
E: Oh, right, or or the Kelvin. What? The mineral cubes you mean?
J: Somebody turned to.
E: Stone Yeah, the D20 they turned. Into like a salty D20 Joe decahedron I believe, right? Oh boy. Well I mean look, you can I and those are great examples and I think we can all agree that people or live creatures being turned to stone is 100% pure fantasy. It is fiction, It is 100% implausible, a physical impossibility, no connection to reality whatsoever. But you are all incorrect because once again, thanks to the recent declassification and release to the public of all sorts of government information that was once kept secret by United States as agencies, our clandestine services, we not only have things like psychics looking for arks of the Covenant like I talked about two weeks ago, but we now know that the ability to turn living things into stone almost instantaneously is a fact. And not only is it a fact, but it's a power not of this world, because extraterrestrial beings and their amazing technology have the capability of turning people to stone. Thanks all to it. Yep, thanks all to a declassified CIA report brought to light, which in one there in which there was one such incident reported where Russian soldiers in the 1980s fought off a UFO and got turned to stone by the aliens that they were fighting.
C: What?
E: Joe Rogan, Yeah, No, no, Joe Rogan told us he shared the details of this 250 page report. Yep, that was allegedly written by the CIA. The original report was the original report was apparently provided initially the source of it, KGB agents late 1980s, and later covered by Ukrainian media. And the incident was also documented in a classified intelligence file in 1993, according to the Jerusalem Post. But obviously it has become brought to light again because of all the declassification that's been recently going on. I'll read you a couple of highlights directly from the report so you can hear it yourself. According to the Cage, this is the from this, this is the report. According to the KGB materials, a quite low flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer appeared above a military unit that was conducting routine training maneuvers. For unknown reasons, somebody unexpectedly launched the surface to air missile and hit the UFO. It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with large heads and large black eyes emerged from it. It stated in the testimonies by the two soldiers who remained alive that after freeing themselves from the debris, the aliens came close together and then merged into a single object that acquired A spherical shape. That object began to buzz and hiss sharply and then became brilliant white. In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned to stone. Only two soldiers in the shade were less exposed than they survived.
C: What?
E: OK, you're right. And then it goes on. The first of all, couple points here. First of all, Joe Rogan, all right. Second of all, second point, Soviet KGB. And 3rd point, perhaps most important, a report that said something happened. Therefore it is true. This reads like a children's book at best, and it's not even that good of a children's book, frankly. All you have to do is go to prior works of fiction. And, you know, forgive me, I'm not attacking religion here, but the the Bible, for example, is filled to the brim with stories about metamorphosis, polymorphine and Bob's favorite transmogrification. Of course, you know, you mentioned Lot's wife, pillar of salt turned it. But there are so many examples of things like this. And, and look, throughout history, these kinds of stories have been told. And but here's what Joe Rogan said, because I listened to his this section of his podcast, he said it's really interesting what's going on with these disclosures. And it's hard to know what's true and what's not true. No, Joe Rogan, it's actually not hard at all. And he then he goes on to reference like the Fleer video and the go fast video. These are those UFO videos from the that captured by the pilots, the Navy pilots as as the best evidence of inexplicable UFO events. And of course those have been pretty thoroughly debunked by Mick West and others. So there you go, you have the Joe Rogan crowd, the UFOUAP crowd all going Yep, this is real because of a made-up Soviet era throwback in what was likely deliberately fabricated nonsense that wound up eventually in ACIA report. And there you have it. That is your dumbest thing of the week. How bad is that? I mean that. I mean, really.
C: That they reported it on Fox News.
E: That's pretty bad.
S: All right.
Your Questions and E-mails (11:40)
Question #1: Separating the Art from the ArtistBeen a fan of the show for a number of years now and have enjoyed learning and engaging with the community and the ideas discussed each week. I was hoping to ask your opinions on how skepticism can inform the way we view certain industries and institutions when individuals can cause conflict within core ideologies. The example I'm thinking of (and what sparked this email) is how to view Tesla in the current political landscape.For background I'm in the market for a new car to replace one that's recently hit end of life and I was hoping to get something electric. This is driven both by the impressive technology and the reduced emissions and costs, especially attractive in my state where our power is almost entirely hydro. The Tesla Model 3 is in my price range and is by all accounts a fantastic car with sound engineering behind it. I come unstuck though grappling with what I believe is a logical environmental/financial choice. The crinkle though is the ties to Musk who I would have picked as my skeptical jackass of the year. This goes back to my original subject matter of whether we can separate "art from the artist" in the technological and political landscapes. For consideration how much of current Tesla is driven by Elon and how much does that matter if the product at the end is still efficient, safe, reliable and just well designed? How should we as skeptics or individuals be tackling these decisions and should this tie weigh in strongly to the final decision?Interested in any thoughts you have on the matter or action you would consider.Thanks,NathanQuestion #2: The Moon RotatesThe Moon does Not Rotate on its AxisRotation in Orbit: An object moving in a 360-degree orbit will, by the end of that orbit, have returned to its original position relative to the body it's orbiting. In that sense, its overall orientation has "rotated" 360 degrees relative to an external viewpoint.Rotation on its Axis: This requires a change in which part of the object leads its motion. A tidally locked body, by definition, maintains the same face towards the object it orbits. Therefore, the same part of the object consistently leads its motion in that relationship.The 1:1 orbital period to "rotational period" of tidally locked moons (like our Moon and 20+ others) is a consequence of their orbit and the gravitational forces involved. It results in a consistent face towards the primary body.according to the definition of Rotation on its Axis, this consistent facing means that these tidally locked moons are not rotating on their axis in the sense that different parts of them are taking the lead in their motion. The "rotation" that completes one cycle per orbit is a rotation of their orientation in space due to their orbital movement, not a spin around an internal axis that changes which part leads the way.this seems right None
C: Thanks, Evan.
E: Jay, where did Earth's water come from?
J: Well, before we get into that, Steve, the faucet guys, I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to be honest. Do you drink enough water?
C: I try to.
E: Who gets to determine what enough is?
J: I will determine that.
E: I don't drink 88 oz glasses. That's BS. That's a bit. That's a myth, yeah.
J: Yeah, well, OK, since that was a hard question, I don't know if you guys are even going to be able to come close to answering this one, but do you know where the Earth's water came from? Or at least what the you know the current theories are.
E: Comets. Is 1 yes comets delivered in the early what proto earth during the bombardment?
J: Heavy yeah, there's, there's four common theories that you'll hear. You know that one of them. Yeah. Comets, like icy comets that bombarded the Earth. This is about 4 billion years ago. Solar nebula capture, right. Hydrogen from the solar nebula was captured, captured by the OR hydrogen by the early Earth and that combined with oxygen to form water and then asteroids. People, you know, the scientists have theorized that, you know, water rich asteroids collided with the early Earth and you know, we that's where a lot of water came from. Now the one I always thought it was, was the concept of outgassing from Earth's interior. And I think I got this from going to Walt Disney World when we were when we were young, a lot younger. And they I watched some video and it it stuck with me.
E: Oh yeah, it's a wet world after all.
J: But there has been some new research that may very well change what scientists around the world think the real source of water was. So like I was saying, you know, for many decades scientists thought that the water that simply just wasn't there when our planet formed, right? The belief was that water was like you said, you guys was delivered by what water rich asteroids or comets during like the first 100 to 200 million years after the Earth formed. And you know, that made sense. You know, there it does make sense. It it, it's kind of like a happy happenstance, right? It wasn't like a plan thing, Of course, like, you know, these these asteroids or, and or comets had to, you know, had to hit the earth in order for the earth to have water going under that theory. But the early solar system was dry and it was violent, right? It was very hot. It was it was a not a nice place to be. And this was particularly true in the inner region where the Earth took shape, you know, the the inner planets and the the minerals making up Earth's early building blocks appeared to be bone dry After, you know, doing the best research that we can on, on, you know, any, any, anything that we can find that would shed some light on what it was like back then. So the prevailing equation for our oceans was that their water came from collisions with icy comets and water rich asteroids that came from the outer solar system. But there's a big but. So there's a new study published in the journal Icarus, and it came to a different conclusion and it's really compelling. The study was led by a research team at the University of Oxford. And the study focused on a mineral. It's called enstatite chondrites. Have you guys heard of this? Heard.
E: Of Chondrites. Chondrites are in meteorites.
J: Yeah. So this is a particular it's a silicate mineral and the research focused on a meteorite called L AR1225 two again, why don't they give them cooler names? I don't know. So it this this meteorite was chemically similar to the material that built Earth about four point 4.5 billion years ago. They used a really powerful technique called sulfur X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Cara.
C: Spectroscopy.
J: Thank you and.
E: I get that wrong too. Jim, I'm not. Even know it. Twists me.
J: You know, if you watch the live stream last Wednesday, but today's Wednesday and I'm sick and I I just, my mouth is not getting around words right now, so.
C: That's fair. That one's tough too, because mix it up with spectrometer spectroscopy, Yeah, it's all.
J: They examined using this new machine they, they were able to examine on a microscopic level what is actually going on in this mineral. So what they found was very surprising to the researchers. The meteorite contained a large amount of hydrogen and it wasn't from Earth's contamination. The hydrogen was chemically bonded to sulfur, meaning it was part of the meteorites original composition. Why is this significant? Well, this directly challenges the long standing assumption that the that mineral ends to tight Krondai, right, or Klondike bar, right? That's I've read. So this discovery directly challenges the long standing assumption that the mineral was too dry to supply any hydrogen and therefore water to the early Earth. So past studies have only found tiny amounts of hydrogen in these rocks, but they hadn't looked in the right places or in the right form. And that that's a mind Bender right there. They look for hydrogen, they didn't find it, but with this new tool they found it. The new research shows that most of the hydrogen is stored as hydrogen sulfide and this is in the meteorites fine grained matrix which is a part of the rock that has completely been ignored. That region turned out to contain almost 10 times more hydrogen than other parts of the meteorite. So the implications of this are are astounding. Earth's primary building material, which is that mineral contained, you know, they had no idea that it contained that much hydrogen from the start. And it dramatically changes our understanding of the origins of Earth's water or potentially where the origin was from. So in this model, water isn't of, it is not like a, you know, a galactic lucky afterthought. It was a predictable outcome of the materials and the conditions at the time our planet formed, which is huge. That's a really impressive find that they did. And it's a it's a game changer. And the study also offers a likely explanation for how the hydrogen got into the rock in the 1st place. The researchers found that areas rich in hydrogen were also full of pyrotite, which is a mineral made of iron and sulfur. These grains probably formed when hydrogen gas from the early solar system reacted with iron sulfide in a cloud of sulfur rich dust. That reaction created hydrogen sulfide, and that's a gas which then mixed into nearby molten rock as the molten material cooled quickly into glass. Right, That's what they're calling it. The hydrogen was sealed inside. So in other words, the hydrogen became part of the rock when it first formed. It wasn't added later by any outside sources.
C: Yeah, these these chondrites, right. When we think about chondrites, do you guys collect meteorites at all?
J: Yeah.
C: Anybody.
J: Yeah, I wish.
C: So I have like a bowl of them.
J: You do?
C: Yeah Chondrites are the non metallic like non.
J: Like nodules, non. Ferrous.
C: Yeah, Yeah. They're the ones that look non ferrous, like rocks that are kind of variegated because the way that they formed was in the early solar system, right? They were, they were primitive asteroids. And they have all these little speckles on them because the idea is that all that dust and those little grains all, like, coalesced and they haven't changed since then.
E: Yep.
C: Like, they're cool. Like, these are billions of years old.
E: You have them.
C: Yeah, of course. I.
S: Mean, of course.
C: You don't collect your own? Yeah, I assume Steve had a little collection too. Maybe not I.
S: Have a couple that I bought. I don't have any that I found.
J: I've been given a couple but.
C: Yeah, yeah.
J: So this process, Cara, it would have occurred in the inner solar system. And again, like I was saying, it's it was hot. It was it was a sulfur rich environment. And this is where Earth and probably Mars and Venus formed. And if that's the case, then it's not just Earth that could have started that wet the mechanism, you know, they're saying it could apply to any planet that formed from similar material under similar conditions, which are largely the inner planets. And the significance of this work lies in what it removes from the equation, which is chance. Remember, I was saying like, you know, we're just lucky that these water rich comets and asteroids came to Earth. You know, it's nothing it the asteroid delivery hypothesis depends on a series of, you know, super low probability events. But if the hydrogen, and you know of course what I'm saying that by extension I also mean water if that was inherent. To Earth's formation, then the presence of oceans becomes much, much less surprising and water and the potential for it to, you know, create life and everything may be a default condition for rocky planets that are formed in these right zones and not by some crazy cut, you know, cosmic accident. That is the the previous prevailing theory. So I think that is, you know, it's pretty profound. You know, of course there's going to be other studies and they're going to, you know, further try to find more evidence and try to see if this holds up to scrutiny. But the bottom line is it was a major, major find, major, significant perspective on where water likely came from.
S: Yeah, of course, this doesn't mean that there weren't comments or, you know, later meteorites that brought more water to the Earth, but it's just a matter of where the bulk of it came from.
J: Yeah, definitely. Sure. I mean, you know, one theory, Steve, is that it's all of these things. It's.
S: All of these things, yeah, it's all about a proportion.
J: You know what I wanted to find out and I could not find anything and I went to the original study was how much could they have calculated? Like, it seems that there's implying that there would have been enough hydrogen to make this amount of water that's on the planet. Yeah, they didn't confirm or deny that, but I think that's pretty implied in the study.
Science or Fiction (21:22)
Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along.Theme: extinct genomesWe have fully sequenced nuclear genomes from the following extinct animals:Item 1: The dodo, famous extinct bird of the Mauritius island.Item 2: The bluebuck, a blue antelope, and the first large African mammal to go extinct in modern times.Item 3: The giant moa (both north island and south island Dinornis species) of New Zealand.Item 4: Denisovans, a close relative of humans and Neanderthals. None
S: All right, Thanks, Jay. Cara.
C: Yeah.
S: So tell me, how much emissions is the United States putting out every year like of? Greenhouse.
C: Nobody knows, Steve, nobody knows. How is 1 to know the answer to this question except by a federal regulation Title 40 from the Environmental Protection Agency, especially Part 98, the GH GRP, which is let me read right here.
E: Greenhouse.
C: Yep, good job. More anymore greenhouse, greenhouse gas reporting program, yeah, super important codified by Congress that required, yeah, about 8000 facilities every year to report their emissions to the EPA, right. So we're talking a lot of data here and specifically emissions that are direct, so reported at the individual facility level, but also upstream suppliers. GHGRP did not include historically emissions from agriculture or lower emitting sources like direct emissions that had annual emissions of less than 25,000 metric tons of CO2 or sinks of greenhouse gases. But any other, what would you call it, like facility, I guess they use that term a lot. Any other individual facility or upstream facility that produced methane or other climate warming gases was required by law, has been required by law to report their annual emissions. And guess what's going to happen to that?
US#03: Going to go bye bye.
C: Goodbye, goodbye. So yeah, unfortunately Trump has plans to stop collecting that greenhouse guest data. And we know this basically from from some reporting by Pro Publica, which has been reposted here in Undark 2 of Trump's officials, Tardif and Sabo. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So political appointee Abigail Tardif, who is now the principal deputy assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, recently, as of, I think just a couple days ago, about a week ago now, instructed EPA staff to draft up a rule that would eliminate reporting requirements for 40 of the 41 sectors of that federal regulation that are now required to submit that data. She has not made any further comment on that. And then another political appointee, Aaron Sabo, he is awaiting a confirmation as assistant administrator to the EPA. He also has been directed to effect change in this area. Neither of them have obviously responded to comment from reporters. Both Tardif and Sabo previously worked as lobbyists. Sabo or Sabo represented the American Chemistry Council and Duke Energy and a bunch of different companies and trade groups, and Tardif worked for Marathon Petroleum and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association. So these are two individuals basically now working with or at EPA directing policy about emissions reporting who previously were lobbyists for for energy sector jobs. So let's talk about what this means. You know, we know that we have to design policy around what's happening to our climate. And it's very, very difficult to write policy if we don't have data, right? Like how, how do we affect change when it comes to climate emissions if we don't know what those climate emissions are? Does that make sense?
E: Makes per makes.
C: Per Yeah, I mean, we're talking, again, oil refineries, power plants, coal mines, petrochemical manufacturers, cement, glass, iron, steel manufacturers. And we're talking about carbon dioxide, methane, all these other different greenhouse gases. Oh, not agriculture. Agriculture is not included.
E: In this not agriculture.
C: Not in this this specific legislation.
E: Interesting. OK.
C: Yeah, so obviously not every bill can do everything. This specific legislation is not targeted towards agriculture, the greenhouse gas reporting program. Edward Maybach, who is a professor at George Mason University, said in response to this decision to obviously stop collecting all of this vital information. He said, quote, it would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient. That is critically I'll, how in the world can we possibly manage this incredible threat to America's well-being and humanity's well-being if we're not actually monitoring what we're doing to exacerbate the problem? Another important quote here is by Rachel Cletus, who is a senior policy director with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She said the bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters. Just letting them off the hook entirely, not tracking the data, does not make the climate crisis any less real. This is just putting our heads in the sand. It's very disconcerting. Sounds about right, yeah. We don't know where we're going to net out with this, obviously, because these policy changes are happening really, really fast and loose. They're happening very often through executive action and not through legislative action. And there's still a lot of questions. We are not legal scholars here on the SGU. I am definitely not a legal scholar. There's still a lot of question about whether the ordering and then the implementation of these policy changes, which were legislative policies, is even legal to do right at an executive level. So we don't know how this will net out, but we do know that we have already started to see some changes from within the agency. So like last month, they announced that they were reconsidering the program. EPA on March 12th sent out this kind of like suite of bulletins celebrated. They, they, they said that, quote, it was the most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history. You can read it right there on the EPA website where Administrator Zeldin talks about all these things that they call, quote, historic actions to power the Great American comeback. So they, you know, they bullet point them in there. Basically, the argument here is that this reporting program is burdensome and it costs American businesses and manufacturing, you know, millions of dollars. I love how they hide under that like it hurts small businesses and the ability to achieve the American dream. We're talking about like the largest polluters across the country. It's 85 to 90% of all greenhouse gases which are reported by this program, 85 to 90%. And we're just not going to have access to that data. And The thing is, it's that's really devastating because the data itself helps these companies function. It, it, it helps American businesses. They don't have to do their own, you know, individual data collection and forecasting because they've access to federal data that's mandated that everybody can use unfettered because our tax dollars pay for it. But now that's, you know, not going to be the case. And, and here's another quote, which I think is an important one, by Andrew Light. He was the assistant secretary of energy for international affairs during the BITE administration. He said we will not get to the kinds of temperature stabilization needed to protect Americans against the worst climate impacts unless we get the cooperation of developing countries. If the United States won't even measure and report our own emissions, how in the world can we expect China, India, Indonesia and other major growing developing countries to do the same? So we know that when Trump first took office, the portal where companies could share their data was closed by the Trump administration and stayed closed for several weeks. So already admissions reporting has been really, really delayed. And then you know, through these series of bulletins, the fate of this program is not looking good. Even if these programs aren't shuttered or if they are shuttered, let's say via executive action, but then brought back through legislative, I guess saving the damage is already done, right? That move fast and break things attitude actually gets what they want to get accomplished, even if later on it has to be reinstated because when the data are lost, the data are lost it's.
E: Just faster to tear things down than it is to.
C: Way easier. Exactly. And to make it harder to report and to close down a portal, and now you can't log in and now you can't do your job. So maybe even if everything gets back online in six months or, hell, four years, you know, who knows? What do we do about that massive hiccup where the whole machine, you know, ground to a halt? Yeah.
S: This seems to be a pattern though of yeah, essentially let's just stop collecting information, you know, or whatever in many.
Skeptical Quote of the Week (30:25)
"The ease with which we believe things that flatter us or confirm our prejudices should always be suspect."— Christopher Hitchens None
C: Countries. Maybe it won't be real.
S: Let's just not report information they, you know, like just, well, let's just not report COVID cases. This is like a pattern. This is not an isolated incident.
B: While we're at it, let's delete a lot of information too.
C: Yeah, totally. Yeah, Well, let's rewrite history.
B: You.
S: Know absolutely yeah, this is this is like just control the information limited. Let's not research the effects of gun violence, you know, or the effectiveness of gun safety regulation. Let's just not study it. Let's just not collect the data. Let's just not report the data. The CDC we're not going to report measles numbers anymore. Why yeah why alarm people It's yeah this is a very disturbing pattern because they say you know information it you know facts data is the beginning, right. This is like this is a crucial thing that feeds into our ability to have science based policy, science based discussion.
C: 100% that's the point, and it goes far beyond partisan politics. This regulation to report this climate data was a congressional regulation. This is law. This is clearly, there may have been people in the past, you know, on certain sides of the aisle who pushed back. But this past this is bipartisan policy, and it's held for quite some time. This new idea of just not getting any information goes far beyond partisan politics. It's heartbreaking to see so much hard work, so much collective strategy, so much science being just dismantled in front of our eyes.
S: Yeah, well, it's yeah. If there's no objective information, then you can create whatever political narrative you wish.
C: Right. And that's.
S: Constitutes for reality.
C: Exactly. But that has never ever been the policy of the left or the right in this country. It's it's never been. Let's just not have information and let's fill it with vacuum.
S: Not like that.
C: That's what's so heartbreaking. Not like this. Yeah, exactly. That's what's so heartbreaking.
S: Terrible. And again, I know we're trying awfully hard not to be like partisan or political on this show, but this is about data. This is about science, you know, Absolutely. You're just trying to win the whole global warming thing by Fiat, by just like, oh, we're just not going to track data. So right, that's what that's what.
C: And it's not specific even to global warming. That's the really scary thing. Yeah, this isn't political per SE. I mean, it is political, but it's not partisan.
S: Yeah, it's not. It's not a typical left, right. Yeah, exactly. Conservative, liberal issue. This is a democracy issue. Really.
C: Yeah.
S: All right, let's move on. So let me ask you guys a question. This is this is a totally a late night college dorm room Stoner type of question.
J: OK, go ahead.
S: Dude is my red your red right?
C: I hate. This question.
S: We've talked about this I. Know we have talked about this.
E: We did. Is this the blue dress? No. The gold dress, No.
C: But there is a difference between subjective downstream interpretation. But no that there are wavelengths of light that we all observe similarly because we have the same architecture. Whether you interpret red as having a specific feeling or or it feels different to you or, I don't know even like the way that you talk about red is different, but how you perceive. But the red that you see is the same red that I see.
S: Yeah. But the it's, it's ultimately an unanswerable question because we're talking about a fully subjective experience.
C: Quality, yeah, but I think we often forget that first half of it.
E: But we don't. But we have deficits too, and that varies from. That's true.
C: Yeah, but those are. But those are observable. Those are demonstrable. We understand exactly how those deficits work.
S: So there, well there are certainly hardcore deficits like various types of color blindness that can be objectively determined. I have a red, green I think diffusion you call it color blindness.
C: Yeah, it's red, green or red, green, yellow. Like there's a very specific type.
S: Like I can't see certain numbers in those little boxes of bubbles. You know what circles? I just can't see the number.
E: Oh yeah, so.
C: You can't determine sometimes the difference between.
S: We're not talking about that. They're just talking about is your experience of a color the same as you know, or at least similar to? There's probably everyone will see, even I see different shades at different times depending on conditions and whatever, you know, even if I'm sleep deprived, things might look a little bit different to me or whatever. But basically red always looks red, you know, to me my subjective experience of it. And, and I have no way of knowing what your subjective experience of it is. But scientists are interested in that question and trying to figure out is there any way that we could infer what the probable answer is? There's, you know, one way that we can that we can argue it is to say, as you were saying, Cara, we all have the same brains. We have mammalian brains, we have human brains. And there's no reason to think that anyone's experience of something as fundamental as just color would be fundamentally different than anyone else. S Yeah. Also another inference is, but this is this is, again, not rock solid, but there's generally agreement about like, yeah, blue is a common color and red is an exciting color. You know, like there's certain emotions that go along with it. But you could argue that's completely learned, and it's also complete and association. Experience. Yeah, yeah, just association. All right. So this gets us to this. What this study where this is the approach that they took and that's why I'm fascinated in like how they approach the question, not so much like the data that came out of it, but what they did was they they created a network of color associations, right? That's the framework that they created. In other words, is red. Is this color right, showing that somebody read without labels. So they like they didn't communicate in labels just is this color more similar to this color over here or that color over there? So you would show them red, pink and green and and somebody might say, yeah, the red is closer to the pink than it is to the green. And they just keep doing that to build up this network of associations.
B: Wait, red is closer to pink than green? Wait a second. Never mind.
S: Yeah. Oh.
Voice-over: God no, Bob.
E: You had me for a third of us.
S: Now what did they use as a control?
E: A cat?
S: People who are color blind. People who are color blind. And they had them.
C: So it's a negative control. People can't tell the. Difference.
S: So they went through the same process. Well there's different kinds of color blind. It's not like people just seeing in black and white. They just.
C: Have no it's it's red. Green is the most. Common, yeah.
S: So they have, they have limited, they have a limited color palette. So the question the, the, the hypothesis was that if we see colors the same, then neurotypical people in terms of their color vision would all build the same network of color relationships. But people who are color blind would build a different network of color relationships. That makes sense. And that's what they found. That's what they found. So again, this is not ironclad rock solid, but it is just like, this is what we would predict if this thing that we think is probably true were true, and that's what they found. So it. Yeah. So yeah, so. And that kind of makes sense, you know, that if we're seeing colors the same way, then we would think, yeah, lavender is more like purple than it is like green or whatever. Like you would, you would make those associations would be the same as well, even when they're discrete frequencies, right? They are different frequencies. They are different mixtures of your of your cones, right. So you could, if people saw colors differently, you could experience completely different relationships among those colors too. You don't have to, but you could. So at least this is consistent with the conclusion that people see color the same way, all right.
B: That's encouraging.
S: Yeah, it's a new little wrinkle in this sort of old again, kind of like college dorm room question that it's.
B: A good idea though, I like the way they approached it. Like you said, it was a cool. Idea.
S: Yeah, that was the point. All right, that was just a quick one for me this week.
B: Oh boy, holy.
S: Crap, Bob, tell us about the evolution of complex life.
B: What? You're done. I was. I was just settling in. What? You're done. I gotta like wait. I gotta.
S: Like I cede my, I cede my time to you, Bob. I yield my time.
B: Yeah, I might need it. OK. Alright. Hi guys, this was fun. The iconic tree of life may be changing near its root. A recent discovery could force the top most domains of all life bacteria, Archaea, Eukarya to reduce down to just two domains. Maybe which domains survive intact and and what did they know? What did they discover? This is from the journal Cell. The name of the study is Microtubules in Asgard. Archaea settle in people and there will be a quiz. Pay attention. I have been. I've been especially interested in in this iconic tree of life and microorganisms ever since I remember, ever since I read Stephen Jay Gould's book Full House, the spread of excellence from Plato to Darwin. Wonderful book, especially when narrated by Ephraim Zimbalist Junior. What a wonderful voice that guy has. No spoilers please. Yeah, so he described there and initially he starts with the, he describes the Old Five Kingdom classification of life. Remember this guy's plants that was like fungi, fungi protists and Monera. I remember those guys. Now the plants, animals and fungi. We we know those Protista protists are a group of, of all the eukaryotes that are not fungi, animals or plants. So protozoans, slime molds, stuff like that. Then Monera. It's kind of a weird, I haven't heard that word in a while, but Monera was like a catch all category that that grouped single celled organisms, bacteria and Archaea together. Karyotic cells. So, so that's what that was. So many of us grew up with those classifications. And yes, we are slowly dying off. So they, they were the top dogs, right? All life on earth fit under one of those five kingdoms. Maybe not beautifully neatly, but they fit in there somewhere, to quote the Animatrix. And for a time it was good. And then microbiology? I just love. That damn all right and then microbiology happened this this elucidated the the hidden genetic relationships between organisms with unprecedented accuracy and we learned that 5 kingdoms just didn't cut it anymore they did not properly reflect Earth's evolutionary history and the diversity of life Yep just didn't cut it anymore they lied we needed well you know like the earth, you know gets a little bit less round as we that's more. About it.
E: That's right.
B: But we but we needed a broader classification. OK, so then Gould then described in his book how that forced the removal of the five kingdoms at the top and and they needed to be replaced with the three domains. These domains were bacteria, Archaea, and eukarya. Bacteria. We all know bacteria, right? They're our buddies. Bacteria, single celled organisms that have prokaryotic cells that have no nuclei, is one of the main differentiators between these cells and other cells, prokaryotic cells, bacteria. Then there was Archaea. These have prokaryotic cells as well. But there's also major biochemical differences and other interesting differences between the bacterial prokaryotic cells and the final domain, Eukarya. That's us. And other things and the rest. These organisms have eukaryotic cells that have a nucleus and other membrane organelles. OK, animals, plants, fungi, protists are in here. That's four. Think about that. That's four out of the five kingdoms that I just mentioned a minute ago in this one domain, four out of the five are like put in there because they belong in there. All multicellular life is in there. Protists, of course, are, are single celled, but all the rest are are basically multicellular. So we so we have 3 domains to rule them all. And for a time it was good. Now, has anyone ever fused Lord of the Rings and the matrix before? I don't remember ever hearing that so, but I doubt I'm the first. OK. And for a for a time it was good. So what's new now? All right, What's changed? Right. I'm obviously going to talk about some change here. So the researchers have been studying a recently found subgroup of Archaea with probably the best name ever. They are called Asgard Archaea. I just loved it. This.
E: Oh, here we go, Marvel.
B: The nanosecond I heard Asgard Archaea, I loved it. So that was basically one website described it as a super phylum of Archaea. Now they use that name, as you know, from North Norse mythology because they found it near a formation in the mid in a Mid-Atlantic Ridge called Loki's Castle. So of course you see the connection between Loki and Asgard. But when I first read Asgard Archaea, though, I didn't think about Norse mythology. My first thought was the cool aliens from Stargate the Asgard. I don't suppose any of you also thought of Stargate first? Cara, did you think of Stargate first when I said no Asgard Archaea? Probably not, but yeah, I'm weird that way, so let's see. So yeah, they were cool, but so tragic. All right, the new bit here for this news item has to do with the cytoskeleton. Do you guys, did you guys know that cells have a skeleton essentially sort of? Yes. Cyto cytoskeleton. That's the the framework of proteins in a cell that give it shape they and support and it it enables even movement. All three domains have cytoskeletons in their cells, but in bacteria and Archaea they are simple structures. Eukarya cells, on the other hand, have very complex cytoskeleton, including very specialized structures called microtubules. And these things help the cells organize internally. They help with division, with cell division, and they also help moving materials around inside the cell, kind of like a cellular conveyor belt or oh wait. Also a better a better analogy would be those bank drive through vacuum tube thingies. That maybe that's a better analogy. What do you even call those stupid things? Pneumatic tube on. Yes, pneumatic tubes. So these complex structures weren't supposed to exist in simpler organisms, just the eukaryotic cells, until they actually do. Though when they studied some of these Asgard Archaea, they found not only a more complex cytoskeleton in general, but they they also found microtubules as well. Now, they weren't quite as complex as eukaryotic cells, but these Archaean cells had microtubules that shouldn't have been there. They, they should not have been in there. They've never been found in there before and even in other Archaean cells, they, they never saw microtubules before. Now the researchers take away is that there, there appears to be less of a distinction between Archaea and Eukarya, which then of course suggests that perhaps the eukaryotic cytoskeleton evolved directly from Archaea ancestors. You got that. So you don't have these three domains branching out separately, but you have well, I'll, I'll continue. We won't get to that point. So if this is correct, then eukaryotes evolved from within Archaea and not separately from it. That's what I was trying to say, that the tree then doesn't branch cleanly into 3 domains anymore. If this is true, that that clean branching isn't valid anymore. Instead it looks like there's just two major branches, bacteria and Archaea, with a eukarya kind of like nested inside of Archaea. Maybe as some superphyllum. I'm not sure but it's but it's no longer it no longer would have its own domain. So then the next question is, is the cytoskeleton critical for the evolution of complex life? That's one of the big questions that they're going to be working on. Perhaps. Perhaps it is the researchers think that a complex cytoskeleton was clearly important for the evolution of eukaryotes. And get this, this one, this was really cool. Some Asgards have tentacle like appendages that are moved by the cytoskeleton, right? So that might help them actually grab or interact with their environment in complex ways. Professor Martin PIL Coffer at 8 at ETH Zurich, said this remarkable cytoskeleton was probably at the beginning of this development. It could have enabled Asgard Archaea to form appendages, thereby allowing them to interact with and then seize and engulf A bacterium. Now what bacterium do you think he was referring to? He was referring to bacterium being absorbed into the into the cell and becoming mitochondria. This is basically the beginning. I mean, mitochondria, you know, it's like taking a kind of a crappy car and throwing in like a jet engine. It's that that's why, you know, complex cell life took off. I mean, the mitochondria of these amazing powerhouses. I mean, basically evolution and Earth changed when that happened. So all right, so it's so who knows what they're going to find, but that this this, this cytoskeleton, this the fact that these cells have this complex cytoskeleton could could have meant that this complexity existed far, you know, far earlier than we then we thought. So in the meantime, though, until this happens, I think we should prepare for the possibility that we'll have two only two high level domains. So what do you guys think that they're going to do with this with the domain names?
J: They better not be a bunch of series of numbers and letters, that's for sure.
B: Yeah, Yeah. Yeah, right, Jay. 4.3. 57 So what I think they're going to do is I think I think they're just going to be boring and it's going to be like, OK, it's the two top level domains now are bacteria and Archaea, because and Eukarya will just be kind of underneath Archaea and that'll be probably what they're going to do, right? Because that that makes sense. But I think they should. It does make sense. But I think they should fuse the Archaea designation with the Eukarya and call it Arcaria, but they'll never do that because that's that's way, way too interesting. So either way, though, either way, stay tuned for a potentially interesting minor tweak to our family tree. And who knows when that's going to happen, But it could could you know, if this, if this pans out, you know, the the two domains could go from three to two, you know, in a few years, who who knows if it's really going to happen, But this looks pretty looks pretty solid with this study that I read. So we'll see what happens.
S: And it's weird to think that we are Archaea, basically.
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