Another obsessional attack on a common herbicide
The article below occurs under the heading: "Two herbicides detected in up to 98% of children may cause learning and social difficulties, study warns".
The relevant journal article is: "Urinary Glyphosate, 2,4-D and DEET Biomarkers in Relation to Neurobehavioral Performance in Ecuadorian Adolescents in the ESPINA Cohort"
If a weed-killer could have horns and a tail it would be Roundup (glyphosate). It's a huge help to farmers but to Greenies it seems to be the devil incarnate. For years now, they have been obsessed with proving it's harmful to people. Anything so popular has to be bad, seems to be the thinking.
But all their efforts have revealed little. Mostly no harm is found and if it is obscure statistical gyrations have to be enlisted to make any sort of point. The latest study is a case in point.
It is difficult to know where to start unravelling the nonsense below so I will make just a few salient points. For a start it was a study of farm children in Ecuador. Ecuador? Would results from Ecuador be the same as resuts from the USA? Who knows? The possibilities for differences would seem to be many.
Secondly, they gave the kids a whole range of tests to examine what might be wrong with them. Only one, Affect Recognition, was significantly associated with glyphosate presence, and only weakly at that. The result drops to non-ignificance if an experiment-wise error rate approach had been adopted -- which is what should have happened when many candidate influences had been examined at the same time. So that's very thin gruel for the glyphosayte haters.
But wait! There's more, as the steak knife salesman used to say. Let me revert to my first point above: That the study was done in Ecuador. The validity of tests used cross-culturally is often low to non-existent so cannot be assumed. And no cross-cultural validation for the tests used seems to have been done for this study. One one occasion when I attempted a cross cultural validity test for one of my scales, the validity turned out to be zero! See https://jonjayray.tripod.com/collapse.html
But to enlist the steak-knife salesman once more, even that is not the end of it. In the test manual, the reliabilities given for Affect Recognition in the age groups concerned were in the .50 range. Which is below what is normally accepted as adequaate in a research instument
In short, these results were nothing more that a parade of meaningless numbers. If anything, they confirm that gyphosate cannot be shown as harmful
The two most widely used herbicides in the world may cause learning problems and poor memory and social skills in children, a study has warned.
Using urine samples and test performance scores from adolescents, researchers found that traces of glyphosate, the most heavily applied herbicide in the US, and common weed killer 24D, were linked to worse brain function.
Researchers from the University of California San Diego found that glyphosate was present in 98 percent of the 520 samples.
People may be exposed to the chemicals by eating contaminated food or drinking water, and it is thought the substances affect the pathways in the brain linked to memory and learning.
Other research has found that glyphosate is in up to 90 percent of wheat-based products such as pizza, crackers and pasta.
Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial rise in chronic diseases and mental health disorders in young adults worldwide.
'Exposure to neurotoxic contaminants in the environment could play a part of this increase,' said senior study author Dr Jose Ricardo Suarez, associate professor at UC San Diego.
The researchers measured the concentrations of two popular herbicides in urine samples: glyphosate and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, better known as 2,4D.
The urine samples were collected in 2016 from 519 children aged between 11 and 17 living in the agricultural county of Pedro Moncayo, Ecuador.
Herbicides are the most commonly used class of pesticides worldwide, often used to kill weeds.
Elevated PFAS levels linked to higher cancer, low birth weight rates
Cities with the highest levels of toxic 'forever chemicals' in tap water also have above-average rates of disease and pregnancy complications, a DailyMail.com analysis suggests.
Glyphosate, used in crops such as corn and soy, is a nonselective herbicide, meaning it kills all vegetation in an area rather than just weeds.
It was detected in 98 percent of participant samples.
2,4D, a herbicide used to kill leafy weeds, was detected in 66 percent of the urine samples.
The researchers also examined the adolescents' performance in five areas: attention and inhibitory control (how well you can stop impulses), memory and learning, language, spatial awareness, and social perception.
They did this by looking through the test scores from 2016 on things like how quickly the children could understand a set of instructions, how well they could remember faces and how quickly they could solve shape puzzles.
Higher amounts of 2,4D in urine were linked to worse scores in the tests for attention and inhibitory control, memory and learning, and language.
Glyphosate concentration in urine was only connected to lower scores in social perception.
The most common glyphosate product is Roundup weed killer, made by Monsanto.
There have been significant increases in glyphosate and 2,4D use following the introduction of genetically modified, glyphosate-resistant "Roundup-ready" crops in 1996 and 2,4D-resistant crops in 2014, the study authors said.
Bayer, the owner of the chemical manufacturing company, has long maintained that exposure to the weed killer has no negative impacts on human health.
The study was published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
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Antrctica not blossoming after all
A Sept. 21 Instagram post shows flowering plants growing on land with icebergs floating on water in the background.
"Flowers are now staring (sic) to bloom in Antarctica and experts say this is not good news," reads text around the image. "This would be the first evidence of accelerated ecosystem response in Antarctica that is directly associated as a consequence of global warming, according to Nicoletta Cannone, a professor of ecology at the University of Insubria."
While a 2022 study did find a global warming-related expansion in the range of two Antarctic flowering plants, the photo does not show those plant species. The photo is labeled as being captured in Greenland on a stock photo website.
The photo in the social media post appears on the stock photo website Alamy, where it is labeled, "Iceberg floating in the water off the coast of Greenland. Flowers on the shore. Nature and landscapes of Greenland."
A spokesperson for the British Antarctic Survey told USA TODAY the photo "most definitely does not show Antarctic plants."
"The purple flower looks very much like Saxifraga oppositifolia − Purple saxifrage − which is frequent in the Arctic," the spokesperson said.
Skip Walker, director of the Alaska Geobotany Center, also told USA TODAY the plants in the photo are likely from the Arctic. "I can't identify the plants with certainty, but they all look like Arctic plants," he said in an email.
Matt Davey, an ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, told USA TODAY there are only two species of flowering plants in Antarctica: Colobanthus quitensis and Deschampsia antarctica.
"The flowers in (the) photo are definitely not the two Antarctic flowering plants," he said in an email.
The text associated with the image seems to loosely quote a 2022 paper co-authored by Nicoletta Cannone, an ecology professor at the University of Insubria in Italy.
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Thanks, New York Times, For Finally Admitting Honey Bees Are Doing Great
Greenies have been moaning for years about declining bee populations
A recent New York Times (NYT) article titled “The Beekeepers Who Don’t Want You to Buy More Bees,” explains that contrary to popular media narratives, honey bee populations are healthy and numerous. This is true. Colony collapse disorder, the main threat to bees, is largely a commercial bee problem and not necessarily a wild honey bee problem.
In the article, professional bee-keeper Gorazd Trusnovec explains to NYT writer David Segal that the well-intentioned growing popularity of beekeeping is actually misguided, because there are now actually too many honey bees in areas all around the world.
“If you overcrowd any space with honey bees, there is a competition for natural resources, and since bees have the largest numbers, they push out other pollinators, which actually harms biodiversity,” he said, after a recent visit to the B&B bees. “I would say that the best thing you could do for honey bees right now is not take up beekeeping.”
Segal goes on to describe colony collapse disorder, which is a phenomena seen in commercial beekeeping in which a large portion of a bee hive or colony dies or is wiped out. Segal writes that “experts tend to blame pesticides, an invasive parasite, a reduction in forageable habitat and climate change,” and this tracks with what Climate Realism has seen and combatted previously.
However, climate change is not among the best explanations for the problem, as explained in “Tell the Truth, UPI News, Parasites and Pesticides, NOT Climate Change, Are Killing Honey Bee Colonies,” or in the June Climate Fact Check.
Extreme weather like heat waves and precipitation aren’t occurring more frequently as measured by any metric, so climate change can’t be implicated in increasing numbers of commercial bee hives being damaged across large geographic regions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists the factors it believes are the most likely causes of the decline in bees and other pollinators:
The alarm around colony collapse disorder (CCD) caused a huge spike in interest in beekeeping in order to “save the bees,” however as a another professional conservationist interviewed by Segal explained, CCD is “an agriculture story, not a conservation story[.]” In fact, there are “more honey bees on the planet than there have ever been in human history.” Segal writes that the number of hives in the world has risen 26 percent in just the last 10 years.
The New York Times itself has contributed to spreading fallacious claims about climate change and CCD, like in “Without Bees, We Are in Trouble,” and for bumblebees, “Climate Change: It’s a Buzzkill for Bumblebees, Study Finds,” in the past, so the present story is refreshing for its accuracy.
Beekeeping has become so popular in places like Slovenia, for example, that the NYT reports honey yields are dropping locally despite a huge increase in hives because there is not enough plant nectar for all the bees.
Honey bees are also not the only pollinators around, and an overabundance of them could negatively impact the populations of other bee species, like bumblebees, as well as non-bee pollinators. This is particularly true in places like North America, where honey bees are an introduced species brought over by European settlers as livestock for honey production. They are not native here, and are considered by conservationists to be invasive competitors to native species.
Honey bees are doing more than fine, regardless of climate change. According to this NYT investigation, they are almost doing too well, due to an increase in the number of beekeepers. Commercial beehives experiencing CCD are not indicative of the health of the entire species, and certainly climate change is not to blame for their problems. Thanks, NYT, for looking beyond the narrative that “climate change causes everything,” to get to the true root cause of the struggles of honey bees and other pollinators, at least in this one story.
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'I was kidnapped by my runaway electric car'
A driver has told how he was "kidnapped" by his runaway electric car and forced to dodge red lights and roundabouts.
Brian Morrison, 53, from Glasgow, said he was heading home from work on Sunday night when he said his brand new MG ZS EV became stuck at 30mph.
Police were forced to stop the runaway car by allowing it to slowly crash into their police van.
MG Motor UK said it was trying to resolve the matter.
A spokesman said: "MG Motor UK has been urgently trying to make contact with Mr Morrison so that his vehicle can be fully inspected by our engineering team.
"We take this matter very seriously and now that contact has been made, we are making every effort to resolve matters quickly and comprehensively for him."
Police Scotland confirmed it had responded to "a driver unable to stop his electric car".
Mr Morrison said his car suffered a ''catastrophic malfunction'' and became stuck at 30mph on the A803 heading towards Kirkintilloch, near Glasgow.
He said he was lucky that the incident had taken place after 22:00 on a Sunday night when the roads were quiet.
"I realised something was wrong when I was coming up to a roundabout and went to slow down but it didn't do it," he said.
"Then I heard a loud grinding noise that sounded like brake pads, but because it was such a new car I knew it couldn't be a problem with them.
"I managed to get around the roundabout going at about 30mph and then had a long road ahead of me, so I assumed it would stop without me accelerating - but it didn't."
Mr Morrison has mobility issues, so he was unable to escape the car travelling at 30mph by jumping out.
He added: "It might not sound like it is very fast, but when you have no control over the speed and you're completely stuck inside, it's terrifying."
Mr Morrison initially called his wife in a panic to ask her to warn vehicles ahead of him that he could not stop his car.
He called 999 when he grew concerned about crashing into pedestrians and navigating more roundabouts and traffic lights.
"The car was just running away on its own, there was nothing I could do," he said.
"When I dialled 999, they sent police to help and put some engineers on the line to try and solve the problem, and they were asking if it was a self-driving car.
"It was the first time that the call handlers had experienced the issue, and they had no idea what to do."
Soon after he made the call, three police vehicles arrived and drove in front and behind the car.
He said: "I was 100% concentrating on my steering, so when a police van pulled up besides me and asked if I was Brian and if I was okay, I just yelled 'no I'm not, I can't stop'."
Police asked Mr Morrison to throw his electronic key through their van window before driving off, and then tried forcibly shutting off the engine - but nothing could stop the car.
He was also asked to hold the power button for a couple of seconds which also failed to stop it and the entire dashboard lit up with faults.
Officers decided to get him to crash into the back of their van before he got into a more built-up area.
Mr Morrison said: "Eventually I came up to a roundabout which slowed the car down to about 15mph and the police van was waiting for me on the other side.
"I went into the back of the van while it was moving, before they put on the brakes to stop me.
''After that, a police officer jumped into my car and did something which seemed to keep the car still."
The police could not move their car as the electric vehicle would keep moving, so they had to wait for the RAC to arrive.
"I still have no idea what happened," he said. "But when the RAC got to me about three hours later, he plugged in the car to do a diagnostic check and there was pages of faults.
"He said he had never seen anything like it and decided he was not willing to turn the engine on to see what was wrong."
Mr Morrison's insurance said they were investigating the incident, which has left him unsure if he would drive another electric vehicle again.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-67005620
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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