Canada Is "Woke" Central

"We will hire the most qualified people based upon their skills and mutual interests. I've had two people say that was the kiss of death. I thought I was trying to be nice saying that if you were interested and able I'd hire you and that's all that mattered. I don't care about the colour of your skin. I'm interested in hiring someone who wants to work on the project and is good at it."

"I believe this is an important stand to make. I will not be silenced any more."

"I think what's happened is the woke and the social justice warriors have made a moralistic argument the way the religious right used to make moralistic arguments. And now people are afraid to challenge them. But I think it's okay to say I believe that equality is a morally valid position. I believe that meritocracy is a morally valid position."

"People do different things. They have different abilities. They have different interests. To me, the whole point is to treat people as individuals, so that's what I do in my life. My way of dealing with racism, or sexism, or any other 'ism' is to treat people as individuals.

"[As scientists] we don't believe in EDI [equality, diversity, inclusion]. We believe in merit, fairness and equality. You should be fair in your procedures and treat people as equals."

Patanjali Kambhampati, professor of chemistry, McGill University, Montreal

Patanjali Kambhampati, a scientist at Montreal's McGill University turned down twice for government grants related to inclusive, equity and diversity provision 'hoops;. John Kenney, National Post

 

As an award winning Canadian scientist Professor Kambhampati has decided to speak out after his request for funding of two projects a year apart were refused one after another, two years running. As a man of great integrity and an expert in his field of scientific research accustomed in the past to receiving federal government research grants, he was being punished for his lack of commitment to "diversity"; doublespeak for giving breaks to unqualified people simply on the basis of their colour or ethnicity.

It doesn't seem to matter to the funding authorities who decided to set his requests aside as not worth evaluating when he emphasized that it was expertise as a qualification that moved him to make his hiring choices, not the colour of an applicant's skin. As himself a man of colour, born in India, living in a 'white' society with ample experiences of his own in the past as a recipient of overt racist discrimination. It is the scientist in him, not the man of Indian origins who responded to pointed questions on his funding application that displeased the funding arbiters.

He committed himself to hiring on merit, nothing more, nothing less. Merit as in scientific qualifications, not the merit based on diversity and considerations of 'inclusiveness'. When his first research funding request was turned down on patently obvious rejection linked to the critical hiring questions, he put it down to new criteria he had no interest in and set it aside. When it happened for a second time, he decided to make it a public issue.

His field of scientific expertise explores super-fast laser science at its cutting edge, a field spanning every issue from telecom to medicine. He applied for a $450,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSERC]. NSERC responded that "the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion considerations in the application were deemed insufficient", and they rejected his application. His previous application went to the federally funded National Frontiers in Research Fund a year earlier "to support world-leading interdisciplinary, international, high-risk, high-reward, transformative and rapid-response Canadian research"; turned down on similar grounds.

 

This is the same government that refuses to give summer-student employment grants to any employee-applicant that refuses to sign a commitment to never support groups or are themselves involved in denying abortion rights to women. The result of which was that critical hiring in many areas of social services for summer student jobs for the past several years stumbled and failed when church groups, for example, could not affirm the demand.

It was at the first-stage bureaucratic level that both Professor Kambhampati's applications were stalled. Neither proceeded to the next step where other scientists would review the proposals for their scientific merit and immediacy. Then it came to light that at roughly the same time another arm of government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, approved a grant to Dr.Lana Ray, professor at Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, of $1.2 million to study cancer prevention with the use of traditional Indigenous healing practices. 

 

Professor Ray commented when the award was announced: "We need to stop framing prevalent risk factors of cancer as such and start thinking about them as symptoms of colonialism."

Professor Kambhampati took up his position in Montreal in 2003 at McGill. Born in India, the now-50-year-old had lived in the United States since age four, working in Minnesota, Texas and California before taking up his Canadian professorship. "In childhood I used to get constant beatings and name calling. Two years ago, I had eight police officers break into my house because I was sitting on my porch while brown. That happened on Canada Day", he said in an interview.

He treats everyone equally and fairly, led by his own experiences. He now believes that woke ideology prevalent on campus has leached into government, creating two major problems: self-censorship and a resistance to asking meaningful questions. "There's a lot of self-censoring. And certainly you see it among young people in the university. So young people in the university self-censor a lot. Now they are afraid to talk. That's no way to advance our understanding of the world."

As a child, he said, his mentors were "old, white World War II vets" who taught him all about radio-controlled airplanes. "And that's what led me to build lasers 30 years later". As a mentor now, the Professor explained he has been of assistance to both men and women of different cultures and religions. "I've mentored minorities, I've mentored women. I myself am a Third World minority. And I have mentored people who have catastrophic illnesses. And I have mentored people who are LGBTQ, and not for any reason other than to treat people as equal."

Woke ideology, in his experience, has accelerated in the last several years. "And now it's the prevailing culture. It's 90 percent of the normal people against 10 percent of the vocal minority that has shamed everyone into self-censorship", he said. 

 

"As a scientist our job is to think about how nature works, ask questions, and find answers without prejudice. We cannot do that anymore. We cannot ask how humans work, and how science and nature work, because the woke are interfering with us and saying, 'You can't ask those questions. You're a racist. You're a sexist. You're a homophobe. You're a colonialist. You're a something'. There's some way in which the woke are trying to get people [so they're' no longer asking meaningful questions]."

Betrayal of National Security

The Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab is the only Level 4 lab in Canada, enabling its scientists to work with highly dangerous microbes. (John Woods/The Canadian Press)

"The fact that we're a net consumer of intelligence means we need to be extremely careful in how we handle this material."

"There seems to be no reflection on any of these issues whatsoever in this demand for information."

Stephanie Carvin, professor, Carleton University Norman Paterson School of International Affairs

"The research culture seems to have taken priority over the national security culture."

"There's only so many of these labs [level-4 security laboratories equipped to handle deadly pathogens] around in t he Western world, let alone among the Five Eyes."

"So if you're going to try to infiltrate one, you're going to try to pick the weakest link. And so once again, it turns out, that Canada was the weakest link."

"China has a very active, very aggressive and extremely dangerous bioweapons program,. So all the research that's being generated here could easily be reappropriated by the Chinese authorities to advance rather nefarious causes."  
"This would also explain why you haven't charged them, because once you charge them, then eventually you have to put people on trial. And when you put people on trial, then you have to disclose the evidence that you have. So the government might quite intentionally be trying to keep this sort of relatively below the radar as much as it can."   

"This needs to be a wake-up call for Canada about how aggressive the Chinese have become at infiltrating Western institutions for their political, economic and national security benefits." 

Christian Leuprecht, professor, Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University

When asked about the case during a daily briefing in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: 'China and Canada have some scientific co-operation, which is quite normal and should not be politicized.' (Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press)

 

In the Canadian House of Commons a battle royale is taking place against the federal government's complacency over permitting arms of the Chinese Communist Party access to some of Canada's most shielded technical, scientific, military, political, industrial secrets. Opposition parties in Parliament are insistent that the reason why two top-flight scientists were dismissed from their work in the nation's high security infectious disease laboratory be disclosed to them. 

A vote on Thursday to declare the Public Health Agency of Canada in contempt of Parliament was passed. It had declined to provide top-secret details relating to the two Chinese scientists being ushered out of the laboratory along with a handful of Chinese bioscience students, without explanation. A parliamentary deadlock has ensued; the Liberal government refusing to hand over documents related to the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg's collaboration with Chinese military researchers.

The two scientists -- Dr.Xiangguo Qin and her husband, Keding Cheng, were fired in January for undisclosed reasons even while an RCMP investigation is underway. Tabling such sensitive information would result in a breach of national security and might interfere with an ongoing police investigation, responds the Public Health Agency of Canada under whose aegis the laboratory operates.

 

Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, a prominent virologist at the forefront of an ongoing RCMP investigation, is seen in an undated screengrab at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Laboratory. She was fired from her post in January, but officials won't say why. (CBC)

 

Experts for the most part share agreement that the Winnipeg high-security laboratory breach represents proof=positive of an overly relaxed attitude in Canadian government circles and academia with respect to actions by Beijing to secure foreign intellectual property in the region of biological or technological research. China is well known to infiltrate foreign powers using a wide range of avenues, among them its Thousands Talents Program, where leading scientists of Chinese origin and engineers working overseas are reminded of their obligations to China.

Security authorities in the United States arrested a number of researchers with connection to the Thousand Talents under the charge the program's ultimate goal is to take possession of sensitive intellectual property, then made use of by the Chinese government and its military. No fewer than seven scientists at the Winnipeg facility have conducted experiments and co-authored studies on infectious diseases in coordination with Chinese military researchers.

 

Qiu, a medical doctor from Tianjin, China, came to Canada in 1996 for graduate studies. (CBC)

 

Chinese scientist Fethu Yan from the Academy of Military Medical Sciences of the People's Liberation Army operated out of the Winnipeg laboratory for a time, occasionally listed as an affiliate of the facility. Countless research agreements have been signed by Canadian academics with Chinese researchers, accompanied most frequently with sizable funding arrangements. If there's one thing scientists working on projects respond to, it is operations funding.

 

The Winnipeg laboratory transferred Ebola and Henipah viruses to China's Wuhan Institute of Virology, under the direction of then-chief scientist at the lab, Dr.Xiangguo Qin; a transfer held to have been unauthorized. Several months later, the two scientists were ushered out of the Winnipeg laboratory by Canadian authorities. Mystery upon mystery, lacking explanation on the basis of their release's potential betrayal of national security. 

"Why did our security procedures not identify that this was not a good idea, that these individuals, given their background, should not be given security clearances?"   

"No news is good news, is how we often refer to it." 

"There are important security issues — and not just for us, but for all the other countries that we partner with as well — because if there's information that's going from us to a hostile foreign state, that is something that has significant ramifications."

Scott Newark, former Alberta crown prosecutor, executive officer, Canadian Police Association, policy adviser to the Ontario and federal governments

CBC News previously received hundreds of pages of documents through an access-to-information request, detailing a shipment of Ebola and Henipah viruses sent from the Winnipeg lab to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. (Karen Pauls/CBC News)

No Middle Ground in Transgender Discussions

"The original piece in question was a difficult and frankly irresponsible read -- especially in light of the fact that 21 trans people have been murdered in 2020 so far [the vast majority of whom are Black trans women]."                                          "It makes me question the motivations and priorities of an author who wishes to come out in support of Rowling, rather than using their platform to demand justice for the lives lost due to transphobic violence."                                                           Jules Purnell, trans person, associate director, sexual-violence prevention, Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania

Dr.James Cantor

"No compromise, no in-between is allowed. they're not even thought crimes. It's 'Oh, clearly you're on the other team. If you don't belong to my religion, your religion is not allowed to speak."                                                             "My 27-year association with SSSS must come to an end.  In the present culture war between science and popular appeal, the SSSS Board of Directors selected the latter. This is not the first time the SSSS Board abused their authority to silence science opposing their personal political views, and no valid organization can be in the name of science in name only.  I am grateful to the other sexuality scientists who have resigned in sympathy, both publicly and privately."                                                                 "To acknowledge the facts: I have long posted news items and opinion pieces to SSSS’s member listserv.  In July, I posted an essay of my own, When is a TERF not a TERF, challenging the extremism that has taken over public discussion of trans issues, pointing out, for example, that the unwillingness ever to recognize anyone’s transition is different from citing the research suggesting children should wait until age 12 to transition."  Dr.James Cantor, sex researcher, Toronto

"Many members of the Board felt that Dr.Cantor had demonstrated a pattern of harassment against several other members -- even after those other members had repeatedly asked him to stop."                                                                             "The Board determined that Dr.Cantor's unwillingness to be responsive to other members' requests to cease his argumentative and harassing posts violated the guidelines of the listserv."                                                                                           Psychology professor, Indiana University Zoe Peterson, president, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality

"James can be provocative, but he's always very fact-based. I understand from a psychological perspective that to some people words are experienced as violence. [But] I'm not so sure that a professional listserv is the place that needs to accommodate this particular sensibility."                                                                   "I believe in the creation of safe spaces, but sometimes we all have to step out of our safe spaces."                                                                                                        Dr.Jack Drescher, Columbia University psychiatry professor, gender-identity expert, Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research

Dr.Cantor posted an essay on the online forum of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality of which he had been a member for 27 years, as a highly respected, high profile researcher into transgenderism. His essay on listserv complained of "extremists" castigating those who question some of the tenets of the transgender movement, in particular that children who identify with another gender begin transitioning before they reach puberty.

Without doubt Dr.Cantor would have understood from past experience that questioning one of the canons of the transgender movement would garner an instant, defamatory response, and his most certainly did, leading him to resign his membership, with yet another complaint, that the group he had long been associated with as a leading scientific expert on transgender issues capitulated to popular acceptance rather than scientific evidence on the trans issues of the day.

He was accused of encouraging hatred, to the point of inciting violence toward trans people. As far as Dr. Cantor is concerned, and he counter-charged as much, it is attitudes such as that, typifying a form of "emotional blackmail" disqualifying people with views that sit between the extremes of anti-trans hatred and militant trans activism that lie at the heart of the problem between both communities.

Formerly a professor at University of Toronto, currently in private practise, Dr.Cantor is clearly not a conformist, comfortable with merely surrendering to the hard-position stance of dedicated trans activists. When the fray ignited and controversy arose, and the scientific group he was part of chose to chastise him by denying him posting privileges for the site as a consequence, he decided to post an open letter of resignation.

Thousands rallied outside Brooklyn Museum in New York to support trans rights on Sunday, June 14, 2020.  CNN

In which he stated his position and accused the society of succumbing to popular appeal, preferring to leave science in the dust as a result of the "culture war" between the two. Dr.Cantor observed that his commentaries on sexuality-related topics have been posted on the listserv for the past 20 years, never coming up against reactions of the type he was latterly confronted with. And the reason is obvious enough; after struggling as society's underdog Historically, the trans community is now enjoying the abject abnegation of mainstream society.

Others of his colleagues, also members of the society, chose to stand on the dignity and veracity of science as opposed to the acceptance of popular opinion and the flavour of the day's favoured causes, and followed suit in resigning membership. Prominent gender-identity experts decided the society's reaction and handling of the episode failed to cover them in glory as a leading group of scientists, capitulating to emotion over reason.

Transgender rights rally, New York REUTERS/Demetrius Freeman

Dr.Cantor's reputation resided in his studies at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for research on pedophilia. His studies with the use of MRI scans suggested that the predilection of pedophiles was hard-wired. In private psychological practise, he has raised his voice against transphobia, he has promoted a transgender bill of rights, but he believes that gender dysphoria - a sense of not being in the right biological gender -- is not as common as claimed by activists. 

It is his belief that surgical transitiioning is unnecessary for some people, likening the willingness of clinicians to accept gender-identity disorder as the cause of mental health illness as similar to the belief that once prevailed in repressed childhood sexual abuse memories, long discredited but for a few rare instances. While he argued in the much-criticized essay that no defence exists for discrimination of transgender people in  housing, employment, sports and public washroom access, he is dismissive of trans-exclusionary radical feminist, a term used to discredit popular author J.K.Rowling, along with those who claim children should not begin transitioning before age 12.

About 15,000 people attended the Black Trans Lives Matter protest in Brooklyn   Getty Images

The World Wide Search for a COVID Vaccine

"It's always a question of dollars for research -- there's never enough to do everything you want."
"So unfortunate situations like this do forces people's and politicians' attention on the need to do that ... I think there will be big consequences."
"It's [the novel coronavirus] really a chemical. It's inert. They're not alive or dead, they're inactive or active."
"They're parasites, by definition that's what they do -- they take advantage of a host."
Roy Duncan, virology professor, Dalhousie University

"HIV research really took off in the late '80s and early 90s, taught us how the virus replicates."
"We're kind of with anti-virals now where antibiotics were to the 1950s ... This particular [COVId-19] virus is going to really dramatically accelerate a lot of work."
Dr.Gerald Evans, chair, infectious diseases division, medical school,Queen's University

"In the face of this pandemic, where public health measures are not sufficient, it is going to propel research further."
"[It] is enhancing and will likely increase the number of anti-virals being developed and tested."
Joanne Lemieux, biochemistry professor, University of Alberta

Cobra Biologics, working on a potential COVID-19 vaccine. REUTERS/Carl Recine

In part as a result of the unique, parasitical qualities of viruses, research initiatives hoping to treat infections from the flu, the common cold and Ebola have been unsuccessful since they are much more difficult to deal with successfully than, as an example, antibiotics in countering bacterial infections. There have been scant few success stories, overwhelmed by abject failures in coming up with drugs with the properties to treat viral infections.

Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir

To the present, Remdesivir, designed originally for Ebola, and which failed to counter its effects, held out hope for efficacy in the treatment of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It has just been given regulatory approval in the United States after undergoing a study that affirmed it had a fairly mild effect on the subjects enrolled in the trial, shortening their hospital stays by several days, but doing nothing whatever for the symptoms, much less protecting against the coronavirus.

It is illustrative of the anxiety involved in trying to find a coping mechanism for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that the drug, however modest its effect, will now be the first arrow in the quiver of the novel coronavirus arsenal. Hope remains high that other drug trials will be more successful, not only in alleviating symptoms but eventually even preventing the virus from infecting people as readily as it does, replicating and spreading. Now the great hope is for the discovery of a reliable, safe vaccine to end the pandemic by preventing its contagion.

At one time the HIV infections that causes AIDS killed just about anyone who contracted it 30 years ago. Now patients are able to live long, healthy lives given the drug regime prescribed for that very specific purpose; not able to cure but to suppress the virus to the point that its deadly symptoms are prevented. Hepatitis C drugs represent a new generation of drugs, excruciatingly expensive but representing a breakthrough by curing the disease.

Ampules of Remdesivir  Ulrich Perrey/Pool via REUTERS

In "acute" viral infections such as flu, measles or West Nile, a short, sharp onset of symptoms ensue followed by fairly swift recovery -- and sometimes death. And no anti-virals have yet been discovered and certainly not for lack of trying. On the other hand, since they've become part of a controlled background of awareness without quite the same level of dire and immediate threat the COVID-19 infection has become, we live with them and adapt accordingly.

"We really don't have good anti-virals for an acute viral infections", Dr.Srinivas Murthy, head of a Canadian trial of possible COVID-19 drug treatments admitted. And as Dr.Evans adds, it is "a heck of a lot harder" to create an antiviral than an antibiotic. Bacteria represent free-living cellular organisms with the biology to survive and reproduce independent of a host they may invade. They can be viewed as relatively easy targets for drugs.

Viruses on the other hand consist of nucleic acid, genetic material encased in protein. Once they infiltrate a host and stick to a cell, viruses become active and burrow deep into the cell, using its molecular chemistry to replicate, in the process creating additional viruses that will go on to infect other cells. They represent a more difficult, limited target. Added to which difficulty is the fact that drugs must be designed not to be toxic to the host cell, along with the virus attached to it.

 Cobra Biologics,  Britain, April 30, 2020. REUTERS/Carl Recine

And then there is the capacity for viruses to mutate, complicating the issue exponentially; they are more difficult to target than bacteria given their mutation tendency, its swiftness and frequency in mutation ensures medication becomes less potent: "Viruses are tricky, they change", noted Dr. Murthy. People's own immune system responding to the presence of an invading virus, can wreak the most damage through dangerous inflammation or sepsis.

COVID-19 Vaccine Search in Laboratories World-Wide

"Typically, the first in-human study tends to be quite small, 40 or 50 people."
"Obviously the first human studies are done in young, healthy people, where they are the least likely to get into trouble if anything goes wrong, with any of the vaccines, including ours."
"We want to move forward in a very careful, deliberate way. But you have older people and people with respiratory and cardiac diseases who are dying at stunningly high rates when they get infected --we're talking 16, 25, 28 percent mortality."
"We have some pretty good ideas about why those vaccine-enhanced diseases occurred [with the previous use of RSV vaccines causing 'vaccine-enhanced disease'] and so we are quite specifically designing our vaccine to avoid that possibility."
Dr.Brian Ward, epidemiologist, professor, department of medicine, McGill University

"People are going to say you've got to be cautious. But other people will say, 'it seems to have worked in the study group -- we gotta go."
"I think we have to go somewhat faster, because the real answer to this plague is vaccination."
Arthur Caplan, bioethicist, Langone Health, New York University

"It's kind of pathetically funny that great vaccine work done by scientists with SARS and MER, both times the taps were shut off. It's hard to even get them into animal studies let alone clinical trials, because pretty well governments say, 'well, this disease is gone, why are we funding it'?"
"[It's different this time] It's amazing. I've never seen in my life, in my career, this much focus and this much effort being put toward so many vaccine candidates for one disease."
"It's fantastic. And I think some good will come out of this. But nothing like this can happen in a time frame that some governments would like to see happen."
"The public has to put a bit of faith and trust in us that nobody is trying to take short cuts where it is going to be more detrimental to the population than the disease itself."
"We're so much more advanced in ethics and understanding toxicity than we were back in the '40s that I think there's not a lot we need to worry about. We need to worry about all those that will succumb to this disease."
Dr.Eric Arts, Canada Research Chair in HIV pathogenesis and viral control, Western University

A COVID-19 assessment centre is set up outside of Scarborough Health Network – Birchmount Hospital on Saturday March 21, 2020. Veronica Henri/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Professor Brian Ward is chief medical officer for Medicago Inc. based in Quebec, using plants with an aim to producing a vaccine for the global novel coronavirus pandemic streaming across the globe. This pathogen is of the same type as SARS, with some similarities and as-yet-unknown differences. It is not as deadly as SARS, but it infects at a higher rate and replicates wildly, searching for new hosts to enable it to continue replicating and infecting.

He explains the purpose of the coronavirus (crownvirus) "spikes" as proteins on the virus outer surface to clamp onto a human cell where it changes from its club appearance to a spear, fusing with the cell membrane's genetic material to enter the cell and replicate. The copies it makes go on to spread to other cells, and when copies are shed externally, the process continues when the virus infects other human hosts. A day following the free release of the genetic blueprint that Chinese scientists had placed on line for SARS-CoV-2, Medicago began its hunt for a vaccine.

In twenty days' time Medicago scientists produced a virus-like particle (VLP) mimicking the virus structure, stripped of harmful genetic material to make them non-infectious, but capable of 'tricking' the immune system into believing it has discovered a virus to generate enough antibodies primed to attack the real virus. Plans to begin testing the company's vaccine are set for July. Which seems a long way off, given the situation the world finds itself in.

Medicago

A galloping virus whose properties are still not completely understood, for which there is no cure, no treatment, no protocol to protect the public, no therapy of any use once it is transmitted, has now infected over a half million people worldwide, and produced close to 25,000 deaths. No one is spared, from the  young to the old, the wealthy and the poor, people of social substance and blue collar workers, people on welfare, and world leaders alike. The democratization of ill health.

This is the sudden presence of an entirely new virus, a pathogen of frightening properties, a zoonotic that transferred a virus that inhabits animals in an exchange between animal and human through a barbaric cuisine-cultural practise of using live wild animals in food preparation and pharmaceuticals. This is not a new situation, but one that has occurred previously and with increasing frequency, challenging nature to do her worst through human practises that offend nature itself.

Now research laboratories around the world are focused on discovering a way to stop this virus in its belligerently raging tracks, coming up with an anti-infectious agent capable of safely vaccinating hundreds of millions of people globally against the ongoing predation of a mysterious, debilitating, sometimes-deadly virus. Now, the need to adequately fund research to secure the health safety of the world's population has become a high priority of governments, which had prior to this denied the funding of ongoing vaccine research.

Moderna based in Massachusetts initiated their first human trials on a possible COVID-19 vaccine a week ago, hoping for initial results to arrive in possibly two months even though a commercially available vaccine will take at least 12 to 18 months. The possibility exists, however that a promising vaccine might be released on an emergency basis to inoculate health care workers at an earlier date.

Dr. Sonia Macieiewski samples proteins at Novavax labs in Rockville, Maryland on March 20, 2020, one of the labs developing a vaccine for the corona virus, COVID-19. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Great Minds at Work Investigating, Interpreting, Counselling

"We've shown that what happens in the solar system can have a big influence on Earth. Extraterrestrial events aren't always destructive. Many people think about meteorites as just dinosaur killers, but we found the opposite. A big collision in the asteroid belt had constructive consequences that led to cooling and biodiversification."
"We're talking about gentle changes that happened over two million years. If we could travel back in time, it wouldn't appear as a catastrophe to us; it would be more like a gentle nudge that led to global change and triggered diversification."
Philipp Heck, curator of meteorites, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

"Our study is the first time it has been shown that asteroid dust actually helps cool Earth to a dramatic extent."
"Geologists often think of nothing outside Earth. You have to understand what happens in space to get the full picture of what's happened on Earth."
"We knew almost nothing about the meteorite flux to Earth in geological deep time before this study." "The conventional view is that the solar system has been very stable over the past 500 million years. So it is quite surprising that the meteorite flux at 467 million years ago was so different from the present."
Birger Schmitz, nuclear physicist, Lund University, Sweden 

An artist's depiction of an asteroid collision in outer space.

(Image: © Don Davis, Southwest Research Institute)

A distant, ancient asteroid collision generated sufficient dust to cause an ice age aeons ago on Earth, according to a study published last week in Science Advances. A research team that reached that conclusion and produced the study has given new insight into efforts that might address climate change.

Our planet Earth is exposed to extraterrestrial matter on a fairly frequent basis; no less than 40,000 tons of space dust settles here annually. A 150-kilometre-wide asteroid collided with a fast-moving object between Mars and Jupiter 466 years ago, the crash serving to increase the dust falling on Earth for the following two million years by a factor of 10,000.

Drs. Schmitz, Heck and their research team discovered that this voluminous fall of dust managed to trigger cooling in the atmosphere of Earth, leading to an ice age. Extraterrestrial dust in significant amounts has the potential of cooling the planet by blocking the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the planet. Since dust from this asteroid collision gradually accumulated, the cooling also resulted gradually, enabling plant and animal species to adapt, as sea levels dropped and temperatures descended by up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Evidence was derived from a study of fossil meteorites, extraterrestrial materials embedded in Earth's rocks in antiquity, so rare Dr. Heck names them "Mona Lisas", the first one of which was discovered in a limestone quarry in Sweden in 1952, set aside by a paleontologist for future study, and identified 27 years later. A mineralogist realized in 1979 the origins of the rock, prompting a systematic search for additional such extraterrestrial material, resulting in the discovery of 130 meteorites over the following two decades.

Co-author Fredrik Terfelt of Lund University collecting rocks containing 467-million-year-old specimens

On examination, Dr. Schmitz and his team determined fully 129 specimens were originally part of the same asteroid breakup. Their level of cosmic ray exposure was measured to confirm outer-space origins and determine their arrival on Earth when the meteorites were analyzed for chemical composition. Researchers were able to determine that extraterrestrial dust began its reach to Earth about 50,000 years after the asteroid collision, by tracing the increase of certain isotopes in the meteorites. Roughly ten thousand years later, during the Ordovician Period, a worldwide ice age was initiated.

The team hypothesized the collision might have increased dust levels by a hundredfold before they launched their research. However, the chemical analysis revealed that dust levels had increased by a far greater amount, by a factor of ten thousand, an increase quite sufficient to alter Earth's climate markedly. Out of that discovery came the attention to a mechanism that could conceivably be used in counteracting global warming.

In their recently-published paper, the research team propose an asteroid be captured and brought to one of the Lagrange points between the sun and Earth. An unstable zone where the gravitational pull of each of those celestial bodies is equal, allowing the production of dust to block sunlight. The use of extraterrestrial dust for global cooling has in fact been previously proposed by other scientists. Dr. Heck, however, has his doubts, considering their findings to represent a mere basis for investigation.

An undated photo of the slowly diminishing asteroid 6478 Gault, with a tail more than 800,000km long and some 5,000km wide. The dust from such objects may have been a factor in past global cooling on Earth.
Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/world/how-cool-planet-extraterrestrial-dust   NASA via New York Times

"Putting a rock into an unstable point that could make it fall into Earth has me worried. A small asteroid wouldn't cause a global extinction, but it could cause a local catastrophe or wipe out a city in the worst case."

Scene: The Anthropocene

"Our planetary system is affected by a magnitude of force as powerful as any naturally occurring, global catastrophe, but one caused solely by a single species: Us. [Our] innate social predisposition to greed [has precipitated the catastrophe]."
"I'm not trying to editorialize and say this is right or this is wrong. Either extreme is too simplistic. We are compelled to progress. We have extracted from the land from the moment we stood on two feet."
"We are working to supply the kinds of materials that are necessary for the lives we've built for ourselves."
Jan Zalasiewicz, geologist, University of Leicester, Anthropocene Working Group

"With its huge population size and distinctive biology, genetics and bone geochemistry, the broiler chicken may be viewed as a key species indicator of the proposed Anthropocene Epoch."
Paper promoting Anthropocene Working Group

"The drive to officially recognize the Anthropocene may, in fact, be political rather than scientific."
"To be useful, the samples measured would have to come from a single stratigraphic section [of the Earth]. The chicken paper] looks like a good anthropology/human history topic and not a geologic topic."
"Why are they doing this work, rather than putting together what is needed for a formal proposal, unless there is nothing to put together for a formal proposal?"
Stanley C. Finney, geologist, California State University, Secretary General, International  Union of Geologial Sciences

"Nor can we ever hope to control the enormous terraforming processes, the Earth's plate tectonics driven by internal heat and resulting in slow but constant creation of new ocean floor, forming, reshaping, and elevating land masses whose distributions and altitudes are key determinants of climate variability and habitability."
"Let us wait before we determine that our mark on the planet is anything more than a modest microlayer in the geologic record."
Vaclav Smil, emeritus professor, University of Manitoba

"[The Anthropocene movement] constructs the future to interpret the present -- a future in which humanity either takes responsibility for the Earth system or is responsible for its collapse."
Mark Sagoff, retired professor, George Mason University

"[The debate over the Anthropocene is] worse than misleading. [It is a proposal that has created] a redundant, manufactured debate that displaces more important scientific research and genuine discussion on climate and environmental change."
"It is a fad, a bandwagon, a way of marketing research as cutting-edge and relevant."
James Scource, professor of physical geography, University of Exeter

A geologist works on a sedimentary rock record.  Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis / Getty

A science crusade led by a group of 37 geologists calling themselves the Anthropocene Working Group whose lead protagonist is Jan Zalasiewicz who has produced numerous journal articles promoting recognition of the Anthropocene as a new unit of the Geologic Time Scale has among its membership climate activists. Among the AWG proposals is the determination to recognize the year 1950 as the turning point of the interglacial twelve-thousand-year Holocene period where humankind emerged while the last Ice Age glaciers retreated.

The world's nuclear superpowers detonated multiple devices depositing measurable radioactive fallout now embedded in sediments across the planet, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, following the Second World War in a race to obtain super-weaponry during the Cold War of the West versus the Iron Curtain of the U.S.S.R. The presence of this nuclear sediment represents evidence of a new epoch, a "bomb spike" registering as proof, according to AWG geologists that humans are to the present what dinosaur-killing meteorites were to ancient history wiping out life on Earth.

As the Anthropocene Project would have it, humankind is heading toward disaster, one manufactured by ourselves that will destroy us all. Proponents of the Anthropocene argument claim it has followed the Holocene era where now forests are being decimated, oceans are in peril, animals are becoming extinct, and all as a result of human-driven habitat loss from poaching, pollution and climate change. In promoting the Anthropocene a recent paper lays claim to the broiler chicken "vividly symbolize[ing] the transformation of the biosphere to fit evolving human consumption patterns, and show[s] clear potential to be a biostratigraphic marker species for the Anthropocene."

This has been accomplished by breeding and developing broiler chickens to feed humanity, the result of which they are so prominent globally as a now-distinct species of bird they have become a symbol of avian transformation for the sole purpose of steaming on our kitchen tables for people to devour. In 2016 the population of broiler chickens was an estimated 22.7 billion, a number vastly greater than that of any other bird species on Earth. Almost 66 billion chickens were bred and consumed in that year, a consumption rate that keeps accelerating representing in part "The Great Acceleration".

Breeding technology and farming practices developed post-1950 has produced the modern broiler chicken, to a particular purpose in skeletal size and shape. The paper that was produced by Jan Zalasiewicz in service to the Anthropocene Working Group's agenda and published by the journal The Royal Society Open Science, has not impressed others in the field, not part of the Anthropocene Working Group. Stanley Finney, chair of the International Union of Geological Sciences states his opposition to a new "Anthro" or "cene" on the Geologic Time Scale.

Other geologists point out that even if the Anthropocene has begun, it has been scarcely 75 years in existence, insufficient time to justify its place in geological space in respect of a four-billion-year-old planet that has managed to survive all manner of evolutionary, climatic, atmospheric and interspace catastrophes as it transforms itself in a gradual process in which there is no discernible completion. And, as Professor Smil points out, while humans may be causing changes on Earth, scant reason exists to conclude humans represent a force as great or greater than nature.

Solar activity, the planet's shape, rotation and tilt, the eccentricity of the orbital path and the circulation of its atmosphere -- all are beyond the reach of human interference. Nature remains firmly in control, and there is no reason to expect that powerful existential force will ever lose its control of the Earth's destiny and ours, emphasizes Professor Smil. "And are we so certain of what future millennia will bring?" asks California State's Stanley Finney.

Still, writes Will Steffen, a chemical engineer and leading member of the Anthropocene Working Group: The world needs a "deep transformation based on a fundamental reorientation of human values, equity, behaviour, institutions, economies, and technologies." Envisaging controls on population, economic development and other "deliberate, integral, and adaptive steps to reduce dangerous impacts on the Earth System".

"How this can be done technically, ethically, equitably, and economically" is uncertain and "highly challenging", particularly as such controls might include "monitoring and changing behaviour".

Credit: University of Leicester

#MeToo Avoidance

"Part of the reason we wrote this article is we know that academic medicine mentorships for women are not of the same quality and quantity as they are for their male colleagues."
"We've all heard and we've had experiences and there's been [research] literature that has said that men are now saying that they fear mentoring women because they fear being falsely accused of some kind of sexual misconduct."
"What I worry about is that men are now going to use this excuse of worrying that they're under some kind of threat as a reason to back off mentorship."
"This has been happening for decades. Women have not been able to advance in leadership positions in academic medicine and we've been trying to find ways to level the playing field."
"I think when you have targets or you have quotas, it really focuses attention and provides opportunities to set an example for the importance of having gender equity."
"If we do not promote diversity and equity within our leadership and within our workforce, we aren't getting the best and the brightest in those positions."
Dr. Sophie Soklaridis, scientist, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health [CAMH], Toronto

"Without mentors, women do not have the opportunities that their male colleagues enjoy."
"Over and over again, I've seen women without strong mentorship choose a pathway different than that they may have preferred."
Dr. Catherine Zahn, CAMH president

The Centre for Addictions and Mental Health Foundation president and CEO Deborah Gillis, CAMH Scientist Dr. Sophie Soklaridis and CAMH president and CEO Dr. Catherine Zahn pose in an undated handout photo.    HO / THE CANADIAN PRESS

A group of high-powered women in the medical-scientific field in Canada put their heads together to come up with a commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine focusing a spotlight on an issue that has become a real-time conundrum.The six authors of the report include Deborah Gillis, CEO of the CAMH foundation, Dr. Valerie Taylor, head of psychiatry at the University of Calgary, Dr. Ayelet Kuper, associate director of the Wilson Centre for Research in Education at University Health Network, Toronto, and Dr. Cynthia Whitehead, vice-president, education, Women's College Hospital, Toronto.

One can assume that all of these women who have achieved such positions of power and influence in their respective fields, took the time and the trouble to mentor other women younger than themselves as they themselves graduated from one tier of success to another in their careers. They certainly expect their male counterparts to do so. At one time males dominated the field of medicine and science. Women have since made huge inroads and appear to be graduating with medical degrees in unprecedented numbers, as well as climbing the ladder of success in their fields.

"Being afraid to mentor women is not simply about fearing false accusations of sexual misconduct: it is about discrediting women who speak out against sexual assault and harassment ... [which] threatens to halt progress toward gender equity in leadership rules", so not only are males in prominent positions failing to do their ethical-scientific-social duty to take women under their professional wings of authority, but in refusing to put their own careers at risk of future threats they will be responsible of halting 'progress toward gender equity', in the process 'discrediting' women's claims...

These women are concerned over what they see as either backsliding on the part of their male peers in assuming the responsibility of mentoring not just men but women, to aid them in progressing in their careers and reaching their aspired levels of professionalism. The problem is the #MeToo movement, putting a chill on men extending themselves to elevate the careers of their junior female colleagues. Given the tumult of the past year, hardly a surprising outcome. Men in all walks of life, from the everyday Joe to those occupying places of high celebrity have fallen at the mere suggestion of sexual impropriety.

There has been little in the way of judicial impartiality in condemning any man for whom the whiff of suspicion has fallen that he at some point in his life might have been responsible for a sexually aggravated attack; anything from rape to suggestive comments to stalking; or somehow failing to completely respect boundaries and telling an off-colour joke could be one of them. Men are being haunted by past and current indiscretions or just plain stupidity. Or, in some instances, female vindictiveness. Ever hear of that? It happens and perhaps more frequently than appreciated.

But in today's social climate women can express their indignation over something a man has done to them or someone else by interpreting whatever it was as a damning crime, and presenting themselves as entirely innocent; that same climate insists whatever they claim must be believed. Even if what it was took place 36 years ago when the perpetrator was a teen. Unless one is Justin Trudeau in his twenties whom reliable evidence clarifies that he did indeed physically and sexually 'assault' a female reporter, and then it's A-OK.

The fact that male professionals in the fields of science and medicine now think hard and heavy about whether to commit to mentoring a young female in their field of excellence is a byproduct of the #MeToo movement and for obvious enough reasons. To characterize that caution as an "excuse" as did Dr. Soklaridis, is insulting and uncalled for. Any male specialist with experience in his field who feels a personal responsibility to mentor a young female in his field will do so if he feels there is no conceivable threat to his good character and his professional standing. That will now take a leap of faith.

Men now have no idea what they may have said or done in their own formative years at any time, any place, with anyone else, that might inconceivably and suddenly be transformed into an unforgivable assault. It's a gamble, and judging by the numbers of men who have fallen victim to accusations, real or imagined, it's one that requires sober second thought. Little wonder men are drawing back from committing themselves to being a guide when doing just that might result in a future accusation of sexual predation.

That society is riddled with sexual assaults, with violent attacks against women is undeniable. In all such instances, due process of law and justice is imperative. But that now seems to have been waived with the influence of the #MeToo phenomenon. What we've seen over the past year transcends that, sets it aside in all too many instances when proof is absent and the 'she-said-he-said' scenario unfolds against the mantra that 'women must be believed' and for the men there is nowhere to go, no one who will hear his version (unless you're Trudeau) and he's damned, poor sod.

While the women authors of the article acknowledge that men appear to have withdrawn mentorships of females because of legitimate concerns of their careers being brought to a screeching halt in fear of accusations of sexual misconduct arise irrespective of guilt or innocent; sometimes as has happened even though innocence is proven, the fact that an accusation was lodged to begin with overrides mere innocence in public consideration, has elicited from them a consideration of just that: "That was something that we found profoundly detrimental and that needed to be addressed."

How did they address that issue? Simple enough, make mentorship mandatory. Establish quotas for female mentoring and leadership roles to close the gender gap. It's what can be called having it every which way.

A Splinter in the Public Eye -- Poseurs Unite!

"We've all observed your 'science guy' persona, yet, you intentionally avoid telling people you're playing a character."
"You have allowed the illusion to persist for decades that you are an expert on science issues in the public eye."
Critic of science popularizer, American Bill Nye

"Unlike the Science Guy, I am not the skilled labour guy or the dirty jobs guy, nor am I a spokesman for blue-collar America."
"I would never juxtapose myself with work in the same way Bill [Nye] has juxtaposed himself with science."
Mike Rowe, former host, Dirty Jobs

"When you're a baby,  you are a scientist. If I make this noise, wow, I get milk. If I push this button or knock this thing off the table, it lands on me and it hurts. Being a kid is constantly testing, discovering, hypothesis, experiment, solution, learning. It's as we grow older, we start to forget about being scientists."
"Men like explosions, women are building things. [Men mostly think about whether they can] build a really big rocket."
"There's so many of these slow-motion, exploding things. What happens if I drop an anvil on a watermelon?"
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Bill Nye shows off a Canadian $5 bill, which features an astronaut and the Canadarm as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on during an armchair discussion highlighting Budget 2018's investments in Canadian innovation at the University of Ottawa in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 6, 2018.   Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Justin Trudeau is utterly oblivious to the perilous state of his vacant mind; he is too obsessed with the conceit of self as Renaissance Man, knowing all, capable of anything and master of all he surveys. Each of his public performances reveal to a gawping public how narcissistic and vacuous this man in arrested adolescence really is, imbued with a streak of malice toward any who might take steps to interfere in his plans. The public humiliation of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, suspected of attempting to undermine a Trudeau decision on naval ship procurement, removing him from his position as vice-chief of the defence staff a case in point.

As a self-declared feminist and "progressive" Justin Trudeau has angered other heads of foreign governments by his firm stance linking trade agreements with gender equality, sensitivity to Aboriginal affairs, workers' rights and respect for the LGBTQ2S communities. His superior sanctimony has cost him the initial admiration he garnered as a cheerful, good-news personality in his travels abroad, leading to the position he now holds as an intellectual light-weight and embarrassment to Canada.

His soft-on-terrorism and big-on-refugees position has failed to endear him to his home public as tax paying Canadians groan at the million-dollar settlements Trudeau feels that hostile Muslim fighters are entitled to, linked to the alacrity with which he has invited those fleeing sectarian violence out of the Middle East to come and share Canadian largess, taking advantage of generous social welfare programs in a country whose health-care system is already stretched to the limit.

The latest debacle where his clownish display of cultural disrespect to a Democratic ally had the Indian sub-continent puzzled as to why a Westerner would appropriate a religious Hindu symbol of piety while clad in outlandish Bollywood glitter. Abuzz over the eight days of a presumed "trade" mission that had very little trade in the mission but plenty of clumsy play-acting rounded out by clear indications in the carelessness of the company Trudeau keeps that terrorist affiliations fail to faze him even as they alarm his courteous hosts who bear the brunt of it.

Trudeau adores celebrity, his own and any opportunities to brush up against the celebrity of others. This week, the University of Ottawa hosted an event to which American science popularizer Bill Nye was invited, to quip on science alongside the equally knowledgeable Justin Trudeau. Both in their element, each supporting the other in their veneer of scientific knowledgeability. Both had briefly studied engineering, the Science Guy as a mechanical engineer, and as the event moderator pointed out, Trudeau whose brief acquaintance with that field of study left him as "someone who thinks of himself as a bit of a science nerd".

The quotes above can attest to the 'nerdiness' of Trudeau as science aficionado. Trudeau's work experience has included a stint as a drama coach at a private school in Vancouver. He has, additionally, had experience as a snowboarding instructor, nightclub bouncer and camp counselor. On the strength of his family name, he has also had experience as a public speaker, collecting sturdy speaking fees in the process.This extensive work experience and his obvious intellectual brilliance prepared him for his role as Prime Minister of Canada.

Canadian scientists, of whom there are plenty, some celebrities in their own right, were evidently insufficiently internationally known for their celebrity-heft to sit alongside the prime minister to discuss Canadian innovation in science. Bill Nye, the American impersonator of science international apparently was, but why complain; the match-up was fairly inspired. What self-respecting Canadian scientist would, after all, want to play science-stooge for Trudeau?

Israel, Moving To The Head Of The Class

"Israel is a country where hundreds of new corporations start up their business every year in information and communications technology, medical services, and agriculture, and also produce innovative technologies. And for Japan, innovation is the engine of our economy."
"Taking both into account, there is every reason for Japan to co-operate with this great nation."
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Israel Innovation Forum, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greets his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe at the Japan-Israel Business Forum, held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Jerusalem, January 18, 2015. Photo: Miriam Alster / Flash90

Not that this is the first time that Japanese have admired and wanted to acquire for themselves some of the spark that Jewish enterprise is capable of generating to advance economies and industries. But at that previous time, Israel did not exist. What did exist was the reputation that Jews were extraordinarily gifted with entrepreneurial qualities, as well as a genetic predisposition to the arts and sciences to a degree not matched by other ethnic groups.

And that is what spurred Japan to invest in a rescue effort of Jews, to bring them under Japanese aegis, away from the European killing machine that Nazi Germany introduced to Europe. Although Japan was recognized by the Third Reich, as part of the Axis powers and granted "Aryan" status, official Japan never did accept the calamitous propaganda about Jewish perfidy and threats to the world. They recognized in the Jewish mind something similar to the Japanese mind, aspiring to succeed.

Now, the two countries have some things in common. Both are small "islands" in the sea of larger countries surrounding them. While Japan historically became a threat and a violent overseer to its neighbours, Israel suffered the reverse; seen as a threat to its larger neighbours, they turned the hostility of violence against Israel. Among its neighbours, Japan is the technologically advanced one, though South Korea has caught up nicely. While among its neighbours, Israel is the success.

Israel has had to, and continues to struggle with that neighbourly hostility, the Muslim collective surrounding it representing an ongoing existential threat to a tiny country of non-Muslims  (excepting its 1.5-million Israeli Palestinians). Added to that, the most influential institution the world has whose purpose has been ostensibly to promote world peace and understanding between nations, has itself become a tool with which to bludgeon Israel and isolate it on the world stage.

Under huge duress from countless sources, not the least of which is the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions universal threat to harm Israel diplomatically and economically through a concerted leftist-led "progressive" campaign to besmirch the country, Israel's energy minister has announced that his nation's gas sales from its enormous offshore gas deposits will soon make the nation financially secure as it sells its resources to an energy-hungry world.

Not only to Egypt, Jordan and Turkey will Israel sell its natural gas resources, but to countries distant from the Middle East; China, Japan and Eastern Europe. "Their attitudes are based on a major reevaluation of what Israel as a nation represents, and what its existence and survival signify for the future prospects of other nations and regions", stated Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli energy minister.

The nation's high-tech industry has been building to the present time where, for a country of fewer than nine million citizens, it has achieved an amazing position in the world of high tech. Israel ranked five in position in the world on the Bloomberg Innovation Index, according to research and development budgets, patents, and the percentage of the labour force with advanced degrees, the number of research professionals per million population.

Ahead of France, Singapore and the U.K., and where the United States ranked sixth.

Major Chinese corporations are anxious to discover which Israeli startups they can invest in to aid them in competing with American counterparts such as Google and Apple. Israeli and Chinese universities work together, partnering on joint projects.

So much for divisive slander, efforts at isolation and manipulating the UN's Human Rights Council to condemn Israel for manufactured human rights abuses, singling it out over all other nations of the world whose record on human rights truly is deplorable, but who nonetheless manage to readily find place for themselves on UN committees judging Israel.

Carlos Slim speaking at the opening of the Aldea Digital Mexico City, Mexico. Photo by ITU Pictures Flickr .. Israel poses a challenge to the United States in the leadership of the global high technology industry, according to Carlos Slim, a Mexican telecommunications magnate. .