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Under current climate policies, 79 per cent of the world’s glaciers will disappear by 2100, endangering the water supply for 2 billion people and raising sea levels dramatically

As I reported before, Bari Weiss, former NYT columnist and then founder of The Free Press, has become Editor-in-Chief of CBS News as the Free Press has joined Paramount, which owns CBS.  I was wary of this for one reason: how this might slant CBS News, though I never watch it anyway. The Free Press is heterodox and, most disturbingly, seems to be soft on religion. Will that infect CBS?

On Saturday night Weiss made her first appearance as a CBS news person, hosting a 45-minute “town hall meeting” with Erika Kirk, the widow of recently assassinated Charlie Kirk, head of  the conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA).  I’ve put the video below.

It was not a propitious interview; in fact, it was pretty boring and repetitive. But that might have been because Erika Kirk seems to be a one-note person, devoted not only to dutifully following the principles of her husband, whom she idolized, but especially devoted to proselytizing about Jesus and God. For religion is one of the main pivots of both Kirk and TPUSA. (Kirk recently issued a book urging us all to rest on the Biblical Sabbath, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.)

The format of this town hall will probably be the one Weiss uses in her future town halls, and she promises many of them. She interviews a subject, and then select members of the audience (an audience relevant to the speaker’s beliefs) ask questions. You can see the video below.

First, let me note that Kirk is entitled to her beliefs, though I don’t think Weiss did her any favors by allowing her to proselytize ad infinitum in the interview.  Second, I do have immense sympathy for Ms. Kirk, who is left with two small children after her husband’s brutal assassination.  And the joy and glee that came out when Kirk was killed was unseemly, and surely deeply hurtful to Erika. This is not a critique of Erika Kirk, but of the show itself. And I’ll add that though I think Kirk’s murder was abhorrent and reprehensible, I still disagreed with almost all of his political stands, stands instantiated in TPUSA.

What struck me most were two things: Kirk’s evasion of any questions that were “hard”, like one asking her if she condemned Trump’s violent political rhetoric or whether words could constitute violence. Her response was almost invariably to say that the Lord (aka Jesus) will take care of everything.  For example, when she was asked whether she’d condemn Trump’s political rhetoric that was sometimes violent, she simply said that the problem was “so much deeper than just one person.” When asked to respond to Charlie’s opposition to the Civil Rights Act, she simply said that she was in favor of merit. (The Civil Rights Act was not “affirmative action” it was enacted to give blacks their Constitutional rights.)

The other issue was Kirk’s incessant proselytyzing. When asked why, she thought, God/Jesus allowed Kirk to be murdered, she said that it unleashed a big revival (I doubt it), that “the Lord is moving in ways we have no idea, and that God is going to use Charlie’s death to show the world something. Big.  God, she thinks, will use the event to allow her “to bring glory to her and his kingdom.”

The father of a murdered Jewish person asks Erika about growing antisemitism on the Right, and will she condemn individuals spreading that hate? She responds simply that we all need the Lord and Saviour (she’s referring to Jesus, but the guy asking questions was a Jew). She adds, “You cannot separate the Old Testament from the New Testament,” but I doubt she believes that. Kirk himself, though a supporter of Israel, made several remarks that seem overtly antisemitic, and TPUSA is aligned heavily with the Christian right. You do not tout Jesus to Jews.

It is God and Jesus all the way down, and Weiss did not question the foundations of Kirk’s faith, which perhaps would have been an unfair question give Erika’s emotionality.

Kirk reiterates constantly the fact that Charlie only wanted to have conversations, but that’s a bit of dissimulation, for Charlie Kirk was firm in his right-wing ideology and I doubt the conversations would ever have changed his mind. I applaud the desire to have mutual, civil, and nonviolent exchanges of views, but those conversations should be conducted in a way that each person should be able to tell us what evidence would change their minds. Charlie would never change his mind, despite the fact that he sat behind tables with signs making provocative statements and adding . . . “Change my mind.”

To her credit, Weiss and others do try to ask some hard question, like how does she intend to take up Charlie’s mission while maintaining a family. (Answer: the Lord will help her do it, and, anyway TPUSA is not a job, but her family.) When asked how she was able to trust God in the “midst of unfair and immense suffering,” Erika cites the story of Job, who was made by God to suffer for no good reason, but in the end came out okay simply because Job prayed for his friends, which made the angry God change His mind. I have never understood the point of that story, but theologians have tied themselves in knots trying to interpret it in a way that puts God in a good light.

Kirk’s views are all summed up in her answer to Weiss’s question about how she met Charlie. Erika responds that the Lord helped her to find Charlie in a job interview, and Erika asked God if Charlie was the right guy. He was, for, as Erika says, “If I remain in the jetstream of God’s will, then he will provide for you.”  And that’s pretty much her answer to every question in the town hall.

This was not a good first foray of Weiss into t.v. journalism, but surely things will improve as Weiss interviews people who don’t cling to superstition. But the goddiness of this show struck me as overbearing and unevidenced, and I hope religion is not a frequent “Town Hall Topic”.

One more note before I get to the video. Variety weighed in on the Town Hall, and not in a positive way; click to read:

The content:

During a Saturday-night town hall led by Bari Weiss, the recently named editor in chief of CBS News, most of Madison Avenue sought an off-ramp.

The program featured an in-depth interview with Erika Kirk, the CEO of the conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA and the widow of Charlie Kirk, the group’s former leader. He was assassinated during one of the organization’s events at Utah Valley University, throwing a harsh spotlight on the political and cultural divides present in the U.S.

The event marked a new offering from CBS News. The organization does not typically host town halls or debates on trending issues or with newsmakers. And the choice of Weiss as moderator also raised eyebrows, because in most modern TV-news organizations, senior editorial executives remain off camera, rather than appearing in front of it.

More may be on the way. During the program, Weiss told viewers that “CBS is going to have many more conversations like this in the weeks and months ahead, so stay tuned. More town halls. More debates. More talking about the things that matter.” That would suggest CBS is planning to devote more hours to the programs.

The news special aired at 8 p.m. on Saturday, one of the least-watched hours in broadcast TV. And that may have contributed to a relative dearth of top advertisers appearing to support the show. During the hour, commercial breaks were largely filled with spots from direct-response advertisers, including the dietary supplement SuperBeets; the home-repair service HomeServe.com; and CarFax, a supplier of auto ownership data. Viewers of the telecast on WCBS, CBS’ flagship station in New York, even saw a commercial for Chia Pet, the terra-cotta figure that sprouts plant life after a few weeks.

Now, after that long introduction, here’s the video. Feel free and encouraged to weigh in below.

A new theory proposes that the universe’s fundamental forces and particle properties may arise from the geometry of hidden extra dimensions. These dimensions could twist and evolve over time, forming stable structures that generate mass and symmetry breaking on their own. The approach may even explain cosmic expansion and predict a new particle. It hints at a universe built entirely from geometry.

A new theory proposes that the universe’s fundamental forces and particle properties may arise from the geometry of hidden extra dimensions. These dimensions could twist and evolve over time, forming stable structures that generate mass and symmetry breaking on their own. The approach may even explain cosmic expansion and predict a new particle. It hints at a universe built entirely from geometry.

Susan Harrison is back from Belize with bird photos for us. (And if you have any photos of your own, please send them in!).  Susan’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

Belize:  the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary

Your correspondent has just returned from a birding trip to Belize, a wonderful country that has preserved over 30% of its land area for wildlife, and where a relatively small-scale and bird-friendly style of agriculture is widely practiced.  Today’s photos are from the last place we visited, the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary, a massive complex of lagoons, swamps and forests in middle northern Belize.  Our exceptionally talented guide grew up here when the small village of Crooked Tree was accessible only by boat in the wet season.  When not guiding birdwatchers, he farms coconuts and avocados here.

We were most fortunate to see the elusive Sungrebe (Heliornis fulica).  Despite its name, this waterbird haunts densely shaded riverbanks and is not a grebe; it has no close relatives.  On the heels of a heavy downpour, we observed this one rapidly plucking damselflies off of overhanging foliage.

Sungrebe:

Another exciting sighting was a colony of Boat-Billed Herons (Cochlearius cochlearius).  These nocturnal hunters do not seize their prey like other herons but instead use their enormous bills in a baleen-like fashion.  During daytime they hide in dense thickets.  This one showed us a yawn.

Boat-billed Heron:

Among the many large, fish-devouring water birds were Bare-throated Tiger Herons (Tigrisoma mexicanum) and Anhingas (Anhinga anhinga).

Bare-throated Tiger Heron:

Anhinga:

We watched as Limpkins (Aramis guarauna), a weird wading bird in its own family, speared and gobbled Apple Snails (Pomacea), this bird’s single food source.  At the same time, these snails were equally of interest to Snail Kites (Rostrhamus sociabilis), who sometimes plucked them away from the Limpkins instead of from the mud.

Limpkin, with a Northern Jacana (Jacana spinosa) in front:

Northern Jacana closeup, showing its massive feet:

Snail Kites:

Skulking by the shore we saw several Russet-naped Wood Rails (Aramides albiventris), an almost comical bird that makes all other rails seem drab indeed.

Russet-naped Wood Rail:

Raptors were also abundant, and two of the more exciting finds were Black-collared Hawks (Busarellus nigricollis) and a Gray-headed Kite (Leptodon cayanensis).

Black-collared Hawk adult and immature:

Gray-headed Kite:

We also saw many wonderful land birds at Crooked Tree, of which I’ll show just a few of the most special.  Yellow-headed Amazons (Amazona oratrix) are among the many parrots that visit Crooked Tree to feed on the local cashew crop; this species is endangered because its intelligence makes it popular in the pet trade.

Yellow-headed Amazons:

Rufous-tailed Jacamars (Galbula ruficauda) resemble giant hummingbirds but are actually insectivores more closely related to woodpeckers and toucans.    The cliffs that Jacamars require for nesting are scarce in low-lying Belize, but Mayan ruins serve the purpose nicely.  We saw this Jacamar at the impressive Lamanai ruins complex.

Rufous-tailed Jacamar:

Detail of the Jaguar Temple at the Lamanai ruins, in which the rectangular holes create a stylized jaguar face:

Olive-throated Parakeets (Eupsittula nana) occurred everywhere we went in Belize, but only in the Caribbean Pine (Pinus caribaea) woodlands of Crooked Tree did they pose low enough for decent photos.

Olive-throated Parakeets:

As human civilization spreads into every corner of the world, human and animal territories are butting up against each other more intensely. This often doesn’t end well for the animals. This is also causing evolutionary pressures that are adapting some species to living in close proximity to humans.

Humans cause significant changes to the environment – we may, for example, clear forests in order to plant crops. We also convert a lot of land to human living spaces. We alter the ecosystem with lots of light pollution. We are also now warming the planet.

Humans also produce a lot of food and along with it a lot of food waste. One of the common rules of evolution is that if a resource exists, something will adapt to exploit it. Perhaps the most versatile species in terms of adapting to human sources of food is rats. They follow humans everywhere we go, and prosper in our shadow. New York city experiencing this phenomenon first hand – there is basically no effective way to deal with the rat problem in the city as long as they have a waste problem. They will need to significantly reduce the availability of food waste if they want to make any dent in the rat population.

There is another way that humans provide a selective pressure on the animals that live close to us – we kill aggressive animals. A recent study shows this effect in a population of brown bears that live in Italy, close to humans. This isolated population has become its own genetic subpopulation of brown bears with distinctive features, including a genetic profile associated with less aggressiveness. Make no mistake, these are still wild animals, and brown bears are a dangerous animal. But they are less aggressive than other brown bears.

Another example are the golden jackals of Israel. They too have been living in close proximity to humans for year, resulting in “partial self-domestication”. This is likely very similar to the process of domestication of wolves into dogs. There are likely several selective pressures involved, not just humans having a higher tendency to kill very aggressive animals. Humans are also, as I said above, a source of food. Those animals that are less afraid of humans and willing to get a little closer to them have access to lots of calories, which is a massive survival advantage. At first human waste may simply be a calorie supplement, providing an advantage for calmer and less threatening-looking animals. Then, as they come to depend more and more on humans for food, the need to hunt decreases. Evolutionary pressures then favor a shift away from hunting, from being large, muscular, aggressive, and even away from camouflage. Selective pressure favor a friendlier demeaner, and cuter physical characteristics.

The end-stage of this process is full domestication, as happened with dogs, but this is a continuum. It is likely that most mammal species have the potential to be domesticated. There is the now famous experiments with laboratory domestication of silver foxes. By selecting individuals with a calmer demeanor, researchers were able to produce a semi-domesticated fox breed in a matter of decades. Interestingly, by selecting for behavior a suite of other features came along for the ride, including floppy ears, spotted coat, and a generally cuter appearance.

There is even a hypothesis that humans self-domesticated. This process may have begun with our split from Neanderthals 600,000 years or so ago, and continued into modern times. The idea is that we collectively will punish, in some way, members of our society that are very aggressive. Violent criminals may be punished in a way (execution, for example) that provides a negative selective pressure, so that over time genes for violence and aggression become less common in the population. In an intensely social setting, selective pressures may favor the ability to cooperate and get along. So the first species we domesticated may have been ourselves.

But to be clear, humans are not the sole agent of domestication. As I outlined above, the process starts with the species itself. Dogs likely self-domesticated much of the way, before humans took over and started breeding them. The trigger for this self-domestication was the availability of human waste food, but humans were not the direct agents of the process.

It is likely that nature will continue to adapt to the overwhelming presence of humans on the planet. For animals there is mostly one choice – if you want to live to have to live with humans. There are still plenty of wild refuges in the world, but they are mostly hemmed in by civilization, and they are mostly managed parks. Eventually contact with humans may be sufficient to provide selective pressures on more and more species.

The brown bear example is extremely interesting, and makes me wonder about other bear populations. There is a large and growing black bear population in Connecticut where I live. I have had black bears many times in my yard and even on my deck. They have come to associate humans with food, and are very adept at accessing human waste food or other sources (like bird feeders). It may be likely that the more contact these bears have with humans the less aggressive they will become. They will learn to live on the edges of human space without without getting killed.

Cars are another source of selective pressure. Many species may evolve behaviors to minimize their chance of being struck by a vehicle.

Human are also learning to adapt to the animals they live near. This is more cultural than evolutionary, but people who live close to wildlife generally learn the rules, just as people in CT are learning to live with black bears. This means you cannot store your bird seed outside, you cannot leave your garbage outside over night, and you need to learn to stay out of the bear’s way. People in the western part of the US have similarly learned to live in proximity to mountain lions. These animals are also moving east (filling a niche left by the killing off of most wolves in the east), and so within a few decades easterners will have to learn to live with mountain lions as well.

Make no mistake – bears and lions are still dangerous wild animals. One risk is that as these species become a little less aggressive people will act as if they are not threatening, and will put themselves unnecessarily at risk. It may be a good thing that they are less aggressive, so that the risk of dangerous human-animal interactions is reduced, but that means we need to have high awareness that these are wild animals and we need to respect their space as well. Reducing the friction between humans and animals works both ways.

The post Animals Adapting to Humans first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

What’s up, people? You don’t have cats or holiday decorations? If you do, see below.

This is a reminder to send in your photo of cats with a Christmas theme (or Hanukah theme, as we now have three Jewish cats.  The instructions are here and we have acquired only about 12 photos. (Note: the cat below is AI generated;  we don’t want those!)

Remember, one photo per submission, please! I’ll make the Deadline 9 a.m. December 24; the day before Koynezaa.

Scientists have discovered a crucial clue to understanding one of nature's most spectacular light shows, the aurora. Research from the University of Southampton reveals that just before these magnetospheric substorms erupt, a distinct pattern of low frequency radio waves appears above the aurora, radio emissions that surge in strength precisely as mysterious "auroral beads" transform into full storms. This radio signature, detected by spacecraft and ground observatories across multiple events, provides the first direct evidence of the physical processes triggering these dramatic celestial displays, and may explain similar phenomena occurring in the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Saturn.

Scientists at Southwest Research Institute have opened a new laboratory dedicated to answering one of astronomy's most fundamental questions, where do planets come from? The Nebular Origins of the Universe Research (NOUR) Laboratory will recreate the extreme conditions found in interstellar clouds, vast regions of ice, gas, and dust that existed before our Solar System formed to trace how these primordial materials ultimately evolved into the worlds we see today. By simulating the chemistry of pre-planetary environments in specialised vacuum chambers, researchers aim to understand how the building blocks of life, including the components of DNA and RNA, formed in the darkness of space billions of years ago.

A “House of Cards” is a wonderful English phrase that it seems is now primarily associated with a Netflix political drama. However, its original meaning is of a system that is fundamentally unstable. It’s also the term Sarah Thiele, originally a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, and now at Princeton, and her co-authors used to describe our current satellite mega-constellation system in a new paper available in pre-print on arXiv.

After the first protons and neutrons formed, after the first light elements formed, the universe…wasn’t really all that great.

Many industries are eyeing up hydrogen as a source of clean energy, but with supplies of green hydrogen limited, we should prioritise the areas where it could have the most positive impact on carbon emissions, say researchers

Hot Jupiters were once cosmic oddities, but unraveling how they moved so close to their stars has remained a stubborn mystery. Scientists have long debated whether these giants were violently flung inward or peacefully drifted through their birth disks. A new approach from researchers in Tokyo cracks open this puzzle by using the timescale of orbital circularization as a diagnostic.

Scientists have achieved an unprecedented view of the Sun by coordinating observations between two of the most powerful solar instruments ever built. For the first time, observations from the Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii and the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft have captured the same solar region simultaneously from different vantage points. This created a stereoscopic view that reveals intricate details of tiny "campfire" features scattered across the Sun's surface. These fleeting brightening, though individually small, occur in such vast numbers that they may collectively shape how the Sun's outer atmosphere is heated and how plasma erupts into space.

Researchers in Sweden have unveiled a way to create high-performance electronic electrodes using nothing more than visible light and specially designed water-soluble monomers. This gentle, chemical-free approach lets conductive plastics form directly on surfaces ranging from glass to textiles to living skin, enabling surprisingly versatile electronic and medical applications.

The FDA sent a letter to the supplement industry assuring that it would make it easier for them to hide disclaimers (which we like to call "quack Miranda warnings") about unproven health claims for supplements. What does this tell us about MAHA?

The post The FDA under MAHA control: Weakening the quack Miranda warning on supplements first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Astronomers have performed the deepest radio observations ever of Omega Centauri, searching for signs of an intermediate mass black hole thought to lurk at its center. Despite 170 hours of observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array achieving unprecedented sensitivity, they detected absolutely nothing where the black hole should be. If an intermediate mass black hole exists in this massive star cluster, as suggested by fast moving stars discovered earlier this year, it must be accreting material at an extraordinarily low rate, barely feeding at all compared to other known black holes.

Researchers have discovered that a close encounter with a rogue planet or brown dwarf during the Sun's early years could have triggered the reshuffling of our Solar System's giant planets. Running 3000 simulations of stellar flybys, the team found that substellar objects passing within 20 astronomical units of the young Sun could destabilise the planets' orbits just enough to match their current configuration without destroying the delicate Kuiper belt. This flyby scenario represents a new possible explanation for one of the Solar System's defining events, with roughly a 1-5 percent probability depending on how common free floating planets actually are in young star clusters.

Astronomers at the University of Tokyo have used gravitational lensing to measure how fast the universe is expanding, adding weight to one of cosmology's most intriguing mysteries. Their technique exploits the way massive galaxies bend light from distant quasars, creating multiple distorted images that arrive at different times. The measurement supports recent observations showing the universe expands faster than predictions based on the early universe suggest, strengthening evidence that the "Hubble tension" represents genuine new physics rather than experimental error.

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected the strongest evidence yet for an atmosphere on a rocky planet outside our solar system. Observations of the ultra-hot super-Earth TOI-561 b suggest that the exoplanet is surrounded by a thick blanket of gases above a global magma ocean.