Welcome again to my newsletter round-up of recent causes for some optimism, as found in the media. Also among the think-tanks. There are also occasional links to debunking of alarmism, and to opinion articles.
* The latest Wildlife Comeback in Europe report has been released. The report highlights species that have made a comeback in continental Europe over the last 40 to 50 years, mostly due to conservation and re-introduction programmes. But also due to natural re-forestation and global greening, especially in the north of Eastern Europe.
* The Mises Institute think-tank reviews a new book, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas — Not Less. The simple clarity of the writing is found to be especially useful… “Epstein has taken great pains to explain what he says in clear and simple terms, and for this, and much else, his readers are in his debt.”
* The UK business minister is reported to have publicly “slammed PayPal”, as the governing party’s British MPs consider amendments to UK law. If successful the changes would reportedly prohibit online payment firms from removing services or imposing ‘cash fines’ on people for expressing the ‘wrong’ political views. Sounds like good news to me. The working example there is perhaps Poland, which already has somewhat similar free speech laws.
* A new U.S. study… “using FBI statistics has found that the crime rate among people ages 17 and under has dropped 78% since 1994”. Sounds like good news, but the headlines are not strictly true. Since arrests do not = crime, let alone convictions. Arrests were what was being measured by the study. So it could be that criminals have become more technically and organisationally savvy about avoiding police, and that police have become more lax in street patrolling and surveillance. There may have been general police policy changes, i.e. they try not to formally arrest youngsters, or to ignore certain types of street crime. Still, such factors perhaps only account for a proportion of such a big 78% drop?
* NASA has carried out its first-ever planetary defence test in space… “DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid”, said NASA.
* Scientists have found new evidence of liquid water under the south polar ice cap of Mars.
* The Register reports that… “Bright yellow buoys running AI software have been deployed in an attempt to deter cargo ships from running over nearby whales”. You might have thought that the sensitive ears of the whales would have heard the ships coming, miles away, and that they would have learned to swim out of the way. But apparently not.
* Also in The Register, IBM offers desktop mainframe emulators, to keep vital old code running, but on modern PCs. Google is also set to offer a similar emulator service in the Cloud. Good news if your local hospital or power plant can’t do without such things. Another example of how the doomsters don’t account for innovation and invention.
* And lastly, Wales Online reports on a new “Gum disease breakthrough via dental ‘gel'”, made by a New York University team.
Enjoyed this post? There’s more over at the ‘Something for the Weekend’ newsletter archive.