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This post is only partly about uranium, but mostly about motivated reasoning – our ability to harness our reasoning power not to arrive at the most likely answer, but to support the answer we want to be true. But let’s chat about uranium for a bit. In the comments to my recent article on a renewable grid, once commenter referred to a blog post on skeptical science and quoted:

“Abbott 2012, linked in the OP, lists about 13 reasons why nuclear will never be capable of generating a significant amount of power. Nuclear supporters have never addressed these issues. To me, the most important issue is there is not enough uranium to generate more than about 5% of all power.”

This is the flip side, I think, to the misinformation about renewable energy I was discussing in that post. Let me way, I don’t think there is an objective right answer here, but my personal view is that the pathway to net zero that emits the least amount of carbon includes nuclear energy, a view that is in line with the IPCC. There is, however, still a lot of anti-nuclear bias out there, just as their is pro-fossil fuel bias, and pro-renewable bias, and every kind of bias. If you want to make a case for any particular source of power, there are enough variables to play with that you can make a case. However, factual misstatements are different – we should at least be arguing from the same set of verified facts. So let’s address the question – how much uranium is there.

There is no objective answer to this question. Why not? Because it depends on your definition. Most estimates of how much uranium there is in the world, in the context of how much is available for nuclear power, do not include every atom of uranium. They generally take several approaches – how much is in current usable stockpiles, how much is being produced by active mines, and how much is “commercially” available. That last category depend on where you draw the line, which depends on the current price of uranium as well as the value of the energy it produces. If, for example, we decided to price the cost of emitting carbon from energy production, the value of uranium would suddenly increase. It also depends on the technology to extract and refine uranium. The value of uranium is also determined by the efficiency of reactors.

Right now about 9% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear, and about 19% of energy in the US. At the current rate of energy production, current producing uranium mines and known resources would last for about 90 years. This is better than most mineral needed to build renewable infrastructure. Right there the “5%” figure quoted above is demonstrably wrong, we are already greater than 5%. Let’s say we doubled the amount of energy produced by nuclear power, and over that same time period there was a 50% increase in energy demand. Current supplies would then last for 45 years, and nuclear would be about 12% of world energy production. Forty-five years would be just fine – that would give us the time to further develop solar, wind, battery, geothermal, and pumped hydro technology. It is conceivable that we could have an all renewable grid by then. It is even possible we might have fusion by then.

But that also assume a couple of things – no new uranium mine discovery, and no significant increases in efficiency. Neither of these things are likely to be true. There are vast known commercially-viable reserves of uranium waiting to be developed. Improved geological techniques are also finding more reserves. Further, newer nuclear designs use uranium more efficiently – there is more burned fuel and less spent nuclear fuel. In fact newer designs can potentially burn the spent fuel from older reactors, further extending the uranium supply. We can also reprocess spent nuclear fuel to make more usable fuel. The figures above also do not count national reserves of uranium, because these figures are not public. Military grade uranium has been and can be repurposed for energy production as well.

Further still – if the acceptable price of uranium increases because of the value of uranium and the cost of energy, and/or the cost of extracting uranium from various sources goes down, then new reserves of uranium become available. For example, there is about 4.5 billion tonnes of uranium in seawater, which is about 1,000 times known terrestrial sources. That’s enough uranium for current use for 90,000 years. Let’s say only 10% of that uranium can be commercially extracted, and our demand increases by a factor of 10 – the supply would still last for 900 years. That is likely longer than fission technology will be needed.

Even putting uranium from seawater aside, known and likely terrestrial sources, combined with advancing nuclear technology, means we likely have enough uranium to burn at double the current rate for 100-200 years, conservatively. In other words – the supply of uranium is simply not a significant limiting factor for nuclear power. So why is this still an anti-nuclear talking point?

That is where we get back to motivated reasoning. Even if we are looking at the same set of facts, they can be perceived as positive or negative depending on your bias. You can say – nuclear only supplies 9% of the world’s power, or that nuclear provides a whopping 9% of world power. Solar has only increased in efficiency by about 10% over the last 30 years (from about 12 to about 22 %), or you can say that the efficiency of solar has almost doubled over this time, while costs have plummeted. You can focus on all the negative tradeoff, or all of the positive benefits of any technology. The same problem can be either a minor nuisance or a deal-killer. You can focus on whatever slice of the evidence is in line with your bias. And of course you can accept as fact things that appear to support your narrative, while questioning those that do not.

We all do this, pretty much all the time. It takes a conscious effort to minimize such motivated reasoning. We have to step back, deliberately try to not care what the outcome is, and just try to be as fair and accurate as possible. We have to ask – but is this really true? What would a neutral person say? What would someone hostile to this position say? It’s a lot of mental work, but it’s good mental hygiene and a good habit to get into.

 

 

The post Uranium and Motivated Reasoning first appeared on NeuroLogica Blog.

A type of cognitive training that tests people's quick recall seems to reduce the risk of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease

Paul Erdős was one of the most prolific mathematicians to ever live, known for showing up at the door of others in the field and declaring they should host and feed him while they do maths together. His radical life should be immortalised by Hollywood in a comedy biopic, says columnist Jacob Aron

One type of friction can waste energy even when two perfectly smooth surfaces move against each other, but researchers are getting a handle on how to attenuate or stop it completely

This could lead to less FDA oversight just when more is needed

The post The peptide craze sweeping America has a fan in RFK Jr first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Baker’s yeast isn’t just useful in the kitchen — it may also be built for space. Researchers found that yeast cells can survive intense shock waves and toxic chemicals similar to those on Mars. The cells protect themselves by forming special stress-response structures that help them endure extreme conditions. This resilience could make yeast a powerful model for astrobiology and future space missions.

The first people to reach the Kitsissut Islands off the north-west coast of Greenland were Indigenous peoples, who crossed over 50 kilometres of treacherous water

The problem that large extra dimensions just might solve is called the hierarchy problem, and it’s one of the nastiest outstanding problems in modern physics.

A new study co-led by the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) reveals that plasma waves traveling along Earth’s magnetic field lines act like an invisible power source, fueling the stunning auroral displays we see in the sky.

Scientists at the University of Warwick have cracked a long-standing problem in air pollution science: how to predict the movement of irregularly shaped nanoparticles as they drift through the air we breathe. These tiny particles — from soot and microplastics to viruses — are linked to serious health risks, yet most models still treat them as perfect spheres for simplicity. By reworking a century-old formula, researchers have created the first simple, accurate way to predict how particles of almost any shape behave.

I used to subscribe to the New York Review of Books, which, while sometimes a repository for boring academic cat-fights, often included engaging and illuminating articles—until fabled editor Bob Silvers died in 2017.  Now, under the leadership of editor Emily Greenhouse, the magazine, always Left-leaning, seems to have become more progressive.

The article by gender scholar Paisley Currah in the December issue, for example, fully accepts the argument that trans people are fully and legally equivalent to the sex that they transitioned to or think they are, not their natal sex.  While for most issues trans people should have the same legal rights as cis people, I’ve argued that in a few cases, like sports, confinement in jails, and right to have a rape counselor or battered-woman’s helper the same as one’s natal sex, trans “rights” conflict with women’s “rights”. Further, an enlightened resolution of those “rights” involves accepting the biological definition of sex, based on gamete type, rather than the self-identification of sex adopted by many gender activists and “progressives.”

You can read the NYRB article by clicking below, or find it archived here.

What’s useful about Currah’s article is its summary of the history of legislation involving both biological sex and self-identified gender, as well as discrimination against women if they stepped outside what was seen as their “proper roles”. What’s not so useful is that Currah swallows the whole hog of “progressive” gender activism, arguing that those who hew to the biological definition of sex are not only endangering feminism (in fact, the opposite is true), but buttressing the Right, including Trump and Team MAGA.  Here he is wrong, for he neglects the many liberals who question the view that you are whatever sex you think you are. (Most Americans, for example, do not think that trans-identified men (“trans women”) should compete on women’s sports teams.) Currah further argues, also mistakenly, that legislation accepting that biological sex can matter legally, is  really “anti trans”.  I would argue that, at least in the cases I mentioned above, it is in fact “pro woman.”

There’s no doubt that much of the legislation involving trans people is meant to buttress a conservative, religious-based agenda, and I disagree with a lot of it (I think, for example, that there’s no good reason to ban transgender people from the military).  But when there are real clashes of rights, what we need is discussion and argumentation, not name-calling or claims that adherence to a definition of sex based on biology is designed to “erase” trans people—or rests at bottom on bigotry.

You can see where Currah is going at the outset:

On April 27, 2023, Kansas became the first state in the country to institute a statewide definition of sex. “A ‘female’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” the law declared, “and a ‘male’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.” Since then dozens of state legislatures have introduced similar bills; sixteen have passed. In Indiana and Nebraska governors have issued executive orders to the same end. Each of these measures effectively strips transgender people of legal recognition.

While Currah, tellingly, never gives a definition of “man” or “woman,” he seems to tacitly accepts the self-identification principle: “a woman is whoever she says she is,” regardless if that person has had no hormone therapy or surgery, and has a beard and a penis. He rejects the biologicaL sex definition on the grounds that so many seemingly intelligent people do. People like Steve Novella and Agustín Fuentes, for example, argue that gamete-based sex is associated or can be disassociated from many other traits, including chromosome type, hormonal titer, chromosome content, and morphology, so there is no one way to define biological sex. I won’t go into the arguments about how a gamete-based defintion is both nearly universal and also helps us make sense of biology; I’ve gone through that a million times.  If you want a good take on sex, see Richard Dawkins’s Substack article). Here’s Currah again:

There is no single sound definition of “biological sex.” Even if you know the chromosomes of a fertilized egg, you can’t definitively determine which type of reproductive cells will develop. . . .

But that definition, too, flies in the face of current knowledge. Biomedical researchers have come to recognize that sex is not a single thing but an umbrella term for a number of things, including sex chromosomes, internal reproductive structures (prostate, uterus), gonads (testes, ovaries), and external genitalia. For most people, these characteristics generally align in a single direction, male or female. But they won’t for everyone. At birth some people, often labeled intersex, don’t fall neatly into the male or female column. Most people? The frequency of true intersex people in the population, estimated by serious people rather than ideologues, lies between about 1 in 5600 and 1 in 20,000.  This means that, for all intents and purposes, sex is a true binary.

Currah’s implicit definition of “sex” based on self-identification leads him to reject all forms of discrimination involving biological sex, including the “hard case” of sports, where biology makes the crucial difference:

That coercion isn’t confined to trans people: the current wave of efforts to enshrine biological definitions of sex pressures cis people, too, to conform to a conservative vision of gender difference. A sports ban in Utah led officials to investigate the birth sex of a cis girl after parents of her competitors complained.

And while he’s again not explicit about gender medicine—at a time when “affirmative care” is being recognized as harmful and is being rolled back for young people—he seems to buy that, too, and without age limits:

A blitz of anti-trans executive orders requires that passports list birth sex, trans women in federal prisons be housed with men and denied transition-related medical care, and federal employees use bathrooms associated with their birth sex.

I am not as concerned with bathroom bills (though single-person bathrooms are one solution) as with medical care.  No, allowing a 12-year old girl to have a double mastectomy, or a teenage boy to start taking estrogen or testosterone blockers, or any adolescent to take pubery blockers, do not comprise an “enlightened” form of care. What about therapy—objective therapy? What about the fact that the vast majority of gender-dysphoric adolescents not given hormones or surgery eventually resolve as gay people as opposed to trans people?

Currah’s main conclusion is that accepting a biological definition of sex, and thinking that biological sex matters, are not only bigots bent on erasing trans people, but also are doing severe damage to feminism:

By campaigning to make birth sex the sole basis for legal distinctions between men and women, advocates of a “gender critical” feminism evidently hope to cordon off trans women from the rest of womanhood without jeopardizing cisgender women’s access to the rights and freedoms that feminism won. But the logic of this position in fact aligns with—and ultimately serves—the desire to roll back feminism itself. That trans and nonbinary people have been able to move beyond their birth sex classifications is due precisely to the successes of the women’s liberation movement. And that movement’s most influential social victory, the decoupling of ideas about biology from ideas about how women ought to be, is precisely the achievement under threat today.

Currah doesn’t realize that liberals like me don’t give a damn about women’s “roles” or “how women ought to be,” but do care about the difference that biology makes when rights clash between groups. He doesn’t realize that those on the Left who emphasize biology are not “transphobes,” but accept trans people but also care about women’s rights—the rights of natal women. (Note that if you think you can be whatever sex you think you are, there is no such thing as “women’s rights”; there are just “people’s rights.” This goes along with the inability of those favoring trans rights, including the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Skrmetti case, to even define “man” and “woman”.)

In fact, what does “feminism” even mean for those who think that you’re whatever sex you think you are? Does a biological man who suddenly identify as a woman gain a new set of “rights”?  If so, what are they beyond the “right” to be called whatever pronouns you want? Tarring one’s opponents as conservatives, bigots, or transphobes accomplishes nothing; in fact, it’s counterproductive. And society is beginning to realize this.

I will tar people like Currah, though, with one word: “misguided”.

Well, I can’t omit Bill Maher’s 8-minute weekly comedy monologue, especially because this week it’s about betting.  I’ve always called gambling, betting enterprises, and lotteries “taxes on the stupid”, because people who spend their money that way don’t seem to know that the expectation of money is far less than they’re spending.  And it’s a regressive form of taxation, as the poor spend more than the rich, both absolutely and relatively. It’s just an easy way for governments to raise money.  I don’t approve of government-funded gambling at all.

In this episode, a good one, Maher recounts the history of gaming in America, and although he opposes it, he also says it’s okay because he’s a libertarian.  On the other hand, he argues that gambling is un-American because it puts fate rather than initiative in control of your life. (Maher clearly is not a determinist.) You’ll appreciate the picture of a young, entrepreneurial Maher at 6:56.

Did I ever gamble. Well, when I used to be in a place that had slot machines I’d put a quarter in one and that was it (I never won). One time I really did want to make a substantial bet was when I was in Scotland some years ago, and wanted to bet that the Queen Mother would live to be at least 100. My girlfriend wouldn’t let me go into the betting parlor, and in the end I would have won: she lived to be 101. I was betting on her genes.

The guests include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Chrystia Freeland.

A colossal ancient impact may have reshaped the Moon far more deeply than scientists once realized. By analyzing rare lunar rocks brought back by China’s Chang’e-6 mission from the Moon’s largest crater, researchers found unusual chemical fingerprints pointing to extreme heat and material loss caused by a giant impact. The collision likely stripped away volatile elements, reshaped volcanic activity, and left a lasting chemical signature deep below the surface.

Physicists at Heidelberg University have developed a new theory that finally unites two long-standing and seemingly incompatible views of how exotic particles behave inside quantum matter. In some cases, an impurity moves through a sea of particles and forms a quasiparticle known as a Fermi polaron; in others, an extremely heavy impurity freezes in place and disrupts the entire system, destroying quasiparticles altogether. The new framework shows these are not opposing realities after all, revealing how even very heavy particles can make tiny movements that allow quasiparticles to emerge.

Once again, everything old is new again. The circle of disinformation is complete.

The post MAHA Leaders Are Recycling COVID Myths to Minimize Measles first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-12 mission is preparing to launch for a long-duration science mission aboard the International Space Station. During the mission, select crew members will participate in human health studies focused on understanding how astronauts’ bodies adapt to the low-gravity environment of space, including a new study examining subtle changes in blood flow.

I always say that one of the things that separates real science from pseudoscience is that while in both you’re allowed to say whatever crazy idea pops into your mind, in real science you’re obligated to take that idea seriously.

Here’s a video of NYT columnist Bret Stephens speaking at the famous 92nd Street YMCA in New York. (It’s 34 minutes long, and well worth watching.) I like Stephens’s columns quite a bit despite his identification as a “conservative”. He’s the paper’s best columnist on Israel and the Gaza War, and he’s also Jewish, and he’s a centrist conservative, not at all a MAGA conservative.

In the video Stephens gives a heterodox take on the “state of World Jewry.” His message is fourfold (I’m expanding on his own words here):

1.) The fight against antisemitism is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend and focus our energy elsewhere.

2.) Antisemitism is the world’s most unwitting compliment, for it is based largely on envy and resentment based on Jewish success.

3.) Proper defense against Jew-hatred is not to prove haters wrong by acting well, but to lean into our Jewishness irrespective of what anybody else thinks of it. As he says, “It goes without saying that there’s nothing  Jews can do to cure the Jew-haters of their hate. . . .And there is nothing we should want to do, either. . . If it’s impossible to cure an antisemite, it’s almost impossible to cure Jews of the delusion that we can cure antisemites.”

4.)  Jews don’t need a seat at the table of victimized groups. We should build our own table.

To me, the best part is his analysis of the psychology of antisemitism, which he think is not properly understood.  Here is one misconception: “We think that antisemitism stems from missing or inaccurate information.” (e.g., the lies of the Gaza war). The result is that people hope to erase antisemitism by correcting widespread misconceptions (“Israel is an apartheid state”, “Israel is committing genocide,” and so on.)

But he argues that Jew hatred is “not the result of a defect of education,” It is, instead, “the product of a psychological reflex. . . .  It’s not just a prejudice and belief, but a neurosis.” Antisemitism preceded the founding of the state of Israel, and therefore can’t just rest on the presence of a Jewish state. He further argues that Jew hatred doesn’t come largely because “we killed Christ,” which is just one excuse people use to justify their bigotry. Instead, says Stephens, people hate Jews because of the virtues of our religion (e.g., the love of life rather than death), and, most of all, because Jews have been successful. A quote: “They do not hate us because of our faults and failures; they hate us because of our virtues and successes. The more virtuous and successful we are, the more we’ll be hated by those whose animating emotions are resentment and envy.”

To Stephens, the obvious conclusion is that it’s a fool’s errand for Jews to try to earn the world’s love.

As for building our own table, it seems to involve “Jewish thriving”: “a community in which Jewish learning, Jewish culture, Jewish ritual, Jewish concerns, Jewish aspiration and Jewish identification. . . . are central to every member’s sense of him or herself.”  He thinks that this can be done both culturally and religiously. (I don’t know how pious Stephens is, or what he believes about God and the Old Testament, but he seems to be more religious than I thought.) Building our own table further involves expanding Jewish education, building more Jewish cultural institutions and creating more venues for Jewish philanthropy, de-wokeifying liberal Jewish congregations, and “reinventing publishing” so it is not as antisemitic as it is now.

As an atheist but also a cultural Jew, I’m a bit put off by the overly religious nature of Stephen’s suggested cure. After all, Jewish schools are founded on the truth of Judaism, which is, like that of all religions, pure superstition. But yes, Jews need to de-wokeify (the ones who voted for Mamdani, for example, seem to me deluded) and not act like victims.

And I agree with Stephens that it’s time to stop trying to prove to the rest of the world that we’re okay. That is truly a fool’s errand, and what has happened since October 7 proves it. The more Israel tried to help Gazans dispossessed by the war, the more Israel (and Jews) was hated. It seems to me that antisemitism is now worse than ever; there are daily pro-Palestinian and anti-Jewish demnonstrations (e.g. “From the river to the sea. . “) all over Europe, Jews are killed en masse in Australia, and universities cater to pro-Palestinians and “encampers,” failing to enforce their rules when they are violated by antisemites.

In the end, Stephens avers that the precipice of Judaism is but a step away from its zenith, and we’ve failed to recognize the imminence of our downfall.  But he’s still hopeful, finishing this way:

“All this was understood once, and will be understood again. Until then, we will, again, endure the honor of being hated as we continue to work for a thriving Jewish future.”

Besides the overemphasis on religious Judaism, my only criticism is that Stephens, like all academics in the humanities, reads a pre-written paper out loud, rarely looking at the audience. But I’ll excuse that, for his talk provides a lot of food for thought—and for argument.  And I think his main argument, encapsulated in the four points above, is correct.

I’ve run on too long: listen to the talk (if you’re a religious or a cultural Jew, you must listen to the talk):

Voyager 2’s flyby of Uranus in 1986 recorded radiation levels so extreme they baffled scientists for nearly 40 years. New research suggests the spacecraft caught Uranus during a rare solar wind event that flooded the planet’s radiation belts with extra energy. Similar storms have been seen near Earth, where they dramatically boost radiation levels. The discovery reshapes how scientists think about Uranus—and why it deserves another visit.

Astronomers propose that an ultra-dense clump of exotic dark matter could be masquerading as the powerful object thought to anchor our galaxy, explaining both the blistering speeds of stars near the center and the slower, graceful rotation of material far beyond. This dark matter structure would have a compact core that pulls on nearby stars like a black hole, surrounded by a broad halo shaping the galaxy’s outer motion.