WHAT HAVE VACCINES EVER DONE FOR US?:

Cervical cancer deaths are plummeting among young U.S. women: The findings could be a preview of what’s to come if HPV vaccination rates improve (Andrea Tamayo, November 27, 2024, Science News)

“We had a hypothesis that since it’s been almost 16 years, that maybe we might be starting to see [the] initial impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer deaths,” says Ashish Deshmukh, an epidemiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “And that’s exactly what we observed.”

Just another reason for the incel Right to hate vaccines.

PITY THE POOR PETROPHILES:

The End of Oil (Ryan Kellogg, November 2024, NBER: Working Paper 33207)

It is now plausible to envision scenarios in which global demand for crude oil falls to essentially zero by the end of this century, driven by improvements in clean energy technologies, adoption of stringent climate policies, or both. This paper asks what such a demand decline, when anticipated, might mean for global oil supply. One possibility is the well-known “green paradox”: because oil is an exhaustible resource, producers may accelerate near-term extraction in order to beat the demand decline. This reaction would increase near-term CO2 emissions and could possibly even lead the total present value of climate damages to be greater than if demand had not declined at all. However, because oil extraction requires potentially long-lived investments in wells and other infrastructure, the opposite may occur: an anticipated demand decline reduces producers’ investment rates, decreasing near-term oil production and CO2 emissions.

remember Peak Oil? That was hilarious.

IF THERE’S ONE THING WE KNOW maga LACKS…:

Musk and Ramaswamy Are Making a Big Mistake (Nicholas Bagley, 12/03/24, The Atlantic)

What’s more, you need smart bureaucrats to make sure that rescissions hold up in court. Under settled law, established way back in the Reagan administration, “an agency changing its course by rescinding a rule is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change.” Compiling that analysis requires technical skills that agency bureaucrats will have and that DOGE will lack. Slashing the federal workforce will thus work at cross-purposes to deregulation.

…it’s a deep bench of smart bureaucrats to replace the ones they hate.

NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN FOSSIL FUELS:

Lead Exposure Drove a Hidden Mental Health Crisis in the U.S., Study Reveals (Ed Cara, December 4, 2024, Gizmodo)

Scientists at Duke University and Florida State University conducted the study, building on their past research of lead’s impact on our health. They estimated that childhood lead exposure—particularly during the decades when it was most found in gasoline—has directly contributed to 151 million more cases of psychiatric disorder among Americans over the past 75 years. The findings indicate that lead has been even more dangerous to humanity than we knew.

Car manufacturers began to add lead to gasoline in the 1920s, aiming to reduce wear and tear on the engines.