Month: June 2017

Ars Live is filmed by Chris Schodt and produced by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

In our latest episode of Ars Technica Live, Ars editors Annalee Newitz and Joe Mullin talked to UC Santa Cruz sociology professor Lindsey Dillon about how the Trump Administration has been removing scientific and environmental data from the Web. Lindsey is part of a group called Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI), which is working on ways to rescue that data and make it available to the public.

Lindsey told us how EDGI got started in November 2016, within days of the presidential election. Its founders are scientists and academics whose main goal was to make sure that researchers and citizens would continue to have access to data about the environment. They organized data rescue events around the country, where volunteers identified vulnerable climate information on websites for several government agencies, including the EPA, DOE, and even NASA. The Internet Archive helped by creating digital records of all the at-risk pages.

Enlarge / President Trump signs an executive order to create the National Space Council. (credit: White House)

Earlier Friday, Ars exclusively reported on the imminent announcement of a reinstated National Space Council by President Donald Trump. And indeed, the executive order signing ceremony took place on Friday afternoon at the White House before the president departed to New Jersey for the holiday weekend.

This event was highly anticipated because it signaled the deeper involvement of Vice President Mike Pence in the setting of national space policy. The new council's tasks include the coordination of military, civil, and commercial space activities and the establishment of broader goals for the United States in space.

The formation of the space council should also provide some clarity on the extent to which the Trump administration, which sees one of its mandates as making the US government function more like a business, applies that methodology to the US civil space program.

Enlarge (credit: Congressman Ted Yoho)

There's widespread agreement that bees around the world are in trouble. A few years back, domestic honey bee nests started experiencing mass die-offs, and problems were found in wild bees as well. What hasn't been clear is what the cause might be. Viruses, fungi, and pesticides have all been floated as possible causes, but definitive evidence has been hard to come by; a number of scientists have suggested that there might be multiple contributing factors.

Nevertheless, suspicions focused on a specific class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. The EU has already placed restrictions on their use, and it's considering a near-total ban.

If you read the headlines this week, it would appear that a new study completely justifies that decision. Funded in part by two insecticide manufacturers, a team of independent researchers purportedly tied neonicotinoids to bee colony health. But a quick look at the underlying data shows that the situation is far more complex. And a second paper, with more robust results, supports the idea that these insecticides are merely one of a number of factors contributing to bees' problems.

Enlarge (credit: Congressman Ted Yoho)

There's widespread agreement that bees around the world are in trouble. A few years back, domestic honey bee nests started experiencing mass die-offs, and problems were found in wild bees as well. What hasn't been clear is what the cause might be. Viruses, fungi, and pesticides have all been floated as possible causes, but definitive evidence has been hard to come by; a number of scientists have suggested that there might be multiple contributing factors.

Nevertheless, suspicions focused on a specific class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. The EU has already placed restrictions on their use, and it's considering a near-total ban.

If you read the headlines this week, it would appear that a new study completely justifies that decision. Funded in part by two insecticide manufacturers, a team of independent researchers purportedly tied neonicotinoids to bee colony health. But a quick look at the underlying data shows that the situation is far more complex. And a second paper, with more robust results, supports the idea that these insecticides are merely one of a number of factors contributing to bees' problems.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | ljhimages)

AT&T is denying that its contracts include "forced arbitration" clauses, even though customers must agree to the clauses in order to obtain Internet or TV service.

"At the outset, no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration," AT&T Executive VP Tim McKone wrote in a letter to US senators today. "Customers accept their contracts with AT&T freely and voluntarily; no one 'forces' them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services."

AT&T was responding to concerns raised by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who previously alleged that AT&T's use of forced arbitration clauses has helped the company charge higher prices than the ones it advertises to customers.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Spencer Platt)

Verizon Wireless said it is disconnecting a small group of customers who use vast amounts of data in rural areas where Verizon relies on roaming agreements with smaller network operators.

"Earlier this month we notified a small group of customers who are out of contract and primarily use mobile data on other wireless companies’ networks that we won’t be their service provider after July 30, 2017," a Verizon spokesperson told Ars today. "This only affects a few people who primarily roam on other networks and does not affect customers who primarily use Verizon's own network."

The customers who are affected "are using vast amounts of data—some as much as a terabyte or more a month—outside of our network footprint," the company said. Verizon gave the customers several weeks notice so they have time to port their numbers to new providers. Verizon provided no option to switch to different plans.

Enlarge / US EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. (credit: Gage Skidmore)

US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have been making some headlines for publicly rejecting the conclusions of climate science. But in between wrongly claiming that climate scientists just don’t know how much of a contribution humans make to recent global warming (answer: roughly 100 percent), they have also been parroting a new line—that climate science needs a “red team” to take on the scientific consensus.

On Friday, E&E News reported that these aren’t empty words. The EPA intends to “organize a specific process in which these individuals... provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science," according to an administration official.

The “red team” concept refers to exercises in which one team is formed with the goal of shooting down the blue team’s conclusions or pursuing off-the-wall ideas. Since people like Scott Pruitt assert that the cause of climate change is fundamentally unknown, they argue that it would be perfectly reasonable to gather up some scientists who think humans are the cause together with some who disagree and let them duke it out.