1 Week, 7 Stories - Newsletter #48

Every edition features 7 stories, from the past week. I’ll draw on my background in media, journalism, agriculture, biotech, and renewable energy to come up with an interesting selection and to offer some context.

Media is back at the top of the newsletter following this week’s announcement by the BBC of extensive cuts to its programming with more to come.

In 2023 8,000 journalism jobs were lost in Canada, the US, and the UK. 2024 is not looking much better according to the Press Gazette, especially for the BBC. To start the process of trimming 500 jobs from its payroll by 2026 the broadcaster outlined the first programs and the 155 jobs on the chopping block.

The funding model for the BBC relies mostly on an annual licence fee of ￡169.50 ($303 CAD) for every TV (believe it or not there is still a reduced rate for black & white TV sets). It was instituted in 1923 for radio and by 1946 included TV as well. Other revenue sources include its commercial studio services and selling its programming around the world. The BBC World Service also receives parliamentary funding. While the annual fee may seem steep it is at least transparent and along with its charter does ensure editorial decisions are distanced from government influence. That fee however is under review by parliament and with more viewers ditching traditional home viewing in favour of? mobile viewing or streaming, the market is changing. Since 2010 the BBC’s income has dropped by 30%.

Hence the need for significant cuts.

Among the programs getting the pink slip are its long form TV interview program HARDtalk, its leading tech program Click, and the BBC Asian Network. Overall the goal is to reduce content by 20% and use less resource-intensive ways to tell stories (which I interpret as fewer documentaries, especially TV).

The role of a publicly funded broadcaster is important when we are all drowning in an ocean of news and information. Getting the news right is expensive. Getting the news wrong is cheap. One liners on social media are a dime a dozen, but getting to the facts takes time and resources. In 2008 technology writer and academic Clay Shirkey coined the term “mass amateurization” to refer to technology which allows non-professionals to create and publish content. Sorting the wheat from the news chaff is difficult and Shirkey’s concerns are coming true.

BBC content is available around the world, much of it free of charge. Programs such as HARDtalk and Click provided insight into issues that affect everyone – not just people in the UK. The audience could be assured the information presented was fact-checked, vetted, and checked again. ?Pulling up a news feed created by less skilled bloggers, bots, and heavily biased news outlets does not present a true picture of the world. Quality reporting and investigative journalism cannot be replaced by artificial intelligence or influencers.

The BBC will survive this current round of cuts. The bigger question now is what lies ahead.

For nearly 40 years Dounreay in Scotland was the centre for fast reactor research and development in the United Kingdom. Now it is a centre for the latest in nuclear decommissioning and clean-up. When the plant opened in 1955 fast reactors were seen as a way to deal with a shortage of uranium because they were fuelled by plutonium and could also convert unused portions of uranium into plutonium. They never proved to be viable and Dounreay was closed in 1994.

Work on the decommissioning has gone slowly but the site has been in the news recently because of safety concerns raised by government inspectors. A story in the Caithness Courier (which is near the? site) described the report as “grim reading”.? A BBC story said the report warned that there were rust and leaks at the plant.

New technology has played a big role in progress so far. A snake-like robot has been used to peek inside a laboratory that has not been seen in 40 years. Loaded with a camera, lights and radiation detector the robot is 7 metres (22 feet) long and can slip through a 30mm (1.18 inches) gap. Also being pressed into service is a quadruped robot nicknamed Spot built by Boston Dynamics. It can climb stairs, avoid obstacles and move over rough ground inside the facility. It even gets its own radiation protection suit as you’ll see in this video when it heads inside to measure radiation levels. Earlier this month one of the engineers working on the decommissioning won the Young Chemical Engineer of the Year award for his work developing the complex machinery that will be used to process radioactive and chemical waste.

There will be plenty of time for more technology to be built and robots to do their job before the site is considered safe for reuse in the year 2333.

And yes, you read that correctly.

Joe Schwarcz is director of McGill University’s Office for Science & Society and is a well know science communicator. Last week he had an opinion? piece in the Montreal Gazette on “The windmills in Donald Trump's mind”. He debunks most of Donald Trump’s ramblings about wind power, and no sooner had I finished reading it than this Canadian Press story popped up in my news feed over the long weekend.? CP is reporting that the Government of Alberta is considering additional restrictions on wind and solar energy projects in the province. In August of last year the province imposed a 7-month moratorium on renewable projects and when it was lifted in February of this year it came with conditions. It also came with the promise of engagement, more study, and that new rules and regulations would be enshrined in legislation before the end of 2024. Now, just weeks before Danielle Smith’s leadership review, we have hints that the future for renewables in Alberta will get tougher. Apparently oblivious to the 466,000 oil and gas wells in the province and about 1200 active drilling rigs, Smith has said that she wanted to preserve “pristine viewscapes”. While Alberta is leaning into limiting renewables,? Manitoba said in September it was encouraging the development of renewable energy with a pragmatic approach that acknowledges that fossil fuels are not going away in the foreseeable future.

A report from the Alberta Wilderness Association says that the new rules already restrict renewable energy development in up to 39% of the province. Meanwhile Alberta municipalities saw a big jump in tax revenue from renewable energy projects before the moratorium was imposed but the uncertainty since then has hurt investment.

As for our booming energy industry which is free to gobble up “pristine viewscapes”, they owe $250 million in unpaid taxes to municipalities.?

There are very real problems to be dealt with in the growth of renewable energy so we do not end up creating a problem that we really should be able to solve. Solar panels and wind turbines do not last forever. A Forbes story says that home solar panels have a life span of about 25 years, but that can be affected by manufacturing and installation quality, weather, and maintenance. The panels don’t stop working immediately but become less efficient at producing power for up to another 20 years. Solar panel use is still relatively new but wind turbines have been in use longer and are already nearing the end of their 20 to 30 year life span. Up to 95% of the material in a wind turbine can be recycled because most of the components are metal and for solar panels almost 90% could be recycled. Just because it could be recycled, does not mean it is being recycled because the process is difficult. In the case of wind turbines an ultra-strong resin is used to make them lighter and more durable and that makes a turbine blade a candidate for the landfill (though some are re-purposed in planters, picnic tables and benches).

A CBC story this week about a company that currently has 10,000 solar panels ready to be recycled is a good example of the challenges. Sunset Renewable Asset Management has the panels stockpiled but so far its technology does not seem to commercially viable and it is that infrastructure which is holding back recycling. The Alberta Recycling Management Authority (ARMA) will take solar panels. It then tests the panel’s performance, and less efficient but still viable panels can be used for community purposes such as cabins or fishing huts. All other panels are sent to the US to be broken down. ARMA is also developing plans for wind turbines and electric vehicle batteries. Federally, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada recently led a solar panel recycling challenge (applications closed September 3rd). The challenge focused on a cost-effective way to separate and recover critical materials such as aluminum, tellurium, and antimony as well as gallium and indium while managing potential contaminants and toxic substances.

Solar and wind power are not always seen as environmentally friendly when the life cycle from manufacturing to disposal is taken into consideration. With 400,000 tonnes of expired solar panel waste and 4.5 million tonnes of wind turbine waste expected in Canada by 2050, we have a long way to go.

In an age when we rely on everything hi-tech and keep our cell phones handy all the time, the University of Scranton will be dedicating a state-of the-art amateur radio station – better known as Ham radio – this month. ?Amateur radio got its start as far back as 1894 when Marconi built his first antenna and station, and once it was seen as something relatively easy to build others got into the wireless telegraphy game. The amateur operators were somewhat ‘ham-fisted’ when it came to tapping out Morse code and that is generally accepted as where the shorthand term for amateur enthusiasts came from.

While often seen as more of a hobby, stations such as the one at University of Scranton take it to a new level. It is used for physics courses and its work on the Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation project receives funding from several sources including the National Science Foundation. With the right equipment, home Ham operators can communicate around the globe and into space including chatting with astronauts on the International Space Station.

More importantly however is the role Ham radio has played and is still playing in emergencies. Before Hurricane Milton was upending life in Florida, Ham radio operators were making plans to disseminate information and emergency alerts. Emergency exercises are common in Canada and the US to prepare for situations where reliable communications will be needed. You know how things fall apart in your own house when your WiFi router gets hung up and needs a re-boot, and cell towers do not always hold up during a hurricane or ice storm.?

Ham radio on the other hand is more mobile, antennas can be moved or fixed quickly, and it is an affordable open service that does not rely on a provider. ?A Ham radio operator far removed from a disaster scene can listen in and pass along information to anyone listening. Operators in disaster zones can create informal networks quickly and are often incorporated directly into emergency management plans.?

You cell phone is handy and incredibly useful but in the event of a major emergency a 125 year old technology is still on-call and delivers more than you realise.

There are the seven wonders of the ancient world - the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

And then there are the new seven wonders – Great Wall of China, Chichen Itzá, Petra, Machu Picchu, Christ the Redeemer, Colosseum in Rome, and the Taj Mahal.

This story is about a new discovery under Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabatean Kingdom. You would immediately recognize the site if you are a fan of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The city is in the southwestern corner of Jordan and is carved in a sandstone cliff face. One of the carved structures is called the Treasury, though its exact purpose is not known. A team of researchers using ground penetrating radar were able to pinpoint the location of a tomb beneath the structure. With permission from the Jordanian government, a joint Jordanian and American excavation of the site has so far uncovered 12 intact skeletal remains and a collection of artifacts. ( 2 of the best stories are in the New York Times and the Washington Post. These should be free links, but if not, CNN offers a good overview.)?

One of the artifacts was a ceramic cup being held by one of the skeletons. It did not take long for speculation that this was the Holy Grail Chalice (also key to the Indiana Jones movie) but one of the archaeologists on the dig told Al Jazeera, “Not a chalice. A juglet”.

What can be seen of Petra when you visit is only a portion of the city as much of it still lies underground, but this latest discovery may reveal clues about the rest of the city. ?A hundred years ago archeologists would rely on digging slowly and carefully at sites that were best guesses about where there could be important discoveries. New technology such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and ground penetrating radar have changed at least that part of that hunt by offering researchers a glimpse of what is beneath the surface. Once a site has been located however, it is back to painstaking digging so as not to damage delicate artifacts and human remains. That next step at Petra is to exhume one of the skeletons for a full study but that will depend on funding.

Sticking with ancient stuff, how about bringing back the woolly mammoth?

When I was still working in the biotech sector, geneticist George Church was talking about bringing back the animal which has been effectively extinct for about 10,000 years. (though there were some still left on Wrangel Island as recently as 4,000 years ago) With the completion of the sequencing of the mammoth genome in 2015 and the book, ?How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, by Beth Shapiro one of the researchers on that project, the idea finally seemed possible.

The goal of ‘de-extinction’ remains elusive. In 2017 George Church thought it was in sight. Seen any new, woolly, ice age looking elephants wandering around lately? The company he co-founded, Colossal Biosciences knows how to generate attention and raise funding even without a woolly mammoth to put on show (they don't allow embedding their videos).

In 2021 Colossal said it had raised $15 million USD ($20.5 million CAD) with the aim of the first shaggy calves within 2 to 4 years. Then in 2023 it said they had raised a further $150 million USD ($206 million CAD) in Series B financing to bring back the Dodo. In all some reports say, about $225 million USD ($310 million CAD) has been raised to date.

Still no woolly mammoth in sight but Colossal is back in the news this month thanks to its announcement of the formation of the Colossal Foundation, a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization. ?This time it is all about saving species and maintaining biodiversity.

Colossal has colossal ambitions if nothing else.

If the de-extinction plan ever happens it will not bring back a pure woolly mammoth as there is not enough complete genetic samples available to clone the ancient animal. More likely it will be an elephant-mammoth hybrid. The idea of reviving mammoths, dodos, or anything else for that matter also raises ethical questions including what it will do for biodiversity challenges today. ?As this article points out, we should instead be focused on saving existing species.

It may lack mammoth buzz, but it is today’s problem.

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I’m available for contract and freelance work with not-for-profits and charities. With 40 years of experience behind me and lots of time ahead of me, I’m here to help you make a difference in your media relations, public relations, and general communications needs.

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