Skeptics Guide #951

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #951 September 27th 2023 Segment #1. Special Report Misinformation Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Zoom Backgrounds https://phys.org/news/2023-09-background.html News Item #2 – Manifesting Fails https://www.sciencealert.com/manifesting-more-money-is-linked-to-worse-financial-outcomes News Item #3 – Tong Test for AI https://techxplore.com/news/2023-09-tong-approach-artificial-general-intelligence.html News Item #4 – Looking for Service Worlds https://www.sciencealert.com/forget-alien-megastructures-new-study-says-we-need-to-look-for-service-worlds News Item #5 – NASA Recovers Asteroid Sample https://www.npr.org/2023/09/24/1201386042/watch-live-nasa-sends-an-asteroid-sample-back-to-earth Segment #3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4. Your Question and E-mails Question #1: Natural Gas vs Coal At the end of the climate change science or fiction Steve made an offhand comment that NG is 10% the climate impact of Coal. That's not accurate, so just wanted to get you all up to date with the latest here. Some great sources of info also at https://coalvsnaturalgas.org/ (which is a site of the Rocky Mountain Institute) Coal when burned to make electricity, is about 2x the CO2 emission of Natural Gas. It also has higher rates of fine particulates (that may be the source of the 10% number stuck in folks heads). However methane (the primary component of Natural Gas) is itself a greenhouse gas. It is 85x more potent than CO2 over a 20 year time horizon. Best estimates are that 40% of current global warming we are experiencing is because of methane (0.5C attributed to the methane that has been released). Methane is a small molecule, it leaks a lot in pipes. Current EPA estimates of leakage of methane make it worse than coal from a GHG perspective because of those rates of leaks. We should stop burning coal for sure. But Natural gas isn't better from a warming perspective (though it does release less fine particulates), when you look at it's system impact. So coal to gas transitions weren't the win people thought they were. Sean Dague NY Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. #1) A series of cognitive studies finds that people tend to make worse decisions when given more information. #2) In the first study of its kind, researchers find that antihydrogen atoms respond the same to gravity as normal matter, ruling out the existence of repulsive antigravity. #3) Engineers have published a method for making thin crystalline silicone solar cells that are one eighth the thickness of existing commercial solar cells with record-breaking efficiencies of 29%. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week “Ignorance lies not in the things you don't know, but in the things you know that ain't so.” - Will Rodgers “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.” - Josh Billings