"Severe Abnormalities" Found In Fukushima Butterflies

Dupple writes "The collapse of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant caused a massive release of radioactive materials to the environment. A prompt and reliable system for evaluating the biological impacts of this accident on animals has not been available. This study suggests the accident caused physiological and genetic damage to the pale grass blue Zizeeria maha, a common lycaenid butterfly in Japan. We collected the first-voltine adults in the Fukushima area in May 2011, some of which showed relatively mild abnormalities. The F1 offspring from the first-voltine females showed more severe abnormalities, which were inherited by the F2 generation. Adult butterflies collected in September 2011 showed more severe abnormalities than those collected in May. Similar abnormalities were experimentally reproduced in individuals from a non-contaminated area by external and internal low-dose exposures. We conclude that artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant caused physiological and genetic damage to this species."

Comments

butterfly effect?

[yagu]

How does this affect the butterfly effect? This could be chaos!

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

The butterfly effect is chaos.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

Re:butterfly effect?

[nitehawk214]

Whoosh.

The sound made by those butterfly wings.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny. The full extent of the damage can be seen in these photos here.

Every time something nuclear comes up, someone has to come along and undermine it with these petty jokes.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 internets to you good sir, i LOL'd

Re:butterfly effect?

[Hardness]

A mutated butterfly in Japan flutters it's wings, and it creates a three-eyed tornado in Kansas... So yes, chaos. Lots of chaos.

Re:butterfly effect?

[mcgrew]

Godzilla butterflies!!! RUN!!!

Re:butterfly effect?

[NatasRevol]

Global warming!

Re:butterfly effect?

[camperslo]

How does this affect the butterfly effect?

Putting the polonium in pollinate. Ask Arafat.

Re:butterfly effect?

[oh_my_080980980]

That's Mothra you moron....

Re:butterfly effect?

[jellomizer]

Because every time something nuclear comes up, there is a slew of OH MY GOD NUCLEAR BAD!!! people. Who is not willing to compare its safety record, with fossil fuels (It best alternative).

I am not touting the Nuclear Energy is Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter. However right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy.

We should expand our Nuclear Energy usage. At the same time we need a strong set of regulations involved and enforced to make sure Nuclear Energy stays safe. Using any mistake that goes on as a lesson learn to make it safer.

Re:butterfly effect?

[jellomizer]

Actually to get a Giant butterfly we will need far more Oxygen in our atmosphere for one to survive.

Re:butterfly effect?

[osu-neko]

I am not touting the Nuclear Energy is Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter. However right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy.

We should expand our Nuclear Energy usage.

If it's true that fossil fuels and nuclear energy are the two and only two alternatives available, then your second statement logically follows from the first. If there are any other forms of energy, your second statement simply does not follow.

Re:butterfly effect?

[symbolset]

Start moving significant quantities of spent fuel to dry cask storage. Then ask again. This should be no problem at all.

Re:butterfly effect?

[AmiMoJo]

False dichotomy. If it were a simply choice between nuclear and "fossil" you might have a point, but there are different types of fossil fuel and other non-fossil sources to consider. Also when looking at the potential risks you have to consider where we are now, not where we were in the past or where other less developed nations are.

Don't oversimplify the debate.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Creepy]

ok, I'll bite. The fact is, there is no "clean" energy that can be built anywhere, and many have major flaws.
Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.
Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.
Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction, mess up the earth's spin, and can affect wildlife that depend on rivers. Some of the better power generating models (ie pumped storage) depend on high elevation drops and some other power source (like Coal) to pump
Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities
Peat (mostly in Russia) - large CO2 producer, kills fish with runoff
Biofuel - corn absolutely rapes soil nutrients, and other sources aren't much better. Most sources are subsidized because they aren't economical
Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't

did I miss anything?

There's nothing inherently wrong with nuclear fission, Fukishima was just using a dangerous reactor design without the failsafes built into later designs. I personally feel LWRs are dumb to build on an earthquake and tsunami prone island, but passively safe designs like the MSRE were never developed and only are being looked into again now by companies like FLiBe energy. This technology was successfully developed in the 1960s and then subsequently abandoned, and the official reason was to avoid fragmenting the industry (but we damn well know it was all about the money - the nuclear lobby existed to protect LWR patents and these were threatened by any other nuclear power technology).

Fusion will require a very expensive containment vessel, and it will be a long time before it becomes efficient in any way (when and if they manage to get more energy out than they put in).

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not touting the Nuclear Energy is Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter. However right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy.

We should expand our Nuclear Energy usage.

If it's true that fossil fuels and nuclear energy are the two and only two alternatives available, then your second statement logically follows from the first. If there are any other forms of energy, your second statement simply does not follow.

Emphasis added

May not follow. An energy source could be something perceived as worse than either.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Kidbro]

The fact is, there is no "clean" energy that can be built anywhere.

did I miss anything?

Yes. Nobody has said that there's a one size fits all clean energy source, so pretending one required and start attacking that false hypothesis is nothing but a straw man technique.
By your reasoning, the entire world is dead of starvation, as there's pretty much no source of food that can be grown everywhere. Different solutions for different locations.

For the record, I'm relatively pro nuclear power - but you're still arguing against a straw man.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Status: Closed

C-x M-c M-butterfly works for me.

Re:butterfly effect?

[tragedy]

Pretty much all power generation, including nuclear and coal, requires long transmission lines. The only sources that don't are local ones, such as right in homes or right down the street. That pretty much means solar (could also be wind or gas/diesel generators, or hydro with people lucky enough to have their own river, but not very likely). So, the long transmission line argument is pretty much bunk since you don't present any alternative that doesn't need them.

Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.

All tall structures kill birds. I don't think the wind turbines actually have any particular vendetta against eagles. Long transmission lines, sure. Of course, as I've pointed out already, unless the power generation is being done in your house/back yard, you're going to need long transmission lines. As for "not viable everywhere", that's certainly true. Of course, that's what the long transmission lines are for.

Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.

How is solar inefficient in energy generated? What are you comparing it against and how are you making the comparison? As for being inefficient in terms of land, that's a tricky one. A solar plant does take up approximately ten times as much land as an equivalent nuclear power plant. On the other hand, that's just comparing the generating plants. Nuclear power plants also require quite a lot of land dedicated to mining uranium. Both types of plant require resources to construct in the first place, which are also mined. Solar probably still takes up more land, but pretty much every solar plant design allows you to also use that land for other things. Usually not farming (although some solar plant designs actually work as big greenhouses), but there's no reason you can't have factories, commercial buildings such as malls, or even housing under a solar plant. The same can't really be said for a nuclear plant. Back to the long transmission lines again. Once again, not unique to any particular form of power generation. Also, if the transmission lines are long enough, then the long transmission lines can be the solution to your last point about varying energy output. If your plants are all located close to the equator, seasonal variation is pretty much a non-issue.

Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction, mess up the earth's spin, and can affect wildlife that depend on rivers. Some of the better power generating models (ie pumped storage) depend on high elevation drops and some other power source (like Coal) to pump

Not much to say on hydroelectric. Just have to mention that you forgot to point out that they need long transmission lines. Also "mess up the earth's spin"? Huh? Now, damming a river and thus creating a large body of water will alter the rotation of our planet, but not by very much. All kinds of natural phenomena such as calving ice sheets, subduction of the crust, earthquake driven upheavals of landmasses, settling of sub-oceanic silt, etc. cause the same kinds of shifts. Is there something I'm missing here?

Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities

The construction dangers, though real, wouldn't seem to be anywhere near the same as those for hydroelectric since they're so vastly different. As for only working for coastal cities, you forgot the long transmission lines.

Peat (mostly in Russia) - large CO2 producer, kills fish with runoff

Peat is just a fresher version of coal. Same issues with burning our natural carbon sinks as all fossil fuels. Also, requires long transmission lines.

Biofuel - corn absolutely rap

Re:butterfly effect?

[Tetch]

every time something nuclear comes up, there is a slew of OH MY GOD NUCLEAR BAD!!!

[sigh] ... this is very simple: nuclear fission produces absolutely foul and disgustingly dangerous waste that we have no idea how to dispose of. That is far and away the most dangerous thing about it ... I'm sure the reactors themselves are operated in a reasonably safe manner these days (apart from at Fukushima of course :), but the waste by-product is a shocking legacy that we bestow on generations to come for tens of thousands of years. I for one am not willing to be party to that.

Nuclear *fusion*, on the other hand, produces no dangerous waste at all ... I'm prepared to wait till we've got all the wrinkles ironed out of that - it being slightly embarassing that we currently have to feed the fusion reaction with more energy than we get out of it :)

Re:butterfly effect?

[symbolset]

Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't

This is not true in general and not in Japan specifically because the entire region is geothermally active. New enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) can extract electrical energy from temperature deltas far lower than traditional dry steam plants. They don't even have to be on land: offshore subsea geothermal plants would work quite well especially with a cool flow of ocean water to supply the cold side of the delta. There is very little of the US that could not generate power with EGS. Google mapped them for us. Quote: "Potential for the continental U.S. exceeds 2,980,295 megawatts using Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) and other advanced geothermal technologies such as Low Temperature Hydrothermal. " This is 3/4ths of domestic consumption in 2011. We don't even have to look for them - typically EGS thermal sources are found incidental to other mineral exploration, and ignored even though most of the work is already done at that point.

Since these resources are completely safe, nontoxic, natural, carbon-free electrical energy resources that cost even less than nuclear energy it would be irresponsible to engage in any increase in risk or carbon generation whatsoever before all of these resources were fully exploited.

As both baseload power and on-demand power EGS also offers the potential to mitigate the variability of other clean resources in a way that even nuclear can't. The persistent thermal resource in a given area is limited, but over a long time base so on surges in need can over-extract thermal energy for many years before diminishing returns diminish the resource locally for a while. This makes them the perfect complement to PV solar and others.

There are other things we could do to improve the situation without the toxins of carbon or the risk of nuclear, like encouraging shallow geothermal heatpumps for home heating and cooling, and extracting electricity from the thermal deltas of manufacturing, but EGS is a really big bucket to serve our energy needs in a realistic way and your dismissal of it in this way is offensive so now I'm going to reciprocate.

One chief objection to nuclear is that we have many hundred reactors worldwide of the Fukushima disaster designs. And every one has 40 years worth of spent fuel stored in an elevated pool on top of the building that could be destroyed in some way - many times the design load of fission byproducts for these pools now, and dozens of times the fuel in the reactor vessel. After cooling for a time this fuel is supposed to be moved to safer dry cask storage. But casks cost money and the operators are skinflints and it's cheaper to have the pools recertified for more and more spent fuel packed tighter and tighter and not ever move any to the casks. But density is the bugaboo of nuclear fission: the tighter you pack these rods the more they encourage each other to fission. So now our national production capacity for these casks is 3% of the need, and one brick of C4 on the bottom of one of these pools could lead to a meltdown outside of the containment leading to a vast wasteland of hundreds of square miles of American Exclusion Zone that can't be occupied for 100 years - among other things - for each of these reactors. Certainly there is evidence that this occurred at Fukushima to some degree. On that very day the dumb bastards trusted to operate our nuclear plants should have been cutting P.O.s for casks - and that

Re:butterfly effect?

[symbolset]

Some US nuclear plants have spent fuel in their cooling ponds at a density over 5x what they were designed for. This is fine as long as nothing bad happens. Unfortunately, Murphy's law.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Genda]

You can't simply go around making blanket statements (well you can, but people will slap you statements down so hard, they'll leave impressions in the asphalt), especially when you quote information that is either grossly dated, fundamentally meaningless or simply lacks vision, and an understanding of what a diverse energy system can, indeed must look like.

Our nation runs on a grid. There are long distance lines everywhere. This already exists, and therefore does not preclude the existence of large green energy sources. Those very same nuclear resources exist at the end of long power lines. The real answer for power transmission is high performance underground transmission with near room temperature superconductors. Huge strides are being made that could make such transmission a viable reality in our lifetimes (provided there is a nation with sufficient wealth and vision to build such a continental resource.)

All human endeavors have unforeseen environmental consequences. The questions you need to ask, are what is the over-arching impact to the environment, how much do mitigations cost and are there meaningful counter measures available to protect the environment? For wind, there all kinds of work being done to protect wildlife, and might I add that when comparing the threat to large western raptors by wind turbines, vs the threat to western forests decimated by wild fire and the impact that would have on the entire local ecosystem, I think a pretty strong argument in favor of the wind power can be made. As for solar, no energy technology in the world is advancing faster than solar, there isn't a day that passes that efficiency breakthroughs aren't being trumped by cost breakthroughs, and technologies that promise to coat entire cities with transparent thin film solar collectors which will not only produce gigawatts of power, but convert heat into electricity, reducing air conditioning costs, and conserving heat waste in the winter. Next year all experts expect solar production to pass the $0.50 per watt mark making it completely viable in the face of rising oil costs. The real excitement is around growing technologies to store power and allow power created at one time and in one location to be made available anywhere else at any time. Green has never been more exciting and more viable.

Agreed, damns are expensive both economically and environmentally. The huge earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands in China several years ago, is almost certainly the result of huge damn project and the result of billions of tons of water pressing on a lubricating active faults. That doesn't mean that there aren't places where damns and the sweet water they collect don't make perfect sense, and provide overall greater value than cost, you just have to be keeping a sane tally of all the cost. As for changing the spin of the earth, that' pretty thin. Several massive earthquakes have over the last ten years impacted global rotation rates tremendously more than all the reservoirs currently in operation. That's simply a non-issue. The same goes for tidal damning and wave energy. There are places where this is feasible. You must however weigh the energy gain against potential impact to wildlife and aquaculture and food sources, as well as possible impacts to ocean currents and cycles necessary to maintain a healthy global ecology. Seeing as the fishing industry is based on that global ecology, screwing up an estuary on the East Coast of the U.S. could mean that West African's go hungry. We have ways now to evaluate the impacts of our decisions. We need to be concerned about how our actions impact others.

You never even mentioned low pressure OTEC generating fresh water, electricity and mineral rich deep water for local aquaculture on floating cities around the equators all over the world. Or biofuels created from algae being grown in exotic solar reactors producing more energy that we can use in the southwestern deserts of the U.S. Brazil has based its entire economy on ethanol production from sugar cane fields

Re:butterfly effect?

[Genda]

Apparently you've been avoiding the headlines. The nuclear reactors in the U.S. were designed for a 40 years life expectancy, however, no new generation of reactors sprung up to replace them. So the industry asked the government to let them go to 60, then 80 years. Recently is was discovered that a particular reactor's containment vessel had huge cavities in its wall that would soon have released the content of the vessel exposing people to a life threatening flood of radioactive coolant and exposing the core to the air where it would have promptly gone China Syndrome.

Thankfully they found the problem and are now fixing it, but our nations deranged belief in using things until they break, like bridges, and highways, and reactors, is not just thrifty. Its psychotic. Our parents, grandparents and great grandparents invested in us, by laying down an infrastructure that made our quality of life possible. Now, we leave our children.... nothing but a smoking hole in the ground. And when rightfully they ask "Where's ours?", we'll answer honestly as we sit back on our swollen asses picking our teeth "Huh, oh, was that yours? Sorry, it was so good we just couldn't stop."

The really sad part, is that for the most part, the average Joe, really wants to leave his kid something, he's just been so bled dry and lied to by those rapacious bastards that he's just trying to hang on to what little he has left (including his dignity.) By the way, there may be a loud and fiery debate about precisely who the rapacious are, I don't make a distinction between the corpos, and the government and the wealthy entitled. The distinctions would only be superficial and for the most part philosophical in nature. In practice its all the same folks. We are well on the way to our very own nuclear thrill ride, but we won't even be able to claim disaster. It will be a horror of our own making built purely out of greed, avarice, and blind idiocy.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Genda]

No, the butterfly would only needs to evolve lungs, because spiracle are a very inefficient means to move oxygen. Of course even lungs set an upper limit to the size of a butterfly... figure to get really big, it would have to migrate to the ocean. A butterfly whale... now that would be a site-seeing tour!!!

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles".

Fuck the eagles.

I'm 42 years old. I remember growing up and *never* seeing a raptor. Never. The closest I saw was a buzzard when we drove through some terribly remote place, and that was ecstatically exciting. Now raptors are everywhere. It is astonishing. I nearly wreck my car every time I see one-- and that's several times a week. I would rather look at them than the road. It was simply unheard of 30 years ago.

Why? DDT is out of the system.

In the last 15 years, I have seen, *in* *my* *back* *yard*, Golden eagles, red tailed hawks, red shouldered hawks, barred owls, Great horned owls, Peregrine falcons and American kestrels. I spent far more time outside as a kid than I do now. I can see Osprey and Bald eagles with an easy drive if I want to. This was impossible when I was 12.

Raptors are recovering. They will continue to recover. The windows on your house and office are a far greater threat to birds than anything else right now.

Yeah-- fuck the eagles. I'm literally weeping right now because I feel like I live in such an amazing and special time where we can actually see these animals. Such a time was mythological when I was a kid.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to play Devil's advocate. I call this the smaller gun analogy.

1. Nuclear energy not, "Clean, Safe, too Cheap to meter"
2. " ...right now the effects of Fossil fuels is worse then the effect of nuclear energy."
Conclusion: we should use more nuclear energy

Bad analogy:
1. a 40mm handgun is not safe
2. a 22 caliber handgun is less lethal
Conclusion: we should shoot more people with 22s. ??

Hey, I said it was a bad analogy!

Alternative to bad analogy: maybe we should shoot less people (this calls into question what percent of people who are shot 'deserve' to be shot, and the definition (where you draw the line) of 'deserve.'

Alternative to bad nuclear energy and worse fossil fuel energy: maybe we should use less energy? Why is that not considered a serious alternative?

Examples: 8 year old Riley: I admit I stole a cookie, but Billy stole 3 cookies (therefore, I Riley, should be let-off)

Guy with traffic ticket to Judge: I admit I was going 10 miles over the speed limit, but other drivers were going 15 miles over the speed limit. Comment, 40 years ago in traffic court the Bailiff came out and announced that the Judge wanted everyone to know that if this was going to be your defense, go to window A and pay your fine, or he will triple your fine. Some idiots still tried it.

But, you sometimes will hear some airhead saying essentially, 'what's the problem, so I shot em with a 25. I coulda shot em with a 36 or 9mm.

The lesser of two evils does not make the less one not-evil. It also shouldn't stop us from looking for a non-evil or even more lesser evil, but sometimes, too often, it does.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

did I miss anything?

Using less energy

decreasing the population. see above

creating a culture where using gobs of energy just isn't done see above

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear waste is produced when using fossil fuels as well, which is even MORE radioactive. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Re:butterfly effect?

[TapeCutter]

did I miss anything?

Yes the fact that many of the same problems exist with coal, eg....
To get the 'advertised' output of 6 coal plants requires you build 7 to cater for maintenance.
To efficiently meet peek load, hydro dams and gas turbines must be available.
To efficiently fuel the plant it must be built on or very near a coal mine and use long transmission lines.

These are large engineering projects we are talking about, you don't get the efficiency of scale you get with a one shoe fits all solution like changing over to fluro bulbs. These projects are specifically engineered to meet the owners needs, if the market is structured such that one of those needs is to reduce pollution, then it will happen.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the sea levels rising by 60m is vastly preferable to IRREPARABLE AND PERMANENT GENOMIC DEGRADATION TO ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS (including humans).

I want Al Gore to build sandcastles on his front porch. (But I think that is above the new sea level in Nashville, TN)
I'm what you would call one of those 'OH MY GOD NUCLEAR BAD!!! people'

Re:butterfly effect?

[AmiMoJo]

Your ignorance on a topic you seem to think you have fully explored is incredible.

Wind Turbines supposedly kill eagles and often requires long transmission lines that make them inefficient in the best of cases. Not viable everywhere.

The bird kill thing is a myth, and long distance transmission lines are a solved problem.

Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines. Energy output varies by season in many areas.

Solar thermal collectors are highly efficient and also help the grid by offering massive amounts of energy storage capacity. They don't take up that much space, and besides which a lack of space is not the problem in many places. Energy output varies but that isn't a problem is you just build enough of them.

Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, especially during construction

No, dams have a horrible safety record. If the wheels fell off your car you wouldn't blame the stereo. Besides which most of the new capacity and development is in small scale hydro rather than massive dams. Generally speaking you don't build a big environment changing dam just for energy.

Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric, only works for coastal cities

Do you even know what this is? I can't imagine in what sense you think the dangers are the same as building large dams. Do you even know that there are many different types of tidal power systems? Which one are you thinking of?

Geothermal - great if you live near steaming hot springs and are basically sitting on an inactive volcano, not so great if you aren't

You don't need a volcano, temperature rises quickly once you get even a short way down. Most mines are hellishly hot.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

peek load

Commodore 64 fan detected.

Re:butterfly effect?

[geekoid]

And you add nothing and do so anonymously.

Re:butterfly effect?

[geekoid]

DO you know the power loss in modern line? inefficient isn't a word I would use.. but then I actually know the numbers.
"Solar is inefficient both in land and energy generated and also generally requires long transmission lines."
again with that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Solar is two technologies(many more if you are padatic.)
Panels and Industrial thermal. IN many areas, panels need to become part of every house built. It wojudl feed all the nergy, but it will offset energy use considerable.
Lets say 200 watts a meter. small 10sq. meters is 2KwH not being taken from the grid for 8 hours. Do that in every homes in a state, its a low of power. This is something we should do regardless of what we use for base load power.

"Hydroelectric Dams have a horrible safety record, "
false.

"Tidal (wave) energy - many of the same construction dangers as Hydroelectric"
false.

"only works for coastal cities"
so?

"did I miss anything?"
a brain?

Yes, for base load power we would be using 4th Gen thorium molten metal reactors. Seriously, the tech is awesome and very safe. But that's no excuse to spread a bunch of lies, and over stated issues.

Re:butterfly effect?

[geekoid]

except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used.
Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.

"Seems like good places to grow crops that aren't intended for human consumption. "
it's not nearly enough to offset cost impact to food.
"on't require long transmission lines"

WTF is every ones hang up with transmission lines? There a lot more efficient the the tankers/ trunks you mention. On average, 6.6% loss. And this has been decreasing as older infrastructure is replaced.

Op quiz: how many gallon per acre do you get from from plant bio-fuels?
After you find that out, do some math comparing how many acres you would need to offset current gasoline fuels.

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats. +10 Whooshes.

Re:butterfly effect?

[tragedy]

except every type of field grown biofuels competes with food. We are already seeing price hits, and it's hardly used.
Unless you are growing bio fuels from tiny animals in places where we can't grow food, then bio fuels should end.

As I pointed out, there are some quite massive areas of otherwise arable land that are contaminated and aren't fit for growing food for human consumption. There are also alternatives like harvesting algae from the sea, etc. Biofuels done poorly (such as corn ethanol) are a problem, but that doesn't magically mean that biofuels can't work. I also just can't accept any financial market-based arguments since those markets are all pretty much entirely based on perception rather than reality. As for "tiny animals", huh?

"Seems like good places to grow crops that aren't intended for human consumption. "
it's not nearly enough to offset cost impact to food.

If growing biofuels on land that otherwise wouldn't have any crops growing on it affects food prices, then that means that the markets are broken, not the concept of biofuels.

WTF is every ones hang up with transmission lines? There a lot more efficient the the tankers/ trunks you mention. On average, 6.6% loss. And this has been decreasing as older infrastructure is replaced.

Uh, yeah, that was my point. Creepy, the poster I was replying to, was the one who was citing the requirement for long transmission lines as the reason that wind and solar wouldn't work. This was ignoring the fact that all non-distributed power generation methods require long transmission lines. Creepy went on to say that tidal power would only work for coastal cities, ignoring the fact that long transmission lines solve that problem. I think you may have missed that my post was a (slightly sarcastic in places) response to Creepy.

Op quiz: how many gallon per acre do you get from from plant bio-fuels?
After you find that out, do some math comparing how many acres you would need to offset current gasoline fuels.

Gallons of what? The concept of biofuels covers a lot of possibilities, including those that can't be measured in gallons. Growing wood to burn in generators, for example, can't be measured in gallons although it's actually a pretty decent power generation scheme. Biomethane can be measured by the gge, I suppose. If you're making biodiesel from algae, then you need an area about the size of Georgia to provide all the fuel needed by the United States. For other biodiesel crops, you need pretty much all the arable land in the US.

Re:butterfly effect?

[teh dave]

Dammit, I had mod points just two days ago... The best I can do is a thumbs up:

b^.^d

Re:butterfly effect?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is wrong with you?

3 Eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

2 wings instead of 4. Or is that 6? I do not comprehend it!
--Professor Farsnworth.

OH SHIT!

[circletimessquare]

MOTHRA!!!!!!

Re:OH SHIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

One can only hope.

Re:OH SHIT!

[MyLongNickName]

I came here to post the same thing and provide a link for the younger Slashdotters

http://dreager1.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/mothrabattleforear1622.jpg

Re:OH SHIT!

[dkleinsc]

Don't worry, Godzilla will take care of Mothra, and everything will be fine (unless you live in Tokyo).

Re:OH SHIT!

[mark_reh]

Damn! Where are the Peanuts when you need them?

Re:OH SHIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new butterfly overlords.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast, circletimesquare. You've posted far too many insightful comments to get off so easily with such an obvious karma whoring post. RTFA, goddammit, and tell us wtf it's saying in plain geek. kthxbai.

Re:OH SHIT!

[WAG24601G]

You say that now, but you'll be glad Mothra's around when King Ghidorah arives.

Re:OH SHIT!

[tnk1]

OH NO! Tokyo!

Re:OH SHIT!

[CanHasDIY]

OH NO! There goes Tokyo!

FTFY.

Go, go Godzilla! Yea...

Re:OH SHIT!

[triffid_98]

In a nursing home on Monster island?

Re:OH SHIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Darinbob]

Mosura ya Mosura!
Dongan kasakuyan indoo muu

Re:OH SHIT!

[jellomizer]

There should be a movie about people living in poverty and bankrupt governments and coprorations due to the massive capital damage movie heroes occur on cities every year.

DC, LA, and NYC will probably need to be rebuilt every 6 months.

I mean 9/11 was considered a major tragedy, the people who caused the damage are considered as some of our most evil people living in the world. But a couple of movie comic book hero's cause wide mass destruction and we parade them as heroes!!!

Re:OH SHIT!

[WastedMeat]

Have you seen "Hancock"? It's not too far from what you describe.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Razgorov Prikazka]

Or call in Peter and Walter Bischop... this is clearly part of a pattern! First bald guy shows up, sea goes swoosh, reactor goes kaboom, then a ghost shows up and now these butterflies... That IS a pattern!

Re:OH SHIT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mothra Fuka!

Re:OH SHIT!

[camperslo]

In a strange twist, radiation from cold-war era atomic testing in the South Pacific about half a century ago is responsible for those Japanese monster movies. They were inspired by fishermen returning home with severe radiation sickness, following exposure during a test.

So it isn't just the current butterflies resulting from release of radiation. The movie monster characters did too.

Re:OH SHIT!

[knigitz]

Off topic quite a bit, but how many Hollywood cops have you seen steal a civilian car to chase down a criminal, crashing into cars as they drive insanely through rush-hour traffic, and not think twice after doing it? The crowd cheers when they catch the bad guy and fist fight him to the ground. I wonder how the Hollywood image of uniformed officers affects both our perception of them, and their perception of themselves.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Kell Bengal]

Or perhaps Japanese radioactive monster movies are an expression of the impact to their cultural psyche from being bombed with two atomic weapons? Something powerful, atomic, indiscriminate and terrifying? Daigo FukuryÅ Maru certainly contributed, but I think the fear of the nuclear monster was already entrenched by then.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Criton]

I was thinking the same thing.

Re:OH SHIT!

[Genda]

You have seen the Rodney King tapes??? Or read about Abner Louima the poor Haitian bugger who was mistakenly arrested in Brooklyn, where at the hands of the police he was beaten, clubbed, kicked in the tender vittles, sodomized with the business end of a toilet plunger and then had the plunger shoved through his teeth (tearing out most of the teeth in the front of his mouth.) The officer who committed the atrocity strutted around the precinct bragging "I took a man down tonight!" I dunno, I'm guessing most officers of the law are straight forward guys just trying to do their incredibly challenging job the best they can. A few, think you can fly a car off a four story building and survive the landing, or drive through heavy traffic at over a hundred MPH without leaving a trail of innocent victims and lawsuits. We need to make better use of police shrinks. Certain guys need to be kept on desk duty.

Re:OH SHIT!

[geekoid]

perhaps? no, definitely. Watch the original Godzilla. I recommend the Japanese version, not the western version where the edited in the reporter.
There is a scene that just rips me apart every time.

The edited American version stars Raymond Burr, and is titled " Godzilla, King of the Monsters!." Sadly, it treats American views like they are complete idiots. Typical studio exec. thinking.

Damage?

[sexconker]

It's not damage until it proves to be detrimental. It seems to me that they're reproducing in the wild just fine.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a complex and information-dense article. I'm so glad someone like you posted... with your brilliant and dismissive hand waving, now I don't have to read it or learn anything new. I now look forward to any Fukushima-scale nuclear events in my area as you have shown us that unless something is detrimental, it isn't damage. I bet flipper-babies probably even swim better than normal babies.

Re:Damage?

[MightyMartian]

It's a substantial change in a population post-incident. Whether the changes are beneficial or not is besides the point.

Re:Damage?

[Githaron]

Having flippers for feet when your peers are land-faring probably is detrimental. It is also probably detrimental if the flippers do not either come with gills or massively increased lung capacity / oxygen efficiency.

Re:Damage?

[sexconker]

Wrong. For all you know they could be beneficial changes. Until you know that the changes are detrimental you can't call them "damage" anymore than you can call all of evolution "damage".

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not damage until it proves to be detrimental.

Read the story. It has pictures. The deformities are clearly not beneficial. Messed up eyes and such.

It seems to me that they're reproducing in the wild just fine.

That's not necessarily a good thing. A trait that dominates inheritance can destroy a species.

Abnormal levels of radiation are bad, mkay? Particularly internal radiation — the kind you get from isotopes blown out of a pressure vessel. Nuclear may be great, and you may really like it, and it may be absolutely necessary to our future, but that doesn't mean damage hasn't been done.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not damage until it proves to be detrimental.

You are confusing the genetic change with the damage that caused it. It is definitely genetic damage but, as you point out, whether it has caused detrimental changes has yet to be seen.

Re:Damage?

[MightyMartian]

Oh, I see, so this is some sort of semantics pissing match you want to win. Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones, but hey, if it somehow makes you feel like you've won a debate, then so be it. In fact, I recommend you go and get some substantial dosage of radiation right now. After all, you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

These changes are beneficial. The new butterfly is radiation resistant. This is not damage, but an improvement. We should examine the mice in the area so that we can improve our genetics accordingly. Radiation resistance is very important for space exploration where radiation exposure is a constant risk.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.

Forgive him. He works for a tobacco company.

Re:Damage?

[steelfood]

There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.

To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.

What this is illustrating is the rate of change, which is fairly high. A high rate of change can be beneficial in the long run, but extremely damaging in the short run. And it is both damaging for the species concerned, as well as for the rest of the ecology which is dependent on the health of all its species.

If you extrapolate it to more advanced and sophisticated species, ultimately those with vertebrae, it's a frightening picture. Insects can handle quite a bit of mutation, as well as are built to resist radiation. Not to mention the species will survive by sheer reproductive numbers alone. More advanced lifeforms like birds and mammals cannot handle the radiation, cannot handle almost all but the smallest of mutations. Worse, birth rates decrease as complexity increases. A 99.9% chance of stillborn for an insect that lays hundreds of eggs is nothing. A mere nine in ten chance of stillborn for more advanced animals would irrepairably damage the species' survivability.

Not to mention that species survivability is a much lower threshold than maintaining civilization. So if you want to put a Good-Bad qualifier on these findings, it's Bad. Very Bad.

Re:Damage?

[MightyMartian]

Indeed. "Why, you can't call those malignant growths in your lungs harmful until you actually die. For all you know, they could give you superpowers!"

When you have severely malformed wings and eyes and other developmental abnormalities of a clearly genetic nature in a population, many of which are clearly deleterious from a purely fitness measurement, then it's not going over the top to call it "damage".

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have tested captive breeding in much higher radiation levels, but of course they haven't.

They actually were talking of using this butterfly species to monitor background contamination (non-radiological) of the human environment as these butterflies have been studied and are very sensitive to environmental changes. They have already noticed that these butterflies are changing due to current levels of global warming as seen in Japan.

There was also a mention on BBC website of "surprised by magnitude of effects because insects were thought to being resilient to radiation". Clearly, that is indication of not understanding insects. Many insects are very susceptible individually to environmental changes and I am NOT surprised by effects of low changes in radiation on individuals. Insect *populations* are very resilient to environmental changes because,

  1. they generally breed quickly, having short lifespans, and
  2. there is so many of them

Insect *populations* are resilient to toxins (pesticides, pollution) and other environmental stressors (radiation, climate change) because they will quickly adapt to those stressors. The same with these butterflies.

I suspect that you could increase radiation in a large area to 1-2Sv/yr, amount that would kill people, but insects like these butterflies and other short lived creatures, like mice, would survive. They would take a terrible short term hit until they could adapt, but in the span of a few generations, they would thrive once more.

Very interesting read.

http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl/

Re:Damage?

[MyLongNickName]

There are no "beneficial" changes. There are only changes, in the form of mutations. The ones that do not produce viable offspring die. The ones that do continue to survive.

To question whether this change is beneficial is like asking whether water is good or evil.

A thousand times "wrong". In the context of evolutionary theory, a beneficial mutation provides a "benefit"... I know this is a radical logical leap. A beneficial change would be a mutation that allows an organism to better compete and ultimately have more offspring. It is nothing at all like asking about good or evil, it is about being better suited to the environment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#Beneficial_mutations

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

where are the enhanced humans from hiroshima? nagasaki? the experiments superpowers did on their own people and on remote tropical islands? chernobyl? the incidents where secrecy held? I'd say it doesn't look promising to me for the butteflies and for the japanese people.

Re:Damage?

[Annymouse Cowherd]

Butterflies lay offspring by the hundreds, have short enough lifespans that selection will take place soon after the event, lack the socializing effects of modern healthcare in humans, etc.

There's no doubt that there were millions of stillborn and otherwise irreparably genetically damaged butterflies already. The question is has it affected the long-term survivability of the species.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're preaching to the choir.

As you get older, you come to the realization that the world really does have some stunningly dumb people. You ignore them and move on.

Re:Damage?

[Dunbal]

And the change in population is entirely due to radiation and not, say at least partly, due to having had most of the landscape flooded by salt water and scoured by a tsunami? Caterpillars don't just drop out of the sky and hatch into butterflies. I'm sure their environment has been quite dented.

Re:Damage?

[oh_my_080980980]

Read the article then comment.

Re:Damage?

[Dunbal]

Meh just ignore him. I agree with you and I have a pretty strong biology background (MD). Changes that are not beneficial we call "disease". But there are a whole bunch of other changes we might not even notice. Those are called genetic variability. So long as it's not detrimental to the organism and, per evolutionary rules, interfering with its ability to compete and mate, change is not necessarily "bad". It's just change.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on down!

We now sell all our flippers with gills!

Re:Damage?

[sexconker]

Oh, I see, so this is some sort of semantics pissing match you want to win. Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones, but hey, if it somehow makes you feel like you've won a debate, then so be it. In fact, I recommend you go and get some substantial dosage of radiation right now. After all, you can't call it damage until your dick falls off.

It sounds like you're mad and you want the butterflies to die off so you can use it as evidence to stir up FUD about radiation.
The butterflies have mutated, but are still able to breed and be successful butterflies. This isn't damage, it's change. Damage is, by definition, change that is detrimental. If you want to argue about anything it helps to know the definitions of the things you're arguing about. If you consider that to be a "semantics pissing match", then I can offer you no help.

Re:Damage?

[Sentrion]

He probably works as a health insurance claims processor.

Re:Damage?

[NeverVotedBush]

And that extra hand might come in, well, handy...

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you believe evolution to be massively inefficient in the long run, you cannot seriously believe that many random changes over a very short span in any given organism will not include detrimental ones. Your stance is nonsense.

Re:Damage?

[MightyMartian]

I'm not angry at all. The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers. Insects get an edge, in general, because fast breeding and lots of offspring can counterbalance such effects, and eventually, you will see some population that can return to some level of fitness, but that doesn't mean that dangerous doses of ionizing radiation is somehow potentially healthy, just because you get some potential survivors, any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival. It's an absurd position.

We're not talking about the generally intermittent nature of natural genetic changes that occur under normal conditions. We're talking about populations being blasted with radiation of sufficient strength to cause massive morphological changes within a generation or two. Evolution isn't some superhero comic book, and there are levels of radiation that make any population much less fit to related populations outside the environment that caused this.

Re:Damage?

[rmstar]

I have a pretty strong biology background (MD)

Haha, that's a good one. Could have been:

I have a pretty strong mathematics background (acountant)

and been about as funny.

But just FYI, wether a change is beneficial or not evolutionary is a rather subtle thing. Just consider sickle cell anemia, which sucks, but can protect you from malaria.

Re:Damage?

[lennier]

any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival.

Well, theoretically, if you keep doing this for a million generations natural selection ought to automatically breed hulking armour-plated bullet-resistant chickens. That's basic Darwin 101, innit?

In fact there's probably a US defense contractor working on exactly this idea right now...

Re:Damage?

[MightyMartian]

That's not Darwinism 101 at all. In fact, plenty of lineages just go extinct when confronted with environmental pressures that they cannot adapt to.

Re:Damage?

[DigiShaman]

...on Mars where the strippers have three tits.

Re:Damage?

[sexconker]

Unless you believe evolution to be massively inefficient in the long run, you cannot seriously believe that many random changes over a very short span in any given organism will not include detrimental ones. Your stance is nonsense.

Evolution IS massively inefficient in the long run. It's random noise that sometimes makes a better picture than the previous picture which was selected for over hundreds of millions of years. The longer it goes on, the more inefficient evolution becomes. If you build up a finely-tuned, massively complex genetic base and then randomly fuck shit up, the odds are astronomically against you. If the environment changes, the larger, older code base means it takes much longer to adapt.

Evolution is the selection against inferior (in the current environment) variations in genetics. Said genetic variations are due to random mutation.
Random mutation is far more likely to have negative effects than positive effects. It takes selection pressure to weed out those negative effects. If evolution were efficient changes would be directed even without said pressure.

I absolutely believe that many random changes over a short time span will likely include detrimental ones.
However, you cannot say that that is the case without evidence, and just as humans weren't evidence of damaged primate genes, mutated butterflies aren't evidence of damaged butterfly genes until they're unable to survive and reproduce as well as the non-mutated butterflies.

Re:Damage?

[sexconker]

I'm not angry at all. The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers. Insects get an edge, in general, because fast breeding and lots of offspring can counterbalance such effects, and eventually, you will see some population that can return to some level of fitness, but that doesn't mean that dangerous doses of ionizing radiation is somehow potentially healthy, just because you get some potential survivors, any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival. It's an absurd position.

We're not talking about the generally intermittent nature of natural genetic changes that occur under normal conditions. We're talking about populations being blasted with radiation of sufficient strength to cause massive morphological changes within a generation or two. Evolution isn't some superhero comic book, and there are levels of radiation that make any population much less fit to related populations outside the environment that caused this.

Until you show that the changes are hurting the mutated butterflies's ability to survive and reproduce you can't say the changes are "damage". Plain and simple. it doesn't matter how the mutation happened or how fast.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

... any more than firing into a chicken coop with a shotgun and still having some chickens manage to survive means shotguns are potentially good for chicken survival.

Sounds reasonable until you realize what's happening now is that the chickens (humans) are also firing shotguns (radiation) at the chicken coup (planet earth).

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

These changes are beneficial. The new butterfly is radiation resistant. This is not damage, but an improvement.

Okay I'll bite, how did the new butterfly become radiation resistant?

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have severely malformed wings

Malformed wings, my hoof! I'm a Fallen Angel, you insensitve clod!

Re:Damage?

[Genda]

Actually, you have to occasionally point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Because if you don't, other stupid people will begin to quote him, you'll start seeing it on FOX News, and before you know it, the Tea Party is demanding Obama's birth certificate. Just point and say "Everyone... this is what stupid looks like... back to your business." Nip it in the bud... as a public service mind you.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones

Well, that's pretty much how natural selection works, albeit at a slower pace. Mutations happen at random, and random isn't likely to be good.
This might kill off the butterflies from that area, or it might accelerate their development. Which one it is going to be is as of yet undetermined, unless you're a real psychic. And comparing generational mutations with radiating someones dick off is just silly.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compare this event to Chernobyl: http://today.ttu.edu/2011/04/25-years-later-amazing-adaptation-in-chernobyl/

I'd like to point your attention to the following quote:

Though they couldn’t prove that was detrimental to the animals, the researchers did find that it was an effect of living in that environment.
“Does that change life expectancy or fitness of individuals living there? We certainly don’t know that,” he said.

But you, OTOH, have concluded that it is massively detrimental in a far less severe case than Chernobyl.
Further:

After researchers placed mice in Chernobyl’s radioactive area, their cells formed greater amounts of protection against radioactivity. Researchers found the mice produced more amounts of proteins and enzymes that repaired DNA broken by the radiation and countered the ill effects of radiation-created oxygen radicals, which can cause cell damage and disease.

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact is that a massive number of genetic mutations in a population within a few generations from something like ionizing radiation or some other agent does not lead to greater fitness, but almost inevitably to lesser fitness; deleterious morphological changes (ie. malformed wings, eyes, internal organs) and increase in various cancers.

That is not a fact, that is a scaremongering theory that was popular directly after the Chernobyl incident. A quarter of a century later we have quite a lot of facts rather than FUD to look at.

Wildlife Thrive in Chernobyl's No-Go Zone
Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife Is Thriving
Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation
Wildlife thriving after Chernobyl’s nuclear disaster – study

Yes, individuals might die and suffer horribly. (It might be hard to find bad mutations since they are often eaten at early age.) but the benefits from having a zone humans avoid outweighs this when we look at population strength.
If the Chernobyl disaster is any indication then the Fukushima disaster is a blessing for Japanese wildlife and the result we will see in a couple of decades is not a "population much less fit to related populations outside the environment that caused this."

Re:Damage?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider that the butterflies carry a large and extremely complex and sophisticated DNA software package that has built up through adaptation by relatively small genetic mutations over countless generations, then exposure to high doses of ionising radiation is like running powerful magnets over your hard disk and hoping that they randomly produce a wonderful new OS. While its in theory possible, it's trillions of times more likely that you'll have destroyed the data and reduced it to meaningless garble.

The normal evolutionary process works because small mutations are allowed, some go right, some go wrong and beneficial changes get copied forward.
Just screwing up and cutting lumps out of DNA at random is more likely to totally overwhelm this process and leave you with an extinct species and loss of complex life or even simple life entirely.

The science fiction mutants are quite unlikely to happen. The more likely result is just the destruction of billions of years of naturally evolving complex life and a hell of a lot of pain and suffering for completely deformed animals.

Re:Damage?

[Dunbal]

Yeah, you think they just hand out medical doctorates without any backround in biology right? I might not be an expert on repitilian biochemistry, but you bet your backside I have the basics down pretty damned straight. Just like you expect your accountant to be able to do arithmetic and statistics quite flawlessly, even if fractional calculus is a little beyond him.

Let me know...

[cynop]

... when the giant killer butterfly goes on a rampage in Tokyo.

of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

in soviet russia it would be damage no questions asked. in free japan we need proof it's detrimental.

so..

[Anonymous Coward]

what really matter is: is the west coast vulnerable to this shit? NYC has the shittest weather ever but at least it's not radioactive. maybe have to put off that move to SF.

Re:so..

[Anonymous Coward]

Move to SF proper. It has plenty of people just like you. You can take shifts monitoring the Geiger counter.

The rest of the west coast is a radioactive hell. Stay away.

Excuse me,

[Anonymous Coward]

But I'll have you know that by good authority here that nuclear power is safe and nothing bad ever happens ever and this is merely some sort of alarmist nonsense. Did you ever think the butterflies might like being irradiated? I mean, they could develop superpowers, or change into a really cool color or something!

Fuckin haters. If we would just subsidize the hell out of nuclear like we do oil and biofuels we could build some new reactors that also never ever break down or fail spectacularly just like the ones in Fukushima that totally did not fail catastrophically.

Re:Excuse me,

[NeverVotedBush]

Thanks for posting that. We all know how beneficial irradiated insects, animals, and humans can be.

Just look at the spider that bit Peter Parker.

Dumbasses

[Anonymous Coward]

This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations. And all you can do is make jokes and actually excuse it!! Wow... Is something wrong with your brainwashed, apathetic, sorry excuse for minds? They used to say the same things about cigarettes except this can never be quit, and it effects all these victims' children and their children and on and on... Ya, it's real fucking funny. It's people like you that make this world shit.

Re:Dumbasses

[Anonymous Coward]

You're so well articulated. I know you've won me over.

Re:Dumbasses

[JSBiff]

We do not know that this is forever. Natural Selection pressures which lead to the development of larger forewings my over the next few decades lead the butterflies right back to the larger wingspans. Or not.

That's evolution. There is no *should* - there is only what is; and what is, is constantly changing. Bigger wings, smaller wings, it's all the same to me, until you can show me species *dieing out*, or having abnormally high rates of birth defects (and smaller wings are NOT a birth defect if they otherwise function normally), cancers, etc.

We should keep watching, with interest, what happens in the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima, but so far, the evidence doesn't suggest catastrophic failure of life, nor is it likely too - the increase in background radiation was temporarily very high, but quickly subsided as the radiactive substances released by the plant dispersed and dilluted.

Finally, I will need a chance to look in more depth at this "study", but I have to wonder if they really proved these changes were due to Fukushima, and not due to something else which was co-temporal (e.g. result of selective pressures do to local ecological changes due to the tsunami; or possibly from the lots of chemical contamination of the environment due to the tsunami washing out industrial facilities, hospitals, etc).

Re:Dumbasses

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the same as suggesting that because a dwarf human is born, all humans will be dwarves from then on, or because a litter of cats are all black, all cats will be black. Genetics do not work that way.

Re:Dumbasses

[ToasterMonkey]

This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations. And all you can do is make jokes and actually excuse it!! Wow... Is something wrong with your brainwashed, apathetic, sorry excuse for minds? They used to say the same things about cigarettes except this can never be quit, and it effects all these victims' children and their children and on and on... Ya, it's real fucking funny. It's people like you that make this world shit.

How is this more permanent than taking a piss in the ocean?

Where do you get your notion of genetic permanence from anyway, how do you think those butterflies got whatever traits they have now?

Re:Dumbasses

[blahplusplus]

"This is forever. It's genetically inherited and it can NEVER be cured. There is no way to know how bad the effects will be (i.e. disease, immunity response, deformities, life span, etc) in the offspring for all generations."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw

Re:Dumbasses

[Vyse of Arcadia]

Listen, buddy. It is never going to be cured. It's bad. There's not a fucking thing we can do about it. So we may as well get a laugh out of it. Unless you have a magical solution that for some reason doesn't work in the presence of humor, howsabout you take the stick out of your ass, grab a beer, and relax a little? All your fuming isn't improving the situation either.

Also, some of the other comments make me think you don't know what you're talking about.

Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

I love science. But this is barely news. These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder. Of course they'll be the first to be affected. A reduced fore-wing size will not unravel the entire food chain, and very importantly: evolution will push back. This species has an enormous population that is unaffected by radiation. If the small wings are an advantage going forward: great. If not, their neighbors will out compete them, and the mutants will die out.

Wake me when they have a stable population of 6 legged dogs.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Also they overturned / cleaned a lot of soil around the place, so they need something more convincing.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[MobyDisk]

I find it newsworthy. And interesting.

These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder.

That is a good lay explanation of why this is not scientifically unexpected. But that doesn't mean it is unimportant. Most news articles have been focused on the direct human impact of the Fukushima disaster. But it is important for people to understand that even if the environmental impact is not significant to large long-lived mammals, it is significant to smaller beings. Ultimately, we depend on their survival, albeit indirectly.

Either way, this is valuable research. It is a good baseline to compare to in years to come.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[khallow]

But it is important for people to understand that even if the environmental impact is not significant to large long-lived mammals, it is significant to smaller beings

To the contrary, similar exposure will have a larger effect on big, long-lived animals like humans. It's possible that this butterfly has an unusually narrow genetic variation due to specialization or happenstance which means it might show effects of mutation more easily. Say like cheetahs supposedly are less varied than leopards.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[toygeek]

That's not evolution, thats natural selection. Huge difference.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[interkin3tic]

This would indeed barely news, but that's an indictment of "news," not this finding. It's important. A scientific finding of "here are the problems, they're not catastrophic" is important.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

We got merkins didn't we? Look at the damage they do!

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

I love science. But this is barely news. These creatures eat the sweet surface juices and pollen, and develop at a rate so fantastic it make them a source of childhood wonder. Of course they'll be the first to be affected. A reduced fore-wing size will not unravel the entire food chain, and very importantly: evolution will push back. This species has an enormous population that is unaffected by radiation. If the small wings are an advantage going forward: great. If not, their neighbors will out compete them, and the mutants will die out.

Wake me when they have a stable population of 6 legged dogs.

There are more abnormalities than just the reduced fore-wing size and patterns. If you read further down the article there are mentions of many cases of malformed legs, antennae, eyes and so on 6month after the incident. Underdeveloped or malformed bodyparts, abnormal growths, altered wing shapes..

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[drooling-dog]

My hypothetical conservative friend says butterflies don't matter, and neither do frogs or furry animals or lower-class humans. When the Job Creators start spawning hideous offspring, then maybe we've got a story here.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Insanity Defense]

That's not evolution, thats natural selection. Huge difference.

Please explain the alleged difference.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[toygeek]

Evolution: One species evolves into another
Natural selection: members of a species with a successful trait thrive over others, becoming dominant within the species. Species itself does not change.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[PatDev]

Natural selection is the most visible cause, evolution is the effect. There are other causes to evolution, such as mutation and genetic drift (evolution).

I'm not sure I would say that distinction is "huge". Comment history suggests GP is not just some kind of creationist-troll. Curious what he meant.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[omnichad]

Perhaps they're saying that the horribly mutated butterflies were already out there and are somehow better able to survive in the radiation. That's the only reasonable understanding I can make of it. Not that it's reasonable in the sense of making sense.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, this is barely news. Unless you're a human embryo hoping to one day grow a full set of limbs.

Here's a visual aid for the imagination-impaired: Google image search "thalidomide babies".

Fukushima has provable teratogenic effects on local organisms, and it is STILL leaking. If you're not concerned you're either a moron or a troll.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Moses48]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection
Evolution happens by process of Natural Selection. People that refute human evolution often accept intra-species natural selection, but won't accept natural selection changing a species to a point where it cannot reproduce with a former version. Yet, generally speaking evolution and natural selection are synonymous.

So, no, there is no huge difference.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Insanity Defense]

Evolution: One species evolves into another

Natural selection: members of a species with a successful trait thrive over others, becoming dominant within the species. Species itself does not change.

1/ the mechanism of evolution IS natural selection.

2/ A successful trait spreading through a population is in fact a change to the species and is evolution.

3/ Species change incrementally from original to successor. Having acquired a single new trait may not do it. Many new traits acquired over time does do it. Like compound interest.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Thalidomide was a purposefully injested drug with rare-but-horrible side affects.

No one is saying that radiation isn't a source of concern, but statistically shortened butterfly wings aren't proof of much.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And no one likes the thought of deformed humans living in misery.

The problem is that these obvious deformities are not sustainable attributes. They are like fire damage. It's horrible. But in short order nature will fix them (and by fix I mean they'll starve, die and become fertilizer), it's not going to cause long term viable mutation. The wing problem, if sufficiently superior in the short term could (conceivably) cause a long-term-bad gene to come into play that replaces a long-term-good gene. And when that extra wing length is neccessary to cause the once per century toad-plaugue toads to choke on these butterflies, thus preserving a few, there may be no long winged one's left and they could get wiped out.

So, I do see a problem with nuclear-inspired mutation. But picking some of the most sensitive creatures in the eco-system and finding a trivial change, while healthy unaffected populations thrive on other parts of that island.... is really nothing to get worked up about.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[khallow]

I should explain this better. The number of mutations experienced by the organism is crudely linear to the volume of the organism and amount of radiation exposure (which in turn has some dependence on the lifespan of the creature). The number of inheritable mutations created will be somewhat less than the above, I think, due both to the smaller volume of sexual organs and the much larger threshold that sperm in large animals needs to overcome in order to fertilize eggs (more competition from more sperm, a longer distance to travel, and far fewer eggs to fertilize).

I also failed to notice that butterflies are likely to experience unusually high accumulation of radiation. Their wings are large surfaces for collecting radioactive particles (with the butterfly's body right at the center) and I imagine it is a common butterfly trait to bask in the Sun, especially in early Spring. This behavior would greatly enhance their exposure to fallout from Fukushima. So butterflies probably are at the highest end of exposure among small animals. I imagine that's part of why they were studied.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[MightyMartian]

This is purely your own private definitions. It certainly isn't definitions that any biologist would agree to. Hell, it's not even the definition of natural selection Darwin used. But please, continue to show how pig ignorant you are.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[AmiMoJo]

The point is not the damage to the butterfly as a species, it is that there is measurable and concrete evidence of the damage caused by the radiation leaked from Fukushima Daiichi. For people who (used to) live there, whose livelihoods are based on farming products from that region, who are concerned that TEPCO is trying to reduce the amount of compensation it has to pay out but claiming the damage isn't that bad...

For those people this is an early and important report, one of many to come over the years and decades they are going to be dealing with this.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution: One species evolves into another

You can't explain a noun by simply using the verb form. Please try again.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

he didn't come up with it... its some bogus ID definition.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Paradise Pete]

Evolution: One species evolves into another

First of all, nothing evolves into anything. A species may evolve from another. That does not require that the first species cease to exist. A quite reasonable explanation of the fact of evolution is the theory of natural selection.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[geekoid]

I have an actual conservative friend who says exactly that... so, yeah.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[geekoid]

It's that incorrect understanding that has set the understanding of evolution back.

Re:Trivial changes to pollen and nectar eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither: that s the Simpsons.

Re:Oh no

[Githaron]

Or Hulk butterflies. If you step on them, they rip off your foot.

Bah...nothing to worry about

[GodfatherofSoul]

I'm sure this is another anti-nuke liberal conspiracy. I bet a bunch of tree huggers mutilated a jar full of butterflies and let them loose. Am I right, guys?

Re:Bah...nothing to worry about

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh . . . Poe's Law. I have a feeling you're trying to be funny, but in the absence of a smiley or similar, I have no way of telling if you're a serious whacko nutcase.

What I Took From This...

[Anonymous Coward]

BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA NUCLEAR ENERGY IS EEEEEEEEVIL ONLY WIND AND SOLAR ARE SAFE BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!!

Also, spend more money on Earth-friendly products and feed the evil greedy corportations who make them as well as the non-friendly products. Celebrate Idiot Profit...I mean, Earth Day!

Re:What I Took From This...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cavemen say "BOOGA!"
The Bogeyman only needs "BOO!"

No it's safe!

[cpu6502]

The government says it's safe, and I believe them! You whacko libertariqans and your anti-gov rhetoric is the true source of evil. The government is just there to help us and protect us!
/end sarcasm

Common Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they'll rave about science in the classroom but when you post a hard science article on Slashdot the same idiots can't come up with anything but comic book memes and flamebaits.
 
I guess if it's not about how to rip of The Man(tm) than it's just a waste of an article here.

Re:Common Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no qualifying exam to post here. Treating the community as a monolithic bloc of people at the same education level, political affiliation, or even possessed of the same level of basic intelligence is unfounded. Some people just make Mothra jokes. Some people use the occasion to push their political agenda. Some people make good comments. This dynamic plays out in virtually every Slashdot post. Expecting otherwise is just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Re:Common Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot wasn't always this retarded. it used to be majority educated people with science backgrounds but then some time in the 00s a flood of high school dropout pc technicians flooded in and turned the place the shit.

Re:Common Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Apple could somehow be made to answer for this crime.

Tell me that the butterflies have mutated...

[idontgno]

into meat-eaters and I'll worry.

So you say you have mutant problem

[GameboyRMH]

For a price I take care of this, I have perfect auto-shotgun for this job...if you have no money I also accept rare artifacts.

Blinky the Three-Eyed Fish

[bussdriver]

"Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish"

Mutant Butterflies, but why?

[the eric conspiracy]

A natural disaster causes a lot of pollutants to escape. I didn't read the article, but has the cause been narrowed down to anything particular?

That's not a bug on that butterfly

[davidwr]

It's a feature!

Yes, folks, we now have real bugs with features.

NOT Mutant Butterflies

[guttentag]

They're not Mutant Butterflies, they're just discarded packaging from the MSN installer disks from back when they administrated the plant remotely via dialup connection. You know, before the meltdown. They don't use MSN dialup now... that would be silly.

Evolution goes Fast Forward!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

A significant amount of genetic diversity is caused simply from natural mutations caused by radiation. Fukushima has put evolution on fast forward around the nuclear power plant. I can't wait to see what a few generations will produce.

Not to diminish the dangers of high doses of radiation, it should be pointed out that wildlife adapted quite quickly to the radiation levels around Cherenoble and things have returned to mostly normal -- minus people.

Perhaps in a few generations, we will be saying "Howdy" to our new butterfly overlords!

you know what that song needs?

[Anonymous Coward]

requires the further liberal application of cowbell

Mutations?

[corruptblitz]

Don't waste your time reading the article. Barely any of the butterflies can shoot lasers from their eyes.

P.S.

[Anonymous Coward]

The username alone should have been a big clue that he's got serious mental problems. Don't waste your time arguing with rocks.

I'm sick of the scaremongering

[he-sk]

It's the butterflies' fault. If they had not stopped with the development of nuclear power 30 years ago, they would not suffer from these "abnormalities". After all, modern reactor designs are intrinsically safe!

Wait. What?!

One of very few studies like it. Very bad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, there are very few comprehensive studies of the effects of nuclear fallout in the wild. This is because the only other comparable disaster was Chernobyl, which the Soviets swept under the rug, and no one so far has had the balls to purposely contaminate a large area 'for science'.

And the effects were bad: many of the pupae in the lab model died. And the (heritable!) abnormalities could seriously compromise an individual: missing legs, non-working eyes.

Certainly the affected population will be out-competed. They are doomed. Evolution works when a relatively small number of individuals mutate in small ways. Those few individuals either survive or don't, and the result is an overall stronger population. But when a large number of individuals undergo a large number of mutations all at once, the entire species could be wiped out.

Because the Fukushima disaster affected a relatively small area of the planet, this evolutionary dead-end butterfly will die off and be replaced in it's niche, with little lasting harm to the ecosystem. But what if a nuclear accident was more widespread?

The problem with radiation-induced mutations is that they happen too fast to too many individuals and the population may not be able to recover. These butterflies are the canary in the coal mine.

the rise of tentacle raep

[Anonymous Coward]

just guessing... if a giant octupus appears

Is it proof, or just an observation?

[EmagGeek]

The presence of abnormalities and the time and location they were observed does not prove they were caused by radiation.

It might be a reasonable conjecture, but it is not proof. When they can prove that these specific abnormalities were definitely caused by radiation that came from the plant (as opposed to natural sources), then we will have cause to be concerned.

Re:Is it proof, or just an observation?

[Anonymous Coward]

If these abnormalities somehow benefit the lifespan and survival-rate of the species. Then, something interesting happened ;)

Re:Is it proof, or just an observation?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. It is too early to panic, and we don't need to be passing legislation or anything, but this is an excellent time to become concerned. We needn't pretend to be completely blind until all colors are discovered.

Re:Is it proof, or just an observation?

[geekoid]

You don't understand science, do you?

Most of the fallout went in the ocean

[symbolset]

Wait till you see the sharks.

Re:Here comes...

[JSBiff]

Hey, has anybody mentioned Mothra yet?

sharks?

[RelliK]

Will they grow lasers on their heads?

Re:sharks?

[equex]

Yes now all we have to do is to herd laser sharks and harvest their laser energy.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shadows of Fukushima coming to stores near you for Christmas 2012!!!

teenage mutant ninja

[mwolfe38]

butterflies? Can't wait to see them take on the shredder!

Woof

[Anonymous Coward]

Our actions are causing living things to suffer radiation poisoning.

A scientist is studying the effects on one particular type of organism. Your response is that it doesn’t matter.

A fantastic rate of development shows effects sooner and in obvious ways -- is that what you meant? Such would be the result of less exposure than others with slower development. If this has any significance, one might remember that other living things may develop tissues at a quickened pace at various times.

My guess is that you love science about as much as a politician.

If you wouldn’t post in your sleep, I would take you up on the wakening. I think it is likely that 6 legged dogs would die out before a stable population is achieved and thus you would be sleeping science lover. An imaginative plot line for an RPG could involve your untimely awakening, resulting in the subsequent construction of nuclear power plants, further love of science, and the beginning of many more trivial events and happenings.

You forgot natual selection

[INowRegretThesePosts]

Call it what you like, but the odds are far greater that we're going to be dealing with very few beneficial mutations, and more than likely a good many bad ones

You forget that nature will select out the detrimental mutations and select in the beneficial mutations.
It seems (to me, a layman) that this incident has accelerated evolution and will, on the medium term, make the bugs more adapted to the environment (for example, they will better adapt to climate change). It increased the raw material (genetic diversity) which fuels evolution.

A Culture of Deceit

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad that 'Butterflies' must stand-in for human beings in World Science and Technology and Genetically advanced (snicker snicker ... they are so dump) Japan.

Japan is the pinnacle of an ass-hole on your elbow in anything.

Boo hoo hoo snif snif OHHHH the irony of it all ... the masters of the Universe are just a bunch of misanthropic losers looking to grope a teenager and get an up-skirt pic at the Tokyo Central Train Station.

OHHH BOO HOOO HOOO!

Not.

Bah, humbug.

[Anonymous Coward]

The dented eyes could be caused by cross-breeding with the local human population.

It may be publicity seeking by the authors.

[shimotsuki]

Hi all,

The butterflies' abnormalities reported in this paper are potentially caused by 1) preexistent character of the populations, 2) inbreeding depression in laboratory, 3) environmental change after quake other than radioactive materials, 4) radioactive materials, and 5) other factors. However, the sampling design is unbelievably bad, and the effects of above factors cannot be isolated. For example, the number of female is very small (Spplementary Table 1), and the control population (Ube) is very distant (Fig. 1a).

In addition, similar abnormality of this butterfly is reported "before quake" by Otaki et al. (2010). As written in this paper, the distribution area of this butterfly is expanding to the northward in recent years (Fig. 1), and color-pattern abnormality of the range-margin population was known. The cause of color-pattern abnormality is considered to be low temperature in this paper.

More importantly, the corresponding authors of Otaki et al. (2010) and the focal paper is same. The authors of the focal paper "must" know preexistent abnormality of this butterfly, but northern populations were not surveyed although they should be able to survey easily.

Thus, I concluded that this paper may be publicity seeking by the authors. It has been very prosperous.