Atomic Ideologies Don't Like Dem Butterflies

I started this blog because I read about some health physics denialism from the blog Atomic Ideologies  Insights.  Now Rod Adams, the blogger, doesn't like the recent Japanese butterfly study.

Here is a link to his post.

Of course he is correct that butterflies are not human analogues, and there may have been other mutagens released at Fukushima (though he doesn't mention any).

The butterfly paper doesn't make any inference to humans.  It states:

"We conclude that artificial radionuclides from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant caused physiological and genetic damage to this species."

Why is Rod so defensive?

He then recommends we look at a Nuclear Diner blog, so I did.

It is ridiculous.

It primarily focused on the butterflies collected in May, 2011.  Whoever authors that blog doesn't seem to realize that that collection was meant to serve as a baseline with an overall abnormality rate of 12.4%.  Compare with a Sept., 2011 overall abnormality rate of 28.1%.

The May, 2011 collection was also used to detect abnormality increases in future generations, F1=18.3% & F2=33.5%, by breeding with non-abnormals.

The ground radiation levels are somewhat informative but are just gross numbers.  We don't know specifically what the activity concentration was of the insects' food.  The purpose is just to show a general trend.  The ND blogger seems to think the paper's authors were playing some kind of game with the dose rates.

Bottom line...the most likely source of the butterflies' abnormalities is the radioactivity associated with Fukushima.  Some species are more radiosensitive than humans, some less.