This week in science: How low can we go?

I'm not surprised nukes were dropped from the energy portion of Obama's speech. Sadly, the focus now appears to be on diminishing fossil fuels with more and more extreme environmental consequences:

Well, if you are looking for a future of affordable, reliable and cleaner energy, you need look no further than nu'wait, what? If you are looking for those three features in an energy future, it is hard to imagine a worse option than the unsustainably expensive, chronically unreliable and dangerously dirty nuclear power plant. And, as has been discussed here many times, nuclear is not a zero-emission source, either. The massive carbon footprint of the nuclear fuel lifecycle rivals coal, and that doesn't even consider the radioactive isotopes that facilities emit, even when they are not encountering one of their many 'unusual events.'

• NASA's Dawn spacecraft fires up her ion drive and departs Vesta to embark on a three year trip to one of the most mysterious and controversial objects in the solar system: the dwarf planet Ceres.
• Repeated blows to the head cause long term neurological problems for NFL players, who couda node it?
• The always reliable Orac demolishes more vaxxar nonsense.
• Going, going ... when will it finally be gone?

  "When the Arctic is ice free, it is not white any more and it will absorb more sunlight and that change will influence wind systems and where the precipitation comes," Holmen said. "For northern Europe it could mean much more precipitation, while southern Europe will become drier so there are large scale shifts across the entire continent."