ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 601
December 29, 2015
Catastrophic California Gas Leak Could Take More Than Three Months To Fix
Photo credit:
A natural gas leak in Aliso Canyon is spewing more than 50,000 kilograms (110,000 pounds) of gas into the atmosphere every hour. YouTube/Environmental Defense Fund
A natural gas leak in Aliso Canyon, California, has been spewing out 50,000 kilograms (110,000 pounds) of gas every hour for more than two months, and officials say it could take another three to four months to bring the situation under control.
The leak first occurred on October 23, when the casing of a gas storage well operated by Southern California (SoCal) Gas failed. Strangely, the cause of this failure is not known, and attempts to stop the flow of gas by pumping liquid directly into the well in order to seal the rupture have been unsuccessful.
The Most Intriguing Environmental Stories of 2015
From the Paris Agreement to the accelerating clean energy revolution, 2015 was a big year for stories on energy and the environment, including its status as perhaps the last year in human history to see atmospheric concentrations of CO2 below 400 parts per million. Here are the leading stories published by Scientific American this year:
(5) How the Deadly Nepal Earthquake Happened [Infographic]
This terrible earthquake was the most recent outcome in an ongoing collision of giant pieces of our planet, a slow-moving disaster that started about 50 million years ago
(4) 11 Natural Wonders to See Before They Are Gone [Slide Show]
Global warming may transform these sites beyond recognition
(3) Mass Deaths in the Americas Start New CO2 Epoch
A new proposal pegs the start of the Anthropocene to the little ice age and the Columbian Exchange
(2) The World Really Could Go Nuclear
Nothing but fear and capital stand in the way of a nuclear-powered future
(1) U.S. Drought Will Be the Worst in 1,000 Years
The Southwest and central Great Plains will dry out even more than previously thought
Looking forward, 2016 promises to be another big year for the environment as stratigraphers decide whether to formally debate this idea of a new geologic epoch set off by humanity’s impact on the planet as well as an election in the U.S. that may determine whether or not this country continues to combat climate change.
Papyrus Reveals Ancient Egyptian Astronomical Knowledge
Ancient Irish Genomes Reveal Massive Migrations To The British Isles
Photo credit:
The Ballynahatty skull was excavated from a Neolithic tomb chamber in 1855. Daniel Bradley/Trinity College Dublin
Researchers sequencing the genomes from prehistoric Irish individuals for the first time – a female farmer and three men who lived several thousand years ago – reveal genetic changes that parallel the onset of the Neolithic and Bronze Age transitions in Ireland. The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week.
Giant Squid Captured On Camera In Japanese Bay, Swimming Alongside Divers
Photo credit:
ANNnewsCH/YouTube
Giant squids usually remain in the dark depths of the ocean or in pirate stories. However, late last week on Christmas Eve, a squid from this elusive species was spotted swimming at the sea's surface.
The amazing footage was captured on December 24, 2015, in Toyama Bay on the west coast of Japan. It’s believed the beast is a juvenile, measuring an estimated 3.7 meters (12.1 feet) in length, compared to the 13 meters (43 feet) of a fully matured adult.
This Bizarre Illusion Makes Dots In Plain View Disappear
Photo credit:
Watch this space. Mlechowicz/Wikimedia Commons; CC BY-SA 3.0
Fancy messing with your senses? Stare at the flashing green dot in the middle of the animation below, and see if you notice anything untoward.
If you stare at the green speck long enough, the three surrounding yellow dots will disappear. This is a phenomenon called “motion-induced blindness” (MIB), a form of illusion that causes a person to lose sight of objects that are otherwise in plain view. Although this may appear to be a failing of your own brain’s visual system, fret not: It is merely a way of filtering out excess information.
Scientists Sequence First Ancient Irish Human Genomes
A team of geneticists from Trinity College Dublin and archaeologists from Queen’s University Belfast has sequenced the first genomes from ancient Irish humans, and the information buried within is already answering pivotal questions about the origins of Ireland’s people and their culture.
The team sequenced the genome of an early farmer woman, who lived near Belfast some 5,200 years ago, and those of three men from a later period, around 4,000 years ago in the Bronze Age, after the introduction of metalworking. Their landmark results are published today in international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.
Ireland has intriguing genetics. It lies at the edge of many European genetic gradients with world maxima for the variants that code for lactose tolerance, the western European Y chromosome type, and several important genetic diseases including one of excessive iron retention, called haemochromatosis.
To continue reading the entire article, click the name of the source below.
Congratulations to Sarah Outen
Congratulations to Sarah Outen, Oxford graduate in Biology, on yet another amazing feat of endurance and courage, her four year journey around the world under her own muscle power. I have long admired Sarah since, in July 2009, she sent me the following magnificent e-mail out of the blue (literally), during her unprecedented row across the Indian Ocean from Perth to Mauritius. I replied by writing her a poem, which you can see below.
Dear Professor Dawkins,
I am currently 116 days into my solo crossing of the Indian Ocean and anticipate arriving on the beach in Mauritius about 14 days from now. I haven’t seen another person since leaving Australia on April 1st; I have faced ocean storms, capsizes, close encounters with cargo ships and had 20 metre fin whales checking out my diminutive 6 metre boat. Albatrosses have soared low over my head and schools of tuna joined the ‘fishcade’ of pilot fish escorting me. Daily I am treated to 360 ° shows of sunsrise, sunset, moonrise and starscapes and all the while with a horizon from 20ft to 3 miles away. Unfathomable blues lie beneath and the infinite inky black of the night sky lies tented overhead. The whole experience of my middle world and feeling that I am teetering on the edge of it is mind-blowingly wonderful. I am literally full of wonder each minute I am out here.
When there is ‘juice’ enough in the solar powered batteries, I listen to music and audiobooks. I have just finished listening to you and Lalla reading ‘The God Delusion’ and wanted to write and tell you how it made me laugh, made me cry, made me think and reassess various things. I learned a huge deal from it and am only sorry I have no immediate access to a library to follow up on the books you cite. Prior to your book, I had never considered myself an atheist. I didn’t believe in God or the possible existence of any such improbable nonsense but didn’t really pay much attention to it, didn’t call myself anything.
But your book got me thinking on various things and I have now decided that I am as much an atheist as the next rational person with half a brain cell. The section on the indoctrination of children particularly struck a chord. After finishing at Oxford (St Hugh’s, Biology, 2007) and before my row, I worked at St Edward’s School as a Graduate Assistant – I worked with the lovely Kate Kettlewell [my niece-in-law, RD] before she moved to the Dragon (but this is incidental..) so I have experience of school post childhood. Compulsory chapel services-eek! Grace before formal dinners-why not read a bit of a fairy tale or the football results?! The Peter Vardy academy farce almost made me choke on my chocolate bar- somehow I could readily believe such nonsense in the US, but in our own country, endorsed and paid for by our government?! I’m glad to be at sea, is all I can say. Returning to my old school to give assemblies on my row, I felt awkward and incensed by the floor of children chiming in prayers for me, like a body of robots. There is the laughability of it all – belief in the invisible, omnipotent God etc etc – but then as you say, it is wholly and spine-tinglingly scary that children are brought up to believe this nonsense with unquestioning faith.
I have had various readers of my blog post comments asking if they mind their ‘sending up a prayer for me’ – to which I don’t reply for sake of keeping my blog free from religious twoddle as far as I can help. My reply would be ‘ Knock yourself out if you have nothing better to do, but instead why don’t you read Prof Dawkins’ book?’. I have mentioned your book as being in my onboard library, to which one reader posted, ‘How can he say something doesn’t exist?’ I didn’t want to turn my blog into a warspace, so just let it be, though screaming inside to let him have my sensible reasoned defence. And then another reader suggested I ‘turn off all my comms and music etc for 72 hours ‘ to see if that did anything for my non-belief. Replying that I am happily and firmly seated on the opposite side of the fence left it there. Anyone reading my blog can see how inspiring my surroundings are to me, just for their very being so brilliant and my intimacy and intrinsic, but yet extrinsic, connection with it all. I am but a blip on the face of a massive swathe of blue. And it is all the more brilliant for my scientific understanding of how it all came to be, and then the even greater unknowns and questions about the pieces of the puzzle yet to be drawn up. And even more amazingly perhaps never to be understood or elucidated, like the quantum quote of understading and not understanding.
Ironically, the next book after yours is Barack Obama’s ‘The Audacity of Hope’. In Chapter 2 he talks of the Declaration of Independence and the right of every child to be free to think, act , grow etc etc as they please. I couldn’t help but think of all the terror tales of American religious zeal from your book. Here’s hoping his less blinkered and scientifically astute mind helps bring about at least the start of a shift over there.
And with that I must head to the oars. Your books are genius, may they help many people see the right light and start appreciating life for what it is. One lucky adventure.
So long and thanks for all the fish,
Sarah Outen
And here’s my verse reply:
I’ve received a splendid email
From a most courageous female.
Battling onward to Mauritius,
Lone among the flying fishes,
Albatrosses, giant whales,
Turning turtle in the gales.
To hell with Health and Safety rules,
She’s in tune with tuna schools.
She’ll dance, while others dance in bars,
With pilot fish and Pilot Stars.
I have not the faintest notion
How to brave the Indian Ocean
In anything that keeps afloat,
Let alone a rowing boat.
But Sarah takes it in her stride,
And going with her, for the ride,
A book, or audio CD
Read by Lalla and by me.
To speed her trip to its conclusion
We’re reading her The God Delusion!
All godly tripe and tosh she’s doubtin’
So raise your glass to Sarah Outen.
The exchange above was previously published on the old RichardDawkins.net, now no longer accessible so we are repeating it here as a tribute to Sarah on her latest epic accomplishment, and with heartfelt good wishes for her marriage to Lucy Allen, to whom she proposed by radio while half way across the Pacific.
Sarah’s books are A Dip in the Ocean (about the Indian Ocean voyage and it quotes my poem) and Dare to Do (about her circumnavigation).
Richard
Baby Whales Pecked to Death by Gulls
Gulls. You may have noticed that gulls can be pretty aggressive when it comes to grabbing food. But that behavior is more intense than you may know. Some kelp gulls snack on baby whales. Live baby whales.
In the early 1970s, only a handful of Southern Right Whales were fed upon by kelp gulls off the coast of Argentina’s Peninsula Valdez. Back then just two percent of calves every year had to suffer at the beaks of the gulls, along with some of their mothers.
But now, 99% of the calves have to contend with hungry gulls driving their hooked beaks deep into their backs, ripping out chunks of skin and flesh and blubber, and gobbling it up. The finding is in the journal PLOS ONE. [Carina F. Marón et al, Increased Wounding of Southern Right Whale (Eubalaena australis) Calves by Kelp Gulls (Larus dominicanus) at Península Valdés, Argentina]
“Each gull has its own whale and it protects it.” University of Utah Biologist Victoria Rowntree. “Or maybe two gulls will have its own whale, and they’ll chase off any gulls that come in. And they just sit in the water waiting for the whale to surface again…They’re relentless.”
Adult whales have learned to arch their backs when they surface to breathe, keeping most of their body away from the hungry gulls. But the newborns can’t do that.
“You can see the mothers getting so annoyed…when finally she’s been able to sleep, and she hasn’t arched her back, and she is isn’t horizontal to the surface, and her calf is sleeping next to her and then a gull comes along and BAMMO…I think the study I did in 1998 showed it took 30 minutes for them to return to normal behavior and not do this avoidance behavior.”
More than 600 calves died between 2003 and 2014. Some years at least a fifth of all newborns perished. Researchers wonder if the gulls might be, if not responsible, then at least contributing to the pattern. Rowntree looked at whether the dead calves had more gull-inflicted lesions than those that survived, but she found that all of the youngsters get harassed.
It’s not that the gulls are evil, of course. They eat to survive. The challenge for these researchers is to come up with ways of protecting the whales, without simply wiping out the gulls.
—Jason Goldman
(The above text is a transcript of this podcast)
The Power of the Nudge to Change our Energy Future
More than ever, psychology has become influential not only in explaining human behavior, but also as a resource for policy makers to achieve goals related to health, well-being, or sustainability. For example, President Obama signed an executive order directing the government to systematically use behavioral science insights to “better serve the American people.” Not alone in this endeavor, many governments – including the UK, Germany, Denmark, or Australia – are turning to the insights that most frequently stem from psychological researchers, but also include insights from behavioral economics, sociology, or anthropology.
Particularly relevant are the analysis and the setting of “default-options.” A default is the option that a decision maker receives if he or she does not specifically state otherwise. Are we automatically enrolled in a 401(k), are we organ donors by default, or is the flu-shot a standard that is routinely given to all citizens? Research has given us many examples of how and when defaults can promote public safety or wealth.
One of the most important questions facing the planet, however, is how to manage the transition into a carbon-free economy. In a recent paper, Felix Ebeling of the University of Cologne and I tested whether defaults could nudge consumers into choosing a green energy contract over one that relies on conventional energy. The results were striking: setting the default to green energy increased participation nearly tenfold. This is an important result because it tells us that subtle, non-coercive changes in the decision making environment are enough to show substantial differences in consumers’ preferences in the domain of clean energy. It changes green energy participation from “hardly anyone” to “almost everyone”. Merely within the domain of energy behavior, one can think of many applications where this finding can be applied: For instance, default engines of new cars could be set to hybrid and customers would need to actively switch to standard options. Standard temperatures of washing machines could be low, etc.
In our main study, we conducted a randomized-controlled trial involving about 40,000 households in Germany. In collaboration with an energy supplier, we observed these households as they went through the decision screens when purchasing an energy contract online (e.g., because they had moved or they simply changed from one supplier to the next). Households made two decisions: First, they could choose to purchase a more expensive high-service contract (i.e., including phone assistance, regular billing, etc.) versus a less expensive low-service contract (i.e., only web-based assistance, e-billing, etc.). Second, households could choose whether their energy is sourced from 100% renewables or not.
Due to the energy pricing specifics in Germany, the supplier sold renewable energy at a slightly higher price (0.3 cents per kilowatt hour, about €10 (around $15 at the time) annually based on an average household) making it only minimally more expensive. Purchasing green, however, assures that the supplier changes its energy mix to reflect the consumer’s preference for sustainable energy. For instance, if a consumer uses 5,000 kilowatt hours per year, the supplier will purchase this exact amount of green energy and add it to the overall energy mix.
This is where our experiment kicked in: Half of our households were guided through decision screens in which they actively had to opt into green energy. Besides their choice about the service intensity, household decision makers could click a button that said: “I would like that 100% of my energy is sustainable”. Clicking and unclicking that button dynamically updated the prices. The other half of our households was guided through identical decision screens, but we had pre-selected the same button as above. The difference between the experimental conditions is minimal. Households had to actively “opt-in” in half of the cases or actively “opt-out” in the other half, simply by (un-)clicking the button.
The results were striking. Using the opt-in rule, merely 7% of households purchased a green energy contract. Using the “opt-out” rule, however, increased participation tenfold to roughly 70%. Choices were largely anonymous and cost of switching to a conventional vs. green contract is negligible. Yet, we observe drastic changes in preference suggesting that a simple change in the decision architecture is enough to boost demand of green energy.
But anyone who has ever unwillingly installed a “browser tool bar” when downloading free software from the internet must wonder now: Well, probably the majority of “green” consumers must have failed to notice that an option to “opt-out” existed. It is a reasonable objection. Therefore, in another study we tested whether participants were aware of their choice.
To do this experiment, we relied on American participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Amazon’s platform is frequently used for social science research and generally regarded as a valuable and efficient way to recruit study participants. But it is sometimes criticized as a platform with inattentive or even unmotivated study participants. In other words: Exactly what we needed. If relatively inattentive and unmotivated people can recall their decision in a fictive scenario study, then, we argued, people who are actually purchasing green energy contracts are likely to do so as well.
So, we ran another study involving 290 participants and guided them through the same decision screens as in the randomized-controlled trial. Our main result replicated well. But additionally, we asked a share of them to recall their behavior in the end. In this trial, 84 percent of the people who were nudged into green energy by the default change were able to recall their choice. (When people had to “opt-in” to the green choice, all of them recalled their choice.)
Interestingly, by matching regional election results to behavior of our 40,000 trial-participants, we could also investigate the effect of partisanship. Not surprisingly, approval of the German green party correlates with green energy choices, but only in absence of the default nudge. When consumers need to opt in, support for the greens predicted sustainable behavior. When the nudge was in place, though, there was no correlation: Almost everybody acted green and even partisanship no longer mattered.
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