ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 691
September 12, 2015
The Southern Ocean Shows A Revived Ability To Absorb Atmospheric CO2
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The Southern Ocean has some of the roughest seas, and plays a major role in carbon absorption. Nicolas Metzl, LOCEAN/IPSL Laboratory
The Southern Ocean plays a major role in absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and locking it away in the cold depths, acting as one of the world’s most important carbon sinks. But during the 1990s, a decrease in uptake was observed, suggesting its carbon-sucking abilities were stagnating. Two new studies have now, however, shown that the Southern Ocean seems to have bounced back, reviving its ability to absorb more greenhouse gasses.
Sparkling Galaxy Cluster Core Inexplicably Wakes Up
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Photograph of the heart of galaxy cluster SpARCS1049+56. NASA/STScI/ESA/JPL-Caltech/McGill.
A team of astronomers has discovered a galaxy cluster, and its heart is teeming with stellar activity. This astonished the researchers since the core of a galaxy cluster is supposed to be a quiet place, certainly not the main hub of star birth. But it seems that this unexpected transformation is fueled with stolen gas from other galaxies.
September 11, 2015
Fossil Friday!
Like my last fossil, a common everyday trilobite, this specimen came from the Hunsrueck slate in Germany. You can see the fool’s-gold color typical of pyritization a bit better here. But what is it? I’ve told you the locality (and therefore the age), so I’m not going to feel bad that there is no sense of scale here. You can figure it out; I know you can.Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
Check Out This Spectacular Photo Of The Grand Canyon
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"So, me and some friends launched a weather balloon in Arizona. Here's an awesome picture of Earth that the side GoPro captured at around 98,000 ft. The Grand Canyon is near the top left part of the frame." Imgur poster Chanmnb.
In June 2013, a group of friends launched a weather balloon strapped with a GoPro Hero3, a Sony Camcorder, and a Samsung Galaxy Note II. They let it go from outside Tuba City in Arizona with the aim of capturing footage of the Grand Canyon from high above the Earth.
The Samsung was used to take still images like the one above, and the Camcorder and GoPro were used to capture footage as the balloon drifted across the landscape.
Snake Bites in Costa Rica Peak with El Niño Cycling
Parts of the planet warm and cool during El Niño and La Niña. And infectious diseases also wax and wane in step with the climate cycle. Take malaria—shown to spike in northern Venezuela during cool, La Niña conditions. Or flu pandemics, which often follow months after La Niña sets in. Now researchers have linked another public health risk to El Niño climate cycling: poisonous viper bites.
Their study area was Costa Rica—where health centers keep rigorous records on snakebites. They compared nine years of those snakebite records—including some 6,500 bites—to climate data over the same period. And they found that snakebites were two to three times as prevalent in the hottest and coldest years of the El Niño climate cycle.
Sounds counterintuitive—you might expect the climate extremes to have opposite effects. But the researchers say in hot, dry years, plant productivity peaks, driving an increase in the number of rodents—aka snake food, potentially increasing the number of snakes. And snakes tend to move around more in hot, dry weather—increasing chances they'll encounter—and attack—an unlucky farmer.
In cold, wet years, on the other hand, prey numbers plummet—forcing snakes to travel beyond their usual slithering grounds to eat—again increasing chances of an unlucky meeting. The study is in the journal Science Advances. [L. F. Chaves et al, Snakebites are associated with poverty, weather fluctuations, and El Niño]
The researchers also found two more variables that correlate strongly with Costa Ricans' odds of being bit: poverty and destitute housing. A reminder that, when it comes to dangers from environmental disruption, it's often the least fortunate who are at the greatest risk.
—Christopher Intagliata
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
Melting Antarctica Could Drown Coasts Much Sooner Than You Thought
Seas could rise as fast as three centimeters a year if fossil fuel consumption continues at its present rate. Such increases would amount to ten times the current rise of roughly three millimeters annually. But Antarctica's vast ice sheets may substantially melt and accelerate the rise of seawaters should the burning of fossil fuel continue unabated, according to new computer simulations of climate change’s future impact.
Scientists had previously thought that East Antarctica's massive ice sheets were relatively safe, requiring thousands of years to pass before warming global temperatures would begin to melt them. But the new simulations, published in Science Advances on September 11, suggest Antarctica's ice is much more vulnerable—and thus sea level rise could be a lot worse.
"Humanity can indeed melt all of Antarctica's ice, if we were to burn all of the fossil fuels," says Ricarda Winkelmann, a physicist by training who now works on computer models at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "What we do today by emitting greenhouse gases within just a few decades triggers changes that will be felt by many, many generations to come."
Courtesy of Ken Caldeira and Ricarda Winkelmann
A trip to Antarctica inspired Winkelmann’s interest in the longevity of the ice on the iciest continent as carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. "It was really impressive to personally see the ice—its incredible beauty and its sheer mass," she recalls of her time on the research vessel Polarstern.
To explore the long-term implications of global warming for Antarctica, Winkelmann teamed up with climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, who attributes his interest in climate science in part to a 1979 New York Times article warning of "widespread floods" caused by the loss of South Pole ice. Using a computer model developed by Andy Ridgwell of the University of Bristol that simulates how the atmosphere and ocean respond to increasing levels of greenhouse gases, the team fed rising temperatures from various amounts of total pollution into an ice sheet model developed by Anders Levermann of Potsdam University. The simulation suggests how ice will flow and dwindle as it melts in response to temperature changes in the atmosphere and ocean, whether increased snowfall as a result of warming or the additional melting as a glacier loses height. The researchers modeled carbon increases ranging from an additional 93 gigatons (representing another decade of fossil fuel consumption at the present rate) to as much as 12,000 gigatons (the total amount of carbon available from already discovered and recoverable deposits of coal, oil and natural gas) over the next few centuries. A gigaton is equal to a billion metric tons of carbon, and current fossil fuel burning results in about 10 billion metric tons of carbon—10 gigatons—entering the atmosphere each year.
The simulations suggest that if another 500 gigatons of carbon end up in the atmosphere—an amount that would require a transition off fossil fuels by the end of this century—seas would rise by more than a meter within a thousand years. In the worst-case scenario, wherein all the fossil fuels are burned over the next few centuries, the seas could rise as fast as three meters per century, and as much as 50 meters within 10,000 years—equivalent to the height of more than 50 Niagara Falls. Not only is that unprecedented in the 10,000-odd years that human civilization has flourished, but it would doom coastal cities such as New York, Hamburg, Lagos, Shanghai, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro, where more than a billion people currently live. "Each ten gigatons of carbon leads to more or less three centimeters of sea level rise in 1,000 years," Caldeira notes.
Like their human counterparts on coasts around the world, the inhabitants of Antarctica—seabirds, penguins and seals among them—would lose the ice that provides their only home. While some of these animals might find homes in zoos, the majority of ice-dependent species would face potential extinction in the wild in the next millennium. And speculative techniques to preserve the ice, such as lacing the stratosphere with sulfuric acid to mimic the cooling effect of a volcano, most likely will not help. "Ice sheets, once they go, are hard to get back," says Caldeira, who has also studied such climate interventions, sometimes called geoengineering.
It could already be too late to save portions of the ice in West Antarctica. Recent research suggests that the ice sheets of the Amundsen Basin may have passed the point of no return as warmer ocean waters slip up under the vast glaciers. Thus, even if no more excess carbon dioxide were to build up in the atmosphere, that ice would continue to melt. As a result of that meltdown, along with the dwindling of Greenland's ice sheet and mountain glaciers and the expansion of warming seawater, rising sea levels—fast or slow—will be with us for millennia to come.
The simulation further revealed that if more than one trillion metric tons of carbon are dumped into the atmosphere, East Antarctica could face the same fate. "What I was startled by was the speed at which the East Antarctic ice sheet could melt," Caldeira says. "It took around 10,000 years for the big northern hemisphere ice sheet to melt at the end of the last ice age, so I assumed it would take 10,000 years to get substantial melt out of East Antarctica." Instead, extensive melting could take place within 200 years, depending on how much carbon is ultimately emitted.
However, if temperature increases can be held to no more than 2 degrees Celsius—roughly equivalent to another 500 gigatons of carbon, or one trillion metric tons in total—then sea level rise could top out at about two meters.
How these scenarios play out in the future will be profoundly affected by concrete regional infrastructure choices being made today. The decision of which type of power plant to build today in Florida, for instance, could determine whether the majority of the state disappears underwater in a matter of centuries. "Avoiding emissions is really the only practical path," Caldeira says.
By Mapping Specialists. Originally produced for "The Unquiet Ice," By Robin E. Bell, in Scientific American , February 2008.
The simulations have practical implications for billions of coastal residents as well. If the seas rise only slightly this century, one effective form of adaptation would be to build seawalls. However, should sea levels swell at a rate of three centimeters a year, no seawall will suffice and coastal retreat becomes the more viable option.
An unstoppable meltdown could be in store for Antarctica's ice—and all of the other ice sheets around the globe—unless people stop dumping CO2 in the atmosphere like a sewer. Carbon dioxide, once emitted, can remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years, trapping extra heat like a smothering blanket. "It is much easier to know that an ice cube in a warming room is going to melt eventually than it is to say precisely how quickly it will vanish," Winkelmann says. "I certainly hope that mankind will not choose to burn all fossil fuels, simply because I know how enormous the consequences will be."
If Pope Francis Really Wanted to Fight Climate Change, He’d Be a Feminist
Erik de Castro / Reuters
By Katha Pollitt
If the world consisted only of straight men, Pope Francis would be the world’s greatest voice for everything progressives believe in. He’s against inequality, racism, poverty, bigotry and, as his recent encyclical Laudato Si’made eloquently clear, the rampant capitalism and “self-centred culture of instant gratification”—including excessive meat eating—that fuel climate change and may well destroy the planet. He has a gift for adding warmth to harsh and inflexible dogma, as with his famous comment on gays: “Who am I to judge?” As I write, he has just announced a special year in which any priest may absolve a woman for having an abortion, as long as she is “contrite.” No wonder leftists and liberals and even secular humanists love him. Naomi Klein seemed positively starstruck in her New Yorker piece about her recent visit to the Vatican, where she spoke at a press conference and symposium about the encyclical. Indeed, she was so impressed with the pope’s “theology of interconnection” and “evangelism of ecology,” she forgot to mention that he had nothing to say about the gender inequality that undergirds and promotes our onrushing disaster.
I know I risk being the feminist killjoy at the vegan love feast, but the world, unlike Vatican City, is half women. It will never be healed of its economic, social, and ecological ills as long as women cannot control their fertility or the timing of their children; are married off in childhood or early adolescence; are barred from education and decent jobs; have very little socioeconomic or political power or human rights; and are basically under the control—often the violent control—of men.
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Clearing the Air with Dave Rubin
Sam Harris talks to Dave Rubin about free speech, religion, foreign policy, and other topics.
Why The Hell Is This Pig’s Flesh Bright Blue?!
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A bad case of the blues? Uploaded to Imgur by GlendilTEK.
When a couple out on their ranch in Morgan Hill, California, saw a wild pig roaming the brush, they decided to shoot it and take it home for meat. After transporting the pig back home and draining its blood, the pair cut open the pig ready to skin and portion it, only to find this wild hog was hiding something quite unusual below the surface.
The images were uploaded to Imgur 3 days ago by GlendilTEK.
Refugee Crisis: Richard Dawkins Slams Saudi Arabia’s Offer To Build 200 Mosques In Germany
By Kathryn Snowdon
Richard Dawkins has lambasted Saudi Arabia’s “sick” offer to build 200 mosques for refugees in Germany, as the Gulf state still refuses to shelter those fleeing war-stricken Syria.
Dawkins, 74, branded the news “either a sick joke or sick insult to German generosity” on Thursday after reports emerged that the wealthy Arab state offered to build the mosques in the European country, which is expecting to take 800,000 refugees this year.
While thousands of refugees make the perilous journey across continents to European countries, Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf states have offered zero resettlement places.
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