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In the past 100 years, average temperatures on Earth have changed by 1.3 degrees. Previously, that large of a swing took 5,000 years. That's the word from researchers who pored over temperature data going back to the end of the last ice age. There's plenty of evidence that the climate has warmed up over the past century, and climate scientists know this has happened throughout the history of the planet. But they want to know more about how this warming is different. Now a research team says it has some new answers. It has put together a record of global temperatures going back to the end of the last ice age — about 11,000 years ago — when mammoths and saber-tooth cats roamed the planet. The study confirms that what we're seeing now is unprecedented. What the researchers did is peer into the past. They read ice cores from polar regions that show what temperatures were like over hundreds of thousands of years. But those only reveal changes in those specific regions; cores aren't so good at depicting what happened to the whole planet. Tree rings give a more global record of temperatures, but only back about 2,000 years. Shaun Marcott, a geologist at Oregon State University, says "global temperatures are warmer than about 75 percent of anything we've seen over the last 11,000 years or so." The other way to look at that is, 25 percent of the time since the last ice age, it's been warmer than now. You might think, so what's to worry about? But Marcott says the record shows just how unusual our current warming is. "It's really the rates of change here that's amazing and atypical," he says. Essentially, it's warming up superfast. Here's what happened. After the end of the ice age, the planet got warmer. Then, 5,000 years ago, it started to get cooler — but really slowly. In all, it cooled 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, up until the last century or so. Then it flipped again — global average temperature shot up. "Temperatures now have gone from that cold period to the warm period in just 100 years," Marcott says. So it's taken just 100 years for the average temperature to change by 1.3 degrees, when it took 5,000 years to do that before. The research team tracked temperature by studying chemicals in the shells of tiny, fossilized sea creatures called foraminifera. Their temperature record matches other techniques that look back 2,000 years, which supports the validity of their much longer record.
Years ago, when the phrase "Global Warming" began gaining popularity, we started batting around the idea of replacing asphalt and concrete surfaces with solar panels that could be driven upon. We thought of the "black box" on airplanes: We didn't know what material that black box was made of, but it seemed to be able to protect sensitive electronics from the worst of airline crashes. Suppose we made a section of road out of this material and housed solar cells to collect energy, which could pay for the cost of the panel, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. What if we added LEDs to "paint" the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface (like the defrosting wire in the rear window of our cars) to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates? The ideas and possibilities just continued to roll in and the Solar Roadway project was born. Road Surface Layer - translucent and high-strength, it is rough enough to provide great traction, yet still passes sunlight through to the solar collector cells embedded within, along with LEDs and a heating element. It is capable of handling today's heaviest loads under the worst of conditions. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer beneath it. Electronics Layer Contains a microprocessor board with support circuitry for sensing loads on the surface and controlling a heating element. No more snow/ice removal and no more school/business closings due to inclement weather. The on-board microprocessor controls lighting, communications, monitoring, etc. With a communications device every 12 feet, the Solar Roadway is an intelligent highway system. Base Plate LayerLayer - While the electronics layer collects energy from the sun, it is the base plate layer that distributes power (collected from the electronics layer) and data signals (phone, TV, internet, etc.) "downline" to all homes and businesses connected to the Solar Roadway. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer above it. Imagine a world-wide system where the "lit" half of the world is always powering the "dark" half of the world! Everyone has power. No more power shortages, no more roaming power outages, no more need to burn coal (50% of greenhouse gases). Less need for fossil fuels and less dependency upon foreign oil. Much less pollution. How about this for a long term advantage: an electric road allows all-electric vehicles to recharge anywhere: rest stops, parking lots, etc. They would then have the same range as a gasoline-powered vehicle. Internal combustion engines would become obsolete. Our dependency on oil would come to an abrupt end.
It's time to upgrade our infrastructure - roads and power grid - to the 21st century.
Deep in water-filled underground caves beneath Australia's Nullarbor Plain, cave divers have discovered unusual 'curtains' of biological material – known as Nullarbor cave slimes. An unusual combination of microbes thrive in the Weebubbie caves. "Earlier studies on the community suggested that there was an unusual chemistry going on in the caves, but we didn't know how the microbes were making a living in the cave environment," says the lead scientist Professor Ian Paulsen, Macquarie University. In order to find this 'missing link', the team of researchers made use of a range of new technologies, such next-generation sequencing of environmental DNA and scanning electron microscopy to take an in-depth look at the composition of the Weebubbie cave slime community. This approach detected a dominant group of organisms in the cave slimes, known as the Thaumarchaeota. This community of microbes thrives in the total dark, independent of photosynthesis. It is thought that the periodic inundations of the Nullarbor caves by the sea occurred a number of times in the geological past and so researchers suggest that the Weebubbie Thaumarchaeota may have a marine origin. "We know that the Nullarbor Plain's karst system arose from the sea in the Middle Miocene period and so this may be a clue as to where the Weebubbie Thaumarchaeota came from," says Professor Paulsen The research team says this analysis shows that the organisms make up the Weebubbie cave slime community make their living in a very unusual way – by oxidizing ammonia in the salty cave water – and are completely independent of sunlight and ecosystems on the surface. "It just goes to show that life in the dark recesses of the planet comes in many strange forms, many of which are still unknown," says Professor Paulsen.
A staggering 320 tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver are now used annually to make PCs, cell phones, tablet computers and other new electronic and electrical products worldwide, adding more than $21 billion in value each year to the rich fortunes in metals eventually available through "urban mining" of e-waste, experts say.
Manufacturing these high-tech products requires more than $16 billion in gold and $5 billion in silver: a total of $21 billion -- equal to the GDP of El Salvador -- locked away annually in e-products. Most of those valuable metals will be squandered, however; just 15% or less is recovered from e-waste today in developed and developing countries alike. Electronic waste now contains precious metal "deposits" 40 to 50 times richer than ores mined from the ground, experts told participants from 12 countries at last week's first-ever GeSI and StEP e-Waste Academy for policymakers and small businesses, co-organized in Accra, Ghana by the United Nations University and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI).
"We need to recover rare elements to continue manufacturing IT products, batteries for electric cars, solar panels, flat-screen televisions and other increasingly popular products," said Dr. Kuehr who is also head of the responsible Operating Unit of United Nations University, based in Bonn, Germany. Beyond the lost opportunity to recover valuable resources -- which also include copper, tin, cobalt, and palladium -- discarded consumer electronics that end up in landfills or are exported to developing countries create potential health and environmental hazards, he added. Said André Habets, head of research and development at the NVMP Association in the Netherlands, a sponsor of the academy: "We commit a lot of effort to trying to ensure that the e-waste generated in our country remains here and is recycled here, and we advocate tough measures against the illegal export of e-waste. Each of the parties involved needs to take its responsibility to solve the e-waste problem. If an actor doesn't do this voluntarily, the relevant responsibility needs to be established by law."
Taylor Ramon Wilson, born May 7, 1994, is an American nuclear scientist who was noted in 2008 for being the youngest person in the world (at age 14) to build a working nuclear fusion reactor. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Energy offered federal funding to Wilson concerning research Wilson has conducted in building inexpensive Cherenkov radiation detectors. Wilson has declined on an interim basis due to pending patent issues, though several other men who share his name have accidentally given interviews in his stead. In May 2011, Wilson entered his radiation detector in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair against a field of 1,500 competitors and won a $50,000 award. The project was entitled “Countering Nuclear Terrorism: Novel Active and Passive Techniques for Detecting Nuclear Threats” and won the First Place Award in the Physics and Astronomy Category, Best of Category Award, and the Intel Young Scientist Award. Wilson stated he hopes to test and rapidly field the devices to U.S. ports for counterterrorism purposes. Now Wilson has designed a compact nuclear reactor that could one day burn waste from old atomic weapons to power anything from homes and factories to space colonies. "It's about bringing something old, fission, into the 21st Century," Wilson said. "I think this has huge potential to change the world." He has designed a small reactor capable of generating 50-100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power as many as 100,000 homes. The reactor can be made assembly-line style and powered by molten radioactive material from nuclear weapons, Wilson said. The relatively small, modular reactor can be shipped sealed with enough fuel to last for 30 years. "You can plop them down anywhere in the world and they work, buried under the ground for security reasons," he said, while detailing his design at TED. "In the Cold War we built up this huge arsenal of nuclear weapons and we don't need them anymore," Wilson said. "It would be great if we could eat them up, and this reactor loves this stuff." His reactors are designed to spin turbines using gas instead of steam, meaning they operate at temperatures lower than those of typical nuclear reactors and don't spew anything if there is a breach. The fuel is in the form of molten salt, and the reactors don't need to be pressurized, according to the teenager.
"In the event of an accident, you can just drain the core into a tank under the reactor with neutron absorbers and the reaction stops," Wilson said. "There is no inclination for the fission products to leave this reactor," he said. "In an accident, the reactor may be toast, which is sorry for the power company, but there is no problem." Wilson, who graduated grade school in May, said he is putting off university to focus on a company he created to make Modular Fission Reactors. He sees his competition as nations, particularly China, and the roadblocks ahead as political instead of technical. Wilson planned to have a prototype ready in two years and a product to market in five years.
"Not only does it combat climate change, it can bring power to the developing world," Wilson said with teenage optimism. "Imagine having a compact reactor in a rocket designed by those planning to habitat other planets. Not only would you have power for propulsion, but power once you get there."
Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, threatening release of carbon from soils, and damage to natural and human environments.
A thaw in Siberia's permafrost (ground frozen throughout the year) could eventually release over 1,000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially enhancing global warming. The data comes from an international team led by Oxford University scientists studying stalactites and stalagmites from caves located along the 'permafrost frontier', where ground begins to be permanently frozen in a layer tens to hundreds of metres thick. Because stalactites and stalagmites only grow when liquid rainwater and snow melt drips into the caves, these formations record 500,000 years of changing permafrost conditions, including warmer periods similar to the climate of today. Records from a particularly warm period (Marine Isotopic Stage 11) that occurred around 400,000 years ago suggest that global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to the modern (pre-industrial) climate is enough to cause substantial thawing of permafrost far north from its present-day southern limit. 'The stalactites and stalagmites from these caves are a way of looking back in time to see how warm periods similar to our modern climate affect how far permafrost extends across Siberia,' said Dr Anton Vaks of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, who led the work. 'As permafrost covers 24% of the land surface of the Northern hemisphere significant thawing could affect vast areas and release giga-tonnes of carbon. 'This has huge implications for ecosystems in the region, and for aspects of the human environment. For instance, natural gas facilities in the region, as well as power lines, roads, railways and buildings are all built on permafrost and are vulnerable to thawing. Such a thaw could damage this infrastructure with obvious economic implications.'
In a probable scenario for climate change, New Orleans will no longer exist. Neither will Atlantic City, N.J. Boston will look much like it did in the 17th century, before the city was dredged up to build a port. And Florida will no longer keep its distinct appendage shape. These geographical changes due to sea-level rise are only the beginning, scientists bluntly stated at a briefing yesterday convened by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "Today's talk underscored what I already knew, but gives me more facts," said Boxer. "We have to act because our children and our grandchildren need us to act." Storms are likely to travel in different patterns than they did before, much like Superstorm Sandy did. Increasing temperatures are changing the cycles of plants and trees and extending the pollination period to exacerbate allergies. In the hottest cities, it will be uncomfortable to step outside during the day. And limited agricultural growth will severely strain the world's ability to feed itself, said a panel composed of two atmospheric scientists, one public health expert and one biological oceanographer. "The last two years [2011 and 2012] have had the largest number of billion-dollar events," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois.
Rising temperatures will increase human exposure to mold, microbial pathogens and infectious diseases, said John Balbus, senior adviser for public health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Studies are indicating that the greatest heat-related harm come may not from extreme exposure but rather from the lower but more frequent stress of increasingly hot summer days. "We've seen the geographical range of ticks that cover Lyme disease shift northward, and is predicted to shift further northward in the United States and in Canada," said Balbus, adding that there are limited studies on the actual incidence of Lyme disease. Melting ice is causing heat exchanges between the oceans and the atmosphere that were not possible before, said James McCarthy, a professor of biological oceanography at Harvard University. "Storms like Superstorm Sandy that begin in the tropics and escape the tropics [now] because of the exceptionally warm surface water remain intense until landfall," he said. "When that storm hits, as it did, we have unprecedented potential for disruption."
Scientists from the United Arab Emirates [UAE] have isolated local salt- and drought-tolerant strains of Rhizobia, soil bacteria that fix nitrogen when they become established inside the root nodules of legumes. Rhizobia bacteria establish a mutually beneficial relationship with their host plant in which they exchange nitrogen they fix for nutrients plants produce through photosynthesis, and could be integral to improving the quality and nitrogen content of soil. The study was carried out by scientists from the Dubai-based International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) in collaboration with the Dubai branch of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science. "The project was conceived when I noticed, at a research farm in Dubai, some leguminous crops forming nodules to fix atmospheric nitrogen," lead author Nanduri Rao, a researcher at ICBA, tells SciDev.Net. Rao's team began isolating several naturally moccurring Rhizobia strains from the root nodules of three leguminous plants: sesbania (Sesbania sesban), lablab (Lablab purpureus) and pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan). Rao explains that the team has also been studying the Rhizobiastrains'tolerance to environmental stresses such as high temperature, salinity, acidity and heavy metal concentrations in laboratory tests. "The strains, native to the United Arab Emirates desert, were found to have a high tolerance to such stresses," Rao says, adding that a full length journal article based on this additional research is currently being prepared. Daniele Daffonchio, professor of microbiology at the University of Milan, Italy, tells SciDev.Net that the identification of microbes capable of surviving in stressful conditions has important implications for agriculture in arid regions. Philippe Normand, professor of microbial ecology at the University of Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France, tells SciDev.Net that the UAE project "has great potential for improving plant productivity under extreme environments," and is "an interesting approach for deserts".
As the world’s population soars, so does its consumption, and as a result we are stretching many of our natural resources to their limits. Of course, the assumption is that human ingenuity and market forces will prevent supplies from running out: we could create better or cheaper extraction methods, recycle materials, find alternatives to non-renewable sources, or reduce consumption. The hope is that talks at the Rio+20 Earth summit will help to steer the world economy on a more sustainable path. But the clock is already ticking, and if the unthinkable happens and we fail to correct current trends, then when can we expect our most valuable resources to run out?
ESA Observing the Earth homepage, features the latest news on Earth observation missions and satellites, including ERS 1, ERS 2, Envisat, Metop, Meteosat and Living Planet. Satellites show that the recent ozone hole over Antarctica was the smallest seen in the past decade. Long-term observations also reveal that Earth’s ozone has been strengthening following international agreements to protect this vital layer of the atmosphere. According to the ozone sensor on Europe’s MetOp weather satellite, the hole over Antarctica in 2012 was the smallest in the last 10 years. The instrument continues the long-term monitoring of atmospheric ozone started by its predecessors on the ERS-2 and Envisat satellites. Since the beginning of the 1980s, an ozone hole has developed over Antarctica during the southern spring – September to November – resulting in a decrease in ozone concentration of up to 70%. Ozone depletion is more extreme in Antarctica than at the North Pole because high wind speeds cause a fast-rotating vortex of cold air, leading to extremely low temperatures. Under these conditions, human-made chlorofluorocarbons – CFCs – have a stronger effect on the ozone, depleting it and creating the infamous hole. Over the Arctic, the effect is far less pronounced because the northern hemisphere’s irregular landmasses and mountains normally prevent the build-up of strong circumpolar winds. To understand these complex processes better, scientists rely on a long time series of data derived from observations and on results from numerical simulations based on complex atmospheric models. Although ozone has been observed over several decades with multiple instruments, combining the existing observations from many different sensors to produce consistent and homogeneous data suitable for scientific analysis is a difficult task. Within the ESA Climate Change Initiative, harmonised ozone climate data records are generated to document the variability of ozone changes better at different scales in space and time. With this information, scientists can better estimate the timing of the ozone layer recovery, and in particular the closure of the ozone hole. Chemistry climate models show that the ozone layer may be building up, and the hole over Antarctica will close in the next decades.
The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has caused changes in the way that waters in the southern oceans mix, an international study shows. A team of scientists led by Professor Darryn Waugh ofJohns Hopkins University, has found that waters originating at the surface at sub-tropical latitudes is mixing into the deeper ocean at a much higher rate than it did 20 years ago, and the reverse is true for waters closer to Antarctica.
Via Kathy Dowsett
Last year's drought took a big bite out of the two most prodigious US crops, corn and soy. But it apparently didn't slow down the spread of weeds that have developed resistance to Monsanto's herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), used on crops engineered by Monsanto to resist it. More than 70 percent of all the the corn, soy, and cotton grown in the US is now genetically modified to withstand glyphosate. Back in 2011, such weeds were already spreading fast. "Monsanto's 'Superweeds' Gallop Through Midwest," declared the headline of a post I wrote then. What's the word you use when an already-galloping horse speeds up? Because that's what's happening. Let's try this: "Monsanto's 'Superweeds' Stampede Through Midwest." That pretty much describes the situation last year, according to a new report from the agribusiness research consultancy Stratus. Since the 2010 growing season, the group has been polling "thousands of US farmers" across 31 states about herbicide resistance. Here's what they found in the 2012 season: • Nearly half (49 percent) of all US farmers surveyed said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds on their farm in 2012, up from 34 percent of farmers in 2011.
• Resistance is still worst in the South. For example, 92 percent of growers in Georgia said they have glyphosate-resistant weeds.
• But the mid-South and Midwest states are catching up. From 2011 to 2012 the acres with resistance almost doubled in Nebraska, Iowa, and Indiana.
• It's spreading at a faster pace each year: Total resistant acres increased by 25 percent in 2011 and 51 percent in 2012.
• And the problem is getting more complicated. More and more farms have at least two resistant species on their farm. In 2010 that was just 12 percent of farms, but two short years later 27 percent had more than one.
Recent extreme rains may have been intensified by the rising global average temperature. Don’t let the drought in the U.S. fool you, intense rainfall around the world has been causing deadly floods in the past few years. Several have died in the current flooding in Queensland, Australia. In July 2012, the heaviest rain in decades left 37 dead in Beijing, China. More than 400 Pakistanis died in floods in September 2012. The now shriveled Mississippi River was a raging flood in 2011, killing 24 Americans in associated flash floods. Recent extreme rains may have been intensified by the rising global average temperature, according to a recent study, which examined data from more than 8,000 weather stations around the planet. The study looked for correlations between atmospheric temperature and extreme rainfall between 1900 to 2009. “The results are that rainfall extremes are increasing on average globally,” lead author Seth Westra of the University of Adelaide said in a press release. “They show that there is a 7% increase in extreme rainfall intensity for every degree increase in global atmospheric temperature. “If extreme rainfall events continue to intensify, we can expect to see floods occurring more frequently around the world. “Assuming an increase in global average temperature by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century, this could mean very substantial increases in rainfall intensity as a result of climate change,” Westra said. The majority of weather stations showed an increase in rainfall. The largest increase in rainfall occurred in tropical nations. “Most of these tropical countries are very poor and thus not well placed to adapt to the increased risk of flooding, which puts them in a larger threat of devastation,” said Westra.
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There are many bizarre things in Australia, but few go even close to the pink lake Hillier.
Lake Hillier is a pink-coloured lake on Middle Island in Western Australia – the largest island from the Recherche Archipelago, a group of about 105 islands. A narrow strip of land composed of sand dunes covered by vegetation separates it from the ocean. The tiny lake only spans 600 meters wide, but the pink color is just unmistakable – and downright weird. What you’re seeing around it is a ime of white salt and a dense woodland of Paperbark and Eucalypt trees. The first reported sighting dates back to the journals of Matthew Flinders, a British navigator and hydrographer in 1802. Nobody knows exactly why it’s pink! The flamboyant rose pink color does not alter when you take the water and put it into a container, and many biologists believe this is all caused by a combination of low nutrient concentrations and bacteria (Dunaliella salina & Halobacterium, to be more precise).
Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study. Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study based on a 30-year record of land surface and newly improved satellite data sets. Of the 10 million square miles (26 million square kilometers) of northern vegetated lands, 34 to 41 percent showed increases in plant growth (green and blue), 3 to 5 percent showed decreases in plant growth (orange and red), and 51 to 62 percent showed no changes (yellow) over the past 30 years. Satellite data in this visualization are from the AVHRR and MODIS instruments, which contribute to a vegetation index that allows researchers to track changes in plant growth over large areas.
An international team of university and NASA scientists examined the relationship between changes in surface temperature and vegetation growth from 45 degrees north latitude to the Arctic Ocean. Results show temperature and vegetation growth at northern latitudes now resemble those found 4 degrees to 6 degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 1982.
"Higher northern latitudes are getting warmer, Arctic sea ice and the duration of snow cover are diminishing, the growing season is getting longer and plants are growing more," said Ranga Myneni of Boston University's Department of Earth and Environment. "In the north's Arctic and boreal areas, the characteristics of the seasons are changing, leading to great disruptions for plants and related ecosystems."
The world's oldest meteorite crater —a giant impact zone more than 62 miles wide — has been found in Greenland, scientists say. Scientists think it was formed 3 billion years ago by a meteorite 19 miles (30 kilometer) wide — which, if it hit Earth today, would wipe out all higher life. The crater is so wide that it would reach the edge of space 62 miles (100 km) above Earth if stood on end. The crater was "discovered" at an office in Copenhagen by scientist Adam Garde as he pored over maps showing nickel and platinum abundance in the target region of West Greenland. Garde, a senior research scientist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, saw a both simple and extreme explanation for several strange geological features in this region: an impact from a meteorite that may have contained valuable metals.
Loss of sea ice due to global warming could open new seasonal shipping lanes through the Arctic Ocean by midcentury, sharply reducing transit times and opening a Pandora's box of safety, environmental and legal issues, according to scientists. Researchers estimated that new shipping lanes linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are likely to open between 2040 and 2059. The lanes would not be open year-round, however, and would likely be restricted to late summer, when ice cover is lowest. Laurence Smith, a professor of Earth and space sciences at UCLA, and colleagues examined current Arctic shipping routes as well as a number of global warming models in making their forecast. Since 1979, satellite mapping has shown an overall decrease in the extent of summer sea ice, which scientists attribute to an increase in man-made greenhouse gases. While climatologists have speculated that this trend may result in widespread Arctic Ocean shipping, this is the first study to make an prediction as to when that might occur. The researchers found that ships with reinforced hulls would have a choice of two new routes: directly over the North Pole and along the fabled Northwest Passage, skirting Canada's northern coastline. Already, commercial vessels have begun using the Northeast Passage, or what the Russians call the Northern Sea Route, which hugs the coast of the Russian Federation. While reduced ice cover will likely increase shipping along the Russian coast, a seasonal route over the North Pole would be 20% shorter, and not require the hiring of Russian escort ships. The North Pole Route and the Northeast Passage would provide the shortest distance between Europe and Asia, and allow ships to bypass the traditional Suez Canal route.
Stunning new data not yet publicly released shows Louisiana losing its battle with rising seas much more quickly than even the most pessimistic studies have predicted to date. While state officials continue to argue over restoration projects to save the state’s sinking, crumbling coast, top researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that Louisiana is in line for the highest rate of sea-level rise “on the planet.” The news of NOAA’s new calculations comes on the heels a 2011 U.S. Geological Survey report, which found that coastal Louisiana had lost 1,883 square miles of land between 1932 and 2010 — an area almost the size of the state of Delaware. (See the map at the top of this post.) From 1985 to 2010, the report found a rate of wetland loss amounting to 16.57 square miles every year. That works out to the loss of an area the size of one football field every hour. Nearly half of that wetland loss occurred in the Terrebonne and Barataria wetland basins. These are home to Terrebonne Parish, source of inspiration to Beasts director Zeitlin, and neighboring Lafourche parish. (The latter was in the news in early January, with reports of cemeteries washing away.)
In one corner is the Earth’s most abundant organism: SAR11, an ocean-living bacterium that survives where most other cells would die and plays a major role in the planet’s carbon cycle. It had been theorized that SAR11 was so small and widespread that it must be invulnerable to attack. In the other corner, and so strange looking that scientists previously didn’t even recognize what they were, are “Pelagiphages,” viruses now known to infect SAR11 and routinely kill millions of these cells every second. How this fight turns out is of more than casual interest, because SAR11 has a huge effect on the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere, and the overall biology of the oceans. “There’s a war going on in our oceans, a huge war, and we never even saw it,” says Stephen Giovannoni, a professor of microbiology at Oregon State University. “This is an important piece of the puzzle in how carbon is stored or released in the sea.” The analysis shows that the new viruses—like their hosts—are the most abundant on record. The paper in Nature describes four previously unknown viruses that infect SAR11. To prove the viruses were as abundant as their hosts, Giovannoni and colleagues teamed up with researchers at the University of Arizona’s Tucson Marine Phage Research Lab, led by Matthew Sullivan, who had developed accurate methods for measuring viral diversity in nature. The analysis shows that the new viruses—like their hosts—are the most abundant on record. Giovannoni’s group discovered the Pelagiphage viral families by using “old-fashioned” research methods, growing the cells and viruses in a laboratory, instead of the tools of modern genomics, and found the new type of virus. “Because they are so new, these viruses were virtually unrecognizable to us based on their DNA,” Giovannoni says. “The viruses themselves, of course, appear to be just as abundant as SAR11.” Sullivan explains the method for discovering viruses in the oceans based on their genomes his group developed over four years is at least 1,000 times more accurate than previous methods. Their work resulted in the Pacific Ocean Virus dataset. This dataset, Sullivan explains, is the viral equivalent of the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition by former human genome researcher J. Craig Venter, who sailed across the world’s oceans sampling, sequencing, and analyzing the DNA of the microorganisms living in these waters. The new findings on SAR11 disprove the theory that the bacteria are immune to viral predation, Giovannoni and his co-authors say. “In general, every living cell is vulnerable to viral infection,” says Giovannoni, who first discovered SAR11 in 1990. “What has been so puzzling about SAR11 was its sheer abundance, there was simply so much of it that some scientists believed it must not get attacked by viruses.” What the new research shows, Giovannoni says, is that SAR11 is competitive, good at scavenging organic carbon, and effective at changing quickly to avoid infection. Because of this, it thrives and persists in abundance even though the new viruses are constantly killing it.
Say goodbye to the grass. The scramble for biofuels is rapidly killing off unique grasslands and pastures in the central US. Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University in Brookings analysed satellite images of five states in the western corn belt. They found that 530,000 hectares of grassland disappeared under blankets of maize and soya beans between 2006 and 2011. The rate was fastest in South Dakota and Iowa, with as much as 5 per cent of pasture becoming cropland each year. The trend is being driven by rising demand for the crops, partly through incentives to use them as fuels instead of food. The switch from meadows to crops is causing a crash in populations of ground-nesting birds. One of the US's most important breeding grounds for wildfowl, an area called the Prairie Pothole Region, is also at risk, with South Dakota's crop fields now within 100 metres of the wetlands. "Half of North American ducks breed here," says Wright. Bill Henwood of the Temperate Grasslands Conservation Initiative in Vancouver, Canada, says the results are distressing. "Exchanging real environmental impacts for the dubious benefits of biofuels is counterproductive," he says. "Last year's record drought in the corn belt all but wiped out the crops anyway." More info: http://tinyurl.com/au236dr
Here is the plan. Customize several Gulfstream business jets with military engines and with equipment to produce and disperse fine droplets of sulfuric acid. Fly the jets up around 20 kilometers—significantly higher than the cruising altitude for a commercial jetliner but still well within their range. At that altitude in the tropics, the aircraft are in the lower stratosphere. The planes spray the sulfuric acid, carefully controlling the rate of its release. The sulfur combines with water vapor to form sulfate aerosols, fine particles less than a micrometer in diameter. These get swept upward by natural wind patterns and are dispersed over the globe, including the poles. Once spread across the stratosphere, the aerosols will reflect about 1 percent of the sunlight hitting Earth back into space. Increasing what scientists call the planet’s albedo, or reflective power, will partially offset the warming effects caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases.
The Food and Drug Administrationsaid it had concluded that the salmon would have “no significant impact” on the environment. The agency also said the salmon was “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon.” While the agency’s draft environmental assessment will be open to public comment for 60 days, it seems likely that the salmon will be approved, though that could still be months away. It is unclear why it took until now for it to be released, but supporters of the salmon say they believe it is because the Obama administration was afraid of an unfavorable consumer reaction before the election in November. Environmental and consumer groups quickly criticized the federal agency’s conclusions. “The G.E. salmon has no socially redeeming value,” Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group opposed to farm biotechnology, said in a statement. “It’s bad for the consumer, bad for the salmon industry and bad for the environment. F.D.A.’s decision is premature and misguided.” But the decision was long in coming. AquaBounty Technologies, the company that developed the salmon, has been trying to win approval for more than a decade. The AquAdvantage salmon, as it is called, is an Atlantic salmon that contains a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon and a genetic switch from the ocean pout, an eel-like creature. The switch keeps the gene on so that the salmon produces growth hormone year round, rather than only during warm weather. The fish reach market weight in about 18 months instead of three years.
Wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels in producing electricity in Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Coal-fired power stations built in the 1970s and 1980s can still produce power at a lower cost than that of wind, the research shows. Relying on fossil fuels to produce electricity is getting more expensive because of the government’s price on carbon emissions imposed last year, higher financing costs and rising natural gas prices, BNEF said. The cost of wind generation has fallen by 10 percent since 2011 on lower equipment expenses, while the cost of solar power has dropped by 29 percent. “The fact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn the economics of power systems on its head,” Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in a statement today. AGL Energy Ltd., Australia’s largest developer of renewable energy projects, said in November that it expected the A$1 billion ($1.03 billion) Macarthur wind farm in Victoria state to begin operating fully this month. AGL in October suspended the development of the first stage of its 1,000-megawatt Dalton gas- fired power station in New South Wales after reviewing the economic viability for several months. Driven by hydro- and wind-power projects, renewable energy contributed 9.6 percent of Australia’s electricity production in 2011, up from 8.7 percent the prior year, according to the Clean Energy Council, an industry group.
There is enough energy for people to reap from the wind to meet all of the world's power demands without radically altering the planet's climate, according to two independent teams of scientists. Wind power is often touted as environmentally friendly, generating no pollutants. It is an increasingly popular source of renewable energy, with the United States aiming to produce 20 percent of its electricity by wind power by 2030. Still, there have been questions as to how much energy wind power can supply the world, and how green it actually is, given how it pulls energy from the atmosphere. To learn more, climate scientist Katherine Marvel at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Calif., and her colleagues developed a global climate model that analyzed how wind turbines would drag on the atmosphere to harvest energy from winds at the planet's surface and higher altitudes. Historically, people have built wind turbines on the ground and in the ocean, but research suggests kite-borne turbines could generate more power from steadier, faster high-altitude winds. Adding wind turbines of any kind slows winds, and Marvel and her colleagues found that adding more than a certain amount of turbines would no longer generate more electricity. Still, their simulations suggest that at least 400 terawatts -- or 400 trillion watts of power -- could be generated from surface winds, and more than 1,800 terawatts could be extracted from winds throughout the atmosphere. In comparison, people globally currently use about 18 terawatts of power. Simulating a century's worth of amped-up wind-energy production suggests that harvesting maximum power from these winds would have dramatic long-term effects on the climate, triggering major shifts in atmospheric circulation.
Viruses are by far the most abundant 'lifeforms' in the oceans and are the reservoir of most of the genetic diversity in the sea. The estimated 10E30 viruses in the ocean, if stretched end to end, would span farther than the nearest 60 galaxies. Every second, approximately 10E23 viral infections occur in the ocean. These infections are a major source of mortality, and cause disease in a range of organisms, from shrimp to whales. As a result, viruses influence the composition of marine communities and are a major force behind biogeochemical cycles. Each infection has the potential to introduce new genetic information into an organism or progeny virus, thereby driving the evolution of both host and viral assemblages. Probing this vast reservoir of genetic and biological diversity continues to yield exciting discoveries. Over tens, hundreds and millions years, our ancestors have been picking up retroviruses (HIV is a retrovirus) that reproduce by taking their genetic material and inserting it into our own chromosomes. There are probably about 100,000 elements in the human genome that you can trace to a virus ancestor. They make up about 8 percent of our genome, and genes that encode proteins only make up 1.2 percent of our genome making us more virus than human. Occasionally, a retrovirus will end up in a sperm cell or an egg and insert its genes there, which then may give rise to a new organism, a new animal, a new person where every cell in that body has got that virus. Nature: http://tinyurl.com/abmjhtf
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