Good teacher resource for National Environmental Week, April 15-21, 2012
December 20 Scenes from the beach
“To stand at the edge of the sea,” wrote Rachel Carson, “… is to have knowledge of things that are as eternal, as any earthly life can be.”* The things that we see this morning–a cerulean sea and sky, the shorebirds, the sun still near the horizon — are identically the same objects that could be seen in Cambrian times, eons ago. There is a sense of the eternal in the objects viewed today. And I suppose there will be little change in a faraway eon that lies in some future age. — Diary, autumn 2011
* At the Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson; Signet Books, New York (1955)
One should read Rachel Carson to get closer to the universe, not for political reasons, not necessarily for the science. But being scientifically accurate, and being close to the pulse of the universe, Carson’s views will change your politics for the better if you really read and listen.
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This Anderson cartoon from the Houston Chronicle in 2009 gets the facts right, but sadly, is still accurate
Remember the pathetic, disgusting attempt to derail the climate talks in Durban, just a few days ago? The “climate skeptics”™ dumped a bunch more private e-mails from the scientists who work on climate. (Stolen e-mails, here; be prepared to be bored, with no smoking guns, no cold guns, no guns at all.)
Unless one thinks the self-proclaimed skeptics are James Bond nemesis enough to actually hope for the end of the world (as opposed to just being monumentally, stupidly misled), their train still can’t get back on the tracks. Revealing that someone among them has stolen more e-mails than previously known, didn’t help. Here is a list of just how bad the derailment has been for the denialists:
No great world-changing agreement, but theclimate talks in Durban, South Africa, produced a consensus that a massive treaty is not coming soon, and that action to save the planet can’t wait for guys in suits who defer by people like Ralph Hall to do the right thing. Generally, the comity at Durban is bad for the denialists — Christopher Monckton went into full panic mode, suggesting the language of the agreement available isn’t the whole story and something else — something sinister — is really going on. (One wonders how Monckton can stand to turn out the lights at night.) They can’t tell the difference between their burro and a burrow, and with Ralph Hall leading them they’re likely to find the edge of the cliff and leave it before they realize just how far up they are and how far they have to fall. (Skeptic/denialist Judith Curry carried a rundown of headlines from Durban, with links — remember her bias.)
Skeptics actually completed a research project and prepared it for publication. A group at Berkeley, with funding from conservative warming denialists like the Koch brothers, and featuring the work and cooperation of leading anti-science people like Anthony Watts, took on the challenge of looking at temperatures reported from weather stations, especially in the U.S., and especially those Anthony Watts had targeted as providing unduly warm and inaccurate readings that skewed all of the science of global warming. The not-loudly-mentioned target, of course, was the “hockey stick” graph. Alas for the skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) study produced results that verify the accuracy of measurements that show warming, and which suggest the IPCC-published hockey stick is accurate enough that it deserves credence. Anthony Watts promptly disavowed all his own work on the project.
One question we need to be asking is why the incidents around the stolen e-mails are known as “Climategate” in the circles of warming denialists. The thieves in this case came from the ranks of the so-called skeptics, and the release of the e-mails was done on the blogs of those who deny warming, or human causation, or human ability to mitigate at all. (Fox News got it bass ackwards, of course — wondering whether the government is somehow complicit in hiding information, while all the information is public and almost all of the private communication is public. At Fox, they don’t even get Homer Simpson doh! moments of understanding — that’s how bad it is in Denialville.)
So far no one’s listening to the bear on this one — follow the money, and bring the criminals to justice.
It’s really SkepticGate, with a more-than two-year coverup and continuing, and the recent release is SkepticGate II.
Denialists, and even those who question global warming on legitimate grounds, must be frustrated. Nothing they do stops the world from warming. As the massive wave of evidence demonstrating the Earth warms and humans share the blame turns to a tsunami, even policy makers (Ralph Hall excepted) look for solutions to warming problems. It’s so bad for the skeptics that even the old trick of stealing e-mails from the scientists, the trick that helped fog up the Copenhagen proceedings, did almost nothing to the Durban talks. While no treaty came out, none was expected — but the sudden action in the last couple of days of the conference to get action despite the continued interference by climate skeptics and their political allies, must have caught them off guard.
Great pictures from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
A newly-discovered comet, Comet Lovejoy, orbited dangerously close to the Sun for a ball of ice. Experts predicted it would be the last trip for the little planetoid.
But, then Lovejoy zoomed out from the other side of our home star. Amazing.
See it for yourself:
How surprising was this? Look at this earlier piece, inviting people to watch the end of the comet:
Dec. 16, 2011: This morning, an armada of spacecraft witnessed something that many experts thought impossible. Comet Lovejoy flew through the hot atmosphere of the sun and emerged intact.
“It’s absolutely astounding,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “I did not think the comet’s icy core was big enough to survive plunging through the several million degree solar corona for close to an hour, but Comet Lovejoy is still with us.”
The comet’s close encounter was recorded by at least five spacecraft: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin STEREO probes, Europe’s Proba2 microsatellite, and the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. The most dramatic footage so far comes from SDO, which saw the comet go in (movie) and then come back out again (movie).
In the SDO movies, the comet’s tail wriggles wildly as the comet plunges through the sun’s hot atmosphere only 120,000 km above the stellar surface. This could be a sign that the comet was buffeted by plasma waves coursing through the corona. Or perhaps the tail was bouncing back and forth off great magnetic loops known to permeate the sun’s atmosphere. No one knows.
“This is all new,” says Battams. “SDO is giving us our first look1 at comets travelling through the sun’s atmosphere. How the two interact is cutting-edge research.”
“The motions of the comet material in the sun’s magnetic field are just fascinating,” adds SDO project scientist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “The abrupt changes in direction reminded me of how the solar wind affected the tail of Comet Encke in 2007 (movie).”
Comet Lovejoy was discovered on Dec. 2, 2011, by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Australia. Researchers quickly realized that the new find was a member of the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets. Named after the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first studied them, Kreutz sungrazers are fragments of a single giant comet that broke apart back in the 12th century (probably the Great Comet of 1106). Kreutz sungrazers are typically small (~10 meters wide) and numerous. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory sees one falling into the sun every few days.
At the time of discovery, Comet Lovejoy appeared to be at least ten times larger than the usual Kreutz sungrazer, somewhere in the in the 100 to 200 meter range. In light of today’s events, researchers are re-thinking those numbers.
This coronagraph image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory shows Comet Lovejoy receding from the sun after its close encounter. The horizontal lines through the comet’s nucleus are digital artifacts caused by saturation of the detector; Lovejoy that that bright! [movie]
“I’d guess the comet’s core must have been at least 500 meters in diameter; otherwise it couldn’t have survived so much solar heating,” says Matthew Knight. “A significant fraction of that mass would have been lost during the encounter. The remains are probably much smaller.”
SOHO and NASA’s twin STEREO probes are monitoring the comet as it recedes from the sun. It is still very bright and should remain in range of the spacecrafts’ cameras for several days to come.
What happens next is anyone’s guess.
“There is still a possibility that Comet Lovejoy will start to fragment,” continues Battams. “It’s been through a tremendously traumatic event; structurally, it could be extremely weak. On the other hand, it could hold itself together and disappear back into the recesses of the solar system.”
“It’s hard to say,” agrees Knight. “There has been so little work on what happens to sungrazing comets after perihelion (closest approach). This continues to be fascinating.”
Author:Dr. Tony Phillips| Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
More Information
Footnote:1“When SDO was launched we thought we would see nothing besides the Sun and the dark disks of the Moon, Earth, Venus, and Mercury in our images,” says SDO project scientist Dean Pesnell of GSFC. “No other bright object would be visible because our instruments are designed to look at the Sun. Now we are measuring the mass and composition of comets by turning the comet inside out.”
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Earlier I posted a video of Stanford’s late Dr. Stephen Schneider in a meeting with Australian climate “skeptics.” It was one of a four-part series, Part 2, to be precise.
Here are the other parts. They are excerpted from an Australian television program, “Insight,” taped in June 2010.
Part 1:
Links promised in the video above can be found below the fold.
Impressive. Schneider explains, to Australian “skeptics,” how CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, why that’s bad, what the urban heat island effect is and why it does not negate temperature measures that show global warming. He savages the argument about CO2’s “logarithmic” absorption characteristics negating scientists’ findings.
Peter Sinclair comes through with a good explanation of the history of concern about global warming — how the warming trend was discovered.
It wasn’t scientists trying to get government grants. It was the U.S. Air Force, trying to beat the commies and keep America safe for democracy and, ironically, safe for dissent from such applications of science.
9,996
Real history couldn’t be published as fiction, which is one way we can tell real history from the stuff that gets made up. In the story told in this video, note carefully the serendipity of figuring out the CO2 issues: Who could invent a story about warfare leading to the discovery of global warming? As with the coincidence of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both dying on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, no editor of fiction would accept it as believable.
Meeting in Durban, South Africa, government officials from many nations worked to find solutions to human causation of destructive climate change, in the framework of proposed treaties under United Nations aegis.
Negotiators at the COP17 Climate Conference in Durban work late into the night to reach agreement on a roadmap to a legally binding deal, 10 December 2011. UKDECC photo and caption
Did anyone expect good reports out of these meetings?
From the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, we get this press release, dated Sunday, December 11, 2011:
Road open to new global legal climate treaty
Global agreement achieved on a roadmap to a legally binding deal
Second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol to be agreed next year
Green Climate Fund to be set up
The UN climate talks in South Africa have been heralded a success after a climate change deal was struck in the early hours of Sunday morning.194 parties have spent the past two weeks in Durban discussing how to cut emissions to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees to avoid dangerous climate change.
In a major realignment of support, well over 120 countries formed a coalition behind the EU’s high ambition proposal of a roadmap to a global legally binding deal to curb emissions. African states together with the least developed countries such as Bangladesh and Gambia, and small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels, like the Maldives, joined with the EU to put forward a timetable which would see the world negotiate a new agreement by 2015 at the latest.
The talks resulted in a decision to adopt the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol next year in return for a roadmap to a global legal agreement covering all parties for the first time. Negotiations will begin on the agreement early next year.
Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said:
“This is a significant step forward in curbing emissions to tackle global climate change. For the first time we’ve seen major economies, normally cautious, commit to take the action demanded by the science.
“The EU’s proposal for the roadmap was at the core of the negotiations and the UK played a central role in galvanising support. This outcome shows the UNFCCC system really works and can produce results. It also shows how a united EU can achieve results on the world stage and deliver in the UK’s best interests.
“There are still many details to be hammered out, but we now need to start negotiating the new legal agreement as soon as possible and there are still many details to be hammered out.”
Also the conference agreed to get the Green Climate Fund up and running, this will help deliver financial support to developing countries to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Notes to editors:
Further details on the Durban climate talks can be found at: www.unfccc.int
Call me skeptical that this report is completely accurate, but as I refuse to be “skeptical” of the reality that the Earth warms, call me hopeful, too. It’s an agreement to keep talking.
This will strike a note of joy in the heart of every Boy Scout and every orienteer in the world: The U.S. and Japan have teamed up for new, super-accurate topographic maps.
NASA, Japan Release Improved Topographic Map Of Earth
WASHINGTON — NASA and Japan released a significantly improved version of the most complete digital topographic map of Earth on Monday, produced with detailed measurements from NASA’s Terra spacecraft.
The map, known as a global digital elevation model, was created from images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, instrument aboard Terra. So-called stereo-pair images are produced by merging two slightly offset two-dimensional images to create the three-dimensional effect of depth. The first version of the map was released by NASA and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in June 2009.
“The ASTER global digital elevation model was already the most complete, consistent global topographic map in the world,” said Woody Turner, ASTER program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With these enhancements, its resolution is in many respects comparable to the U.S. data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), while covering more of the globe.”
The improved version of the map adds 260,000 additional stereo-pair images to improve coverage. It features improved spatial resolution, increased horizontal and vertical accuracy, more realistic coverage over water bodies and the ability to identify lakes as small as 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) in diameter. The map is available online to users everywhere at no cost.
“This updated version of the ASTER global digital elevation model provides civilian users with the highest-resolution global topography data available,” said Mike Abrams, ASTER science team leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “These data can be used for a broad range of applications, from planning highways and protecting lands with cultural or environmental significance, to searching for natural resources.”
The ASTER data cover 99 percent of Earth’s landmass and span from 83 degrees north latitude to 83 degrees south. Each elevation measurement point in the data is 98 feet (30 meters) apart.
NASA and METI are jointly contributing the data for the ASTER topographic map to the Group on Earth Observations, an international partnership headquartered at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, for use in its Global Earth Observation System of Systems. This “system of systems” is a collaborative, international effort to share and integrate Earth observation data from many different instruments and systems to help monitor and forecast global environmental changes.
ASTER is one of five instruments launched on Terra in 1999. ASTER acquires images from visible to thermal infrared wavelengths, with spatial resolutions ranging from about 50 to 300 feet (15 to 90 meters). A joint science team from the United States and Japan validates and calibrates the instrument and data products. The U.S. science team is located at JPL.
NASA, METI, Japan’s Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC), and the U.S. Geological Survey validated the data, with support from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other collaborators. The data are distributed by NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources Observation and Science Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., and by ERSDAC in Tokyo.
Users of the new version of the ASTER data products are advised that while improved, the data still contain anomalies and artifacts that will affect its usefulness for certain applications.
Data users can download the ASTER global digital elevation model at:
New topographical map of Earth released October 17, 2011, from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) of Japan and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
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New short from the Texas Parks and Wildlife people:
The smoke may be gone but the Bastrop fires of Labor Day weekend are still a smoldering concern for biologists. They’re keeping tabs on the Houston Toad. And with only an estimated 2,000 left in Texas, this endangered species is facing its next challenge as the drought continues. More on Houston toads at http://www.houstonzoo.org/HoustonToad/
For background, see this earlier reel from TPWS on the fires at Bastrop State Park:
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Lynn Margulis, image from Cambridge Forum Speakers
LYNN MARGULIS DIES
The eminent biologist Lynn Margulis died on November 22, 2011, at the age of 73, according to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Born Lynn Alexander in Chicago on March 5, 1938, she enrolled in the University of Chicago at the age of fourteen. She received her A.B. in liberal arts from the University of Chicago in 1957, a joint master’s degree in zoology and genetics from the University of Wisconsin in 1960, and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1963. After a stint as a post-doctoral researcher at Brandeis University, she spent twenty-two years in the Department of Biology at Boston University before moving to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she was Distinguished University Professor. Among her honors and awards were membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement from Sigma Xi, the Darwin-Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society, and the National Medal of Science. A prolific writer (often in collaboration with her son Dorion Sagan), her books include Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (Yale University Press 1970), Origins of Sex (Yale University Press, 1986), Microcosmos (HarperCollins, 1987), Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution (Springer, 1997), Symbiotic Planet (Basic Books, 1998), and Acquiring Genomes (Basic Books, 2002).
Margulis was perhaps most celebrated for her advocacy of the endosymbiotic theory of the origin of organelles, starting with her paper “On the origin of mitosing cells,” published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1967. The endosymbiotic theory is now generally accepted for mitochondria and chloroplasts, if not for all of the organelles that Margulis thought. She was also known for her advocacy of the Gaia hypothesis and symbiogenesis, the idea that speciation is driven largely by symbiosis. Her proclivity for such unconventional evolutionary mechanisms allowed her to be steadily misrepresented by antievolutionists hoping to convince the public that evolution is a theory in crisis. But Margulis firmly rejected creationism, writing, for example, “Anthropocentric writers with a proclivity for the miraculous and a commitment to divine intervention tend to attribute historical appearances like eyes, wings, and speech to ‘irreducible complexity’ (as, for example, Michael Behe does in his book, Darwin’s Black Box) or ‘ingenious design’ (in the tradition of William Paley who used the functional organs of animals as proof for the existence of God). Here we feel no need for supernatural hypotheses. Rather, we insist that today, more than ever, it is the growing scientific understanding of how new traits appear, ones even as complex as the vertebrate eye, that has triumphed” (Acquiring Genomes, p. 202). She was a Supporter of NCSE.
This is a great blow to creationism. Margulis was one of the favorite scientists for quote mining and misquoting among creationism defenders.
It is a greater blow to science and friends of science. All the rest of us will miss the brilliant insights and the questions that forced people to look at life in a new way, often.
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Even writing an article like this one carries risks; opponents of the president will excerpt the criticism and strip it of context.
But in this case, the President has reality on his side. The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.
Some more of the emails stolen from the Climate Research Centre in 2009 have been released. This time they are accompanied by a readme with out-of-context quotes that asserts the purpose of the release is information transparency, but that’s an obvious lie, since they’ve sat on them for two years and released them just before Durban conference. The timing suggests that the people behind the theft and release have a financial interest in preventing mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. It is most unlikely that there is anything incriminating in these emails — if there was, it would have been released two years ago.
Especially, the last round revealed no data to show warming is not happening, nor any data to show anything but righteous and noble concern to mitigate or stop the human contribution to the pollution that causes unnatural global warming. This round of releases will do the same, I predict.
Drew Sheneman, Newark Star-Ledger, on politics around findings of global warming; polar bears won't read the stolen e-mails, refuse to be convinced findings of warming comprise a hoax
(Does anyone have the date on that cartoon? Is it, like this one from Tom Toles, so old it indicates denialists do nothing new under the sun?)
How many times do we allow the miscreant to call “wolf” falsely? Why would we believe him on any other issue?
More, Resources:
Here’s one site where you can read and search the stolen e-mails; in classic denialist fog-the-issue fashion, the site is named “FOIA,” though it has absolutely nothing to do with a legitimate use of any Freedom of Information Act. FOIA is not stealing stuff.
Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it. Plants do it, too, but often with the help of animals.
Here are some of the most glorious pictures of sex you’ll ever see, filmed by Louie Schwartzberg. Anyone who has ever tried to take a good photograph should marvel at these shots, and the skill and artistry and luck it took to get them:
What will we do if the bees vanish?
The lowdown:
http://www.ted.com Pollination: it’s vital to life on Earth, but largely unseen by the human eye. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg [of Moving Art] shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film “Wings of Life,” inspired by the vanishing of one of nature’s primary pollinators, the honeybee.
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Wikipedia describes this old woodcut: "The most famous depiction of the 1833 actually produced in 1889 for the Adventist book Bible Readings for the Home Circle - the engraving is by Adolf Vollmy based upon an original painting by the Swiss artist Karl Jauslin, that is in turn based on a first-person account of the 1833 storm by a minister, Joseph Harvey Waggoner on his way from Florida to New Orleans."
There are a few spectacular shots of the Leonid meteors this year — got one you want to share?
The War Against Bugs, by Print Magazine — a Neocide ad from European media.
With all due respect to entomologists, there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about bugs (insects by any other name). These little monsters certainly have ecological significance, but don’t tell me they are fun to have crawling around. Hence, chemical manufacturers have made it their business to find he most efficient means of ridding the pests while retaining the fine upstanding species. Too bad that anything designed to kill will doubtless have ill effects on he eco-system. In he 50s DDT was the magic bullet against such varieties as various potato beetles, coddling moth, corn earworm, cotton bollworm and tobacco budworms (eeeecccchhhh!). Then in 1972, the US Environmental Protection Agency curtailed all use of DDT on crops. The ban did not take hold in other countries until much later, and DDT was vociferously promoted through eerie calls to arms like this poster by Savignac.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
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