(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Some months ago we tracked about a project that pretends to paint some Peruvian glaciers in white, to slow their melting. This week in Lima, during a meeting of the UN, we heard about geo-engineering actions to mitigate climate change, like scattering reflecting particles in the atmosphere. Reporters called it “to change the color of the clouds”.  Also, the Canary Islands held a science festival with the presence of Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Although they didn’t coincide in space and time, both claimed again for the absolute necessity of human space exploration. Reporters wrote nice stories but without second opinions (and more elaborated than the pilot’s ones), about if we really need to invest so much money in sending people to space.

Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin y otros astronautas, junto con astrofísicos y figuras como Richard Dawkins, han participado en el encuentro Starmus organizado en las Islas Canarias. También estuvieron recientemente en España el reconocido investigador japonés Shinya Yamanaka (el que primero logró reprogramar células adultas a células madre iPS), o Nicholas Stern (quien publicó el primer informe sobre el impacto del cambio climático en la economía mundial). En formato entrevista o reportaje, varios periodistas han trnasmitido los mensajes de estas figuras. Está bien; pero… ¿tiene la opinión de todos la misma relevancia? No del todo.

Yamanaka o Stern sí que son figuras influyentes. El primero como creador y científico en activo, y el segundo como líder de opinión y persona de peso en la toma de decisiones. Pero Neil Armstrong… ¡claro que es un héroe por haber sido el primer hombre en pisar la luna! pero… ¿importa mucho su opinión parcial? Ni él ni Aldrin son más expertos que los ingenieros jefe de la NASA, o los sociólogos de la ciencia que analizan si tiene sentido o no la exploración humana del espacio. Los comentarios de los astronautas pueden ser tan inspiradores como frívolos. Que el pedante Buzz Aldrin diga “tenemos que ir a Marte porque en 5.000 millones de años el Sol se comerá la Tierra”, o que Neil Armstrong defienda lo mismo porque puede caer un meteorito o ocurrir un desastre (Rosa Tristán “Armstrong defiende los vuelos tripulados frente a los robots” – El Mundo) es de una simplicidad aberrante. De corte parecido es la nota en Público de Nuño Domínguez “Los ‘abuelos’ del cosmos exigen un futuro en el espacio”. Quizás los organizadores del encuentro sólo hayan invitado a gente favorable a la exploración tripulada. Pero si es así, los periodistas podrían haber sido más quisquillosos para poner a prueba la coherencia de lo que estos pilotos de mérito relativo opinan.

Nicholas Stern es un caso diferente. A él si merece mucho la pena escucharle cuando dice “Alemania no podrá evitar que la energía nuclear se expanda” (Araceli Acosta – ABC). O si en su visita a Colombia los reporteros de El Espectador le preguntan de manera específica por el Amazonas. O incluso cuando se eligen como titular un topicazo que podría haber dicho cualquiera “Somos la generación que puede destruir la relación entre los humanos y el planeta (Carolina García – El País)

Lo mismo con el experto en reprogramación celular Shinya Yamanaka y las notas de Ángeles López “me gustaría ayudar a personas con lesión medular” en El Mundo, o otras que juegan con el debate científicamente inexistente entre células madre embrionarias vs reprogamadadas: El País destaca que “Si existe una alternativa a las células embrionarias, debemos buscarla”, Público prefiere escoger “El uso de células embrionarias debe ser permitido” (Nuño Domínguez), y el conservador ABC juega un poco con el titular de Núria Ramírez de Castro: “Al mirar un embrión al microscopio veía a mis hijas”. Tampoco es que sea Yamanaka quien deba establecer los criterios éticos sobre la investigación con células madre, pero su valor respecto al de Armstrong es muy diferente. Al final, es como los actores y los directores-guionistas. Los actores son los famosos, pero la película podría haberse realizado igual si en lugar de Cloney hubieran contratado a Pitt. Y hasta cierto punto lo mismo pasa con Armstrong. En cambio crear una historia única de la nada es lo que hacen directores y escritores, y también hasta cierto punto, pioneros científicos como Yamanaka.

Pero ya que hablábamos de cambio climático y de iniciativas rocambolescas como ir a vivir a otros planetas… terminemos con una historia que parece unir conceptos: Hace un tiempo hablamos del proyecto de pintar los glaciares peruanos de blanco que ganó un premio del banco mundial. Se trataba de pintarlos para que reflejaran la luz, no se calentaran tanto, y frenaran el deshielo. Todavía está en marcha. Era adaptación, pero esta semana científicos del IPCC reunidos en Lima han sugerido una medida de geoingeniería para mitigación que nos los recordó: inyectar aerosoles en la atmósfera que tiñan las nubes y no permitan la entrada de tantos rayos solares. Podéis leer la historia en Radio Programas Perú, en El Comercio “Científicos proponen alterar el color de las nubes para combatir el cambio climático”, o en muchos otros medios, pero en todos encontraréis la misma información de la agencia AFP. En realidad lo de colorear resulta engañoso; pues lo que harían es tirar aerosoles reflectantes a la estratosfera para reducir la entrada de radiación. Las notas no confirman si es un proyecto sobre la mesa o una idea rocambolesca a valorar, pero ya puestos a ser tecno-optimistas en exceso, pues porqué no plantearse viajar por el espacio y colorear las nubes…

- Pere Estupinyà

On land, it is easier to see where the great herds and their predators go. For one, you can watch them. For two, they leave their mark on the land. Even people did it. The Comanche Trail, or Trace, of the early to mid-19th century marked where raiders from the Great Plains of the nascent US rode south into Mexico and pushed herds of stolen horses and cattle back north across the Rio Grande.When the Comanche tribes collapsed under US Army pressure, the trail remained visible for decades – with signs of it still apparent to those who know what to look for.

In the oceans, it’s harder. When the migrants are gone, there will be little or no palimpsest left by their processions. But a lot of press followed a report in Nature on a huge program of tagging ocean predators – sharks, turtles, seabirds, whales,  seals and sea lions, and more – to see where they travel in the Pacific in search of such prey as krill and sardines. Rather majestic and hopeful  to find that these presumably ancient routes are still mappable despite the well-reported decline in ocean fisheries. The Tagging of Pacific Predators project is part of the larger Census of the Sea and Future of Marine Animal Populations Project.

Stories:

• San Diego Union – Tribune – Mike Lee: Marine predators flock to California coast ;
• SF Chronicle – David Perlman: The Pacific Ocean’s ‘corridors of life’ ;
• PostMedia News via Vancouver Sun – Margaret Munro: Curious migratory routes surprise researchers ;
• Best headline prize to  Straits Times (Signapore) on an AFP story: View to a krill: Prospects of feast drive marine predators ;
• San Jose Mercury News – Jane J. Lee: California Coast is hot spot for marine life ;
• Washington Post – Juliet Eilperin: West Coast Boasts underwater Serengeti, study finds ;
• NYTimes Dot Earth blog – Andrew C. Revkin: Oceans Imperiled But Still Teeming;

Grist for the Mill:

Dalhousie University Press Release ; Oregon State Univ.  Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

A few years ago planetary scientists monitoring instruments aboard the Cassini spacecraft and traversing the Saturnian system photographed sprays of ice and vapor from a strangely ‘Tiger striped’ portion of the moon Enceladus, near its south pole. Close traverses through the spray allowed chemical analysis. Speculation ran high that a salty ocean lies miles under the little orb’s thick shell of ice. It thus joined such other moon’s as Jupiter’s Europa on the list of deep reservoirs where pre-biological and conceivably biological activity may exist off Earth. Here are earlier posts in 2008 and 2009 illustrating the heavy coverage already given this line of research. That 2008 report, from Ron Cowen who recently left Science News for the freelancer’s life, seems to have been the first public rendition of the thesis now in the news again.

The paper, in  Nature, analyzes the existing data more thoroughly to make the case stronger. The result posits not only a deeper ‘ocean’ but intervening, shallower lenses of liquid sort of like pockets of magma in Earth’s crust. The pattern of salts and water vapor in the plumes, it says here,   makes it very hard to see how some kind of direct ice-to-vapor sublimation could generate the observed compositional distribution. It has to be tempting write a headline on this as though it’s the first time readers have heard it. The truth of that assumption for the vast majority of readers is, one must say, no excuse for reporters not to bring up the history of the idea in their stories. If I find anybody that does not nod to the history of the Enceladus ocean hypothesis, I’ll make a fuss.

• Washington Post – Marc Kaufman: Saturn’s moon Enceladus shows evidence of an ocean beneath its surface ; Sketches the state of play now – but does not explicitly tell readers that the ocean hypothesis has been prominently in play already. 
• Christian Science Monitor – Pete Spotts: Hidden sea on a Saturn moon? New evidence says yes. OK, but seems to have left out a link in the supposed sequences that make liquid water so compelling an inference. Between ref. to water leaching salts, and a reference to a ‘dry’ solution to the puzzle of the geysers that is now off the table, is no explanation what the dry solution would be.
• Ars Technica – John Timmer: Saturns’ Icy Moon Might Have an Ocean ; Second sentence says “..long suspected of harboring a subsurface water ocean” and isn’t ‘harboring’ the right marine-flavored verb to employ?
• Orange Country Register – Pat Brennan: Geysers reveal likely ocean in Saturn moon ; Notes this is the “strongest evidence yet..” which, even without elaboration, does the trick. Notes that the geysers shoot out 300 miles or “as far as the entire diameter of the moon.”
• NYTimes – Sindya N. Bhanoo: Ice Saturn Moon May Have Ocean Beneath Its Surface ;
• Daily Mail (UK) Waterworld: Ice spray shooting out of Saturn moon point to a giant ocean lurking beneath its surface ;
• AFP – Saltwater ocean lurks beneath Saturn moon – study ;
• Scientific American – John Matson: Turf and Surf: Salty Plumes Point to Underground Ocean inside Saturn’s Moon Enceladus ; Well done. Intriguing reference to ‘deep misty caverns.”
• Universe Today – Jason Major: Enceladus’s Salty Surprise ;
• .. could do more

Grist for the Mill:

European Space Agency Press Release ;NASA JPL Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

Do the routine setbacks of life cost anything? Anything extra, that is? What does that even mean? How about weather – what does weather cost?  The National Center for Atmospheric Research reports that a rough calculation puts annual, weather-related costs to be  be $485 billion. Note that this is not an increment for climate change, but the cost of floods, droughts, winds, freezes, and so forth that are statistically expectable now and again even at steady state climate, but disruptive when they occur. At least I presumed that’s what it is, but reading a short AP account by Randolph E. Schmid revealed no exact definition.

After all, just replacing one’s roof is a weather-related cost, since the reason is to keep the rain out. But I doubt that such maintenance is included in NCAR’s cost-of-rain gauge. A look at the paper (in Grist below) caused the eyeballs to roll back – among demand curves, price elasticities, heating degree days, cooling ones, and popular whims -  while looking for how the analysis separate economic fluctuations due to normal but unusual weather, from fluctuations from other things. But it says the hit on the economy is around 3.4% (the $485 billion) of a $14.4 trillion economy, using 2008′s statistics. The analysis skipped explicit attention to Alaska and Hawaii entirely, declaring them outliers but it does apply percentage behavior of the other 48 states to their economic output for a national guesstimate. It draws its example from Colorado’s ski resorts. Schmid, probably wisely, chose not to try to distill this into a paragraph or two.

The conclusion is that weather variability is costly, but not nearly as much as some earlier estimates held. It runs in this month’s Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The authors say they are trying to refine the analysis. The project is running mainly on National Science Foundation and Nati’l Oceanic and Atmospheric Adm. money.

So what? Such information, if refined and made reliable, must carry weight among people who think about long-range public and private investments in infrastructure and its maintenance. Land use planners too. I dunno. But I did find one angle all by myself of no manifest meaning yet diverting. This source here (Wikipedia with US Census backup) says that the mean US population center – where the nation would balance (all 50 states  if on a flat plate yet distributed sort of like it is on the globe and its only mass were people (of equal weight, one imagines), is a few miles northeast of Plato, Missouri. The state is middle America. And guess what. Missouri – as seen in that map up there plucked from the report -  is among states with the least weather-related economic variability! Hmmm. Tell that to the survivors in Joplin.(Incidentally, Tennessee ranks lowest in economic sensitivity to weather shifts, at 2.5 percent ups and downs).

I think I just composed a shaggy dog post.

Other Stories on NCAR’s Weather Expense Study:

• Christian Science Monitor- Wynne Parry: Weather is Costly – up to $243 billion a year ; This number is in a sense equivalent to the $485 billion prominent in the study. Parry takes half the mean fluctuation range – figuring the typical cost is at the midpoint of the average year-to-year fluctuations.
• Discovery News – John D. Cox: Routine Weather Costs U.S. $485 Billion ;
• Denver Post – Monte Whaley: Boulder scientists put a price tag on weather ; Whaley says tornado outbreaks, like those this year, are not included. Not this year’s, of course. But if not in general, how does one distinguish between extreme weather that is routine and that which is not? I cannot see in the report where it says extreme weather events are not included. Confusion R me.

Grist for the Mill: NCAR Press Release, Journal article ;

- Charlie Petit

White House Press Room, 1945, when reporters were easy to peg , bit.ly/mR0gQp

At the estimable specialty blog Embargo Watch, its top man Ivan Oransky turned over some space to UK scientist, journalist, and blogger Martin Robbins for a review of his adventures in embargoland’s Nature quadrant. Written in high-arch and varying degrees of devilish dudgeon, it is indirectly an argument why the traditional science journal embargo system – whereby editors tip off genuine journalists to upcoming treasures (their value inflated of course by the very embargo set up to protect them) – has become so precarious. It’s creaky for other reasons, but blogging is a major one.

Delicious all the way through. Incidentally, ksjtracker was tipped to this piece by a source employed by AAAS and by Science specifically – who hints but does not quite say that his employer’s policy on revealing embargoed material to bloggers is similarly furry around the margins.

Incidentally, while reading the above linked things, I noticed a recent post Robbins had at his regular blogging spot for the Guardian, Science is not my God / Are atheists hypocrites for condemning the faith of the religious, yet having an equally strong faith in the power of science. It’s worth chewing on. But I do see a problem that even Ludwig Wittgenstein might not be able to unravel. Religion is based on faith, yes. Can one however have faith in a discipline such as science that relies on doubt?  Can ‘faith’ (or trust, as Robbins suggests may be the better word) in science be equivalent to the faith of believers in the truth of sacred texts? I doubt it.

A few other, somewhat related bloggy items on new media and old ways of life, with science reporting in common:

• Knight Digital Media Center/News Leadership 3.0 – Amy Gahran: Social media is not the enemy of journalism, Pew report indicates ; This Pew report seems likely to get a lot of close reading in J-schools and the like. It’s linked in Gahran’s piece.
• Collide-a-Scape – Keith Kloor: The Media as Piñata ;
• Science2.0 – Alex “Sandy” Antunes: Many Futures For Science Writing ;

- Charlie Petit

Somehow this story bewitches the imagination, and inspires a snort or two too. The BBC‘s Jonathan Amos is, or was, at the Paris Air Show this week. There he reports that the European Space Agency just killed off Johannes Kepler after dispatching Jules Verne two years ago, and one learns via further research that ESA has Albert Einstein on the schedule for incineration too.

I can see naming long-lived space hardware, like orbiting observatories, after famous scientists. But a once-and-it’s-done cargo pod that takes stuff to the space station and then dives into the atmosphere over the Pacific with a load of trash on board? I think to name them for self-ignited, flamed out icons of pop might be a better idea – Elvis, Jimi, Janis, Sid….  Except one supposes the families and estate trustees would sue if one tried that.

One is not teasing Amos here. This reads like a good example of making do with the news at hand and adding some value, too, while nosing about at a meeting, convention, or as in this case, a huge trade show. He crisply summarizes what these ATVs or Automated Transfer Vehicles do (they are BIG, the size of deluxe Winnebagos), and digs up additional speculation from well-connected show goers about what kinds of further, practical vehicles might be doing business fairly soon in low Earth orbit and far, far beyond.

One of his sources beats around the bush, and also employs a turn of overphrasing I’d not seen before. The man’s not a native English speaker, and an astronaut, so maybe that’s why he popped out that “we’ve had two interface discussions.” Ah. Maybe Amos quoted that to be mischievous. I think his source meant they have met.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) The proportion of women in the scientific workforce is higher in Latin America (45.0%) than in Europe (33.9%). The data come from an extensive special report published today in SciDev (in Spanish and English), about gender barriers in Science. It’s more focused on Africa and Asia than Latin America, and it’s mainly based on opinion articles, but worth a look. Elsewhere in science news from Latin America – Genetic studies of  Uruguay’s native species of dog. Atacama desert attracts solar energy companies. Agriculture in central America might need to start adaptive measures for climate change. A reporter from Argentina who visited MIT last week writes a great story about memory. A study predicts that Europeans will suffer more heat strokes in the next decades and a silly headline says “In 2080 more Europeans will die during summer than in winter”. Great story in Cuba about molecular gastronomy, and the science behind the process of cooking. And finally, in Jornal do Brasil we found a statistical study suggesting that andropause and erectile dysfunction is not only caused by the decrease of testosterone levels after 40, it might be an important cause of divorce.

Aquí nos encanta la labor que hace SciDev reflexionando sobre la importancia de fomentar la ciencia en los países en desarrollo, su vinculación con la socieda, y dando a conocer sus “pequeños” avances que para ellos son grandes. Somos fans. Por eso cuando vimos el especial sobre ciencia y género nos lanzamos de cabeza a analizarlo. Pero nos dejó un poquito fríos. Bastantes artículos de opinión (ninguno sobre América Latina) y con pocas opiniones novedosas. Se puede leer un muy buen resumen de todas las piezas en la editorial de David Dickson and Jeanne Therese “Mujeres en la ciencia: un recurso aún sin explotar”. Allí vemos un dato significativo: hay más mujeres como mano de obra científica en Latinoamérica (45%) que en Europa (33,9%). La distribución no es toda igual, evidentemente. México y Chile tienen menor proporción de científicas (2 hombres por cada mujer).  Son datos extraídos de la pieza que sí es imprescindible: Jeanne Therese H. Andres “Superar barreras de género en ciencia: hechos y cifras”. Allí se aportan algunos datos, como un mapa con la distribución de científicas en el mundo, y muchos comentarios extensos sobre los diferentes ángulos del problema (mitos, educación, rol de las instituciones, barreras para avanzar en la carrera…). Muy buen trabajo, pero creemos que en este campo hay todavía más datos a utilizar.

Completemos con algunas notas de hoy. En El País (Uruguay), una interesante nota de Leticia Costa Delgado sobre estudios genéticos con cimarrones, una especie de perro autóctona de Uruguay. Leticia explica de manera muy clara la base científica con la que se desarrollan este tipo de estudios. Habla de marcadores moleculares, y de microsatélites, pero con tono muy didáctico. El interés de la investigadora en utilizarlos como modelo para estudios comparativos está un poco más coja, pero posiblemente porque las investigaciones originales también lo están todavía.

Titular ilustrativo en La Nación (Chile) por Victoria Martín Campos: “Desierto de Atacama tiene locos a empresarios de energía solar”. En realidad es una nota sobre una empresa que ha ganado un concurso convocado por el Banco Mundial. Pero estas notas que relacionan innovación, empresa y desarrollo económico en los medios de comunicación latinoamericanos cubren la gran función de transmitir a la sociedad esta importancia de invertir en CTI.

En La Nación (Argentina), Nöra Bar saca en “La capacidad de recordar nos permite imaginar el futuro” muy buen partido de su paso por el MIT en el seminario sobre neurociencia del KnightSJF. Interesante nota con uno de los más grandes expertos mundiales en el estudio de la memoria, e inteligente comentario sobre que el éxito del MIT no es sólo por recursos y buenas ideas, sino por esa persistencia y visión a largo plazo que a tantos gobiernos reclamamos.

El Periódico de Guatemala trata con mucha dedicación los asuntos medioambientales. Carlos Rigalt nos habla del agua y la preparación de Centroamérica ante el cambio climático. En La Nación (Paraguay) descubrimos que una nueva red adaptará agricultura en Centroamérica ante impacto del cambio climático. Tema interesantísimo a ser tratado en profundidad, y desde óptica crítica.

Quien sabe si viene de EFE o de La Tercera, pero titular “Científicos predicen que en el 2080 europeos morirán más en verano que en invierno”, tiene un punto absurdo copiar-pegar que resulta lamentable. Se refiere a aumento de golpes de calor por cambio climático, que significan un porcentaje ridículo de las causas de mortalidad.

Gran artículo en Público de Ainhoa Iriberri “Vacunas: manual de instrucciones para acabar con los mitos” sobre la manera de luchar contra los temores injustificados a las vacunas. Y trabajadísimo texto en Juventud Rebelde (Cuba) de René Tamayo León sobre el éxito de la cocina molecular, la relación de la ciencia con el arte culinario, y la comprensión científica de todo lo que rodea a la preparación e ingesta de alimentos.

Y de interés para gran parte de la humanidad, un estudio publicado en Jornal do Brasil y redactado por Luisa Bustamante sugiriendo que la andropausia masculina (ligada a la disfunción eréctil) puede ser la causa de muchos divorcios. La pérdida del 2% anual de testosterona a partir de la cuarentena está relacionada con la falta de líbido. Son datos del Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estadística. Sería interesante una comparativa con otros países.

- Pere Estupinyà

Partly this post arose from love for this piece of evocative, illustrative graphic cover art that New Scientist got from an outfit called AgencyRush. It might be called a torsle, the human figure equivalent of a wordle, devoted to rare earths and other arcane elements that hardly used to come up in conversation even among geeks, and many of which are in short supply to the high tech business.

It goes with a story by James Mitchell Crow with clean and polished prose, but no pyrotechnics and no resort to personal profiles to glue readers eyeballs to the page (not that there’s anything wrong with profiles, as pointed out here yesterday). It takes one on a rich tour of scarce and often funny-named residents of the periodic table that have become essential to modern gadgetry. My fave is dysprosium. Sounds like something out of a Coleridge fever dream.

New Scientist is getting stingy with its stories (for good reasons that we all know). For this one, if you’re not already registered, you must pass a border post that demands identification. Free access lasts only another five days, one gathers, and after that you must subscribe. This is explanatory science reporting that, if you’re like me, will fill a small but throbbing part of your brain that wanted to know a little more about these things, and more,  that China is so reluctant to export. And as it says, it’s a good thing we learned sooner rather than later to go find some of our own, make it from scratch, or to look into works-around if we cannot. That’s sort of like OPEC and embargoes and other things that send petroleum prices soaring. I’m one of those who think that every time some greedy cartel, natural catastrophe, or political ruction spikes the price of fossil energy it does the world a favor.

Other rare earths stories:

• Reuters – Michael Martina: China’s global share of rare earth production to drop: report ;
• Industrial Minerals (trade journal) Mark Watts: Heavy rare earth prices more than triple in three weeks ; Dyprosium included

- Charlie Petit

How time flies. I got lost in transit again, too much  scrivening over the next post down. But one cannot just ignore the nation’s long-leading newspaper science section, can one?   Here’s the whole thing.

But not quite that fast am I done. The front page has two sterling examples of the science story told through personal profile, complete with vignettes that haven’t a great deal to do with science but do flesh out the scientist and give life to the work.

• Nicholas Wade : In Tiny Worm, Unlocking Secrets of the Brain ; It’s on C. elegans and its implications for our own brains. The creature is a regular topic of science reporting. Wasn’t it Natalie Angier, back in the mid-90s, who wrote a masterful account of this little thing’s development from cell to multi-organ creature (and performed a feat of description that helped win her a Pulitzer)? Wade manages to avoid the cliche by sketching the career and personal life arc of one scientist doing extraordinarily tedious, conscientious work on the connections in its little brain.
• David Stout: Recomposing Life’s Deetails From Scraps ; Commercial TV watchers have seen it often on shows like CSI – the rendering of a dead person’s facial features by sculpting clay on to their skulls. Here’s an account of one of the master’s of the craft, with pathos too. It’s his last case.

- Charlie Petit

Source http://tinyurl.com/3fehlrx

A look this morning at the Associated Press feed revealed two breaking stories on oceans and their environmental status – and led to much more.

Seth Borenstein is writing on a new report for the UN that adds glum, urgent detail to an already widely shared and dismal conclusion. Marine life is entering a time of mass extirpation (including a lot of extinction). Temperatures keep going up, purse seines and bottom trawls keep going down, dead zones get wider, and the pH of the water trends ever closer to acid. Evidence of their effects, it says here, is accumulating surprisingly fast. Today’s ocean, one fears, is a goner.

Randolph E. Schmid reports that a Univ. of Pennsylvania group – working in the Sea Level Research Lab which is a hint the team has expertise – has gone through a mess of data and concluded that sea level is not only going up, but that the rate of rise for the last century sticks out from the previous two millennia like a ..a ..ah yes. The blade on a hockey stick. Yep, another hockey stick. Michael Mann is involved, too, if not tree rings and any so-called tricks of data-blending. The report, both a literature review for the globe with new data from the US Atlantic Coast, is in Proceedings of the Nat’l Academy of Sciences.

To little surprise, the news bursts hove into view first at AP but neither dispatch is a scoop.

1) Other Marine and Ocean Health Stories:

• Reuters – Tim Wimborne: Ocean life on the brink of mass extinctions: study ;
• Time Magazine – Bryan Walsh: A Scary Report Card on the World’s Oceans. The lede (its tone: again with this?) will resonate with environmental global change writers and a big part of their collective audience. Walsh’s piece is a cry of anger and despair. Best line, while describing a reason little will be done, : “…on the surface, a living sea and a dead one look much the same.”
• NYTimes (Green blog) David Jolly: Oceans Are at Dire Risk, Team of Scientists Warns ; Builds the report’s case by well-selected quotation of specific passages. As with most coverage, no hint in this piece that there are reasonably objective experts who might disagree with the report.
• Sydney Morning Herald – Ian Munro: Oceans face catastrophe, panel warns ;
• Forbes – Haydn Shaughnessy: Setting an Innovation Agenda for the Ocean: the Next Frontier for People Like Us ; This is an outlier, and interesting. Forbes is a conservative biz mag, Shaughnessy says he doesn’t believe in climate change. But he fully believes the oceans are sick. He knows his readers.  It’s a portrait of a guy trying to wrap his head around this problem (on behalf of ‘people like us’) while sticking with, one infers, his general world view that it’s hard and maybe wrong to compel the majority of people to do anything about anything bigger than themselves, even when it’s an emergency.
• Slate Magazine – Daniel Politi : Ocean Life Facing Mass Extinction / A number of threats could result in an unprecedented loss of species, according to a shocking report ;
• Guardian (UK) Fiona Harvey: ‘Shocking’ state of seas threatens mass extinction, say marine experts;
• Telegraph (UK) Louise Gray: World’s oceans move into ‘extinction phase’ ; Gray reports environmental worries straight. Readers of this right-leaning newspaper include many who don’t want to read them. The comments trend accordingly.
• BBC – Richard Black: World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline ;
• AFP  – Marlowe Hood (via Discovery News):  Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction / The recent fast global decline of ocean health points to a level of marine die-off similar to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum;
• Independent (UK) Michael McCarthy: Oceans on brink of catastrophe / Marine life facing mass extinction ‘within one human generation’ / State of seas ‘much worse than we thought’, says global panel of scientists;
• … much more, but must move on.

Mass Ocean Extinction Grist for the Mill:  Int’l Union for Cons. of Nature Press Release ; Full report.

2) Other Sea Level Rise Stories:

• USA Today – Wendy Koch: Fastest sea-level rise in 2,199 years linked to climate change ;
• Phil. Inqauirer – Sandy Bauers: Sea level rise on East Coast called fastest in last century ; One thinks the hed means to say it has been for the last century the fastest in a long time. One thinks it could have been composed more clearly. A question: Was the rate 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, as last ice age waned, faster or slower than this? One suspects faster, but not having time to look it up….   ???
• Telegraph (UK) Nick Collins: Sea levels rising at fastest rate in 2,000 years ; Yes, but paper only tries to go back 2000 miles for its new US data. So properly it ought to say at least 2,000.
• Spiegel Online – Marcus Becker: Sea Level Study Leads to Divisions ; The author phoned around and got other opinion that highlights pitfalls of extrapolating data from the US East Coast to the world. One of his sources does say, presumably because it is a tectonically quiet, trailing margin of a continental crust bordering a widening sea and mostly far from recent glaciation, the Penn authors chose about as good a single region to use as  global proxy that there is. Story’s strength is its examples of the dramatic differences tide gauges reveal worldwide of local sea level trends.
• Time Mag – Ecocentric blog: Tara Thean: Sea Levels in Norther Carolina – and elsewhere – Rising Fast ; Strong focus on the local, not global, implication of the data.
• Scotsman – John von Radowitz: Global warming alert as sea level rise said to be fastest rate for 2,100 years ;
• … lots more out there.

Sea Level Grist for the Mill:  Full PNAS paper ; Penn Press Release ;

3) One Story: Are climate worriers up to their old tricks? One news outlets this week ran a story on suspicion that sea level rise data – not that in the Penn study – was doctored and thus exaggerated by University of Colorado researchers. The latter added a fudge factor (which does not mean the same as a lie or sleight of hand) to tide gauge data in order to compensate for effects of post-glacial rebound on ocean volume. It got quick reaction from a watchdog organization.

• Fox News – Maxim Lott: Changing Tides: Research Center Under Fire for ‘Adjusted’ Sea-Level Data ; The lede: Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued – or are climate scientists doctoring the data? Poor old Al. If one has quarrels with the science, why keep bringing up an earnest politician as its lead spokesman (and designated pinata)  rather than genuine experts? Aside from being a lot more meaningfully correct than occasionally wrong, Gore is, after all, just another former newspaperman trying to do his best at translation of specialty info. He did mix up, once or twice, the ultimate equilibrium sea level with how far it might get in this century. But his general thesis did not depend on that flub. Poor old Al.
• Media Matters – Simon Maloy: Climate Science Takes Another Spin Through The Fox Cycle ;

Climate Data Doctoring Grist for the Mill: Forbes Magazine blog op-ed post by Heartland Institute senior fellow.

- Charlie Petit

A special feature at Yale E360, the non-profit, university-based outlet for environmental journalism and think pieces, got some extra circulation in the last few days. The story by Rhett Butler – founder of the Mongabay.com outlet for tropical forest news – relates a surprise conclusion. It is that palm oil plantations, favorite piñatas of activists and environmental scientists concerned by lost of old growth forest in Malaysia, Indonesia, and other nearby areas of the far western Pacific, could be the sort-of good guys in the Amazon Basin. (Source for pic, and for additional info)

Notable is that Reuters picked up the story from e360 and circulated it worldwide.

The arguments are complex and largely hypothetical, and are worth reading for yourself. But the short version is that they are a better alternative to the agricultural threat now clear-cutting and burning out so much Amazon acreage: cattle ranching. The argument is that, with higher potential profit margins, the oil palms could drive the cattle rancher to turn into biofuel producers. Unclear is whether it would simply add a new deforestation threat without eliminating the older and worse one.

Related  forest news:

• AFP via Brisbane Times: Trees for crops ‘will not halt warming.’ ; What it really is about is whether afforestation, as it is called among wonks, will simply slow it down. And the answer is still no, or not very much at all.
• PostMedia via Vancouver Sun – Margaret Munro: Planting trees ‘no magic bullet’ for climate change / Research finds benefits marginal, especially in northern climes ;

- Charlie Petit

There he  is, SpongeBob Squarepants, at number eight and the highest ranked show with deep intellectual satisfaction on the New York Time’s list of top cable TV programs (after some iParty shows, Nascar, pawn stars and pickers).

With such celebrity, it is no wonder that a June 15 San Francisco State University press release caught on. It distributed word that in the journal Mycologia an SFSU professor and colleagues from UC Berkeley and the University of Minnesota have discovered a new, orange puffball of a  fungus in Borneo and named it Spongiforma squarepantsii. The gist is that it’s a mushroom that has lost its stem.  It has the build of a sponge (and when dessicated even sops up water and can be wrung out but it remains undeclared whether one can wash the dishes with one). Living in the Malaysian district of Sarawak on Borneo, It is the second one known of its genus – the other also pretty new to science and a native to Thailand on the Asian mainland nation. Also that journal editors dragged their feet before permitting such a reference to silly pop-culture in a name being proffered for formal scientific status. Its spore-sporting tissues, says here, look a little like the dwelling-dotted subsea community that animators rendered as SpongeBob’s home.

Stories:

• San Francisco Chronicle – David Perlman: SpongeBob, the mushroom, discovered in Borneo ; Story’s out today. But Perlman notes he interviewed one of the scientists Thursday last – so that is pretty fast off the mark, press release date-wise.
• LiveScience – Meet SpongeBob Mushroom, a Funky New Fungus ;
• Gizmodo – Kwame Opam: There Is An Actual Spongebob Squarepants. And It’s A Fungus. The source for the story – all of two paragraphs -  is listed as MSNBC, where in turn one finds the LiveScience version. So, one asks… why a byline?
• National Geographic – Christine Dell’Amore: Weird & Wild: “Spongebob” Mushroom Names ;

Grist for the Mill: SFSU Press Release, Journal article abstract,

- Charlie Petit