Front Ears of Science
1. Missing- Link Republicans
For weeks, Washington has been atwitter with rumors that researchers from the American Association for the Advancement of Science had confirmed the existence of UFOs, Bigfoot, the Yeti, and a Republican scientist.
Turns out it’s all true — except for the Republican scientist.
In the normally staid, dry, technical environment of the AAAS journal, Science, Robert White last week loosed a blistering indictment of Republican anti-science which, he pointed out, “isn’t Republican, isn’t science, and doesn’t work.”
Says White: “Science has disappeared from Republican policy and rhetoric over the past 8 years. It is now almost radical for a Republican to fight for an evidence-based policy process that has not been distorted by political ideology.”
He noted that large groups of scientists had backed Barack Obama during the election campaign, and “an astonishing 76 Nobel Laureates signed a letter endorsing him.”
Meanwhile, the editors of Science found it nearly impossible to locate a McCain spokesperson ready to talk about science.
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2. Adventures in Zoology
Project Ursa Major at Slippery Rock University (aka Teachers College) has closed its doors for lack of funding. Zoologists connected with the effort said they were probably within three years of finding definitive proof for the existence of the Giant Panda.
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3. Engineers Gone Wild
Since human enterprise warms the earth, then surely human enterprise can cool it. So goes the mantra of geo-engineering, the embryonic science of the biggest toys ever conceived (the engineer’s holy grail).
A sampling of their Faustian bargains:
(for more details see the Jan. 21 Economist.)
1. A giant space-borne parasol to shade the earth from the sun. Jor El’s umbrella.
2. TWO giant space-borne umbrellas — so from the moon it would look like the earth is wearing sunglasses. (Actually, we made that one up.)
3. Filling the stratosphere with reflective sulfate particles (or glitter?) to bounce the sunshine back into space.
4. Dumping iron in the oceans to trigger immense blooms of phytoplankton that would consume carbon dioxide. (And suck up all the local oxygen, which would kill every other living thing in the vicinity.)
5. Creating cloud formations over the ocean by spraying seawater into the air. (But who will train the whales?)
So far, none look particularly effective except the space umbrella, and even that, they estimate, would have to be at least half the size of Brazil to do much good.
Assembling such a contraption in space could be tricky, but we figure Totes could be hired to assemble it on the ground and then just punch the button.
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4. Krypton on Ice
WARNING TO SUPERMAN: SKIP THIS ITEM
How do you take the temperature of the earth’s oceans as of 18,000 years ago?
Simple, says paleoclimatologist Melissa Headley. She and her colleagues took a chunk of an ice core drilling from that era and measured its krypton and xenon gas contents.
The amount of these inert gases in the ocean and atmosphere remains very stable over time. But the amount that dissolves in water — thus preserves in ice — depends on how warm or cold the water is. So to determine the temperature, just measure the quantity of krypton and xenon.
Elementary, my dear flotsam.
But doesn’t water always freeze at 32 degrees?
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5. Flour Jar Theory
If you put two species of ladybugs into a jar filled with aphids, stands to reason one species will soon be outcompeted and then extinct — at least in the world inside the jar. As Darwin said, one bitch per niche.
But a new mathematical model presented at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington shows how competing species can sometimes coexist. And, in fact, some experiments done in the 1960s — putting different species of flour beetles into jars of flour — have puzzled researchers ever since because in some cases both species flourished for as long as 30 generations.
To account for this, the math model includes equations for subtle evolutionary changes.
Surely, there’s a better use for mathematics. And for flour.
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6. The Periwinkle Paradox
“It is not good to think about coral reefs as epitomizing all issues of acidification,” marine biologist Donald Potts told a scientific meeting last week.
We were glad to hear that because it’s something we never do here at Front Ears. It’s in our mission statement.
The underlying point is that increasing levels of carbon dioxide not only raise temperatures but also cause acidification of the oceans. And that would mean that not only corals but all kinds of calcifying organisms would have trouble building their structures or shells.
In lab experiments, a team from the University of North Carolina showed that periwinkles, oysters, and urchins formed less calcium carbonate under acidic conditions.
But there are exceptions to prove the rule. An American lobster, a blue crab, and one species of mussel actually formed thicker shells even under severe acidification.
Why would anyone say that an exception proves a rule? You would think an exception would DISprove a rule, wouldn’t you?
See, that’s where you’re wrong.
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7. A Martian Ocean – Down the Drain
Scientists searching for water on Mars have had some tantalizing news lately — even a wisp of ice on one of the landers — but the big one got away.
The famous Frozen Sea — presumed to be dirt-covered ice — was just revealed by radar probes to consist not of ice but of lava.
There goes that theory. The Martini must be named after something else.
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8. It’s Not Easy Being Greenland
You can call someone a slowpoke or a sloth or even a slug, but if you’re reaching for the image of the slowest thing on earth, you think of glaciers. “Glacial” was always the extreme creepword in the English language — until about 10 years ago, when two of Greenland’s biggest outlet glaciers suddenly accelerated.
Outlet glaciers are like the tongues of an ice sheet, extending out into the sea and calving off icebergs. (Never mind. Global Warming is not caused by mixed metaphors.) In normal times, Greenland’s leading edges have typically advanced by 13 meters a day, but early this decade that rate tripled to 36 meters a day, and doomsday loomed.
If the entire mass of Greenland’s ice were to melt, it would raise the level of earth’s oceans by 24 feet. There go most of the world’s coastal cities, hundreds of its islands, and entire countries like Tuvalu and the Maldives. Greenland itself would be revealed as an archipelago.
Well guess what. Doomsday has been postponed.
At the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, various papers and surveys agreed: Greenland’s outlet glacier flows have abated to 2000 levels.
We don’t know why it started. We don’t know why it stopped. We do know that there have been 17 ice ages in the past two million years, and the next one is about due.
So forget the Super Bowl. The battle of the millennium will be Global Warming vs. the Ice Age.
If you manage to live a few hundred years longer, remember to build an ark — 50 cubits long, 30 cubits wide, and equipped with optional sled runners.
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