Preposterous Guru

Renewable Nanophilosophy
 

Does Dark Matter? Scientists On Verge of Breakthrough

For 80 years, it has eluded the finest minds in science. But tonight it appeared that the hunt may be over for dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that accounts for three-quarters of the mass of the universe.

In a series of coordinated announcements at several US laboratories, researchers said they believed they had captured dark matter in a defunct iron ore mine half a mile underground. The claim, if confirmed next year, will rank as one the most spectacular discoveries in physics in the past century.

Tantalising glimpses of dark matter particles were picked up by highly sensitive detectors at the bottom of the Soudan mine in Minnesota, the scientists said.

Dan Bauer, head of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), said the group had spotted two particles with all the expected characteristics of dark matter. There is a one in four chance that the result is due to some other effect in the underground detectors, Bauer told a seminar at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago.

Rumours that Bauer's group was on the verge of making an announcement surfaced on physicists' blogs a few weeks ago. Though tentative, tonight's results triggered an immediate wave of excitement in the science community.

"If they have a real signal, it's a seriously big deal. The scale on which people are looking for dark matter is vast," said Gerry Gilmore at Cambridge University's institute of astronomy. "Dark matter is what created the structure of the universe and is essentially what holds it together. When ordinary matter falls into lumps of dark matter it turns into galaxies, stars, planets and people. Without it, we wouldn't be here," Gilmore said.

(Guardian - full article)

Posted December 17, 2009
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Acid Ocean Facts

1. Up to one half of the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by the world's oceans

2. Absorbed CO2 in seawater (H2O) forms carbonic acid (H2CO3), lowering the water's pH level and making it more acidic

3. This raises the hydrogen ion concentration in the water, and limits organisms' access to carbonate ions, which are needed to form hard parts

Up to 50% of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels over the past 200 years has been absorbed by the world's oceans

This has lowered the pH value of seawater - the measure of acidity and alkalinity - by 0.1

The vast majority of liquids lie between pH 0 (very acidic) and pH 14 (very alkaline); 7 is neutral

Seawater is mildly alkaline with a "natural" pH of about 8.2

The IPCC forecasts that ocean pH will fall by "between 0.14 and 0.35 units over the 21st Century, adding to the present fall of 0.1 units since pre-industrial times"

In September, the UN-backed study into The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb) concluded that the widely-endorsed target of trying to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 or their equivalent to around 450 parts per million (ppm) would prove lethal to much of the world's coral.

"Unlike global warming, which can manifest itself in nuanced, complex ways, the science of ocean acidification is unambiguous," said Andrew Dickson, a Scripps professor of marine chemistry.

"The chemical reactions that take place as increasing amounts of carbon dioxide are introduced to seawater have been established for nearly a century."

SCRIPPS Institution of Oceanography

(BBC - full article)

Posted December 13, 2009
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Food Shortages Will Produce Social Unrest - UK Chief Scientist

A "perfect storm" of food shortages and water scarcity now threatens to unleash public unrest and conflict in the next 20 years, the government's chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, has warned, with climate change and crop and animal diseases adding to future woes.

In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive, just as the nation's farmers start to feel the impact of disrupted rainfall and rising temperatures caused by climate change. "If we don't address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move to avoid food and water shortages," he told a conference earlier this year.

Over the next 40 years Britain's population will rise from 60 to 75 million while the world's will leap from 6.8 to 9 billion. Feeding all these people will stretch human ingenuity to its limit. Crop yields will have to jump, a goal that will have to be achieved in the middle of global climatic disruption. At the same time, farmers will find many aids - in particular, chemical fertilisers - that they have come to rely on will no longer be available .

"People do not quite realise the scale of the issue," added Bevan. "This is one of the most serious problems that science has ever faced." In Britain the lives of hundreds of thousands of people will be threatened by food shortages. Across the globe, tens of millions - if not hundreds of millions - will be affected.

"About 40% of crops in Britain are vulnerable to destruction by weeds, fungi and insects," added Dr Tom Hooper, another Rothamsted researcher. "We have got to find sustainable ways to prevent that from happening if we want to maintain and increase food production in future."

BBSRC: www.foodsecurity.ac.uk

(The Observer - full article)

Posted December 13, 2009
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Eco-lights - Nice But Dim?

Think those compact fluorescent bulbs are not as bright as the old-style lights they replaced? You are probably not imagining it.

A guide to the amount of light given by a CFL bulb is given on its box as a comparison to the wattage of an incandescent bulb. But the European Commission says in a FAQ document this can be misleading.

"Currently, exaggerated claims are often made on the packaging about the light output of compact fluorescent lamps - for example that an 11-12-watt compact fluorescent lamp would be the equivalent of a 60-watt incandescent, which is not true."

Brightness varies as conditions change. "A compact fluorescent light is designed to provide maximum light output at 25C, and when it gets hotter or colder than that, its brightness can be reduced. If your bulb is in a recessed fixture in the ceiling, and it gets warm, you might see a 10-20% reduction in its light output."

And studies show CFL bulbs can get 20% dimmer over time.
New European regulations expected next year mean manufacturers will have to display lumens - a measure of light output - more prominently than wattage on bulb packaging.

(BBC - full article)

Posted December 11, 2009
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William Blake and Isaac Newton in Copenhagen

As we paid a visit to the memorial of the extraordinary artist and poet William Blake in Bunhill Row, London, my friend and I met a young scholar who there for similar purpose. It turned out he had written a thesis on Blake. We chatted about Blake's regard for nature, and his attitude to it, and I mentioned Isaac Newton.

The gentlemen reminded me of this picture:

Blake depicts Newton studying the known universe, surrounded by the vast unknown. He forms a triangle, as he makes a triangle. His focus is on what is directly in front of him, to the exclusion of all else.

Blake did not romanticise nature, but he believed that without the necessary balance of the spiritual, humanity was merely a slave to reason.

Let's not forget, as in Copenhagen our politicians try to begin to solve the problems brought upon us over generations, that:

"The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself." - William Blake.

Posted December 7, 2009
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Antarctic Ice Will Raise Sea Levels 1.4m Globally

Sea levels are likely to rise by about 1.4m (4ft 6in) globally by 2100 as polar ice melts, according to a major review of climate change in Antarctica.
Conducted by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), it says that warming seas are accelerating melting in the west of the continent. Ozone loss has cooled the region, it says, shielding it from global warming.

Rising temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula are making life suitable for invasive species on land and sea.

The report - Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment - was written using contributions from 100 leading scientists in various disciplines, and reviewed by a further 200.

SCAR's executive director Dr Colin Summerhayes said it painted a picture of "the creeping global catastrophe that we face".

"The temperature of the air is increasing, the temperature of the ocean is increasing, sea levels are rising - and the Sun appears to have very little influence on what we see," he said.

(BBC)

Posted December 1, 2009
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Methane: The Other Greenhouse Gas

As the world struggles to make political sense of collective environmental guardianship, with so much focus on carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuels, very little attention is being to methane. Yet, methane has a much greater impact on global warming than previously thought. As a greenhouse gas, it is thirty three times more damaging than CO2.

In September 2008, Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) unpopularly called on populations to curb their meat eating habits, for reasons of habitat loss, since carbon-storing forests are destroyed to provide land for grazing meat animals, as well as methane production from the animals themselves.

"The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat production account for about 18% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

Australian scientists have now said they are hoping to breed sheep that burp less as part of efforts to tackle climate change. The scientists have been trying to identify a genetic link that causes some sheep to belch less than others.

Burping is a far greater cause of emissions in sheep than flatulence, they say.

About 16% of Australia's greenhouse emissions come from agriculture, says the department of climate change.

Australia's Sheep Cooperative Research Council says 66% of agricultural emissions are released as methane from the gut of livestock.

"Ninety per cent of the methane that sheep and cattle and goats produce comes from the rumen, and that's burped out," John Goopy from the New South Wales Department of Industry and Investment told ABC.

"Not much goes behind - that's horses." (BBC)

As the world warms, "locked up" methane is being released into the atmosphere and the oceans.

A 2006 study of the thawing Siberian tundra found that

"...thawing permafrost along lake margins accounts for most of the methane released from the lakes, and estimate that an expansion of thaw lakes between 1974 and 2000, which was concurrent with regional warming, increased methane emissions in our study region by 58 per cent. Furthermore, the Pleistocene age (35,260-42,900 years) of methane emitted from hotspots along thawing lake margins indicates that this positive feedback to climate warming has led to the release of old carbon stocks previously stored in permafrost."
British and German scientists have found methane seeping from the Arctic sea bed.

Most of the methane reacts with the oxygen in the water to form carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas. In sea water, this forms carbonic acid which adds to ocean acidification, with consequent problems for biodiversity.

Professor Tim Minshull of the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton told BBC News: "We already knew there was some methane hydrate in the ocean off Spitsbergen and that's an area where climate change is happening rather faster than just about anywhere else in the world."

Their most significant finding is that climate change means the gas is being released from more and deeper areas of the Arctic Ocean.

Graham Westbrook, lead author and professor of geophysics at the University of Birmingham, said: "If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of megatonnes of methane a year - equivalent to 5-10% of the total amount released globally by natural sources, could be released into the ocean."

Posted November 29, 2009
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Next Ten Years Will Be Warmer Than Ever, says Met Office

At least half the years in the next decade will be warmer than the previous record year for global temperatures and next year could be the warmest to date, according to the Met Office.

The weather forecaster said there is a 50 per cent chance that the world average temperature in 2010 will be warmer than in 1998, which is the warmest on record in the Met Office's 160 years of data.

The Met Office's Hadley Centre announced its predictions as a separate scientific analysis showed that previous estimates about the rate of temperature rise had been too low. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said the planet could warm by 7C (10.8F). The increase would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable.

The Met Office also predicted that temperatures could reach 7C above pre-industrial levels by 2100 if emissions carried on rising at the present rate of between 2 per cent and 3 per cent a year.

It said that global emissions would have to peak in 2016 and then fall at 4 per cent a year for decades if the world were to have a reasonable chance of limiting the increase to 2C.

The Earth's temperature has risen by 0.75C over the past century and every year from 2001 has been in the top 11 warmest on record.

(Times)

Posted November 25, 2009
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Acid oceans leave fish at more risk from predators

Ocean acidification could cause fish to become "fatally attracted" to their predators, according to scientists.

A team studying the effects of acidification - caused by dissolved CO2 - on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to "smell danger".

Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.

The findings were published in the journal Ecology Letters.

Danielle Dixson from James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, led the study.

 "Ocean acidification has the potential to become a widespread problem and it's unknown how many organisms and ecosystems will cope with the decrease [in] pH.

"This study shows that ocean acidification could lead to an increase in the mortality of larvae."

(BBC)

Posted November 24, 2009
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Biodiversity Loss Masked by Focus on Climate

Problem of biodiversity loss has been 'eased off centre stage' by focus on climate change, according to Prof Edward Wilson, the ecologist described as 'Darwin's natural heir'.

The diversity of life on Earth is undergoing an "immense and hidden" tragedy that requires the scale of global response now being deployed to tackle climate change, according to one of the world's most eminent biologists.

Prof Edward Wilson, an ecologist who has been described as "Darwin's natural heir" and hailed by novelist Ian McEwan as an "intellectual hero" and "inspirational" writer, told the Guardian that the threat was so grave he is pushing for the creation of an international body of experts modelled on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC, which is credited with convincing world leaders that the threat from climate change is real, includes about 2,500 scientific expert reviewers from more than 130 countries and was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2007 along with Al Gore. Wilson's proposed organisation - which he names the Barometer of Life - would report to governments on the threats posed to species around the world.

Wilson said the problem of biodiversity loss had been "eased off centre stage" because of the focus on climate change.

"We don't hear as much public concern, protestation and plans by political leaders to save the living environment. It doesn't get anything like the attention the physical environment has," he said.

Since the beginning of the last century, 183 species are known to have become extinct, including the Tasmanian tiger, the Caribbean monk seal and the toolache wallaby. But this number is a gross underestimate of the true number of extinctions, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature species programme.

(Guardian - read more)

Posted November 20, 2009
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