Dolphins recognize themselves in mirrors, act very silly

CNN's Randi Kaye goes down in an underwater lab to see how dolphins react to themselves in a mirror.

[Randi Kaye  observes that dolphins’ "high levels of intelligence are, in many ways, much like our own,” and she asks scientist Diana Reiss , “If that's true, what does that tell us?"

It tells us that dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'. Ethically and legally, slaughtering them in such places as Taiji and the Faroes should be considered murder.]

Dolphins see themselves in mirror

Technorati Tags: marine mammal,dolphin

World mayors sign climate change pact

Mexico City (AFP) Nov 21, 2010 - Mayors from around the world signed a voluntary pact in Mexico City on Sunday to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a meeting meant as a precursor to next week's s UN-sponsored talks in Cancun.

The gathering in one of the world's most polluted cities assembled some 3,000 local and regional leaders to discuss a wide range of economic and social issues, including climate change.

Participants from some 135 cities and urban areas signed a pact committing them to adopt a slate of measures to stem climate change.

The pact will be presented at next week's UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico from November 29-December 10.

Top climate scientists from around the world hope in Cancun to break the deadlock on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and channeling aid to poor, vulnerable countries after the widely regarded failure of the last climate summit in Copenhagen.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, the current president of the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), opened the mayoral gathering, set to last four days.

"We have to tell the international community that it's in the cities that the battle to slow global warming will be won," Ebrard said in the lead-up to the meeting. …

World mayors sign climate change pact

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

The CRU Hack: One year later

By Gavin Schmidt
20 November 2010

I woke up on Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 completely unaware of what was about to unfold. I tried to log in to RealClimate, but for some reason my login did not work. Neither did the admin login. I logged in to the back-end via ssh, only to be inexplicably logged out again. I did it again. No dice. I then called the hosting company and told them to take us offline until I could see what was going on. When I did get control back from the hacker (and hacker it was), there was a large uploaded file on our server, and a draft post ready to go announcing the theft of the CRU emails. And so it began.

From that Friday, and for about 3 weeks afterward, we were drafted into the biggest context-setting exercise we’d ever been involved in. What was the story with Soon and Baliunas? What is the difference between tree ring density and tree ring width? What papers were being discussed in email X? What was Trenberth talking about? Or Wigley? Or Briffa or Jones? Who were any of this people anyway? The very specificity of the emails meant that it was hard for the broader scientific community to add informed comment, and so the burden on the people directly involved was high.

The posts we put up initially are still valid today – and the 1000’s of comment stand as testimony to the contemporary fervour of the conversation:

• The CRU Hack
• The CRU Hack: Context
• Where’s the Data?
• The CRU Hack: More Context

I think we did pretty well considering – no other site, nor set of scientists (not even at UEA) provided so much of the background to counter the inevitable misinterpretations that starting immediately spreading. While some commentators were predicting resignations, retractions and criminal charges, we noted that there had not been any scientific misconduct, and predicted that this is what the inquiries would find and that the science would not be affected. (Note, the most thorough inquiry, and one that will have to withstand judicial review, is the one by EPA which, strangely enough, has barely been discussed in the blogosphere). …

One year later

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change

All viruses ‘can be DNA stowaways’

(PhysOrg.com) -- 'Fossil viruses' preserved inside the DNA of mammals and insects suggest that all viruses, including relatives of HIV and Ebola, could potentially be ‘stowaways’ transmitted from generation to generation for millions of years, according to new research.

A team from Oxford University and the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center built on earlier work at Oxford that discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient HIV-like virus in the genomes of animals including sloths, lemurs and rabbits.

The team’s new research, reported in this week’s PLoS Genetics, shows that many more different types of viruses are endogenous – capable of being transmitted from generation to generation – with ‘fossil viruses’ turning up in the genomes of creatures as different as mosquitoes, wallabies, and humans.

‘Many of these viruses, such as the ancestors of Ebola, are far more ancient and spread across many more animal groups than anyone ever suspected,’ said Dr Aris Katzourakis of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, an author of the report. ‘We’ve demonstrated that viruses have been integrating within animal genomes for at least 100 million years.’

‘We’ve also shown that, in some cases, viral genes have been domesticated by their hosts, and put to use by the hosts for their own purposes, demonstrating that captured viral sequences may have played a larger than expected role in animal evolution.’ …

All viruses 'can be DNA stowaways'

Technorati Tags: evolutionary biology

The tortoise and the solar plant

By Sarah McBride
October 30, 2010

Mercy Vaughn crouches over a young tortoise peeking out from its burrow near a creosote bush in California's Mojave Desert.

The area is home to rare species, including the threatened desert tortoise. But a giant solar plant is under construction in the vast wilderness area.

To help save the animal, the company building the plant, BrightSource Energy, had to agree to a lot of conditions, including reptile relocation.

Vaughn, a biologist from Texas, and her colleague Peter Woodman are leading a team of 50 biologists hired to survey the site over and over before construction begins. They have to keep track of every single tortoise.

"This is one that was walking down the middle of the road when it was spotted by one of the monitors," Woodman says. "Luckily, we've got a radio transmitter on it now."

He's looking at an adult female tortoise; she's about the size of a dinner plate, and the transmitter is glued to her shell. It almost looks like a stray twig. …

The tortoises can't stay where construction crews might harm them, so the biologists are moving them to pens to ride out the desert winter. In the spring, they'll try relocating them to the wild.

BrightSource is spending more than $40 million to protect plants and wildlife. That includes buying acres of land to keep as nature preserves. …

The Tortoise And The Solar Plant: A Mojave Story

Technorati Tags: solar power,California,conservation

Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming denialists

[It’s about time. –Jim]

The American Geophysical Union plans to announce that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the issue. Other scientists plan a pushback against congressional conservatives who have vowed to kill regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

By Neela Banerjee, Tribune Washington Bureau
November 8, 2010

Reporting from Washington —
Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in Tuesday's election.

On Monday, the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists, plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.

John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, who last May wrote a widely disseminated response to climate change skeptics, is also pulling together a "climate rapid response team," which includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.

"This group feels strongly that science and politics can't be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists," said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

"We are taking the fight to them because we are … tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed."

During the recent campaigns, skepticism about climate change became a rallying cry for many Republican candidates. Of the more than 100 new GOP members of Congress, 50% are climate change skeptics, according to an analysis of campaign statements by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. …

Climate scientists plan campaign against global warming skeptics via Wit’s End

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,activism

Californians defy oil industry to save climate law

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Wednesday 3 November 2010 at 11:30:00

Proposition 23 defeated as voters back climate change laws, despite multimillion-dollar campaign from oil giants

California yesterday retained its position as one of the global leaders in clean technology and climate change policy, after voters rejected a proposition that would have indefinitely suspended the state's flagship climate change bill.

With results from 48 precincts having been reported, "no" votes against Proposition 23 stood at 59 per cent, representing a significant victory for green campaigners including Bill Gates, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Avatar director James Cameron, as well as current state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Michael Eckhart, president of trade group the American Council on Renewable Energy, told Reuters: "This is reaffirmation that we are a country of some enlightenment. A majority of Californians, even in great stress of unemployment and economic demise, will still accept this responsibility. Rejecting an attempt to destroy the environment is a good thing. "

Prop 23 would have suspended the state's AB 32 law until unemployment fell to 5.5 per cent or less for four straight quarters.

Commentators argued that the move would have effectively scrapped the legislation altogether as the state's current unemployment rate is running at over 10 per cent and has dipped below 5.5 per cent for only two short periods in the last 20 years.

The vote means that California will retain its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, ensuring a third of the state's electricity comes from renewable sources by the same date and launching a regional emissions trading scheme.

The vote represents a major victory for green businesses and environmental groups after Republican politicians and out-of-state oil companies waged a high-profile campaign in favour of Prop 23, spending millions on TV ads in support of the proposition. …

Californians defy oil industry to save climate law

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,California

R.I.P. Benoît Mandelbrot

It’s with great sadness that I read about the passing of Benoît B. Mandelbrot, renowned as the Father of Fractal Geometry. He taught me more about the universe than any other individual.

I first read about fractal geometry in the late ‘70s, probably in Scientific American or Byte magazine, and this inspired me to program my Exidy Sorcerer to generate Mandelbrot Set images.

The Exidy Sorcerer personal computer, 1978–1980.

Lest we forget, that machine had a Zilog Z80 processor running at 2 MHz, with 8 kilobytes of RAM (expandable to 32K); it took many minutes to generate a small monochrome view that was 100x100 pixels. 

Old-skool monochrome Mandelbrot Set, circa 1979.

My fascination with fractals endured throughout the ‘80s – my final project in my Digital Systems class (6.111) was an EPROM / microcode implementation of  a Mandelbrot Set engine. It could generate a 256x256 image in a minute or two.

Old-skool 256-color Mandelbrot Set, circa 1986.

As a senior in 1987, I was fortunate to attend a lecture by Professor Mandelbrot in the venerable room 10-250. He was charming, self-effacing, and spoke with a clarity that elicited little bursts of illumination in my brain.

The late ‘80s saw a wave of interest in fractal geometry, both in the scientific and popular literature. One of the best books to emerge was Michael Barnsley’s Fractals Everywhere, which brought a mathematical rigor to the subject that was accessible to dilettantes like me.

Fractals Everywhere, by Michael Barnsley, 1988.

This book inspired me to do a bit of analysis myself, so I persuaded my employer at the time (Boeing) to let me roam the company looking for chaotic dynamics in various data sets. It was a lot of fun, and I got a paper and a conference trip to New Orleans out of it.

My second encounter with Professor Mandelbrot was in 2004, when he gave a presentation to Microsoft Research, discussing his work in applying multifractal analysis to market data. With devastating efficiency, he eviscerated Black-Shoales and the underpinnings of portfolio theory (hint: market data are not IID). I suspect that he was not surprised by the global financial collapse of 2008.

The (Mis)behavior of Markets, by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard L. Hudson, 2004.

Today, chaos theory and fractal geometry drift in and out of my career, with fun diversions like this generative architecture project:

Gennaro Senatore: Morphogenesis of Spatial Configurations, 2009.

Here’s a quick phase-space reconstruction of 100,000 millenia of simulated insolation on Summer Solstice at 65N latitude.

Poincaré map for 100 million years of Earth’s wiggles.

Benoît Mandelbrot’s work has formed the background for my entire adult life. Maybe he’ll receive a posthumous Nobel Prize.  The man who gave us this certainly deserves it:

Partial view of the Mandelbrot set, by Wolfgang Beyer with the program Ultra Fractal 3.

Thank you, Benoît Mandelbrot.

Technorati Tags: fractal,chaos

Why did Google bet $1 million on Shweeb?

By Kyle Almond, CNN
October 12, 2010 8:59 a.m. EDT | Filed under: Innovation

(CNN) -- Living in Tokyo, Japan, during the late '90s, Geoffrey Barnett found it extremely difficult -- even dangerous -- to ride his bicycle to work every day.

"The traffic is incredible, and there's so much pollution," said Barnett, an Australian who worked in the city as an English teacher.

His students shared his frustration, and they would often talk about Tokyo's jam-packed streets during class.

"It was always a topic of discussion that motivated the students to talk, because it was a part of their life as well," Barnett recalled.

Out of those frequent discussions evolved Barnett's idea for Shweeb, a system of personal, pedal-powered monorail pods that he hopes can one day become an alternative form of urban transit. With Shweeb, pods hang from an elevated track that, theoretically, would stretch to destinations throughout a city.

"Cumbersome, jammed-up cities of today should be rendered into completely accessible worlds once you've got a way to shoot over the traffic," said Barnett, who derived the name Shweeb from the German word "schweben," which means to hang, hover or float. He left Tokyo in 2000 to design a prototype.

Barnett's vision received a significant boost last month when Google awarded Shweeb $1 million for research and development. Shweeb was one of five winners of Project 10^100, Google's "call for ideas to change the world." …

Why did Google bet $1 million on Shweeb?

Technorati Tags: transportation

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

By George Altman, Press-Register
Monday, October 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.

Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.

Although the surface of Gulf waters and shores appears to have escaped a worst-case scenario, they say the program is still doing good.

“Had we done nothing and then the worst would have happened, where would we be?” said Alabama State Conservationist William Puckett. …

Homer Wilkes, state conservationist for Mississippi, said that the “ounce of prevention” represented by the program is far better than the “pound of cure” that would have been required had birds been limited to oiled marshes. …

Puckett said that regardless of the program’s initial spill-related mission, new places for migratory birds to rest are beneficial. “The positive is, we did create thousands and thousands of acres of additional bird habitat,” he said. …

After oil spill, Alabama, Mississippi landowners paid to create artificial marshes

Technorati Tags: wetland,oil spill,oil production,environmental restoration,bird decline,agriculture

Cuccinelli goes fishing again: Virginia AG revives witch hunt against climate scientist

— RealClimate @ 4 October 2010

In keeping with our role as a site that tries to deal with the science of climate change rather than the politics, we have specifically refrained from commenting on various politically-motivated legal shenanigans relating to climate science. Some of them have involved us directly, but we didn’t (don’t) want to have RC become just a blog about us. However, the latest move by Ken Cuccinelli, the Attorney General of Virginia, against Mike Mann and UVa is so ridiculous it needs to be highlighted to the widest audience possible.

For background, Rosalind Helderman at the Washington Post has covered most of the story. The last installment was that Cuccinelli’s attempt to subpoena 10 years of emails between 39 scientists and Mike Mann and ‘all documents’ residing at UVa related to four federal and one Commonwealth of Virginia grant, was thrown out by a judge because Cuccinelli did not provide any reason to suspect that fraud had occurred and that federal grants are not covered by the relevant statute. Without due cause, the AG is not allowed to investigate (and without such a restriction, there would be no end to politically motivated witch hunts).

Yesterday, Cuccinelli filed a new demand that takes this previous judgment into account. Namely, he attempts to give a reason to suspect fraud and only targets the Commonwealth grant – though still asks for 10 years of emails with an assortment of scientists. However, his reasoning should scare the bejesus of anyone who has ever published a paper on any topic that any attorney might have a political grudge against. …

Cuccinelli goes fishing again

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change,corruption

Good news from Italy: the Kitegen is in motion

Posted by Ugo Bardi
October 4, 2010 - 5:23am

I am just back from a trip to Piedmont, Northern Italy, where I have visited the construction site of the new prototype of the Kitegen; the high altitude wind power (or "Airborne Wind Energy", AWE) system being developed by Kitegen Research s.r.l., headed by Massimo Ippolito. I can bring good news to you: the kitegen project is in motion. After a first, reduced scale prototype, built and tested two years ago, now a full size system is being completed.

The Kitegen is a very innovative technology based on the idea of capturing the abundant energy of high altitude winds. It uses a kite that is launched from a ground based structure that contains all the machinery and control systems. The kite is expected to fly at altitudes up to 2000 meters and to provide energy by pulling on a set of cables that act on a power generator.

The promise of the kitegen is remarkable; preliminary calculations indicate an EROEI better than anything that can be obtained by traditional wind or solar technologies. However, one thing is paper, another is the reality of putting together a machine that had never been built before. It is an incredible challenge that Massimo Ippolito has taken onto himself and that he is succeeding in overcoming; step by step. …

Good news from Italy: the Kitegen is in motion

Technorati Tags: wind power,wind turbine

Genetically altered trees and plants could help counter global warming

Forests of genetically altered trees and other plants could sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year and so help ameliorate global warming, according to estimates published in the October issue of BioScience.

The study [pdf], by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, outlines a variety of strategies for augmenting the processes that plants use to sequester carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into long-lived forms of carbon, first in vegetation and ultimately in soil. Besides increasing the efficiency of plants' absorption of light, researchers might be able to genetically alter plants so they send more carbon into their roots—where some may be converted into soil carbon and remain out of circulation for centuries. Other possibilities include altering plants so that they can better withstand the stresses of growing on marginal land, and so that they yield improved bioenergy and food crops. Such innovations might in combination boost substantially the amount of carbon that vegetation naturally extracts from air, according to the authors' estimates. The researchers stress that the use of genetically engineered plants for carbon sequestration is only one of many policy initiatives and technical tools that might boost the carbon sequestration already occurring in natural vegetation and crops.

The article, by Christer Jansson, Stan D. Wullschleger, Udaya C. Kalluri, and Gerald A. Tuskan, is the first in a Special Section in the October BioScience that includes several perspectives on the prospects for enhancing biological carbon sequestration. Other articles in the section analyze the substantial ecological and economic constraints that limit such efforts. One article discusses the prospects for sequestering carbon by culturing algae to produce biofuel feedstocks; one proposes a modification of the current regulatory climate for producing genetically engineered trees in the United States; and one discusses societal perceptions of the issues surrounding the use of genetically altered organisms to ameliorate warming attributed to the buildup of greenhouse gases.

Genetically Altered Trees and Plants Could Help Counter Global Warming

Technorati Tags: biofuel,biotechnology,genetic engineering,carbon sequestration,carbon capture,greenhouse gas,carbon dioxide,bioenergy

Techo-leapfrogging at its best: 2,000 Indian villages skip fossil fuels, get first electricity from solar

By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY
09.22.10

If you ever need a great example of technological leapfrogging in practice, here it is: In the Indian state of Orissa, the state government has decided to electrify approximately an additional 2,000 villages by March 2012. But rather than hook them up to coal-fired power plants, it will be using decentralized solar power. Biomass, wind power and a variety of small-scale hydropower projects are also in the mix.

Express Buzz reports that currently there are 395 villages powered through solar, with an additional 205 to be completed by the end of the year. Detailed reports to deploy solar to at the remaining villages are being drawn up.

Further renewable energy development in Orissa includes 118 MW of biomass plants, with 20 MW of that to be completed soon. Two wind power projects, 150 MW in size are in the works, with surveys for 22 more locations underway. Micro, mini and small-scale hydropower projects are also planned for deliver an additional 300 MW. …

Techo-Leapfrogging At Its Best: 2,000 Indian Villages Skip Fossil Fuels, Get First Electricity From Solar

Technorati Tags: solar power,wind power,biomass,India

Canceled coal plants show carbon trade is working, Barclays analyst says

By Mathew Carr - Sep 14, 2010 4:24 AM PT

Planned investment by European utilities and RWE AG’s cancellation of a coal plant in Poland demonstrates that emissions trading works, according to an analyst at the investment bank of Barclays Plc.

One European utility wants to boost its renewable energy capacity to 21 gigawatts by 2020 from 2.2 gigawatts this year, Trevor Sikorksi, a London-based analyst at Barclays Capital, said in a Sept. 13 research note, citing a speech at one of the bank’s conferences. He didn’t name the company.

Essen-based RWE plans to halt construction of the 800- megawatt coal-fired power plant near Katowice, southern Poland, showing “how extensively the investment behavior of companies in large-emitting sectors has changed with the introduction of the European Union emissions-trading system,” he said. The program started in 2005.

Canceled Coal Plants Show Carbon Trade Is Working, Barclays Analyst Says

Technorati Tags: coal,carbon market,Europe

Potomac River: 10-fold increase in native submerged vegetation reflects improved water quality

 

ScienceDaily (Sep. 7, 2010) — The Potomac River in Washington, D.C. is showing multiple benefits from restoration efforts, newly published research suggests.Reduced nutrients and improved water clarity have increased the abundance and diversity of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) in the Potomac, according to direct measurements taken during the 18-year field study.

Since 1990, the area covered by SAV in the lower Potomac has doubled, the area covered by native SAV has increased ten-fold, the diversity of plant species has increased, and the proportion of exotic species to native species has declined as nutrients have declined, according to the study by the U.S. Geological Survey and England's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southhampton, UK.

"Improvements to plant communities living at the bottom of the river have occurred nearly in lock step with decreases in nutrients and sediment in the water and incremental reductions in nitrogen effluent entering the river from the wastewater treatment plant for the Washington DC area," said USGS scientist Dr. Nancy Rybicki.

More than a dozen species of SAV, including the exotic hydrilla, co-exist in this reach of the Potomac that was almost barren in a 1978-1981 USGS study.

"People want to know that money spent on ecosystem restoration is having tangible results, but many feel that efforts to clean up Chesapeake Bay have so far had limited success," said researcher Dr Henry Ruhl of the NOC.

"Upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant have benefited SAV habitats 50-miles downstream. These findings underscore the benefits of nutrient reduction efforts on a major tributary to the Chesapeake Bay," said Rybicki, who has been conducting research on the Potomac since 1979.

"Our results suggest that widespread recovery of submerged vegetation abundance and diversity can be achievable if restoration efforts are enhanced across the bay," said Henry Ruhl of the National Oceanography Centre. "There are many other estuaries globally where nutrients have been identified as contributing to SAV habitat decline, so restoration is an issue for many governments." …

Potomac River: 10-fold increase in native submerged vegetation reflects improved water quality

Technorati Tags: environmental restoration,sewage,nitrogen,eutrophication,dead zone

Insurers demand key role in climate adaptation

BusinessGreen.com Staff, BusinessGreen, Tuesday 7 September 2010 at 00:15:00

Coalition of insurance firms issue statement urging governments to support public-private initiatives designed to accelerate rollout of climate-related insurance policies

Over 100 of the world's leading insurance companies joined forces yesterday to urge world leaders to draw on the industry's expertise to shape climate adaptation policies for developing countries being worked on as part of the UN's climate change negotiations.

The Prince of Wales's ClimateWise insurance industry group, the Geneva Association think tank, UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, which together represent the world's leading insurance and risk management firms, co-ordinated the joint statement calling on governments to better support proven insurance mechanisms for tackling climate change risks.

The four-page statement [pdf], which was released on the eve of the British government's Capital Markets Climate Initiative conference in London, argues that public-private initiatives would allow insurers to extend climate-related policies to developing economies that would help them to manage the risks posed by extreme weather events.

Specifically it calls on governments to formally acknowledge the role of the insurance industry in the on-going UN climate change negotiations and deliver funding and regulatory frameworks that enable the wider rollout of climate-related insurance products.

Andrew Torrance, chairman of ClimateWise and chief executive of Allianz Insurance, said that it was in governments' own interests to utilise the risk management skills found in the insurance industry. …

Insurers demand key role in climate adaptation

Technorati Tags: global warming,climate change