UNC-Duke Coal Wars? [Terra Sigillata]
The NCAA basketball season traditionally brings to the Piedmont region of North Carolina the Tobacco Road battles between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, the private school in Durham about 12 miles to the northwest (actually 10.79 miles from the Dean Dome to Cameron Indoor Stadium).
But what I'm wondering is why a coal war hasn't erupted between the two institutions.
In the last couple of weeks, much hand-wringing has occurred on the UNC campus regarding the fact that the campus burns coal to generate heat for the university buildings. Rather than burning it in eastern Tennessee or western North Carolina where the mercury and sulfur dioxide can be left unseen with poor Appalachian folk, it came to light the the state's flagship university burns coal on its campus. Most of the discussion centered on whether or not UNC buys their coal from companies known to use the environmentally-less friendly approach of mountaintop removal. This latest discussion was sparked, as it were, during a recent visit by climate scientist James Hansen and an accompanying rally by local members of the Sierra Club.
It seems to have come as a revelation to some that the university uses coal as an energy source. Yet activists are pushing for a "coal-free UNC."
Uhhhh, suuure. Let's put a nuclear power plant in Carrboro. (for those outside NC, think Boulder, Berkeley, Bozeman)
But rather than pointing fingers at one another across the UNC campus, Tar Heels should look in solidarity across town at a common enemy: their archrival, Duke.
Back when I was well enough to go to Duke's Medical Center library, I would drive up Coal Pile Drive to see if there was any short-term parking. Yes, Coal Pile Drive (map):
Hey, Tar Heels! Duke has a big-ass pile of coal that they burn too! Right across the street from all kinds of research labs from neurobiology to their institute for the environment.
Rather than examine one's own inevitable need for coal and lack of any plausible alternative, blame Duke.
Does it solve the problem? No.
But doesn't it just feel better to blame Duke?
Spinning up the earth [Built on Facts]
There's an interesting science puff piece that's been circulating around various media outlets about the length of the day after the earthquake in Chile. At random, here's the NY Daily News version:
The quake that rocked the South American nation may have also knocked the Earth off its axis.
The 8.8-magnitude earthquake near Chile may have also made our planet's days shorter, according to NASA scientist Richard Gross.
A minor change in the Earth's axis isn't expected to alter much in terms of weather. The planet's tilt influences the seasons, allowing for winter, spring, summer and fall, and it would take a far greater change in the Earth's axis to affect them.
The Chile quake may have moved the Earth's axis by about 3 inches, Gross said.
The quake also shortened the day by 1.26 microseconds, the scientist determined, using a complex model he and others developed.
It's not a bad article, and in fact I really don't see much to quibble with except maybe for using "isn't expected to" instead of "won't". It's sort of like saying continental drift isn't expected to alter the time of London to New York flights. Various other publications's versions of the story go into more detail, like Bloomberg's version which correctly notes that the axis in question isn't quite the rotation axis but "axis about which the Earth's mass is balanced", which is almost exactly but not quite the same thing.
The article goes on to make a comparison with figure skaters. As a spinning skater pulls her arms in, she rotates faster. While the shifting of the crust here isn't nearly so symmetric, it's the same concept. It would be interesting to do a rough calculation with these numbers to see how much the earth's "arms" - ie, its diameter - were pulled in.
To begin with, we write down the angular momentum of the earth. It's:
Where I is the moment of inertia and omega is the angular frequency of the earth's rotation - ie, one per day, with a factor of two pi multiplied in for reasons that don't matter in this context. We can pretend that the earth is a perfect uniform sphere and write down the expression for I in terms of the mass and radius:
While we're at it, we might as well write down omega in terms of the period of rotation, which is of course T = 1 day:
Slap those down in the expression for L:
All right, from there we can actually get a number for the angular momentum of the earth. Plugging in T = 1 day and m = 5.9742 x 1024kg, I get L = 1.4139 x 1034 in the rather unwieldy units of m^2 kg/s.
But angular momentum is conserved, so it's the same both before and after the quake. If T goes up, therefore r has got to go down. The new T is 1 day - 1.26 microseconds. Solve for r, plug in the new T, and I get that r changes by 46.5 microns. That's roughly the diameter of a human hair, though of course I'm a pretty bad button puncher so you ought to recheck my numbers to be sure.
The actual shift of the local geography involved was much, much larger. This tiny number represents sort of an average over the whole globe, and that only with approximations of limited validity.
Now here's hoping there's no more earthquakes to do calculations on.
The Climate Change Generation? Report Challenges Assumptions About Younger Americans [Framing Science]
Americans under the age of 35 have grown up during an era of ever more certain climate science, increasing news attention, alarming entertainment portrayals, and growing environmental activism, yet on a number of key indicators, this demographic group remains less engaged on the issue than older Americans.
A survey report released today challenges conventional wisdom that younger Americans as a group are more concerned and active on the issue of climate change than their older counterparts. The analysis of nationally representative data collected in January of this year is timed for release with last night's American University Forum event on the "Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media, and Politics in an Unsustainable World."
--->Among the key findings, consider the trusted information sources on climate change for younger Americans. Notably, only 33% under the age of 35 trust the news media as a source of information about climate change, a proportion lower than any other age group. This proportion is also only slightly higher than the 27% of those under 35 who trust Sarah Palin on climate change. This finding suggests that news organizations and journalists need to take initiatives to increase their credibility and to build stronger relationships with younger audiences.
--->Yet importantly for those under 35, 82% of respondents trust scientists, 61% trust President Obama, and 54% trust Al Gore, proportions higher than any other age group. The implication is that direct engagement efforts on the part of scientists and the White House, outside of traditional news coverage, are likely to influence perceptions among this group.
--->Moreover, among Evangelicals under 35, for this politically important group, religious leaders are the most trusted source for info on climate change (81%) but nearly just as many young Evangelicals also trust scientists (77%) and a majority trust Obama (52%). If scientists and the White House were to work closely with Evangelical leaders on climate change, it would likely reap benefits relative to this sizable segment of Americans.
These are just a few of the important findings. Readers should check out the PDF of the full report and survey analysis. An executive summary is below. I will be posting about different elements of the report throughout the week so check back for more. The report is a joint collaboration between researchers at AU, Yale University, and George Mason University.
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Animal Testing Statistics and Perspectives [The Primate Diaries]
In light of the recent discussion on animal testing and animal rights I thought a few additional points would be valuable. It is a fact that animal testing leads to some necessary medical advances that save lives. Anyone who would say differently doesn't have the slightest clue what they're talking about and should be dismissed out of hand. The question is an issue of how many, especially given the ethical concerns. It is also a fact that the vast majority of animal testing serves more peripheral goals, categorized as applied studies that include cosmetic, chemical and pharmaceutical testing, and that there is a strong financial incentive to maintain the status quo.
For example, a few years ago The Independent published some facts and figures concerning vivisection in the UK:
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Video Clip: Will Obama Make Climate Change a Communication Priority? [Framing Science]
At last night's AU Forum on The Climate Change Generation, one of the students asked what can be done to break public indifference on the issue.
In the YouTube clip above, I answered that Obama as president needs to make climate change a leading communication priority, marshaling the power of the bully pulpit for a long term president-led engagement campaign on the issue. When and if this happens, I suggested one of the first things Obama should do is to personally host a series of Rose Garden summits with religious leaders, business leaders, public health experts, and national security experts and then go on the road with these leaders, speaking to communities across the country.
Fellow panelist Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post followed by saying that the White House has hosted meetings of these groups but Obama has yet to be able to be on hand or to make these meetings a part of his regular bully pulpit efforts.
You can watch the clip of the discussion above. Also the full video of the panel is available here.
Tuesday Tidbits: Testing the volcano-earthquake connection in Chile … and more! [Eruptions]
Some news for a busy Tuesday:
The crater at Poas volcano in Costa Rica, taken February 25, 2010. Image courtesy of OVSICORI by Federico Chavarria.
- After the MSNBC debacle, it is nice to see some good articles on why the Chilean earthquake was overall less disastrous than the Haitian earthquake, why the tsunami wasn't as large as predicted and why these earthquakes are not abnormal. There are a lot of factors involved - the location, depth, preparedness, wealth - so the comparison can be very telling in terms of both geologic and societal issues.
- The other scientific fallout from the Chilean earthquake will be a test of the volcano-earthquake connection suggested by Sebastian Watt in last year's EPSL article. According to Watt's (and others) research, we should expect to see an uptick in volcanic activity over the next year within 500 km of the epicenter of the earthquake - so watch places like Longavi, Descabezado Grande, Calabozos, Copahue, Chillan and Lonquimay amongst many others.
- Remember the spiders on Mt. Saint Helens, used to monitor the volcano? Well, they will be spreading to Chile to help monitor Chaiten. Two spiders will be set up on the rhyolite dome system to monitor changes in the domes - looking at seismic activity, deformation and explosions in the caldera.
- Dr. Boris Behncke has updated us on some of the volcanic activity in Costa Rica - including a phreatic eruption at Poas last week and increasing seismicity at Irazu. More on the earthquakes at Irazu can be read here. There is also a great set of aerial images of Poas and Arenal taken recently that were posted by OVSICORI.
- Eruptions reader Thomas Wipf left a link to a great video of Sakurajima in Japan erupting on January 16, 2010. Definitely worth the four minutes to see an impressive explosive eruption.
- It seems that activity at Mayon has settled down significantly as well, with PHIVOLCS lowering the alert status to Level 1 (of 3). Only about 5 volcanic earthquakes are occurring daily at Mayon and that the overall activity suggests a return to "normalcy". However, they do warn people to be careful in lahar-prone drainages near the volcano considering all the new, loose volcaniclastic material on the slopes of Mayon.
Who are the people in your denial neighborhood? [The Island of Doubt]
As regular readers will know, I prefer the term "pseudoskeptic" over "denier" when it comes to those who insist we needn't be worried about climate change. This is because the common denominator among any set of such characters tends to be a misapplication of the scientific method, a failure to apply rigorous skeptical analysis to the subject. Not all of these pseudoskeptics are deniers, as this list from Foreign Policy makes clear.
Indeed, the distinctions among the selected "Guide to Climate Skeptics" make it even more important to choose our descriptors carefully. I would argue that calling them "skeptics" is the authors' first mistake. But let's look at each one in turn as FP tries to "sort out the noise from the serious concerns."
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Not Exactly Pocket Science – panic aboard the Titanic, the rise of polar bears and emasculated frogs [Not Exactly Rocket Science]
I'm trying something new. Right from the start, I've always tried to write fairly long and detailed write-ups of new papers but this means that on any given week, there are always more stories than time and my desktop gets littered with PDFs awaiting interpretation.
So, I'm going to start doing shorter write-ups of papers that don't make the cut, linking to more detailed treatments on other quality news sources. This is something that I hope science journalists will do more of. It stems from a Twitter conversation where I asked if I should (a) write up short versions of these stories, (b) ignore them, or (c) link to other pieces. People chose a combo of A and C. And if we're being honest, I was really pleased with "Not Exactly Pocket Science" and the name needed a feature to go with it!
These shorter pieces will still be written from primary papers rather than press releases or existing news stories. Give me feedback. Do these add to the NERS experience, or do short articles go against what you expect of this blog? And also let me know if you find better pieces on the same stories, or you don't like the ones I've linked to. Let's turn NEPS into a way of highlighting good journalism elsewhere on the web too.
Panic on a sinking ship - Titanic vs Lusitania
In 1912, the Titanic famously sank after colliding with an iceberg. Three years later, the Lusitania also met the ocean floor thanks to torpedoes from a German U-boat. Both ships had similar proportions of crew and demographics of passengers. Neither had enough lifeboats and as a result, only about a third of the passengers on either vessel survived. Over a thousand people died in each tragedy. But Bruno Frey thinks that differences in the type of people who died tell us something about human behaviour under crisis situations. The key factor, he thinks, is time.
The Titanic sank in a leisurely 2 hours and 40 minutes, with plenty of time for social norms to influence who made it onto the lifeboats. The Lusitania went under in just 18 minutes, creating a situation where it was literally every man for himself. In both cases, the captains told crew to save "women and children first". But their orders were only deferred to on the Titanic, where women and children were indeed more likely to survive than other passengers. On the Lusitania, people aged 16-35 (their supposed physical prime) were around 10% more likely to survive than other age groups. Likewise, first-class passengers had higher odds of survival aboard the Titanic, when class issues had enough time to manifest themselves but they actually fared worse than the third-class passengers on the Lusitania.
I usually enjoy attempts to view history through a scientific lens, but in this case, it's difficult to see how much you could really tell from two data points though. Grey's data are certainly consistent with the hypothesis that selfish behaviour is more likely to emerge in crises that unfold more quickly. But so many other factors could have influenced the outcomes - the structure of the ship, the fact that the Lusitania sank during war-time, the fact that they probably knew about the events aboard the Titanic, different perceptions of the odds of rescue, and so on. Indeed, Grey mentions all of these and says that, "There can be no absolute proof of the hypothesis that only time led to such behavioural differences. Ideally, more observations (comparable shipwrecks) are needed to better isolate the potential relevance of time."
More from Mark Henderson at the Times and Jeff Wise at the Extreme Fear blog
Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0911303107
Jawbone reveals the rise of the polar bear
A lots of news coverage is devoted to discussing the fate of polar bears, but it's their origins that are now getting some attention. A new fossil jaw from Svalbard gave Charlotte Lindqvist the opportunity to trace the history of climate change's flagship species. Polar bears live and die on sea ice, their remains either sink without a trace or are scavenged, so every new fossil is an exciting find. The new jawbone is approximately 130,000 to 110,000 years old but Lindqvist managed to extract enough DNA from it to sequence the genome of its mitochondria - small power plants within every animal cell, each containing their own genome.
She also sequenced extra mitochondrial genomes from two living polar bears and four brown bears from different areas. A family tree built from these sequences revealed that the jawbone's owner was remarkably similar to the last common ancestor of brown and polar bears, sitting just at the point where the two lineages diverged. By analysing the carbon isotopes of the fossil's canines, Lindqvist deduced that this ancient bear ate sea-going mammals just like its modern cousins do.
Together, this single bone paints the portrait of an evolutionary success story. Within 10,000-30,000 years of their split from brown bears, the polar bears had adapted magnificently to their frosty kingdom and risen to the rank of top predator. Within the next 100,000 years, they had spread across the entire polar realm. As Lindqvist says, they're "an excellent example of "evolutionary opportunism". Whether they'll be swift enough to cope with the current changes to their habitat is another matter.
More from Brandon Keim at Wired
Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0914266107
Common pesticide turns Kermits into Kermitas
Their testicle shrinks, their testosterone depletes, their sperm count falls, and they stop trying to have sex. Becoming emasculated and impotent isn't a pretty fate for a male frog, but thanks to a pesticide called atrazine, it could be a common one. Atrazine is an "endocrine disruptor", a substance that mimics the effects of sex hormones in the body. Tyrone Hayes has found that it can chemically castrate male African clawed frogs.
Around 10% of the animals actually became fully functional females despite being genetically male. They could even mate with other males to produce viable eggs (albeit ones that only hatched into genetic males). In others, the changes were less drastic but they were still feminised enough to seriously affect their odds of mating successfully. This isn't the first time that atrazine has been linked to feminised frogs and according to previous studies, it affects other groups of animals, from salmon to crocodiles, in the same way. In these species, atrazine switches on the manufacture of aromatase, an enzyme that, in turn, stimulates the production of oestrogen. This flood of hormone may also be behind the feminised Kermits.
Frogs and other amphibians are particularly vulnerable to chemicals like atrazine because of their absorbent skins. Indeed, Hayes emasculated his frogs with just 2 parts per billion of atrazine, a dose that animals would frequently encounter in contaminated areas, and well within levels occasionally found in rainfall. Because of the environmental risks, atrazine was banned in the EU in 2004, but the US still sprays 80 million pounds of this persistent chemical every year. Obviously, this study didn't assess the impact that the chemical could have on frog populations but there's every reason to suspect it as a "contributor to global amphibian declines".
More from Janet Raloff at Science News
More on amphibian conservation:
- Climate change responsible for decline of Costa Rican amphibians and reptiles,
- Common pesticide is good news for parasites, bad news for frogs
Reference: PNAS http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0914266107
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The Central Public Health Challenge of Our Times [Casaubon's Book]
One of the pleasures of blogging here has been the focus that this community has on issues of public health. Doing everything we can to maintain the health and well-being of populations through a shift into a different model of life is an issue that is deeply important to me - I don't always agree with everyone who writes here on these issues (and, of course, they don't always agree with each other 
), but I am struck with admiration of the degree of concern for the public welfare expressed by my Science Blog Colleagues.
Which is why I'm being so presumptuous (since I am a science writer, not a physician or medical researcher) as to suggest a new direction for my fellow bloggers who focus on public health issues. With any luck they will find that now that Andrew Wakefield's false claims about vaccine-autism link are thoroughly discredited (for the bazillionth time - and can I just say how pleased I am, since I personally, as the parent of a child with severe autism, would like to know what actually *does* cause autism and we're unlikely to find that out it by doing another 40 studies on a discredited line of reasoning) that they have some free time on their hands. My suggestion would be to focus on another public health crisis - arguably the biggest one we face - our dependence on cars for personal transportation.
Even before NASA released its study demonstrating that road transport was the single largest driver, in economic terms, of anthropogenic global warming, with all the public health implications that included, we knew that our current transportation paradigm, which prioritizes personal vehicles, was a major detriment to public well-being.
Worldwide, we can attribute 1.2 million deaths per year and 40 million injuries significant enough to merit a doctor visit to auto-related accidents. There are 40,000 deaths in the US alone annually that are car-related. The disability claims alone from car-related loss of work and permanent injury come in the hundreds of millions of dollars (all data from Pat Murphy's _Plan C_ 168-169 originally taken from the NTSB). Motor Vehicle accidents remain the leading cause of death in children
We also know that motor vehicles affect the public health in other respects. Besides the role of particulate emissions and pollution from road traffic in rates of asthma and lung disease and a host of other health problems, we know that motor vehicle ownership is associated with obesity and a reduction in exercise. In just one study in Colombia (where there is a meaningful population that doesn't own cars), household motor vehicle ownership was shown to be significantly correlated with male obesity
Up until now, the focus has been on reducing the severity of inevitable car crashes - on booster and car seats for children, safety belt use, new technologies for those who can afford newer vehicles. But while the impact of these changes has been significant in relationship to per capita deaths, the expansion of the population, increase in total cars owned and trips taken means that the difference between 1975, before any of the above safety measures were instituted and 2008 was quite minute. That is, all of our gains are being lost to Jevons Paradox .
A significant move towards a society with reduced auto-related mortality, illness and disability would involve getting people to get rid of their cars, to reduce overall trips taken, to travel shorter distances - ie, the famous "lifestyle changes" that are so central to almost any major health issue.
Like all lifestyle changes, this requires both conversations with those affected, and also public policy changes. This is probably a lot less fun for most of us than debating people who deny that vaccines work - most of us are implicated in the car culture ourselves. There are at least as many factors preventing people from getting rid of their cars or substantially reducing their mileage as there are getting them to make other lifestyle changes involving diet and exercise. And yet, one way we could significantly reduce illness and mortality would be to reduce car usage and ownership.
While giving up all vehicles may not be viable for people, many households could reduce the number of trips they make weekly, many households could carpool for at least some activities, or consolidate errands. Most households could incorporate more use to public transportation, bicycles or "shank's mare" (walking). Car use is in many respects an acquired behavior, like smoking. Unlike smoking, it can be necessary, but people do not always have to make life choices that maximize their car usage and needs.
As a participant in the Riot for Austerity, a program that encourages people to reduce their resource use to 1/10th of the American average, we had people in 14 nations and in every possible life situation attempt to reduce their usage, and nearly everyone - no matter what their personal situation, no matter where they lived, whether they were physically able bodied or had children, no matter how long they commuted were able to reduce vehicale usage by 25-50% - this is in the absence of public policy changes like more public transportation. Many were able to reduce their usage further still, but at a minimum, most people should be able to make some inroads in their transportation usage - one study found that more than 25% of all trips were largely discretionary
.
If cars were properly perceived not as a necessity and status symbol, but as a public health threat, we could begin to make significant inroads into their reduction - and to reduction of greenhouse gasses from them. Even beginning to speak as though car related pollution, disability and death were not inevitable outcomes of a lifestyle that can't be seriously reconsidered, but as though cars are a significant threat to public health begins to open up a conversation that as yet, we are simply not having.
Emissions data indicates we will have to deal with our internal combustion engine problem - if not, we get the scenarios visible in the previous post on this site. No one wants that. So we must begin to address the reality that we can't all have private cars - and that case begins from the language of the public good - and public health.
Sharon
You Must Read This! [Casaubon's Book]
I have an enormous amount of respect for Stuart Staniford, who I think is one of the best minds working on our collective ecological crisis. That said, we've had some serious debates, because I've tended to think that our situation, particularly our longer term food situation, is more serious than Staniford has - but those debates on my end have always included just a profound gratitude for the kind of analytic work he does.
(Days over 100 degrees in projected high emissions scenarios)
Staniford has done a fabulous review (Note: apologies for linkage problems, they should now be fixed!) of a report that got buried "Global Climate Impacts on the United States" and gets right to the central point - that climate change in the US is going to be a very, very hard thing to adapt to. A lot of us know this intellectually, but it is very hard to grasp exactly how radically our world is slated to change. I think information like this is precisely why I'm less optimistic than Staniford has been - because how do you do agriculture in a nation that looks a lot like the mojave desert?
I think it is important to point out that while Staniford observes that it is possible there are errors that make this either less or more awful, I think the aggregate of the evidence from what we are seeing is that it is likely to be more awful - that is, almost all of the material evidence we have for how climate change is occurring suggests that we have been understating the dangers. Moreover, the report in question uses older estimates of climate sensitivity than the emerging understanding, now accepted by the IPCC - that is, it may not take emissions nearly as high as projected to achieve the worst outcomes:
This is not to say that it will be right in all respects - clearly the planet as an entire system is so complex that scientists may not have successfully understood and modeled all the important physics, chemistry, and biology, and there may be surprises as additional effects show up. Anyone paying attention to climate science is aware that there have already been significant surprises - it turned out that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets started melting much faster than had been expected, and the Arctic sea ice appears to have been melting faster than climate scientists expected. So I don't dismiss the possibility of things either being better or worse than climate science currently predicts.
This ties into Staniford's excellent work on China's transportation growth and emissions which make projected high emissions scenarios more likely.
You really need to read this stuff. You won't enjoy it, but you need it.
Sharon