from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1ztLCVF
Preserving nature in the Age of Humans
Can we take responsibility for an increasingly human-driven planet? Photo credit: ‘Witness to sunrise’, Muley Point, Utah, by Mark Klett
By Ben A Minteer, Arizona State University and Stephen Pyne, Arizona State University
Is the Earth now spinning through the “Age of Humans?” More than a few scientists think so. They’ve suggested, in fact, that we modify the name of the current geological epoch (the Holocene, which began roughly 12,000 years ago) to the “Anthropocene.” It’s a term first put into wide circulation by Nobel-Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in an article published in Nature in 2002. And it’s stirring up a good deal of debate, not only among geologists.
The idea is that we needed a new planetary marker to account for the scale of human changes to the Earth: extensive land transformation, mass extinctions, control of the nitrogen cycle, large-scale water diversion, and especially change of the atmosphere through the emission of greenhouse gases. Although naming geological epochs isn’t usually a controversial act, the Anthropocene proposal is radical because it means that what had been an environmental fixture against which people acted, the geological record, is now just another expression of the human presence.
It seems to be a particularly bitter pill to swallow for nature preservationists, heirs to the American tradition led by writers, scientists and activists such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, David Brower, Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey. That’s because some have argued the traditional focus on the goal of wilderness protection rests on a view of “pristine” nature that is simply no longer viable on a planet hurtling toward nine billion human inhabitants.
Given this situation, we felt the time was ripe to explore the impact of the Anthropocene on the idea and practice of nature preservation. Our plan was to create a salon, a kind of literary summit. But we wanted to cut to the chase: What does it mean to “save American nature” in the age of humans?
We invited a distinguished group of environmental writers – scientists, philosophers, historians, journalists, agency administrators and activists – to give it their best shot. The essays appear in the new collection, After Preservation: Saving American Nature in the Age of Humans.
Getting the chronology right, it turns out, matters less than we might think. The historian J R McNeill recounts the difficulty in fixing a clear start date for the Anthropocene. (Should it coincide with the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions? The rise of agriculture? The birth of the industrial era in the 19th century? The mid-20th century uptick in carbon emissions?) Wherever we peg it, McNeill argues, the future of nature preservation in America will increasingly be shaped by environmental traditions more congruent with notions of a human-driven world.
Is humanity now ‘too big for nature?’ Photo credit: Mark Klett
It’s a view shared by ecologist Erle Ellis. We’ve simply “outgrown” nature, Ellis argues, and so we have to become more comfortable within the “used and crowded planet” we’ve made. Andrew Revkin, author of the Dot Earth environmental blog for the New York Times, sounds a similar theme, arguing that the whole idea of “saving” a nature viewed outside the human presence is an anachronism. What we need instead, he suggests, is to focus on restoring a bipartisan politics able to cope with the challenges of living in and managing a human-driven world.
But all this talk of a more human-driven world and a species that is now “too big for nature” is dismissed by wilderness activist Dave Foreman, who spies a dark future awaiting us if we continue on the current path. Foreman condemns the vision of the “Anthropoceniacs” who he argues are promoting nothing less than the technological takeover of life on the planet. We need to remind ourselves, he writes, “that we are not gods.”
The need for humility courses throughout After Preservation. But it’s joined by an equally strong plea for pragmatism and more intelligent control. As science journalist Emma Marris writes, the desire to restrain ourselves in nature may ironically prove self-defeating if it means we can’t intervene to prevent present and future species extinctions. The biologist Harry Greene echoes this view with his manifesto to “rewild” the Anthropocene by actively introducing cheetahs, elephants, camels and lions to North America as proxies for the long-lost megafauna of the Pleistocene. It’s a rebooting of the wilderness idea – or maybe a wilderness 2.0 – for the technological age.
Regardless of how the Anthropocene debate plays out, environmental science and policy experts Norm Christensen and Jack Ward Thomas remind everyone how hard it is to implement whatever we want on the ground without unexpected consequences. Thomas, a former chief of the US Forest Service, describes how the unpredictability of ecosystems can result in cases in which the preservationist agenda becomes complicated as ecosystems change in surprising ways (for instance, when an unplanned growth in the barred owl population starts to displace the protected northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest).
The Anthropocene has become an environmentalist Rorshach. Photo credit: Mark Klett
Much of the discussion of the Anthropocene must hinge on values. But many of our authors conclude that it also needs grounding in a deeper and more nuanced understanding of history. As historians Donald Worster and Curt Meine point out, even if purist notions of the wilderness may no longer be realistic in the Anthropocene, it would be a grave mistake to jettison our environmental traditions and the commitment to protecting as much wildness as we can.
Even so, many suggest that nature conservation will have to evolve in order to reflect a more diverse constituency, an urban population not well served by the older preservationist values and images. Or, as ecologist Michelle Marvier and The Nature Conservancy’s Hazel Wong sum it up, “Move over, Grizzly Adams.”
The debate wasn’t settled at the end of After Preservation but we didn’t expect it to be. The argument has deep roots, as the writer and climate activist Bill McKibben reminds us in his coda to the book. And in one way or another, pragmatists and preservationists have been at odds since the birth of the American conservation movement in the late 19th century. The Anthropocene debate is only the most recent replaying of this enduring struggle.
What way forward? We think John McPhee probably got it about right nearly forty years ago in his memorable portrait of modern Alaska, Coming into the Country:
Only an easygoing extremist would preserve every bit of country. And extremists alone would exploit it all. Everyone else has to think the matter through – choose a point of tolerance, however much the point might tend to one side.
Our hope is that After Preservation will help us choose that point of tolerance as we puzzle through the environmental ethos of the Anthropocene. We’ve little choice: it’s going to be a challenge confronting the meaning and work of nature preservation for some time to come.
Ben A Minteer is Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Chair at Arizona State University.
Stephen Pyne is Regents Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1IGLFzv
Can we take responsibility for an increasingly human-driven planet? Photo credit: ‘Witness to sunrise’, Muley Point, Utah, by Mark Klett
By Ben A Minteer, Arizona State University and Stephen Pyne, Arizona State University
Is the Earth now spinning through the “Age of Humans?” More than a few scientists think so. They’ve suggested, in fact, that we modify the name of the current geological epoch (the Holocene, which began roughly 12,000 years ago) to the “Anthropocene.” It’s a term first put into wide circulation by Nobel-Prize winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen in an article published in Nature in 2002. And it’s stirring up a good deal of debate, not only among geologists.
The idea is that we needed a new planetary marker to account for the scale of human changes to the Earth: extensive land transformation, mass extinctions, control of the nitrogen cycle, large-scale water diversion, and especially change of the atmosphere through the emission of greenhouse gases. Although naming geological epochs isn’t usually a controversial act, the Anthropocene proposal is radical because it means that what had been an environmental fixture against which people acted, the geological record, is now just another expression of the human presence.
It seems to be a particularly bitter pill to swallow for nature preservationists, heirs to the American tradition led by writers, scientists and activists such as John Muir, Aldo Leopold, David Brower, Rachel Carson and Edward Abbey. That’s because some have argued the traditional focus on the goal of wilderness protection rests on a view of “pristine” nature that is simply no longer viable on a planet hurtling toward nine billion human inhabitants.
Given this situation, we felt the time was ripe to explore the impact of the Anthropocene on the idea and practice of nature preservation. Our plan was to create a salon, a kind of literary summit. But we wanted to cut to the chase: What does it mean to “save American nature” in the age of humans?
We invited a distinguished group of environmental writers – scientists, philosophers, historians, journalists, agency administrators and activists – to give it their best shot. The essays appear in the new collection, After Preservation: Saving American Nature in the Age of Humans.
Getting the chronology right, it turns out, matters less than we might think. The historian J R McNeill recounts the difficulty in fixing a clear start date for the Anthropocene. (Should it coincide with the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions? The rise of agriculture? The birth of the industrial era in the 19th century? The mid-20th century uptick in carbon emissions?) Wherever we peg it, McNeill argues, the future of nature preservation in America will increasingly be shaped by environmental traditions more congruent with notions of a human-driven world.
Is humanity now ‘too big for nature?’ Photo credit: Mark Klett
It’s a view shared by ecologist Erle Ellis. We’ve simply “outgrown” nature, Ellis argues, and so we have to become more comfortable within the “used and crowded planet” we’ve made. Andrew Revkin, author of the Dot Earth environmental blog for the New York Times, sounds a similar theme, arguing that the whole idea of “saving” a nature viewed outside the human presence is an anachronism. What we need instead, he suggests, is to focus on restoring a bipartisan politics able to cope with the challenges of living in and managing a human-driven world.
But all this talk of a more human-driven world and a species that is now “too big for nature” is dismissed by wilderness activist Dave Foreman, who spies a dark future awaiting us if we continue on the current path. Foreman condemns the vision of the “Anthropoceniacs” who he argues are promoting nothing less than the technological takeover of life on the planet. We need to remind ourselves, he writes, “that we are not gods.”
The need for humility courses throughout After Preservation. But it’s joined by an equally strong plea for pragmatism and more intelligent control. As science journalist Emma Marris writes, the desire to restrain ourselves in nature may ironically prove self-defeating if it means we can’t intervene to prevent present and future species extinctions. The biologist Harry Greene echoes this view with his manifesto to “rewild” the Anthropocene by actively introducing cheetahs, elephants, camels and lions to North America as proxies for the long-lost megafauna of the Pleistocene. It’s a rebooting of the wilderness idea – or maybe a wilderness 2.0 – for the technological age.
Regardless of how the Anthropocene debate plays out, environmental science and policy experts Norm Christensen and Jack Ward Thomas remind everyone how hard it is to implement whatever we want on the ground without unexpected consequences. Thomas, a former chief of the US Forest Service, describes how the unpredictability of ecosystems can result in cases in which the preservationist agenda becomes complicated as ecosystems change in surprising ways (for instance, when an unplanned growth in the barred owl population starts to displace the protected northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest).
The Anthropocene has become an environmentalist Rorshach. Photo credit: Mark Klett
Much of the discussion of the Anthropocene must hinge on values. But many of our authors conclude that it also needs grounding in a deeper and more nuanced understanding of history. As historians Donald Worster and Curt Meine point out, even if purist notions of the wilderness may no longer be realistic in the Anthropocene, it would be a grave mistake to jettison our environmental traditions and the commitment to protecting as much wildness as we can.
Even so, many suggest that nature conservation will have to evolve in order to reflect a more diverse constituency, an urban population not well served by the older preservationist values and images. Or, as ecologist Michelle Marvier and The Nature Conservancy’s Hazel Wong sum it up, “Move over, Grizzly Adams.”
The debate wasn’t settled at the end of After Preservation but we didn’t expect it to be. The argument has deep roots, as the writer and climate activist Bill McKibben reminds us in his coda to the book. And in one way or another, pragmatists and preservationists have been at odds since the birth of the American conservation movement in the late 19th century. The Anthropocene debate is only the most recent replaying of this enduring struggle.
What way forward? We think John McPhee probably got it about right nearly forty years ago in his memorable portrait of modern Alaska, Coming into the Country:
Only an easygoing extremist would preserve every bit of country. And extremists alone would exploit it all. Everyone else has to think the matter through – choose a point of tolerance, however much the point might tend to one side.
Our hope is that After Preservation will help us choose that point of tolerance as we puzzle through the environmental ethos of the Anthropocene. We’ve little choice: it’s going to be a challenge confronting the meaning and work of nature preservation for some time to come.
Ben A Minteer is Arizona Zoological Society Endowed Chair at Arizona State University.
Stephen Pyne is Regents Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1IGLFzv
Is surfacestations.org dead? [Stoat]
The long slow wiki edit war over exactly what sort of denier AW is continues – RationalWiki is more informative – but the issue of surfacestations.org remains untouched. Is it alive? Dead? Undead? Having browsed around a bit I can’t find anyone saying – or, indeed, caring – but being a caring sharing sort of individual I thought I’d poke it a bit.
http://ift.tt/ZEXXPW is unpromising: NEWS Updated 07/30/2012 New paper in process, see details here. NOTE: Surfacestations.org gallery server has received heavy traffic and some attacks in the last 24hrs. The online image database aka gallery server site has been put into safe mode to secure backups and make it more secure. The “paper” in question is of course the still-born one, still dead after all these years. The online database page promises “We have a growing online database of USHCN, GHCN, and GISS station site surveys on our high speed database server” but the link to http://ift.tt/1F2coqx times out. The last time it was alive appears to be April 2014; by June 2014 it was “Site is temporarily down for maintenance”, which is more than it manages now.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1F2cq1x
The long slow wiki edit war over exactly what sort of denier AW is continues – RationalWiki is more informative – but the issue of surfacestations.org remains untouched. Is it alive? Dead? Undead? Having browsed around a bit I can’t find anyone saying – or, indeed, caring – but being a caring sharing sort of individual I thought I’d poke it a bit.
http://ift.tt/ZEXXPW is unpromising: NEWS Updated 07/30/2012 New paper in process, see details here. NOTE: Surfacestations.org gallery server has received heavy traffic and some attacks in the last 24hrs. The online image database aka gallery server site has been put into safe mode to secure backups and make it more secure. The “paper” in question is of course the still-born one, still dead after all these years. The online database page promises “We have a growing online database of USHCN, GHCN, and GISS station site surveys on our high speed database server” but the link to http://ift.tt/1F2coqx times out. The last time it was alive appears to be April 2014; by June 2014 it was “Site is temporarily down for maintenance”, which is more than it manages now.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1F2cq1x
Tonga’s newest island: Before and after views
These two images were acquired by NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite. The top image shows the two small islands of Hunga Tonga (right) and Hunga Ha’apai (left) in the Polynesian island kingdom of Tonga, separated by the South Pacific Ocean, on December 2, 2013, a year before an undersea volcano erupted in December, 2014.
December 2, 2013. Image credit: NASA
The second image shows the same area on April 28, 2015, four months after the eruption and the first time that Landsat got a cloud-free view.
April 28, 2015. Image credit: NASA
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According to a report in January, 2015 from the Tongan Ministry of Information & Communications, the new island between Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai rose about 120 meters (390 feet) above sea level. It measured just 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from north to south, and 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from west to east. And while volcanic material connected the new island with Hunga Ha’apai to the west, it was a few hundred meters short of connecting with Hunga Tonga.
Already, the island has received visitors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran a series of photographs taken by Hotel owner GP Orbassano, who together with a friend and his son, explored the island in March 2015.
The highest peak of Tonga’s newest island is believed to be 250 metres high. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
The volcanic island is covered with deep channels that are unstable to walk on. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
GP Orbassano says there are thousands of seabirds on the island. Photo taken on March 6,2015. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
Bottom line: In December, 2014, an undersea volcano exploded to life in the Polynesian island kingdom of Tonga. The eruption created a new island. Two satellite images show the area before and after the eruption.
Read more from NASA’s Earth Observatory
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1EasQOP
These two images were acquired by NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite. The top image shows the two small islands of Hunga Tonga (right) and Hunga Ha’apai (left) in the Polynesian island kingdom of Tonga, separated by the South Pacific Ocean, on December 2, 2013, a year before an undersea volcano erupted in December, 2014.
December 2, 2013. Image credit: NASA
The second image shows the same area on April 28, 2015, four months after the eruption and the first time that Landsat got a cloud-free view.
April 28, 2015. Image credit: NASA
Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!
According to a report in January, 2015 from the Tongan Ministry of Information & Communications, the new island between Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha’apai rose about 120 meters (390 feet) above sea level. It measured just 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) from north to south, and 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from west to east. And while volcanic material connected the new island with Hunga Ha’apai to the west, it was a few hundred meters short of connecting with Hunga Tonga.
Already, the island has received visitors. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran a series of photographs taken by Hotel owner GP Orbassano, who together with a friend and his son, explored the island in March 2015.
The highest peak of Tonga’s newest island is believed to be 250 metres high. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
The volcanic island is covered with deep channels that are unstable to walk on. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
GP Orbassano says there are thousands of seabirds on the island. Photo taken on March 6,2015. Photo credit: GP Orbassano
Bottom line: In December, 2014, an undersea volcano exploded to life in the Polynesian island kingdom of Tonga. The eruption created a new island. Two satellite images show the area before and after the eruption.
Read more from NASA’s Earth Observatory
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1EasQOP
Do you have sleep apnea? UW smartphone app can tell
“It’s similar to the way bats navigate,” scientist says.
Smartphones already have the ability to monitor human health. Apps these days can track the amount of calories burned throughout the day, determine a user’s heart rate and follow one’s sleeping patterns.
The old way to find out if you have sleep apnea … now you can test yourself with a smartphone and University of Washington app. (Getty Images)
Now, a new app in the development stage at the University of Washington can wirelessly detect sleep apnea episodes, potentially saving those who suffer from the sleep disorder thousands of dollars.
Sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder that is commonly caused by blockage of the airway (obstructive sleep apnea) or the brain failing to signal muscles to breath during sleep (central sleep apnea). Obstructive sleep apnea, which is much more common, affects roughly 25 million Americans.
The current system for diagnosing sleep apnea requires an overnight stay at the hospital and deep pockets. Patients are hooked up to a ridiculous mass of wires and undergo an extensive polysomnography test to track the amount of times he or she struggles to breath throughout the night. In the end, the overnight examination costs thousands of dollars.
How the app works
There are home sleep apnea tests that function similarly, but the new app, named ApneaApp, uses sonar technology to track breathing patterns without a person having to sleep amidst a tangle of wires and sensors.
ApneaApp sends inaudible sound waves from the phone’s speaker that bounce off people in their sleep to track miniscule changes in their breathing pattern. The returning sound waves are then picked up by the phone’s microphone.
“It’s similar to the way bats navigate,” said Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, lead author and a Ph.D. student in the UW’s department of computer science and engineering. “They send out sound signals that hit a target, and when those signals bounce back they know something is there.”
Since sound wave patterns can change due to distance, the app is able to distinguish between the breathing patterns of two different people sleeping side by side. It efficiently traces breathing patterns from distances up to three feet, so users can place their smartphones at their bedside tables, as they normally would. Regardless of one’s sleeping position, ApneaApp can track breathing patterns—even when the person is underneath a blanket.
The high frequency of the app’s emitted sound waves, which adults cannot hear, means that other audible sounds, such as talking, fans and street noise aren’t picked up by the microphone. And while children may hear ApneaApp’s high-pitched sound waves, researchers are developing a newer version with sound waves that will be inaudible to all humans.
Researchers believe the app could be available to smartphone users within the next two years.
What the fuss is about
Sleep apnea affects roughly one in thirteen Americans, and most who suffer from the sleep disorder are unaware of their condition. Part of this boils down to the small number of sleep specialists.
“Right now we don’t have enough sleep clinics, sleep laboratories and sleep specialists in the country to address all the sleep apnea that is out there,” said co-author Dr. Nathaniel F. Watson, professor of neurology and co-director of the UW Medicine Sleep Center.
ApneaApp could provide consumers with an economical and accessible method of testing for sleep apnea. Insurance companies typically only cover one trip to the doctor for a sleep test, and even then, a diagnosis based off one test may be misrepresentative of a patient’s regular breathing pattern. With the UW-created app, people have the ability to track their breathing pattern for multiple days, creating a more accurate representation.
The app is still in the preliminary stages of development—it is currently undergoing more tests to validate results, while researchers are also seeing if the app can track other minimal body movements during sleep.
However, with accuracy rates of 95 to 99 percent compared to the test currently done at hospitals, ApneaApp may be a consumer reality soon. 300 hours of testing have already been completed at Harborview Medical Center.
“These initial results are impressive and suggest that ApneaApp has the potential to be a simple, noninvasive way for the average person to identify sleep apnea events at home and hopefully seek treatment,” said Wilson.
Considering researchers are still seeking federal Food and Drug Administration approval—and that children can hear the emitted sound waves—ApneaApp has some areas to improve on before consumer access. However, the signs are encouraging. With more readily accessible testing methods, sleep apnea can be more widely diagnosed to those who actually suffer from the bizarre sleeping disorder.
Sleep apnea is one of many strange medical conditions. Here is a list of others that we have compiled:
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1bXsAMv
“It’s similar to the way bats navigate,” scientist says.
Smartphones already have the ability to monitor human health. Apps these days can track the amount of calories burned throughout the day, determine a user’s heart rate and follow one’s sleeping patterns.
The old way to find out if you have sleep apnea … now you can test yourself with a smartphone and University of Washington app. (Getty Images)
Now, a new app in the development stage at the University of Washington can wirelessly detect sleep apnea episodes, potentially saving those who suffer from the sleep disorder thousands of dollars.
Sleep apnea is a sleeping disorder that is commonly caused by blockage of the airway (obstructive sleep apnea) or the brain failing to signal muscles to breath during sleep (central sleep apnea). Obstructive sleep apnea, which is much more common, affects roughly 25 million Americans.
The current system for diagnosing sleep apnea requires an overnight stay at the hospital and deep pockets. Patients are hooked up to a ridiculous mass of wires and undergo an extensive polysomnography test to track the amount of times he or she struggles to breath throughout the night. In the end, the overnight examination costs thousands of dollars.
How the app works
There are home sleep apnea tests that function similarly, but the new app, named ApneaApp, uses sonar technology to track breathing patterns without a person having to sleep amidst a tangle of wires and sensors.
ApneaApp sends inaudible sound waves from the phone’s speaker that bounce off people in their sleep to track miniscule changes in their breathing pattern. The returning sound waves are then picked up by the phone’s microphone.
“It’s similar to the way bats navigate,” said Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, lead author and a Ph.D. student in the UW’s department of computer science and engineering. “They send out sound signals that hit a target, and when those signals bounce back they know something is there.”
Since sound wave patterns can change due to distance, the app is able to distinguish between the breathing patterns of two different people sleeping side by side. It efficiently traces breathing patterns from distances up to three feet, so users can place their smartphones at their bedside tables, as they normally would. Regardless of one’s sleeping position, ApneaApp can track breathing patterns—even when the person is underneath a blanket.
The high frequency of the app’s emitted sound waves, which adults cannot hear, means that other audible sounds, such as talking, fans and street noise aren’t picked up by the microphone. And while children may hear ApneaApp’s high-pitched sound waves, researchers are developing a newer version with sound waves that will be inaudible to all humans.
Researchers believe the app could be available to smartphone users within the next two years.
What the fuss is about
Sleep apnea affects roughly one in thirteen Americans, and most who suffer from the sleep disorder are unaware of their condition. Part of this boils down to the small number of sleep specialists.
“Right now we don’t have enough sleep clinics, sleep laboratories and sleep specialists in the country to address all the sleep apnea that is out there,” said co-author Dr. Nathaniel F. Watson, professor of neurology and co-director of the UW Medicine Sleep Center.
ApneaApp could provide consumers with an economical and accessible method of testing for sleep apnea. Insurance companies typically only cover one trip to the doctor for a sleep test, and even then, a diagnosis based off one test may be misrepresentative of a patient’s regular breathing pattern. With the UW-created app, people have the ability to track their breathing pattern for multiple days, creating a more accurate representation.
The app is still in the preliminary stages of development—it is currently undergoing more tests to validate results, while researchers are also seeing if the app can track other minimal body movements during sleep.
However, with accuracy rates of 95 to 99 percent compared to the test currently done at hospitals, ApneaApp may be a consumer reality soon. 300 hours of testing have already been completed at Harborview Medical Center.
“These initial results are impressive and suggest that ApneaApp has the potential to be a simple, noninvasive way for the average person to identify sleep apnea events at home and hopefully seek treatment,” said Wilson.
Considering researchers are still seeking federal Food and Drug Administration approval—and that children can hear the emitted sound waves—ApneaApp has some areas to improve on before consumer access. However, the signs are encouraging. With more readily accessible testing methods, sleep apnea can be more widely diagnosed to those who actually suffer from the bizarre sleeping disorder.
Sleep apnea is one of many strange medical conditions. Here is a list of others that we have compiled:
from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1bXsAMv
Global Warming: Getting worse [Greg Laden's Blog]
I recently noted that there are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected. Since I wrote that (in late January) even more evidence has come along, so I thought it was time for an update.
First a bit of perspective. Scientists have known for a very long time that the proportion of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere controls (along with other factors) overall surface and upper ocean heat balance. In particular, is has been understood that the release of fossil Carbon (in coal and petroleum) as CO2 would likely warm the Earth and change climate. The basic physics to understand and predict this have been in place for much longer than the vast majority of global warming that has actually happened. Unfortunately, a number of factors have slowed down the policy response, and the acceptance of this basic science by non scientists.
A very small factor, often cited by climate contrarians, is the consideration mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, that the Earth goes through major climate swings including the onset of ice ages, so we have to worry about both cooling and warming. This possibility was obviated around the time it was being discussed, though people then may not have fully realized it at the time, because as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased beyond about 300ppm, from the pre-industrial average of around 250–280ppm (it is now at 400ppm), the possibility of a new Ice Age diminished to about zero. Another factor mitigating against urgency is the fact that the Earth’s surface temperatures have undergone a handful of “pauses” as the surface temperature has marched generally upwards. I’m not talking about the “Faux Pause” said to have happened during the last two decades, but earlier pauses, including one around the 1940s that was probably just a natural down swing that happened when there was not enough warming to swamp it. A second pause, shorter, happened after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in 1991.
Prior to recent anthropogenic global warming, the Earth’s surface temperature has squiggled up and down do to natural variability. Some of these squiggles were, at least reionally large enough to get names, such as the “Medieval Warm Period” (properly called the “Medieval Climate Anomaly”) and the “Little Ice Age.” When the planet’s temperature started going distinctly up at the beginning of the 20th century, these natural ups and downs, some larger and some smaller, caused by a number of different factors, eventually became imposed on a stronger upward signal. So, when we have a “downward” swing caused by natural variation, it is manifest not so much as a true downturn in surface temperatures, but rather, less of an upward swing. Since about a year and a half ago, we have seen very steady warming suggesting that a recent attenuation in how much temperatures go up is reversing. Most informed climate scientists expect 2015 and even 2016 to be years with many very warm months globally. So, the second factor (the first being the concern over the ice age as possibly) is natural variation in the Earth’s surface temperature. To reiterate, early natural swings in the surface temperature may have legitimately caused some scientists to wonder about how much greenhouse gas pollution changes things, but later natural variations have not; Scientists know that this natural variation is superimposed on an impressive long term upward increase in temperature of the Earth’s surface and the upper ocean. Which brings us to the third major factor delaying both non-scientists’ acceptance of the realities of global warming, and dangerous policy inaction: Denialism.
The recent relative attenuation of increase in surface temperatures, likely soon to be over, was not thought of by scientists as disproving climate models or suggesting a stoppage of warming. But it was claimed by those denying the science as evidence that global warming is not real and that the climate scientists have it all wrong. That is only one form of denialism, which also includes the idea that yes, warming is happening, but does not matter, or yes, it matters, but we can’t do anything about it, or yes, we could do something about it, but the Chinese will not act (there is little evidence of that by the way, they are acting) so we’re screwed anyway. Etc.
The slowdown in global warming is not real, but a decades-long slowdown in addressing global warming at the individual, corporate or business, and governmental levels is very real, and very meaningful. There is no doubt that had we started to act aggressively, say, back in the 1980s when any major hurdles for overall understanding of the reality of global warming were overcome, that we would be way ahead of where we are now in the effort to keep the Carbon in the ground by using clean energy. The precipitous drop we’ve seen in photovoltaic costs, increases in battery efficiency and drop in cost, the deployment of wind turbines, and so on, would have had a different history than they have in fact had, and almost certainly all of this would have occurred faster. Over the last 30 or 40 years we have spent considerable effort building new sources of energy, most of which have used fossil Carbon. If even half of that effort was spent on increasing efficiency and developing non fossil Carbon sources, we would not have reached an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 400ppm in 2015. The effects of greenhouse gas pollution would be less today and we would not be heading so quickly towards certain disaster. Shame on the denialists for causing this to happen.
I should mention a fourth cause of inappropriate rejection of the science of climate change. This is actually an indirect effect of climate change itself. You all know about the Inhofe Snowball. A US Senator actually carried a snowball into the senate chamber, a snowball he said he made outside where there has been an atypical snowfall in Washington DC, and held it aloft as evidence that the scientists had it all wrong, and that global warming is a hoax. Over the last few years, we have seen a climatological pattern in the US which has kept winter snows away from the mountains of California, contributing significantly to a major drought there. The same climatological phenomenon has brought unusual winter storms to states along the Eastern Seaboard that usually get less snow (such as major snow storms in Atlanta two winters ago) and persistent unseasonal cold to the northeastern part of the US. This change in pattern is due to a shift in the behavior of the Polar jet stream, which in turn is almost certainly caused by anomalous very warm water in parts of the Pacific and the extreme amplification of anomalous warm conditions in the Arctic, relative to the rest of the planet. (The jury is still out as to the exact process, but no serious climate scientists working on this scientific problem, as far as I know, doubts it is an effect of greenhouse gas pollution). This blob of cold air resting over the seat of power of one of the more influential governments in the world fuels the absurd but apparently effective anti-science pro-fossil fuel activism among so many of our current elected officials.
Climate Sensitivity Is Not Low
The concept of “Climate Sensitivity” is embodied in two formulations that each address the same basic question: given an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, how much will the Earth’s surface and upper ocean temperatures increase? The issue is more complex than I’ll address here, but here is the simple version. Often, “Climate sensitivity” is the amount of warming that will result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels. That increase in temperature would take a while to happen because of the way climate works. On a different planet, equilibrium would be reached faster or slower. Historically, the range of climate sensitivity values has run from as low as about 1.5 degrees C up to 6 degrees C.
The difficulty in estimating climate sensitivity is in the feedbacks, such as ice melt, changes in water vapor, etc. For the most part, feedbacks will increase temperature. Without feedbacks, climate sensitivity would be about 1.2 degrees C, but the feedbacks are strong, the climate system is complex, and the math is a bit higher level.
As time goes by, our understanding of climate sensitivity has become more refined, and it is probably true that most climate scientists who study this would settle on 3 degrees C as the best estimate, but with wide range around that. The lower end of the range, however, is not as great as the larger end of the range, and the upper end of the range probably has what is called a “fat tail.” This would mean that while 3 degrees C is the best guess, the probability of it being way higher, like 4 or 5, is perhaps one in ten. (This all depends on which model or scientist you query.) The point here is that while it might be 3, there is a non-trivial chance (one in ten is not small for an extreme event) that it would be a value that would be really bad for us.
Anyway, Dana Nuccitelli has a recent post in The Guardian that looks at climate sensitivity in relation to “The Single Study Syndrome.”
There have been a few recent studies using what’s called an “energy balance model” approach, combining simple climate models with recent observational data, concluding that climate sensitivity is on the low end of IPCC estimates. However, subsequent research has identified some potentially serious flaws in this approach.
These types of studies have nevertheless been the focus of disproportionate attention. For example, in recent testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, contrarian climate scientist Judith Curry said,
Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change: … Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide
Curry referenced just one paper (using the energy balance model approach) to support that argument – the very definition of single study syndrome …
…As Andrew Dessler told me,
There certainly is some evidence that climate sensitivity may be below 2°C. But if you look at all of the evidence, it’s hard to reconcile with such a low climate sensitivity. I think our best estimate is still around 3°C for doubled CO2.
So there is not new information suggesting a higher climate sensitivity, or a quicker realization of it, but there is a continuation of the consensus that the value is not low, despite efforts by so called luke-warmists or denialists to throw cold water on this hot topic.
Important Carbon Sink May Be Limited.
A study just out in Nature Geoscience suggests that one of the possible factors that may mitigate against global warming, the terrestrial sink, is limited in its ability to do so. The idea here is that as CO2 increases some biological activities at the Earth’s Surface increase and store some of the carbon in solid form as biomass. Essentially, the CO2 acts as plant fertilizer, and some of that Carbon is trapped in the detritus of that system, or in living tissue. This recent study suggests that this sink is smaller than previously suspected.
Terrestrial carbon storage is dependent on the availability of nitrogen for plant growth… Widespread phosphorus limitation in terrestrial ecosystems may also strongly regulate the global carbon cycle… Here we use global state-of-the-art coupled carbon–climate model projections of terrestrial net primary productivity and carbon storage from 1860–2100; estimates of annual new nutrient inputs from deposition, nitrogen fixation, and weathering; and estimates of carbon allocation and stoichiometry to evaluate how simulated CO2 fertilization effects could be constrained by nutrient availability. We find that the nutrients required for the projected increases in net primary productivity greatly exceed estimated nutrient supply rates, suggesting that projected productivity increases may be unrealistically high. … We conclude that potential effects of nutrient limitation must be considered in estimates of the terrestrial carbon sink strength through the twenty-first century.
Related, the Amazon carbon sink is also showing long term decline in its effectiveness.
Permafrost Feedback
From Andy Skuce writing at Skeptical Science:
We have good reason to be concerned about the potential for nasty climate feedbacks from thawing permafrost in the Arctic….research bring good news or bad? [From recent work on this topic we may conclude that] although the permafrost feedback is unlikely to cause abrupt climate change in the near future, the feedback is going to make climate change worse over the second half of this century and beyond. The emissions quantities are still uncertain, but the central estimate would be like adding an additional country with the unmitigated emissions the current size of the United States’ for at least the rest of the century. This will not cause a climate catastrophe by itself, but it will make preventing dangerous climate change that much more difficult. As if it wasn’t hard enough already.
Expect More Extreme Weather
Michael D. Lemonick at Climate Central writes:
disasters were happening long before humans started pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but global warming has tipped the odds in their favor. A devastating heat wave like the one that killed 35,000 people in Europe in 2003, for example, is now more than 10 times more likely than it used to be…. But that’s just a single event in a single place, which doesn’t say much about the world as a whole. A new analysis in Nature Climate Change, however, takes a much broader view. About 18 percent of heavy precipitation events worldwide and 75 percent of hot temperature extremes — defined as events that come only once in every thousand days, on average — can already be attributed to human activity, says the study. And as the world continues to warm, the frequency of those events is expected to double by 2100.
Melting Glaciers Are Melting
This topic would require an entire blog post in itself. I’ll give just an overview here. Over the last year or so, scientists have realized that more of the Antarctic glaciers are melting more than previously thought, and a few big chunks of ice have actually floated away or become less stable. There is more fresh water flowing from glacial melt into the Gulf of Alaska than previously thought. Related to this, as well as changes in currents and increasing sea temperatures, sea level rise is sparking sharply.
The Shifting Climate
I mentioned earlier that the general upward trend of surface temperature has a certain amount of natural variation superimposed over it. Recent work strongly suggests that a multi-decade long variation, an up and down squiggle, which has been mostly in the down phase over recent years, is about to turn into an upward squiggle. This is a pretty convincing study that underscored the currently observed month by month warming, which has been going on for over a year now. It is not clear that the current acceleration in warming is the beginning of this long term change … that will be known only after a few years has gone by. But it is important to remember that nothing new has to happen, no new scientific finding has to occur, for us to understand right now that the upward march of global surface temperatures is going to be greater on average than the last decade or so has suggested. We have been warming all along, but lately much of that warming has been in the oceans. Expect surface temperatures to catch up soon.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1zIgQso
I recently noted that there are reasons to think that the effects of human caused climate change are coming on faster than previously expected. Since I wrote that (in late January) even more evidence has come along, so I thought it was time for an update.
First a bit of perspective. Scientists have known for a very long time that the proportion of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere controls (along with other factors) overall surface and upper ocean heat balance. In particular, is has been understood that the release of fossil Carbon (in coal and petroleum) as CO2 would likely warm the Earth and change climate. The basic physics to understand and predict this have been in place for much longer than the vast majority of global warming that has actually happened. Unfortunately, a number of factors have slowed down the policy response, and the acceptance of this basic science by non scientists.
A very small factor, often cited by climate contrarians, is the consideration mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, that the Earth goes through major climate swings including the onset of ice ages, so we have to worry about both cooling and warming. This possibility was obviated around the time it was being discussed, though people then may not have fully realized it at the time, because as atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased beyond about 300ppm, from the pre-industrial average of around 250–280ppm (it is now at 400ppm), the possibility of a new Ice Age diminished to about zero. Another factor mitigating against urgency is the fact that the Earth’s surface temperatures have undergone a handful of “pauses” as the surface temperature has marched generally upwards. I’m not talking about the “Faux Pause” said to have happened during the last two decades, but earlier pauses, including one around the 1940s that was probably just a natural down swing that happened when there was not enough warming to swamp it. A second pause, shorter, happened after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, in 1991.
Prior to recent anthropogenic global warming, the Earth’s surface temperature has squiggled up and down do to natural variability. Some of these squiggles were, at least reionally large enough to get names, such as the “Medieval Warm Period” (properly called the “Medieval Climate Anomaly”) and the “Little Ice Age.” When the planet’s temperature started going distinctly up at the beginning of the 20th century, these natural ups and downs, some larger and some smaller, caused by a number of different factors, eventually became imposed on a stronger upward signal. So, when we have a “downward” swing caused by natural variation, it is manifest not so much as a true downturn in surface temperatures, but rather, less of an upward swing. Since about a year and a half ago, we have seen very steady warming suggesting that a recent attenuation in how much temperatures go up is reversing. Most informed climate scientists expect 2015 and even 2016 to be years with many very warm months globally. So, the second factor (the first being the concern over the ice age as possibly) is natural variation in the Earth’s surface temperature. To reiterate, early natural swings in the surface temperature may have legitimately caused some scientists to wonder about how much greenhouse gas pollution changes things, but later natural variations have not; Scientists know that this natural variation is superimposed on an impressive long term upward increase in temperature of the Earth’s surface and the upper ocean. Which brings us to the third major factor delaying both non-scientists’ acceptance of the realities of global warming, and dangerous policy inaction: Denialism.
The recent relative attenuation of increase in surface temperatures, likely soon to be over, was not thought of by scientists as disproving climate models or suggesting a stoppage of warming. But it was claimed by those denying the science as evidence that global warming is not real and that the climate scientists have it all wrong. That is only one form of denialism, which also includes the idea that yes, warming is happening, but does not matter, or yes, it matters, but we can’t do anything about it, or yes, we could do something about it, but the Chinese will not act (there is little evidence of that by the way, they are acting) so we’re screwed anyway. Etc.
The slowdown in global warming is not real, but a decades-long slowdown in addressing global warming at the individual, corporate or business, and governmental levels is very real, and very meaningful. There is no doubt that had we started to act aggressively, say, back in the 1980s when any major hurdles for overall understanding of the reality of global warming were overcome, that we would be way ahead of where we are now in the effort to keep the Carbon in the ground by using clean energy. The precipitous drop we’ve seen in photovoltaic costs, increases in battery efficiency and drop in cost, the deployment of wind turbines, and so on, would have had a different history than they have in fact had, and almost certainly all of this would have occurred faster. Over the last 30 or 40 years we have spent considerable effort building new sources of energy, most of which have used fossil Carbon. If even half of that effort was spent on increasing efficiency and developing non fossil Carbon sources, we would not have reached an atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 400ppm in 2015. The effects of greenhouse gas pollution would be less today and we would not be heading so quickly towards certain disaster. Shame on the denialists for causing this to happen.
I should mention a fourth cause of inappropriate rejection of the science of climate change. This is actually an indirect effect of climate change itself. You all know about the Inhofe Snowball. A US Senator actually carried a snowball into the senate chamber, a snowball he said he made outside where there has been an atypical snowfall in Washington DC, and held it aloft as evidence that the scientists had it all wrong, and that global warming is a hoax. Over the last few years, we have seen a climatological pattern in the US which has kept winter snows away from the mountains of California, contributing significantly to a major drought there. The same climatological phenomenon has brought unusual winter storms to states along the Eastern Seaboard that usually get less snow (such as major snow storms in Atlanta two winters ago) and persistent unseasonal cold to the northeastern part of the US. This change in pattern is due to a shift in the behavior of the Polar jet stream, which in turn is almost certainly caused by anomalous very warm water in parts of the Pacific and the extreme amplification of anomalous warm conditions in the Arctic, relative to the rest of the planet. (The jury is still out as to the exact process, but no serious climate scientists working on this scientific problem, as far as I know, doubts it is an effect of greenhouse gas pollution). This blob of cold air resting over the seat of power of one of the more influential governments in the world fuels the absurd but apparently effective anti-science pro-fossil fuel activism among so many of our current elected officials.
Climate Sensitivity Is Not Low
The concept of “Climate Sensitivity” is embodied in two formulations that each address the same basic question: given an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, how much will the Earth’s surface and upper ocean temperatures increase? The issue is more complex than I’ll address here, but here is the simple version. Often, “Climate sensitivity” is the amount of warming that will result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from pre-industrial levels. That increase in temperature would take a while to happen because of the way climate works. On a different planet, equilibrium would be reached faster or slower. Historically, the range of climate sensitivity values has run from as low as about 1.5 degrees C up to 6 degrees C.
The difficulty in estimating climate sensitivity is in the feedbacks, such as ice melt, changes in water vapor, etc. For the most part, feedbacks will increase temperature. Without feedbacks, climate sensitivity would be about 1.2 degrees C, but the feedbacks are strong, the climate system is complex, and the math is a bit higher level.
As time goes by, our understanding of climate sensitivity has become more refined, and it is probably true that most climate scientists who study this would settle on 3 degrees C as the best estimate, but with wide range around that. The lower end of the range, however, is not as great as the larger end of the range, and the upper end of the range probably has what is called a “fat tail.” This would mean that while 3 degrees C is the best guess, the probability of it being way higher, like 4 or 5, is perhaps one in ten. (This all depends on which model or scientist you query.) The point here is that while it might be 3, there is a non-trivial chance (one in ten is not small for an extreme event) that it would be a value that would be really bad for us.
Anyway, Dana Nuccitelli has a recent post in The Guardian that looks at climate sensitivity in relation to “The Single Study Syndrome.”
There have been a few recent studies using what’s called an “energy balance model” approach, combining simple climate models with recent observational data, concluding that climate sensitivity is on the low end of IPCC estimates. However, subsequent research has identified some potentially serious flaws in this approach.
These types of studies have nevertheless been the focus of disproportionate attention. For example, in recent testimony before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, contrarian climate scientist Judith Curry said,
Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change: … Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide
Curry referenced just one paper (using the energy balance model approach) to support that argument – the very definition of single study syndrome …
…As Andrew Dessler told me,
There certainly is some evidence that climate sensitivity may be below 2°C. But if you look at all of the evidence, it’s hard to reconcile with such a low climate sensitivity. I think our best estimate is still around 3°C for doubled CO2.
So there is not new information suggesting a higher climate sensitivity, or a quicker realization of it, but there is a continuation of the consensus that the value is not low, despite efforts by so called luke-warmists or denialists to throw cold water on this hot topic.
Important Carbon Sink May Be Limited.
A study just out in Nature Geoscience suggests that one of the possible factors that may mitigate against global warming, the terrestrial sink, is limited in its ability to do so. The idea here is that as CO2 increases some biological activities at the Earth’s Surface increase and store some of the carbon in solid form as biomass. Essentially, the CO2 acts as plant fertilizer, and some of that Carbon is trapped in the detritus of that system, or in living tissue. This recent study suggests that this sink is smaller than previously suspected.
Terrestrial carbon storage is dependent on the availability of nitrogen for plant growth… Widespread phosphorus limitation in terrestrial ecosystems may also strongly regulate the global carbon cycle… Here we use global state-of-the-art coupled carbon–climate model projections of terrestrial net primary productivity and carbon storage from 1860–2100; estimates of annual new nutrient inputs from deposition, nitrogen fixation, and weathering; and estimates of carbon allocation and stoichiometry to evaluate how simulated CO2 fertilization effects could be constrained by nutrient availability. We find that the nutrients required for the projected increases in net primary productivity greatly exceed estimated nutrient supply rates, suggesting that projected productivity increases may be unrealistically high. … We conclude that potential effects of nutrient limitation must be considered in estimates of the terrestrial carbon sink strength through the twenty-first century.
Related, the Amazon carbon sink is also showing long term decline in its effectiveness.
Permafrost Feedback
From Andy Skuce writing at Skeptical Science:
We have good reason to be concerned about the potential for nasty climate feedbacks from thawing permafrost in the Arctic….research bring good news or bad? [From recent work on this topic we may conclude that] although the permafrost feedback is unlikely to cause abrupt climate change in the near future, the feedback is going to make climate change worse over the second half of this century and beyond. The emissions quantities are still uncertain, but the central estimate would be like adding an additional country with the unmitigated emissions the current size of the United States’ for at least the rest of the century. This will not cause a climate catastrophe by itself, but it will make preventing dangerous climate change that much more difficult. As if it wasn’t hard enough already.
Expect More Extreme Weather
Michael D. Lemonick at Climate Central writes:
disasters were happening long before humans started pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but global warming has tipped the odds in their favor. A devastating heat wave like the one that killed 35,000 people in Europe in 2003, for example, is now more than 10 times more likely than it used to be…. But that’s just a single event in a single place, which doesn’t say much about the world as a whole. A new analysis in Nature Climate Change, however, takes a much broader view. About 18 percent of heavy precipitation events worldwide and 75 percent of hot temperature extremes — defined as events that come only once in every thousand days, on average — can already be attributed to human activity, says the study. And as the world continues to warm, the frequency of those events is expected to double by 2100.
Melting Glaciers Are Melting
This topic would require an entire blog post in itself. I’ll give just an overview here. Over the last year or so, scientists have realized that more of the Antarctic glaciers are melting more than previously thought, and a few big chunks of ice have actually floated away or become less stable. There is more fresh water flowing from glacial melt into the Gulf of Alaska than previously thought. Related to this, as well as changes in currents and increasing sea temperatures, sea level rise is sparking sharply.
The Shifting Climate
I mentioned earlier that the general upward trend of surface temperature has a certain amount of natural variation superimposed over it. Recent work strongly suggests that a multi-decade long variation, an up and down squiggle, which has been mostly in the down phase over recent years, is about to turn into an upward squiggle. This is a pretty convincing study that underscored the currently observed month by month warming, which has been going on for over a year now. It is not clear that the current acceleration in warming is the beginning of this long term change … that will be known only after a few years has gone by. But it is important to remember that nothing new has to happen, no new scientific finding has to occur, for us to understand right now that the upward march of global surface temperatures is going to be greater on average than the last decade or so has suggested. We have been warming all along, but lately much of that warming has been in the oceans. Expect surface temperatures to catch up soon.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1zIgQso
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