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Get ready for New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto

“There could be mountains of water ice with glaciers of nitrogen creeping down their sides,” Bill McKinnon says. “That’s entirely plausible. At -400 degrees F, water ice would be hard and brittle, but nitrogen ice would be squishy and easily melted.” Image credit: iStockphoto

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly through the Pluto system on July 14 at an angle of 46 degrees to the plane of the dwarf planet’s orbit, piercing the plane and then passing through the shadows first of Pluto and then of its moon, Charon.

Once past Charon it will turn around and, looking backward, search for any tenuous rings around Pluto, and use sunlight reflected from Charon to image the part of Pluto’s surface now in continuous darkness.

Commentary from Bill McKinnon, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and a co-investigator on the mission’s science team, will appear on NASA’s New Horizons page. Images will typically appear on the page one to a few days after the event.

The first color movies from NASA’s New Horizons mission show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, and the complex orbital dance of the two bodies known as a double planet. The images were taken on nine different occasions from May 29-June 3. Image credit: NASA

First color movies of Pluto and Charon

All through June, New Horizons has been scanning its planned trajectory for debris that might damage the spacecraft. If any hazards are found, it might divert to an alternative pathway or point its antenna in the ram direction to shield the body of the spacecraft.

Already the images of Pluto are sharper than the best that can be made with earth-based telescopes.

The spacecraft will send down particularly choice images and other data July 12, two days before the day of closest approach, and again on July 13. This is a fail-safe or contingency sample, much like the bag of rocks Neil Armstrong scooped up in his first four minutes on the moon to make sure he wouldn’t come back empty-handed.

On July 14 the day of closest approach, the spacecraft will be incommunicado, busy executing a pre-programmed sequence of observations.

At 9 pm EDT on July 14 the spacecraft will phone home to let the team know it all worked.

It will then begin to return encounter images and other data, starting early in the morning of July 15. Following this, the spacecraft will download a complete but highly compressed “browse dataset” of the observations made during the flyby, so the mission scientists can get some idea of what it has captured.

Transmitting the full, uncompressed dataset will take time, however. McKinnon doesn’t anticipate seeing the first good stereo images that will make the topography look three-dimensional until September, and it will take a full 16 months to transmit all of the data. Pluto is very far away, so the radio signals are quite faint and the baud rates quite low.

These images, taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), show four different “faces” of Pluto as it rotates about its axis with a period of 6.4 days. All the images have been rotated to align Pluto’s rotational axis with the vertical direction (up-down) on the figure, as depicted schematically in the upper left.From left to right, the images were taken when Pluto’s central longitude was 17, 63, 130, and 243 degrees, respectively. Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

When New Horizons was launched in 2001, Pluto was still called a planet and Charon was Pluto’s only known moon.

In the 9.5 years the spacecraft has been traveling the 3 billion miles from Earth to Pluto’s perch at the edge of the solar system, everything has changed. The Hubble Telescope found two more moons, Nix and Hydra, in 2005; a group of astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006; Hubble found a third moon, named Kerberos in 2011; and then a fourth, named Styx, in 2012.

From another point of view, however, nothing has changed. Pluto is still the most distant solar system body we’ve ever visited, and one about which we know very little. Watching it turn from a pixelated blob into a real world will be a thrill, says McKinnon.

New Horizons is the culmination of years of planning and lobbying for a mission to Pluto. The first proposal, called Pluto-350, was circulated in 1989. It was followed by Mariner Mark II, Pluto Fast Flyby, Pluto Express, and Pluto Kuiper Express, none of which made it off the drawing board. After a call for proposals, NASA finally selected New Horizons for funding in 2001.

McKinnon has to pinch himself to make sure he isn’t dreaming and that he is going to get to see Pluto up close.

Having read The Experts Speak, a giant compendium of predictions by experts that turned out to be wrong, McKinnon is a bit skittish about predicting what Pluto will be like.

Still, he expects its geology to be spectacular. At 4.7 billion miles from the sun, Kuiper Belt Objects are the coldest objects in the solar system. Pluto’s surface temperature is 40 Kelvin, or roughly -400 degrees Fahrenheit, and at that temperature many compounds that are gases on Earth freeze out as ices. McKinnon said:

There could be mountains of water ice with glaciers of nitrogen creeping down their sides. That’s entirely plausible. At -400 degrees F, water ice would be hard and brittle, but nitrogen ice would be squishy and easily melted.

We know Pluto has atmosphere, or at least an atmospheric haze.

It’s made up mostly of nitrogen, like Earth’s atmosphere, with traces of carbon monoxide and methane (natural gas). These ‘volatiles’ snow out of the atmosphere in some places and vaporize in others, creating shifting patterns of color and brightness on Pluto’s surface.

Pluto also has seasons; in fact, it has extreme seasons because it orbits tipped on its side. At its solstices (when the sun is at its highest or lowest in the sky), a quarter of its surface is in continuous daylight and another quarter is in continuous darkness.

While the New Horizons spacecraft has been in transit to Pluto, Pluto’s atmospheric pressure has doubled or tripled. But at the same time, McKinnon says, we know some of its atmosphere is escaping to space and mixing with the solar wind.

What replenishes the atmosphere if it is continually lost? “There is either a really thick layer of ice that hasn’t yet been depleted, or a source of continuous supply,” McKinnon says. “And that’s something we’ll actually get to the bottom of when we get there, because there will either be thick ice caps that would take billions of years to erode or just a thin glaze of ices that must be replenished from somewhere.”

“We also want to understand as much as we can what lies beneath the surface,” McKinnon says. “Even though Pluto’s surface is icy, we think it has a rocky core. It may even have a subsurface ocean of water spiked with ammonia that is warmed by radioactive decay in the rocky core.”

New Horizons will also look at Charon and Pluto’s other moons. Charon seems to be very different from Pluto; its surface is covered by patches of ammonia hydrates and water crystals, which couldn’t long withstand bombardment with ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays. Some scientists have suggested this may mean it is being resurfaced by icy lava flows from cryo-volcanos erupting liquid water with dissolved ammonia (like cosmic Windex), McKinnon says.

Bottom line: On July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly through the Pluto system at an angle of 46 degrees to the plane of the dwarf planet’s orbit, piercing the plane and then passing through the shadows first of Pluto and then of its moon, Charon.

Via Futurity

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1RLhGYb

First color movies of Pluto and Charon

Already the images of Pluto are sharper than the best that can be made with earth-based telescopes.

On July 14 the day of closest approach, the spacecraft will be incommunicado, busy executing a pre-programmed sequence of observations.

At 9 pm EDT on July 14 the spacecraft will phone home to let the team know it all worked.

When New Horizons was launched in 2001, Pluto was still called a planet and Charon was Pluto’s only known moon.

McKinnon has to pinch himself to make sure he isn’t dreaming and that he is going to get to see Pluto up close.

Having read The Experts Speak, a giant compendium of predictions by experts that turned out to be wrong, McKinnon is a bit skittish about predicting what Pluto will be like.

There could be mountains of water ice with glaciers of nitrogen creeping down their sides. That’s entirely plausible. At -400 degrees F, water ice would be hard and brittle, but nitrogen ice would be squishy and easily melted.

We know Pluto has atmosphere, or at least an atmospheric haze.

Via Futurity

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1RLhGYb

What is the speed of thought?

Just how quickly are those thoughts bouncing around in there? Image credit: shutterstock

By Tim Welsh, University of Toronto

As inquisitive beings, we are constantly questioning and quantifying the speed of various things. With a fair degree of accuracy, scientists have quantified the speed of light, the speed of sound, the speed at which the earth revolves around the sun, the speed at which hummingbirds beat their wings, the average speed of continental drift….

These values are all well-characterized. But what about the speed of thought? It’s a challenging question that’s not easily answerable – but we can give it a shot.

What’s a thought? Photo credit: Fergus Macdonald

First, some thoughts on thought

To quantify the speed of anything, one needs to identify its beginning and end. For our purposes, a “thought” will be defined as the mental activities engaged from the moment sensory information is received to the moment an action is initiated. This definition necessarily excludes many experiences and processes one might consider to be “thoughts.”

Here, a “thought” includes processes related to perception (determining what is in the environment and where), decision-making (determining what to do) and action-planning (determining how to do it). The distinction between, and independence of, each of these processes is blurry. Further, each of these processes, and perhaps even their sub-components, could be considered “thoughts” on their own. But we have to set our start- and endpoints somewhere to have any hope of tackling the question.

Finally, trying to identify one value for the “speed of thought” is a little like trying to identify one maximum speed for all forms of transportation, from bicycles to rockets. There are many different kinds of thoughts that can vary greatly in timescale. Consider the differences between simple, speedy reactions like the sprinter deciding to run after the crack of the starting pistol (on the order of 150 milliseconds [ms]), and more complex decisions like deciding when to change lanes while driving on a highway or figuring out the appropriate strategy to solve a math problem (on the order of seconds to minutes).

Even looking inside the brain, we can’t see thoughts. Photo credit: Duke University Photography Jim Wallace

Thoughts are invisible, so what should we measure?

Thought is ultimately an internal and very individualized process that’s not readily observable. It relies on interactions across complex networks of neurons distributed throughout the peripheral and central nervous systems. Researchers can use imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography, to see what areas of the nervous system are active during different thought processes, and how information flows through the nervous system. We’re still a long way from reliably relating these signals to the mental events they represent, though.

Many scientists consider the best proxy measure of the speed or efficiency of thought processes to be reaction time – the time from the onset of a specific signal to the moment an action is initiated. Indeed, researchers interested in assessing how fast information travels through the nervous system have used reaction time since the mid-1800s. This approach makes sense because thoughts are ultimately expressed through overt actions. Reaction time provides an index of how efficiently someone receives and interprets sensory information, decides what to do based on that information, and plans and initiates an action based on that decision.

Neurons do the work of transmitting thoughts. Image credit: Bryan Jones

Neural factors involved

The time it takes for all thoughts to occur is ultimately shaped by the characteristics of the neurons and the networks involved. Many things influence the speed at which information flows through the system, but three key factors are:

Distance – The farther signals need to travel, the longer the reaction time is going to be. Reaction times for movements of the foot are longer than for movements of the hand, in large part because the signals traveling to and from the brain have a longer distance to cover. This principle is readily demonstrated through reflexes (note, however, that reflexes are responses that occur without “thought” because they do not involve neurons that engaged in conscious thought). The key observation for the present purpose is that the same reflexes evoked in taller individuals tend to have longer response times than for shorter individuals. By way of analogy, if two couriers driving to New York leave at the same time and travel at exactly the same speed, a courier leaving from Washington, DC will always arrive before one leaving from Los Angeles.
Neuron characteristics – The width of the neuron is important. Signals are carried more quickly in neurons with larger diameters than those that are narrower – a courier will generally travel faster on wide multi-lane highways than on narrow country roads.

Nerve signals jump between the exposed areas between myelin sheathes. Image credit: shutterstock

How much myelination a neuron has is also important. Some nerve cells have myelin cells that wrap around the neuron to provide a type of insulation sheath. The myelin sheath isn’t completely continuous along a neuron; there are small gaps in which the nerve cell is exposed. Nerve signals effectively jump from exposed section to exposed section instead of traveling the full extent of the neuronal surface. So signals move much faster in neurons that have myelin sheaths than in neurons that don’t. The message will get to New York sooner if it passes from cellphone tower to cellphone tower than if the courier drives the message along each and every inch of the road. In the human context, the signals carried by the large-diameter, myelinated neurons that link the spinal cord to the muscles can travel at speeds ranging from 70-120 miles per second (m/s) (156-270 miles per hour[mph]), while signals traveling along the same paths carried by the small-diameter, unmyelinated fibers of the pain receptors travel at speeds ranging from 0.5-2 m/s (1.1-4.4 mph). That’s quite a difference!
Complexity – Increasing the number of neurons involved in a thought means a greater absolute distance the signal needs to travel – which necessarily means more time. The courier from Washington, DC will take less time to get to New York with a direct route than if she travels to Chicago and Boston along the way. Further, more neurons mean more connections. Most neurons are not in physical contact with other neurons. Instead, most signals are passed via neurotransmitter molecules that travel across the small spaces between the nerve cells called synapses. This process takes more time (at least 0.5 ms per synapse) than if the signal was continually passed within the single neuron. The message carried from Washington, DC will take less time to get to New York if one single courier does the whole route than if multiple couriers are involved, stopping and handing over the message several times along the way. In truth, even the “simplest” thoughts involve multiple structures and hundreds of thousands of neurons.

And they’re off! Photo credit: Oscar Rethwill

How quickly it can happen

It’s amazing to consider that a given thought can be generated and acted on in less than 150 ms. Consider the sprinter at a starting line. The reception and perception of the crack of the starter’s gun, the decision to begin running, issuing of the movement commands, and generating muscle force to start running involves a network that begins in the inner ear and travels through numerous structures of the nervous system before reaching the muscles of the legs. All that can happen in literally half the time of a blink of an eye.

Although the time to initiate a sprint start is extremely short, a variety of factors can influence it. One is the loudness of the auditory “go” signal. Although reaction time tends to decrease as the loudness of the “go” increases, there appears to be a critical point in the range of 120-124 decibels where an additional decrease of approximately 18 ms can occur. That’s because sounds this loud can generate the “startle” response and trigger a pre-planned sprinting response.

Researchers think this triggered response emerges through activation of neural centers in the brain stem. These startle-elicited responses may be quicker because they involve a relatively shorter and less complex neural system – one that does not necessarily require the signal to travel all the way up to the more complex structures of the cerebral cortex. A debate could be had here as to whether or not these triggered responses are “thoughts,” because it can be questioned whether or not a true decision to act was made; but the reaction time differences of these responses illustrate the effect of neural factors such as distance and complexity. Involuntary reflexes, too, involve shorter and simpler circuitry and tend to take less time to execute than voluntary responses.

How well can we gauge our own speed of thought? Image credit: William Brawley

Perceptions of our thoughts and actions

Considering how quickly they do happen, it’s little wonder we often feel our thoughts and actions are nearly instantaneous. But it turns out we’re also poor judges of when our actions actually occur.

Although we’re aware of our thoughts and the resulting movements, an interesting dissociation has been observed between the time we think we initiate a movement and when that movement actually starts. In studies, researchers ask volunteers to watch a second hand rotate around a clock face and to complete a simple rapid finger or wrist movement, such as a key press, whenever they liked. After the clock hand had completed its rotation, the people were asked to identify where the hand was on the clock face when they started their own movement.

Surprisingly, people typically judge the onset of their movement to occur 75-100 ms prior to when it actually began. This difference cannot be accounted for simply by the time it takes for the movement commands to travel from the brain to the arm muscles (which is on the order of 16-25 ms). It’s unclear exactly why this misperception occurs, but it’s generally believed that people base their judgment of movement onset on the time of the decision to act and the prediction of the upcoming movement, instead of on the movement itself. These and other findings raise important questions about the planning and control of action and our sense of agency and control in the world – because our decision to act and our perception of when we act appear to be distinct from when we in fact do.

In sum, although quantifying a single “speed of thought” may never be possible, analyzing the time it takes to plan and complete actions provides important insights into how efficiently the nervous system completes these processes, and how changes associated with movement and cognitive disorders affect the efficiency of these mental activities.

Tim Welsh is Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at University of Toronto.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1RLhJ6i

Just how quickly are those thoughts bouncing around in there? Image credit: shutterstock

By Tim Welsh, University of Toronto

These values are all well-characterized. But what about the speed of thought? It’s a challenging question that’s not easily answerable – but we can give it a shot.

What’s a thought? Photo credit: Fergus Macdonald

First, some thoughts on thought

Even looking inside the brain, we can’t see thoughts. Photo credit: Duke University Photography Jim Wallace

Thoughts are invisible, so what should we measure?

Neurons do the work of transmitting thoughts. Image credit: Bryan Jones

Neural factors involved

Distance – The farther signals need to travel, the longer the reaction time is going to be. Reaction times for movements of the foot are longer than for movements of the hand, in large part because the signals traveling to and from the brain have a longer distance to cover. This principle is readily demonstrated through reflexes (note, however, that reflexes are responses that occur without “thought” because they do not involve neurons that engaged in conscious thought). The key observation for the present purpose is that the same reflexes evoked in taller individuals tend to have longer response times than for shorter individuals. By way of analogy, if two couriers driving to New York leave at the same time and travel at exactly the same speed, a courier leaving from Washington, DC will always arrive before one leaving from Los Angeles.
Neuron characteristics – The width of the neuron is important. Signals are carried more quickly in neurons with larger diameters than those that are narrower – a courier will generally travel faster on wide multi-lane highways than on narrow country roads.

Nerve signals jump between the exposed areas between myelin sheathes. Image credit: shutterstock

How much myelination a neuron has is also important. Some nerve cells have myelin cells that wrap around the neuron to provide a type of insulation sheath. The myelin sheath isn’t completely continuous along a neuron; there are small gaps in which the nerve cell is exposed. Nerve signals effectively jump from exposed section to exposed section instead of traveling the full extent of the neuronal surface. So signals move much faster in neurons that have myelin sheaths than in neurons that don’t. The message will get to New York sooner if it passes from cellphone tower to cellphone tower than if the courier drives the message along each and every inch of the road. In the human context, the signals carried by the large-diameter, myelinated neurons that link the spinal cord to the muscles can travel at speeds ranging from 70-120 miles per second (m/s) (156-270 miles per hour[mph]), while signals traveling along the same paths carried by the small-diameter, unmyelinated fibers of the pain receptors travel at speeds ranging from 0.5-2 m/s (1.1-4.4 mph). That’s quite a difference!
Complexity – Increasing the number of neurons involved in a thought means a greater absolute distance the signal needs to travel – which necessarily means more time. The courier from Washington, DC will take less time to get to New York with a direct route than if she travels to Chicago and Boston along the way. Further, more neurons mean more connections. Most neurons are not in physical contact with other neurons. Instead, most signals are passed via neurotransmitter molecules that travel across the small spaces between the nerve cells called synapses. This process takes more time (at least 0.5 ms per synapse) than if the signal was continually passed within the single neuron. The message carried from Washington, DC will take less time to get to New York if one single courier does the whole route than if multiple couriers are involved, stopping and handing over the message several times along the way. In truth, even the “simplest” thoughts involve multiple structures and hundreds of thousands of neurons.

And they’re off! Photo credit: Oscar Rethwill

How quickly it can happen

How well can we gauge our own speed of thought? Image credit: William Brawley

Perceptions of our thoughts and actions

Tim Welsh is Professor of Kinesiology and Physical Education at University of Toronto.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1RLhJ6i

Moon near Antares. Jupiter and Venus!

Don’t forget to look westward at nightfall for the close pairing of the planets Venus and Jupiter, with the star Regulus hovering above the embracing planets.

Tonight – June 29, 2015 – look for the star Antares near the moon (and the planet Saturn) as darkness falls. At the same time of night, look west for Jupiter and Venus! They are spectacular now and just one day away from their conjunction, marking these two bright worlds closest appearance to each other in our night sky until August, 2016!

Want more about the Jupiter and Venus conjunction? Click into our June 30 Tonight post.

Best photos: Venus and Jupiter, west after sunset

Interested in the star near tonight’s moon? Well, Antares is one of the sky’s most fascinating stars. It’s a bright, twinkling, reddish star, representing the ruby Heart of the Scorpion in the constellation Scorpius. What’s more, Antares is opposite on the sky to another bright reddish star, Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. In other words, watch for Antares near the moon on the night of June 29. Then, if you’re up in the predawn hours on June 30, try to glimpse at the star Aldebaran close the eastern horizon tomorrow, about 75 minutes before sunrise. (See chart below.) You’ll need an unobstructed horizon in the direction of sunrise (and possibly binoculars) to see Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus the Bull. From the Southern Hemisphere, It’ll be easier to view Aldebaran in the predawn/dawn morning sky. Click here to find out when Aldebaran will rise into your sky.

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From northerly latitudes, the constellation Auriga and its brightest star, Capella, may help guide your eye to the star Aldebaran before sunrise June 30. Good luck!

Look for Aldebaran near the planet Mercury at dawn tomorrow, on June 30! From northerly latitudes, the constellation Auriga and its brightest star, Capella, may help guide your eye to the star Aldebaran before sunrise. Good luck!

Antares and Aldebaran reside in two different constellations, on opposite sides of the sky. Antares – the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion – stays out for most of the night tonight, and at nightfall June 29, sits rather low in the southeast with the bright waxing gibbous moon and the golden planet Saturn. Meanwhile, Aldebaran – brightest star in Taurus – hides in the sun’s glare throughout the most of June.

In late June, Antares transits – reaches its highest point in the sky – around 10 p.m. local standard time (11 p.m local daylight-saving time). This applies to all time zones. The moon, Antares and Saturn move westward throughout the night, and sit low in the southwest sky before the onset of morning dawn. Antares’ setting in the west-southwest presages Aldebaran’s rising in the east-northeast.

Aldebaran lies in the opposite location from Antares on the great dome of sky. That’s why Aldebaran rises after Antares sets – and vice versa. With each passing day, Antares sets four minutes earlier while Aldebaran rises four minutes earlier. In other words, with each passing month, Antares sets two hours earlier while Aldebaran rises two hours earlier. Six months from now, in late December, you’ll see Aldebaran nearly all night long, and Antares at morning dawn – after Aldebaran sets.

Antares shines from dusk until dawn in early June. Aldebaran is hidden in the sun’s glare from sunup until sundown in early June. Opposites!

Six months after Aldebaran’s conjunction with the sun, it’ll be Antares’ turn to be in conjunction with the sun on or near December 1. The Earth will be on the other side of the sun six months later, on December 1, so it’ll be Aldebaran that’ll shine from dusk until dawn, and Antares that’ll be lost in the glare of the sun in December.

Antares and Aldebaran reside close to the ecliptic and are well-known stars of the Zodiac. It’s cool that these two ruddy bright stars stand nearly opposite of one another on the great dome of sky.

Bottom line: Two similar-looking red stars, Antares in Scorpius and Aldebaran in Taurus, are on opposite sides of the sky. Thus, in early June, when Antares is visible from dusk till dawn, Aldebaran spends the day traveling with the sun across the sky, lost in the sun’s glare.

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Don’t forget to look westward at nightfall for the close pairing of the planets Venus and Jupiter, with the star Regulus hovering above the embracing planets.

Want more about the Jupiter and Venus conjunction? Click into our June 30 Tonight post.

Best photos: Venus and Jupiter, west after sunset

EarthSky logo tees back for a limited time, but going fast. Order today!

Antares shines from dusk until dawn in early June. Aldebaran is hidden in the sun’s glare from sunup until sundown in early June. Opposites!

Antares and Aldebaran reside close to the ecliptic and are well-known stars of the Zodiac. It’s cool that these two ruddy bright stars stand nearly opposite of one another on the great dome of sky.

Enjoying EarthSky so far? Sign up for our free daily newsletter today!

Donate: Your support means the world to us

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2015 SkS Weekly Digest #26

SkS Highlights

New study links global warming to Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events by John Abraham garnered the most commen ts of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. The Carbon Brief Interview: Christiana Figueres by Leo Hickman (The Carbon Brief) attracted the second highest number and Cracking the mystery of the corrosive ocean by Kaitlin Alexander (ClimateSight) received the the third highest.

El Niño Watch

The El Niño event increasing storm potential in the Pacific Ocean is likely to disrupt oil shipments around the globe, spelling higher gas prices at the pump and rising costs at the grocery store.

Commodities traders are already factoring in a rise in oil prices, according to the Financial Times. That's because any interruption in shipping routes is a major cost on transportation. And when the cargo being shipped is oil, food and consumer goods are also likely to see inflated prices.

U.S. oil imports ship largely from the Middle East around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and across the Atlantic. The Atlantic hurricane season this year is expected to be calmer than normal, so imports won't likely be constrained.

El Nino may spell higher prices at pump, grocery store by Thomas M. Kostigen, USA Today, June 27, 2015

Toon of the Week

2015 SkS Toon 26

On climate change, will Christians follow Pope Francis or Rush Limbaugh? by David Horsey, Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2015

Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

“We see climate change as a major health issue and that it is often neglected in the policy debates,” said Professor Anthony Costello, director of the UCL Institute of Global Health* and co-chair of the commission.

“On our current trajectory, going to 4C [of warming] is somewhere we don’t want to go and that has very serious and potentially catastrophic effects for human health and human survival and could undermine all of the last half-century’s gains. We see that as a medical emergency because the action we ned to do to stop that in its tracks and get us back onto a 2C trajectory or less requires action now – and action in the next ten years – otherwise the game could be over.”

*The Institute for Global Health (University College London) is a world-leading centre of research and teaching excellence in global health.

Climate change threatens 50 years of progress in global health, study says by Damian Carrington and Sarah Boseley, Guardian, June 22, 2015

SkS Spotlights

CAIT, created by the Woerld Resources Institute, is one of the most trusted sources of climate data available. It is a free and open source for comprehensive and comparable climate and emissions data. CAIT is made up of a suite of tools that allow users to utilize the data to understand considerations of equity in climate negotiations, see transparency and available information in country climate action comitments, interact with historic emissions data, and dive into the methodologies behind future emissions projections. CAIT allows national governments, international organizations and independent researchers to perform relevant analysis and promote efficient action on climate change.

Coming Soon on SkS

Irreversible loss of world's ice cover should spur leaders into action, say scientists (Roz Pidcock)
A Southern Hemisphere Booster of Super El Niño (Rob Painting)
Dutch government ordered to cut carbon emissions in landmark ruling (Arthur Neslen)
2015 SkS News Bulletin #6: Pope Francis & Climate Change (John Hartz)
Global warming is devastating Earth's oceans (Dana)
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27A (John Hartz)
The Carbon Brief Interview: Dr Fatih Birol (Simon Evans)
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B (John Hartz)
2015 SkS Weekly Digest #27 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week

2015 Poster 26

SkS Week in Review

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B by John Hartz
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A by John Hartz
Why warmer storms could lead to more flooding than expected by Conrad Wasko and Ashish Sharma (The Conversation)
Cracking the mystery of the corrosive ocean by Kaitlin Alexander (ClimateSight)
2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25 by John Hartz
The Carbon Brief Interview: Christiana Figueres by Leo Hickman (The Carbon Brief)
New study links global warming to Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events by John Abraham (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)

97 Hours of Consensus: Eric Wolff

97 Hours: Eric Wolff

Eric Wolff's bio page

Quote derived with permission from author from:

"We do know that in the last century, CO2 has risen to levels well above anything experienced in the last 800,000 years and we know why CO2 causes warming. It's basic physics that's been known for more than a century. It's pretty straightforward. If you put more CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it will get warmer - there is no way around that one."

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1CDpsMO

SkS Highlights

El Niño Watch

The El Niño event increasing storm potential in the Pacific Ocean is likely to disrupt oil shipments around the globe, spelling higher gas prices at the pump and rising costs at the grocery store.

El Nino may spell higher prices at pump, grocery store by Thomas M. Kostigen, USA Today, June 27, 2015

Toon of the Week

2015 SkS Toon 26

On climate change, will Christians follow Pope Francis or Rush Limbaugh? by David Horsey, Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2015

Hat tip to I Heart Climate Scientists

Quote of the Week

*The Institute for Global Health (University College London) is a world-leading centre of research and teaching excellence in global health.

Climate change threatens 50 years of progress in global health, study says by Damian Carrington and Sarah Boseley, Guardian, June 22, 2015

SkS Spotlights

Coming Soon on SkS

Irreversible loss of world's ice cover should spur leaders into action, say scientists (Roz Pidcock)
A Southern Hemisphere Booster of Super El Niño (Rob Painting)
Dutch government ordered to cut carbon emissions in landmark ruling (Arthur Neslen)
2015 SkS News Bulletin #6: Pope Francis & Climate Change (John Hartz)
Global warming is devastating Earth's oceans (Dana)
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27A (John Hartz)
The Carbon Brief Interview: Dr Fatih Birol (Simon Evans)
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #27B (John Hartz)
2015 SkS Weekly Digest #27 (John Hartz)

Poster of the Week

2015 Poster 26

SkS Week in Review

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B by John Hartz
2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26A by John Hartz
Why warmer storms could lead to more flooding than expected by Conrad Wasko and Ashish Sharma (The Conversation)
Cracking the mystery of the corrosive ocean by Kaitlin Alexander (ClimateSight)
2015 SkS Weekly Digest #25 by John Hartz
The Carbon Brief Interview: Christiana Figueres by Leo Hickman (The Carbon Brief)
New study links global warming to Hurricane Sandy and other extreme weather events by John Abraham (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Guardian)

97 Hours of Consensus: Eric Wolff

97 Hours: Eric Wolff

Eric Wolff's bio page

Quote derived with permission from author from:

"We do know that in the last century, CO2 has risen to levels well above anything experienced in the last 800,000 years and we know why CO2 causes warming. It's basic physics that's been known for more than a century. It's pretty straightforward. If you put more CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it will get warmer - there is no way around that one."

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1CDpsMO

LaSi vs EcMd: round two [Stoat]

Mark Lynas, one of the EcoMod crowd, has noticed what I pointed out – that Da Fadder is not on their side, indeed opposed. Whether the Bishop of Rome has noticed that the EcoMods disagree with him is another matter.

ML roughly parallels what I said, but gets carried away with the goodness of his own side:

It is not the sin of greed but rather aspirations to a better life that led countries from England to the US to China and India to burn huge quantities of coal. All sought to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty

Well, not really. Lifting people out of poverty may have been the consequence, but apart from a few noble souls mostly the motives were Gain, which the BoR also dislikes. Nonetheless I’m more sympathetic to ML than the BoR, if you were wondering; this isn’t a major error of consequence, though I presume it mis-colours their analysis.

The Ecomodernist Myth?

But I came to this via The Ecomodernist Myth, by Thomas Smith; via a tweet from ATTP. That begins by picking up ML on the same point as I’ve just made (which he calls “myth 1″), so well done him, but really that’s just a nit picking detail; he’ll need rather more than that. I think he’s wrong, too, to call it an Ecomodernist Myth. Its an error in a piece that ML wrote, but that doesn’t make it one of the tenets of EcMd. Indeed it looks to me like all his myths come from ML’s piece which is, errm, “sleight of hand” on his part.

Next we have the intensification of poverty which… already is occurring, due to existing high-energy lifestyles in the west. WTF? No evidence is offered for this odd assertion. Poverty, overall, isn’t intensifying. Its reducing.

The piece continues downhill from there, so I wonder bother rip it up unless anyone cares.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BOJRn0

ML roughly parallels what I said, but gets carried away with the goodness of his own side:

It is not the sin of greed but rather aspirations to a better life that led countries from England to the US to China and India to burn huge quantities of coal. All sought to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty

The Ecomodernist Myth?

The piece continues downhill from there, so I wonder bother rip it up unless anyone cares.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1BOJRn0

SpaceX rocket explodes after launch

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon spacecraft loaded with supplies for the International Space Station (ISS), exploded Sunday (June 28, 2015) shortly after liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The astronauts aboard ISS have about four months of supplies left, but the failure has dealt a blow to NASA, which has had three failed shipments of cargo to ISS in the past eight months.

The liftoff appeared normal until the rocket went supersonic – that is, began traveling faster than sound – at about 27 miles (43 km) up. That was at about 2 1/2 minutes into the flight. Watchers suddenly saw an expanding white cloud, then fiery plumes where the rocket was supposed to be. On NASA-TV, pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic.

June 28, 2015 failure of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Pieces could be seen falling into the Atlantic. Video still via NASA-TV

Pieces of Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft falling into Atlantic from a billowing cloud, June 28, 2015, following launch failure. Video still via NASA-TV

Tension could be heard in the voice of NASA commentator George Diller when he said:

We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure.

No astronauts were on board, but the Dragon spacecraft was carrying 5,200 pounds of space station cargo, including a first-of-its-kind docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules.

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk later said an over pressurization occurred in the liquid-oxygen tank of the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage.

Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

This failed launch has far-reaching implications. NASA is faced with the problem of how to keep the International Space Station supplied and staffed. This is the second ISS cargo shipment to fail in a row. In April, a Russian supply ship spun out of control and later burned up upon re-entry.

It’s the third failed cargo shipment in eight months, after an Orbital Sciences Corp. supply ship was destroyed in a launch accident last October.

Watched #Dragon launch from @space_station Sadly failed Space is hard Teams assess below @NASAKennedy #YearInSpace http://pic.twitter.com/myi3col5Ix

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) June 28, 2015

Bottom line: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Dragon re-supply craft to the International Space Station appeared to explode in mid-air about two-and-a-half minutes after launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday, June 28, 2015.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1KiZDIc

Pieces of Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft falling into Atlantic from a billowing cloud, June 28, 2015, following launch failure. Video still via NASA-TV

Tension could be heard in the voice of NASA commentator George Diller when he said:

We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure.

No astronauts were on board, but the Dragon spacecraft was carrying 5,200 pounds of space station cargo, including a first-of-its-kind docking port designed for future commercial crew capsules.

SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk later said an over pressurization occurred in the liquid-oxygen tank of the Falcon 9 rocket’s upper stage.

Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown. Will provide more info as soon as we review the data.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

There was an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank. Data suggests counterintuitive cause.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2015

It’s the third failed cargo shipment in eight months, after an Orbital Sciences Corp. supply ship was destroyed in a launch accident last October.

Watched #Dragon launch from @space_station Sadly failed Space is hard Teams assess below @NASAKennedy #YearInSpace http://pic.twitter.com/myi3col5Ix

— Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) June 28, 2015

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1KiZDIc

2015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #26B

Alaska’s glaciers seen as major source of sea level rise

The ice that tumbles into the ocean along Alaska’s coastline often makes for dramatic images that show one of the ravages of climate change – melting tidewater glaciers that contribute to sea level rise. But a new study finds that far more meltwater is flowing into the sea from a similar, if less frequently photographed source – inland glaciers.

Compared to their coastal counterparts, inland glaciers account for 95 percent of glacial mass loss due to climate-driven melting, a study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters shows. In fact, researchers found that Alaska’s glaciers are melting so fast that they would cover the state with a 1-foot thick layer of water every seven years.

“This is the first time that we’ve assessed all of the glaciers and been able to say how much of the total is coming from tidewater glaciers, and here’s how much of the total is from lake and land glaciers,” Shad O’Neel, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher and co-author of the study, said.

Alaska’s glaciers seen as major source of sea level rise by Chelsey B. Coombs , Climate Central, June 25.

Alberta's new climate plan seen as a meaningful first step

The newly elected government in the Canadian province of Alberta announced what it called "important first steps" to rein in the province's growing emissions of greenhouse gases. It vowed to tighten its existing regulations, raise its carbon price modestly, and promised new rules governing the oil and gas sector.

But it appears that the new approach, like the old one that was about to expire, would allow carbon dioxide emissions from Alberta’s gigantic tar sands operations to keep rising, at least for the time being.

Tar sands emissions are the main reason for Canada's failure to achieve its past promises to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Alberta's New Climate Plan Seen as a Meaningful First Step by John H Cusman Jr, InsideClimate News, June 25, 2015

Barack Obama interviews Sir David Attenborough in unique White House encounter for BBC1

Normally, it is President Obama who answers the questions. But on this occasion the US President invited Sir David Attenborough into the White House for a unique interview in which he grills the broadcasting legend about his career and prescriptions to save the planet.

The summit between the President and the great natural history educator took place on Sir David’s 89th birthday.

During the candid encounter, they discussed the future of the planet, their mutual passion for nature and what can be done to protect it.

Barack Obama interviews Sir David Attenborough in unique White House encounter for BBC1 by Adam Sherwin, The Independent, June 26, 2015

Climate change should be top foreign policy priority, G7 study says

Tackling climate change risks must become a top foreign policy priority if the world is to combat the global security threat it poses in the 21st century, according to a new study commissioned by the G7 countries.

Multiple conflicts have taken the government systems for dealing with them “to their limits”, according to one of the authors of the report, which was launched at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on Tuesday.

Written by an international consortium including peacebuilding NGO International Alert and the European Union Institute for Security Studies, it calls climate change “the ultimate threat multiplier” in fragile situations.

Climate change should be top foreign policy priority, G7 study says by Emma Howard, Guardian, June 24, 2015

Climate change? Yeah, nah

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of climate change scepticism in the developed world, a study has revealed. Surprisingly, we have more sceptics per capita than in the US, where large numbers of right-wing media and politicians refuse to accept climate change is man-made.

A new paper from the University of Tasmania, called Scepticism in a changing climate: a cross-national study, found 13 per cent of New Zealanders were climate change sceptics.

It was third only to Norway (15 per cent) and Australia (17 per cent). The United States came in at 12 per cent.

The study, which was published in the journal, Global Environmental Change, was based on surveys taken in each of the 14 countries and was designed to be representative of adults aged over 18.

Climate change? Yeah, nah by Matthew Theunissen, New Zealand Herald, June 28, 2015

For faithful, social justice goals demand action on environment

For an earnest young Christian named Ben Lowe, revelation came on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, in Africa. A relentless warming of the lake was reducing the catch of fish, the people were going hungry — and he had learned of scientific evidence that climate change was to blame.

For the Rev. Brian Sauder, who grew up attending a small Anabaptist church in rural Illinois, the moment came in a college classroom. Studying the fallout from environmental degradation, he learned of poor people who had to walk hours longer each day to gather firewood from depleted forests.

For both men, Christian duties that their upbringing had led them to regard as separate — taking care of the earth and taking care of the poor — merged into a morally urgent problem. “Why haven’t I ever made this connection before?” Mr. Sauder recalled asking himself.

It is a connection that many people of faith all over the world are starting to make.

For faithful, social justice goals demand action on environment by Justin Gillis, New York Tiems, June 20, 2015

If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble

We are used to hearing that if everyone lived in the same way as North Americans or Australians, we would need four or five planet Earths to sustain us.

This sort of analysis is known as the “ecological footprint” and shows that even the so-called “green” western European nations, with their more progressive approaches to renewable energy, energy efficiency and public transport, would require more than three planets.

How can we live within the means of our planet? When we delve seriously into this question it becomes clear that almost all environmental literature grossly underestimates what is needed for our civilisation to become sustainable.

Only the brave should read on.

If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble by Samuel Alexander, The Conversation US, June 26, 2015

It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change

Reducing Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si” to a white paper on global warming is, in George Weigel’s fitting analogy, “akin to reading ‘Moby Dick’ as if it were a treatise on the 19th-century New England whaling industry.” The whole spirit and story of the thing are missed.

The pope’s sprawling, ambitious statement — setting out a theory of nature and of the human person — will be profitably scrutinized for decades. Environmentalists who like some of Francis’s conclusions will find, if they sit quietly with the text rather than rummage through it for the politically relevant bits, that the pope is making a frontal assault on a technological and utilitarian worldview that treats creation as “raw material to be hammered into useful shape,” reduces humans to mere consumers and treats inconvenient people as so much refuse.

In the pope’s vision, both nature and human nature are gifts to be appreciated and accepted, not despoiled or redefined. And the ultimate demonstration of God’s attitude toward nature is the incarnation, in which the creator — so the remarkable story goes — somehow became a crawling, puking, sleeping, living, dying creature, occupying a biological niche, in a thin layer of air, on a floating, fragile ball.

It’s time for conservatives to end the denial on climate change Op-ed by Michael Gerson, Washington Post, June 25, 2015

Megacity drought: Sao Paulo withers after dry 'wet season'

After four years of low rainfall Brazil's commercial capital, Sao Paulo, is suffering from a grim combination of high temperatures and water shortages, writes Leila Carvalho. And now the drought has given rise to a lethal plague of dengue fever.

Megacity drought: Sao Paulo withers after dry 'wet season' by Leila Carvalho, Ecologist, June 26, 2015

Most extreme weather has climate change link, study says

In the wake of major hurricanes, floods and heat waves, scientists are quick to say that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change until careful analysis draws that conclusion. Now, a new study argues that thinking is backwards, that all extreme weather has a link to climate change.

The default position has been holding science back in connecting weather and climate, concludes the authors of a peer-reviewed paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change.

This "could be a game changer in how these studies are done in [the] future," lead author Kevin Trenberth said in an email.

Most Extreme Weather Has Climate Change Link, Study Says by Lisa Song, InsideClimate News, June 23, 2015

No, coal is not the fix-all solution to energy poverty

Pope Francis' papal encyclical on climate change and the environment, titled "On the Care of Our Common Home", was released last Thursday, recognizing climate change as a moral issue (the poor will suffer the most from a changing climate), while also calling on political leaders to replace fossil fuels with less-polluting sources of energy. The encyclical endorses the science that says climate change is human-caused, resulting from coal, oil, and natural gas use, and also states that humanity is failing in "its God-given role to be a responsible steward of Earth," while time is running out to fix the problem. Papal encyclicals are one of the highest forms of papal teaching, expected to be taken very seriously by Catholics.

In what is a victory for climate hawks (the encyclical is basically a call to actiontargeted at the Vatican's bishops around the world), the encyclical provided a new target for conservatives in the U.S. and elsewhere; conservative media in the U.S. came up with all types of critiques in response to the Pope's new encyclical; Australian climate deniers insisted that "if you're an Australian, [the encyclical] is not good news"; while in Poland (a largely Catholic country dependent on coal), a conservative paper called the encyclical 'anti-Polish.' In the U.S., the coal industry relied on their GOP allies to dissuade the public of the Pope's stance by providing U.S. Republicans a list of talking points to be used in defense of fossil fuels. One of these talking pointswas the claim that "[only coal] is capable of providing the energy emerging economies and struggling communities need to rise up out of abject poverty and towards a new-found hope"— basically an attempt to out-do Pope Francis' moral integrity.

No, Coal is NOT the Fix-All Solution to Energy Poverty by Rosaly Byrd, Huffington Post, June 26, 2015

Solar minimum could bring cold winters to Europe and US, but would not hold off climate change

Over the past few decades, our Sun has been relatively active, giving off high levels of the solar radiation that warms the Earth. However, in recent years this peak activity has tailed off, prompting scientists to wonder if the Sun is heading into a period of lower output.

A new study says even if the Sun's activity did drop off for a while, it wouldn't have much impact on rising global temperatures. But it could mean a higher chance of a chilly winter in Europe and the US, the researchers say.

Solar minimum could bring cold winters to Europe and US, but would not hold off climate change by Robert McSweeney, The Carbon Brief, June 23, 2015

The case for Australian coal in India is weakening

“India needs Australian coal” is a view promoted by government and industry alike, most recently in the Institute for Public Affairs' latest report. The report argues that opening up Australia’s Galilee Basin for the export of coal to India will provide 82 million Indians with electricity to transform their lives.

This echoes sentiments previously expressed by the coal industry and Prime Minister Tony Abbott. In response to a contrasting report released today by the Climate Council, arguing that Galilee coal is “unburnable”, Michael Roche of the Queensland Resources Council replied:

In fact we know India has 300 million people without electricity and that Prime Minister Modi is determined to give those people access to affordable electricity by 2040 […] We also know that no credible forecaster expects India to be able to meet Mr Modi’s target without use of imported coal to supplement domestic supply.

But is there really a case for Australian coal in India? The evidence suggests not.

The case for Australian coal in India is weakening by Lynette Molyneaux, The Conversation US, June 24, 2015

Top Doctors call on charities to 'Do no harm' and divest from fossil fuels

Fifty of the world's leading medical doctors and researchers on Thursday joined in the call for two multibillion dollar charities—Wellcome Trust and Gates Foundation—to divest their endowments from "the world’s 200 largest fossil fuel companies over the next five years"—because global health depends on it.

"Divestment rests on the premise that it is wrong to profit from an industry whose core business threatens human and planetary health, bringing to mind one of the foundations of medical ethics—first, do no harm," wrote the doctors and scholars in an open letterpublished in The Guardian.

Signatories included Dr. Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The British Medical Journal, Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, and professors from across the United Kingdom.

Top Doctors call on charities to 'Do no harm' and divest from fossil fuels by Sarah Lazare, Common Dream, June 26, 2015

US climate deniers call Paris summit 'a threat' to the world

The godfather of climate denial has warned that a United Nations deal on global warming would spell “economic suicide” for America and a disaster to the world, according to a leaked fundraising letter.

In the rambling 13-page letter, Fred Singer, a retired rocket scientist who rejects the science underlining climate change, appeals for at least $425,000 (£270,212) to stop what he called the “radical, economy-wrecking and sovereignty-destroying UN climate pact”.

The letter, penned on behalf of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact), an ultra-conservative group that denies the existence of climate change, suggests growing desperation about the prospects of a climate change deal emerging from the Paris meeting. Cfact did not dispute authenticity of the document.

A leaked copy of the letter which was sent to Cfact supporters was obtained by the Guardian.

US climate deniers call Paris summit 'a threat' to the world by Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, June 26, 2015

from Skeptical Science http://ift.tt/1JrOGFC