Science & Technology News

[GordMay]

No major economy on track for Paris goals

None of the world’s major economies, including those in the G20 group, have a sufficient plan to meet their obligations, under the Paris Agreement on climate change. The policy-analyst group Climate Action Tracker looked at the policies of 36 countries, plus the European Union, that are responsible for 80% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. [1]
Only the Gambia’s climate action is compatible with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C .
Seven countries’ policies were almost good enough, including the United Kingdom.
Australia, Brazil, Indonesia Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Viet Nam are among the nations, whose policies were judged to be badly insufficient.

More about ➥ https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/15/w...ntl/index.html

[1] “Global Update: Climate target updates slow as science demands action” ~ Climate Action Tracker
➥ https://climateactiontracker.org/pub...eptember-2021/

Full Report ➥ https://climateactiontracker.org/doc...obalUpdate.pdf

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Perhaps you should read the cmip6* section on total solar forcings.

Where does one find that?
Where does CMIP6 suggest that variations in total solar forcing play a significant role in climate change?

“Solar forcing for CMIP6 (v3.2)” ~ by Katja Matthes et al
➥ https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/10/2247/2017/

CMIP6 Search ➥ https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/cmip6/

* Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP)
CMIP is a project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)’s Working
Group of Coupled Modelling (WGCM).

[GordMay]

Norway's polar bears turn to inbreeding, cannibalism to survive climate change, studies show

Scientists have noted that ‘rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic Barents Sea’ has led to the loss of 10 per cent of genetic diversity in the polar bear population of Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago, between 1995 and 2015, states the study [1], published by The Royal Society journal on Sept. 8.
Declining sea ice coverage, the study explained, leads to habitat fragmentation, forcing polar bears to mate with others within a smaller area, resulting in inbreeding.

A second study [2], released in April, found that climate change has severely disrupted the dietary habits of the polar bear population, forcing them to prey on seabirds and eggs, instead of seals. However, due to lack of experience, most bears observed were not “efficient” seabird egg predators, the study found, noting that instead of visiting multiple nests, bears would often visit the same empty nest multiple times.

[1] “Sea ice reduction drives genetic differentiation among Barents Sea polar bears” ~ by Simo Njabulo Maduna et al
“Loss of Arctic sea ice owing to climate change is predicted to reduce both genetic diversity and gene flow in ice-dependent species, with potentially negative consequences for their long-term viability ...”
➥ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/d...rspb.2021.1741

[2] “Polar bears are inefficient predators of seabird eggs” ~ by Patrick M. Jagielski
“Climate-mediated sea-ice loss is disrupting the foraging ecology of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) across much of their range ...”
➥ https://royalsocietypublishing.org/d...98/rsos.210391

[GordMay]

World’s Whitest Paint

We already had the world’s blackest black, ‘Vantablack' [2], a color so dark, that looking at it is like looking into a hole in the universe. It absorbs up to 99.964% of light striking it.

Now, thanks to a team of scientists at Purdue University, we have the world’s whitest white, a reflective surface so efficient [capable of reflecting 95.5% of all light hitting it] that it can send heat from your rooftop right back into space, to save on your air-conditioning bill. [1a & 1b]

A paint, that can reflect 95.5% of light, can create surfaces that are extremely cool to the touch - up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler, than they might otherwise be. If you were to use this paint,to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, it’s estimated that you could get a cooling power of about 10 kilowatts.

[1a] “Ultrawhite BaSO4 Paints and Films for Remarkable Daytime Subambient Radiative Cooling”~ by Xiangyu Li, & Xiulin Ruan et al
➥ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.1c02368

[1b] “Full Daytime Sub-ambient Radiative Cooling in Commercial-like Paints with High Figure of Merit”~ by Xiangyu Li, & Xiulin Ruan et al
➥ https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...368?via%3Dihub

More about the Whitest Paint:

➥ https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rele...d-records.html

➥ https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/rele...iterally..html

[2] Vantablack ➥ https://www.surreynanosystems.com/

[GordMay]

Nearly 900 years ago, astronomers spotted a strange, bright light in the sky.
We finally know what caused it.

In the 12th century, Chinese and Japanese astronomers spotted a new light in the sky, shining as brightly as Saturn. They identified it as a powerful stellar explosion, known as a supernova, and marked its approximate location in the sky - but its cause remained a mystery.

Now, astronomers say they have solved the 840-year-old puzzle:

Two extremely dense stars collided in the Milky Way, and merged into a sizzling-hot star, now known as Parker's star, and formed a surrounding nebula, an expanding shell of gas and dust.

This supernova, or the so-called Chinese Guest Star, of A.D. 1181, which remained visible from Aug. 6 to Feb. 6 of that year, is only one of nine historically recorded supernovas, in our galaxy, according to the study [1], published Sept. 15, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomers have identified the remnants of only a handful of these supernovas, but the Chinese Guest Star was the only supernova, of the last millennium, whose remnants were yet to be found.

[1] “The Remnant and Origin of the Historical Supernova 1181 AD” ~ by Andreas Ritter et al
➥ https://iopscience.iop.org/article/1...41-8213/ac2253

[GordMay]

By taking on poliovirus, Marguerite Vogt transformed the study of all viruses

“... It was 1952 and polio was one of the most feared diseases in America, paralyzing more than 15,000 people, mostly children, each year. Parents wouldn’t let their children play outside, and quarantines were instituted in neighborhoods with polio cases.

Scientists were desperate for information about the virus, but many were hesitant to work with the infectious agent. “Everybody was afraid to go to that little lab in the basement,” says Martin Haas, professor of biology and oncology at the University of California, San Diego, and a personal friend and collaborator of Vogt’s for over three decades.

Vogt, a brand-new research associate in the laboratory of Renato Dulbecco, took on the task of attempting to grow and isolate the virus on a layer of monkey kidney cells. The method was called a plaque assay for the distinctive round plaques that form when a single virus particle kills all the cells around it ...

... After a year of persistence, Vogt succeeded (and remained virus-free). In 1954, she and Dulbecco published [1] the method for purifying and counting poliovirus particles. It was immediately used by other scientists to study variants of poliovirus, and by microbiologist Albert Sabin to identify and isolate strains of weakened poliovirus to make the oral polio vaccine used in mass vaccination campaigns around the world.

Perhaps even more importantly, the poliovirus plaque assay enabled scientists worldwide to analyze animal viruses at the level of individual cells, a field now known as molecular virology. Vogt and Dulbecco’s approach remains the gold standard for purifying and counting virus particles, including in recent studies of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 ...”

More about ➥ https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...orspicks091921

[1] “PLAQUE FORMATION AND ISOLATION OF PURE LINES WITH POLIOMYELITIS VIRUSES” ~ by R. Dulbecco and Marguerite Vogt
➥ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2180341/

[SailOar]

The Most Important Number You’ve Never Heard Of

There’s a good reason climate change is called the policy problem from hell. Several good reasons, actually, but let’s start with a big one: Fighting climate change forces society to spend real money today to reap benefits that will occur over hundreds or even thousands of years. We’re not set up to be that farsighted, either financially or mentally.

The social cost of carbon are hugely affected by the choice of discount rate, which is a wonky concept that represents in today’s dollars how much society values future costs and benefits. (If your discount rate is high, you might rather have one cookie today than wait for two next week; if your discount rate is low, you’ll wait to get the two.)

The most recent analysis suggests that the social cost of carbon is $56 a ton on average at a 3 percent discount rate, and $171 a ton on average at a 2 percent discount rate. The 2 percent figure is more in line with the relevant current interest rates. (There are higher numbers for methane and nitrous oxide, which are more potent.)

To provide some context for those figures: The Obama administration calculated the social cost of carbon at what amounts to $51 a ton in today’s dollars. The Trump administration lowered that to $1 to $7 a ton by applying higher discount rates (thus shrinking the present cost of future damage) and by considering damage in the United States only, rather than worldwide. The Biden administration restored the Obama administration’s number on an interim basis while putting out the call for more research.

The higher figure implies that even very costly measures to reduce emissions should be implemented immediately. That’s a tough message to swallow, especially for the world’s poor, who have the hardest time coping with higher energy costs. Rich nations may need to extend them more of a helping hand.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Social Cost of Carbon: Advances in Long-Term Probabilistic Projections of Population, GDP, Emissions, and Discount Rates

Abstract

The social cost of carbon is a vitally important metric for informing the climate policy of numerous entities, including most notably its role in guiding climate regulations issued by the US federal government (USG). Characterization of uncertainty and transparency of assumptions are critical for supporting such an influential metric used in policy analysis. Challenges inherent to SCC estimation push the boundaries of typical analytical techniques and require augmented approaches to assess uncertainty, which in turn also raises important considerations for discounting. This paper addresses challenges related to projecting very long-term economic growth, population, and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as calibration of key discounting parameters for consistency with those projections. Our work improves upon alternative approaches that have been used by the USG, such as the use of non-probabilistic scenarios and constant discounting. The most prominent set of scenarios commonly used for this purpose do not fully characterize the uncertainty distribution of fully probabilistic model input data or corresponding SCC estimate outputs. Incorporating the full range of economic uncertainty in the SCC further underscores the importance of adopting a stochastic discounting approach to account for such uncertainty in an integrated manner.

[GordMay]

SARS-like viruses may jump from animals to people hundreds of thousands of times a year

In a preprint study [1], published last week, researchers estimate that an average of 400,000 people are likely infected with SARS-related coronaviruses every year, in spillovers that never grow into detectable outbreaks.

The researchers created a detailed map of the habitats of 23 bat species, known to harbor SARS-related coronaviruses, the group to which SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 belong, and then overlaid it with data on where humans live, to create a map of potential infection hot spots. They found that close to 500 million people live in areas where spillovers can occur, including northern India, Nepal, Myanmar, and most of Southeast Asia. The risk is highest in southern China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and on Java. and other islands in Indonesia. The maps could guide efforts to reduce the likelihood of spillover, by changing behaviors in high-risk communities, and targeting surveillance to detect new outbreaks earlier; ad could also guide efforts to find the virus’ natural origin.

Small surveys, done before COVID-19 erupted, have suggested some people in Southeast Asia harbor antibodies against SARS-related coronaviruses. Combining those data, with data on how often people encounter bats, and how long antibodies remain in the blood, the researchers calculated that some 400,000 undetected human infections with these viruses occur each year, across the region.

Although 400,000 infections annually sounds like a lot, in a region with likely hundreds of millions of bats, and nearly half a billion people, it isn’t really that many.

There are many caveats, and the research is still preliminary, but it highlights how little we know about the extent of zoonotic spillovers.

Pre-Print, Not Peer Reviewed
[1] “A strategy to assess spillover risk of bat SARS-related coronaviruses in Southeast Asia” ~ by Cecilia A. Sánchez et al
➥ https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1....09.21263359v1


Did the coronavirus jump from animals to people twice?

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could have spilled from animals to people multiple times, according to a preliminary analysis [2] of viral genomes sampled from people infected in China and elsewhere early in the pandemic.

If confirmed by further analyses [& the findings still have to be peer reviewed], the findings would add weight to the hypothesis that the pandemic originated in multiple markets in Wuhan, China, and make the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 escaped from a laboratory less likely, say some researchers.

[2] “Evidence Against the Veracity of SARS-CoV-2 Genomes Intermediate between Lineages A and B” ~ by Jonathan Pekar et al
➥ https://virological.org/t/evidence-a...es-a-and-b/754

[GordMay]

COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter?
As debates about booster shots heat up, what’s known about the duration of vaccine-based immunity is still evolving.
Levels of neutralizing antibodies [the shock troops of our immune system] typically shoot up, after vaccination, then quickly taper off months later. The reserves, memory B cells and T cells, stick around to fight off infection for much longer. How long, and how effectively, remains a question. Evidence hints at a growing risk of breakthrough infection over time, but vaccinated people still seem to be protected from severe illness.

More [with links] ➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02532-4

[GordMay]

What’s heating the solar corona?

The Sun’s corona, a halo of hot plasma that extends millions of kilometres into space, is a million times dimmer than the solar surface, but is at least 1 million K hotter.
Physicists have struggled to find an explanation: a review in 2000 listed 22 theories, all of which are still in the running.
Physicist Philip Judge guides us through one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, including a video explainer.

Here ➥ https://physicsworld.com/a/the-endur...-solar-corona/

[SailOar]

Do We Need to Shrink the Economy to Stop Climate Change?

• The dominant paradigm for solving climate change is called green growth, which claims that the global economy can both continue growing and defuse the threat of a warming planet through rapid, market-led environmental action and technological innovation
• A rival paradigm, known as degrowth, thinks that humanity simply does not have the capacity to phase out fossil fuels and meet the ever-growing demand of rich economies; consumption itself has to be curtailed
• The argument for degrowth rests on two key premises:

  1) Human economies cannot grow infinitely on a planet with finite resources.
  2) G.D.P. can be decoupled from greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, but that decoupling isn’t happening fast enough

• The requisite solution also has two parts:

  1) Since climate change is being driven primarily by the cumulative historical consumption of the Global North, it is incumbent on rich countries to shrink their economies
  2) That retrenchment, in turn, would create space in the global carbon budget for poorer countries to continue growing, which they still need to do to lift their populations out of poverty

• Arguments against degrowth include:

  1) Standards of living can be increased without exhausting the planet’s resources by finding more efficient ways to use the stuff we have.
  2) Decoupling G.D.P. from greenhouse gas emissions is not just possible, but has already happened -- including by the United States -- though not nearly fast enough

• Proponents of both paradigms agree that "selling" degrowth to the general populace is much harder than "selling" green growth
• Doughnut economics suggests that economies should abandon growth for growth’s sake and make it their goal to reach the sweet spot — or the doughnut — between the “social foundation,” where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the “environmental ceiling"

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by SailOar

• Doughnut economics suggests that economies should abandon growth for growth’s sake and make it their goal to reach the sweet spot — or the doughnut — between the “social foundation,” where everyone has what they need to live a good life, and the “environmental ceiling"

I've been arguing for this point since long before Al Gore gave us his "inconvenient truth." It pisses me off to no end to see so-called environmentalists relay the clear science on where we are headed, but then always end their message with some "hopeful" line about; if we all just changed our lightbulbs, insulted our homes, or stopped using disposable straws, then we can solve our issues without really changing our lifestyles.

BS.

The hard truth is that humanity, collectively, uses too much of the planet's resources to sustain our lifestyles. This is due to too many people, and (more significantly) a few of us living way too richly.

Technology and efficiency won't solve our problems. History shows that as we get more efficient with a resource, we often use more of it. This often results in either no net savings, or an increase.

The real answer is to stop using so much. For us in the developed world that means a significant reduction in our total energy and resource use. If all of us in the rich counties consumed at the current global average, most environmental problems would be solved. But that would mean asking people to actually change their lifestyles significantly.

This is something few of us are willing to do.

[GordMay]

Coral Reef Decline

A Canadian-led team of scientists has concluded [1] that tropical coral reefs, that feed millions around the world, have lost about half their ability to support human communities, since 1950.
• Global coverage of living coral has declined by half since the 1950s
• Catch of coral reef associate fishes per unit effort has decreased by 60% since 1950
• Coral reefs’ capacity to provide ecosystem services has declined by half since the 1950s

The paper [1] is the first to tote up the cumulative effects of threats faced by tropical coral reefs, including pollution from agricultural runoff, ocean acidification from greenhouse gases, and damaging fishing practices such as trawling, as well as climate change.

It combines data from many sources. Just the figures on reef extent drew on 14,705 surveys, from 3,582 reefs, in 87 countries.
The conclusions on biodiversity were made from a database, with more than one billion records, on 100,000 species, from plankton to mammals.

[1]“Global decline in capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services”
~ By Tyler D Eddy et al
➥ https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fullt...322(21)00474-7

PDF ➥ https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.o...57279/mmc1.pdf

[jimbunyard]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I've been arguing for this point since long before Al Gore gave us his "inconvenient truth." It pisses me off to no end to see so-called environmentalists relay the clear science on where we are headed, but then always end their message with some "hopeful" line about; if we all just changed our lightbulbs, insulted our homes, or stopped using disposable straws, then we can solve our issues without really changing our lifestyles.

BS.

The hard truth is that humanity, collectively, uses too much of the planet's resources to sustain our lifestyles. This is due to too many people, and (more significantly) a few of us living way too richly.

Technology and efficiency won't solve our problems. History shows that as we get more efficient with a resource, we often use more of it. This often results in either no net savings, or an increase.

The real answer is to stop using so much. For us in the developed world that means a significant reduction in our total energy and resource use. If all of us in the rich counties consumed at the current global average, most environmental problems would be solved. But that would mean asking people to actually change their lifestyles significantly.

This is something few of us are willing to do.

Pretty sure we're 'insulted our home' quite sufficiently (ha ha)... but this is the worse kind of political correctness, because of the real existential risk it carries.

That's 'existential' for the way of life for the global North; the rest of the 'human experience' will just face a more severe go of it, though it seems that some of the 'less fortunate' of the homo sapien's spectrum live far happier lives...

As for the rest of the macrobiological world, no need to worry about them, with 95% of the Earth's macrobiological biomass residing in humans and their 'support species', the rest of that macrobiological mass are destined, at least in the long to medium term (if not permanently), to exist in comparatively large 'viewing zoos'.


Jevon's paradox is a bitch, but is, unfortunately, real...


As we've known for at least a decade...

Whether we're willing or we're asked, the real power that is, Old Mother Nature, will make that decision for us.

What's most interesting to me is the deadly dichotomy of deniers and blue-sky pseudo (or, at best, deluded) environmentalists who believe that either approach (respectively, 'adapt' or 'employ [non or barely-existant] technological solutions) will 'solve' the problem, but steadfastly refuse to attempt either.

There is a slight 'glimmer of hope' though, since, and increasingly, more are talking about the real pragmatic approaches that have a chance of working, and many younger people are growing up with an idea of the problem.

Now if we can just get my favorite bugaboo, Madison Avenue and pseudo economic 'interests' out of the picture ('revolution' anyone?) we'd have a fighting chance...

'Status quo' for the global North ain't happening, no matter how it pans out --- a cursory look at the [fake] news will confirm that to any but those wearing the rosiest of glasses.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

The real answer is to stop using so much. For us in the developed world that means a significant reduction in our total energy and resource use. If all of us in the rich counties consumed at the current global average, most environmental problems would be solved. But that would mean asking people to actually change their lifestyles significantly.

This is something few of us are willing to do.

During 2020, when the big lockdowns were off but there were still restrictions and lots of work from home, I noticed that the parks were busier, more people outside, bicycles selling out... I think that many people, once they got over the initial shocks, and support was there for most who needed it, actually enjoyed slowing down a bit. This gives me confidence that most of us could pull back a little and still have a great life. This would require more equitable sharing of wealth though, which is strictly verboten.

The planet is a cruising sailboat. We can rush from place to place with the engine always at max rpm, gobbling up the finite amount of onboard fuel, or we can run the engine when we need it at the most efficient speed, and take advantage of the wind instead, whenever we can. And enjoy the voyage more.

(too long for a T-shirt. Darn)