Terrellas: Magnetized spheres that were bombarded with beams of charged particles in order to simulate the magnetic field of the Earth, and its influence on the auroras. They were replaced by computer models years ago, but they are still hauntingly beautiful demonstrations of our best natural light show. Need more glowing skyporn? Check out my YouTube episode all about auroras. (image via Planeterrella. Tip of the terrella to The Science Llama)
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Terrellas: Magnetized spheres that were bombarded with beams of charged particles in order to simulate the magnetic field of the Earth, and its influence on the auroras. They were replaced by computer models years ago, but they are still hauntingly beautiful demonstrations of our best natural light show. Need more glowing skyporn? Check out my YouTube episode all about auroras. (image via Planeterrella. Tip of the terrella to The Science Llama)
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Terrellas: Magnetized spheres that were bombarded with beams of charged particles in order to simulate the magnetic field of the Earth, and its influence on the auroras. They were replaced by computer models years ago, but they are still hauntingly beautiful demonstrations of our best natural light show. Need more glowing skyporn? Check out my YouTube episode all about auroras. (image via Planeterrella. Tip of the terrella to The Science Llama)
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Terrellas: Magnetized spheres that were bombarded with beams of charged particles in order to simulate the magnetic field of the Earth, and its influence on the auroras.

They were replaced by computer models years ago, but they are still hauntingly beautiful demonstrations of our best natural light show.

Need more glowing skyporn? Check out my YouTube episode all about auroras.

(image via Planeterrella. Tip of the terrella to The Science Llama)

I definitely spoke to soon on that previous answer. Bird songs are absolutely a form of culture. I actually don’t know what I was thinking, other than maybe answering a question on my phone might be a good idea? Anyway, bird songs and other not-so-melodic calls are certainly culture, because at its core culture is simply learned and communicated behaviors. Take zebra finches, for instance … hallo, zebra finch! Zebra finch males court their mates with melodic calls. Usually they learn those calls from their fathers and uncles. But if they are brought up in isolation, they will tweak those calls and come up with their own personal version (much to the ire of the females, because they know what they like). But as those “creative” males have male offspring, their children and grandchildren will gradually shift the song back to the “official version”.  Is the song behavior coded in their genes somewhere? Do they shift it back because the females pressure them to through mating success (if ya know what I’m saying)? Who knows? But it’s certainly learned and transmitted culture, as well as imprinted culture. Some people just call that “social learning”, but I think that’s splitting hairs to make us feel special as humans. You can read more about these zebra finch songs at Wired if you’re so inclined. But the real question under all of this is are bird songs music? I argue no. There’s an intent to the creation of music that birds just don’t have. A premeditation that says “I have an idea and I want to communicate it with these sounds.” Birds don’t (seem to) do that premeditation part.  But whales on the other hand … (I’m going to continue pondering this idea … hopefully you will do the same. Social behaviors and bird songs be weird, man. Maybe my opinion will evolve over time.)
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I definitely spoke to soon on that previous answer. Bird songs are absolutely a form of culture. I actually don’t know what I was thinking, other than maybe answering a question on my phone might be a good idea?

Anyway, bird songs and other not-so-melodic calls are certainly culture, because at its core culture is simply learned and communicated behaviors. Take zebra finches, for instance … hallo, zebra finch!

Zebra finch males court their mates with melodic calls. Usually they learn those calls from their fathers and uncles. But if they are brought up in isolation, they will tweak those calls and come up with their own personal version (much to the ire of the females, because they know what they like). But as those “creative” males have male offspring, their children and grandchildren will gradually shift the song back to the “official version”. 

Is the song behavior coded in their genes somewhere? Do they shift it back because the females pressure them to through mating success (if ya know what I’m saying)? Who knows? But it’s certainly learned and transmitted culture, as well as imprinted culture. Some people just call that “social learning”, but I think that’s splitting hairs to make us feel special as humans. You can read more about these zebra finch songs at Wired if you’re so inclined.

But the real question under all of this is are bird songs music? I argue no. There’s an intent to the creation of music that birds just don’t have. A premeditation that says “I have an idea and I want to communicate it with these sounds.” Birds don’t (seem to) do that premeditation part. 

But whales on the other hand …

(I’m going to continue pondering this idea … hopefully you will do the same. Social behaviors and bird songs be weird, man. Maybe my opinion will evolve over time.)

Getting your “buzz” on … That’s a bee on a coffee flower. Normally, that wouldn’t be worth commenting about. It’s just another bee getting a snack. Except that coffee flowers and a handful of other plants might use caffeine-laced nectar in order to draw bees back like Starbucks-addicts. Plants produce chemicals like caffeine (along with nicotine, rubber, cocaine and a host of other chemicals) as self-defense mechanisms. If a bee mainlined the caffeine present in the normal plant tissues, it would be poisoned to death. But the low levels present in some nectar might be just enough to give it an addictive buzz and bring it back for more. Read more about the researchers who are studying this at The New York Times. More bee/flower goodness on YouTube here.
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Getting your “buzz” on …

That’s a bee on a coffee flower. Normally, that wouldn’t be worth commenting about. It’s just another bee getting a snack. Except that coffee flowers and a handful of other plants might use caffeine-laced nectar in order to draw bees back like Starbucks-addicts.

Plants produce chemicals like caffeine (along with nicotine, rubber, cocaine and a host of other chemicals) as self-defense mechanisms. If a bee mainlined the caffeine present in the normal plant tissues, it would be poisoned to death. But the low levels present in some nectar might be just enough to give it an addictive buzz and bring it back for more.

Read more about the researchers who are studying this at The New York Times. More bee/flower goodness on YouTube here.

Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like? This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower. This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News. Bee sure to check out the full episode on YouTube.
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Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field

In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like?

This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower.

This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News.

Bee sure to check out the full episode on YouTube.

A “RoboBee” and a synthetic insect eye reported in the same week? Sounds like a full-fledged man-made insect is just around the corner! University of Illinois-UC researchers built a synthetic compound eye that, instead of focusing on the central field of view like our eyes, can discern depth and shape along its full scope. The resolution is only about that of a rather small ant, but there’s hope it could one day include as many facets as a bee or dragonfly eye. That research is reported in Nature.  And in this week’s Science, Harvard roboticists report the first controlled flight of a coin-size miniature aerial vehicle (MAV) based on the flight physics of insect wings. The construction is based on that used to make pop-up books, an odd advance in micro-building techniques that gave them the precision needed to get it off the ground. The wings aren’t as flexible or functional as real insect wings, but it’s the smallest piloted vehicle ever made. That research is reported in this week’s Science.  Now we just need to extend that compound eye camera’s sensitivity into the UV range, attach it to the RoboBee, and we’ll finally be able to see flowers like we imagined in this YouTube episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart  (and maybe synthetically pollinate them!!) I, for one, welcome our tiny, buzzing underlings.
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A “RoboBee” and a synthetic insect eye reported in the same week? Sounds like a full-fledged man-made insect is just around the corner! University of Illinois-UC researchers built a synthetic compound eye that, instead of focusing on the central field of view like our eyes, can discern depth and shape along its full scope. The resolution is only about that of a rather small ant, but there’s hope it could one day include as many facets as a bee or dragonfly eye. That research is reported in Nature.  And in this week’s Science, Harvard roboticists report the first controlled flight of a coin-size miniature aerial vehicle (MAV) based on the flight physics of insect wings. The construction is based on that used to make pop-up books, an odd advance in micro-building techniques that gave them the precision needed to get it off the ground. The wings aren’t as flexible or functional as real insect wings, but it’s the smallest piloted vehicle ever made. That research is reported in this week’s Science.  Now we just need to extend that compound eye camera’s sensitivity into the UV range, attach it to the RoboBee, and we’ll finally be able to see flowers like we imagined in this YouTube episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart  (and maybe synthetically pollinate them!!) I, for one, welcome our tiny, buzzing underlings.
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A “RoboBee” and a synthetic insect eye reported in the same week? Sounds like a full-fledged man-made insect is just around the corner!

University of Illinois-UC researchers built a synthetic compound eye that, instead of focusing on the central field of view like our eyes, can discern depth and shape along its full scope. The resolution is only about that of a rather small ant, but there’s hope it could one day include as many facets as a bee or dragonfly eye. That research is reported in Nature. 

And in this week’s Science, Harvard roboticists report the first controlled flight of a coin-size miniature aerial vehicle (MAV) based on the flight physics of insect wings. The construction is based on that used to make pop-up books, an odd advance in micro-building techniques that gave them the precision needed to get it off the ground. The wings aren’t as flexible or functional as real insect wings, but it’s the smallest piloted vehicle ever made. That research is reported in this week’s Science. 

Now we just need to extend that compound eye camera’s sensitivity into the UV range, attach it to the RoboBee, and we’ll finally be able to see flowers like we imagined in this YouTube episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart  (and maybe synthetically pollinate them!!)

I, for one, welcome our tiny, buzzing underlings.

How Bees and Butterflies See Butterflies and bees can both sense pigments in the center of flowers that we can’t see. UV photography techniques pioneered by Klaus Schmitt and others capture this better than anything else I’ve seen. See how the center of the flower gets darker as the UV fades in? Bulls-eye. And what’s up with the glowing butterfly?! Living in a UV world would be awesome, except for all the DNA damage to your retinas thanks to the unfiltered radiation. Click here to watch the latest episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart for more on how bees and butterflies have evolved to see flowers in a new light. And subscribe! It’s free.
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How Bees and Butterflies See

Butterflies and bees can both sense pigments in the center of flowers that we can’t see. UV photography techniques pioneered by Klaus Schmitt and others capture this better than anything else I’ve seen. See how the center of the flower gets darker as the UV fades in? Bulls-eye.

And what’s up with the glowing butterfly?! Living in a UV world would be awesome, except for all the DNA damage to your retinas thanks to the unfiltered radiation.

Click here to watch the latest episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart for more on how bees and butterflies have evolved to see flowers in a new light. And subscribe! It’s free.

Like A Bee Sees By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!) Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot. Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle.  THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool. Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below: UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.
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Like A Bee Sees By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!) Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot. Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle.  THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool. Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below: UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.
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Like A Bee Sees By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!) Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot. Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle.  THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool. Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below: UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.
Zoom Info
Like A Bee Sees By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!) Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot. Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle.  THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool. Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below: UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.
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Like A Bee Sees By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!) Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot. Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle.  THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool. Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below: UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.
Zoom Info

Like A Bee Sees

By now you’ve probably all watched the latest It’s Okay To Be Smart video  about the amaaaaazing ways that bees are able to sense flowers. (actually I know a few of you haven’t so go do that, mmkay? Thanks!)

Beyond the electric field sensing part (which is cool in its own right), it’s the fact that bees see into the “invisible” that just blows my mind. Bees (and butterflies too, actually) have photoreceptors that respond to wavelengths down in the UV range (see chart above). They use that vision to zoom right in on the important part of the flower: the sweet, sugary nectar pot.

Spoiler alert: As much as we love flowers, they don’t really give a crap about us. But they do love bees. In return for giving the bees the sugary yum-yums, flowers get pollinated. And in the name of the evolutionary game, that’s the most important thing. To help get the gene-passing-on done, flowers have evolved certain pigments near the center of the flower that absorb UV light. That paints a big, fat bulls-eye for the bee to land on, right where the flower needs them (next to all the flower-sex bits). To us, the whole flower may look yellow or orange. To a bee. BIG “land here” spot in the middle. 

THAT IS AMAZING!!! Nature, you are just too cool.

Thanks to camera technology, we can take UV filtered photos of flowers and see those patterns pop out. It’s a pretty advanced technique, but some of my favorites are above. Check out those photographers’ galleries at the links below:

UV floral photography by Klaus Schmitt and Bjørn Rørslett.  Click to subscribe to IOTBS on YouTube.

The New York Times has created an interactive feature tallying all of the exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler Telescope. You should really check out the link, because theirs is animated, and much bigger, and completely awesome.  This comes after news of Kepler’s detection of a new multiplanet system, with not one but two planets in the habitable zone (original research paper). Doesn’t mean that either of them would, could, or should have life, but put a check mark next to criteria #1 for biology. This brings us to a total of 871 confirmed exoplanets, which is a drop in a drop in a drop in the bucket for how many are estimated to be out there. Those 871 confirmed exoplanets represent a mere 0.0000008% of the likely number in just the Milky Way. Bonus: Find out more about how astrobiologists calculate the odds of extraterrestrial civilizations in this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart: The Odds of Finding Life and Love.
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The New York Times has created an interactive feature tallying all of the exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler Telescope. You should really check out the link, because theirs is animated, and much bigger, and completely awesome.  This comes after news of Kepler’s detection of a new multiplanet system, with not one but two planets in the habitable zone (original research paper). Doesn’t mean that either of them would, could, or should have life, but put a check mark next to criteria #1 for biology. This brings us to a total of 871 confirmed exoplanets, which is a drop in a drop in a drop in the bucket for how many are estimated to be out there. Those 871 confirmed exoplanets represent a mere 0.0000008% of the likely number in just the Milky Way. Bonus: Find out more about how astrobiologists calculate the odds of extraterrestrial civilizations in this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart: The Odds of Finding Life and Love.
Zoom Info
The New York Times has created an interactive feature tallying all of the exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler Telescope. You should really check out the link, because theirs is animated, and much bigger, and completely awesome.  This comes after news of Kepler’s detection of a new multiplanet system, with not one but two planets in the habitable zone (original research paper). Doesn’t mean that either of them would, could, or should have life, but put a check mark next to criteria #1 for biology. This brings us to a total of 871 confirmed exoplanets, which is a drop in a drop in a drop in the bucket for how many are estimated to be out there. Those 871 confirmed exoplanets represent a mere 0.0000008% of the likely number in just the Milky Way. Bonus: Find out more about how astrobiologists calculate the odds of extraterrestrial civilizations in this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart: The Odds of Finding Life and Love.
Zoom Info

The New York Times has created an interactive feature tallying all of the exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler Telescope. You should really check out the link, because theirs is animated, and much bigger, and completely awesome. 

This comes after news of Kepler’s detection of a new multiplanet system, with not one but two planets in the habitable zone (original research paper). Doesn’t mean that either of them would, could, or should have life, but put a check mark next to criteria #1 for biology.

This brings us to a total of 871 confirmed exoplanets, which is a drop in a drop in a drop in the bucket for how many are estimated to be out there. Those 871 confirmed exoplanets represent a mere 0.0000008% of the likely number in just the Milky Way.

Bonus: Find out more about how astrobiologists calculate the odds of extraterrestrial civilizations in this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart: The Odds of Finding Life and Love.

Time for a science-tastic, carboniferous Episode Extra™ to accompany my latest YouTube vid! In the most recent episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube, about how we all share the same air, the #1 question from People Who Are Watching was about a number I mentioned in the beginning: We hoomanz are emitting 33-34 billion tons of CO2 a year. If the atmosphere is so dang big, is that amount of CO2 a lot? A few people were subsequently all “Wait a sec, is Joe referencing climate change here?! Rabble rabble rabble!!!” Congrats. You caught me. Guilty as charged. But there’s science on my side, and you know what they say about science: Where the carbon comes from: the primary people-caused CO2 sources are fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production. Since 1850, over one thousand billion (AKA “a trillion”) tons of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere. We put about 34 billion tons of CO2 into atmosphere in 2011, the latest year I could find data. These are not debatable facts, minus a few decimals of statistical error. We can measure them, we have the technology.  Where does it go? Only 55% of this is removed by the oceans (dissolved CO2 and photosynthetic organisms) and the plants in our jungles and forests. Fifty years ago, as much as 60% of that CO2 would have been removed by oceans and plants. That means that not only are we increasing the amount of CO2 we emit every year, but plants and oceans (the carbon “sinks”) can’t keep up with the rate that we are adding it to the atmosphere. Sure, as more carbon is put into atmosphere, plants and plankton can reproduce and take more of it up. But if we pump it out faster than they proliferate, it’s still a net loss. Oceans might actually be less able to absorb CO2 as the world warms (it’s simple chemistry, think about warm carbonated soda). Then we get to the warming part. CO2 makes up less than one tenth of one percent of Earth’s atmosphere. So it can’t be that big of a deal to increase that by like 0.01% right? Wrong. Sure, for every million molecules of air, only ~391 of them will be CO2, but carbon dioxide is an amazingly powerful molecular mirror for solar energy, reflecting it back down to Earth and heating our planet. The math is complex, but tenths of tenths of percent changes in CO2 concentrations can lead to full degree changes in global temperatures. This doesn’t even include the effects of methane, which is almost 1,000 times less abundant as CO2, but contributes a whopping 1/5th of greenhouse gas effects. For more: A paper in PNAS about carbon emissions and carbon sinks. A summary of emissions, warming and greenhouse gases from NOAA. Finally, you might need this: How to talk to a climate skeptic. We do share the same small atmosphere, just like the video says. So keep it clean, because it’s mine too, dammit! (PS - If you read this far, you should totally subscribe)
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Time for a science-tastic, carboniferous Episode Extra™ to accompany my latest YouTube vid!

In the most recent episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube, about how we all share the same air, the #1 question from People Who Are Watching was about a number I mentioned in the beginning: We hoomanz are emitting 33-34 billion tons of CO2 a year. If the atmosphere is so dang big, is that amount of CO2 a lot?

A few people were subsequently all “Wait a sec, is Joe referencing climate change here?! Rabble rabble rabble!!!” Congrats. You caught me. Guilty as charged. But there’s science on my side, and you know what they say about science:

image

Where the carbon comes from: the primary people-caused CO2 sources are fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production. Since 1850, over one thousand billion (AKA “a trillion”) tons of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere. We put about 34 billion tons of CO2 into atmosphere in 2011, the latest year I could find data. These are not debatable facts, minus a few decimals of statistical error. We can measure them, we have the technology. 

Where does it go? Only 55% of this is removed by the oceans (dissolved CO2 and photosynthetic organisms) and the plants in our jungles and forests. Fifty years ago, as much as 60% of that CO2 would have been removed by oceans and plants. That means that not only are we increasing the amount of CO2 we emit every year, but plants and oceans (the carbon “sinks”) can’t keep up with the rate that we are adding it to the atmosphere.

Sure, as more carbon is put into atmosphere, plants and plankton can reproduce and take more of it up. But if we pump it out faster than they proliferate, it’s still a net loss. Oceans might actually be less able to absorb CO2 as the world warms (it’s simple chemistry, think about warm carbonated soda).

Then we get to the warming part. CO2 makes up less than one tenth of one percent of Earth’s atmosphere. So it can’t be that big of a deal to increase that by like 0.01% right? Wrong. Sure, for every million molecules of air, only ~391 of them will be CO2, but carbon dioxide is an amazingly powerful molecular mirror for solar energy, reflecting it back down to Earth and heating our planet. The math is complex, but tenths of tenths of percent changes in CO2 concentrations can lead to full degree changes in global temperatures. This doesn’t even include the effects of methane, which is almost 1,000 times less abundant as CO2, but contributes a whopping 1/5th of greenhouse gas effects.

For more: A paper in PNAS about carbon emissions and carbon sinks. A summary of emissions, warming and greenhouse gases from NOAA. Finally, you might need this: How to talk to a climate skeptic.

We do share the same small atmosphere, just like the video says. So keep it clean, because it’s mine too, dammit! (PS - If you read this far, you should totally subscribe)