Let’s agree that we’re in agreement about the climate and move on

An international team of scientists recently surveyed almost 12,000 climate science research publications to gauge the consensus on manmade global warming among people who know lots about climate science. They did this because some people still like to pretend like there’s plenty of skepticism and doubt about what’s causing all this. 

What did they find? Well, of the 4,000 papers that declared a position on the cause of global warming since 1991, 97.1% of them agreed that humans were causing a majority of global warming. The rest? Most of them didn’t claim a position because it’s so well-accepted that they didn’t want to waste the space. 

And just how small is the leftover, even if it was real doubt (which it isn’t)? That 2.9% remainder is less than:

Can we start accepting how much everyone who understands the science is in agreement and work on fixing it and adapting to it? The doubt is not real. Just like the Loch Ness Monster.

Read more about the climate research survey at Smithsonian.com. Read more about the crazy psychology behind conspiracy theories here (which is all I am willing to call climate science denialism from here on out).

So there.

Col. Chris Hadfield returns to Earth tomorrow after nearly five months in command of the International Space Station. Here are his touching personal reflections on the mission.

His stay on the ISS has captured the imagination and the curiosity of millions of people on Earth, thanks to this wonderfully interconnected world we call social media. Not only do we have the technology to send men to space for months at a time, but they can share that experience so richly with all of us.

I am truly grateful for his hard work, the hard work of people like his son Evan (who managed his dad’s Tumblr and much of his other social media) and the hard work of those who continue to support the mission. He went to space so we could ALL go to space.

Celebrate with the ten best videos from Commander Hadfield’s time aboard the ISS. I know what my favorite was (also in GIF form).

400. For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million, as reported this week. The last time the atmosphere contained this much carbon dioxide was 3 million years ago. This new data comes from the Mauna Loa observatory and a set of data continuously collected since 1958: The Keeling curve. This represents almost a 50% increase since the beginning of the industrial age. Although there is some seasonal variability (that little jagged edge) due to seasonal vegetation sucking up a bit of the CO2 every year, the trend is clear … and it’s not good. So what does that mean? The effects are not something to look forward to. The last time the CO2 level was this high, way back when, here’s what the world was like: Back then, it was a different world. Global average temperatures during the period were between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) higher than today, and sea level was as much as 131 feet (40 meters) higher in some places. While the average (which is calculated from levels over the past several days) has since dropped back to 399 (as of today), the saddest part is that both of those numbers are unacceptable. 400 is just a little more catchy. With 401 and beyond right around the corner, what now? We must cut emissions as fast as humanly possible. Because we are mighty humans, and it is possible. We need to take care, because we all share this air. Read about the science of our CO2 contribution here. Watch this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart to gain some hope maybe. What do you think is the #1 thing we can do to change? What are YOU willing to do?
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400.

For the first time in human history, carbon dioxide levels reached an average daily level of 400 parts per million, as reported this week. The last time the atmosphere contained this much carbon dioxide was 3 million years ago.

This new data comes from the Mauna Loa observatory and a set of data continuously collected since 1958: The Keeling curve. This represents almost a 50% increase since the beginning of the industrial age. Although there is some seasonal variability (that little jagged edge) due to seasonal vegetation sucking up a bit of the CO2 every year, the trend is clear … and it’s not good.

So what does that mean? The effects are not something to look forward to. The last time the CO2 level was this high, way back when, here’s what the world was like:

Back then, it was a different world. Global average temperatures during the period were between 5.4 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 4 degrees Celsius) higher than today, and sea level was as much as 131 feet (40 meters) higher in some places.

While the average (which is calculated from levels over the past several days) has since dropped back to 399 (as of today), the saddest part is that both of those numbers are unacceptable. 400 is just a little more catchy. With 401 and beyond right around the corner, what now? We must cut emissions as fast as humanly possible.

Because we are mighty humans, and it is possible.

We need to take care, because we all share this air. Read about the science of our CO2 contribution here. Watch this episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart to gain some hope maybe.

What do you think is the #1 thing we can do to change? What are YOU willing to do?

A Boy And His Atom: The World’s Smallest Movie

Scientists are known for loving their work. Biologists tend to their cultures and animals. Physicists polish their exquisite machines like sports car entusiasts treat vintage Ferraris. So do chemists love atoms? Apparently they do. At least enough to write a love story with, and about them.

IBM scientists have created the world’s smallest movie using individual atoms. It’s the story of a boy and his playful atom buddy, drawn in stop motion and with each quantum pixel positioned using a scanning tunneling microscope. Every frame is magnified a stunning 100 million times!

This amazing feat was accomplished by using a charged atomic needle to drag single carbon monoxide molecules (the individual atoms we see are one side of that two-atom molecule) around on a copper substrate. I’ve posted a little bit about these feats of atomic art before, with these “quantum corrals” and “ferrous wheels”. 

See those ripples around each atom? They remind me of pebbles being tossed into a still pond. They are actually ripples in the electron field of the copper surface below! It’s a reminder that, contrary to many textbooks, electrons behave more like waves than particles following an orbit. And like any other wave, they can form intricate interference patterns. Check out this previous post for more on that.

The hope is that manipulating atomic structures like this may lead to even greater information storage capacity. Imaging all the world’s books and movies on your mobile phone at once!

Here’s a “making of” movie from IBM, featuring the sound of atoms being moved as well as the encouraging sight of several female team members.

This makes me as happy as atom boy there.

Born Without a Windpipe, Now Breathing A Full Life Hannah Warren has become the youngest person to ever receive a bioengineered tissue transplant, receiving a windpipe created from her own stem cells grown around a special plastic scaffold. This “proto-windpipe” is then recognized by the body, and (through processes that aren’t entirely clear) a fully developed windpipe, complete with the many layers of specialized cells, is formed with the scaffold and stem cells as its guide.  I’ve posted about these bioengineered transplants in older patients before, but I think this captures the amazement we all feel: Dr. Macchiarini described a look of befuddlement on the child’s face when she realized that the mouth tube was gone and she could put her lips together for the first time. “It was beautiful,” he said. Yes. Beautiful, indeed. Way to go science. (via New York Times)
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Born Without a Windpipe, Now Breathing A Full Life

Hannah Warren has become the youngest person to ever receive a bioengineered tissue transplant, receiving a windpipe created from her own stem cells grown around a special plastic scaffold. This “proto-windpipe” is then recognized by the body, and (through processes that aren’t entirely clear) a fully developed windpipe, complete with the many layers of specialized cells, is formed with the scaffold and stem cells as its guide. 

I’ve posted about these bioengineered transplants in older patients before, but I think this captures the amazement we all feel:

Dr. Macchiarini described a look of befuddlement on the child’s face when she realized that the mouth tube was gone and she could put her lips together for the first time. “It was beautiful,” he said.

Yes. Beautiful, indeed. Way to go science.

(via New York Times)

Source: The New York Times

Maggie Koerth-Baker has written a chemistry and combustion rundown of ammonium nitrate, the chemical believed to be behind the devastating blast yesterday in West, TX: “Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn’t really a dangerous explosive (most of the time)”. Ammonium nitrate, a primary ingredient in synthetic fertilizers, isn’t itself very explosive. Accidents involving it are actually pretty rare, although incidents like the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995 have given it quite a reputation. However, like anything, it’s the dose that makes the poison.  When it burns, it creates its own oxygen, which can lead to a runaway fire. In those runaway fires, the chemical can bind together from pellets into a massive plug, allowing it to trap huge amounts of hot gases beneath the weight of burning material. You can guess what happens when hot gases build up with no place to go. More details at Boing Boing. Stay strong, West, TX.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker has written a chemistry and combustion rundown of ammonium nitrate, the chemical believed to be behind the devastating blast yesterday in West, TX: “Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn’t really a dangerous explosive (most of the time)”.

Ammonium nitrate, a primary ingredient in synthetic fertilizers, isn’t itself very explosive. Accidents involving it are actually pretty rare, although incidents like the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995 have given it quite a reputation. However, like anything, it’s the dose that makes the poison. 

When it burns, it creates its own oxygen, which can lead to a runaway fire. In those runaway fires, the chemical can bind together from pellets into a massive plug, allowing it to trap huge amounts of hot gases beneath the weight of burning material. You can guess what happens when hot gases build up with no place to go.

More details at Boing Boing. Stay strong, West, TX.

Source: Boing Boing

The Twisted Cultural Conflict of Duck Genitalia Research

What happens when a conservative website “discovers” a study that studies the explosive corkscrew nature of duck genitalia and how it relates to sexual evolution? Their commenters completely lose their minds at the idea that the government would fund such basic science research (srsly, read the comments … or actually maybe don’t).

Except that basic science research like this is the cornerstone of innovation and discovery. Carl Zimmer stands up for this kind of science in this must-read article, and I stand behind him. Besides, xkcd’s money chart reminds us that this isn’t why the budget is in trouble, maybe?

Science is a journey of unknowns, a slow and careful march into uncharted territories of human knowledge. We can not predict how research will benefit humanity, because those benefits might be years, or even decades down the road. Or they might not materialize at all.

You can’t fund the invention of an MRI machine, instead you fund basic research in the physics of magnetic resonance on living tissues. Likewise, studies of sexual conflict in ducks can unlock the secrets of our own evolution, and might even help us understand mysterious conditions like preeclampsia (which killed Sybil on Downton Abbey, an event I have not fully recovered from).

This is why it is so important to share science with your friends, and to make sure that scientists and science folks everywhere are connecting with the public. Because if you don’t communicate your science, then someone else will do it for you, and nefariously. 

By this point, you probably want to see the slo-mo videos of those explosive corkscrew genitalia, right? Here ya go. 

Perhaps most tragically, the critics seem to be missing the easy opportunity to make “stimulus package” jokes … which is funny, I don’t care who ya are.

I hate waking up to bad news. Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh. NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on. Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee. Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try. Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even? More coverage at Universe Today. 
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I hate waking up to bad news. Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh. NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on. Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee. Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try. Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even? More coverage at Universe Today. 
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I hate waking up to bad news.

Thanks to Congress and the White House failing to agree on budget cuts, and the subsequent “sequestration” (across-the-board, slash-and-burn, top-to-bottom money-trimming), NASA has announced that they are suspending all education and public outreach activities. It’s a suspension, not a cancellation … but uggghhhh.

NASA knows this sucks. But they’ve been put in a place where they have to choose whether they can support their actual missions with the money they have been given, and no matter how much they value the extras (and they do), it’s rock-and-a-hard-place time for space folks. It’s hard to put presents under the tree if you’re struggling to keep the lights on.

Projects like the Mars Curiosity Twitter account and NASA’s Twitter socials will continue. So what could we be saying goodbye to? These are the outreach programs that put Mars science in underprivileged classrooms, turning science into smiles. The programs that publish free ebooks of our Earth as art, erasing borders and instilling wonder in one fell swoop. Programs that allow us to travel beyond our planet in a single click. These are programs that plop down space telescope mock-ups in the middle of downtown Austin so the kid in me can do cartwheels with sciencey glee.

Today, online, there are so many wonderful places that can take up the slack (blogs and websites like this). But will we be able to do this effectively if NASA can’t even do it themselves? I don’t know. But we will try.

Because if we do try, then we can remind people who vote and people who make budgets of what NASA already knows: Whenever we look up, we are inspired to make new things possible, in sciences terrestrial and astronomical. And when we look back down at Earth, and those borders disappear, doesn’t it make you want to make this chart a little more even?

More coverage at Universe Today. 

Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is. The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost.  The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought.  The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :) Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.
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Planck-in’ on Billions and Billions

I’m amazed that in 2013, we can still be smacked upside the head and reminded of how little we know about our universe. Even the most basic things about it. Like, how old it is.

The European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope has collected 15.5 months worth of data on the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB (What’s that? Click here), and today they released the most detailed map ever of those oldest remnants of the Big Bang. It says that our universe is almost perfect. Almost. 

The highlights from this new map include the finding that the universe is almost certainly 13.81 billion years old, about 100 million years older than previous estimates. And we got better estimates for the stuffness of stuff: 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter, and 68.3 percent dark energy. The universe is expanding, which is the whole reason that the CMB even exists, but this new map says it’s expanding slower than we thought. 

The coolest part, though? The “almost perfect” part. The radiation that became the CMB was just sort of randomly splattered out, like we’d expect (and the randomness of the dots on the map above show that). But those little fluctuations aren’t the same everywhere! The universe appears to be slightly lopsided, and even rather cold in one part. The ESA folks say we may need “new physics” to explain why. Nice to know you cosmologists of the future will have something to work on :)

Of course, all of this just goes for the observable universe. The rest, whatever it may be (or not be), has NO EDGE. Just like Hank Green reminds us. Phil Plait has tons more dirty details behind the Planck news at Bad Astronomy.

The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
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The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
Zoom Info
The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2! The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list!  What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life). What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past. *Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.
Zoom Info

The number of places in our solar system that could have ever supported life now stands at 2!

The first, of course, is Earth, because … well, us. According to an awesomely exciting announcement today by NASA and JPL, we can add Gale Crater to that list! 

What they found: Curiosity’s rock drill recently uncovered clay-like minerals below Gale Crater’s rusty red surface. These muddy minerals, pictured above, hint at a “Gray Mars” era, when Gale Crater and the ancient stream bed it holds could have been home to intermittent lakes. When the onboard instruments scanned the chemical makeup of the clay, it found carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and sulfur compounds, a group of elements known as “CHONPS” that have to exist in order to create life as we know it. Most importantly, the minerals were pretty neutral in pH and were found in forms that point to a possible chemical energy system (another key ingredient for life).

What remains unknown: This does NOT mean that anything ever actually lived there. But it is the first time that the ingredients for the evolution of microbial life, and the correct conditions to support it, have been directly observed beyond Earth. Mars still has water frozen at its poles, and once had quite a bit of water above and below the surface. The rover will poke around this site, called Yellowknife Bay, for a while longer before heading toward the mountainous center of Gale Crater. There, it will study the multiple layers of rock present on the hillside in order to piece together an even clearer picture of Gale Crater’s muddy, moist, maybe* microbial Martian past.

*Maybe. Just want to emphasize that part.