It was the metal not the impact

Tiny shelled creatures shed light on extinction and recovery 65 million years ago
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

An asteroid strike may not only account for the demise of ocean and land life 65 million years ago, but the fireball’s path and the resulting dust, darkness and toxic metal contamination may explain the geographic unevenness of extinctions and recovery, according to Penn State geoscientists. “Our results shed light on the causes of nannoplankton extinction, how productivity was restored, the factors that controlled the origination of new species, and, ultimately, how phytoplankton influenced restoration of the entire marine ecosystem,” the researchers report in this month’s issue of Nature Geoscience.

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The nanoplankton they examined had hard, calcium shells, allowing theme to survive to be looked at. The researchers found that the Northern Hemisphere was almost completely depleted of these plankton after the asteroid hit, while Southern Hemisphere groups were not as badly hit.

This fits with other data indicating that the major extinctions took place in the Northern Hemisphere. It took that Hemisphere 270 thousand years to recover. Meanwhile, the Southern Hemisphere fared much better.

They believe that the main reason the Northern Hemisphere was slower to recover was due to high levels of toxic metals in the northern waters, preventing the expansion of nanoplankton populations. Without those species, there was not enough food to support much of anything else in the oceans.

So, not to self, to survive an asteroid impact, get to opposite Hemisphere.

Nice compilation of climate science information

by kevindooley

Senator Inhofe’s attempt to distract us from the scientific realities of global warming
[Via Skeptical Science]

There has been a shift in the climate debate over recent months. It seems people are talking less about the science and more about the alleged actions of a small group of climate scientists. Senator Inhofe is an extreme example with his recent attempt to criminalize 17 leading scientists. These accusations are largely based on stolen private emails that are being quoted out of context and/or without understanding of the science involved. Unfortunately, this is shifting the focus away from the most important element of the climate debate: the scientific reality of global warming. The empirical evidence that global warming is happening and that humans are the primary cause has been and continues to be observed, measured and documented in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

We find out what’s happening in our climate by empirical observations – measurements made out in the real world. We have even more confidence in our understanding when independent measurements find the same result. In the case of man-made global warming, we have multiple lines of evidence that global warming is happening and that human activity is the predominant cause. There are not only independent scientific teams all over the globe but also measurements of a wide range of phenomena all painting the same picture.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing. This is measured by hundreds of monitoring stations across the globe, all finding the same increasing trend (NOAA). The rising trend is confirmed by satellite measurements conducted independently by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Combined with ice core measurements from Greenland and Antarctica, this tells us that atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest in over 15 million years (Tripati 2009).

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The entire post has links to science articles and provides a wonderfully concise overview of most of the important points. There is a ton of data, collected and examined by a large number of independent researchers, using a variety of different techniques, that all lead to the same conclusion.

If someone wants to come up with a better conclusion, they will have to simultaneously explain ALL this data, because that is what the current explanation does. So far, the only explanation that most denialists put forth to explain all the data is that all the data must be wrong. It is all the work of fraudulent researchers. That is their single overriding hypothesis – fraud on a scale that has never been seen before.

That is what Inhofe is attempting to distract us with.

What I have seen in a lifetime of watching creationists attack evolution is that they somehow believe that finding a single crack in the theory means the whole thing is wrong. If it were that easy to bring down a theory, it would have been done a long time ago. Nobody is crueler to a new theory than a group of scientists.

Evolution is as strong as it is because there is 100 years or more of researchers trying to bring down the structure. Their work has only informed us and made the theory stronger. That is what science does.

Similarly, climate science has already done a lot of whacking at this theory. So far, at almost every turn, instead of weakening the theory, the research strengthens it. That is how science works.

If you want to smote the theory, then there needs to be a better one to replace it. There needs to be a better model of the world. Simple destruction is not useful. That is why science succeeds.

Advice not just for climate scientists

by Sister72

Advice to Climate Scientists on how to Avoid being Swift-boated and how to become Public Intellectuals
[Via Informed Comment]

Climate Scientists continue to see persuasive evidence of global warming and climate change when they speak at academic conferences, even though, as Andrew Sullivan rightly put it, the science is being ‘swift-boated before our eyes.’ (See also Bill McKibben at Tomdispatch.com on Climate Change’s OJ Simpson moment).

This article at mongabay.com includes some hand-wringing from scientists who say that they should have responded to the attacks earlier and more forcefully in public last fall, or who worry that scientists are not charismatic t.v. personalities who can be persuasive on that medium.

Let me just give my scientific colleagues some advice, since as a Middle East expert I’ve seen all sorts of falsehoods about the region successfully purveyed by the US mass media and print press, in such a way as to shape public opinion and to affect policy-making in Washington:

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Juan Cole provides some outstanding advice that every scientist should heed. In shorter form they are:

1. Get a blog going. Lay people have a thirst and you can connect directly to them, without having the media act as filters.

2. There is little you could have done to stop the spread of falsehoods. Reporters will make up quotes if they need to. They have irrational pressures put on them that overcome most possible rational arguments. Some of these pressures are: the owners of the media outlets; political interests impacted by the science; the combative, competitive nature of the media.

3. Just keep plugging away. Be in for the long haul. Eventually, educated, rational argument gets through. You may be horribly smeared in public and your reputation left in taters but “… if an issue is important to you and the fate of your children and grandchildren, surely having an impact is well worth any price you pay.”

[Listening to: Mr. Tambourine Man from the album "Odetta Sings Dylan" by Odetta]

Lots of hollering [Updated]

by ConspiracyofHappiness

Bill McKibben: Climate science takes the OJ tactic
[Via All Today's News - Sightline Daily]

The doubters of climate science have launched an enormously clever — and effective — campaign, and it’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy is perhaps the OJ Simpson trial.

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A very nice dissection of how lawyer tricks are used to impart doubt when there really is not any, to question facts that are not really in question. They are not using facts to show climate change is wrong. They do not propose an alternate theory that explains the data better than current theories.

They simply follow the lawyer’s approach, one captured in the nice phrase “When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When you have neither, holler.”

All you have to do is read the comments and that is what you see – a lot of hollering where the few bits of information presented have been debunked. People with no understanding of the data making pronouncements full of ignorance.

Funny how science and facts often lose out when lawyers get involved.

[UPDATE: Here is a longer version of McKibben's piece.]

[Listening to: Batman from the album "Walking Down a Street Called Love" by Link Wray]

[Listening to: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood from the album "An Other Cup" by Yusuf Islam]

Technology gives Roger his voice back

Roger Ebert (Kinda) Gets His Voice Back (Updated with Video)
[Via Cinematical]

UPDATED: Watch video of Ebert using his new voice after the jump.

The following post went live on 3/1/10, and it was written by Peter Hall

Ah, science, how wonderful you are. When I learned that illustrious film critic Roger Ebert would never be able to use his natural speaking voice again, I, like many others, wondered if he’d take to using text-to-speech converter not unlike what famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking uses to communication. Turns out Ebert has indeed been working toward a speech aid, only his artificial voice will have a distinct advantage over the more robotic tones most associate with the technology; it speaks in his actual voice.

Ebert has an interesting post up at his own blog detailing how he came to deal with his new-found mute-hood, and, as with all of Ebert’s candid posts about his battle with cancer, it’s a bittersweet read. In it he outlines a few experiments with using standard issue software (his wife liked the British variant he now uses around the house) before one day stumbling across CereProc, a Scottish-based firm on the cutting-edge of synthesized voice technology. Ebert then opened a dialog with the company in the hope that they could develop a custom voice synthesizer pieced together from past recordings of Ebert’s voice.

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Pretty amazing story. Roger Ebert gets his voice back because of the commentary tracks he recorded for some DVDs. As he wrote on his blog, he can now talk to his grandchildren using his voice. He used it on Oprah today.

Watch the little video. The voice files still require a little cleaning up but the sound is so much better than the normal computer generated voice, even on an Apple.

Only one thing will satisfy them

by oddsock

An Open Letter To IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri
[Via DenialDepot]

Dear Sir,

I regret to inform you that I have withdrawn my support for your continuing role as chairman of the IPCC. Please resign your chairmanship immediately after reading this message. You may take the rest of the day off.

It was thanks to our help that you became chairman of the IPCC in the first place. We’ve never trusted the IPCC and the previous IPCC chairman, Dr Watson, was one of those so-called “Climate Scientists”. So we had him ousted. We certainly didn’t want a “scientist” chairing the IPCC – too close to the “science” you see and therefore too dependent on grant money.

No what we needed was someone with industry links who could make money the good old fashioned way. So we picked you, in light of your industrial links and your qualifications in Economics and Railway Engineering (at a time when trains correctly bellowed co2!). To seal the deal, your directorship of an energy and environment research institute made you a relevant candidate for the position.

Remember? No? Perhaps you don’t recall how you became chair of the IPCC? It’s hard to deny when it’s in print in a 2002 NYT article:

Auto manufacturers and oil companies have long seen Dr. Watson as a foe, and their lobbyists have said that Dr. Pachauri, who has worked with industry in the past, was clearly preferable.

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Read the 2002 article. That’s right. The same head of the IPCC that is being vilified today was the Bush administration’s top choice because he was viewed as friendly to business. He was an engineer and economist, not a climate scientist like his predecessor, Robert Watson. He was not viewed favorably because he pushed for reducing carbon emission.

Business got someone they liked, someone with ties to industry. And his IPCC report was also not what they wanted. The facts did not go their way, even though one of their guys was running it.

So, they have to now destroy his reputation and try to get someone even more favorable to them the next time. Only when the conclusions have been made to conform to what they want will they be satisfied. Yet E pur si muove!

[Listening to: The Remembering - High the Memory from the album "Tales from Topographic Oceans" by Yes]