Non-condensing greenhouse gases are why we are not a frozen wasteland

by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

How carbon dioxide controls earth’s temperature – NASA’s Lacis: “There is no viable alternative to counteract global warming except through direct human effort to reduce the atmospheric CO2 level.”
[Via Climate Progress]

A study by GISS climate scientists recently published in the journal Science shows that atmospheric CO₂ operates as a thermostat to control the temperature of Earth….

CO₂ is the key atmospheric gas that exerts principal control (80% of the non-condensing GHG forcing) over the strength of the terrestrial greenhouse effect. Water vapor and clouds are fast-acting feedback effects, and as such, they are controlled by the radiative forcing supplied by the non-condensing GHGs….

There is no viable alternative to counteract global warming except through direct human effort to reduce the atmospheric CO₂ level.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has posted three articles on their website explaining two important new studies, “Atmospheric CO₂: Principal control knob governing Earth’s temperature” (subs. req’d) in Science by Andrew Lacis et al. and “The attribution of the present-day total greenhouse effect” (subs. req’d) in JGR by Gavin Schmidt et al. Together they make a terrific tutorial on the critical role human-caused CO2 plays in climate change.

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A lot of nice data that all demonstrates that the key forcings for climate come from GHG such as carbon dioxide. The Science article states:

Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere.

While water may be a stronger GHG than CO2, it cycles through the system and its condensation can remove it from the atmosphere. It is CO2 and other GHG that moderate the greenhouse effect that keeps the planet warm enough for us to live.

Without the carbon dioxide and other gases, water rapidly condenses out, freezes and completes a cycle that results in a much colder world. Without carbon dioxide, we would not be here. But too much carbon dioxide released by humans enhances this warming effect to the point that it results in increased warming.

“The bottom line is that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a thermostat in regulating the temperature of Earth,”

And just as with any thermostat, turning it up increases the temperature.

What happens when there is no middle anymore?

Robots replacing middle class jobs?
[Via Boing Boing]

If the middle class is disappearing, who will do all that work? Robots? That’s the question posed by GOOD editor Andrew Price in his article titled “Automation Insurance.” From GOOD:

Economists will remind you that new technologies create new jobs as they destroy old ones. That’s true. When you have robots, you need robotics engineers. But those aren’t going to be mid-range jobs.

On the low end of the spectrum, we have physical jobs that we can’t automate yet (yard work, for example). On the high end of the spectrum, we have creative and cognitive jobs that we can’t automate yet (law and management, for example). But as technology advances, and it certainly will, more people are going to be elbowed out of the workforce.

We may be heading toward a future with plentiful high-end jobs and plentiful low-end jobs, and not much in the middle.

“Automation Insurance: Robots Are Replacing Middle Class Jobs”

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We are talking about perhaps 1/3 of the people in the US being unemployed if these mid-range jobs disappear. Where will the jobs come from for these people to earn an income? What will they do?

Carrying the install drive on a keychain

New MacBook Air features USB software reinstall drive
[Via AppleInsider]

Rather than relying on an external optical drive or another computer sharing its DVD drive, the new Mac Book Air supplies a solid state reinstallation drive the plugs into the USB port.

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I wonder when everyone else will be doing this?

Five important things to remember in science

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by banspy

Avoid the career virus!
[Via Naturally Selected]

When we come down with flu, we do everything we can to get rid of the virus and get better. But when we come down with mind viruses—or ideas that harm us rather than help us—we often just accept them as “how things are,” doing nothing to counter their damaging effects.

There’s one mind virus, particularly acute these days, we should all pay attention to:

Science is a real struggle. It is a dog eat dog endeavor, and if you aren’t hyper competitive, super smart, and working 80 hours a week, you won’t succeed.

This mind virus was highlighted by the recent case of the postdoc poisoning his colleague’s cell cultures, because he was afraid she might be getting ahead. Not only was the act itself borne of this mind virus, but so were many of the comments following it. “That’s just the way it is in science these days,” was a common refrain in the blogosphere.

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Such ultracompetitiveness often does more harm in science than good. Pushing yourself may help sometimes but viewing everything as a zero-sum game where the only way to move yourself forward is to harm others is not a long-term successful strategy.

Because science is a small world and it gets around when you abuse others. Your brilliance may be enough to overcome the distaste of others but you can find yourself quite alone when you need help the most.

Here are the 5 things Morgan suggests that can help:

1. Learn to live “in the moment” and enjoy every moment. If you’re in the moment, then you’ll realize that you have great power to make things happen. Some people refer to this as “mindfulness.” It works.
2. Don’t focus on what success others are having, or what you haven’t achieved yet. Focus only on your own success and what you want to achieve.
3. Help other people rather than being afraid of them. The more you help others, the more it will come back to help you. his doesn’t mean giving away your results to a competitor—but it does mean helping a lab-mate or a colleague whenever you have the chance.
4. Get enough sleep. Many of us academics think that the only way to get ahead is to spend long hours working, while depriving ourselves of sleep. That’s like driving your car without enough engine oil. You can get away with it for a while, but eventually the engine blows out.
5. Realize that the only thing you can control in your life is what’s in front you, here and now. You can’t control the competition. You can’t control whether your experiments will have the outcome you want. Make the most of what you can control, by doing the right work at the right time—and ignore the rest.

Not only will your life improve, but very likely you will be more productive and a lot happier. Work towards win-win and things will be much better. There can be more than one blackjack at the table.

We have always complained about education in the US

I Agree With Bob Somerby’s Challenge to Ezra Klein & Kevin Drum: Will Progressives Stop Engaging in Willful Ignorance About Education?
[Via Mike the Mad Biologist]

I write about education and educational data a lot, and I’m always struck by the insistence that the U.S. K-12 educational system is DOOMED! This is a staggering display of willful ignorance that rivals creationism (and, arguably, is more pernicious). Without going through the entire backstory (that’s what links are for), some U.S. states–relatively large ones–excel, to the point where they do better than every European country and most Asian countries. These states also do better than expected, given their childhood poverty rates; some cities also do a better than expected job of educating poor children.

Regarding long-term trends, according to the NAEP, African-American students have increased reading test scores by the rough equivalent of three grade levels during the period of 1971-2008:

(from here)

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It is very easy to continue complaining about education – we have apparently been doing it as long as we have had public schools. In 1943, the New York Times was shocked to discover that a large number of college students could not identify who George Washington was – some thought he was President during the War of 1812.

Thomas Jefferson complained about the poor quality of our schools. In the 1880s, politicians suggested that the public school system was so ineffective that it should be abolished. In the 1920s, parents complained about the progressive reforms that provided group activities rather than grammar and drills.

Here we have the point that some states have education numbers higher than most countries, outdoing all European ones. They are doing a great job.

As long as we have some states that are producing some of the best students in the world, we have a hope of being competitive. And even the laggard regions are better today than they used to be.

Wunderground is one of the prize creations of the Internet Age

by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Yale profile of Wunderground.com’s Jeff Masters: “The ignorance and greed that human society is showing [on climate change] will be to our ultimate detriment and possible destruction.”
[Via Climate Progress]

Journalist Julie Halpert has a terrific Yale Forum profile of the prolific uber-meteorologist. Masters, a CP favorite, pulls no punches on global warming. The piece is excerpted below.

When Jeff Masters was 10, he helped launch the “mad scientist club” in his Birmingham, Michigan, school, writing a 100-page thesis based on observations from his telescope.

By the time he was 12, he was diligently tracking the strength of wind gusts from a weather station he had set up in his backyard. The Midwest’s extremely variable climate conditions intrigued him. “I was always interested in weather,” he says….

Today, at age 50, all-things-weather are his job and his passion. A co-founder of The Weather Underground (wunderground.com), Masters created most of the software that formats the National Weather Service data used on the website, and also the imagery on the tropical page. And as a blogger on that site, he’s also become a committed advocate for the need to address human-caused climate change….

From College Degrees to Hurricane Hugo Scare

After receiving his bachelors and masters degrees in meteorology from the University of Michigan, he says, he was “burnt out from school.” On a lark, he applied for a job with the hurricane hunters as a flight meteorologist for NOAA’s Aircraft Operations Center. From 1986 to 1990, he spent his time flying into the eye of hurricanes.

“It was a dream job” that satisfied his huge fascination with weather, he said: “What better way to seek out the most intense storms and most interesting weather phenomena?”

He relished the thrill of the experience, but a near brush with death, flying into September 1989’s Hurricane Hugo, gave him a fresh perspective. The team had underestimated the weather, expecting a weaker storm. “We shouldn’t have been in the eyewall of a category five hurricane,” Masters says, thinking back and adding that they hadn’t paid adequate attention to the warning signs.

The plane’s engine caught fire and there was extreme turbulence. But the pilot was able to keep control of the plane, allowing it to land safely. Masters decided that would be his last flight, and says now that he still suffers from lingering effects of the “traumatizing” experience.

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Please read the whole thing because Jeff Masters created one of the web’s greatest sites. Not only can you find the current and historical weather for almost any place you what, it also has data from thousands of home-brewed weather stations. Its graphs and information give you everything you would want.

But it is his blog where you really get to know the people who follow weather, especially hurricanes. If you want to know what is going on or where to find data about anything dealing with these storms, follow his blog.I do.

The best way to deal with invading species – eat them

by shellac

New Weapon Against Invading Fish: The Pan
[Via Dot Earth]

One approach to invasive fish involves batter and a hot pan.

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We are really good at destroying the health of a species by overfishing or over grazing or over-somthing. SO why not deal with invasive species by simply leveraging that talent.

The idea of Kentucky tuna recipes is intriguing. A good marketing campaign – The other, other, other white meat – could be all it took.

A broken death penalty?

Texas Continues to Execute the Innocent
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

Or at least do everything it can to avoid doing anything that might prevent the execution of the innocent. Balko reports:

A Texas appeals court has ordered a halt to a district court’s inquiry into whether Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for setting a 1992 fire that killed his three daughters, was innocent. The stay was sought by Navarro County District Attorney R. Lowell Thompson. It’s merely the latest attempt by Texas officials (Thompson’s office prosecuted Willingham), including Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to stave off any formal inquiry into Willingham’s execution. Arson specialists now say Willingham was convicted based on flawed and outdated science, and there’s little forensic evidence to support the theory that the fire was set intentionally.

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In some Orwellian fashion, it is better to kill an innocent man than to investigate whether he is innocent. Since it is very likely they have already put innocent people to death, I guess it makes it easier on their consciences to fight these things.

In the last 10 years, 55 people on death row have been exonerated.

It matters not whether a man in innocent or not. What matters is the conviction. The state does not demonstrate its power by searching for the truth. It demonstrates it by putting people to death, whether innocent or not.

Coral death is not good at all

by lsgcp

Worst coral death strikes at Southeast Asia
[Via Deep Sea News]

If the impending coral death in the Caribbean didn’t make you nauseous… International marine scientists say that a huge coral death which has struck Southeast Asian and Indian Ocean reefs over recent months has highlighted the urgency of controlling global carbon emissions. Many reefs are dead or dying across the Indian Ocean and into the Coral Triangle following a bleaching

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I have written about coral death before and it appears to be accelerating, particularly with corals located between the tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. It is not pretty:

“It is certainly the worst coral die-off we have seen since 1998. It may prove to be the worst such event known to science,” says Dr Andrew Baird of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook Universities. “So far around 80 percent of Acropora colonies and 50 per cent of colonies from other species have died since the outbreak began in May this year.”

No coral, and the fish population declines. No fish and fisherman have no livelihood. Once the coral bleaches, it starts degrading, making it even less likely that it will return.

There is no indication that these bleaching events are temporary at all. Will we have to create our own artificial ones around the world to help prevent total loss?

Anti-science candidates inspire little confidence we can deal with complex problems

Shouldn’t Senators understand the Constitution?
[Via Bad Astronomy]

OK, this should be pretty obvious: the first official act of someone who is elected Senator of these United States of America is to swear to uphold the Constitution. So it stands to reason that maybe, just maybe, the person doing the swearing should understand the Constitution. Right?

Right?

Yeah. Watch this:

OK, first off: I know that picking on Christine O’Donnell, Republican candidate for the Senate in Delaware, is like shooting fish in a barrel, but easier. However, the media is screwing this up: personally, I don’t care what she believed ten years ago in college. Everyone does stupid stuff in college. It’s college. I’m far more concerned with what she believes now. And she’s emblematic for the rest of the Tea Party as well.

There are a lot of things to note in this video. The first is that multiple times she ducks Wolf Blitzer’s question about whether or not she thinks evolution is a myth, saying that her beliefs about evolution and creationism aren’t important; what’s important are local schools and what they can teach. That is utter baloney. As a Senator, she might be asked to vote on bills that are directly or indirectly involved with this issue, and her personal belief is very important indeed.

And why duck the question? Is she ashamed of being a creationist, or simply trying to avoid looking foolish on television?

Second, and more importantly, is her comment:

What I will support in Washington DC is the ability for the local school system to decide what is taught in their classroom… [I was talking about] a classroom that was not allowed to teach creationism as an equal theory as evolution. That is against their Constitutional rights and that is an overreaching [of the] arm of the government.

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When did it become okay in America for supposed mainstream political candidates to not only deny science but to uphold religion being taught in schools as science? The Baptists were instrumental in getting the First Amendment written because they had been prevented from being part of the political process by the Anglican Church. Now fundamentalists want the state ti approve one religion’s myth over all others and force other Americans to sit still while it is taught.

No myth that they talk about is science but they want it to be treated as such. Too bad. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights prevent them from doing this. It prevents the state from establishing benefits for one religion over any other.

Yet now these people want to teach Judeo creationism as science. Which version of creationism are we talking about? The one where the Earth is less than 6000 years old and man was created in his current form? The only evidence for this are the preachings of a few churches based on the words from a multiply translated book a couple of thousand years old.

What about creationism where everything was created 21 billion years ago and just allowed to follow physical laws? It is still an attempt to make the natural world fit a multiply translated, multi-thousand year old book. That is not science.

And, why would that creation story be any more appropriate than any other? Why do these people assume that only their creation myth gets to be taught?

If they get to have their creation myth taught as an alternative to evolution, then what is to prevent Muslims from suing to get their myth taught? Or some Chinese? Or the Navaho?

Don’t these guys get that if somehow the Constitution allows them to teach Judeo creationism as fact, that the same Constitution will require minority groups to ask for the same thing? They do not get to say that my religious beliefs are more important and can be taught but yours do not.

Being ignorant does not bode well for being able to solve any problems we face. But then, from the tone of many of these candidates, solving any problems is actually not part of their mandate.

Delaying one tablet and killing another is not how to compete with iPad

by Shoes on Wires

Lenovo delays tablet until Android ‘Honeycomb’ release; cancels Windows 7 tablet
[Via MacDailyNews]

“Hopefully you weren’t sitting on the Android tablet sidelines, patiently waiting for Lenovo’s options,” Matt Burns reports for CrunchGear. “Yeah, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

Burns reports, “The company’s COO recent stated that the Lenovo’s US-market tablet will not be based around the Android 2.2 Froyo release, but rather Honeycomb. Therefore, if Google pushes back Honeycomb, Lenovo’s tablet will obviously have to suit. This puts the tablet on schedule for a Summer 2011 release — or rather a few months into the iPad 2′s life.”

Burns reports, “While the Android tablet was delayed, the Windows 7 flavor is simply canceled and for good reason too. Lenovo’s director of new technology, Howard Locker, nailed it by saying, ‘The challenge with Windows 7 is that it’s based on the same paradigm as 1985—it’s really an interface that’s optimized for a mouse and keyboard. It has to be optimized for touch. How do you do that?’”

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So, Windows 7 does not really work on tablets and neither does Windows Phone 7. So what is MS strategy? At least Google is giving them something.

But, as I mentioned yesterday and Apple demonstrated today, having a unified OS for everything means that innovations on one can be moved easily to the other. So users of the iPhone will be able to use the OS on a desktop without having to completely change learned behavior. It opens up the possibility for developers that an app can be created relatively easily that can run on hundreds of millions of devices.

Here is what Jobs said the other day about the difficulty of just developing for Android on cell phones:

Twitter client, Twitter Deck, recently launched their app for Android. They reported that they had to contend with more than 100 different versions of Android software on 244 different handsets. The multiple hardware and software iterations present developers with a daunting challenge. Many Android apps work only on selected Android handsets running selected Android versions. And this is for handsets that have been shipped less than 12 months ago. Compare this with iPhone, where there are two versions of the software, the current and the most recent predecessor to test against.

But none of that can be easily moved to the PC because MS controls that venue. Google really has no entry there for developers of Android.

And, as Jobs mentioned, most of the developer’s time is spent testing the software rather than writing it.

Apple announced today that FaceTime, an app it only launched a couple of months ago, will not be available for desktops and laptops. This rapid development cycle derives from the fact that iOS and OS X are essentially the same under the hood.

Or the easy creation of multitouch on the desktop, based on iOS devices. Or instant on in the new Airs, based on iPad technology.

Apple has created a system where innovations on one form factor can be easily moved into others, whether those innovations are hardware or software. No one else can do this.

They can not even compete with the iPad, much less the iPhone, iPod Touch, Macbook Air, or OS X.

This is what happens when you have an adaptive company .

It’s an Apple day

Amazing how whenever Apple does an event, it occupies almost all the tech talk for the day if not longer. Apple has had such a history of delivering outstanding new products ready for shipping at these that the excitement has brought down many servers.

Apple is live streaming today’s event, perhaps testing its huge server farm in NC and its ability to deliver content at peak need. Could be an interesting talk.

I wonder what surprise he will have.

Removing 1.5 million base pairs of DNA

by IRRI Images

Chopping bits out of the genome
[Via Field of Science Combined Feed]

Generally bacteria genomes tend to be fairly minimal in the amount you can remove from them. Unlike eukaryotes, which can have whole swathes of genome that codes for very little, bacteria, with their limited space for a chromosome, need every gene they can get. They just don’t have the space for unnecessary genes.

Streptomyces bacteria, however, have bigger genomes and the luxary to invest in genes which are not strictly necessary for bacterial survival. These are called Secondary metabolite genes (as opposed to the necessary primary metabolites) and they code for genes that form an arsenal of weapons for the Streptomyces to deploy. Most Strep are soil-based, and they need the ability to produce secondary metabolites (such as antibiotics) to fight off invading bacteria, and clear terratory to expand their growth into.

What has recently been done (very ingeniously) is to remove the secondary metabolism genes from the bacterial species Streptomyces avermitilis creating essentially an ‘empty’ strep bacteria, that can grow and divide but not produce any of the secretory substances that strep are known for. The researchers managed to cut an entire 1.5Mb of DNA right out of the genome – helped by the fact that all the secondary metabolite genes cluster together on one side of the chromosome.

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This provides a nice system to study how a biological system can create all sorts of useful metabolites, without anything else getting in the way. I would think it might have a real effect on synthetic biology.

This sort of thing has been done often on viral systems – removing everything that was not absolutely required – so that new versions could be examined or manipulated. Some of the biggest advances have come from working with such systems. Now we have a ‘higher’ organism, one where much more complex things can be done.

It’ll be interesting to see if this leads to new breakthroughs.

[Listening to: Suburban War from the album "The Suburbs" by Arcade Fire]

The Lion Roars?

by Tambako the Jaguar

Anticipating Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
[Via RoughlyDrafted Magazine]

As Apple prepares to release its current quarterly earnings, a second announcement this week will present the company’s future related to the Mac platform. Here’s what’s likely to be unveiled.

The company has been devoting much of its efforts toward iOS since its release, and it’s no wonder why. Mac sales are (and have been) growing about as fast as they possibly can, and there is no new competition buffeting the shores of PC Island; Apple’s Mac platform is the only storm delivering hurricane devastation to the status quo of desktops and laptops.

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He does a great job discussing how iOS IS max OSX. So, almost any innovation created for one can be fairly easily moved to the other. In contrast, MS Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 have very different innards.

So, when FaceTime becomes a part of iOS devices, it will not be a surprise to see iChat AV incorporate it, allowing desktops to talk with iPod Touches, without needing any phone company involved. We have a new version of Calendar on MobileMe which looks like the iPad version and synchs with the desktop version.

There is a lot more speculation but I think his point that a lot of the heavy lifting for iOS is complete, opening up engineering resources for OS X may be right on target. People do not realize how few engineers Apple has working for them compared with other high tech companies.

[Listening to: Play Me from the album "Neil Diamond]

One in 10,000 – too high an estimate of the number that get Android’s openness?

by tomsun

Android Chief Andy Rubin Responds to Steve Jobs With Tweet
[Via Daring Fireball]

Andy Rubin:

the definition of open: “mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make”

That’s a compelling argument for about 0.01 percent of the population. (Via MG Siegler.)

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