Category: Science

Scientists Seriously Discuss Geoengineering Solutions to Global Warming

(p. A1) UTRECHT, the Netherlands — The solution to global warming, Olaf Schuiling says, lies beneath our feet.
For Dr. Schuiling, a retired geochemist, climate salvation would come in the form of olivine, a green-tinted mineral found in abundance around the world. When exposed to the elements, it slowly takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Olivine has been doing this naturally for billions of years, but Dr. Schuiling wants to speed up the process by spreading it on fields and beaches and using it for dikes, pathways, even sandboxes. Sprinkle enough of the crushed rock around, he says, and it will eventually remove enough CO2 to slow the rise in global temperatures.
“Let the earth help us to save the earth,” said Dr. Schuiling, who has been pursuing the idea single-mindedly for several decades and at 82 is still writing papers on the subject from his cluttered office at the University of Utrecht.
Once considered the stuff of wild-eyed fantasies, such ideas for countering climate change — known as geoengineering solutions, because they intentionally manipulate nature — are now being discussed seriously by scientists.

For the full story, see:
HENRY FOUNTAIN. “Climate Cures Seeking to Tap Nature’s Power.” The New York Times (Mon., NOV. 10, 2014): A1 & A6.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 9, 2014, and has the title “Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path.”)

Alertness to What Problem Can Be Solved with Unexpected Results

(p. 208) “Every scientist must occasionally turn around and ask not merely, ‘How can I solve this problem?’ but, ‘Now that I have come to a result, what problem have I solved?” This use of reverse questions is of tremendous value precisely at the deepest parts of science.”–NORBERT WIENER, INVENTION:THE CARE AND FEEDING OF IDEAS

Source:
Norbert Wiener as quoted in Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.

Simplot’s Company Keeps Innovating with Potatoes

(p. B1) A potato genetically engineered to reduce the amounts of a potentially harmful ingredient in French fries and potato chips has been approved for commercial planting, the Department of Agriculture announced on Friday [November 7, 2014].
The potato’s DNA has been altered so that less of a chemical called acrylamide, which is suspected of causing cancer in people, is produced when the potato is fried.
The new potato also resists bruising, a characteristic long sought by potato growers and processors for financial reasons. Potatoes bruised during harvesting, shipping or storage can lose value or become unusable.
The biotech tubers were developed by the J. R. Simplot Company, a privately held company based in Boise, Idaho, which was the initial supplier of frozen French fries to McDonald’s in the 1960s and is still a major supplier. The company’s founder, Mr. Simplot, who died in 2008, became a billionaire.
The potato is one of a new wave of genetically modified crops that aim to provide benefits to consumers, not just to farmers as the widely grown biotech crops like herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn do. The nonbruising aspect of the potato is similar to that of genetically engineered nonbrowning apples, developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, which are awaiting regulatory approval.
. . .
The question now is whether the potatoes — which come in the Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet and Atlantic varieties — will be adopted by food companies and restaurant chains. At least one group opposed to such crops has already pressed McDonald’s to reject them.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW POLLACK. “New Potato, Hot Potato: U.S. Approves Modified Crop. Next Up: French-Fry Fans.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 8, 2014): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 7, 2014, and has the title “U.S.D.A. Approves Modified Potato. Next Up: French Fry Fans.”)

Einthoven Tried to Share Prize Money with His Assistant

(p. 194) One event that occurred after Einthoven received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 speaks volumes about his integrity. In the construction of his string galvanometer and laboratory experiments over many years, Einthoven was rather clumsy with his hands and relied very much on the collaboration of his chief assistant K. F. L. van der Woerdt. Years later, when he received the $40,000 in Nobel Prize money, Einthoven wished to share it with his assistant but soon learned that the man had died. He sought out the man’s two surviving sisters, who were living in genteel poverty in a kind of almshouse. He journeyed there by train and gave them half of the award money.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.

In 1971 Nixon “Launched an All-Out War on Cancer”

(p. 173) In 1971 the U.S. government finally launched an all-out “war on cancer.” In his State of the Union address in January 1971, President Richard Nixon declared: “The time has come in America when the same kind of concerted effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal.”
As the country debated a bill known as the National Cancer Act, the air was filled with feverish excitement and heady optimism. Popular magazines again trumpeted the imminent conquest of cancer. However, some members of the committee of the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, which was asked by the NCI to review the cancer plan envisioned by the act, expressed concern regarding the centralization of planning of research and that “the lines of research… could turn out to be the wrong leads.” The plan fails, the reviewers said in their confidential report, because

It leaves the impression that all shots can be called from a national headquarters; that all, or nearly all, of the really important ideas are already in hand, and that given the right kind of administration and organization, the hard problems can be solved. It fails to allow for the surprises which must surely lie ahead if we are really going to gain an understanding of cancer.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)

Model Flaws Result in No Useful Climate Consensus

At the end of the first page of the commentary quoted below, the following biographical credentials were provided for the author of the commentary:

(p. C1) Dr. Koonin was undersecretary for science in the Energy Department during President Barack Obama’s first term and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. His previous positions include professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, as well as chief scientist of where his work focused on renewable and low-carbon energy technologies.

(p. C1) The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
. . .
(p. C2) We often hear that there is a “scientific consensus” about climate change. But as far as the computer models go, there isn’t a useful consensus at the level of detail relevant to assessing human influences.
. . .
• Although the Earth’s average surface temperature rose sharply by 0.9 degree Fahrenheit during the last quarter of the 20th century, it has increased much more slowly for the past 16 years, even as the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen by some 25%. This surprising fact demonstrates directly that natural influences and variability are powerful enough to counteract the present warming influence exerted by human activity.
Yet the models famously fail to capture this slowing in the temperature rise. Several dozen different explanations for this failure have been offered, with ocean variability most likely playing a major role. But the whole episode continues to highlight the limits of our modeling.
. . .
• A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity–that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today’s best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.
These and many other open questions are in fact described in the IPCC research reports, although a detailed and knowledgeable reading is sometimes required to discern them. They are not “minor” issues to be “cleaned up” by further research. Rather, they are deficiencies that erode confidence in the computer projections. Work to resolve these shortcomings in climate models should be among the top priorities for climate research.
Yet a public official reading only the IPCC’s “Summary for Policy Makers” would gain little sense of the extent or implications of these deficiencies. These are fundamental challenges to our understanding of human impacts on the climate, and they should not be dismissed with the mantra that “climate science is settled.”

For the full commentary, see:
STEVEN E. KOONIN. “Climate Science Is Not Settled.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Sept. 20, 2014): C1-C2.
(Note: italics in original; ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 19, 2014.)

“Discovery Cannot Be Achieved by Directive”

(p. 170) As early as 1945 the medical advisory committee reporting to the committee reporting to the federal government on a postwar program for scientific research emphasized the frequently unexpected nature of discoveries:

Discoveries in medicine have often come from the most remote and unexpected fields of science in the past; and it is probable that this will be equally true in the future. It is not unlikely that significant progress in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, cancer, and other refractory conditions will be made, perhaps unexpectedly, as the result of fundamental discoveries in fields unrelated to these diseases…. Discovery cannot be achieved by directive. Further progress requires that the entire field of medicine and the underlying sciences of biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, bacteriology, pathology, parasitology, etc., be developed impartially.

Their statement “discovery cannot be achieved by directive” would prove to be sadly prophetic.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Moss Revived After 1,500 Years

(p. D3) Typically, plants break down into organic matter as they become permafrost. Looking at the ancient moss from Signy Island, however, Dr. Convey and his colleagues wondered if, after centuries of frozen darkness, it could grow again.
It was an unlikely idea. Scientists had not managed to revive moss that had been frozen for more than 20 years. Still, Dr. Convey thought it would be interesting to try. “It was just kite-flying,” he said.
The scientists put a core of Signy permafrost under a lamp in a lab in Britain and misted it from time to time with water. After a few weeks, the moss was sending up new green growth.
The deepest layer in which the resuscitated moss grew was three and a half feet below the surface. Based on radiocarbon tests, as they report in the journal Current Biology, the revived moss turned out to be more than 1,500 years old. It’s been in a state of suspended animation, in other words, since the age of King Arthur.
. . .
In some cases, organisms may naturally revive after thousands of years without scientists’ help. And it’s possible that they play an important role in their ecosystems.
At the end of each ice age, for example, retreating glaciers leave behind bare ground that develops into new ecosystems. Dr. Convey wonders if moss, and perhaps other species, may survive under the ice for thousands of years and revive when the glaciers melt. “That gives you a very different way of understanding the biodiversity of a region,” he said.
While cloning mammoths remains speculative, reviving dormant organisms is now passing out of its proof-of-concept stage. The research could lead to using revival to help bolster endangered species.
“You could use whatever is stored in ice or sediment as a sort of backup for biodiversity,” said Luisa Orsini of the University of Birmingham in England. But, she said, “one has to be really, really careful introducing something from the past.”

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; A Growth Spurt at 1,500 Years Old.” The New York Times (Tues., MARCH 18, 2014): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 17, 2014.)

The academic paper reporting the research summarized above, is:
Roads, Esme, Royce E. Longton, and Peter Convey. “Millennial Timescale Regeneration in a Moss from Antarctica.” Current Biology 24, no. 6 (March 17, 2014): R222-R223.

“Folkman Persisted in His Genuinely Original Thinking”

(p. 141) As detailed by Robert Cooke in his 2001 book Dr. Folkman’s War, the successful answers to these basic questions took Folkman through diligent investigations punctuated by an astonishing series of chance observations and circumstances. Over decades, Folkman persisted in his genuinely original thinking. His concept was far in advance of technological and other scientific advances that would provide the methodology and basic knowledge essential to its proof, forcing him to await verification and to withstand ridicule, scorn, and vicious competition for grants. Looking back three decades later, Folkman would ruefully reflect: “I was too young to realize how much trouble was in store for a theory that could not be tested immediately.”

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Evidence Some Flies Can Adapt to Climate Change

(p. D7) In the early 2000s, Ary A. Hoffmann, a biologist then at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, wondered how the many species in tropical rain forests would cope when their humid environment dried out.
. . .
. . . at the end of the experiment, the flies were no more resistant to dry air than their forebears. The flies seemed to lack the genetic potential to evolve. Those results suggested that if the rain forest home of Drosophilia birchii loses its high humidity, the flies will die off.
. . .
Recently, two of Dr. Hoffmann’s collaborators — Belinda van Heerwaarden and Carla M. Sgrò of Monash University — decided to rerun the experiment, but with a crucial twist.
Rather than expose the flies to 10 percent relative humidity, Dr. van Heerwaarden and Dr. Sgrò tried 35 percent. That’s still far drier than the moist air of rain forests, but it’s not the aridity one might encounter on a summer day in Death Valley.
“It’s a humidity that’s more relevant to the predictions for how dry the environment would become in the next 30 to 50 years,” Dr. Sgrò said.
. . .
Unlike the flies in the earlier studies, it didn’t take long for these to start evolving. After just five generations, one species was able to survive 23 percent longer in 35 humidity.

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “MATTER; Study Gives Hope of Adaptation to Climate Change.” The New York Times (Tues., JULY 29, 2014): D7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date JULY 24, 2014.)

The recent paper discussed above, is:
van Heerwaarden, Belinda, and Carla M. Sgrò. “Is Adaptation to Climate Change Really Constrained in Niche Specialists?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281, no. 1790 (2014): 1-1.