Tag: NASA

We Just Passed the Climate’s “Grim Milestone”

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Source: Mother Jones

Authors: Tim McDonnell, and James West

Over the last couple weeks, scientists and environmentalists have been keeping a particularly close eye on the Hawaii-based monitoring station that tracks how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, as the count tiptoed closer to a record-smashing 400 parts per million. Yesterday, we finally got there: The daily mean concentration was higher than at any time in human history, NOAA reported today.

Don’t worry: The earth is not about to go up in a ball of flame. The 400 ppm mark is only a milestone, 50 ppm over what legendary NASA scientist James Hansen has since 1988 called the safe zone for avoiding the worst impacts of climate change, and yet only halfway to what the IPCC predicts we’ll reach by the end of the century.

“Somehow in the last 50 ppm we melted the Arctic,” said environmentalist and founder of activist group 350.org Bill McKibben, who called today’s news a “grim but predictable milestone” and has long used the symbolic number as a rallying call for climate action. “We’ll see what happens in the next 50.”

We could find out soon enough: With the East Coast still recovering from Superstorm Sandy and the West gearing up for what promises to be a nasty fire season, University of California ecologist Max Moritz says milestones like these are “an excuse for us to take a good hard look at where we are,” especially as the carbon concentration shows no signs of reversing course.

Scientists first saw the carbon scale tip past 400 ppm last summer, but only briefly; the record reported today by NOAA is the first time a daily average has surpassed that point. For the last several years concentrations have hovered in the 390s, and we’re still not to the point where the carbon concentration will stay above the 400 ppm threshold permanently. But that’s just around the corner, said J. Marshall Shepherd, president of the American Meteorological Society.

“It’s clear that sometime next year we’ll see 400 consistently,” he said. “Avoiding the future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in greenhouse gases.”

Most scientists, environmentalists, and climate-conscious policymakers agree this will require, at a minimum, slashing the use of fossil fuels, and in the meantime, taking steps to adapt for a world with higher temperatures, higher seas, and more extreme weather. For example, according to Hansen, the world will need to completely stop burning coal by 2030 if returning to 350 ppm is to remain possible. What’s the holdup? Texas Tech climatologist Katherine Hayhoe blames “the inertia of our economic system, and the inertia of our political system.” But she, like most of her peers, believe it can—and must—be done: “We have to change how we get our energy and how we use our energy.”

Some progress is being made on that front: Thanks to energy efficiency gains, increased use of renewable power, and policies to cut emissions from cars and power plants, carbon emissions in the US have fallen 13 percent in the last seven years. But they’re expected to begin climbing again soon, and worldwide, 2012 saw the most carbon emissions ever. Today’s milestone underscores the reality that if we’re serious about addressing climate change, there’s still a long road ahead.

“So far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” NOAA scientist Pieter Tans, who oversees the monitoring program, told the Times.

For McKibben, the real date to mark in the history books has yet to arrive: “I don’t think this will be the turning point. The turning point will be when we do something about it.”

Emphasis Mine

see: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/05/we-just-passed-climates-grim-milestone

Big Bang’s afterglow reveals older universe

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Source: Washing Post

Author: and

Cosmologists have released the most detailed “baby picture” yet of the early universe, a portrait that helps answer some of the deepest questions of science while providing enough surprises to keep scientists busy for years.

The images captured by a space telescope show the universe is 13.8 billion years old, 100 million years older than previously estimated.

(N.B.: about 0.7% older).  The results also reinforce a key theory scientists have about how the universe was formed, exploding from subatomic size to its current expanse in what one scientist described as “one nano-nano-nano-nano second after the Big Bang.” And they also revise estimates of how much matter and mysterious dark energy make up the universe.

The images form the most accurate and detailed map ever made of the oldest light in the universe, what scientists call the cosmic microwave background, a sort of afterglow left over from the Big Bang. That ancient light has traveled for billions of years from the very early universe to reach Earth. The patterns of light represent the seeds of galaxies and clusters of galaxies seen today.

The information released Thursday from the European Space Agency’s Planck space telescope “is the most sensitive and sharpest map ever” of that light, said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics for NASA. “It’s as if we have gone from standard television to high-definition television; new and important details have become crystal-clear,” he said.But the new map raises questions: some features that don’t quite fit with the current understanding about the age, contents and fundamental characteristics of the universe, based on a simple model developed by scientists. For example, the model predicts the afterglow should look roughly the same everywhere. But the pattern is asymmetrical on two halves of the sky.

There is also an unexplained cold spot, larger than expected, that covers a patch in the southern sky.

By studying the high-resolution details of this map, he said, scientists can answer deep and fundamental questions about the history of the universe and its complex composition.

Using the first 15 months of data from the telescope, scientists created an all-sky picture of the afterglow — light imprinted on the sky when the universe was just a baby, about 370,000 years old. NASA contributed technology, and U.S., European and Canadian scientists analyzed the data.

“The extraordinary quality of Planck’s portrait of the infant universe allows us to peel back its layers to the very foundations, revealing that our blueprint of the cosmos is far from complete,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency.

The results suggest the universe is expanding more slowly than scientists thought. The data also show there is less of the perplexing dark energy and more matter — both normal and dark matter — in the universe than previously known. Dark matter is an invisible substance that can be perceived only by observing the effects of gravity, while dark energy is a mysterious force thought to be responsible for pushing the universe apart.

The afterglow started out as a white-hot glow, but during 13.8 billion years, as the universe expanded by 1,100 times, it cooled. In a testament to its sensitivity, the Planck telescope measured it to be less than 3 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. The temperature typically varies by less than one 100 millionth of a degree across the sky.

By matching the data to predictions from mathematical models, scientists can assemble a surprisingly detailed picture of the universe an instant after the Big Bang.

“Imagine investigating the foundations of a house and finding that parts of them are weak,” said Francois Bouchet of the Institute d’Astrophysique de Paris. “You might not know whether the weaknesses will eventually topple the house, but you’d probably start looking for ways to reinforce it pretty quickly all the same.”The findings also test theories describing inflation, the dramatic expansion of the universe that took place immediately after its birth. In less than a blink of an eye, the universe blew up by 100 trillion trillion times in size, scientists said. The new map, by showing that matter seems to be distributed randomly, suggests that random processes were at play in the very early universe.Scientists said it was difficult to overstate the importance of the data. An early version of this map made by other satellites won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for two Americans. The background radiation was discovered accidentally in 1964 by a pair of American radio astronomers.

Scientists say the Planck space mission is cosmology’s equivalent of the human genome project.

“Just as DNA determines many individual characteristics, the map from the space probe shows the seeds from which our current universe grew,” said Marc Kamionkowski, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. Cosmologists have a long road ahead, he said, to understand the detailed physical processes by which the patterns of light gave rise to stars, galaxies and planets.The Planck telescope, named for the German physicist Max Planck, the originator of quantum physics, was launched in 2009 and has been scanning the skies since, mapping the cosmic microwave background. This radiation gives scientists a snapshot of the universe 370,000 years after the Big Bang.

Emphasis Mine

see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/big-bangs-afterglow-reveals-older-universe/2013/03/21/88d3e788-9249-11e2-9abd-e4c5c9dc5e90_story.html

Fox Viewers Overwhelmingly Think We Should Prepare for Alien Invasion Before Fighting Climate Change

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By Alex Seitz-Wald | Sourced from ThinkProgress

“A new (supposedly) NASA-funded study postulating that aliens may attack humans over climate change had all the ingredients for a perfect Fox faux controversy — it bolstered their anti-science narrative, painted their opponents as clownish radicals, and highlighted wasteful government spending on a supposedly liberal casue. Fox reported the “news from NASA” several times several times today, presenting it as official “taxpayer funded research.” A chyron on Fox and Friends read: “NASA: Global warming may provoke an [alien] attack.”

But as Business Insider pointed out, they’re “wrong” — “That report was not funded by NASA. It was written by an independent group of scientists and bloggers. One of those happens to work at NASA.” NASA distanced itself from the report as well, calling reports linking the agency to it “not true.” Host Megyn Kelly finally corrected the record this afternoon, saying, “I was making that up.”

But before she did, she was so bemused by the study that she directed her viewers to complete a poll on her website which asked how we should respond to the study: “Immediately increase efforts to curb greenhouse gases,” “Develop weapons to kill the Aliens FIRST,” or “Gently suggest scientists research how to create job.”

Not surprisingly, most suggested they research something else. But more than six times as many respondents (19 percent to 3 percent) said we should focus on building weapons to kill aliens before curbing greenhouse gases. Watch a compilation:”

(N.B.: click link below to see video)

“The poll is of course not scientific, but you can hardly blame the viewers who did respond, considering Fox’s constant misinformation about climate change. For instance, as she presented the poll, Kelly said of curbing climate change, “just in case, right?” — as in, “just in case” the science is right. She did not make a similar qualifier for alien invasion. Numerous studies consistently show that Fox viewers are among the most misinformed of news viewers, while at least one study has shown that — perversely — watching Fox actually makes people lessinformed than they were to begin with.

“Trust me folks, this story is hard to understand,” Fox and Friends host Gretchen Carlson said of the “NASA study.” Indeed.

Emphasis Mine

see:http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/653185/fox_viewers_overwhelmingly_think_we_should_prepare_for_alien_invasion_before_fighting_climate_change/