Warming gas levels hit ‘troubling milestone’

The world’s air has reached what scientists call a troubling new milestone for carbon dioxide, the main global warming pollutant.

Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn’t quite a surprise, because it’s been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395.

So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.

“The fact that it’s 400 is significant,” said Jim Butler, global monitoring director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Lab in Boulder, Colo. “It’s just a reminder to everybody that we haven’t fixed this and we’re still in trouble.”

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and stays in the atmosphere for 100 years. Some carbon dioxide is natural, mainly from decomposing dead plants and animals. Before the Industrial Age, levels were around 275 parts per million.

For more than 60 years, readings have been in the 300s, except in urban areas, where levels are skewed. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

  It’s been at least 800,000 years — probably more — since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said.

Until now.

Readings are coming in at 400 and higher all over the Arctic. They’ve been recorded in Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Iceland and even Mongolia. But levels change with the seasons and will drop a bit in the summer, when plants suck up carbon dioxide, NOAA scientists said.

So the yearly average for those northern stations likely will be lower and so will the global number.

Globally, the average carbon dioxide level is about 395 parts per million but will pass the 400 mark within a few years, scientists said.

… political dynamics in the United States mean there’s no possibility of significant restrictions on man-made greenhouse gases no matter what the levels are in the air, said Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow of the libertarian Cato Institute.

via Warming gas levels hit ‘troubling milestone’ | World news | The Guardian.

… Scientists feel that the planet can handle 350 ppm on an on going basis, and that the discussions should not be about stalling CO2 at 387, but bringing it back down to under 350 ppm.  They would prefer to see it back down to 287 ppm. To give you an idea it of what it would take to lower these emissions back down, it would take an 80% reduction of current CO2 output over 10 years.  To achieve this type of reduction would take a massive shift in society – from industry to diet, and with some fortitude, the introduction of new technologies to capture airborne CO2 particles.  Such devices have been drawn up, and are waiting for funding to build a fully functioning prototype.  Closing the gap in CO2 emissions are crucial for our existence.  We do know the more warming that goes on out there, the threat to our planet  and ourselves only increases.

  via earthyreport.com

I found this question, not really from a global warming denier, but from a climate change “so what-er”:

“If the dinos could live with such high CO2 levels for millions of years, please explain to me, why should WE worry?” – link

Seriously? Perhaps if this person was placed underwater and asked to stay alive, they might admit that humans are unable to survive in some environments where other animals can. Whales can live under the ocean, why should WE worry about the ocean swallowing the Maldives?

No problem, there will still be land above ground. Yeah, but it will be a lot hotter. Right now, CO2 makes up about 0.035% of the atmosphere.

… about 100 million years ago, the atmosphere was about 3% carbon dioxide. Big forests of giant ferns grew up because of all the carbon dioxide in the air, and the Earth got so warm that dinosaurs could live near the South Pole.” – link

Let’s say the CO2 reaches 3% and displaces the oxygen and we end up with a 17.9% oxygen atmosphere. What’s the big deal about that?  I assume that there is a good reason for the CDC standard for full face air purifying respirators:

The minimum allowable oxygen concentration shall be 19.5 percent.

An O2 level of 6 to 8 percent is 100 percent fatal in 8 minutes according to ANL.gov, but 17.9% O2 would make you uncoordinated, unable to work strenuously, and you’d have heart and lung problems. I think you’d be very uncomfortable, less intelligent, and you’d die much sooner.

The following image is Cyanosis of the hand in someone with low oxygen saturation:

Generalized hypoxia occurs in healthy people when they ascend to high altitude, where it causes altitude sickness leading to potentially fatal complications: high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) and high altitude cerebral edema (HACE).^[2] Hypoxia also occurs in healthy individuals when breathing mixtures of gases with a low oxygen content, e.g. while diving underwater especially when using closed-circuit rebreather systems that control the amount of oxygen in the supplied air. A mild and non-damaging intermittent hypoxia is used intentionally during altitude trainings to develop an athletic performance adaptation at both the systemic and cellular level.^[3]

via Wikipedia

How did Dinosaurs survive in low O2? They could do something we can’t, biologically.

Dinosaurs appeared on Earth about 230 million years ago, when atmospheric oxygen levels were close to half what they are today. Scientists wonder how they

survived – for 165 million years – under these varying conditions. UC Irvine biologist James Hicks is finding answers in the alligator, a modern relative of the dinosaur.

In a recent study, Hicks and UCI postdoctoral researcher Tomasz Owerkowicz found that alligators incubated and raised in an environment with just 12 percent oxygen (compared to today’s 21 percent) had larger hearts and lungs and improved cardiopulmonary function.

“In a similar vein, the success of dinosaurs probably depended on the effectiveness of their lungs and hearts in obtaining oxygen from air and distributing it throughout the body,” Hicks says. “Our results provide indirect evidence that dinosaurs must have had superior oxygen delivery systems.”

Such findings are important because the Earth’s atmosphere is changing: Oxygen levels are dropping, while carbon dioxide levels are rising.

“Our experiments may help us understand how some animals will be able to adapt to environmental change in the near future,” Hicks says. “They may help us identify which animals are likely to survive and which might become extinct in new atmospheric conditions.”

Large reptiles such as alligators have existed in their basic form for about 220 million years, surviving large oxygen fluctuations. To study how they adapt, Hicks and Owerkowicz incubated alligator eggs at different oxygen levels – 12 percent, 21 percent and 30 percent (Earth’s peak level, occurring about 300 million years ago).

Hatchlings from the two higher-oxygen groups had no obvious physical differences, but those from the oxygen-starved group had swollen bellies. Researchers believe there was not enough oxygen for the developing embryos to consume all of their egg-yolk food, leaving them with huge yolk-distended potbellies. They also were smaller, except for their hearts, which were large, presumably to maximize the limited oxygen supply. …

After three months in their respective atmospheres, the low-oxygen alligators had compensated by developing enlarged lungs, resulting in an increased metabolic rate.

“The metabolic rate determines everything an animal is capable of doing – running, digesting, keeping warm, growing and reproducing,” Owerkowicz says. “The basic function of alligators – the resting metabolic rate – was different just because the oxygen level was different.”

via UCI.edu

I guess we could strap oxygen concentrators to our backs…

Meditate with me

We meditate together. I have an app for my iPhone called equanimity that has nice chimes and let’s me write journal entries. It also tracks and charts my dedication to the practice. Doing this with my life partner, even when we are apart, is one of the things I deeply love about her.

In my search for inner peace yesterday, I consulted my friend the Tibetan guru. I bought him lunch and learned of a practice of exchanging ones goodness for the things that anger you about others.

He did this on a week long Buddhist retreat with an amazing real world result.

It sounded absurd to me at first, but if you understand that your feelings about others are yours, something you own, the reason is clear. This is similar to cognitive behavioral therapy where you find your negative illogical “tapes”, the things you say to yourself that cause distress, and update them to be realistic. But done correctly, holistically, you also replace the body sensations of anger–or whatever you are working on–with your new calm in the here and now, imprinting that new sensation over your old memories.

This is my work this morning, replacing anger with positive strength and compassion.  Our biggest concerns or problems are our best sources of energy.

‘Truman show’ delusion: Believing your life is a reality TV show

Brian Alexander – Just when you thought those annoying Kardashians couldn’t mess with your head any more than they already do, consider “Mr. A.” When he first saw the psychiatrist, he demanded to speak to “the director” of the reality show in which he was starring.
When “Mr. B.” met psychiatric workers, he informed them that he was being continuously taped for national broadcast. “Mr. D.” really was working on a reality show — until he came to believe that he was the actual star.

All these people, and others, suffered from the delusion that they were serving as entertainment for others. All of them specifically cited the 1998 movie “The Truman Show,” written by Andrew Niccol, directed by Peter Weir, and starring Jim Carrey. In the movie, Carrey plays an insurance man living in a town that’s actually a TV set and populated by actors he thinks are his friends, family and neighbors.

Psychiatrist Joel Gold, in private practice and a professor of psychiatry at New York University, and his brother Ian Gold, a philosopher of psychiatry at McGill University, writing in the most recent issue of the journalCognitive Neuropsychiatry, dub this the “Truman Show” delusion. They ask “Can a case be made that the phenomenon of reality television might interact with the expression of psychotic symptoms?”

The answer, they argue, is most definitely yes.

They suggest that “reality television resonates with a common anxiety about one’s position in the social hierarchy…. Someone who is particularly anxious about their social status, therefore, might experience reality television as presenting a significant social threat, or a tantalizing possibility of success, or both. In the life of such a person, reality television might act as a significant stress, the effects of which might include a persecutory or grandiose delusion of the Truman Show type.”

It’s not that watching lots of reality TV causes a mental illness (believe it or not). Rather, an existing or nascent illness, like schizophrenia, interacts with the cultural pervasiveness of reality TV to give form to the delusion. It’s a little like those unstable people who go to Jerusalem and experience“Jerusalem Syndrome,” the belief that they’re characters from the Bible.

The Golds wrote the paper because they think the environmental associations with psychosis don’t get enough attention. “We think in North America that it’s overlooked,” he said in an interview. …

WEIRD NEWS | MAY 31, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/9OsC3

Tractor Beams No Longer Pure Science Fiction!

Science fiction meets real science! “Tractor beams” – fascinating invisible beams that can push and pull objects, leave science fiction domain.

The idea of “tractor beam” employed in science fiction films and books to haul spaceships and capture floating capsules gains scientific focus.

It’s not just science fiction writers who are interested in this technological phenomenon. Haifeng Wang and co-workers at the A*STAR Information Storage Institute producing long term generation technologies, have now demonstrated how a tractor beam can in reality be recognized on a little scale.

These rays of light are frequently shown pulling objects towards an observer, seemingly violating the laws of physics, and of course, this kind of beams have but to be realised in the actual world.

Haifeng Wang at the A*STAR Information Storage Institute and co-employees have now demonstrated how a tractor beam can in fact be realized on a tiny scale.

“Our work demonstrates a tractor beam primarily based only on a single laser to pull or push an object of interest toward the light source,” says Wang.

Based on pioneering work by Albert Einstein and Max Planck a lot more than a hundred years ago, it is acknowledged that light carries momentum that pushes objects away.

In addition, the intensity that varies across a laser beam can be used to push objects sideways, and for example can be used to move cells in biotechnology applications.

Pulling an object in the direction of an observer, nevertheless, has so far verified to be elusive. In 2011, researchers theoretically demonstrated a mechanism in which light movement can be controlled utilizing two opposing light beams — though technically, this differs from the concept behind a tractor beam.

Wang and co-workers have now studied the properties of lasers with a distinct kind of distribution of light intensity across the beam, or so-referred to as Bessel beams. Generally, if a laser beam hits a tiny particle in its path, the light is scattered backwards, which in turn pushes the particle forward.

What Wang and co-workers have now shown theoretically for Bessel beams is that for particles that are sufficiently modest, the light scatters off the particle in a forward path, which means that the particle itself is pulled backwards towards the observer.

In other words, the behaviour of the particle is the direct opposite of the typical scenario. The dimension of the tractor beam force depends on parameters such as the electrical and magnetic properties of the particles.

Even though the forces are not really significant, such tractor beams do have real applications, says Wang.

“These beams are not very likely to pull a human or a auto, as this would demand a massive laser intensity that could damage the object,” says Wang. “However, they could manipulate biological cells due to the fact the force required for these doesn’t have to be large.”..

Chinese official arrested on suspicion of spying for US

According to sources, US and China have kept quiet aborut the incident for several months to avoid fresh crisis in relations

A Chinese state security official has been arrested on suspicion of spying for the US, sources have said, in a case both countries have kept quiet for several months to prevent a new diplomatic crisis. The aide to a vice-minister in the security ministry is alleged to have passed information to the US for several years about China’s overseas espionage activities, according to three sources, who all have direct knowledge of the matter.

The aide had been recruited by the CIA and provided “political, economic and strategic intelligence”, one source said, although it was unclear what level of information he had access to or whether overseas Chinese spies were compromised by the intelligence he handed over.

The case could represent China’s worst-known breach of state intelligence in two decades, and its revelation follows two other major embarrassments for Chinese security, both involving US diplomatic missions at a tense time for bilateral ties…

GUARDIAN.CO.UK | JUNE 1, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/9QLRh

Finnish Scientists Announce a Possible Universal Allergy Vaccine

Pollen A new process could one day keep millions allergy-free. Wellcome Images

Scientists at the University of Eastern Finland say they hope to have an allergy vaccine on the market in five to seven years.

For everything, from pollen to cat hair.

The antibody immunoglobulin E (IgE) works as the sneezy gatekeeper for allergies: it causes your white blood cells to release histamine, which in turn causes all of your favorite allergic responses, from a watery eyes to hay fever. Now, a team of scientists led by Professor Juhu Rouvinen have found a means of genetically modifying allergens so they won’t bind with IgE, while still allowing them to interact with immunoglobulin G. IgG is the friendly cousin of IgE; it keeps allergies out by stopping the IgE-allergen complex from forming. That could block histamine from coming out of white blood cells, and thus block that runny nose. After that, it’s simple, at least in theory: Just load a modified version in a shot and let the immune system take care of the rest.

Five to seven years might be a few too many springs away for allergy sufferers, but the team has formed a bio-tech company, Desentum, to help in production.

[Forbes]

Paralyzed rats given drugs that awaken dormant neurons

With careful training using a robotic harness, and a special chemical cocktail designed to stimulate brain cells, rats with spinal cord injuries were able to re-learn how to walk. Scientists in Switzerland say the tests suggest humans with paralysis due to spinal cord injuries may regain some nerve activity.

The therapy takes advantage of the nervous system’s inherent plasticity, in which neural networks can be rewired to take on different tasks. Areas of the motor cortex were able to establish new connections to the rats’ hind limbs, which had been paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries in a manner similar to spinal cord paralysis in people.

Despite the nervous system’s ability to reroute itself, half of human spinal cord injuries lead to paralysis, according to researchers led by Grégoire Courtine at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. But with a neural prosthesis, in this case an electrochemical treatment, and a robotic assistance device, even the most debilitating injury can be re-routed. The trick was rousing the dormant spinal column, the researchers say.This is different from other robotically mediated paralysis therapy we saw recently involving brain-derived motor control. In that study, human patients wore a cranial device thattapped into their thoughts to control a robotic arm. In this case, the treatment is physiological, inducing dormant neurons to forge new connections and move limbs directly.

First, Courtine and colleagues injected the rats with a chemical cocktail that binds to dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin receptors on the spinal cord’s neurons. This replaced the neurotransmitters that would normally be released in healthy spinal pathways. A few minutes after priming the neurons, the team stimulated the rats’ spinal cords through electrodes implanted into the spinal canal. This sent electrical signals to the roused neurons. Then the rats needed to be trained to use their limbs again. Within a week of their injuries, the rats were on treadmills, forging new neural connections….

POPULAR SCIENCE | JUNE 1, 2012

http://pulse.me/s/9QPZQ

TV star Richard Dawson dies at 79

Can’t sleep tonight, so I’m catching up on the news. This is sad. Survey says.. Rest in peace.

TV star Richard Dawson dies at 79
BBC NEWS | JUNE 3, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/9UzFW

–Richard Dawson won an Emmy Award in 1978 for best game show hostRichard Dawson, the English-born actor and TV host who found fame in the US at the helm of game show Family Feud and in sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, has died.

A former husband of actress Diana Dors, Dawson was 79.

Born in Gosport, Hampshire, he played Corporal Peter Newkirk in World War II comedy Hogan’s Heroes for six years.

He became a panelist on TV show Match Game before hosting Family Feud for 10 years. Family Feud was copied in the UK under the name Family Fortunes.

His son Gary wrote on Facebook on Saturday: “It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my father passed away this evening from complications due to esophageal cancer.

“He was surrounded by his family. He was an amazing talent, a loving husband, a great dad, and a doting grandfather. He will be missed but always remembered.”

Dawson hosted a spoof episode between Ronald Reagan, played by Johnny Carson, and the Queen (Rose Carr)

After starting his career as a stand-up comedian, Dawson married the English pin-up Dors in 1959. The couple settled in California but he was devastated when she walked out on him and they divorced in 1967.

By then, he was known as the Cockney prisoner of war in Hogan’s Heroes, which ran on CBS from 1965 to ’71.

He became Family Feud’s host when it launched on the ABC network in 1976 and won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 for best game show host.

At its height, Family Feud was one of the most popular programmes on US TV, airing 11 times a week – five in daytime and six in the evening.

Known for giving the female contestants a kiss, he met his second wife Gretchen when she appeared on the programme with her family in 1981.

Sent via Pulse

Drone wars and state secrecy – how Barack Obama became a hardliner

He was once a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war. Now, according to revelations last week, the US president personally oversees a ‘kill list’ for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Then there’s the CIA renditions, increased surveillance and a crackdown on whistleblowers. No wonder Washington insiders are likening him to ‘George W Bush on steroids’

Amos Guiora knows all about the pitfalls of targeted assassinations, both in terms of legal process and the risk of killing the wrong people or causing civilian casualties. The University of Utah law professor spent many years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip where such killing strikes are common. He knows what it feels like when people weigh life-and-death decisions.

Yet Guiora – no dove on such matters – confessed he was “deeply concerned” about President Barack Obama’s own “kill list” of terrorists and the way they are eliminated by missiles fired from robot drones around the world. He believes US policy has not tightly defined how people get on the list, leaving it open to legal and moral problems when the order to kill leaves Obama’s desk. “He is making a decision largely devoid of external review,” Guiroa told the Observer, saying the US’s apparent methodology for deciding who is a terrorist is “loosey goosey”.

Indeed, newspaper revelations last week about the “kill list” showed the Obama administration defines a militant as any military-age male in the strike zone when its drone attacks. That has raised the hackles of many who saw Obama as somehow more sophisticated on terrorism issues than his predecessor, George W Bush. But Guiora does not view it that way. He sees Obama as the same as Bush, just much more enthusiastic when it comes to waging drone war. “If Bush did what Obama has been doing, then journalists would have been all over it,” he said.

But the “kill list” and rapidly expanded drone programme are just two of many aspects of Obama’s national security policy that seem at odds with the expectations of many supporters in 2008. Having come to office on a powerful message of breaking with Bush, Obama has in fact built on his predecessor’s national security tactics.

Obama has presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. He has launched a ferocious and unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. He has broken his promise to close down the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison and pressed on with prosecutions via secretive military tribunals, rather than civilian courts. He has preserved CIA renditions. He has tried to grab broad new powers on what defines a terrorist or a terrorist supporter and what can be done with them, often without recourse to legal process.

The sheer scope and breadth of Obama’s national security policy has stunned even fervent Bush supporters and members of the Washington DC establishment. In last week’s New York Times article that detailed the “kill list”, Bush’s last CIA director, Michael Hayden, said Obama should open the process to more public scrutiny. …

GUARDIAN.CO.UK | JUNE 2, 2012
http://pulse.me/s/9SWel