Mars is approaching
Mars_09_01_2012_0944ut-T-EMr Image Credit: Efrain Morales
An amazing photo of Mars as it approaches the Earth captured by Efrain Morales on January 9, 2012.
Mars is approaching and on this session showing its largest volcano Olympus Mons and in our solar system under orographic clouds and at the Tharsis Montes region at the limb.
Equipment used: LX200ACF 12 in. OTA, F30, CGE mount, PGR Flea3 Ccd, TeleVue 3x barlows, Astronomik Ir, RGB filter set.
You can find more amazing images on Efrain’s Morales website and on his Flickr page, where I found this one.
14 measures to reduce warming by targeting short-lived pollutants
Led by NASA researcher Drew Shindell, a double dozen of scientists argue in an article publiched in the journal Science that it is possible to mitigate near-term climate-change and improve human health and food security the same time.
They identify 14 measures based on existent technologies and fairly cheap to implement. They argue that targeting the short-lived pollutants, methane and black carbon (shoot), could reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050.
Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security
ABSTRACT
Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered ~400 emission control measures to reduce these pollutants by using current technology and experience. We identified 14 measures targeting methane and BC emissions that reduce projected global mean warming ~0.5°C by 2050. This strategy avoids 0.7 to 4.7 million annual premature deaths from outdoor air pollution and increases annual crop yields by 30 to 135 million metric tons due to ozone reductions in 2030 and beyond. Benefits of methane emissions reductions are valued at $700 to $5000 per metric ton, which is well above typical marginal abatement costs (less than $250). The selected controls target different sources and influence climate on shorter time scales than those of carbon dioxide–reduction measures. Implementing both substantially reduces the risks of crossing the 2°C threshold.
Read the article here (subscription required)
Greeks reclaim the land to ease the pain of economic austerity – Make a difference – The Ecologist
Via Scoop.it – Around this world
A group of community-minded gardeners have turned a former Athens airport into a blooming vegetable plot, showing how Greece’s eroded soil holds the keys to a revival in farming and a way to buck the jobless trend…
‘If we want to survive on this land we must first help to heal the earth,’ said Nicola Netién, agro-ecologist, teacher and co-creator of the NGO Permaculture Research Institute Hellas. He was talking to a group of some fifty people of all ages who had gathered for two days of workshops on self-sufficiency, how to self-organize, agro-ecology and composting. This small gathering was taking place on a beautifully sunny autumn day at the former Athens airport, Ellinikon. When the airport moved to another location 10 years ago in preparation for Athens hosting the 2004 Olympic Games, there was the hope and the State’s promise that this now available land would become a park.
Then the ‘crisis’ landed and rumors began spreading that the site had been sold to an international developer who would pour yet more concrete on the chaotic sprawl that is Athens. This is when a small group of local residents, bearing seeds and armed with shovels, moved in. Their mission: to create a communal and productive agricultural space that will encourage an exploration into antidotes for the ecological-economic-educational and cultural crisis.
Via www.theecologist.org
Stay foolish, but what if that could cost you your life. Some thoughts on Steve Jobs and more
Last night I watched the BBC documentary about Steve Jobs – Steve Jobs :Billion Dollar Hippy. It was an interesting documentary, well balanced and with the usual euphemisms.
Image Credit: davidgalbraith.org
What struck me at the end though, was that when Jobs diagnosed with cancer, he delayed having surgery for 9 months after he was diagnosed. Instead he tried alternative therapies and a strictly vegan diet to fight the disease, despite the advice of his doctors and people close to him.
I thought “What a stupid idea! That cannot be true”. Well, it seems it is. I don’t say that this cost him his life, I don’t know and maybe we will never know, but it is also true that the early stages after diagnosis are the most critical. One of the people close to Jobs said that “Steve was an unconventional person and when it came to treating his illness he was very happy to use non-traditional methods.
ΗAPPY! He said happy, I thought. The man who many regard as genius was “happy” to use alternative methods to treat his cancer.
I have expressed my opinion about the alternative medicine (check antiscience tag), no reason to say more, here. Also, I don’t regard Steve Jobs as genius, a great synthesist perhaps, someone who was able to see and understand all the components and put them together, creating an attractive and original product. A clever and authentic man, nevertheless.
It is the human mind that fascinates me and concerns me. What makes a clever man, such as Steve Jobs , in his most critical moment of his life to abandon logic and waste his talent and his life indeed, in such foolish way.
Science at Sea
On 6 June 2011 the U.K.research vessel the RRS Discovery left Liverpool to embark on the first research cruise in a large UK programme studying the impacts of ocean acidification.
A consortiun of 23 scientists from 8 different UK institutes were carrying out the science on the cruise, which ended on 11 July 2011.
The group’s research is focused on explaining how different degrees of ocean acidification will affect the surface ocean.
More spesific the scientists are investigating the impacts of changing seawater chemistry on:
- marine organisms and ecosystems
- biochemical cycling in the sea, and
- how the sea interacts with the atmosphere to influence climate
Source and more information: Sea Surface Consortium -Ocean Acidification UK
Acid in the Arctic
Arctic waters are rapidly turning acidic, even faster than originally thought. New research from oceanographer Dr. James Orr of the Laboratory for the Sciences of Climate and Environment in Paris predicts that the Arctic Ocean will be corrosive enough to dissolve shells of clams, mussels and others within the next decade. Host Jeff Young talks with Dr. Orr about the mounting crisis in the Arctic Ocean.
Listen/download the podcast
Source: Living on Earth
Problems for the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) in Greece
I was alerted to this via a tweet from the Stuart @astronomyblog. It’s a shame this is not an issue among Greeks but given the dire problems in Greece, it is, i suppose, understadable.
The Greek Government plans to change the public character of NOA and convert it into a private institution, to the contrary of the status that other similar institutions have around the world. It also plans to suppress by next year the annual state funding of NOA by 30%.
If this happens, critical social services offered by NOA, such as the National Seismic Network and the meteorological monitoring with a wide 24 hours base coverage of Greece, the service to public protection against natural hazards, the space observations and the important astronomical infrastructures in the region will collapse.
Today, Greece allocates less than 0.6% of its GDP for research, compared to the 1.85% EU average. The annual budget for salaries at NOA is less than 5 million Euros while all operational costs are funded through the overhead of competitive EU projects, that also includes the NESTOR underwater neutrino detector.
There is a petition you can sign here. I signed it.
EGU, AOGS and JpGU joint Position Statement on Ocean Acidification
“Impacts of ocean acidification may be just as dramatic as those of global warming (resulting from anthropogenic activities on top of natural variability) and the combination of both are likely to exacerbate consequences, resulting in potentially profound changes throughout marine ecosystems and in the services that they provide to humankind”.
Background on Ocean Acidification (OA)
Ocean acidification is a rapidly emerging scientific issue and its possible ecological and economical impacts (which are largely unknown) have raised serious concerns across the scientific and resource management communities.
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from our industrial and agricultural activities has resulted in atmospheric CO2 concentrations that have increased from approximately 280 to 385 parts per million (ppm). The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now higher than experienced on Earth for at least the last 800,000 years (direct ice core evidence) and probably the last 25 million years, and is expected to continue to rise at an increasing rate, leading to significant temperature increases in the atmosphere and ocean in the coming decades. The ocean has absorbed about 430 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or about one-third of anthropogenic carbon emissions. This absorption has benefited humankind by significantly lowering greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, thereby reducing anthropogenic global warming. However, the pH of ocean surface waters has already decreased by about 0.1 units, from an average of about 8.21 to 8.10 since the beginning of the industrial revolution. By the middle of this century atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could reach more than 500 ppm, and near the end of the century they could be over 800 ppm. This will result in an additional surface water pH decrease of approximately 0.4 pH units by 2100, implying that the ocean will be about 150% more acidic than at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Ocean acidification and coral reefs: A video research diary with Jack Silverman and Ken Caldeira
Video diary from the Carnegie Institution Dept. of Global Ecology expedition to One Tree Island, Australia. The aim of the expedition is to improve our understanding of the effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs.
Expedition participants at this stage include Kenny Schneider, Jack Silverman, Kate Rick, Julia Pongratz, Ben Kravitz, Lilian Caldeira, and Ken Caldeira.
As climate talks stall, Earth’s ‘carbon sponges’ choke
Via Scoop.it – Climate Change
By Benjamin DODMAN (text)
With world leaders still struggling to find an answer to climate change, two documentaries screened at the Pariscience film festival highlight the crucial – and costly – role played by the planet’s greatest natural assets against carbon emissions. It’s been almost twenty years since representatives of 154 countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – two decades punctuated by largely fruitless attempts to agree on a strategy to fight global warming.
Like most recent gatherings, this year’s climate summit in the South African city of Durban, which is due to start on November 28, has been described as the last chance to come up with a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on carbon emissions, which expires next year. To prepare for the key event, delegates from 192 countries gathered for talks this week in the Central American country of Panama, a narrow stretch of land covered by pristine rainforests and a gateway between two oceans.
The location of the discussions may have served as a reminder of the importance of the world’s greatest absorbers of carbon emissions: forests and oceans. Between them – and in roughly equal shares – the planet’s forests and oceans absorb about half the carbon dioxide we pump into the air. Their plight is the subject of two films screened at the 7th edition of the ‘Pariscience’ science film festival, held in the French capital between October 6 and 11.
“Up in smoke”, a documentary by Briton Adam Wakeling, follows scientist Mike Hands in his attempts to find an alternative to slash-and-burn agriculture in equatorial rainforests; a form of subsistence farming that the British scientist blames for a “slowly enacted catastrophe”.
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EPOCA’s work on ocean acidification is the subject of “Tipping Point”, a documentary by France’s Laurence Jourdan. When carbon dioxide dissolves into the oceans it forms acids, which cause the pH of the oceans to decrease. Scientists talk of a “tipping point” when this alteration becomes irreversible.
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