Friday, August 28, 2009

Climate change: not just for crunchy liberals and nerds anymore

While the sane/intelligent/non-comatose population has been well aware of the climate change thing for years, the rest of us are finally starting to come around. It's hard (but apparently not impossible) to ignore the physical evidence that the global climate is changing. Yeah, yeah, it does that on its own....well, not like this. Sorry to have to tell you this Bush Administration, Michael Crichton, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Glenn Beck, the rest of the yahoos at Fox News, and 41% OF AMERICANS (!!!!)....but you are all craaazies.

I could rant/yell/spout statistics for days and days about how ridiculous it is that we are even arguing about this, instead of doing something about it. But I won't. I will simply point out a couple of FACTS that the crazies are going to be hardpressed to ignore/refute/conspire against.

So, basically, scientists went to Antarctica and analyzed air pockets in ice cores dating back to 800,000 years ago. They found (spoiler alert) that carbon dioxide was at significantly lower levels back then. That's statistically significant. Which is like, science. In fact, they found that the CO2 levels are higher right this very second than they ever were during any of those previous 800,000 years. "Hmm," you might think, "I wonder what was happening in that general time period." Only the emergence/expansion/explosion of a dominant group of organisms in the genus Homo. Oh wait, wait, that was us.

For a cogent/fascinating/eloquent explanation of the issues we face due to rising carbon dioxide levels, I recommend The Next One Hundred Years, by Jonathan Weiner. This guy won a Pulitzer (for a different book, but still), and does an excellent job of explaining the problem with having too much carbon floating around. In a nutshell: for a long time, the CO2 level held steady around 315 parts per million. During the mid twentieth century, it started creeping up. And by creeping, I mean skyrocketing. See:

It is currently at 389 ppm, a 25-ish percent increase. In 50 years. Holy. Crap. High levels of CO2 lead to ocean acidification, inhibition of plant growth, extreme weather events, sea level rise, species extinctions, and of course, global temperature increase. D'oh! Did I mention that this book was written in the scientific yesteryear of 1991? We've known about this for decades, and we are still arguing about whether or not it's real. Come on, crazies, we've got enough to worry about.

If you're not much of a reader, and all this carbon talk is like Greek (or Latin I guess, which is what it is), there are pictures, too! Believe it or not, there are satellite photos of this stuff. They were actually classified by the Bush Administration, and then Obama came in and was like "What? That's dumb." And he declassified them. So here, for your viewing pleasure, are satellite images taken one (1) year apart (!) of ice melt in Alaska.

See that big, ominous dark spot on the right-hand picture? Just one (1) year before that, it was full of happy/sparkly/crystally ice, as you can see in the left-hand picture. And now it's gone. Ignore that, bitches! Science 1, Crazies 0, Earth, totally screwed.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Charismatic Megafauna, Now With More Charisma

Ok, so this is a tiny bit pre-emptive, seeing as the superawesome groundbreaking thing I am about to share is still in the research and development stage...but - there are some really cool pictures to look at, and it kind of goes along with a good cause, so I'ma talk about it anyway. Here goes:

We might be able to learn whale language!!

No, seriously.

So this guy, Mark Fischer is a whale researcher and computer nerd, I mean programmer. He graphs cetacean calls using an algorithm he made, and ends up with pictures called wavelets. It's ok to giggle at the word "wavelet." I did. Not only are these wavelets really cool to look at (each species looks completely different), but he is looking for underlying patterns that might lead us closer to understanding the intricacies of whale (and dolphin, too!) communication. The word "language" might be a bit of a stretch, but in conjunction with the research being done on whale migration, feeding, reproduction, etc., there is totally some potential here. We could learn what they are saying when they are looking for whale food, whale homes, whale love, and whatever else it is that whales do all day.



One big problem though: we can't hear everything the whales are saying. They don't exactly operate within the spectrum of our hearing range. What? The whales aren't there just to entertain us with their gloriously soothing songs?! Anyway, the recordings that are made tend to miss some of the frequencies, and therefore make it much more difficult to look at the whole picture. Even though it is a pretty picture regardless.
All in all, it's a fascinating idea. We'd finally find out if Moby Dick actually was evil, if chomping Jonah was really worth all the trouble, and
if Willy actually wanted to be free. Either way, we get to look at these:

Humpback Whale

Minke Whale

And my very favorite, the beluga. Don't you just want to have that? A baby beluga swimming so wild and so free?



Which brings me to my next point. These wavelets (and more) are available as artwork, and you can put them in your house! Through an organization called Interspecies, you can donate money toward "healing our own species' emotional, spiritual and cultural ties with nature." It's something about using art to bring humans and other species closer together, bla bla bla. Whatever...they send you a cool picture in the mail. (Sidebar: Another artist, Jim Nollman, also has work available on Interspecies for a pretty donated penny - totally worth it though, he's pretty awesome). It is entirely possible, however, that all of this is totally useless - maybe Dory had it right all along, and wwwhhaaaaaallllessssss jjjjussssssst ttaaaaaalllllkk llliiiiiikkkeeee ttthiiissssssss......


As a complete non sequitur, I think the phrase "charismatic megafauna" might just be my all time favorite in the English language. That is all. Check out interspecies.com and aguasonic.com.