Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

September 5, 2008

For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).

http://snipurl.com/3nagx


Mammoths Moved 'Out of America'
from BBC News Online

Scientists have discovered that the last Siberian woolly mammoths may have originated in North America. Their research in the journal Current Biology represents the largest study of ancient woolly mammoth DNA.

The scientists also question the direct role of climate change in the eventual demise of these large beasts.

They believe that woolly mammoths survived through the period when the ice sheets were at their maximum, while other Ice Age mammals "crashed out." The iconic Ice Age woolly mammoth—Mammuthus primigenius—roamed through mainland Eurasia and North America until about 10,000 years ago.

http://snipurl.com/3mzcv


Study Finds No Autism Link in Vaccine
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

A common vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella is not linked to autism, a study published [Wednesday] concludes. The findings contradict earlier research that had fueled fears of a possible link between childhood vaccinations and a steep increase in autism diagnoses.

In February 1998, the Lancet journal published a study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield of 12 children with autism and other behavioral problems that suggested the onset of their behavioral abnormalities was linked to receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.

The new study comes as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington is in the midst of evaluating evidence on whether children's vaccines are implicated in causing autism.

http://snipurl.com/3mz48


Milky Way's Black Hole Seen in New Detail
from Science News

New radio wave observations are giving astronomers their closest look yet at the supermassive black hole believed to be lurking at the center of our galaxy.

Reporting in the Sept. 4 Nature, a team has, for the first time, resolved features as small as the black hole's event horizon—the gravitationally warped region from which nothing, not even light, can escape.

"We have now entered a new era, one in which we can directly image structure at the event horizon of a black hole," asserts Christopher Reynolds of the University of Maryland in College Park in a commentary accompanying the Nature report.

http://snipurl.com/3mzul


BPA Linked to Primate Health Issues
from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON—Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine have linked a chemical found in everyday plastics to problems with brain function and mood disorders in monkeys, the first time the chemical has been connected to health problems in primates.

The study is the latest in an accumulation of research that has raises concerns about bisphenol A, or BPA, a compound that gives a shatterproof quality to polycarbonate plastic and has been found to leach from plastic into food and water.

The Yale study results come as federal toxicologists Wednesday reaffirmed an earlier draft-report finding that there is "some concern" bisphenol A can cause developmental problems in the brain and hormonal systems of infants and children.

http://snipurl.com/3mzft


Doctors: New Way to Spot Breast Cancer Shows Promise
from USA Today

A radioactive tracer that "lights up" cancer hiding inside dense breasts showed promise in its first big test against mammograms, revealing more tumors and giving fewer false alarms, doctors reported Wednesday.

The experimental method—molecular breast imaging, or MBI—would not replace mammograms for women at average risk of the disease.

But it might become an additional tool for higher-risk women with a lot of dense tissue that makes tumors hard to spot on mammograms, and it could be done at less cost than an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging.

http://snipurl.com/3mz9s


Cracking Anthrax
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Attacked by Bacillus anthracis in its most virulent form, the human body is no match. White blood cells dispatched to kill the pathogen wind up transporting anthrax spores back to key organs, where the bacteria burst forth in multitudes, flooding the bloodstream with death-dealing toxins.

By the time many victims realize they're infected, they're already doomed. Anthrax is an old nemesis.

... Robert Koch, a pioneer in microbiology, finally isolated the bacterium in 1877, helping launch a scientific effort to understand and overcome the microbe. That effort continues around the world, including inside labs at San Diego State University and the University of California San Diego. A driving motivation is fear, of course.

http://snipurl.com/3mzpn


How the Large Hadron Collider Might Change the Web
from Scientific American

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins smashing protons together this fall inside its 17-mile-circumference underground particle racetrack near Geneva, Switzerland, it will usher in a new era not only of physics but also of computing.

Before the year is out, the LHC is projected to begin pumping out a tsunami of raw data equivalent to one DVD (five gigabytes) every five seconds. Its annual output of 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) will soon dwarf that of any other scientific experiment in history.

The challenge is making that data accessible to a scientist anywhere in the world at the execution of a few commands on her laptop. The solution is a global computer network called the LHC Computing Grid, and with any luck, it may be giving us a glimpse of the Internet of the future.

http://snipurl.com/3mzwa


A Changing Climate of Opinion?
from the Economist

There is a branch of science fiction that looks at the Earth's neighbours, Mars and Venus, and asks how they might be made habitable. The answer is planetary engineering. ... So, fiddle with the atmospheres of these neighbours and you open new frontiers for human settlement and far-fetched story lines.

It is an intriguing idea. It may even come to pass, though probably not in the lifetime of anyone now reading such stories. But what is more worrying—and more real—is the idea that such planetary engineering may be needed to make the Earth itself habitable by humanity, and that it may be needed in the near future.

Reality has a way of trumping art, and human-induced climate change is very real indeed. So real that some people are asking whether science fiction should now be converted into science fact.

http://snipurl.com/3mzzm 


Scientists Map Gene Changes Linked to Cancer
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)—Scientists have mapped the cascade of genetic changes that turn normal cells in the brain and pancreas into two of the most lethal cancers. The result points to a new approach for fighting tumors and maybe even catching them sooner.

Genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from the culprits for the next patient, making the puzzle of cancer genetics even more complicated. But Friday's research also found that clusters of seemingly disparate genes all work along the same pathways.

So instead of today's hunt for drugs that target a single gene, the idea is to target entire pathways that most patients share. Think of delivering the mail to a single box at the end of the cul-de-sac instead of at every doorstep. The three studies, published in the journals Science and Nature, mark a milestone in cancer genetics.

http://snipurl.com/3nakt 

[Iason Ouabache]

Study Finds No Autism Link in Vaccine
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

A common vaccine given to children to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella is not linked to autism, a study published [Wednesday] concludes. The findings contradict earlier research that had fueled fears of a possible link between childhood vaccinations and a steep increase in autism diagnoses.

In February 1998, the Lancet journal published a study by British researcher Andrew Wakefield of 12 children with autism and other behavioral problems that suggested the onset of their behavioral abnormalities was linked to receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine.

The new study comes as the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington is in the midst of evaluating evidence on whether children's vaccines are implicated in causing autism.

http://snipurl.com/3mz48

Well, duh!  Anyone who still thinks that it's the vaccines that cause autism deserves to have their child get measles, mumps, and rubella all at the same time.

How the Large Hadron Collider Might Change the Web
from Scientific American

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) begins smashing protons together this fall inside its 17-mile-circumference underground particle racetrack near Geneva, Switzerland, it will usher in a new era not only of physics but also of computing.

Before the year is out, the LHC is projected to begin pumping out a tsunami of raw data equivalent to one DVD (five gigabytes) every five seconds. Its annual output of 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) will soon dwarf that of any other scientific experiment in history.

The challenge is making that data accessible to a scientist anywhere in the world at the execution of a few commands on her laptop. The solution is a global computer network called the LHC Computing Grid, and with any luck, it may be giving us a glimpse of the Internet of the future.

http://snipurl.com/3mzwa

And people said that the LHC would be a worthless boondoggle. (THAT WILL END ALL LIFE IN THIS QUANDRANT OF SPACE!!!111! ZOMG!!!)

Scientists Map Gene Changes Linked to Cancer
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)—Scientists have mapped the cascade of genetic changes that turn normal cells in the brain and pancreas into two of the most lethal cancers. The result points to a new approach for fighting tumors and maybe even catching them sooner.

Genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from the culprits for the next patient, making the puzzle of cancer genetics even more complicated. But Friday's research also found that clusters of seemingly disparate genes all work along the same pathways.

So instead of today's hunt for drugs that target a single gene, the idea is to target entire pathways that most patients share. Think of delivering the mail to a single box at the end of the cul-de-sac instead of at every doorstep. The three studies, published in the journals Science and Nature, mark a milestone in cancer genetics.

http://snipurl.com/3nakt 

Sweet!  It's awesome to know that a real cure for cancer could happen in our lifetimes.

[Kai]

September 10, 2008

'Big Bang' Experiment Starts Well
from BBC News Online

Scientists have hailed a successful switch-on for an enormous experiment which will recreate the conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

They have fired a beam of particles called protons around the 27km-long tunnel which houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The £5bn machine on the Swiss-French border is designed to smash particles together with cataclysmic force. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.

The beam completed its first circuit of the underground tunnel at just before 0930 BST. "There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap. There were cheers in the control room when engineers heard of the successful test. He added later: "We had a very good start-up."

http://snipurl.com/3owds


Down Canyons and Up Cliffs, Pursuing Southwest's Ancient Art
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

In his mid-60s, Ekkehart Malotki, a retired linguistics professor, willingly dangled from a rope tied to a car that was backed to the edge of a cliff. A half-dozen times, he descended with his rope, photographed the cliff face and climbed back up.

He was documenting a rock art panel a quarter-mile long in northern Arizona. These adventures are commonplace for Dr. Malotki, a German-born American who is now 69.

Dr. Malotki fell in love with America's desert Southwest as a 20-something graduate student of languages at the University of California, San Diego. There, he debunked the longstanding notion that the Hopi tribe of northern Arizona did not talk about time. He believes time is a fundamental, universal concept that is likely to appear in the words of any human culture, and with respect to the Hopi, he was right.

http://snipurl.com/3ooti


The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth—Maybe
from Scientific American

The future looks bright—maybe too bright. The sun is slowly expanding and brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable.

About 7.6 billion years from now, the sun will reach its maximum size as a red giant: its surface will extend beyond Earth's orbit today by 20 percent and will shine 3,000 times brighter. In its final stage, the sun will collapse into a white dwarf.

Although scientists agree on the sun's future, they disagree about what will happen to Earth. Since 1924, when British mathematician James Jeans first considered Earth's fate during the sun's red giant phase, a bevy of scientists have reached oscillating conclusions. In some scenarios, our planet escapes vaporization; in the latest analyses, however, it does not.

http://snipurl.com/3omat


Neanderthals Grew Fast, but Sexual Maturity Came Late
from National Geographic News

Live fast, die young—this is how our closest relatives the Neanderthals were traditionally thought to progress through life. But a new study of Neanderthal skeletons suggests the species grew quickly but reached sexual maturity later than so-called modern humans—and quite possibly survived to a ripe old age.

The study also suggests that Neanderthals had a harder time of child bearing and possibly child raising. As a result, modern humans may have simply outbred their heavy-browed rivals. By studying the skulls of Neanderthal babies, researchers were able to estimate how quickly the infants' brains grew.

They found that between birth and adulthood, a Neanderthal brain expanded faster than that of a modern human. The biggest growth spurt occurred in the first couple of years of life.

http://snipurl.com/3om7c


Friendly Invaders
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

New Zealand is home to 2,065 native plants found nowhere else on Earth. They range from magnificent towering kauri trees to tiny flowers that form tightly packed mounds called vegetable sheep.

When Europeans began arriving in New Zealand, they brought with them alien plants—crops, garden plants and stowaway weeds. Today, 22,000 non-native plants grow in New Zealand. Most of them can survive only with the loving care of gardeners and farmers. But 2,069 have become naturalized: they have spread out across the islands on their own. There are more naturalized invasive plant species in New Zealand than native species.

It sounds like the makings of an ecological disaster ... But in a paper published in August in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dov Sax, an ecologist at Brown University, and Steven D. Gaines, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, point out that the invasion has not led to a mass extinction of native plants. The number of documented extinctions of native New Zealand plant species is a grand total of three.

http://snipurl.com/3om1z


'Water Bears' Are First Animal to Survive Space Vacuum
from New Scientist

Tiny invertebrates called 'water bears' can survive in the vacuum of space, a European Space Agency experiment has shown. They are the first animals known to be able to survive the harsh combination of low pressure and intense radiation found in space.

Water bears, also known as tardigrades, are known for their virtual indestructibility on Earth. The creatures can survive intense pressures, huge doses of radiation, and years of being dried out.

To further test their hardiness, Ingemar Jönsson of Sweden's Kristianstad University and colleagues launched two species of dried-up tardigrades from Kazakhstan in September 2007 aboard ESA's FOTON-M3 mission, which carried a variety of experimental payloads.

http://snipurl.com/3omdx


Some Teens So Heavy They Face Liver Damage, Transplants
from USA Today

TRENTON, N.J. (Associated Press)—In a new and disturbing twist on the obesity epidemic, some overweight teenagers have severe liver damage caused by too much body fat, and a handful have needed liver transplants. Many more may need a new liver by their 30s or 40s, say experts warning that pediatricians need to be more vigilant.

The condition, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure or liver cancer, is being seen in kids in the United States, Europe, Australia and even some developing countries, according to a surge of recent medical studies and doctors interviewed by The Associated Press.

The American Liver Foundation and other experts estimate 2% to 5% of American children over age 5, nearly all of them obese or overweight, have the condition, called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

http://snipurl.com/3ooa8


Potent Promise: Essential Stemness
from Science News

Stem cells' powers of self-renewal, immortality and potential for medicine inspire those who study them. But progress toward understanding them has been slow—it took 20 years just to figure out how to grow embryonic stem cells in the laboratory.

More recently, though, molecular techniques have enabled swift movement on two fronts. Researchers are starting to see how stem cells can replenish their numbers while giving rise to specialized cells.

Others are learning how to turn adult skin cells into cells more like their embryonic ancestors. These advances offer hope that scientists will soon harness the capabilities of stem cells, at last fulfilling the cells' promise.

http://snipurl.com/3oooe


Blood-Sugar Control Benefits May Last
from the Seattle Times

Diabetics who tightly control their blood sugar—even if only for the first decade after they are diagnosed—have lower risks of heart attack, death and other complications 10 or more years later, a large follow-up study has found.

The discovery of this "legacy effect" may put new emphasis on rigorous treatment when people first learn they have type 2 diabetes, the most common form and the type linked to obesity.

Doctors warn that people should not let their blood sugar spin out of control—that could have serious health consequences. "What you don't want is for people to think that they had a period of good glucose control and then they allow their blood glucose to go high—that would be disadvantageous," said Dr. Stephen Davis, head of Vanderbilt University's diabetes and endocrinology division, who had no role in the study.

http://snipurl.com/3owfm 


Lost Bacteria Collection Raises Concerns about Biobanks
from Nature News

A US congressional investigation into the destruction of more than 10,000 bacterial samples from an infectious disease laboratory has led to a call for uniform guidelines governing federally funded biobanks.

At a subcommittee hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology on Tuesday 9 September, representatives expressed their dismay at the destruction of specimens maintained by researchers then at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

After the Special Pathogens Laboratory there was closed in 2006, administrators decided to destroy the samples without warning, even as researchers prepared to transfer the collection to the nearby University of Pittsburgh. Loss of the specimens prompted an outcry from the microbiology community and nearly 250 researchers signed a petition calling for an independent inquiry into the matter.

http://snipurl.com/3owiy

[Kai]

September 11, 2008

Condors in a Coal Mine
from Smithsonian Magazine

It was early winter, the end of deer-hunting season in Central California, and condor biologist Joe Burnett of the Ventana Wildlife Society was steeling himself for a task he had come to dread. Burnett and a team of four Condor Recovery Program members were at a remote site in the mountains east of Big Sur, where they were trapping condors and testing them for lead poisoning.

Three team members were restraining an adult female known as Condor 208. Their arms encircled her body, and one person clamped the bird's powerful jaws shut. Burnett grabbed a syringe. "OK, here we go," he said. The team members tightened their hold, and Burnett plunged the needle into the bird's leg. The condor flinched.

Burnett transferred a drop of blood to a glass slide and inserted it into a portable instrument that tests blood for lead. It takes the instrument three minutes to give a reading; Burnett calls the waiting time "180 seconds from hell." ... The machine beeped and displayed the test result: High. The bird's blood-lead level was elevated beyond the instrument's range. Condor 208 was in mortal danger.

http://snipurl.com/3oyc4 


Particle Accelerator Speeds Into an Age of "New Physics"
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

MEYRIN, Switzerland—It is the biggest machine ever built. Everyone says it looks like a movie set for a corny James Bond villain. They are correct. The machine is attended by brainiacs wearing hard hats and running around on catwalks. They are looking for the answer to the question: Where does everything in the universe come from? Price tag: $8 billion plus.

The world's largest particle accelerator is buried deep in the earth beneath herds of placid dairy cows grazing on the Swiss-French border. The thing has been under construction for years, like the pyramids. Its centerpiece is a circular 17-mile tunnel that contains a pipe swaddled in supermagnets refrigerated to crazy-low temperatures, colder than deep space.

The idea is to set two beams of protons traveling in opposite directions around the tunnel, redlining at the speed of light, generating wicked energy that will mimic the cataclysmic conditions at the beginning of time, then smashing into each other in a furious re-creation of the Big Bang—this time recorded by giant digital cameras.

http://snipurl.com/3oykp


Potent Promise: Back to the Womb
from Science News

Reverting adult cells to an embryonic state without creating embryos is a tricky business

The diagnosis is not good; the patient will need surgery. So the doctor plucks a hair from the patient's head and tells her to come back in a few weeks. When the patient returns, the surgeon patches up the faulty organ by implanting healthy cells generated in the lab from the patient's hair follicle. After a few months, the new cells have integrated into the organ and the woman's symptoms recede. A year later, she's healthy and living a normal life.

This is the scenario that stem cell researchers hope will be commonplace 10 or 15 years from now. A patient's own cells—perhaps taken from hair follicles, blood or skin—would be transformed into cells of the heart, brain or other organs. Doctors would then transplant these converted cells into the afflicted organ to treat the illness, whether it's multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, heart failure or diabetes.

http://snipurl.com/3owzq


Creationism Vs. Evolution
from Scientific American

The controversy over evolution rages on. Win all your debates against creationists with the science in our special report.

A recent movie, Expelled, claims that intelligent design is good science that is being censored by adherents to evolution, which is nothing but Darwinian dogma. Creationists cast themselves as proponents of "academic freedom." Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up.

Two prominent defenders of science exchange their views on how scientists ought to approach religion and its followers. Plus an interactive map of the U.S. highlights this year's battlegrounds in the fight to teach evolution.

http://snipurl.com/3oy8o


Steven Wiley Recounts "My Favorite Fraud"
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

Last week I was at a scientific conference in which career development was a major topic. The audience included mostly scientists at an early stage in their careers, but also a few older scientists, like myself, who were to provide advice on how to manage laboratories and careers.

Popular discussion topics included how to run lab meetings and deal with the egos of graduate students and postdocs. My particular advice included: Keep current with experimental technologies, and evaluate papers on a technical basis before trusting their conclusions.

I'm sure that this advice sounded to some like the musings of a compulsive technogeek, but it was prompted by an incident that happened when I was a postdoc.

http://snipurl.com/3oygs


The Science of Happiness
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

If recent scientific research on happiness—and there has been quite a bit—has proved anything, it's that happiness is not a goal. It's a process. Although our tendency to be happy or not is partly inborn, it's also partly within our control.

And, perhaps more surprising, happiness brings success, not the other way around. Though many people think happiness is elusive, scientists have actually pinned it down and know how to get it.

For years, many in the field of psychology saw the science of happiness as an oxymoron. "We got no respect," says Ed Diener, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, who began studying happiness in 1981. "Critics said you couldn't study happiness because you couldn't measure it." In the mid-1990s, he and a few other researchers started to prove the naysayers wrong.

http://snipurl.com/3p08t 


Diatom Nanostructures Bend Light
from BBC News Online

Simple marine algae called diatoms have evolved intricate structures that allow them to manipulate light. Visible light is strongly diffracted when it passes through tiny holes in their silica-based cell walls, scientists say.

Understanding the physical principles that allow diatoms to trap solar energy more efficiently may also help develop new synthetic replicas. This research was presented at the BA Science Festival in Liverpool.

Nature started to evolve complex colour and light manipulating systems during the Cambrian explosion—about 500 million years ago. Scientists have been inspired by the natural systems that are found in wide range of organisms—including peacocks, butterflies and beetles. These single-celled marine algae are found in almost all aquatic environments on Earth.

http://snipurl.com/3p0bc


Cold Water Rings Dinner Bell for West Coast Salmon
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

A federal oceanographer says a flip-flop in atmospheric conditions is creating a feast for salmon and other sea life off the West Coast, reversing a trend that contributed to a virtual shutdown of West Coast salmon fishing this summer.

Bill Peterson of NOAA Fisheries in Newport, Ore., said Tuesday the change in cycle of an atmospheric condition known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation last fall has brought cold water flows from the Gulf of Alaska, which are carrying an abundance of tiny animals known as copepods that are the foundation of the food chain.

It's unknown how long the good times will last, but Peterson said ocean surveys of chinook salmon in June found lots of yearling juveniles, which should grow up to be plentiful stocks of adults by 2010. Coho surveys start in a couple weeks.

http://snipurl.com/3p0hd


Old Forests Capture Plenty of Carbon
from Nature News

Old forests continue to accumulate carbon at a much greater rate than researchers had previously thought, making them more important as carbon sinks that must be factored into global climate models, researchers say.

Until recently, it was assumed that very old forests no longer absorbed carbon. The only new growth occurred in the small spaces that opened up when large old trees died and decomposed, releasing their accumulated carbon. The forests at large were therefore considered to be carbon neutral, and accounted as such in climate models.

In the past decade or so, murmurs of disagreement with this idea have grown louder, and individual projects have found that even very old forests are capable of storing carbon thanks to tree growth, the addition of new trees and a decreased rate of respiration in old trees.

http://snipurl.com/3p0ik


Arthroscopic Knee Surgery Questioned for Some Arthritis Patients
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

(Associated Press) Two studies call into question whether many people with arthritis are needlessly undergoing one of the most common operations in America: arthroscopic knee surgery.

One finds that surgery is no better than medication and physical therapy for relieving the pain and stiffness of moderate or severe arthritis. The other reveals that tears in knee cartilage—which often prompt such surgeries—are very common without causing symptoms.

Experts said the new studies and other evidence show arthroscopic knee surgery still has a place, such as after a recent injury, but shouldn't be done routinely for osteoarthritis. ... The studies were published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

http://snipurl.com/3p9bw

[fomenter]

http://www.dailytech.com/A+Melting+Arctic+Happy+News+for+Mankind/article12882.htm
arctic melting may be good news

Recent short-term gains in Arctic ice coverage indicate nothing about the eventual state of the Arctic. Answers to the long-term status of the region lie in the realm of a scientific branch known as paleoclimatology. What does it tell us?

The Earth is currently in the geologic epoch known as the Holocene. This began nearly 12,000 years ago when the last ice age (more precisely, the Weichsal glacial) ended. Temperatures warmed, glaciers began to retreat, and the Arctic began to melt. This began what is called an interglacial: a warmer period between glaciation.

We tend to think of the poles as immutable, but geologically speaking, permanent polar ice is a rare phenomenon, comprising less than 10% of history. Icecaps form briefly between interglacials, only to melt as the next one begins -- this time around will be no different.

[Kai]

http://www.dailytech.com/A+Melting+Arctic+Happy+News+for+Mankind/article12882.htm
arctic melting may be good news

Recent short-term gains in Arctic ice coverage indicate nothing about the eventual state of the Arctic. Answers to the long-term status of the region lie in the realm of a scientific branch known as paleoclimatology. What does it tell us?

The Earth is currently in the geologic epoch known as the Holocene. This began nearly 12,000 years ago when the last ice age (more precisely, the Weichsal glacial) ended. Temperatures warmed, glaciers began to retreat, and the Arctic began to melt. This began what is called an interglacial: a warmer period between glaciation.

We tend to think of the poles as immutable, but geologically speaking, permanent polar ice is a rare phenomenon, comprising less than 10% of history. Icecaps form briefly between interglacials, only to melt as the next one begins -- this time around will be no different.

Good news for who? For humans? We're too stuck in this want for a static environment. Human civilization won't be able to cope all that well with any sort of global climate change. For other life forms? Yes and no. Some organisms will benefit, some wont, just like what happens when any environmental change occurs. If there is a large scale extinction event, it will take no more than 20 million years years before the diversity of life on this planet is as large, or larger, than it is now. The question is, will humans survive favorably? We are emergent enough in our consciousness to be affected by greater events than just growth, predatorial evasion, foraging, and reproduction. Do we want to live in a medieval world again, or one with human civilization torn apart on a wide scale?

Me, I like my bugs. Some of my bugs are remnants of the last ice age. I like them a lot, and would like to keep them around if possible. If not possible, I want to at least keep around the ones that can make it, cause I like bugs. I'm not so into most people, but thats my reason. Climate change is going to happen. Hopefully it won't happen so fast that my bugs won't make it.

[fomenter]

i am not a scientist so the articles veracity? you decide.
the claims they make, no flooding, northwest passage opening, access to oil and gas reserves and fishing grounds, polarbears will be fine more bio mass in oceans etc don't sound bad for human survival i see no link to humans being forced to a feudal survival society. i also don't see any statements about the speed of change being unnaturally fast so maybe your bugs will be OK too...

[Kai]

i am not a scientist so the articles veracity? you decide.
the claims they make, no flooding, northwest passage opening, access to oil and gas reserves and fishing grounds, polarbears will be fine more bio mass in oceans etc don't sound bad for human survival i see no link to humans being forced to a feudal survival society. i also don't see any statements about the speed of change being unnaturally fast so maybe your bugs will be OK too...

Warming of ocean temperatures is going to change the climate regardless of the change in shore ice. Ocean currents are driven by temperature change. Ocean temperature is what drives weather, and also climate on the continents. I'm not sure about the information on the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. I do know that other smaller glaciers such as the ones in iceland and the US are shrinking. It is true that water levels will not change due to melting of ocean ice because ice is less dense than the liquid, thus taking up less overal space. Its the glacial caps you have to worry about for that. I do not agree that humans are having no effect on climate change, and I do not agree that the melting of the arctic ice will not have an effect on climate. Any change on the order of thousands of years and not millions is going to cause some level of extinctions. We have proof of effects by climate change. Some examples:

The Joshua Tree, once thriving in Joshua Tree National Park, is expected to be extinct within the part in the next 20-50 years due to climate change.

The Bristlecone pines of the Green mountains, the oldest organisms on earth, are dying fast due to climatic change. The worlds oldest tree, once doing well 10 years ago, is nearly dead, along with most other trees in the area. This tree is over 2000 years old, and just a branch is left alive now.

Pikas, an extraordinary rodent with a language of over 200 'words', once thriving in the great basin at higher altitudes, are dwindling in numbers because they can't handle the rising temperatures, and this is, as the others, a recent developement. Indeed, look at sky islands, isolated pockets, boreal relics communities and species, all dwindling because they are caught on these islands and there is no place to go, no way out, no way to traverse the land around. They are stuck, and they will go extinct if things continue this way.

[Vene]

Not to mention that the excess CO₂ in the atmosphere is fucking with the ocean's pH and is destroying coral reefs.
link

I don't even want to think about what would happen if the ocean's buffer is overcome.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Basically the entire ocean is fucked.  Between the plastic and the changing temperature and the overfishing, a lot of species are suffering. 

[fomenter]

you will have to excuse me for being a sceptic, when i was growing up we were in the beginning of an ice age and the scientists and media told us all to panic because of the coming food shortages, mass extinctions and endless winters.

being a sceptic and not a scientist i am trying to keep my opinions on the subject as common sense as possible. It seems to be a fairly even split between the man made and natural cycle proponents (in my view it is undecided ), yes climate change kills some species but the direct effects of pollution will do far more harm(amphibians), I don't trust politicians who use the issue or manipulate scientist (grant money)  or to create fears about the issue to gain power.
I suspect that the size and resilience of nature is not being given enough respect.   

[Vene]

you will have to excuse me for being a sceptic, when i was growing up we were in the beginning of an ice age and the scientists and media told us all to panic because of the coming food shortages, mass extinctions and endless winters.

being a sceptic and not a scientist i am trying to keep my opinions on the subject as common sense as possible. It seems to be a fairly even split between the man made and natural cycle proponents (in my view it is undecided ), yes climate change kills some species but the direct effects of pollution will do far more harm(amphibians), I don't trust politicians who use the issue or manipulate scientist (grant money)  or to create fears about the issue to gain power.
I suspect that the size and resilience of nature is not being given enough respect.   

Only the media reported about an ice age.  No reputable scientist agreed with it.  Just for future reference, the media does a horrific job of reporting science.  Second, there is a food shortage, but it is not here, it's in third-world nations.  It would be a lot worse if not for the green revolution.  As for the even split.  That is false.  There is not a single scientific organization that doubts global warming.

Now, you are right to doubt politicians.  But the people who actually study the Earth are a lot more trustworthy.  Scientists don't gain power from fear, scientists gain acclaim from disproving other scientists.  There is much more to be gained from an individual scientist to go against the mainstream and prove them all wrong.

As for nature's resilience, it will survive.  But nature as we know it isn't.  While I am positive that global warming will not destroy life, it most definitely can cause a lot of death.  Climate change has lead to mass extinction in the past, and humans are causing very rapid climate change right now.  Carbon dioxide does absorb electromagnetic radiation from the sun.  This does translate into heat.  Humans are releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Not to mention that carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid and the huge amounts of it have already altered the ocean's pH.

[fomenter]

the split is over cause, man made vs natural cycle not if global warming is happening , the other split is between those who think it is increasing at a disastrous rate and those who say we cant predict. on the first split I go with undecided leaning slightly toward natural cycle, on the second I say cant predict yet

It would be a lot worse if not for the green revolution

politicians have influence on scientific opinion when they hold the purse strings "grants", politicians use those influenced opinions to create fear in the public and gain power from it.

Climate change has lead to mass extinction in the past,

global warming ??    ice ages, volcanoes, meteor strikes i have heard of causing extinctions can you give an example of global warming doing the same ??..

[fomenter]

news reporting on what scientists were saying

time magazine ice age
http://neoconexpress.blogspot.com/2007/02/time-like-newsweek-predicted-iceage-in.html#

and news week
Newsweek 1975: Scientists Predict Massive Global Cooling



Newsweek Magazine, April 28th 1975:
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas - parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia - where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree - a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras - and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 - years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases - all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.

"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, "is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.

[Kai]

you will have to excuse me for being a sceptic, when i was growing up we were in the beginning of an ice age and the scientists and media told us all to panic because of the coming food shortages, mass extinctions and endless winters.

being a sceptic and not a scientist i am trying to keep my opinions on the subject as common sense as possible. It seems to be a fairly even split between the man made and natural cycle proponents (in my view it is undecided ), yes climate change kills some species but the direct effects of pollution will do far more harm(amphibians), I don't trust politicians who use the issue or manipulate scientist (grant money)  or to create fears about the issue to gain power.
I suspect that the size and resilience of nature is not being given enough respect.   

Scientists are seldom the ones who spread panic. The ones who spread panic are the people in the media who take the summaries of the scientific paper, summarize those and then twist it to make it sound far beyond what it says. Thus you get perspectives which make it seem like scientific opinion is jumping back and forth, while the scientist have been cautions and just amassing data all along, some data says one thing, some says the other, all conclusions tenative till well supported.

I can see what you are saying though. The desctruction of tropical rainforest by logging and slash and burn, the killing of the oceans by chemicals, anoxic zones created by eutrophication in the gulf of mexico, low flows on rivers due to water overuse, all these other human caused events are making a massive change and they are not talked about, because people would rather speculate over some nebulous thing than sit down and actually make changes about things that are concrete. Make changes like limiting water use, fertilizer and pesticide use, saving rainforest land, cleaning up chemicals, actually doing something physical about the impact humans are having on the planet. People don't want to do it, one, because its easier to just argue, 2, because it costs money, and 3 because it means that people will have to change their lifestyles. The last one is the biggest one, by the way.

Also, just as a note, volcanic eruptions, continental drift, ect, all effect extinction rates specifically because of climate change. When people talk of global warming they think too local, too weather related. When people think of this in relation to extinction, they don't think local enough! Many species are isolated, specialists that can only survive within a certain climate. As the climate changes, they either have to move, change their biology, or go extinct. Local climate is a character of many factors, but is deeply effected by world and regional climate change. We still have no clue why the last ice age occured, or why it is ending. We have hypotheses, but we don't really know why global warming and cooling cycles occur. Regional and local is much easier. You can look at ocean currents and vegitation and human influences. But we don't know the bigger picture. Its all laden with chaos.

We should be very deeply interested however. There is absolutly no evidence to suggest that we will as a species in all certainty survive the next million years (or as a lineage, for that matter). We can't tell the future. We have no clue what will happen next. So we need to be very careful, because our very existence is a fluke and who knows how long we are around for. The planet will be around without us but we can't survive without the biosphere.