Daily Science Dose

He’s been a professor at Stanford, he runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, oh, and he was part of team of scientists that won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Not a bad choice for Energy secretary, eh?

And the best part is that he understands the carbon conundrum. Kudos, Mr. Obama, for choosing Mr. Chu as your man to lead this nation’s energy policy.

So much better than that Dick Cheney, plain and tall…and in the pocket of the oil and coal companies. Not that Cheney was Secretary of the Department of Energy, but he might as well have been with his closed door energy wheelings and dealings. Not to mention the team of henchmen Bush employed to allow those oil and coal companies to ignore the consequences of carbon emissions.

I see a brighter and more informed energy future for America and in turn, the World.

Steven Chu is a big advocate for energy conservation. In a Q&A with Science News, he details that buildings account for nearly 40% of all energy consumed, and that with new more efficient technology and building methods, we can get that percentage down to half of that. He also feels that number can drop further, achieving the same results on 25% of what had previously been needed to run the same buildings.

Chu also advocates governmental tax credits to spur advances in energy technologies. In addition to tax credits, Chu feels that the US should be building a “greener” workforce in energy industries, by supporting universities and laboratories in developing the next generation of scientists that will continue to advance the field. Give more grants to professors, who in turn can employ more graduate students, who will in turn become the scientists that develop new and better technology to work to solve our inevitable energy crisis.

Steven Chu, Obama, Secretary of Energy, Department of Energy

While I was watching NOVA last night, which was called “Ocean Animal Emergency” and truly saddening, I was struck by a small seal pup that had facial tumors growing out of its mouth. The tumors were found to be inoperable, and the poor, little Harbor seal had to be euthanized.

The moment I saw the seal’s tumors I was reminded of another creature that has become afflicted with grotesque facial tumors, the Tasmanian Devil.

Are the facial tumors afflicting the harbor seal on NOVA and Tasmanian Devil related? Could there be something more to this? What is it that is causing these odd, devastating growths? In January 2008, reports came out detailing that Tasmanian Devils have elevated levels of chemicals used as flame retardants in their blood stream. Could these chemicals be causing this kind of growth? Or are the chemicals just enabling this kind of cancer, making some animals more susceptible to disease?

The science is still out on the Tasmanian Devil, but as more than 60% of the wild population has died in the last decade since this facial cancer was first discovered, there may not be much time for scientists to figure it out.

The facial growth I saw on the harbor seal did not look quite as gruesome as that which I have seen in pictures of tasmanian devils. The harbor seal’s tumors looked more like big “toes” sticking out of its mouth. The seal didn’t look bothered by them, so it is unsure if the tumors were causing pain of any kind. I have to wonder if there is some correlation between the toxins we keep dumping in the ocean and this poor seal’s face.

NOVA explained that the seal and sea lions that are euthanized at the Marine Mammal Center are given a post-mortum examination, and blood and tissue samples are collected. I have to wonder what the MMC will find, if anything. Of course, it may simply be a birth defect, and I am worrying over nothing. But as seals are higher up on the food chain and consume other marine creatures, they could be the front line when it comes to realizing the effects of the many, many substances we allow to flow into our waters.

The MMC and other marine researchers are finding that another toxin, domoic acid, is killing sea lions and the numbers are only increasing. The domoic acid is a toxin released by the Pseudo-nitzschia algae, an algae that needs sunlight and nutrient-rich water, which are usually not the same water. However, with increasing amounts of nutrients in the form of fertilizers running into our near-shore waters, like Southern California where many sea lions are dying, algae blooms are becoming common in the spring and early summer.

seals, NOVA, pbs, ocean, animals, marine, mammal, tumors, growths, flame retardants, chemicals, toxins, cancer, tasmanian devil, water, pollution, algae, bloom, California, Marine Mammal Center, sea lions, domoic acid, Pseudo-nitzschia, harbor seal

Did you know that the present time is already considered one of the great mass extinctions? Humans seem to be the major culprit in this, the Holocene extinction event, but scientists have recently began surmising that a similar extinction 251 million years ago was caused by the same thing. But with no humans around 251 million years ago, what is it that I am talking about — yep, carbon dioxide.

The Christian Science Monitor published an article this last week detailing the current hypotheses of a team of researchers and scientists from multiple disciplines.

Now scientists are rethinking another of earth’s great die-offs. The end-Permian extinction 251 million years ago was the worst of earth’s five mass extinctions. Ninety percent of all marine life and 70 percent of terrestrial life disappeared. It took five million years, perhaps more, for the biosphere to recover.

But while the die-off was uniquely devastating, evidence of a single cataclysmic event, like an asteroid strike, hasn’t been found in the geological record. Scientists now suspect that “the mother of all mass extinctions” was of Earth’s own making. And the more they learn about it, the more parallels they see to today’s world: A bout of greenhouse-gas-induced global warming, much like today’s, set off a chain of events that culminated in oxygen-depleted oceans exhaling poison gas.

It seems that increased volcanic activity started burning through coal beds, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide — something we humans are doing, we are like little volcanoes, I guess. The Earth’s population at the time was already stressing the system, and when the extra CO2 entered the atmosphere, it lead to warmer seas (sounds familiar). The warmer seas lead to increased weathering and erosion, which washed nutrients into the oceans, thus leading to algae blooms (again, familiar). When the algae dies, the decomposition process requires oxygen, effectively starving the water of oxygen. When water does not have enough oxygen, many organisms cannot live in that water, except for anaerobic organisms that breathe in sulfates and give off hydrogen sulfide as exhalation. Hydrogen sulfide is poisonous to us oxygen-loving organisms.

And the lessons for today? At the Permian boundary, “you’re in a state of gradual warming, then as you approach that boundary, the warming in­­creases dramatically,” says Jeff Kiehl, a senior scientist at the Na­­­tion­­­al Center for Atmospheric Re­­search in Boulder, Colo. “It wasn’t a linear warming.” Says Professor Kump: “This shows us what could happen if we push the system too hard…. We don’t know where the intermediate thresholds are.”

We’re still some way from the atmospheric CO2 levels hypothesized at the end-Permian extinction – which were perhaps 10 times preindustrial levels, or 2,800 ppm. Yet, according the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if trends continue we’re still approaching 1,000 ppm of CO2 by 2100. That’s not Permian-extinction levels, but it would be the highest CO2 concentration in 80 million years, and a level at which both ocean anoxia and lesser extinctions have occurred.

This theory on what lead to the “great dying” at the transition between the Permian and Triassic periods (the extinction event is called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, appropriately enough) has been bouncing around for a while now, once scientists started questioning the evidence of the Killer Asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. It seems that despite the asteroid’s impact and subsequent devastation, many big dinosaurs stuck around for quite some time afterward. When the asteroid impact theory gained popularity, some scientists felt that all of our many mass extinctions throughout Earth’s history were caused by otherworldly impacts, but not all the evidence added up.

Until fossil records started showing evidence of little sulfide-emitting organisms, and then scientists started looking at the Permian-Triassic more carefully.

From a Scientific American article from 2006:

But the biomarkers in the oceanic sediments from the latest part of the Permian, and from the latest Triassic rocks as well, yielded chemical evidence of an ocean-wide bloom of the H2S-consuming bacteria. Because these microbes can live only in an oxygen-free environment but need sunlight for their photosynthesis, their presence in strata representing shallow marine settings is itself a marker indicating that even the surface of the oceans at the end of the Permian was without oxygen but was enriched in H2S.

Also, the P-Tr event is marked by volcanic activity in Siberia, of all places, and only a couple of months ago, scientists discovered that large amounts of methane are leaking from the Siberia Seabed. Hmm, methane is a greenhouse gas that has 20 times the power to trap heat that carbon dioxide does, and if that “leak” continues, well, estimates that 50 percent of all species will go extinct in the next century may not be too far off the mark.

extinction, mass, permian, triassic, dinosaurs, humans, mammals, volcanic activity, volcanoes, asteroid, impact, Siberia, methane, carbon dioxide, population stress, warming seas, sulfides, oxygen, algae bloom, anaerobic, greenhouse gas, global warming

Ok, that is a bit misleading, I admit, but scientists have discovered a fungus in South American that produces octane and other hydrocarbons that are also found in petroleum.

Gary Strobel, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, happened upon a fungus growing on an Ulmo tree in Patagonia. When he and other researchers grew the fungus in their lab, they found that the fungus “exhaled” the same hydrocarbons that are found in diesel fuel.

From Science:

After discovering the new fungus wedged between cells in a stem from an Ulmo tree (Eucryphia cordifolia), Strobel and colleagues cultured the organism, collected the gaseous compounds it produced, and ran the compounds through a mass spectrometer to identify them. When he saw the printout, Strobel says, “every hair on my body stood up.” The list included octane, 1-octene, heptane, 2-methyl, and hexadecane–all common components of diesel fuels.

Although other microbes are known to make individual volatile hydrocarbons common in fuels, Strobel says none can match the synthetic repertoire of G. roseum, which makes a staggering 55 volatile hydrocarbons: “No one has ever observed anything like this with any microbe before.” He suspects that the fungus produces the hydrocarbon stew to inhibit other organisms from growing nearby.

So this little fungus gives off these noxious fumes in order to carve out a nook for itself to live, and this “perfume” just happens to be the same stuff that we humans rely on for transportation needs. My question is naturally, if we do find a way to harness this octane brew, will it still burn off into carbon dioxide?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Seriously, this is pretty neat, that a small microorganism can produce gasoline and jet fuel, but how is producing renewable fuels that are burned and give off carbon dioxide among other gases help us in the long run? I agree that these fuel-producing microbes could alleviate “peak oil” and great loss we will all suffer when the eventual day comes when we run out of oil. But unless scientists can also find a microbe that can turn carbon dioxide into oh, let’s say, oxygen, I don’t see how these new biofuels, renewable or not, can help mitigate all that carbon dioxide we all have had a hand in pumping into Earth’s atmosphere.

However, to play the positive side of Lulu, this new fungus could provide impetus for people to preserve what little undisturbed wilderness we have left on this planet. If this little fungus was growing on a tree in Patagonia, who knows what is growing on trees in Canada’s arboreal forest, or the rainforess of Borneo. We could wipe out these trees and forests and other undisturbed ecosystems before we have the opportunity to stumble upon little hydrocarbon-producing fungi.

biofuels, gas, oil, octane, fuel, transportation, fungus, ulmo tree, South America, Patagonia, hyrdocarbons, forests, rainforest, Canadian arboreal, wilderness, carbon dioxide, oxygen

Earlier this month, Science Magazine reported that an international collaboration of scientists have published a comprehensive database of everything mammalian. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) pulled together information from all parts of the world as well as going back into records from the 1500’s in order to get a total picture of what is going on in the world of warm-blooded vertabrates.

The database, part of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, updates and expands a survey from 1996 and includes both land and marine species. Taking 5 years to compile, the effort involved more than 1700 researchers from 130 countries. They combed their literature and pooled their unpublished knowledge of ecology, taxonomy, distribution, population trends, threats, and conservation efforts. The species were then classified according to their extinction risk. “We wanted to make this one-stop shopping for scientists and policymakers,” says IUCN and Conservation International mammalogist Jan Schipper, who coordinated the project.

The bad news is that one quarter of those 5487 species are on the fast track to extinction. Half are experiencing declining numbers. Out of the total number, more than 860 species are too poorly known to be properly assessed in terms of population health.

The good news is that since the last published database, 700 new species of mammals have been discovered. Also encouraging is that well-established and funded conservation programs are working for the most part in many areas.

More numbers…

29 of the species in the database may already be extinct, including China’s freshwater dolphin the baiji.

188 species are critically endangered.

1 in 5 species that are not already showing danger of extinction are showing decreases in population.

1139 species are presently threatened with extinction.

Habitat loss is the major reason for declining numbers in addition to hunting for land mammals. Marine mammals face the same threats, but also suffer more acutely from pollution issues and fishing including by-catch of species that are not regulated by fishing agencies. The larger the animal, the higher the risk of extinction, such as in such animals as gorillas and rhinos. Marine mammals are facing the biggest threat in the North Atlantic and Pacific as well as in the waters around Southeast Asia.

The new database “is the most valuable effort to date to summarize the state of conservation and threats to the world’s mammal populations,” says mammalogist Don Wilson of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. “By detailing threats at the species level, it will now be possible for management agencies in every country in the world to prioritize their efforts to try to mitigate these threats.”

With more and more people needing more and more room, I cannot say with any conviction that we can save some of these mammals. That brings up an interesting question: What do we save? What can we save? And who decides?

mammals, extinction, endangered, species, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, database, marine, land, Southeast Asia, China, baiji, dolphin, gorillas, rhinos, North Atlantic, North Pacific, pollution, habitat destruction, hunting, by-catch