Environmental Justice and ENPs...

Topics: African Americans, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Ecology, Environment, Nanotechnology

Abstract

The production and use of Engineered Nanoparticles (ENPs) or materials containing ENPs has increased astonishingly, leading to increased exposure to workers and consumers. The invention and applications of new materials either create new opportunities or pose new risks and uncertainties. The uncertainties concerning application of ENPs are posing disturbances to the ecosystem and human health. This review first addresses in vitro and in vivo studies conducted on the toxicity of ENPs to animals and humans. Ethical justifications are provided specially with reference to Intergenerational Justice (IRG-J) and Ecological Justice (EC-J). The social benefits and burdens of ENPs are identified for present and future generations. Some mitigation approaches for combating the potential risks posed by ENPs are proposed. Finally, suggestions for the safe handling of ENPs in future are proposed in the review.

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The term nanotechnology refers to the science of investigating and manipulating materials at atomic, molecular and macromolecular scale. (Sudarenko, 2013). Nanoparticles (NPs) are known to occur naturally (e.g., volcanic ash and forest fires), accidentally (i.e., unintended human activities) and anthropogenic (e.g., cosmetics and other consumer products). Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) or engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) are man made materials produced deliberately for different industrial applications and most commonly having dimension from 1 to 100 nm (Auffan et al., 2009). It is widely acknowledged in the scientific community that ENPs have enormous potential to transform industrial processes in the future thereby shaping how the society and the global economy will function. They have several industrial and domestic applications in consumer products, cosmetics, agriculture, soil and groundwater remediation, electronics, energy storage, biomedical and transportation (Besha et al., 2018; Boldrin et al., 2014).

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) or engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) are man made materials produced deliberately for different industrial applications and most commonly having dimension from 1 to 100 nm (Auffan et al., 2009). It is widely acknowledged in the scientific community that ENPs have enormous potential to transform industrial processes in the future thereby shaping how the society and the global economy will function. They have several industrial and domestic applications in consumer products, cosmetics, agriculture, soil and groundwater remediation, electronics, energy storage, biomedical and transportation (Besha et al., 2018; Boldrin et al., 2014).

Sustainability and environmental ethics for the application of engineered nanoparticles
Abreham Tesfaye Beshaa, Yanju Liubc, Dawit N. Bekelebc, Zhaomin Dongd, Ravi Naidubc, Gebru Neda Gebremariama

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“Poison is the wind that blows from the north and south and east.” Marvin Gaye wasn’t an environmental scientist, but his 1971 single “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” provides a stark and useful environmental analysis, complete with warnings of overcrowding and climate change. The song doesn’t explicitly mention race, but its place in Gaye’s What’s Going On album portrays a black Vietnam veteran, coming back to his segregated community and envisioning the hell that people endure.

Gaye’s prophecies relied on the qualitative data of storytelling—of long-circulated anecdotes and warnings within black communities of bad air and water, poison, and cancer. But those warnings have been buttressed by study after study indicating that people of color face disproportionate risks from pollution, and that polluting industries are often located in the middle of their communities.

Late last week, even as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Trump administration continued a plan to dismantle many of the institutions built to address those disproportionate risks, researchers embedded in the EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment released a study indicating that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air. Specifically, the study finds that people in poverty are exposed to more fine particulate matter than people living above poverty. According to the study’s authors, “results at national, state, and county scales all indicate that non-Whites tend to be burdened disproportionately to Whites.”

Trump's EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real
A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency finds that people of color are much more likely to live near polluters and breathe polluted air—even as the agency seeks to roll back regulations on pollution.
Vann R. Newkirk, The Atlantic

Catastrophe 2040...

Harry Taylor, 6, played with the bones of dead livestock on his family’s farm in New South Wales, Australia, an area that has faced severe drought. Credit: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Global Warming, Politics

1.5 degrees Celsius

INCHEON, South Korea — A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”

The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists convened by the United Nations to guide world leaders, describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

The report “is quite a shock, and quite concerning,” said Bill Hare, an author of previous I.P.C.C. reports and a physicist with Climate Analytics, a nonprofit organization. “We were not aware of this just a few years ago.” The report was the first to be commissioned by world leaders under the Paris agreement, the 2015 pact by nations to fight global warming.

The authors found that if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the atmosphere will warm up by as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels by 2040, inundating coastlines and intensifying droughts and poverty. Previous work had focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by a larger number, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), because that was the threshold scientists previously considered for the most severe effects of climate change.

The new report, however, shows that many of those effects will come much sooner, at the 2.7-degree mark.

Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040
Coral Davenport, NY Times

Silencing Future Springs...

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Existentialism, Politics, Women in Science

The above is a very insightful interview from Chris Hedges, which its introduction gives a provocative image (not meant to be demeaning to the poor, nor sexist to women). In the Fermi Paradox that wasn't a paradox and apparently, wasn't Fermi's, the tantalizing, generic question of "where are the aliens?" may simply be answered by: if there were any, their civilization was probably consumed by their hierarchal rich.

Silent Spring began with a “fable for tomorrow” – a true story using a composite of examples drawn from many real communities where the use of DDT had caused damage to wildlife, birds, bees, agricultural animals, domestic pets, and even humans. Carson used it as an introduction to a very scientifically complicated and already controversial subject. This “fable” made an indelible impression on readers and was used by critics to charge that Carson was a fiction writer and not a scientist.

Carson’s passionate concern in Silent Spring is with the future of the planet and all life on Earth. She calls for humans to act responsibly, carefully, and as stewards of the living earth.

Additionally Silent Spring suggested a needed change in how democracies and liberal societies operated so that individuals and groups could question what their governments allowed others to put into the environment. Far from calling for sweeping changes in government policy, Carson believed the federal government was part of the problem. She admonished her readers and audiences to ask “Who Speaks, And Why?” and therein to set the seeds of social revolution. She identified human hubris and financial self-interest as the crux of the problem and asked if we could master ourselves and our appetites to live as though we humans are an equal part of the earth’s systems and not the master of them.

Carson expected criticism, but she did not expect to be personally vilified by the chemical industry and its allies in and out of government. She spent her last years courageously defending the truth of her conclusions until her untimely death in 1964.

Source: Rachel Carson dot org

Neither the Forest Nor the Trees...

Over Population Nightmare from 1960s - Star Trek's Mark of Gideon
Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Politics, Star Trek

It's rare I do a "twofer." However, in the absence of a Starfleet/"Space Farce" or warp drive, we have to start thinking about how we're going to feed, clothe and employ the yet-to-be-born since we've yet to establish interplanetary colonies, let alone interstellar ones. Our "leaders" won't discuss the coming conundrum, hence I can only assume they've got nothing but slogans, jingoism and empty rhetoric bandied to stoke our fears and keep them in their comfortable seats.

"The world is expected to add another billion people within the next 15 years, bringing the total global population from 7.3 billion in mid-2015 to 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to new estimates from the UN." Source: 5 ways the world will look dramatically different in 2100, Ana Swanson, Washington Post

Current assessments of climate change could overestimate the amount of carbon that plants remove from the atmosphere. That’s because models of photosynthesis often leave out a poorly-understood limit on the process. Now US researchers have calculated that if its representation is doubled, climate models predict an additional 9 Gigatonnes of carbon will still be in the atmosphere by 2100, instead of being locked away inside plants.

“Photosynthesis is the largest flux of carbon into terrestrial ecosystems, yet there is still uncertainty in our understanding of its physiological and environmental controls,” says Danica Lombardozzi from the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. “Our findings suggest that TPU [triose phosphate utilisation] currently limits photosynthesis, and TPU limitation may become even more limiting to photosynthesis in the future. Yet TPU-limited photosynthesis is … poorly constrained by observations and is therefore not always included in photosynthesis models.”

Plants may absorb less carbon under climate change, Environmental Research Letters, reported on Physics World

Overpopulation facts - the problem no one will discuss: Alexandra Paul at TEDxTopanga

The Least of These...

Falling harvests and rising prices are in prospect. (Courtesy Morteza Rafikhah, via Wikimedia Commons)

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Economy, Politics

One of Mother Teresa's favorite texts in the Bible, which she often quoted to support her ministry to the poor, is "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40, 45, NIV). Source: Timothy Lent, LinkedIn

An effective climate strategy to protect everyone on Earth, and the natural world as well, is what the planet needs. But Austrian-based scientists have now confirmed something all climate scientists have suspected for more than a decade: there can be no simple, one-size-fits-all solution to the twin challenges of climate change and human poverty.

That catastrophic climate change driven by “business as usual” fossil fuel energy reliance will by 2100 impose devastating costs worldwide, and drive millions from their homes and even homelands, has been repeatedly established.

So has the need to shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources, almost certainly by imposing some kind of “carbon tax” worldwide.

But a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis warns that if agriculture is included in stringent climate mitigation schemes, there will be higher costs in the short term.

If humans don’t act, then climate change driven by global warming will create conditions that will put an extra 24 million people, or perhaps 50 million extra, at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

Sadly, I think with the exacerbation of inequality; the Russian-installed occupant of the American Executive Mansion and the general disposition of self-absorbed humanity, these quotes by the author Fyodor Dostoyevsky encapsulates our current, pitiful state:

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Climate strategy needs tailoring to poorest, Tim Radford, Physics World

Great Seuss!..

The Lorax and the patas monkey both possess distinctive facial hair.
Left: Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Right: Istock/Getty

Topics: Biology, Ecology, Environment, Humor, Philosophy

Near the town of Nanyuki
No Grickle-grass grows
And the wind smells fast and sweet when it blows.
Nevertheless, some scholars propose
That this is the home of the Lorax.

Of the dozens of children’s books, Theodor Seuss Geisel wrote under his pen name — Dr. Seuss — The Lorax was reportedly his favorite. Published in 1971, it tells the story of deforestation and environmental destruction by the Once-ler and his family, despite the protestations of “sort of a man” — the curious Lorax.

Most readers have assumed that the Lorax was a character born in Geisel’s extraordinary mind. But a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on 23 July1 suggests that Geisel was inspired by a monkey that lives across West and East Africa.

“It began at a formal dinner,” says Nathaniel Dominy, an anthropologist and evolutionary biologist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where Geisel once studied. Dominy was seated beside Donald Pease, the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth. “I have two young kids, and because he’s the Geisel professor, I figured Dr. Seuss was some common ground,” says Dominy.

He told Pease that during fieldwork in Kenya, he had often thought that the patas monkey (Erythrocebus patas) looks as if it walked off the page of a Dr. Seuss book.

'I speak for the trees': Could this monkey be Dr. Seuss’s Lorax? Colin Barras, Nature

Freytag's Dénouement...

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism, Global Warming, Octavia Butler

Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: exposition (originally called introduction), rising action (rise), climax, falling action (return or fall), and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe. Dramatic structure - Wikipedia

Completely unplanned but apropos that this post appears on the superstitious "Friday the 13th," the reason for many Jason Voorhees movie serials in my youth. Also phonetically, it is akin to Fredo Corleone from The Godfather, insisting beyond all evidence to the contrary of intellectual acumen, heretofore demonstrably non-existent.

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The late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” says Trump had “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” Source: Steve Chapman, Chicago Times

With their documented disdain of education, Karl Rovian "created realities" to include non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction; anti-science as entrance to "the club" and the tribal (and corporate-manipulated), lock-step climate denialism, it was inevitable this ideology would eventually birth an orange, sacrilegious personification. Amanda Marcotte, author of Troll Nation succinctly ties the right's absence of logic and reason as raison d'etre for its very existence. Their grifter-in-chief's mullet - well past expiration - has become this generations latest troll doll model. This would be funny if they, and he didn't have power.

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Failure to meet the United Nations’ 2ºC warming limits will lead to sea level rise and dire global economic consequences, new research has warned.

Published today in Environmental Research Letters, a study led by the UK National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) found flooding from rising sea levels could cost $14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100 if the target of holding global temperatures below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels is missed.

The researchers also found that upper-middle income countries such as China would see the largest increase in flood costs, whereas the highest income countries would suffer the least, thanks to existing high levels of protection infrastructure.

Svetlana Jevrejeva, from the NOC, is the study’s lead author. She said: “More than 600 million people live in low-elevation coastal areas, less than 10 meters above sea level. In a warming climate, global sea level will rise due to the melting of land-based glaciers and ice sheets, and from the thermal expansion of ocean waters. So, sea level rise is one of the most damaging aspects of our warming climate.”

Sea level projections exist for emissions scenarios and socio-economic scenarios. However, there are no scenarios covering limiting warming below the 2°C and 1.5°C targets during the entire 21st century and beyond. [1]

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The ancillary effects of climate change are brain-eating amoeba in Florida and Louisianna. It is playing a role in tick migrations, especially in the south; particularly in the Carolinas, where I now live again. There's only so much OFF we can wear for mosquitoes along with sunscreen for UV. It goes well beyond snowballs in the well of the Senate by representatives well-compensated by the fossil fuel industry that are the pimps to his prostitution. World population in 2100 is estimated to go from its present 7.6 to 11.2 billion; that presumes the Senator's grandchildren will be a part of that population.

Octavia Butler's short Parable Series is worth your time away from thousands of television stations you'll never watch and news feeds on social media that are either questionable or manipulated by Russian troll farms to manipulate you:

The sequel, “Parable of the Talents,” published in 1998, begins in 2032. By then, various forms of indentured servitude and slavery are common, facilitated by high-tech slave collars. The oppression of women has become extreme; those who express their opinion, “nags,” might have their tongues cut out. People are addicted not only to designer drugs but also to “dream masks,” which generate virtual fantasies as guided dreams, allowing wearers to submerge themselves in simpler, happier lives. News comes in the form of disks or “news bullets,” which “purport to tell us all we need to know in flashy pictures and quick, witty, verbal one-two punches. Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.” The Donner Administration has written off science, but a more immediate threat lurks: a violent movement is being whipped up by a new Presidential candidate, Andrew Steele Jarret, a Texas senator and religious zealot who is running on a platform to “make American great again.”

In her lifetime, Butler insisted that the Parable series was not intended as an augur. “This was not a book about prophecy,” she said, of “Talents,” in remarks she delivered at M.I.T. “This was a cautionary tale, although people have told me it was prophecy. All I have to say to that is: I certainly hope not.” [2]

We miss you, Octavia.

1. Rising sea levels could cost the world $14 trillion a year by 2100, Simon Davies, Physics World
2. Octavia Butler’s Prescient Vision of a Zealot Elected to “Make America Great Again", Abby Aguirre, New Yorker

Tears for the Baobab...

GIF image from Nature.
The African baobab is one of the continent’s most recognizable tree species. Credit: Hougaard Malan/naturepl.com

Topics: Biology, Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism

Africa’s iconic baobab trees are dying, and scientists don’t know why. In a study intended to examine why the trees are so long-living, researchers made the unexpected finding that many of the oldest and largest of the trees have died in the past decade or so.

The African baobab tree (Adansonia digitata) is the oldest living flowering plant, or angiosperm, and is found in the continent’s tropical regions. Individual trees — which can contain up to 500 cubic metres of wood — can live for more than 2,000 years. Their wide trunks often have hollow cavities, and their high branches resemble roots sticking up into the air.

The researchers — who published their findings in Nature Plants on 11 June — set out to use a newly developed radiocarbon-dating technique to study the age and architecture of the species. Usual tree-ring dating methods are not suitable for baobabs, because their trunks do not necessarily grow annual rings.

The trees’ ages were previously attributed to their size, and in local folklore, baobabs are often described as being old, says study author Adrian Patrut, a radiochemist at Babeş-Bolyai University in Romania.

Africa’s majestic baobab trees are mysteriously dying, Sarah Wild, Nature

Cause and Effect...

Image Source: NASA.gov

Topics: Climate Change, Commentary, Ecology, Politics, Research

Also:

In Photos: The Southern California Wildfires of 2017 Seen from Space, Christine Lunsford, Space.com Contributor

Assuredly climate change has something to do with the California fires, but TIME lists it last as one of a number of causes; CNN says "we don't know," but mention several factors like the Santa Ana winds that can spread it in the years-long dry conditions that preceded this tragedy. There's a tendency to leap to the "aha" and go with what happens to be the proclivities of your particular tribal group. Unfortunately, these tend to be the ones that appreciate and understand science, and those that consider it something to fear when it challenges the other tribe's dogma.

We've had fires with lightening strikes since humanity was comprised of hunter-gatherer migrating groups. We've had fires with the advent of agriculture, cities and civilization. What matters is whether we believe in a collective effort to write policies that will protect life and property - now derisively known as government, that some in the human tribe run for, then put themselves in a position to thwart any solutions from it. "Pluck" alone will not solve our problems. We lack, as I've said on posts previous to this one, a depth of understanding in the following:

Civics - the study of the rights and duties of citizens and of how government works,

Source: Merriam-Webster

Epistemology - Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.

Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Science - a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work. It is also the body of knowledge accumulated through the discoveries about all the things in the universe.

The word "science" is derived from the Latin word scientia, which is knowledge based on demonstrable and reproducible data, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. True to this definition, science aims for measurable results through testing and analysis. Science is based on fact, not opinion or preferences.

Scientific Method - When conducting research, scientists use the scientific method to collect measurable, empirical evidence in an experiment related to a hypothesis (often in the form of an if/then statement), the results aiming to support or contradict a theory.

The steps of the scientific method go something like this:

1. Make an observation or observations.

2. Ask questions about the observations and gather information.

3. Form a hypothesis — a tentative description of what's been observed, and make predictions based on that hypothesis.

4. Test the hypothesis and predictions in an experiment that can be reproduced.

5. Analyze the data and draw conclusions; accept or reject the hypothesis or modify the hypothesis if necessary.

6. Reproduce the experiment until there are no discrepancies between observations and theory. "

Source: Live Science - Science & the Scientific Method

Science along with its subset engineering deals in the natural sciences, i.e. those things that relate to nature or phenomena that can be observed, defined, measured, calculated, or quantized (quantum mechanics I'm alluding to here). Once the subject goes into the supernatural, whatever the argument, it is no longer science.

That does not mean science is incompatible with wonder:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Thomas Jefferson fashioned our federal republic after Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon and Sir John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. We have to decide as a species what path we're going to follow - belief or rationality. One is a function of culture, and a source of comfort to many in particular groups; the other the natural outcome of our previous hunter-gatherer ancestors. It is a matter of survival. It would be culturally arrogant and supremely stupid to consider after 5 mass extinction events, we could not hurry the next one. As matter-of-fact, we're within and on track for the sixth. It is a dark poetry that lead (Pb) in-then modern plumbing had previously been suspected as ending the world empire of Rome (it didn't). The current one appears being scuttled by enabled Silicon transistors, transmitting 140 (now 280) characters. Little did we know our future epitaph - that will be unearthed by any curious alien archaeologists, assuming they will have survived their own intelligence Entropy for deep space travel - is being written in this daily inanity of "alternative facts."

Related link:
Nobel Week Dialog: Science and Society - the Future of Truth

Gag Orders...

Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism

A U.S. Forest Service scientist who was scheduled to talk about the role that climate change plays in wildfire conditions was denied approval to attend the conference featuring fire experts from around the country.

William Jolly, a research ecologist with the agency's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., was supposed to give a 30-minute presentation titled "Climate-Induced Variations in Global Severe Fire Weather Conditions" at the International Fire Congress in Orlando, Fla., next month. The event is hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE).

The travel denial follows reports last week that U.S. EPA blocked three scientists from making presentations at a conference in Rhode Island featuring climate change. Critics accused the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science.

"It's kind of weird that they would make it hard for a government scientist to take part in this because managing wildfire is a huge challenge logistically and financially on a vast array of federal lands," he said. "These scientists, by participating in these kinds of society meetings, share their thoughts and hear other people's thoughts, which is important because their work is supposed to form how these lands are managed and how we prepare for and adapt under climate change."

Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires
Brittany Patterson, Scientific American, ClimateWire

Terraforming Earth...

What Mars might look like after centuries of terraformation. Image: NASA/ZME Science

Topics: Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Cosmic Connection, Earth, Ecology, Space Exploration, Terraforming

(Okay, somewhat "down-to-Earth"): The first time I read the concept of terraforming ("Earth-shaping") was in the book by Carl Sagan, "The Cosmic Connection" (see chapter 22: "Terraforming the Planets"). In it, he recounted a proposal he made in 1961 to seed algae in Venus' atmosphere to over a period of time cool it enough for human habitation. Biophysicist Robert Haynes coined the "neologism Ecopoiesis, forming the word from the Greek οἶκος, oikos, 'house', and ποίησις, poiesis, 'production'".There was apparently a symposium hosted by NASA in 1979; a book originally printed in 1984: "The Greening of Mars" (ref: Wikipedia). It has a long history in scientific and science fiction thought. Terraforming the planets only makes sense as they are far closer than exoplanets, and we don't have to contest a planet's resources with its inhabitants since as far as we can tell, there aren't any.

Zeroth thought: "Earth-shaping Earth" is redundant and silly. First thought of a geoengineering solution is it requires nothing of the polluters that got us here in the first place. No slight at all to the researchers, just that if you create a fat pill, no one's going to change their diets or continue exercising for increased health: it's the global equivalent of a couch potato, or a public ever more nonchalant about a pending global crisis that we'll "snap our fingers" and fix. Second thought: creating "life forms that clean" could have unintended consequences, as the authors of the Technology Review write up below alludes to. Third: note the photo of Mars above. That's a projection of centuries, not a few months before the first space RVs and suburban settlements. From the aspect of a society that has become entirely too push-button and "hit the reset" oriented, it seems it would be better on our own planet to mitigate anthropogenic climate disruption (a more apt descriptor) with policy and societal change in behaviors. Giving an engineering solution to this important issue without backing legislation or political will is similar in pouring gasoline simultaneously as the fire department attempts to put out a raging blaze.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The inexorable rise of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the steady increase in global temperatures raise the frightening prospect of significant change in Earth’s climate. Indeed, the evidence seems clear that our climate is altering rapidly.

So scientists and politicians the world over are looking for ways to halt or reverse these changes, a task that is fraught with difficulties in a world hooked on fossil fuels. One option increasingly discussed is terraforming—deliberately altering the environment in a way that cools the planet, perhaps by absorbing carbon dioxide or reflecting sunlight.

To have an impact, these kinds of plans changes must have a global reach require engineering projects of previously unimaginable scale. That’s set bioengineers thinking that there might be an alternative option.

Instead of creating global engineering projects, why not create life forms that do a similar job instead. The big advantage of this approach is that organisms grow naturally and can spread across huge areas of the planet by the ordinary mechanisms of life. Thus the process of terraforming the landscape would occur with minimal human input. What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty. The big fear is that these approach could have unexpected and unintended consequences for the planet. One nightmare scenario is that the organisms might unintentionally trigger feedback mechanisms that accelerate global warming rather than mitigate it. So an important question is how to prevent this scenario.

Physics arXiv: Synthetic circuit designs for Earth terraformation
Ricard Solé, Salva Duran-Nebreda, Raul Montañez
Space.com:
Shell-Worlds: How Humanity Could Terraform Small Planets (Infographic), Karl Tate

1994 to 2014...

Image source

The second Tuesday then was November 8, 1994. It was twenty years ago Saturday. We were having a meeting of the Austin Alumni Chapter of NSBE at the University Hills Branch Library in Austin, Texas. I had voted a week before.

It became painfully obvious to me from casual conversations at that meeting that I was apparently the only engineer that had bothered to vote. I was in a crowd I respected - colleagues whose work I'd referenced - I thought, "really?" That was the launch of Newton Gingrich along with the current Speaker of the House John Boehner and the affable television personality Joe Scarborough (I'm being very facetious), and the so-called "Contract With America" preceding the first government shutdown, '95 - 96. Then, as now, it was a non-presidential, off-year election, when we were - then, and now - picking the legislative branch of government: Congress, consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. That's the congress the next president will be working with largely after 2016.

The House Science Committee will decide how we'll address greenhouse gas emissions and global warming...or, not. Evidence doesn't seem to sway the current members of the committee, most of whom don't have a background in science or an appreciation for it. The House will either empower or further curtail the EPA; the FDA; Wall Street deregulation (because deregulation worked so well in 2008). You think they're going to vote on background checks with the NRA writing checks? The only vote they're clamoring for is impeachment, and we've seen they don't need facts or reality to do anything extraordinarily insane like...another government shutdown. The House and Senate will decide the focus of the K-12 science education curriculum and university research dollars for years to come. That could determine whether we'll remain competitive in the global marketplace with a pipeline preparing a skilled labor force in a highly technological society...or, not. I have my druthers junk pseudoscience pushed down our collective throats as science fulfilling this need. The new Senate will either confirm or stall any appointments to the Federal or Supreme Court...bet on stall.

We, as an electorate, don't like to think of the army of lobbyists that pull and tug at our legislators on a daily basis, but we have to; that their whole time spent between elections is gearing up and fundraising for another election and watching either their right/left flank respective of party to thwart a primary challenge from an extreme of center. We like to think of our "public servants" doing work for the "common good," not a revolving door connection that they'll use once their government careers are over: for which they'll get a nice retirement at pretty close to their current salaries, premium healthcare and a cushy 7-figure lobbyist's job. "Do not cry for me, Argentina" (Evita).

Sadly, there will be more citizens in long lines after Thanksgiving for things they can't afford and don't need, but won't for their right to vote. The 113th Congress worked a total of 133 days for a full year's 6-figure salary, so I doubt they'll increase their workload in the 114th. Although, carting feces for their beneficent overlords is a bit of heavy lifting. I don't agree with basing voter ID laws on 31 actual cases out of a billion, but enough time has elapsed to where enough ID's could have been obtained. There was no excuse in 1994; there is none acceptable now.

I've witnessed breathtaking verbal Jujitsu and Kabuki dance offs by disingenuous, [obviously now] failed candidates distancing themselves from their party's leader which only means in a red state, they suddenly "discovered" with horror they voted for (gasp) "that guy"! (That worked so well for "Presidents'" Gore, McCain and Romney.) It was disrespect shown to both the president and constituents - African American, Asian, Hispanic/Latino - that share in common a higher degree of Melanin and the eventual majority in 2042. It was pure disdain: one party overt; the other clumsy and comedic. It appears in the two-party system, "corporations are [the only] people" politicians care about. These lightweights needed to learn "the dozens": Yes, I voted for him, did you want me to vote for someone else? Your guy? Please! A pathetic display of spinelessness. No analysis post game or naval gazing will be necessary: feckless cowards all! I'm with Bill Mahr on this one.

I remember my sister, a young woman that had quite a made up mind back in the sixties. When you see African American young people getting hosed or bitten by dogs on video, there for most is a detached nostalgia. Because it was my sister with the bites, cuts and stitches, it is cringe-worthy viewing for me.

I remember my wife's grandfather: my mother-in-law saw her father's legs dangling from his truck as it ambled up a Louisiana dirt road. "Paw-Paw" was hanging on to the steering wheel and the door, his head bloodied and bowed. His family got him to the nearest hospital in time - he almost died. Seems the Klan didn't take too kindly a preacher exercising his right to vote. Burning crosses; beating preachers near-to-death: Christian organization...right. Paw-Paw rests now with the honored ancestors, succumbed to natural causes.

Those are two people that "I" know personally that for their sacrifice, I cannot fathom NOT voting. I did my part; my conscience is clear.

If we don't make our voices loud, the only sound our representatives will hear is the clink of coins; the whisper of bills into the reelection coffers. A Texas colloquialism goes: "you got to dance with the one that brung ya!"

It's up to us whether that is a salute to Francis Scott Key's "Star Spangled Banner"...or an oligarch's lap dance.

I hate to be so graphic, but our so-called elected representatives can be either representative politicians or paid-for prostitutes: they cannot be both!

One Big Step...

Bright Hub: Careers in Environmental Science

...and hopefully, a giant leap for the species.

On Monday (today) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to unveil proposed regulations that could be the biggest step the U.S. has taken yet toward dealing with climate change. The regulations would limit emissions from power plants, which currently account for 40 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, by far the biggest source.

“There’s a good chance that when history is written, this will be seen as the moment when the U.S. fully committed to combating climate change,” says Michael Greenstone, professor of environmental economics at MIT. “It’s a tremendous step forward.”

MIT Technology Review:
EPA to Take Biggest Step Ever to Fight Climate Change, Kevin Bullis

Ragnarok...

Source: Live Science Link below

Ragnarok by Reginald L. Goodwin

Amazon.com: The Sixth Extinction - An Unnatural History, Elisabeth Kolbert
Live Science: Civilization Doomed by Over-consumption, Wealth Inequality
Live Science: Society is Doomed, Scientists Claim

Life on Earth...

Source: PHUTURELABS

The American Association for the Advancement of Science had an insightful title: "Global Challenges: Sustaining Life on Earth." Some excerpts from each sub link:

Will The World Have Enough Energy in 2040?

By 2040, planet Earth will be home to nearly 9 billion people — up roughly 2 billion from today — all requiring access to energy supplies in order to participate in modern life. We have the natural resources to meet global projected energy demands in 2040, but how to do so equitably and without exacerbating global warming are more difficult questions, experts said at a AAAS event.

The challenges will be less acute in the developed world, where energy use is projected to stay mostly steady in the next three decades. But the next 30 years should see energy demand surge in other countries whose economies are growing rapidly, especially those in Asia, according to representatives from Exxon-Mobil and the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Though they differ in their finer points, projections by both organizations show global energy use growing from roughly 400 quadrillion BTU's in 2000 to over 700 quadrillion BTU's by 2040 with virtually all of the increase coming from outside today's high-income countries. At that point, less than half of the world's oil resources will be consumed, according to Rob Gardner, manager of the Economics and Energy Division of Exxon-Mobil's Corporate Strategic Planning Department. The company also estimates that the remaining recoverable global resources of natural gas are enough to meet current demand for about 200 years

Societies' Nearsightedness Poses Main Obstacle to Extreme Weather Preparation

Extreme weather: Everybody talks about it, but human nature often gets in the way of our doing something about it. This was the consensus among scientists who participated in a discussion about "Building Resilience to Extreme Weather," at the AAAS headquarters auditorium in downtown Washington, DC.

Scientists, engineers and others who study extreme weather have proposed numerous ways to reduce the suffering and damage inflicted by hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, deluges, droughts and such. Obstacles to implementing these measures often arise because peoples' perspectives are short-term and localized, while nature's patterns are vastly longer-term and global, the speakers said.

Society could benefit greatly by taking the same approach to natural hazards as that taken by the aviation industry toward air disasters, which means "learning from experience," he said. For instance, if a wing falls off a plane, the official reaction is that "this must never happen again.'"

Promising Advances in Conservation Science May Test Existing Policies

Already, scientists have cloned an extinct goat-specifically, a Portuguese subspecies of the Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica), said Haig, one of three speakers who joined moderator Richard Harris of National Public Radio to discuss the frontiers of conservation science and policy. The ibex clone, produced after Spanish and French scientists inserted preserved DNA into a modern goat egg and made 57 implantation attempts, died shortly after birth. In Australia, researchers also have so far cloned early embryos of a mouth-brooding frog (Rheobatrachus) that used its stomach as a womb before habitat loss prompted it to go extinct some 30 years ago. Other research teams have announced plans to try and resurrect the carrier pigeon, the woolly mammoth, an extinct type of cattle known as the auroch, and other animals, using a combination of cloning and selective breeding methods.

Energy, climate, biodiversity: three tall-orders that science is up to the task with the noted exception (lack) of political will and obfuscation from our leaders. At issue is the engineered public distrust of prepared experts on science, and their misplaced trust in "thought leaders" that parrot talking points for respective myopic energy industries. Change at this point could affect their business model, and it might. I'm betting with the right incentives, that change could be mutually beneficial: the climate on earth somewhat stabilized, meaning the economies of nations stable as well, thus more with the means to consume responsibly, and would so gladly. Making money on war, misery and social stratification can only go so far (after all, the Earth is only an estimated 1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters), rather large, but not infinite. Especially for 9 billion souls that will require food, housing and employment. Our species will have to become space faring to survive.

It would be a shame our venture into the stars via Mars is an evacuation versus a colonization. The Red Planet's atmosphere is currently too thin for human life. It would take several centuries of Terra-forming to get it habitable. It would take starting that process.

Our planet is our star ship, and our only practice field. It will stand testament as evidence of our stewardship...or lack thereof.

American Association for the Advancement of Science:
Global Challenges: Sustaining Life on Earth, 11 December 2013, Kathy Wren