Blog for a Better World

A group of 1,700 leading scientists called on the US government last June to take the lead in fighting global warming. Citing the unprecedented and unanticipated effects of global warming, the scientists, including six Nobel prizewinners, presented a letter calling for an immediate reduction in US carbon emissions. The letter warns if emissions continue unabated, the nation and the world will face more sea level rise, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, snowmelt, flood risk, and public health threats, as well as increased rates of plant and animal species extinctions.  The scientists call on the government to reduce emissions on the order of 80% below 2000 levels by 2050; but as a first step, the scientists call for a 15-20% reduction on 2000 levels by 2020.

For nearly seven years, scientist Bruce E. Ivins and a small circle of fellow anthrax specialists at Fort Detrick’s Army medical lab, in tactics that the researchers considered heavy-handed and often threatening, were interviewed and polygraphed as early as 2002, and reinterviewed numerous times. Their labs were searched, and their computers and equipment carted away. The FBI eventually focused on Ivins, whom federal prosecutors were planning to indict when he committed suicide.  Colleagues and friends of Ivins remained convinced that he was innocent; he had neither the motive nor the means to create the lethal powder that was sent by mail to new outlets and congressional offices in 2001.  They contend that the FBI has no evidence and that a lot of the tactics that they used were designed to isolate him from his support. The FBI just continued to push his buttons.

Researchers have worked out how rib-extensions helped a 225 million year old reptile glide through the air, with a little help from a wind tunnel.  Although the weird rib-growths of Kuehneosuchus and Kuehneosaurus were long thought to be related to flight it was not clear how they worked, says Koen Stein, who did the work when a palaeobiology student at the University of Bristol in the UK.  To help understand the flight of the two Kuehns, Stein and colleagues built models of the two very similar reptiles and stuck them in a wind tunnel.  To their surprise, they found that Kuehneosuchus was aerodynamically very stable. Jumping from a five-meter tree, it could easily have crossed nine meters distance before landing on the ground. The other form, Kuehneosaurus, was more of a parachutist than a glider.

Russian scientists have abandoned their polar research base after the ice it was floating on started melting faster than expected.  The 20 polar researchers and their two dogs climbed on board a research icebreaker and all scientific programs at the station have been stopped.  The research base was set up in September on a five kilometers by three kilometers ice flow which averaged 1.5 thick. By the time the scientists abandoned base on Sunday, it was just 600 meters by 300 meters. This year’s Arctic melt started early than usual and there’s a bit of a trend for less Arctic ice.