Author Archives: JulianGaray

Congressional climate deniers are getting called on their BS at town halls this week.

by JulianGaray Posted on February 22, 2017

The protesters gathered in Boston’s Copley Square with some impressively nerdy signs, including “Scientists are wicked smaht” and “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.”

The rally coincided with the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held a few blocks away, but was not sponsored by the scientific organization. In fact, scientists have often been wary of participating in political demonstrations, citing the need for science to be objective and nonpartisan.

“We’re not protesting a party,” one scientist told the Boston Globe. “As scientists, we want to support truth.”

Truth, however, has increasingly become a political issue, with an administration that has denied climate change, attacked the value of the EPA, and put forward a non-evidence-based travel ban that would adversely affect many scientists and researchers in the United States. As one sign at the rally put it, “Alternative facts are the square root of negative one.” That is, imaginary.

Sunday’s rally was a warm-up act for the March for Science, which is expected to bring many thousands of scientists to Washington, D.C., on April 22, Earth Day.

Continue at source:  

Congressional climate deniers are getting called on their BS at town halls this week.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Congressional climate deniers are getting called on their BS at town halls this week.

These itty bitty creatures fight global warming from the bottom of the sea

by JulianGaray Posted on October 14, 2014

These itty bitty creatures fight global warming from the bottom of the sea

By

14 Oct 2014 6:40 PM

Share

Share

These itty bitty creatures fight global warming from the bottom of the sea

×

What did you have for breakfast? I bet it wasn’t methane, because that would be bizarre for (presumably) a human like yourself — but did you know that some weird lil’ creatures out there actually breathe the stuff on the reg?

Specifically, we’re talking microbes that live deep on the sea floor and in rocky outcroppings, known as seamounts, according to a new study out this week in the journal Nature Communications. The microbes in question are actually two species: bacteria and some other organisms known as “anaerobic methanotrophs,” catchily nicknamed ANME. The tag team breathes methane, by way of sulfate ions found in seawater, instead of oxygen — and while doing so, the organisms also manage to sequester a non-trivial amount of the greenhouse gas:

“Without this biological process, much of that methane would enter the water column, and the escape rates into the atmosphere would probably be quite a bit higher,” says study first author Jeffrey Marlow, a geobiology graduate student in [lead researcher Victoria] Orphan’s lab.

These methane-metabolizers have been studied before, but only in the sediment in seafloor vents, where methane is actively bubbling into the water. If they are also present deep within the rock of these seamounts, that means there’s a lot more habitat for these global-warming-fighting organisms to use.

The downside? The rock-resident microbes were only about one-third as effective at sequestering methane as their mud-dwelling relatives. So while the question of exactly HOW MUCH methane a bunch of germs can really gobble down is still open, at least we can say that, in a world of methane, every bit counts.

Source:
Rock-Dwelling Microbes Remove Methane from Deep Sea

, CalTech.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Read the article: 

These itty bitty creatures fight global warming from the bottom of the sea

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on These itty bitty creatures fight global warming from the bottom of the sea

Open War in Ukraine Is a Little Bit Closer Every Day

by JulianGaray Posted on August 15, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

“Maybe it’s just me,” tweets Blake Hounshell, “but open warfare between Ukraine and Russia seems like a BFD.”

Yes indeed. As it happens, we’re not quite at the stage of open warfare yet, but we sure seem to be getting mighty close. Remember that Russian “aid convoy” that everyone was so suspicious of? Well, it turns out to be….pretty suspicious. BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg says that upon inspection, many of the 280 trucks turned out to be “almost empty.” Yesterday we received reports of a column of Russian military vehicles crossing the border into Ukraine as the aid convoy idled nearby, and that was confirmed by NATO earlier today. A little later, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced that Ukraine had destroyed “the majority” of the column.

In one sense, this is nothing new. Ukraine has been saying for months that Moscow is backing pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, and more recently Ukraine began an aggressive fighting to expel them. Still, this does appear to be an escalation. Between the mysterious aid convoy and the military column that may or may not have been largely destroyed by Ukrainian forces, warfare is indeed becoming a little more open every day.

Link – 

Open War in Ukraine Is a Little Bit Closer Every Day

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Open War in Ukraine Is a Little Bit Closer Every Day