Archive for the 'Newsletter' Category

Photo by study author Pascal Geraghty, New South Wales Department of Primary Industry

By WhySharksMatters from Southern Fried Science

Last week, a team of 10 Australian scientists announced that they had found the world’s first “shark hybrids”, offspring of individuals from two different shark species which had interbred. During a routine survey of Australian marine life, 57 sharks were found that physically resembled one species of shark, but had genetic markers inconsistent with that species. Subsequent genetic investigation revealed that these 57 animals were hybrids between common blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus) and Australian blacktip sharks (C. tilstoni).

Some of these hybrids were “F1?, meaning that one parents was a common blacktip and one was an Australian blacktip. Others were “B+”(backcrossed), which means that one parent was a common blacktip/Australian blacktip hybrid, and the other was a “purebreed” of one of those two species. According to the study’s lead author, Dr. Jess Morgan of the University of Queensland, ”our genetic marker tells us that these hybrids are ‘at least’ F1, and that these animals are reproductively viable and can produce an F2…the hybrids may be generations past F2 but the existing genetic markers can’t distinguish how many generations past the second cross have occurred.”

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A coal-fired power plant in Changchun, China. Many environmental officials say all countries should be bound by the same rules. Photo from the Associated Press

By John M. Broder from The New York Times

For 17 years, officials from nearly 200 countries have gathered under the auspices of the United Nations to try to deal with one of the most vexing questions of our era — how to slow the heating of the planet.

Every year they leave a trail of disillusion and discontent, particularly among the poorest nations and those most vulnerable to rising seas and spreading deserts. Every year they fail to significantly advance their own stated goal of keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

That was the case again this year. The event, the 17th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, wrapped up early Sunday morning with modest accomplishments: the promise to work toward a new global treaty in coming years and the establishment of a new climate fund.

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Image by Brett Ryder

From the Economist

Shorlty before the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, many companies got into green. The summit was expected to lead to new regulations restricting greenhouse-gas emissions. Dozens of chief executives came to see history being made and to be seen on the right side of it. But Copenhagen was a flop. Most firms turned their thoughts elsewhere. Only four bosses showed up at the next annual climate meet, in Cancún. Few are expected at this year’s bash, which begins in Durban on November 28th.

Alas, that represents a realistic assessment of the Durban summit’s chances of delivering anything like the long-term certainty that businesses crave. Of 300 bosses of big global firms recently quizzed by Ernst & Young, 83% said they wanted to see a legally binding multilateral deal struck in Durban to update the ailing Kyoto protocol and help to put a price on carbon emissions. But only 18% expect this to happen. The absence of a clear climate policy helps explain why, for example, investment in British clean technology fell from around $11 billion in 2009 to $3 billion last year. It would also suggest that any firm factoring a steep carbon price into its plans—as Shell does, assuming a notional price of $40 a tonne—should quietly lower it.

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Image by Jefferson Beck/Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA/AP

By Charles Q. Choi from the Christian Science Monitor

Antarctica’s vast ice sheets first grew when carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere sharply declined millions of years ago, scientists now find.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — it traps heat radiating away from the Earth’s surface. High levels of it in the atmosphere are linked with global warming, while low levels are linked with global cooling. Many such periods of warming and cooling have occurred in the Earth’s history, with repercussions for climate around the planet.

But reconstructions of what atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were like back when glaciers began to cover Antarctica nearly 34 million years ago had appeared contradictory. Some research actually suggested carbon dioxide levels rose just before and across this time, a period known as the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition, which is the opposite of what would be expected as prime glacier-growing conditions.

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From ScienceDaily

More than half of eastern U.S. tree species examined in a massive new Duke University-led study aren’t adapting to climate change as quickly or consistently as predicted.

“Many models have suggested that trees will migrate rapidly to higher latitudes and elevations in response to warming temperatures, but evidence for a consistent, climate-driven northward migration is essentially absent in this large analysis,” says James S. Clark, H.L. Blomquist Professor of Environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Nearly 59 percent of the species examined by Clark and his colleagues showed signs that their geographic ranges are contracting from both the north and south.

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