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Svalbarg Global Seed Bank, in Norway. Credit (both images): Mari Tefre, Global Crop Diversity Trust
The Obama administration has ushered in an “Era of Responsibility” and brows are furrowed all over the globe about climate change.
One man is taking the opportunity to suggest an area of responsibility — and a way to boost the chance for human survival no matter what comes down from the skies.
Seeds.
The cultivation of seeds helped forge the success of the human species, and Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, says some of the oldest varieties could hold the key to worldwide food security into the future. He’s urging people to remember the seeds that evolved with farmers over thousands of years, even as modern agriculture largely ignores them.
Fowler, a two-time cancer survivor with a renewed purpose, has endeavored to save as many of the world’s seeds as he can. His organization is behind the pioneering effort to build and operate the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, in Norway, and is enjoying good, early success at collecting at-risk and agriculturally important seeds to store there. Just two years after launching its effort to save endangered crop species, the Trust has announced that it’s on track to save from extinction 100,000 different varieties of food crops from 46 countries, making it one of the largest and most successful biological rescue efforts ever undertaken.
“We are moving quickly to regenerate and preserve seed samples representing thousands of distinct varieties of critical food crops like rice, maize, and wheat in 46 countries that were well on their way to total extinction,” Fowler said. “I think it is fair to say that without this effort, many of them would have been lost forever.”
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USGS scientists have predicted that, if atmospheric CO2 levels aren't controlled, glaciers at Glacier National Park could be gone by 2030. Photo by Anne Minard.
It’s a bit of an understatement to say journalists have been coming under scrutiny lately for coverage of climate change. On the extreme end of the criticism is the allegation that “the media” (can you tell I hate that, “the media?”) is deliberately hoodwinking the general public to believe in global warming. I’m not really sure I understand why “the media,” of which I am a living, breathing member, would be accused of a crafted conspiracy to promulgate a myth of global warming. That’s odd. Who would be the target of such a conspiracy, and who would benefit?
A more mainstream observation, which is coming from even within the ranks of journalists, is that we’ve gotten some of our reporting wrong, that we haven’t done due diligence in vetting the facts.
Two examples:
Vicky Pope, head of climate change for government at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom, wrote a guest column for the UK’s The Guardian in which she blasts both global warming activists and global warming skeptics for exploiting short-term temperature changes to advance their respective arguments. Those misuses of data are irresponsible, she says, and distract from what should be a unified effort to reduce the pollutants we put into the atmosphere. James Hrynyshyn reported Vicky Pope’s statement late last week in his blog, and got a handful of useful comments underneath.
New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin cautioned his fellow journalists in a recent panel to not be seduced by the “story of the moment.” For example, he said, the question is not, “Will President Barack Obama be able to pass a climate bill?” but rather, “Is the atmosphere going to notice?” That dialogue took place at the American Museum of Natural History last week, and was reported in the blog of the Columbia Journalism Review.
And so the implication seems to be that media members are at risk of being “seduced” by quick-turnaround stories and alarmist perspectives. All of this criticism bothers me, because I’m a journalist who has written some stories on human-caused climate change — and who has accepted it as fact. It’s fair to say I’m afraid something I think I know could turn out to be wrong. As such, my heart leaps into my throat when I see attacks on prevailing beliefs about global warming, like I did late last week underneath a blog post by Tom Yulsman at CEJournal.
That’s my bias; I’ll state it clearly: I’ve believed for some time that global warming is real and actionable, and I have a visceral reaction when people say it’s phony. And so, fully aware of this bias — and trying to put it aside — I’ve delved into some fresh research on the subject. (more…)
Original portrait by Justus Sustermans painted in 1636.
What a week for noble births! Last Thursday marked the 200th birthdays for both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, and today marks the 445th year since the Feb. 15, 1564 birth of Galileo Galilei, the inventor of the telescope, whose controversial astronomy views landed him on house arrest for the final 19 years of his life. Galileo, a devout Catholic, ran into trouble with the Catholic Church because he publicly supported a sun-centered view of the solar system initially proposed by Copernicus. At the time, the Church adhered to an Earth-centered view that had been fronted by Ptolemy and others, and considered Galileo a heretic for countering it. Galileo’s first telescope was 9 power and he accomplished a power of 30 in his lifetime. These days, amateur telescopes boast powers into the hundreds, and the giant professional telescopes, with their 30-foot mirrors that weigh tens of tons, are no longer discussed in terms of power — but how well they detect objects billions of light-years from Earth. Today’s 365 Days of Astronomy podcast has a great segment on Galileo here.
Incidentally, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, a global celebration of astronomy honoring the 400th year since the invention of the telescope. Loads of educational and outreach programs are geared toward space enthusiasts of all varieties. Check it out!
Final breakdown on science stimulus funding, from ScienceDebate2008
ScienceDebate2008 and AAAS have tallied the final numbers for science funding in the stimulus package. The graphic at right will open in a new page if you click on it. Kudos to Arizona State Geologist Lee Allison for putting these on his blog.
Three-dimensional cryo-electron tomogram of two different Borrelia species. Credit: Heidelberg University Hospital
Researchers in Germany and Russia have been spying on the creepy little bacteria that cause Lyme’s Disease, and think they may be closing in on an Achilles Heel. And that could translate into good news someday for the roughly 30,000 people who contract the tick-born disease in the United States each year (see map) — and the 80,000 annual cases in Germany.
The Lymes disease bacterium, called Borrelia burgdorferi, has evolved impressively crafty strategies for breaching the human body’s defenses. The spiral-shaped, actively motile bacteria have flexible, pliable bodies propelled by a whiplike structure called a flagella. Researchers have long suspected that the motility of the pathogen is the key to its wildly successful infectiousness.
Now they have evidence to back it up.
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