Science
Fight climate change like it's World War III: 4 potent weapons to deploy – Phys.org
by David Blair, Bruce Hobbs, David Franklin Treagust and Malcolm McCulloch, The Conversation
In 1896 Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius explored whether Earth’s temperatures were influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere. He calculated that if carbon dioxide concentrations doubled, global temperatures would rise 5℃ – even more at the poles.
Just over a century later, the world is on track to fulfilling Arrhenius’ prediction. If we continue on the current trajectory, Earth will warm up to 4.8℃ above pre-industrial times by 2100.
We are a group of experts in physics, geology, science education, coral reefs and climate system science. We believe the lack of progress by governments in reducing global emissions means bold solutions are now urgently needed.
We must fight climate change like it’s World War III—and battle on many fronts. Here we examine four of them.
1. Plant a lot more trees
Tree-planting has enormous potential to tackle to climate crisis. Recent research calculated that worldwide 900 million hectares of additional tree cover could exist outside of already-established forests, farmland and urban areas—sufficient to store 25% of the current atmospheric carbon pool. Forests act to increase cloud and rainfall and reduce temperatures.
The grand vision of the Gondwana link project in Western Australia is an example of what can be done. It is reconnecting fragmented ecosystems to create a continuous 1,000km corridor of bushland.
Broadscale land clearing must cease and a massive program of tree planting should be implemented in all possible areas. Such a program would provide huge small business employment opportunities. It requires incentives and partnerships that could be funded through taxes on carbon emissions.
Renewable energy-powered desalination may be required in some places to provide the water needed to establish forests in drought conditions. This meshes with an important new technology: carbon mineralisation.
2. Turn carbon dioxide into rock
Carbon mineralisation involves turning carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals by emulating the way seashells and limestone are made naturally.
Many techniques have been researched and proposed. These include capturing carbon dioxide from industrial plants and bubbling it through brine from desalination plants, or capturing it from nickel mine tailings using bacteria.
Huge quantities of CO₂ can potentially be captured in this way, creating useful building materials as a by-product.
Demonstration plants should now be trialled in Australia, with a view to rapid scaling up to commercialisation.
3. Make Earth’s surface more reflective
Solar radiation management describes techniques to reflect solar energy (sunlight) back to space, and so counteract planetary heating.
Changing the reflectivity of surfaces, such as by painting a dark roof white, reduces absorbed heat enormously and could cool cities. On larger scales we can dust asphalt roads with limestone, retain pale stubble on farms over summer and plant paler crops.
Studies suggest lighter land surfaces have good potential for cooling at a regional scale, and may lower extreme temperatures by up to 3℃.
Such methods also indirectly cut greenhouse gas emissions by reducing air-conditioner use.
4. Reimagine transport
Economic mechanisms are essential to accelerate the transition to renewable energy, energy storage and zero-emission transport.
The international shipping industry emitted about 800 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2015, and this figure is expected to double by mid-century.
For all ships not powered by renewable energy, research suggests speed limits could be lowered by 20% to reduce fuel use. Australia could lead the world by scaling berthing charges according to satellite-monitored ship speeds.
Australia should also follow the lead of Norway which offers generous financial incentives to encourage zero-emission vehicles (powered by hydrogen or electricity). These include sales tax exemption and free parking in some places. And it’s worked: almost 60% of new cars sold in Norway in March 2019 were reportedly entirely electric-powered.
Where to next?
The above list is by no means exhaustive. Australia’s bid to sell emissions reduction to the world as renewable hydrogen and electricity should be massively accelerated, and expanded to the scale of the Apollo mission’s race to the Moon.
We must slash emissions from agriculture, and re-establish soil carbon reservoirs lost through modern agriculture. We also suggest a major military response to bushfire, including a water-bombing air fleet and airfields within two hours of every fire risk location.
Finally, the war demands a central headquarters providing leadership, information and coordination—perhaps a greatly expanded version of the Greenhouse Office established under the Howard Coalition government in 1998 (but later merged into another government department). The office should provide, among other things, information on the climate cost of every item we use, both to aid consumer choice and tax climate-harming products.
Some technologies may prove too costly, too risky, or too slow to implement. All require careful governance, leadership and public engagement to ensure community backing.
But as global greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, governments must deploy every weapon available—not only to win the war, but to prevent the terrible social cost of despair.
The full report on which this article is based is available here.
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Fight climate change like it’s World War III: 4 potent weapons to deploy (2020, March 16)
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Science
Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like teeth for defence, building nests
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The artwork and publicity materials showcasing a giant salmon that lived five million years ago were ready to go to promote a new exhibit, when the discovery of two fossilized skulls immediately changed what researchers knew about the fish.
Initial fossil discoveries of the 2.7-metre-long salmon in Oregon in the 1970s were incomplete and had led researchers to mistakenly suggest the fish had fang-like teeth.
It was dubbed the “sabre-toothed salmon” and became a kind of mascot for the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon, says researcher Edward Davis.
But then came discovery of two skulls in 2014.
Davis, a member of the team that found the skulls, says it wasn’t until they got back to the lab that he realized the significance of the discovery that has led to the renaming of the fish in a new, peer-reviewed study.
“There were these two skulls staring at me with sideways teeth,” says Davis, an associate professor in the department of earth sciences at the university.
In that position, the tusk-like teeth could not have been used for biting, he says.
“That was definitely a surprising moment,” says Davis, who serves as director of the Condon Fossil Collection at the university’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
“I realized that all of the artwork and all of the publicity materials and bumper stickers and buttons and T-shirts we had just made two months prior, for the new exhibit, were all out of date,” he says with a laugh.
Davis is co-author of the new study in the journal PLOS One, which renames the giant fish the “spike-toothed salmon.”
It says the salmon used the tusk-like spikes for building nests to spawn, and as defence mechanisms against predators and other salmon.
The salmon lived about five million years ago at a time when Earth was transitioning from warmer to relatively cooler conditions, Davis says.
It’s hard to know exactly why the relatives of today’s sockeye went extinct, but Davis says the cooler conditions would have affected the productivity of the Pacific Ocean and the amount of rain feeding rivers that served as their spawning areas.
Another co-author, Brian Sidlauskas, says a fish the size of the spike-toothed salmon must have been targeted by predators such as killer whales or sharks.
“I like to think … it’s almost like a sledgehammer, these salmon swinging their head back and forth in order to fend off things that might want to feast on them,” he says.
Sidlauskas says analysis by the lead author of the paper, Kerin Claeson, found both male and female salmon had the “multi-functional” spike-tooth feature.
“That’s part of our reason for hypothesizing that this tooth is multi-functional … It could easily be for digging out nests,” he says.
“Think about how big the (nest) would have to be for an animal of this size, and then carving it out in what’s probably pretty shallow water; and so having an extra digging tool attached to your head could be really useful.”
Sidlauskas says the giant salmon help researchers understand the boundaries of what’s possible with the evolution of salmon, but they also capture the human imagination and a sense of wonder about what’s possible on Earth.
“I think it helps us value a little more what we do still have, or I hope that it does. That animal is no longer with us, but it is a product of the same biosphere that sustains us.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2024.
Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press
Science
Giant prehistoric salmon had tusk-like spikes used for defence, building nests: study
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A new paper says a giant salmon that lived five million years ago in the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest used tusk-like spikes as defense mechanisms and for building nests to spawn.
The initial fossil discoveries of the 2.7-metre-long salmon in Oregon in the 1970s were incomplete and led researchers to suggest the fish had fang-like teeth.
The now-extinct fish was dubbed the “saber-tooth salmon,” but the study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One today renames it the “spike-toothed salmon” and says both males and females possessed the “multifunctional” feature.
Study co-author Edward Davis says the revelation about the tusk-like teeth came after the discovery of fossilized skulls at a site in Oregon in 2014.
Davis, an associate professor in the department of earth sciences at the University of Oregon, says he was surprised to see the skulls had “sideways teeth.”
Contrary to the belief since the 1970s, he says the teeth couldn’t have been used for any kind of biting.
“That was definitely a surprising moment,” Davis says of the fossil discovery in 2014. “I realized that all of the artwork and all of the publicity materials … we had just made two months prior, for the new exhibit, were all out of date.”
Science
SpaceX sends 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit
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April 23 (UPI) — SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit Tuesday evening from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Liftoff occurred at 6:17 EDT with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sending the payload of 23 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster landed on an autonomous drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from the rocket’s second stage and its payload.
The entire mission was scheduled to take about an hour and 5 minutes to complete from launch to satellite deployment.
The mission was the ninth flight for the first-stage booster that previously completed five Starlink satellite-deployment missions and three other missions.
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