From the “God particle” to Jurassic fleas, 2012 has been an incredible year for science. A lot happened while the myopic media remained preoccupied with an overload of election year political blather and smear, and superpac prevarication. Here’s a tiny sample of science news that you may have missed…

* Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva announced they had discovered a particle so fundamental that without it there would be no atoms in the universe. This means no matter, no people, no research, and nothing to write about. Referred to as the “Higgs boson” particle, it’s commonly been called the God particle, simply because it comprises all of what we call “reality.” British physicist Prof Sir Peter Knight asserted that the discovery of the Higgs is as significant to physics as the discovery of DNA was to biology.

* Hurricane Sandy did the impossible… it blew global warming right back into the spotlight. Thanks to ever rising average temperatures, the once in a century storm is becoming a once every couple years storm. Sea level, once thought to be rising at 2 mm. per year, is actually rising about 60 percent faster, a byproduct of global warming. It’s rising so much that storms can now push into New York City, flooding tunnels that carry subway traffic as well as those that handle cars and trucks.

* My brother in Dallas TX complained recently that they had baked under three solid months of 100 plus degree temperatures, with no letup… Climate scientists described it as an “exceptional” drought. Texans are accustomed to hot and dry, but this was the worst since record keeping began in 1895. This year, clay soil cracked so much that many Texas football fields had to be closed… in Texas that IS bad. Roads buckled, shifting soil twisted water mains, breaking 200 of them in Fort Worth alone.

* U.S. cities matched or broke 29,300 high temperature records this year. By September’s end, nearly two thirds of the U.S. was suffering drought. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO, stated, “The breaking of records is the best indication that we’re outside the normal range of simply weather.” In the ’50’s, record highs and lows were about equal. From 2000 thru 2009, record highs outnumbered record lows 2 to 1. So-called Attribution Science is indicating that observed change cannot be explained without including the effects of human generated greenhouse gasses. These gasses have been compared to steroids in sports. In effect, increasing the temperature ‘moves the fence’ closer, making ‘home runs’ more likely.

* On Friday, May 25 this year, Germany produced the highest solar energy output ever achieved, obtaining a third of their entire energy needs from the sun. The total of 22 gigawatts is equivalent to 16 nuclear power plants operating at full capacity. By years end, this will have been increased by some 30 percent. Generous public subsidies have transformed Germany into the world’s largest solar market. They installed more solar panels in one month than the U.S. did all year. We need to stop denying the obvious, and start learning from Germany how to clear the air, and solve the dilemma of global warming.

* Recent reintroduction of wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains has already boosted ecological health in Yellowstone National Park, according to William Ripple, ecologist at Oregon State University. He characterizes the ecological restoration as “spectacular.” Now that wolves are culling elk, woody plants such as willow and aspen are able to grow, providing habitat. This has led to repopulation of critters from birds to bugs to beavers. It would require ten times as many wolves to spread these benefits throughout the northern Rockies. The ill-advised decision to remove wolves from federal protection led to this year’s hunting and shooting of many collared animals which have been subjects of research for well over a decade. This decision was based not on science, but on politics and has harmed efforts to better understand our interactions with the environment.

* New critters discovered in 2012… a New Guinea frog has dethroned a southeast Asian fish as the tiniest known vertebrate. The housefly sized frog is one-third inch long and weighs .02 gram. A new species of native spider was found in an Oregon cave. It grows up to three inches long and has hook-like claws at the end of each leg to capture small insects. A carnivorous sponge was discovered 11,000 feet below the surface off the California coast. It feeds on small crustaceans which it captures with harp-like vanes covered with hooks.

* Old critters discovered in 2012… fossils of gigantic Jurassic fleas were found by Chinese paleontologists, who sent images of them to Michael Engel of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. Nearly an inch long, the specimens were from 165 million to 125 million years ago. They were equipped with serrated mouthparts for piercing thick hides of dinosaurs. Prior to this Chinese find the earliest flea fossils dated back only 45 million years.

* Factory farms are giving rise to increasingly dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In February a methicillin-susceptible staph jumped from people to industrially farmed pigs. It was able to acquire resistance to the antibiotics the pigs are fed, and jumped back to human hosts having acquired drug resistance. These super germs are responsible for more than 250,000 hospitalizations each year. Of the many problems associated with concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s), over use of antibiotics is particularly dangerous to human health. Microbiologist Lance Price of George Washington University, states, “I truly couldn’t design a better system for creating drug-resistant bacteria than a concentrated operation where you’re feeding animals antibiotics.”

* Speaking of CAFO’s, groundwater is being tapped out at unsustainable rates all over the world, but particularly in India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mexico, and the United States. The impact could be huge. It’s being used up at 3.5 times the amount being replenished… as an average. Apparently we’re not just warming, but dehydrating the planet.

Happy New Year!