One of the memorable hallmarks of the Republican Convention this year was the chanting of “drill baby drill!” This mantra echoed during Sarah Palin’s address, and was apparently meant as a sound bite solution to our energy problems and rising fuel costs.

But there was an uncomfortable familiarity about it. Some of us still remember 1965 and the chanting of, “Burn Baby Burn,” as large portions of Los Angeles went up in flames. It seemed so out of place… as if people were celebrating the loss of their own homes, livelihoods, and stores.

Just as burning is not a solution to racial discrimination, so too drilling is not a solution to our growing energy crisis. Cheap oil is as much a curse as a blessing. It has gradually gotten us into this mess, and it’s gradually running out. Unlike many other nations, we haven’t developed alternative energy to any significant degree. The United States doesn’t have sufficient oil reserves to even begin to meet our needs. We send hundreds of billions of dollars to oil rich nations, many of whom are hostile to us, in order to feed our growing oil addiction. We haven’t formulated any sort of long term plan for either self sufficient or sustainable energy supplies. We continue to contribute carbon, billions of tons of it, into the atmosphere, exacerbating the ever growing and daunting dilemma of global warming. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris took the plunge this year (perhaps a holdover from his days on the swimming and diving teams at Peoria Central High). Our son transferred to Northern Michigan University at Marquette from Western Illinois. It’s a significant transition, trading the rolling hills and farm fields of Macomb for the wild and windy shores of Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Dropping him off at school was a novel experience. After hauling belongings, books, and mementos five hundred miles to a new apartment, and after meeting a new semester’s roommates, we set out to explore the immediate area.

A nearby hiking trail put me in mind of Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Read the rest of this entry »

We are in the midst of that toasty torrid time of year… commonly called the dog days of summer! A time dominated by the doggone heat. You can feel so dog tired that you’re sicker than a dog. Things seem to be going to the dogs, so you just don’t feel like putting on the dog. Since heat impacts all of us, we all have a dog in this hunt, so to speak… “Dog Days” has traditionally applied to the hottest, most sultry spell of the year here in the northern hemisphere, generally it refers to August and part of July. Although this period is named for ‘man’s best friend,’ it has little to do with dogs, but a lot to do with the heavens. Sirius, the so-called Dog Star, is the brightest star in the sky, next to the sun. In July and August, it actually rises and sets with the sun.

The Romans believed it provided heat as well as light, and hence, during this time always heralded the approach of a hot, unpleasant period associated with an evil time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” (Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813).

Read the rest of this entry »

There it was, the Maharajah of Muck, the Sultan of swamp. This was not just any old turtle. A very special skeleton, this was a remarkable relic; an ambassador from antiquity.

Sommer Park staff had discovered the remains of a very large and very ancient snapping turtle at the shore of a pond. Amazingly it was pretty much in one piece. It appeared almost mythical; part reptile, part dinosaur, perhaps even part dragon.

The normally rough and ridged shell was worn so smooth that it was obviously an old timer (many decades old) when it died. The tail had huge raised saw-tooth points along its length like those often depicted on dragons. The large head with sharp massive beak and hollow eye sockets had a fierce and violent visage even in death. Long claws still looked ready for action. An old injury, a healed hole from an undetermined sized bullet, near the rear of the shell reflected a resilience in this rugged reptile when confronted with us human critters. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Trade Center in New York was officially dedicated in 1973. That was the year Spiro Agnew resigned from the Vice Presidency charged with income tax evasion. A first class stamp cost only eight cents. Watergate hearings began, and the Miami Dolphins won the Super Bowl after an undefeated season.

But many associate 1973 with the OPEC Oil Embargo. Mostly Arab nations got together, motivated perhaps by the Yom Kippur War, and decided to use the oil weapon against allies of Israel, mainly the United States and the Netherlands.

Oil supplies were cut off, resulting in shortages, price increase, and an economic downturn. There were long lines and lots of waiting at gas stations. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974.
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The canvas was timeworn, and tattered; the wood… worn, brittle, and battered. But one thing time could not tarnish was an enduring beauty, grace, and symmetry. This weathered wooden canoe was a relic; a special gift from a special friend (and paddling partner) who is now in his 80’s.

After hauling it back to Peoria in April, I gave it a once over, and looked up the identification number on line. It appeared to have been made by Old Town Canoe Company, of Old Town Maine, some 96 years ago, around 1912. I sent the information, via snail mail, to Old Town. They still have records of each canoe’s history, when it was sold, and to whom. There may be some tidbit to help in restoration. Read the rest of this entry »

It isn’t exactly the first thing I would have expected from an old acquaintance, having not seen him for some 20 years: “I’m up to 62 so far!” He was decked out in binoculars and spotting scope and was searching for birds along the Lake Michigan shore. He was referring not to the quantity, but to the variety of birds he’d managed to locate that day. Not bad for winter.

Funny how bird watching can take on a competitive edge. Maybe it’s the thrill of the hunt, or just a sense of adventure. You never quite know what you might find and it’s always interesting. After all, it takes a pretty keen eye and/or ear to locate many lesser known varieties of birds, not to mention knowledge of their habits and haunts. And each year it seems to get more challenging as many bird populations decline. Read the rest of this entry »

What do an asteroid, a giant volcano, and an electric hair dryer have in common? Each can be associated with cataclysmic events in Earth’s history that mark the end or beginning of significant stages in evolution or planetary development. At least that seems to be what Paul Crutzen is implying. The Nobel Laureate has suggested that we are now in a brand new geologic age he calls the “Anthropocene,” characterized by human activities and influences.

According to Crutzen, our species has so impacted the planet that we have brought about an end to Earth’s most recent Geologic Epoch, a 12 thousand year interglacial time span known as the Holocene, and have started a whole new one. In February 08, an international team of Geologists agreed. They believe that humankind has now caused the end to one epoch of Earth’s history and marked the start of another. This is a monumental accomplishment when considering the vast planetary scope of the science of geology, and our almost viral smallness when compared to the entire planet, though it’s not an accomplishment of which to be particularly proud.

Changes in Geologic epochs are often brought about by major catastrophes such as an asteroid impact; for example, the one that ended the Cretaceous, and caused the extinction of dinosaurs, some 65 and a half million years ago; or extensive volcanic activity that likely characterized the end of the Permian Period some 250 million years ago, in which over 90 percent of life became extinct. At that time there was enough carbon dioxide released to raise the average temperature 6 degrees Celsius. Toxic gasses, ozone destruction, and ultraviolet radiation conspired to exacerbate the problem.

We’ve impacted the planet by “being fruitful and multiplying” to such an extent that we are a hundred times more numerous than any animal ever of comparable size. Our population is now at six and a half billion and has shown no sign of leveling off. In just 12 years we will add a billion more. Everyone uses fuel, impacts habitats directly or indirectly, and together we release vast amounts of carbon dioxide. The resulting species loss from habitat destruction, and global warming from atmospheric pollution characterize the “Anthropocene.” It’s clearly not sustainable.

The Geologic Time Scale is immense. For example, in the past 4 and a half billion years, life has appeared and thrived on Earth. In this time, both life and the planet have undergone amazing changes. These changes are organized into various periods of transition identified as eons, epochs, eras, and periods. These transitional phases help place Earth’s history into meaningful perspective and are separated by cataclysmic events such as asteroid impacts or extensive volcanic activity. The resulting story is written in the rocks and is there to be read and interpreted, providing a glimpse into the dynamics of the planet and the amazing adaptability of life, within the immense abyss of time.

It is in this sedimentary saga that we gain insight into the depths of our own primordial beginnings and come to understand and appreciate our ultimate present day dominance of Planet Earth, along with both the positive and negative consequences. This casts light on the all important context of the global warming dilemma in which we find ourselves today.

There is a quote attributed to Chief Seattle, which poetically interprets this dilemma: “Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

Seattle points out that the Earth is our mother. The scientific view of this is interpreted nicely by Paleontologist, Neil Shubin, who takes you back through some 3.5 billion years of history of the human body in his new book, “Your Inner Fish.” It’s a fascinating journey and paints a detailed picture of evolution showing our intimate connections to the planet and to the life around us.

For example: within the lobed fins of a primitive fish are found the bones that comprise the template from which arise not only the wings of bats, and legs of horses, but also human arms and legs. The comparative anatomy and genome map provide an increasingly clear picture of exactly how we are not just on this Earth, but of it, as well.

But what about the hair dryer? It simply represents our many uses for electricity. Of all the contributors of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, from automobiles to home heating, none is more significant than coal fired electric generating plants. The United States currently uses more electric power than anybody else in the world… from lights to toasters to TV’s to hair dryers. In just a couple centuries human activities have managed to increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 275 parts per million to 383 parts per million and it’s still rising, along with our population.

The solutions to this dilemma are simple: consume less; recycle more; reduce pollution; reduce our population to a level that is sustainable; and restore Earth’s depleted ecosystems. But can we do it? The future of our species, along with most others depends on it.

According to Dr Andrew Gale, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, “Human activity has become the number one driver of most of the major changes in Earth’s topography and climate. You can’t have 6.5 billion people living on a planet the size of ours and exploiting every possible resource without creating huge changes in the physical, chemical and biological environment which will be reflected dramatically in our geological record of the planet.”

Today’s sediments will be tomorrow’s rocks. Will there be geologists around to interpret our story written in those rocks?

It turned out to be a very snowy game, making the stadium seem like one of those glass balls you shake and watch the “snow” come down covering whatever is in the globe… which in this case was over 72 thousand of us crowded into Lambeau Field. My daughter, Sarah, and I had been in Green Bay to witness the playoff game between the Packers and the Seattle Seahawks. It was a beautiful setting and a picturesque playoff party (thanks to a Packer victory).

While in the area we did a little sightseeing. The deal was, I could do some birding and Sarah could do some shopping. Winter is an excellent time to be in Northeast Wisconsin. Arctic birds are plentiful, from snow buntings along country roads to several species of diving ducks wintering near the shore of Lake Michigan.

Near Manitowoc, a hooded merganser didn’t care about Seattle’s Seahawks or Green Bay’s Packers. It was nonchalantly swimming around in sub-freezing temperatures, diving under water, and coming up with fish. Just looking at him through binoculars made me cold. To him, I was just an insignificant and extraneous part of his environment.

To the Arctic ducks, whether Green Bay made it to the Super Bowl was completely irrelevant. If you are a merganser, human activities are unimportant… or are they? While it’s amazing how nonexistent our struggles seem to a surf scoter, what’s far more amazing is how very important we’ve actually become in the lives of wildlife throughout this entire planet, and not in a positive way.

Our impact, for example, upon Earth’s atmosphere has been staggering. This is, in fact, most noticeable in the Arctic where melt is proceeding at a faster than expected pace. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the atmosphere contained about 275 parts per million of carbon. Today that number has gone up by over a third. There are now 383 parts per million of carbon. That’s across the entire planet! That amount continues to rise as we raze forests and burn more and more fossils. In just a couple short centuries, we humans have made such a vast change to the planet that it’s beginning to appear that we are throwing the system off kilter. What is alarming is the brief amount of time it’s taken us to impact the atmosphere to such a degree.

The top six carbon pollution sources are as follows:

• 8.4 percent: fossil ‘fuel’ retrieval, processing, and distribution.
• 9.1 percent: land use and biomass burning, for fuel and cropland clearing.
• 12.9 percent: Residential and commercial.
• 19.2 percent: transportation fuels; gasoline and diesel.
• 20.6 percent: industrial processes.
• 29.5 percent: electric generating stations (mostly coal fired). These are the biggest single polluters. If we are to have a meaningful impact on global warming it should start here.

The problem is dramatically illustrated if you ever have the opportunity to approach Denver from the west on I 70 at night. The entire valley laid out at the foot of the front range is flooded with light, looking like a gigantic smoldering fire. Here in central Illinois, trainloads of coal stream in continuously to feed the power plants that line the Illinois River. But as we’re beginning to realize, our ability to light up our world at night comes at a great cost. Motel 6 may just have to stop saying, “we’ll leave the light on for you.”

We had found another good reason to modify our electricity consuming habits lying sprawled on a Lake Michigan beach. It was a very large and very dead salmon. In the words of the Munchkin undertaker, he was not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. Since it’s a top predator, it’s flesh is so contaminated by mercury, fisherman are warned to limit how much of it they consume, due to health concerns. As a kid, growing up along the shores of this “Shining Big Sea Water,” it seemed far too vast for us to be able to pollute.

The contamination of fish, around the world, and the huge jump in atmospheric carbon are linked. Coal-fired power plants are partly to blame. We are releasing carbon and other materials that have been locked up in coal and oil for hundreds of millions of years.

For the mergansers and scoters, we’ve become a bigger and bigger presence in their world. The fish they catch are now tainted with mercury. Their nesting areas to the north are increasingly impacted by the warming of the planet. Permafrost is melting, wetlands are changing, weather patterns are modifying, and who knows what other changes are in store for these migratory birds? One thing is certain, it won’t be good.

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. It’s been argued about, denied, and ignored. Two of the most difficult things in the current presidential campaign is getting candidates to address the issue, and getting journalists to challenge them to talk about what they would do about it as president. We simply can’t continue to go on as we’ve been doing. The challenge of global warming is unprecedented.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.”

We have to depend on what Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature,” and change our ways. To have the largest impact on atmospheric carbon, priority should be placed upon the largest sources. It will be necessary, for example, to take a close look at power generation, and to become much more conservative in our use of electricity. The same is true for the types of vehicles we drive and the amount of fuel we consume.

Our aim should be to restore a world in which mergansers will be able to continue to ignore us for millennia to come.

The United Nations negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 the ultimate aim: “….. to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations …at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with the climate system ….. within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.”

* Mark Serreze may have finally gotten through to even some of the most oblivious American politicians. He simply stated that, “the Arctic is screaming.” Dr. Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice center in Boulder, CO, could have pointed out that Greenland’s ice sheet this year lost some 19 BILLION TONS more than previous high mark, or that the Arctic sea ice at this summer’s end was half as extensive as it was just 4 years earlier (and much thinner). But statistics haven’t seemed to budge the United States (largest greenhouse gas emitter) into action. The planet continues to warm. This is nowhere more evident than in the Arctic. Many scientists now fear global warming may have already exceeded previous worst case scenarios, and we may have passed a tipping point in which this process could now speed up dramatically. It is becoming increasingly obvious that a quick change in direction is needed, if we are to have a chance to influence consequences.

* In a remote jungle in the Papua Province of New Guinea, scientists discovered several new species, but two are of particular interest, because they are mammals. A giant rat, five times larger than our city pests, was found, along with a tiny opossum. Both species are new to science. The rat, apparently has no fear of humans and wandered into the scientists’ camp several times.

* Vitamin D may save your life, not just your bones. It’s long been associated with rickets (softening of bones) in children. Now rickets is being referred to as “the tip of the iceberg.” Other maladies associated with vitamin D deficiency include cancers (colon, prostate, and breast) and tuberculosis, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis. It now appears this vitamin is needed for overall optimal health. The body produces vitamin D from sunlight exposure. With our increasingly indoor lifestyle, added vitamin D supplements may be recommended.

* Not quite ready to resurrect a dinosaur, but amazingly, paleontologist, Mary Schneider has isolated proteins from a 68 million year old T. Rex fossil. When the protein sequences were compared to others, the T-Rex most closely resembled the genome of today’s chickens (partly because they happened to have those proteins for comparison). This is more validation of the connections between dinosaurs and modern birds.

* Australia is suffering under what is being called the worst drought in a millennium. The intergovernmental panel on climate change warned that the water shortage will intensify there. Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia, states, “Australia is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the impact of climate change on water resources…. The lesson from Australia is that the shift has been very dramatic and has occurred in a very short period.”

* Several reports in 07 make the case that the Bush Administration stifles scientists and attempts to alter their research findings. An internal order by Dept. of Commerce in April, requires scientists in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to obtain permission before speaking about scientific matters “of official importance.” Undoubtedly this pertains to climate change. All employee utterance is subject to “official review.” This chilling of the free flow of ideas damages the scientific process itself. According to Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Scientific Integrity Program, “Science works by building on research results and discussion of what’s working or not working. It’s part of this administration’s reluctance to base decisions on information.”

* Medical workers who had been accused of intentionally giving AIDS to children in Libya, and who had been sentenced to death by firing squad, were freed this past July, based largely upon evidence from viral DNA. They had been under arrest since 1999. Using genetic data from the virus in the children’s blood as a molecular clock, biologists from the University of Oxford proved the outbreak had occurred long before the accused medics even started working at the Libyan hospital.

* Bees have been disappearing for no apparent reason in the U.S. Referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious affliction has had many in the food industry very concerned, and has wiped out over 50 percent of colonies in 35 states. Bees, after all, pollinate a third of our food crops. In September entomologists came closer to tracking down the culprit. They’ve found a link to Israeli acute paralysis virus. Whether this might be a cause or a symptom of CCD isn’t known. The stress on colonies, for example, of moving over vast distances by semi truck for pollination purposes, might actually trigger the disorder.

* New genetic evidence indicates recent evolution in the human genome. In fact, as much as ten percent of the human genome has continued to change over the past hundred thousand years. Evidence shows recent selection, including genes that affect muscle tissue, hair, hearing, immune-system function, skin pigmentation, sense of smell, and response to heat stress. Some changes seem obvious. A change that provides an immune advantage would likely spread throughout a population. Some forces of change, however, such as hair follicle genes, are more difficult to explain.

* The appendix may not be as useless as had been assumed. In September surgeons and immunologists at Duke University offered a reason for this strange structure located near the beginning of the large intestine. Biochemist, William Parker had been looking at closely bound communities of bacteria called biofilms. In the gut, biofilms aid digestion, produce nutrients, and crowd out harmful invaders. In humans the greatest concentration of these occurs in the appendix. It’s been suggested that when diarrheal illnesses like cholera deplete the microflora of the intestine, the appendix may play an important role in restoring protective bacterial populations back into the large intestine. This would convey a survival advantage.

* A three hundred million year old forest has been indentified in Illinois. All told the fossilized forest floor covers some four square miles. The leafy layer is held up by columns of coal, affording a vole’s eye view from beneath. Because sediment had slowly crept in over these plants over several months, tiny plants, including mosses and ferns, have been preserved in detail.

* For many years the disappearance of some thirty five genera of animals from North America had been blamed on Native American hunters. Now it appears there is an alternate explanation. A team of scientists announced in May that about thirteen thousand years ago, a miles-wide comet seems to have exploded just north of the Great Lakes, triggering wide spread fires, immense clouds of debris, and a thousand year cold spell. The result was the disappearance of numerous animals along with many of the human inhabitants.

The New Year, 2008, will see an election. Usually there are some implications for science in America. Keep this in mind in November.