The title tonight comes from Governor Gavin Newsom and my lively imagination sparked by a recently found 1.3 million year old disabled wolf. In a NY Times interview, Newsom explains why California is “America’s fast forward. The future happens here first, from an innovative perspective and from, obviously, the dynamic of our influence across sectors. But as it relates to climate change. It’s real. It’s raw.” (My emphasis added below.)
As a coastal state, a state steeped with some of the oldest living beings on planet Earth, those extraordinary 2,000 year old trees along our coast and these magnificent majestic redwoods that have been impacted by climate change and the ravages of these heat waves and droughts. And so we have a responsibility not just to identify these areas of vulnerability, but to identify the solutions and be the leader to solve for these things. We have agency. We can shape the future. None of us are bystanders. We know what to do. The question is, do we have the courage to do it and do we have enough partners to advance that cause. But we have a lot more work to do. And I think, when we do that, yes, so goes not just the nation, but we can impact the rest of the globe.
Tonight’s science stories coalesce around Newsom’s message about the need to identify areas of vulnerability and solutions that address the raw reality of the human effect on the rest of nature, including climate change. This story about wolves is part of the solution, we need to be more like wolves and care for the pack, although since modern humans are only 200,000 years old it might take us awhile to catch up to wolves. Let’s take steps to be sure we have that long.
Wolves today live and hunt in packs, which helps them take down large prey. But when did this group behavior evolve? An international research team has reported specimens of an ancestral wolf, Canis chihliensis, from the Ice Age of north China (~1.3 million years ago), with debilitating injuries to the jaws and leg. The wolf survived these injuries long enough to heal, supporting the likelihood of food-sharing and family care in this early canine. [...]
Survival suggests that, while recovering, it procured food in some way other than by hunting—likely with the support of a pack. [...]
"It is incredible to see these dental infections and fractured tibia from this early Chinese wolf—and find similar injuries in our dire wolves at Rancho La Brea," said Dr. Mairin Balisi, National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, and co-author of the study. "Museum collections are valuable for many reasons. In this case, they've enabled us to observe shared behavior across species, across continents, across time."
As the streets of San Francisco emptied out in the first months of the pandemic, the city's male birds began singing more softly and improving their vocal range, making them "sexier" to females, according to a new study published Thursday. [...]
As noise pollution decreased, "their songs also sounded better, they sounded sexier," she said."They were better competitors, and they sounded like better mates to females." The scientists were surprised by just how far the volume of their songs had dropped - almost a third.
But despite this, the sparrows' trills could still be heard from twice as far away compared to before the shutdown, tying in with anecdotal reports of birdsongs becoming more conspicuous to humans.
The authors said their research showed just how quickly birds can adapt to changing environments, and suggest that finding long-term solutions to curbing noise pollution might lead to other positive outcomes like higher species diversity.
Humanity has cleared nearly half of the world’s forests.
But what would happen if we let many of these lands to return back to forests — and how much climate-warming carbon would they absorb?
Knowing the places where restored forest cover could have the greatest climate impact could help decision-makers prioritize where to simply let forests be.
That’s what a team of researchers, including Conservation International climate expert Bronson Griscom, set out to discover. Compiling more than 13,000 measurements of carbon captured in regenerating forests worldwide, they used artificial intelligence to project how quickly deforested areas could grow back naturally — and how much carbon they might absorb if they do.
The result is a global map that pinpoints exactly which forest areas have the most potential to help humanity combat climate change over the next 30 years if they are simply left alone to function as nature intended.
And according to the map, restoring tropical forest cover might offer an even bigger climate opportunity than previously thought.
The fast-warming Arctic has started to transition from a predominantly frozen state into an entirely different climate, according to a comprehensive new study of Arctic conditions.
Weather patterns in the upper latitudes have always varied from year to year, with more or less sea ice, colder or warmer winters, and longer or shorter seasons of rain instead of snow.
But new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) finds that the Arctic has now warmed so significantly that its year-to-year variability is moving outside the bounds of any past fluctuations, signaling the transition to a "new Arctic" climate regime.
"The rate of change is remarkable," said NCAR scientist Laura Landrum, lead author of the study. "It's a period of such rapid change that observations of past weather patterns no longer show what you can expect next year. The Arctic is already entering a completely different climate than just a few decades ago."
The western Joshua tree will be considered for protection under the California Endangered Species Act, possibly becoming the first plant species to be given protection of law in the state because of a primarily climate crisis-related threat.
The California Fish and Game Commission voted Tuesday to accept a petition that provides the gnarly-limbed yucca plants protected status for a year while the state conducts a study. The Joshua tree – which is not a tree but is actually a succulent called Yucca brevifolia – has graced the landscape of the Mojave desert for 2.5m years.
Research has shown that amid unmitigated climate change, only .02% of the tree’s current habitat in Joshua Tree national park would remain viable. Hotter and drier conditions – like the record-high temperatures that struck the state this summer – are killing off Joshua trees, and leaving fewer young to survive. Last month, the Dome fire burned burned through more than 43,000 acres in some of the world’s densest old-growth Joshua tree forest in the Mojave national preserve.
Public lands in the United States are natural allies in efforts to address climate change, wildlife loss and to improve community health via access to nature.
Their sheer scale, scope and reach offer the unmatched potential to absorb large amounts of carbon emissions, provide habitat for wildlife need to survive and adapt to rising temperatures, and create space for people and communities to flourish.
Unfortunately, public lands in America are not managed in a way that prioritizes addressing these crises.
COVID-19 has accelerated calls for fast, open science to inform policy responses. However, when contradictory or false results become public, the negative consequences of this becomes hard to contain. Nate Breznau discusses the Heinsberg Study into COVID-19, outlining how the lack of appropriate scientific scrutiny led to policy responses that were misinformed and dangerous. Breznau argues that for fast science to be reliable, it needs to be underscored by access and transparency. Otherwise, it risks becoming fake news. [...]
The Heinsberg Study is a classic example of science by press conference. Streek reported two seemingly contradictory claims. One was that the lockdown measures had worked to slow the spread of the virus, the other was that it would be safe to start reopening. Media outlets were free to cherrypick any statement out of context. In fact, Gérard Krause, the invited scientists who should have provided a reliability check in the press conference made clear that relying on 7 deaths to calculate a case-fatality ratio is unbelievably shaky. “If you have three, four or five deaths [instead of 7] you quickly reach values above one percent” he pointed out at minute 36 of the press conference.
Whales DGAF about what humans say they can and cannot do
Ebisu may be the world’s first literal copycat. Researchers have shown the Japanese feline can imitate the actions of her owner under controlled scientific conditions. The ability has only been seen in a handful of creatures, and the find could suggest imitation arose relatively early in mammal evolution.
“It’s really exciting,” says Kristyn Vitale, a cat cognition researcher and animal behaviorist at Unity College. “People think of cats as solitary and antisocial,” she says. “But this study reinforces the idea that they’re watching us and learning from us.”
Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope, the observations and assigned sounds have been matched to the position and brightness of the sources as the melody spans the image, as you can see in the video below.
In the sonification of the Milky Way’s center, a region 26,000 light-years away, the data from the observatories creates a visual spectacle of bright lights and fiery clouds. The sonification follows a similar pattern. Spitzer data focused on the gas and dust clouds in the center of the Milky Way, and around them, Hubble spotted thousands of bright stars. Chandra brings in the most energetic events, the remnants of stellar explosions as well as the centerpiece, Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy.
The Galactic Center sonification, followed by the sounds of the famous "Pillars of Creation" Eagle nebula aka M16, and the beautiful supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.