Archive for evolution

19

Sep

2021

John Carpenter’s “Planaria”: or, The New Individualism

Sometimes you run into a concept that completely rewires your outlook. It happened for me back in the eighties, when I encountered the definition of “Life” in Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker: “Information, shaped by natural selection”. That concise distillation—an actual description of what life is, as opposed to all those tired and exception-prone checklists that […]

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27

Mar

2018

Riding the Tiger: or, Flirting with the Antivaxxers.

[PreProda: Yeah, after some really enlightening discussion in the Comments section, I’m walking back about 90% of this post. But I’m leaving it posted both because the comments are so interesting, and as a kind of historical artefact to remind me of what happens when I don’t take the time to think things through.] [Proda: […]

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17

Mar

2015

The Gene Genies, Part 2: The Genes that Wouldn’t Die.

Evolution with Foresight: an oxymoron, right? Evolution has no foresight. Natural selection only promotes what works in the moment. If a particular mutation doubles your reproductive rate, you will fill the world with thy numbers; the process doesn’t understand too much of a good thing, doesn’t care if greater fecundity today means overpopulation, starvation, and […]

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16

Mar

2015

The Gene Genies, Part 1: The Squids of Lamarck.

You know the drill. DNA holds the source code; RNA carries it to the ribosomes; ribosomes build stuff for the cell. Of course, the details of cellular operation are a million times more intricate than this— some RNA acts not to courier code but to switch genes on and off, for example— but it’s this […]

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04

Nov

2014

Your Brain on Gore.

Some of you have seen this already. It’s a few days old, this revelation of yet another difference between liberals and conservatives. In addition to the usual polarities on abortion, gun control, climate change, evolution— you know the list— here comes another wedge issue some of you may not have been expecting: Animal mutilation. Turns […]

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26

May

2014

“Just to be Clear, I Don’t Expect You to Embrace Any of This…

“I’m told a lot of lawyers tend to show up at these things, and my guess is the standard legal toolbox does not come with a middle finger to stick to the authorities. Then again, lawyers also know better than most what an ass the law is; they know that some are more equal than […]

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14

Feb

2013

The Darwinian Dead

So I’m spending all this time dealing with the legacy of the stationary dead, only to come up for air and notice that the walking ones are back on the march. I’ve never read the Walking Dead graphic novels (unlike, apparently, every thirteen-year-old at Bowmore Public School), but I’m a big fan of the AMC […]

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22

Aug

2012

Lateral Transfers

The whitecap’s skin glows with a golden tan of cultured xanthophylls. Joel’s smile grows a little more brittle. He’s heard all about the benefits, of course. UV protection, higher blood oxygen, more energy — they say it even cuts down on your food requirements, not that any of these people have to worry about grocery […]

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29

Jul

2012

Coincidence? You Decide!

New York Times (NYT), LaChance et al1(L) Blindsight endnotes (BSE), “Vampire Domestication: Taming Yesterday’s Nightmares for a Better Tomorrow” (VD) Dr. Tishkoff’s team interprets these divergent DNA sequences as genetic remnants of an interbreeding with an archaic species of human … the geneticists estimate that the archaic species split from the ancestors of […]

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30

Mar

2012

Going Viral.

When you’re a first-time lecturer in a department full of senior faculty, odds are you’ll get crap time slots when it comes to your teaching load. When you’re a first-time lecturer whose supervisor is the most-detested rival of the department head, you’re pretty much guaranteed as much. Which is how I ended up teaching Advanced […]

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Calendar

July 2022

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Recent Comments
- Rosten on Remora
- Jack Dominey on Remora
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- Dale Allen on The Jovian Duck: LaMDA and the Mirror Test
Signposts En Route to Oblivion

July ’22

• US Supreme Court guts the EPA’s options for regulating carbon emissions. Because why just force people to have more babies when you can do that and increase the carbon bootyprints of each larva in the bargain?

June ’22

• Desertification: Central Asian deserts have expanded by a hundred kilometers since the eighties.

May ’22

• Exxon fails to wriggle out of going on trial for fucking over the planet and lying about it. This does absolutely nothing to mitigate climate change or to de-oil a single marine organism, but at least the odds of fucking up a few of the culprits may have improved a little.

• You know those 50+°C heatwaves that are all the rage in India and Pakistan these days? A hundred times more likely now, thanks to climate change. Once every three years, instead of once every three centuries.

• Pollution responsible for 1 out of every 6 deaths on the planet. That’s nine million a year.

Put that together with the ongoing decline in Human fertility, this problem might just take care of itself.

• It’s now basically a coin toss whether we blow through 1.5°C within the next five years.

• 91% of the Great Barrier Reef bleached this year. And the year’s not over.

• Fossil industry embarked on 646Gt worth of “carbon bombs“, more than enough to blow through the planet’s entire remaining carbon budget for a 1.5°C scenario. Then again, 1.5 was always a pipe dream anyway, right? And besides, there’s a war on.

• Swapping out just 20% of global beef production for mycoprotein could, by midcentury, cut deforestation (and associated emissions) in half.

April ’22

• Over 15,000 mammal-to-mammal zoonoses expected over the next half-century as a result of climate change.

• A fifth of all reptile species are threatened with extinction. Popsci coverage here.

• And of course, mere hours after the IPCC’s latest report emphasises yet again how we absolutely cannot afford to approve new fossil-fuel megaprojects, the Trudeau government approves a new fossil-fuel megaproject.

They promise it won’t have any “significant adverse environmental effects”, though. Cross their hearts.

• 1.5° is officially off the table. Now, the most optimistic scenario hinges on sucking carbon back out of the air to compensate for the inevitable “overshoot”.

March ’22

• Great Barrier Reef bleaching yet again, during an El Nina this time (which is supposed to be when corals catch a break from the heat). “It’s also happening faster than was predicted 20 years ago.”

• Coal surging, renewables stagnating, thanks to the war. I guess we can kiss goodbye even Cop26’s delusional and miniscule hopes of 1.5°C.

On the up side, none of this matters in the event of a nuclear war.

• 175 countries pledge to act on plastic pollution. It’s not a deal so much as a pledge to work out a deal, but at least it’s a legally-binding deal covering the the whole production cycle. Popsci coverage here.

• Latest IPCC Report is out. “brutal“… “bleakest warning yet”… impacts “sooner and greater than we originally thought”…

Ah, what’s the use. We’ve heard it all before, and we do fuck-all.

February ’22

• U.S. Oil Industry Uses Ukraine Invasion to Push for More Drilling at Home. And less environmental regulation. And more pipelines. You know the list.

• SW US megadrought now worst in at least 1,200 years. At least.

• Global methane hits 1,900ppb. Been spiking since 2007. Arctic-thaw feedback suspected.

January ’22

• Coal is in ascension again. All hail the post-covid economic recovery.

• Ghost Flights are back. Up to 2.1 million tons of greenhouse gas emitted as empty planes fly around the skies of Europe. Didn’t we end this shit back in 2020?

December ’21

• You know how the Arctic is warming “twice as fast” as the rest of the world? Turns out it’s actually warming twice as fast as that. So, four times. Yet another case of exceeding the worst-case scenario.

November ’21

• The moral case for destroying fossil fuel infrastructure. About the only thing I’d disagree with is the claim that there’s no moral case for taking human life. Oh, and “Ethical” would have been a better word to use than “moral”.

• In the wake of COP26, Biden administration selling off drilling rights to 80 million seabed acres in the Gulf of Mexico. Way to “lead by example”, you duplicitous scumbag.

• Oh, here’s a cute little post-mortem tidbit from COP26: researchers were frequently prevented by the conference organizers from accessing the rooms where negotiations were taking place“. Kinda tells you all you need to know about how science factors into these things.

• You may have heard that if every country honors the commitments made thus far at Glasgow, we could be looking at a merely disastrous increase of 1.8°C, instead of the downright catastrophic 2-plus.Wrong. Try 2.4°C. (PopSci coverage here.)

• Hey, the grass roots finally accepts the reality of climate change! Of course, we’re still willing to do fuck-all about it.

October ’21

• You know how we’re supposed to cut emissions in half by 2030? Current pledges, even if implemented, will only cut them by 17% according to the most recent UN Report (popsci coverage here). Yet another “thundering wake-up call”; so much for “building back better”.

• 45% of Americans Don’t Believe Humans Cause Climate Change. Which probably still makes them smarter than Pyro650: at least most of them admit that climate change exists.

• Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11,000,000 a minute. Also, Biden signed as many drilling permits in the first six months of his administration as Trump did in his first year, during a time when no new drilling can occur past 2021 if we want to have a hope in hell of achieving even the flaccid half-assed commitments of the Paris Accord

September ’21

• Coral reef coverage declined by 50% worldwide between the fifties and 2007. And that was before all those massive bleaching events hit the Great Barrier Reef.

• Still on track for 3°C, thanks to virtually every Paris signatory not even coming close to meeting their commitments. (The only country that is on track? Gambia.)

• Of course, they haven’t won a lot yet— and the moment they start, governments will probably just pass legislation to ban these kinds of lawsuits— but attribution studies are coming into their own when it comes to suing corps and countries for screwing the pooch on climate change. (Personally I’d like to see more in the way of jail terms and death penalties— but as usual, the good news is so far and few between you pretty much have to take what you can get.)

August ’21

• Big Oil has a plan to deal with climate change. Basically, it’s suck up every drop of oil we can, for as long as we can, while getting governments and taxpayers to fund our ultimate and inevitable switch to renewables.

• Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions are about to undergo the biggest jump since 1990, thanks to the post-covid economic ‘recovery’. Ah well. At least they’re learning to live with the whole catastrophic-flooding thing…

• Hey, here’s a teensy glimmer of hope: coal-free steel. Note they didn’t say “carbon-neutral” steel, so I don’t know how “green” it is. Still. We take what we can get.

• Down in the US, this passing Summer of the Furnace has changed people’s minds about climate change not at all. Hell, 1 in 4 don’t even think it’s any big deal.

• Parts of the March ’22 IPCC report leaked seven months early by scientists fearing the usual governmental watering-down. How fucked are we? See for yourself.

• Yup. We’re fucked even more unequivocally than we were the last time the IPCC checked in. Popsci coverage here.

• Revenge Travel. It’s a thing.

• Oh goodie. Looks like the Gulf Stream might be shutting down. Too many downstream effects to list here.

• Last July worst for wildfires, globally, since records began.

• The Greenland Ice Sheet lost enough meltwater to cover Florida to a depth of two inches last, um, Tuesday. 8.5 billion tonnes in one day. It’s not even a record.

July ’21

• “Everything is on fire.” Siberia hit by unprecedented burning.

• Remember “Limits to Growth”? Turns out they were right all along. Recent analysis suggests that business-as-usual will lead to global societal collapse around 2040, right on schedule. J. Industrial Ecol. report downloadable here.

• Even now—even now— the G20 won’t agree on commitments to combat climate change. Four of the miserable fuckers have put forth plans that would lead to a 5C rise in global temperatures if everyone adopted them.

• Not to be outdone by the Europeans catastrophic flooding also in China! All that coal-powered economic growth, finally paying off.

• Tired of the same old stories about heat waves, droughts, and wildfires? You’re in luck! Climate change causes catastrophic flooding in Europe, too! Climate Change. A Catastrophe for Every Mood.

• The Amazon rainforest is now a net carbon producer. Goodbye, “Lungs of the Planet”. It was nice knowing you.

• June ’21 was the hottest ever recorded in the US. Wanna bet July breaks that record?

• Last June’s inferno over on N’Am’s western reaches was rendered 150 times more likely due to climate change.

• Hate to sound like a broken record but once again, worse than the worst-case scenario: Nobody saw the Lytton conflagration coming. Scientists never factored “heat domes” into their models.

June ’21

• ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant’s support for carbon tax a PR ploy. ExxonMobil shocked and appalled by these allegations.

May ’21

• Electric cars ‘will be cheaper to produce than fossil fuel vehicles by 2027’. One source even says this will happen by 2024.

• Europe to clamp down on air and water pollution under green deal. “The overarching goal is to eliminate all harmful contamination by 2050.” Good words. Let’s hope the actions live up to them.

• Heartened by so many governments suddenly hopping on the green bandwagon? Even if they all keep all their commitments, we’re still looking at a 2.4C global increase. Ah, well. 1.5C was always “aspirational” anyway…

April ’21

• Australian Academy of Science: holding warming to 1.5C now “virtually impossible“. (As usual, the Hope Police object to the dire wording, but even they admit it’s “super-challenging” and “hanging in the balance”.)

• Coal is powering the post-covid economic recovery. This year’s coal usage expected to rival peak burn of 2014.

• European droughts over the past five years are “unprecedented in the past 2,110 years“. Popsci coverage in The Guardian.

• Carbon emissions to soar in 2021 by second highest rate in history. Massive surges in coal power in the US and China.

The Covid Dip. It was nice while it lasted.

• Only 3% of the world’s ecosystems remain intact. We might be able to recover up to 20% through species reintroduction if we really get off our asses, but what are the odds?

March ’21

• Disease outbreaks more likely in deforestation areas. Well, duh.

• Bottom trawling releases as much carbon as air travel. Not to mention the sheer physical damage of clearcutting entire benthic ecosystems. Popsi coverage here.

• Bladeless, even windless wind power. From giant wobbling dildos to streetlamp-mounted little turbines that harness air displaced by passing traffic.

• Former CIO for sustainable investing at BlackRock states that “Green Investing” is Bullshit. Turns out capitalism is incompatible with decarbonization pretty much by definition. Who knew.

• Geoengineering goes mainstream. At least, the National Academies of Sciences thinks we should be taking a serious look.

• Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival’. It’s old news—and I remain skeptical that linear regression is the appropriate analysis in any case—but wouldn’t it be nice if our sperm counts really did hit zero by midcentury? And we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves.

• Hey, new Ebola outbreak in Guinea. Actually it’s been going on since January, but who can keep track? (Also it now appears that Ebola can lie dormant in a host for up to 5 years, and then jump out and out break all over again…)

• Northern California’s Kelp forest ecosystem reduced by 95% since 2013. Crash instigated by a “multiyear marine heat wave”.

• UN agrees on standards to put a monetary value on ecosystems. Works great until Jeff Bezos pulls out his checkbook and says Okay, I’ve bought the Amazon. Let’s burn the fucker down.”

• Global carbon emissions on track to surpass pre-Covid levels. December emissions 2% higher in 2020 than in 2019. Goodbye, Covid dip. You were nice while you lasted.

February ’21

• Chance of keeping global warming below 2C currently 2%. Goodbye, coral reefs.

• Nineteen out of twenty Australian ecosystems are seriously fucked (i.e., “experiencing potentially irreversible environmental changes.”) Guardian coverage here.

• China doubles the number of “Protected” animal species. Now there’s, like, six of them. (Just kidding. Really, it’s nice to see they’ve given up on the whole wolf-extermination thing.)

• Global “Peace Levels” have declined 2.5% since 2008. (Actually this dates from last August but I just discovered it now.) In your face, Stephen Pinker.

• 20% of all Human mortality due to particulate air pollution. 30% in east Asia. Guardian coverage here.

• US Cities are vastly underestimating their carbon emissions. The uncounted difference adds more annual emissions than the entire state of California. PopSci coverage here.

January ’21

• Past estimates of sea-level rise are too conservative. The worst-case scenario gets even worse, yet again. PopSci coverage here.

• Global ice loss now following IPCC’s worst-case trajectory. Which might be relatively good news, given how many indicators are trending to worse than worst-case. PopSci coverage here.

• Electric cars will be cheaper than the fossil-powered variety by 2023-2025. Of course, fossil-powered SUV sales are still going through the roof.

• Increased rewilding of landscape in rich countries, thanks to declining birth rates. See what happens if we just ignore that whole Judeo-Christian “fill up the world with thy numbers” edict?

• Three quarters of the world’s sharks and rays are in danger of extinction. As usual, a conservative estimate. Popsci perspective here.

• Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced. 1000 – 2500 recharge cycles without significant battery degradation.

• Future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than currently believed. “The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms—including humanity—is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts.” Popsci summary here.

• World’s insects suffering ‘death by a thousand cuts’. A series of papers in PNAS. Popsci summary here.

• Solar now cheapest electricity in history. Oil use still hasn’t peaked— and won’t without “stronger climate action”— but it’s something.

• 2020 hottest year in recorded history. Technically tied with 2016, but 2016 cheated by getting an El Niño boost.

December ’20

• Monarch butterflies are endangered under the ESA, but won’t get protection because ‘it costs too much’. Not the only such species, by a long shot.

• Mass die-off of birds in south-western US ’caused by starvation’. One guess what the drought that caused the starvation was caused by.

• Fighting the Covid recession by amping up fossil-fuel production. Imagine my surprise.

• Global human-made mass now exceeds all living biomass. This doesn’t even include landfills.

• Water now trading on the Stock Market. Hey, at least they haven’t monetized the air we breathe. Yet.

• EU’s biggest oil producer closes deal to shut down its entire oil industry. Legally binding on future governments and everything.

• November 202 hottest November on Record, beating out runners-up 2016 and 2019. During an El Nina no less, which acts to cool the planet.

• By 2030, world’s governments plan to produce more than double the fossil fuels than would be consistent with curbing global warming. Meeting even the half-assed Paris accords requires cutting fossil fuel production by 6% annually. Current plans: an annual increase of 2%.

• Media Reframes Projected Failure to Meet Carbon-Reduction Targets as Being ‘Within Striking Distance’ . If every country honors their pledges (which virtually none have done up to this point) we’re still looking at 2.1C increase by centuries’ end. But hey, let’s move the goalposts and call it a win.

• Cloned Meat Goes Commercial. Only in Singapore, so far. And highly carbon-intensive until it scales up. But in a world in which 96% of mammalian biomass is people and livestock, it’s a start.

November ’20

• Once covid passes, we plan on driving even more. We’re a bit more restrained when it comes to flying, at least. Be still my heart.

October ’20

• A fifth of the world’s countries are in danger of ecosystem collapse. Odd. I didn’t realize that “ecosystems” respected international boundaries…

• Arctic methane deposits starting to release, scientists find. Preliminary findings. Still awaiting confirmation. But if true, another cascade has begun.

• China pledges Carbon-neutrality by 2060. The bad news is, talk is cheap from the world’s biggest coal-burner. Good news is, totalitarian regimes can turn on a dime if they really want to. None of that messy pandering-to-the-voter bullshit.

• Over half the Great Barrier Reef has disappeared since the nineties. As usual, this estimate is conservative; it doesn’t include major bleaching events over the past year.

• California wildfires spawn first ‘gigafire’ in modern history. One fire, one-million-plus acres.

• Climate change could tip 1.45 million km² of Amazonian rainforest to savannah by century’s end. Admittedly a conservative estimate. Popsci coverage here.

September ’20

• World fails to meet a single one of the UN’s 2010 Aichi biodiversity targets to put the brakes on global ecocide. Not a single fucking one. Report here.

• Northern Hemisphere’s 2020 summer hottest in recorded history.

• Global wildlife populations down by 68% since 1970. Two thirds down, one to go.

August ’20

• Greenland Ice Sheet has passed Point of No Return. Already the largest single contributor to rising sea levels. Now there’s no Off switch.

• Rising temperatures on track to kill as many people as all current infectious diseases combined. Original paywalled study here.

July ’20 and earlier

• Forget future development; emissions resulting from projects already committed/underway mean we can kiss 1.5°C goodbye as an attainable target.

• Covid Means Fewer Children!. Even better, the fertility decline preferentially affects those with the biggest carbon bootprints (i.e., urbanites in rich countries).

• 2020: the worst year ever for the fossil fuel industry. “We’re still in for a long and ugly fight”, they admit. Still.

• Virtual extinction of Polar bears within eighty years due to climate change. But it’s not all bad. A few straggly survivors may be all Coca Cola needs to keep its advertising campaign within the bounds of good taste.

• Green power beats fossil fuels for first time in Europe. Still less than half, and pandemic-temporary. But something. Also when there’s a renewables surplus they pay you to consume electricity.

• Unsuitable for ‘human life to flourish’: Up to 3B will live in extreme heat by 2070.

• Record-breaking Siberian winter keeps 2020 on track to be hottest year in recorded history. Covid Pause? What Covid pause?

• It hit 80F in the Arctic this week. Not to mention the zombie fires.

• 2019: the Hottest Year in Europe’s Recorded History.

• Ecuador To Sell A Third Of Its Amazon Rainforest To Chinese Oil Companies.

• Amazon could switch from carbon sink to carbon source within twenty years.. “Decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models.”

• The Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its third mass-bleaching event in five years.. Hey, just because nobody’s talking about it doesn’t mean it’s stopped happening.

• E.P.A., Citing Coronavirus, Drastically Relaxes Rules for Polluters. But it’s okay, because they’re also asking companies to “act responsibly”.

• Australian Bushfires destroyed over a fifth of the continent’s temperate broadleaf forests. This year alone. Who knows what next year might bring?

• Global carbon emissions fall 2%. It’s pathetic progress and utterly insufficient, but I’ll take what I can get.

• Australia’s Bushfires Completely Blasted Through the Models. They weren’t supposed to get this bad for another eighty years.

• A quarter of climate-change tweets are from bots. The vast majority of them denialist.

• January 2019 warmest in recorded history.

• Good news for a change: Global emissions didn’t increase in 2019.

• Climate change displaced 17.2 million from their homes in 2019.

• Atmospheric triflouromethane—a greenhouse gas 12,000x worse than CO₂— reaches record levels.

• We’re currently adding 5 Hiroshima bombs worth of heat per second to the world’s oceans. And climbing.

• Climate threats now dominate long-term risks. Global leaders finally admit risks outweigh those from cyberattacks, pandemics, geopolitical conflict and weapons of mass destruction. Well, duh.

• Earth just had its hottest decade on record. NASA’s Gavin Schmidt admits 1.5C goal unattainable.

• 2019 UN Emissions Gap Report (global emissions have to drop by 7.6% annually starting now or we’re even more fucked).

• 3.2C unless emission-control efforts tripled.

• Greenhouse gases accelerated to new peak in 2018.

• Nature: Predicted extent of global flooding is triple previous estimates.