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Chimpanzees Develop 'Specialized Tool Kits' To Catch Army AntsChimpanzees in the Congo have developed specialized "tool kits" to forage for army ants, providing some of the first recorded evidence of multiple tools.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Methane Gas Likely Spewing Into The Oceans Through Vents In Sea FloorScientists worry that rising global temperatures accompanied by melting permafrost in arctic regions will initiate the release of underground methane into the atmosphere. A new paper elucidates how this underground methane in frozen regions would escape and concludes that methane trapped under the ocean may already be escaping through vents in the sea floor a million times faster than previously believed.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Functional MRI Forecasts Which Soldiers Might Be Vulnerable To SuicideA researcher in Israel demonstrates that functional magnetic resonance imaging can be used to forecast which soldiers might be vulnerable to stress psychopathology.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Protein Modifier SUMO Helps Set Apart Females And MalesOne way in which men and women differ is in their expression of liver proteins that control energy generation and lipid and steroid hormone production and turnover. Researchers have identified a new mechanism -- involving a process known as sumoylation -- underlying this differential expression of proteins in male and female mice. They also suggest drugs that may prevent estrogen-induced intrahepatic cholestasis, the most common liver disease during pregnancy.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am High School Football, Wrestling Athletes Suffer Highest Rate Of Severe InjuriesHigh school football and wrestling athletes experienced the highest rate of severe injuries, according to the first study to examine severe injuries -- injuries that caused high school athletes to miss more than 21 days of sport participation among a nationally representative sample of high school athletes. Severe injuries accounted for 15 percent of all high school sport-related injuries.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Novel Anti-cancer Drug Yields Positive Response In People With Advanced Skin And Brain CancerThe Hedgehog signaling pathway is involved in a preliminary study and case report describing positive responses to an experimental anticancer drug in a majority of people with advanced or metastatic basal cell skin cancers. One patient with the most common type of pediatric brain cancer, medulloblastoma, also showed tumor shrinkage.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 9:00 am Study Evaluates Use Of Corticosteroids And Antiviral Agents For Treatment Of Bell PalsyAmong patients with Bell Palsy, a facial paralysis with unknown cause, treatment with corticosteroids is associated with a reduced risk of an unsatisfactory recovery, and treatment with a combination of corticosteroids and antiviral agents may be associated with additional benefit, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis of previously published studies.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am Injectable Biomaterial Regenerates Brain Tissue In Traumatic InjuriesAn injectable biomaterial gel may help brain tissue grow at the site of a traumatic brain injury, according to new findings. Research shows that the biomaterial gel made up of both synthetic and natural sources has the potential to spur the growth of a patient's own neural stem cells in the body, structurally repairing the brain injury site.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am Fungal Map Of Mutations Key To Increasing Enzyme Production For Bioenergy UseNew research provides the first genome-wide look at the mutations in strains of the fungus Trichoderma reesei in order to understand just how the production of enzymes that break down cellulose production was first improved, and how it can be boosted even further for industrial applications such as biofuel production.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am Avastin Dramatically Improves Response, Survival In Deadly Recurrrent Glioblastomas, Study FindsA study has found that targeted therapy Avastin, alone and in combination with the chemotherapy drug CPT-11, significantly increased response rates, progression-free survival times and survival rates in patients with a deadly form of brain cancer that had recurred.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am Jimena weakening after plowing into Mexico (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 4:36 am World heading for climate 'abyss': UN chief (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 4:01 am The Nation's Weather (AP)AP - Most moisture from Tropical Storm Jimena was expected to remain over Mexico, but some would advect northeastward into the Southwest, triggering scattered showers and thunderstorms.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 3:21 am China tries to calm unease over rare earths curbs (AP)AP - A Chinese official tried to calm unease about curbs on exports of rare earths used in clean energy products and superconductors, saying Thursday that sales will continue but must be limited to reduce damage to China's environment.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 3:14 am World heading for abyss on climate change: UN chief (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 2:52 am NASA monitors space junk ahead of spacewalk (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 2:33 am A Stem-Cell Discovery Could Help Diabetics (Time.com)Time.com - Harvard stem-cell scientists have created the first insulin-producing cells from skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients -- and gained a deeper understanding of the diseaseSource: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 2:25 am Spacewalk still on despite approaching space junk (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 2:11 am Coconuts used to capture carbonThe Maldives government aims to reduce its CO2 emissions using fertiliser. The "biochar" is a charcoal made from bio-wastes such as coconut shells.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 3 Sep 2009 | 2:07 am Report: Loggerhead turtles at risk of extinction (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 3 Sep 2009 | 1:15 am Australia's warm winter a recordAustralia records its warmest ever winter - partly caused by climate change - and fears the coming bush fire season.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:11 pm China approves single-dose swine flu vaccine (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:01 pm NASA tracks space junk headed toward space stationHOUSTON (Reuters) - The International Space Station might have to fire its thrusters to avoid a piece of space junk that could pass within two miles of the orbiting complex and its 13 astronauts, NASA said on Wednesday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Sep 2009 | 8:51 pm Galaxy 'cannibalism' revealedThe vast Andromeda galaxy has expanded by consuming stars from smaller galaxies, research shows.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 7:37 pm New-found Asian antelope said close to extinctionGENEVA (Reuters) - The Saola antelope, discovered in 1992 by scientists in remote valleys on the borders of Laos and Vietnam, is on the brink of extinction from hunting with dogs and snaring, the nature body IUCN said on Thursday.Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Sep 2009 | 6:11 pm New Understanding of the Heart's EvolutionNow scientists have a better understanding how the complex heart evolved.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 5:41 pm Hundreds of sand lizards releasedHundreds of rare sand lizards are being released at sites across England and Wales from where they had previously disappeared.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 5:12 pm Cane and able?How India's demand for sugar is hitting BrazilSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 5:03 pm Ancient wall found in JerusalemA 3,700-year-old wall has been discovered in east Jerusalem, the region's earliest fortifications, Israeli archaeologists say.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 4:57 pm Big Oil Deposit Found Beneath Gulf of MexicoBP says it's found a deep oil field in the Gulf of Mexico that could generate more than 3 billion barrels of petroleum.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 4:50 pm Telegraphs Ran on Electric Air in Crazy 1859 Magnetic Storm
On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.
In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose. “With this a beautiful tint of pink finally mingled. The clouds of this color were most abundant to the northeast and northwest of the zenith,” the Times wrote. “There they shot across one another, intermingling and deepening until the sky was painfully lurid. There was no figure the imagination could not find portrayed by these instantaneous flashes.” As if what was happening in the heavens wasn’t enough, the communications infrastructure just beginning to stretch along the eastern seaboard was going haywire from all the electromagnetism. “We observed the influence upon the lines at the time of commencing business — 8 o’clock — and it continued so strong up to 9 1/2 as to prevent any business from being done, excepting by throwing off the batteries at each end of the line and working by the atmospheric current entirely!” the astonished telegraph operators of Boston wrote in a statement that appeared in The New York Times later that week.
The Boston operator told his Portland, Maine counterpart, “Mine is also disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current. How do you receive my writing?” Portland responded, “Better than with our batteries on,” before finally concluding with Yankee pluck, “Very well. Shall I go ahead with business?” In terms of the relationship between the Earth and its star, it is probably the weirdest 24-hours on record. People struggled to explain what had happened. NASA’s David Hathaway, a solar astronomer, said that people in the solar community were beginning to understand that there was a relationship between events on the sun and magnetism on Earth. But that knowledge was not widely disseminated. Another theory held that auroras were actually atmospheric phenomena, that is to say, weather of a particular type. Proof of various sorts was offered. Auroras apparently had a sound, “the noise of crepitation,” or crackling, that marked them as Earth-bound phenomena. Even weirder explanations arose, like meteorologist Ebenezer Miriam’s hilariously quacky quote in The New York Times. “The Aurora (electricity discharged from the craters of volcanoes) either dissolves in the atmosphere, and is thus diffused through space or concentrated into a gelatineus[sic] substance forming meteors, called shooting stars,” Miriam wrote. “These meteors dissolve rapidly in atmospheric air, but sometimes reach the earth before dissolving, and resemble thin starch.” But some scientists were on the right track. Eighteen hours before the storm hit, Richard Carrington, a young but well-respected British astronomer, had been making his daily sunspot observations when he saw two brilliant spots of light. We know now that what he was seeing was the heating up of the surface of the sun beyond its standard fusion-powered temperature of about 5,500 degrees Celsius. The energy to do so came from a magnetic explosion as a distended part of the sun’s magnetic field snapped and reconnected. “They give off the energy equivalent of about 10 million atomic bombs in the matter of an hour or two,” Hathaway said. “[The 1859] one was special, and it was noticed because it was a white light flare. It actually heated up the surface of the sun well enough to light up the sun.” Though back then Carrington didn’t know what he was looking at, five years of staring at the sun had taught him that what he was seeing was unprecedented. When in the wee hours of the next night, the skies all over the globe began turning brilliant colors, Carrington knew he was on to something. “I think that it represents a tipping point in astronomy because for the first time, astronomers had concrete evidence that a force other than gravity could communicate itself across 93 million miles of space,” said Stuart Clark, author of the book The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began. Still, it would be decades before the scientific theory would catch up with the observations. British heavyweights like Lord Kelvin opined that the sun could never deliver the level of energy that had been observed on Earth. Understanding what was happening without understanding how the sun worked or the nature of particles was not exactly easy. “It’s a great example of where theory and observation don’t match up,” Clark said. “The scientific establishment tends to believe the theory, but it’s usually the other way around, and the observations are correct. You have to build up a critical mass of observations to shift the scientific theory.” Over time, more and more observations did shift the theory, and the sun was held properly responsible for geomagnetic storms. The technological lesson that electrical equipment could be disturbed was largely forgotten, though. When a geomagnetic storm hits the Earth, it shakes the Earth’s magnetosphere. As the magnetized plasma pushes the Earth’s magnetic field lines around, currents flow. Those currents have their own magnetic fields and soon, down at the ground, strong electromagnetic forces are in play. In other words, your telegraph can run on “auroral current.” Geomagnetic storms, though, can have less benign impacts. On August 4, 1972, a Bell Telephone line running from Chicago to San Francisco got knocked out. Bell Labs researchers wanted to find out why, and their findings led them right back to 1859 and the auroral current. Louis Lanzerotti, now an engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, went digging in the Bell Labs library for similar events and explanations. Along with field research, the history became the core of a new approach to building more robust electrical systems. “We did all this analysis and wrote this paper in ‘74 for the Bell Systems Technical Journal,” Lanzerotti said. “And it really made a helluva of a difference in Bell Systems. They redesigned their power systems.” The fight to secure the Earth’s technical systems from geomagnetic anomalies continues. Late last year, the National Academies of Science put out a report on severe space weather events. If a storm even approaching 1859 levels were to happen again, they concluded the damage could range upwards of a $1 trillion, largely because of disruptions to the electrical grid. The data on how often huge storms occur is scarce. Ice cores are the main evidence we have outside human historical documents. Charged particles can interact with nitrogen in the atmosphere, creating nitrides. The increased concentration of those molecules can be detected by looking at ice cores, which act like a logbook of the atmosphere at a given time. Over the last 500 years of this data, the 1859 event was twice as big as anything else. Even so, the sun remains a bit of a mystery, particularly these tremendously energetic events. Scientists like Hathaway are able to describe why one geomagnetic storm might be bigger than another based on the details of how it arose, but they are hard pressed to predict when or why a freakishly large storm might arise. Scientific understanding of how the sun impacts the Earth and its tech-heavy humans isn’t complete, but at least we know when it got its start: the early hours of September 2, 1859. “It’s at that point we realize that these celestial objects affected our technologies and the way we wanted to live our lives,” Stuart said. And it turns out, our burning hot star still does. Image: TRACE/NASA See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 2 Sep 2009 | 4:44 pm Tipping Points: What Wall Street and Nature Have in CommonWhen a tipping point is coming – be it in ocean circulation patterns, wildlife populations, or even the global economy – it is often heralded by telltale signs, scientists have found.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 2:42 pm Circus billionaire plans show from spaceCAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A billionaire Canadian circus entrepreneur who will visit space this month said on Wednesday he will host a live event from orbit on October 9 to promote the importance of access to clean water globally.Source: Reuters: Science News | 2 Sep 2009 | 2:31 pm Andromeda Galaxy a Cosmic CannibalAndromeda, our galactic neighbor, has an appetite for stars and dwarf galaxies.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Sep 2009 | 1:30 pm Fear the Flu: What You Can DoRound 2 of Swine Flu is just getting started.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:52 pm Studying the Sex Secrets of a Snail ParasiteEvolutionary biologist studies snails to investigate sexual reproduction in parasites.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:48 pm BLOG: Cirque du SpaceThe creator of Cirque du Soleil plans an artistic performance in space.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:40 pm India emissions 'triple by 2030'The amount of greenhouse gases India produces will more than triple by 2030 - but per-capita rate will stay low, a report says.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:33 pm Before Sex, Say This Prayer ...The new prayer is is aimed at purifying their intentions.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:31 pm Man Survives with Heart Stopped 45 MinutesThe clinical definition of death isn't what it used to be.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:30 pm Lasers Can Chill Stuff Super Fast
Need to cool something extra-fast? New research suggests that lasers might do the trick. Physicists proposed the idea of laser cooling 30 years ago, but until now, experiments had been largely unsuccessful and only worked with low-pressure gases. Now, German researchers have shown that bombarding high-pressure gas with a laser can produce dramatic cooling, dropping the temperature as much as 66 degrees Celsius (about 119 degrees Fahrenheit) in a matter of seconds. The researchers say laser cooling of dense gases could work as a new kind of refrigeration, and might even be able to achieve temperatures close to absolute zero. They reported their findings Wednesday in Nature. Laser cooling works because zapping gas molecules with the right kind of laser excites electrons into higher-than-normal orbits. “In this process the electron orbits of the particles ‘bend,’” physicist Martin Weitz of the University of Bonn said in a press release. “At the time of the collision, you therefore need less energy than normal in order to vault the electron into a high orbit.” Once the collision is over, the orbits return to their normal shape, and electrons have to absorb energy to stay in the new higher orbit. As electrons soak up extra energy, gas particles slow down and the temperature drops. And what’s the point of all this fancy physics? Super-fast refrigeration can create “supercooled” gases, which stay in a gaseous state at temperatures that would normally turn them into liquid. Scientists who study matter are fascinated by the unusual properties of supercooled materials, while food scientists have used supercooling to make shinier chocolate and extra-pure vodka. The researchers say there’s also an important benefit for the rest of us: Say hello to the laser-cooled mini fridge. Image: Flickr/San Diego Shooter. Note: Han Solo was probably NOT frozen in carbonite by laser cooling. Perhaps the Ugnaughts could also have benefited from this technology.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 2 Sep 2009 | 12:00 pm FAQ: The Science and History of WildfiresLearn what's behind the current blazes in Southern California.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:51 am Accidental Poisoning Deaths Spike UpwardIt appears that the increase in poisonings is largely due to prescription drugs.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:50 am Scientists Seek Warning Signs for Catastrophic Tipping Points
Tipping points are found in ecosystems, economies and even bodies. But they’re usually recognized in retrospect, when it’s too late for anything but regret. Now a growing body of research suggests there are telltale mathematical signals. If scientists can figure out how to detect them, they may be able to forecast tipping points ahead of time. “We are repeatedly blindsided by disasters that come out of the blue. If we had better tools for anticipating those events, we could avoid some of them,” said Steve Carpenter, a University of Washington ecologist and co-author of a review Wednesday in Nature. In 1982, physicist Kenneth Wilson won a Nobel Prize for developing equations to describe transitions that don’t happen in a linear, easily predictable way, but are sudden and massive, such as fluids becoming turbulent and metals becoming magnetized. Since then, scientists have noticed similar shifts elsewhere. The theory provides the only models that make sense of the Sahara’s sudden flip from fertile grassland to sandy wastes some 5,500 years ago. Exploited fish populations fluctuate wildly. Futures prices on the S&P 500 displayed telltale skewing in the year preceding the 1987 stock market crash. The proposition is by no means certain, but the possibility of being able to predict these sorts of events is tantalizing. “These are provocative possibilities. The fact that the patterns seem to recur in so many different circumstances suggests that the mechanisms underlying them may have universal characteristics,” said study co-author George Sugihara, a nonlinear dynamics specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The math appears to be universal. Carpenter and others suspect that all critical transitions are preceded by the same basic patterns. The trick is to figure out what sort of data to look for, and then how to make sense of it. Tip-offs for tipping points appear when the feedback loops that normally keep complex systems at equilibrium become stressed. Too many trees are cut down, too many cattle are turned out to graze, too many investors sell low. The system takes longer to recover from variations it normally weathers. Its mathematical representations become jagged rather than smooth.
The data needed to detect ecological tipping points comes from Earth-orbiting satellites, but the U.S. fleet isn’t up to the task. “Global and regional monitoring systems are a long way from where they need to be,” said University of Wisconsin ecologist Steve Carpenter. “Earth-observing capacity in the U.S. has deteriorated badly.” In 2007, a National Academy of Sciences report predicted the number of U.S. satellites would drop by 40 percent over the next three years. “There’s a train wreck coming,” said William Gail of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it needed $670 million to replace U.S. weather satellites, which will start shutting down by 2014. “The message to policymakers is that monitoring needs to improve a lot,” Carpenter said. “ And it’s not enough to go gather the data. Someone has to analyze it, someone has to pay attention to it. Right now, nobody is paying attention.” Image: Colorado State University Assuming scientists can find the signals that precede these events, and that monitoring systems can gather the necessary high-quality, long-term data — a very big if — researchers then need to figure how different kinds of feedback interact and where the thresholds points are. In a rangeland, for instance, dozens of factors are involved in desertification, from fire intensity and grazing pressure to ambient moisture and soil composition. One might be more relevant than another to understanding the system’s dynamics. “It’d be very nice if it were true that there were precursors for tipping points in all these diverse systems. It’d be even nicer if we could find these precursors. I want to believe it, but I’m not sure I do,” said Steven Strogatz, a Cornell University biomathematician who was not involved in the paper. The difficulty of early detection is especially pronounced with markets. Computer models can replicate their bubble-and-crash behavior, but real markets — buffeted by political and social trends, and inevitably responding to the very act of prediction — are much cloudier. “It is hard to find clear evidence of bifurcations and transitions, let alone find an early warning system to detect an upcoming crash,” said Cars Homme, an economic theorist at the University of Amsterdam. The most promising evidence of useful early warning signs comes from grasslands, coral reefs and lakes. Vegetation-pattern-based early warning signs have been documented in several regions, and transition theory is already being used to guide land use in parts of Australia. The U.S. Geological Survey is currently hunting through satellite imagery for signals of impending desertification at two sites in the Southwest. They’ve studied desertification there by painstakingly measuring local conditions and experimentally setting fires, removing grasses and controlling the fall of water. But so far, the vegetation patterns that indicated tipping points in the Kalahari haven’t shown up here, though this may be due to poor image quality rather than bad theory. The researchers are now looking for signals in on-the-ground measurements of vegetation changes. “These things aren’t going to be foolproof. There will be false positives and false negatives, and people need to be aware of that,” said Carpenter. “There’s still a great deal of basic research going on to understand the indicators better. We’re still in the early days. But why not try? The alternative is to get repeatedly blindsided. The alternative is not appealing.” Citation: “Early-warning signals for critical transitions.” By Marten Scheffer, Jordi Bascompte, William A. Brock, Victor Brovkin, Stephen R. Carpenter, Vasilis Dakos, Hermann Held, Egbert H. van Nes, Max Rietkerk & George Sugihara. Nature, Vol. 461, No. 7260, September 2, 2009. Image: NASA. In March, researchers predicted that continued deforestation would cause less rain to fall in the Amazon, ultimately resulting in the rain forest’s transformation to grasslands. See Also:
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes, Wired Science on Twitter.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:48 am Space Station Experiment to Hunt Antimatter GalaxiesA $1.5 billion cosmic ray detector scheduled to go up to the space station will help scientists hunt for antimatter galaxies.Source: Livescience.com | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:39 am Startled Pigeons Whistle With Their WingsPigeons manipulate the shape of their wings when spooked so they emit a whistle.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Sep 2009 | 11:30 am WATCH: Football Helmets Detect ConcussionsA new padding design in football helmets can help to prevent serious injury.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 2 Sep 2009 | 10:30 am Why coral reefs face a catastrophic futureDestroyed by rising carbon levels, acidity, pollution, algae, bleaching and El Niño, coral reefs require a dramatic change in our carbon policy to have any chance of survival, report warns Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm water and thick with a psychedelic display of fish, sharks, crustaceans and other sea life, the colourful coral ramparts that rise from the sand are known as the rainforests of the oceans. And with good reason. Reefs and rainforests have more in common than their beauty and bewildering biodiversity. Both have stood for millions of years, and yet both are poised to disappear. If you thought you had heard enough bad news on the environment and that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks like it will enter the history books as the first major ecosystem wiped out by our love of cheap energy. Today, a report from the Australian government agency that looks after the nation's emblematic Great Barrier Reef reported that "the overall outlook for the reef is poor and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted". The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and it is not the only one. Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here. "The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs. "There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct." Alex Rogers, a coral expert with the Zoological Society of London, talks of an "absolute guarantee of their annihilation". And David Obura, another coral heavyweight and head of CORDIO East Africa, a research group in Kenya, is equally pessimistic: "I don't think reefs have much of a chance. And what's happening to reefs is a parable of what is going to happen to everything else." These are desperate words, stripped of the usual scientific caveats and expressions of uncertainty, and they are a measure of the enormity of what's happening to our reefs. The problem is a new take on a familiar evil. Of the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide spewed from cars, power stations, aircraft and factories each year, about half hangs round in the thin layer of atmosphere where it traps heat at the Earth's surface and so drives global warming. What happens to the rest of this steady flood of carbon pollution? Some is absorbed by the world's soils and forests, offering vital respite to our overcooked climate. The remainder dissolves into the world's oceans. And there, it stores up a whole heap of trouble for coral reefs. Often mistaken for plants, individual corals are animals closely related to sea anemones and jellyfish. They have tiny tentacles and can sting and eat fish and small animals. Corals are found throughout the world's oceans, and holidaymakers taking a swim off the Cornish coast may brush their hands through clouds of the tiny creatures without ever realising. It is when corals form communities on the sea bed that things get interesting. Especially in the tropics. Yes, Britain has its own rugged coral reefs, but such deep-water constructions are too remote, cold and dark to really fire the imagination. It is in shallow, brightly light waters, that coral reefs really come to life. In the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific, the coral come together with tiny algae to make magic. The algae do something that the coral cannot. They photosynthesise, and so use the sun's energy to churn out food for the coral. In return, the coral provide the algae with the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis, and so complete the circle of symbiotic life. Freed of the need to wave their tentacles around to hunt for food, the coral can devote more energy to secreting the mineral calcium carbonate, from which they form a stony exoskeleton. A second type of algae, which also produces calcium carbonate, provides cement. Together, the marine menage-a-trois make a very effective building site, with dead corals leaving their calcium skeletons behind as limestone. For all their apparent beauty and fragility, just think of coral reefs as big lumps of rock with a living crust. A fragile crust too. The natural world is a harsh environment for coral reefs. They are under perpetual attack by legions of fish that graze their fields of algae. Animals bore into their shells to make homes, and storms and crashing waves break them apart. They may appear peaceful paradises, but most coral reefs are manic sites of constant destruction and frantic rebuilding. Crucially though, for millions of years, these processes have been in balance. Human impact has tipped that balance. Loaded with the agricultural nutrients nitrates and phosphates, rivers now spill their polluted waters into the sea. Sediment and sewage cloud the clear waters, while over-fishing plays havoc with the finely tuned community of fish and sharks that kept the reef nibbling down to sustainable levels. All of this is enough to wreck coral without any help from climate change. Global warming, predictably, has made the situation worse. Secure in their tropical currents, coral reefs have evolved to operate within a fairly narrow temperature range, yet, in the late 1970s and 1980s, coral scientists got an unpleasant demonstration of what happens when the hot tap is left on too long. "The algae go berserk," said Rogers. Scientists think the algae react to the warmer water and increased sunlight by producing toxic oxygen compounds called superoxides, which can damage the coral. The coral respond by ejecting their algal lodgers, leaving the reefs starved of nutrients and deathly white. Such bleaching was first observed on a large scale in the 1980s, and reached massive levels worldwide during the 1997-98 El Niño weather event. On top of a human-warmed climate, the 1997-98 El Niño, caused by pulses of warming and cooling in the Pacific, drove water temperatures across the world beyond the coral comfort zone. The mass bleaching event that followed killed a fifth of coral communities worldwide, and though many have recovered slightly since, the global death toll attributed to the 1997-98 mass bleaching stands at 16%. "At the moment the reefs seem to be recovering well but it's only a matter of time before we have another [mass bleaching event]," says Obura. With its striking images of skeletal reefs stripped of colour and life, coral bleaching offers photogenic evidence of our crumbling biodiversity, and has placed the plight of coral reefs higher on the world's consciousness. Head along to your local swimming pool for diving lessons these days, and chances are that you will be offered a coral conservation course as well. Katy Bloor, an instructor at Sub-Mission Dive School in Stoke-on-Trent, says many divers are not aware of the problems corals face, particularly as holiday operators tend to visit reefs in better condition. "Most have probably dived on a coral reef that they thought was a bit rubbish, but they haven't considered why," she said. If anyone knows what they are missing out on, it should be Charlie Veron. So what does it feel like to dive on a pristine reef? "I have not seen many reefs that can be called pristine, and none exist now," he says. "But if I had to take a punt, I was diving on the Chesterfield Reefs, east of New Caledonia [in the southwest Pacific] about 30 years ago and was staggered by the wealth of life, especially big fish which were so thick that I was hardly ever able to photograph coral. That place made even remote parts of the Great Barrier Reef look second rate. "I can only describe it like walking through a rainforest dripping with orchids, crowded with birds and mammals of bewildering variety and trees growing in extreme profusion." Can the coral be helped? If planting more trees can regrow a forest, can coral be introduced to bolster failing reefs? There are a handful of groups working on the problem, many of which have reported encouraging results. Off Japan, scientists are farming healthy coral on hundreds of ceramic discs, which they plan to transplant onto the badly-bleached Sekisei Lagoon reef within two years. In 30 years or so, they hope the reef can recover fully. A similar, if more low-tech, exercise is under way in the Philippine coastal community of Bolinao, where local people have broken off chunks from the healthy section of their local reef and have crudely wedged them into cracks in bleached sections. Others have cultured corals in swimming pools, and researchers in the Maldives are using giant sunken cages, connected to a low level electric current, to help coral form their chalky shells. But the problem with all these efforts, according to Rogers at the ZSL, is that they cannot address the looming holocaust that reefs face. A new, terrible curse that comes on top of the bleaching, the battering, the poisoning and the pollution. Remember the carbon dioxide that we left dissolving in the oceans? Billions and billions of tonnes of it over the last 150 years or so since the industrial revolution? While mankind has squabbled, delayed, distracted and dithered over the impact that carbon emissions have on the atmosphere, that dissolved pollution has been steadily turning the oceans more acidic. There is no dispute, no denial, about this one. Chemistry is chemistry, and carbon dioxide plus water has made carbonic acid since the dawn of time. As a result, the surface waters of the world's oceans have dropped by about 0.1 pH unit – a sentence that proves the hopeless inadequacy of scientific terminology to express certain concepts. It sounds small, but is a truly jaw-dropping change for coral reefs. For reefs to rebuild their stony skeletons, they rely on the seawater washing over them to be rich in the calcium mineral aragonite. Put simply, the more acid the seawater, the less aragonite it can hold, and the less corals can rebuild their structure. Earlier this year, a paper in the journal Science reported that calcification rates across the Great Barrier Reefs have dropped 14% since 1990. The researchers said more acidic seas were the most likely culprit, and ended their sober write-up of the study with the extraordinary warning that it showed "precipitous changes in the biodiversity and productivity of the world's oceans may be imminent". Rogers says carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are already over the safe limits for coral reefs. And even the most ambitious political targets for carbon cuts, based on limiting temperature rise to 2C, are insufficient. Their only hope, he says, is a long-term carbon concentration much lower than today's. The clock must somehow be wound back and carbon somehow sucked out of the air. If not, then so much more carbon will dissolve in the seas that the reefs will surely crumble to dust. Given the reluctance to reduce emissions so far, the coral community is not holding its breath. "I just don't see the world having the commitment to sort this one out," says Obura. "We need to use the coral reef lesson to wake us up and not let this happen to a hundred other ecosystems." Reefs to see before they dieFlorida Keys, United States The only coral reef system in the continental US and the third largest in the world, stretching 221 miles down the Florida coast. The US National Marine Fisheries Service says live coral is down 50-80% in the last decade, mainly due to damage by humans. Jamaican reefs Threatened by sewage disposal, inland agricultural run-off and eutrophication, as well as tourist activities such as glass-bottom boat trips. Hurricanes hinder reef recovery and Caribbean coral cover has declined 80% in 25 years. Scarborough Reef, South China Sea Ownership disputes between the Philippines, mainland China and Taiwan mean the waters surrounding this reef are heavily overfished, and mangled by the blasts and cyanide used to maximise catch. Reefs of the windward Southeast Hawaiian Islands, US Management is improving around the main Hawaiian islands such as Oahu and Maui, but over-fishing and organic sediment from plantations remain major threats. Seribu Islands, Java Sea, Indonesia Spanning over 108,000 hectares and 100 small islands, this reef is a significant contributor to the Indonesian tourism economy. Rapid urban development poses threats from domestic and industrial waste, urban run-off and oil and gas exploration. The 1997-1998 El Niño event triggered severe bleaching and killed over 90% of the coral down to 25 metres. Stable but for how long?The Great Barrier Reef The globe's largest coral reef ecosystem, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and stretching over 3,000km, is the best example of reef management with little damage since 2004. Significant bleaching occurred in 1998, 2002 and 2006. The Red Sea Riviera, Gulf of Aqaba, Egypt, Israel and Jordan These reefs continue to remain in good health despite intense tourism. Coral cover remains high to very high, despite localised losses from coral bleaching and crowns-of-thorns starfish, which prey on coral polyps. Mombasa National Marine Park, Kenya Adjacent to the most heavily populated beach along the Kenyan coast, damage due to tourism is inevitable. In 1989 the area was pronounced a marine park, leading to an increase in recorded coral cover from 8 to 30%. Reefs of the Seychelles, Indian Ocean Lost some 90% of coral cover during the 1998 El Nino event. Slowly recovering due to granitic coral, which is more resistant and supports regrowth. Surin Islands, Thailand The reefs located off this group of islands were weakened by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami The majority of the damage is localized and low impact, but the coral is now more susceptible to future destruction. Lauren Smith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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