Climate Emergency News - How to Convince the Loonies

Scienctific ignorance proudly on display

Shutterstock

Inside the mind of a sceptic: the ‘mental gymnastics’ of climate change denial

How do you convince the climate change denying loonies to believe the evidence of their own eyes?

It's about as hard as convincing a Creationist that evidence-based science is right and evidence-free superstitions is wrong, as this article in The Conversation by Rachael Sharman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, and Professor Patrick D. Nunn, Professor of Geography, School of Law and Society, both of the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, explains. It is about their research into the causes of climate scepticism in Australia, but the findings have a wider application, especially in the USA where scepticism is high, following the scientifically illiterate Donald Trump's lead, and the pro-Trump, QAnon conspiracy theorists' disinformation campaign.

Their article is reprinted under a Creative Commons license, reformatted for stylistic consistency. The original article can be read here.

Evolution News - Amazon Rainforest Birds Evolving Due to Climate Change

Above the Amazon rainforest canopy where birds have become smaller and their wings have become longer over several generations, indicating a response to the shifting environmental conditions that may include new physiological or nutritional challenges.

Photo credit: Vitek Jirinec, LSU

Amazon Rainforest Birds’ Bodies Transform Due to Climate Change

A study by a combined team from the USA, Brazil and Portugal, led by Vitek Jirinec of Louisiana State University's School of Renewable Natural Resources, has found evidence that climate change is causing birds of the Amazon Rainforest to evolve smaller bodies and longer wings, even in the areas of the forest where human activity is minimal.

They arrived at this conclusion by examining data from measuring over 15,000 birds over a period of 40 years from a wide range of sites. Over that time the body mass of individuals has reduced by about 2% per decade, so that a bird species with an average body weight of 30 grams in 1980 would now have an average weight of 27.6 grams. These changes are not confined to specific areas, so eliminating local factors. In other words, the changes are being produced by a pervasive environmental change.

The team have published their findings, open access a few days ago, in Science Advances.

These birds don’t vary that much in size. They are fairly fine-tuned, so when everyone in the population is a couple of grams smaller, it’s significant.

This is undoubtedly happening all over and probably not just with birds...If you look out your window, and consider what you’re seeing out there, the conditions are not what they were 40 years ago and it’s very likely plants and animals are responding to those changes as well. We have this idea that the things we see are fixed in time; but if these birds aren’t fixed in time, that may not be true.

Professor Philip Stouffer, co-author
Lee F. Mason Professor
School of Renewable Natural Resources
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Where there was a significant difference, however, was related to the level in the forest that the species normally inhabits, from the forest floor to the canopy. The change was most marked in those which occupy the higher levels, where climate change has had the biggest impact making it drier and hotter. This has created an environment which favour lighter bodies with longer wings, both of which improve flight efficiency so making it easier to tolerate higher temperatures.

In the abstract to their open access paper, published in Science Advances, the authors say:

Abstract

Warming from climate change is expected to reduce body size of endotherms, but studies from temperate systems have produced equivocal results. Over four decades, we collected morphometric data on a nonmigratory understory bird community within Amazonian primary rainforest that is experiencing increasingly extreme climate. All 77

species showed lower mean mass since the early 1980s—nearly half with 95% confidence. A third of species concomitantly increased wing length, driving a decrease in mass:wing ratio for 69% of species. Seasonal precipitation patterns were generally better than temperature at explaining morphological variation. Short-term climatic conditions affected all metrics, but time trends in wing and mass:wing remained robust even after controlling for annual seasonal conditions. We attribute these results to pressures to increase resource economy under warming. Both seasonal and long-term morphological shifts suggest response to climate change and highlight its pervasive consequences, even in the heart of the world’s largest rainforest.

Jirinec Vitek; Burner Ryan C.; Amaral Bruna R.; Bierregaard Richard O.; Fernández-Arellano Gilberto; Hernández-Palma Angélica; Johnson Erik I.; Lovejoy Thomas E.; Powell Luke L.; Rutt Cameron L.; Wolfe Jared D.; Stouffer Philip C (2021)
Morphological consequences of climate change for resident birds in intact Amazonian rainforest
Science Advances 7(46); eabk1743. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abk1743

Copyright: 2021 The authors. Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This is a clear example, not only of the effects of climate change but of how significant environmental change can influence the evolution of species as the environment selects for those characteristics which give greater fitness. It's a beautiful example of how science quite incidentally and with no intention on the part of the authors to do so, casually refutes Creationism by revealing the facts and so confirming once gain how evolution by natural selection works in practice. Significant morphological changes have occurred in these species over a defined time period and that change is proportional to the impact of a pervasive, measurable environmental change in different ecological niches.

Evolution News - The Difference Between Information and Meaning

I. sakaiensis grown on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) accumulates poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB).

How a bacterium may help solve the plastic pollution crisis｜NARA Institute of Science and Technology

One key concept in genetic evolution that Creationists, either wilfully, or because of genuinely limited critical thinking ability, find hard to grasp, is the difference between genetic information and the meaning of that information in the context of the prevailing environment. This makes them especially susceptible to professional frauds in the Deception Institute and others in the Creation Industry, to false claims about mutation always involving a loss of information, when what changes in most forms of mutation is simply a change in the meaning of the information.

Certain bacteria harbor the necessary enzymes to degrade PET, the most problematic plastic environmentally. Our research has shown that the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis converts PET into poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB), a type of poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) plastic that is biodegradable.

We believe that this discovery could be significant in tackling plastic pollution, as we show that the PET-degradation and PHB-synthesis pathways are functionally linked in I. sakaiensis. This might provide a novel pathway where a single bacterial species breaks down difficult-to-recycle PET plastics and uses the products to make biodegradable PHA plastics.

Shosuke Yoshida, senior author
Institute for Research Initiatives,
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

This is illustrated neatly by the discovery that the 201-F6 strain of the bacterium Ideonella sakaiensis can not only degrade petroleum-based plastics but can also sustainably produce biodegradable plastics from otherwise non-biodegradable poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), a plastic widely used for disposable containers such as drinks bottles as well as textiles and food wrappers. This discovery was made by scientists at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Kansai Science City, Japan. Their findings are published, open access, in Scientific Reports.

This ability depends on the presence of two enzymes, PET hydrolase (PETase) and mono(2-hydroxyethyl) terephthalic acid (MHET) hydrolase (MHETase) which together hydrolyse PET into terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol (EG) monomers, both of which are readily biodegraded by other organisms.

In this strain of bacteria, genetic information has mutated to produce these two enzymes which, in the context of an environment highly polluted by man-made plastics, has given them the ability to exploit an abundant food source, unlike their ancestral form. Had this mutation arisen in pre-plastic times, it would have been utterly useless and might even have been detrimental in taking up resources to produce useless enzymes. In other words, the change in information now has a highly beneficial meaning in the context of a modern Earth, where once it had none.

In their paper published a few days ago in Scientific Reports the team say:

Abstract

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is a widely used plastic in bottles and fibers; its waste products pollute the environment owing to its remarkable durability. Recently, Ideonella sakaiensis 201-F6 was isolated as a unique bacterium that can degrade and assimilate PET, thus paving the way for the bioremediation and bioconversion of PET waste. We found that this strain harbors a poly(hydroxyalkanoate) (PHA) synthesis gene cluster, which is highly homologous with that of Cupriavidus necator, an efficient PHA producer. Cells grown on PET accumulated intracellular PHA at high levels. Collectively, our findings in this study demonstrate that I. sakaiensis can mediate the direct conversion of non-biodegradable PET into environment-friendly plastic, providing a new approach for PET recycling.

Fujiwara, Ryoga; Sanuki, Rikako; Ajiro, Hiroharu; Fukui, Toshiaki; Yoshida, Shosuke
Direct fermentative conversion of poly(ethylene terephthalate) into poly(hydroxyalkanoate) by Ideonella sakaiensis
Scientific Reports 11, 19991 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-99528-x

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Springer Nature Ltd.
Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

What has changed in not the quantity of genetic information but the contextual meaning of it and that meaning has changed over time with the invention, use and environmental accumulation of vast quantities of non-biodegradable man-made plastic.

Biodiversity News - 4 New Species of Lichen Found

Micarea stellaris is one of the recently described lichen species. The name refers to ´star´ and comes from intensely shining crystals that are visible when studying it in polarised light.

Scale bar 1 mm.

Vuria, the highest peak in the Taita Hills, reaches to over two Kilometres heigh. Land use has fragmented mountain forests.

Photo: Aannina Kantelinen

Montane cloud forest, Taita Hills, Kenya

Photo: Petri Pellikka

Ngongoni antilopes benefit from the tree cover destroyed by elephants during the dry spells as it increases grasslands in the dry savannah plains surrounding verdant Taita Hills.

Photo: Petri Pellikka

Four lichen species new to science discovered in Kenyan cloud forests | University of Helsinki

The fragility of Earth's biodiversity was highlighted a few days ago by news that researchers from the University of Helsinki Finnish Museum of Natural History, Luomus and the National Museums of Kenya, have recently discovered four new species of lichen, all of the Micrarea genus, growing in the mountain forests in Kenya's Taita Hills. This unique environment is under threat from increasing land use which is fragmenting the forests.

From the University of Helsinki news release:

Bacteria Evolved to Eat Plastic

ILLUSTRATION: P. HUEY/SCIENCE

Feeding on plastic | Science

One of the more subtle aspects of evolution, and one that creationists are either unable or unwilling to understand, is the difference between genetic information and the meaning of that information. A paper published in March 2016 by a Japanese team, illustrates that principle very well. It is about the discovery of a strain of bacteria that has evolved the ability to digest the man-made plastic, poly(ethylene teraphthalate) (PET).

Currently, the world-wide production of PET is over 50 million tons and none of it was biodegradable - until now!

Does God Hate Vultures Too?

Lappet-Faced Vulture, Torgos tracheliotus

Another Continental Vulture Crisis: Africa's Vultures Collapsing toward Extinction | Conservation Letters - Wiley Online Library.

With so many species in serious decline and under threat of imminent extinction, creationists and Intelligent Design hoaxers have some explaining to do. They at least owe it to their followers to explain why their creator god either intended this to happen or is powerless to prevent it. Admittedly, they will need to face up to some unpleasant realities to do so, but at least they'll know they aren't living a lie.

What they need to grasp is that their notion, it it were any good, would be applicable across the entire range of biological science, not just the cherry-picked pieces that make their dupes feel important or to provide easy, default answers to the parts that are hard to understand without learning basic science, putting aside

Pope Is Part Of The Climate Change Problem

Generally, Popes talk what can only politely be called cobblers, and so far the current pope has been no exception. Normally it quite easy to read something a pope has said and to write an article pointing out the bigotry, superstition, scientific illiteracy or clerical self-interest which underpins it. A religious commentator might even regard popes as a godsend for the frequency with which they open their mouth just wide enough to get a red-booted foot in it.

But now we see a pope actually talking sense about climate change and man's responsibility for it and for once the Catholic Church isn't supporting the right-wing and the forces of reaction. From a quick skim through an English translation of his encyclical, Laudato Si', it appears to be well informed and even well-argued. No doubt Pope Francis is not personally the author of it and has depended a great deal on his science advisers to do the actual science but that doesn't detract from his responsibility for the contents, and he deserves praise for it.

Environment, Evolution and Polar Bear Extinction

PLOS ONE: Projected Polar Bear Sea Ice Habitat in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

The prospect of polar bears becoming extinct by 2075 because of the loss of the North Polar icecap is a stark warning of what we are doing to the life-support system we call Earth as we pump out more and more of our toxic waste, like bacteria polluting our culture medium. It also serves to illustrate a couple of things about how life evolves and changes over time, pushed as often as not by environmental change, not genetic change.