Guest post: How to ‘fairly’ share emissions from goods traded around the world | Carbon Brief
https://www.carbonbrief.org/...post-how-to-fairly-share-emissions-from-goods-traded-around-the-world

meta-metabolome ecology



Ecological Modeling Applied to Metabolomics Opens New Area of Scientific Inquiry | PNNL
https://www.pnnl.gov/...s/ecological-modeling-applied-metabolomics-opens-new-area-scientific-inquiry

An ecological meta-community contains multiple communities of biological species distributed through space. Processes governing meta-community dynamics are often studied through an approach called null modeling. Now, researchers, led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), have shown that this approach can be extended to organic molecules fundamental to biogeochemical cycling across all ecosystems. They developed this new conceptual paradigm and created the tools to turn the concepts into a quantitative framework. To demonstrate the approach, the team further applied the methods to organic metabolites collected along a well-studied section of the Columbia River. The outcome is the foundation for a new line of scientific inquiry they call “meta-metabolome ecology.”

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This approach enables researchers to track processes governing organic metabolite profiles through space and time in natural ecosystems. This is key to develop predictive, mechanistic models that link molecular properties to emergent ecosystem function from local to global scales, such as reactive transport and Earth system models. River corridors are an example of an ecosystem that can benefit from this type of analysis. They are major biogeochemical engines of the Earth system, yet challenges connecting processes and features across scales still exist. Furthermore, the science opened by this study will allow microbial taxa to be more directly coupled to the organic molecules involved with metabolic reactions that underlie biogeochemical function

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To better understand processes that constrain or promote variation in metabolomes, researchers integrated metabolite data with tools and concepts from community ecology. They used metabolite data collected from ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometric analysis of filtered river water and subsurface pore water collected from a well-studied stretch of the Columbia River. These data were generated at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), a DOE Office of Science user facility at PNNL.

With these data, the researchers developed several metabolite dendrograms to group molecules based on common traits, such as elemental composition, structural features, and biochemical transformations. Next, they performed ecological null modeling, a common approach used in meta-community ecology but never before applied to organic metabolite assemblages. The null models quantified processes that governed the assembly of molecules into metabolomes.

The researchers found metabolites that were potentially biochemically active were more deterministically assembled than less active metabolites. Organic metabolites that are biochemically active and deterministically organized are most important to represent in mechanistic models.

Xbox's 'Instant On' Feature Could Consume 4 Billion kWh By 2025 - Slashdot
https://games.slashdot.org/...5/2135240/xboxs-instant-on-feature-could-consume-4-billion-kwh-by-2025

God Bleeds - Oil Graduates Aren't Finding Jobs
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/01/15/god-bleeds-oil-graduates-arent-finding-jobs/

Cutting Emissions To Zero CAN Halt Climate Change In Our Lifetimes
https://cleantechnica.com/.../15/cutting-emissions-to-zero-can-halt-climate-change-in-our-lifetimes/

“There’s no point in stopping climate change,” an acquaintance once told me. “Even if we changed everything to electric and solar panels, your scientists are saying it wouldn’t even help our grandchildren’s grandchildren much.”

That view may sound defeatist, but until recently, that was the prevailing scientific view. My acquaintance was actually right. “Our” scientists were saying something like that. On the NASA climate change frequently asked questions pages, under “Is it too late to prevent climate change?” it says, “Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades, if not centuries. That’s because it takes a while for the planet (for example, the oceans) to respond, and because carbon dioxide – the predominant heat-trapping gas – lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.”

That data led to a lot of hopelessness, and even served as an excuse for people who don’t want to sacrifice anything to mitigate the effects of climate change. Fortunately, some climate scientists are finding that their past assumptions on this question were wrong.

Buried under doomsday predictions for what could happen during a second Trump term was newer information about this from Michael Mann, a distinguished climate scientist. It turns out that if we cut to zero emissions, the warming would continue, but only for a few years.

nebudu kopirovat cely :)

Joe Biden's climate pledges: Are they realistic?
https://dw.com/en/joe-bidens-climate-pledges-are-they-realistic/a-56173821

What can Biden do domestically during his term?
With 2050 a long way off, all eyes are on what the president-elect does at home in the next few years.

Key among his domestic climate pledges is his plan to make the US power sector climate neutral by 2035. Bertram said "this is something where there could be visible results within three to four years [in Biden's term]."

In addition to the power sector, Keohane says the EDF has identified two other key short-term goals for Biden's domestic policy: Transportation, particularly with legislation around tailpipe standards for cars and trucks, and methane reduction in industry.

"The federal government needs to go all out on existing authorities like the Clean Air Act," Keohane said. "Methane is the main cause of near-term warming, and reducing that is something Biden can do from day one."

In the US, the oil and gas industries were responsible for 31% of methane production in the US between 1990 and 2017 according to the Environmental Protection Agency , second only to agriculture. Investing in clean energy sources and creating a transition away from these industries will be important in reducing methane emissions in the next few years.

TADEAS:

Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption | Environment | The Guardian
https://amp.theguardian.com/...-warn-of-ghastly-future-of-mass-extinction-and-climate-disruption-aoe

“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,” they write in a report in Frontiers in Conservation Science which references more than 150 studies detailing the world’s major environmental challenges.

The delay between destruction of the natural world and the impacts of these actions means people do not recognise how vast the problem is, the paper argues. “[The] mainstream is having difficulty grasping the magnitude of this loss, despite the steady erosion of the fabric of human civilisation.”

The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will be inevitable unless urgent action is taken.

“Ours is not a call to surrender – we aim to provide leaders with a realistic ‘cold shower’ of the state of the planet that is essential for planning to avoid a ghastly future,” it adds.

TADEAS:

Simultaneous with population growth, humanity's consumption as a fraction of Earth's regenerative capacity has grown from ~ 73% in 1960 to 170% in 2016 (Lin et al., 2018), with substantially greater per-person consumption in countries with highest income. With COVID-19, this overshoot dropped to 56% above Earth's regenerative capacity, which means that between January and August 2020, humanity consumed as much as Earth can renew in the entire year (overshootday.org). While inequality among people and countries remains staggering, the global middle class has grown rapidly and exceeded half the human population by 2018 (Kharas and Hamel, 2018). Over 70% of all people currently live in countries that run a biocapacity deficit while also having less than world-average income, excluding them from compensating their biocapacity deficit through purchases (Wackernagel et al., 2019) and eroding future resilience via reduced food security (Ehrlich and Harte, 2015b). The consumption rates of high-income countries continue to be substantially higher than low-income countries, with many of the latter even experiencing declines in per-capita footprint (Dasgupta and Ehrlich, 2013; Wackernagel et al., 2019).

Insects face ‘death by a thousand cuts’

In the introduction to a special issue of PNAS that throws light on insect decline, ecologists do not mince words: “Nature is under siege,” they write. “Most biologists agree that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction event.” In a bid to provide a scientifically grounded assessment of insect population trends, the journal offers 11 papers that delve into every aspect of the issue.

One of the challenges is going beyond “the overwhelming sense that something sinister is afoot” and gathering clear, comprehensive data on insect abundances over time. There are only a handful of long-term monitoring studies of insect populations. So entomologists have turned to plumbing other historical data for signals of change.

PNAS special issue introduction | 30 min read & PNAS feature | 15 min read
Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/2/e2023989118