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Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • New Antarctic Seabed Sonar Images Reveal Clues To Sea-Level Rise

    New Antarctic Seabed Sonar Images Reveal Clues To Sea-Level Rise

    ScienceDaily (May 5, 2009) — Motorway-sized troughs and channels carved into Antarctica’s continental shelves by glaciers thousands of years ago could help scientists to predict future sea-level rise, according to a report in the May issue of the journal Geology.

    Using sonar technology from onboard ships, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) captured the most extensive, continuous set of images of the seafloor around the Amundsen Sea embayment ever taken. This region is a major drain point of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and considered by some scientists to be the most likely site for the initiation of major ice sheet collapse.

    The sonar images reveal an ‘imprint’ of the Antarctic ice sheet as it was at the end of the last ice age around 10 thousand years ago. The extent of ice covering the continent was much larger than it is today. The seabed troughs and channels that are now exposed provide new clues about the speed and flow of the ice sheet. They indicate that the controlling mechanisms that move ice towards the coast and into the sea are more complex than previously thought.

    Lead author Rob Larter from British Antarctic Survey said, “One of the greatest uncertainties for predicting future sea-level rise is Antarctica’s likely contribution. It is very important for scientists and our society to understand fully how polar ice flows into the sea. Indeed, this issue was highlighted in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Our research tells us more about how the ice sheet responded to warming at the end of the last ice age, and how processes at the ice sheet bed controlled its flow. This is a big step toward understanding of how the ice sheets are likely to respond to future warming.’

    Background

    The area of the Amundsen Sea embayment surveyed was 9950 km2. In the western Amundsen Sea embayment three 17-39 km wide troughs extend seaward from the modern ice shelf front. This is roughly with width of the English Channel. Individual streamlined features carved into the seabed are about as wide as a motorway.

    Ice sheet

    The Antarctic ice sheet retreated to near its present limit around 10 thousand years ago. It is the layer of ice up to 5000 m thick covering the Antarctic continent. It is formed from snow falling in the interior of the Antarctic which compacts into ice. The ice sheet slowly moves towards the coast, eventually breaking away as icebergs which gradually melt into the sea.

    The ice sheet covering East Antarctica is very stable, because it lies on rock that is above sea level and is thought unlikely to collapse. The West Antarctic is less stable, because it sits on rock below sea level.

    Ice shelf

    An ice shelf is a thick (100-1000 m), floating platform of ice that forms where a glacier or ice sheet flows down to a coastline and onto the ocean surface. Ice shelves are found in Antarctica, Greenland and Canada only.

    Glacier

    Just as rivers collect water and allow it to flow downhill a glacier is actually a “river” of ice. A glacier flows much more slowly than river. Rivers of ice within ice sheets account for most of the drainage into the oceans.

    Continental shelf

    The relatively shallow (generally up to 200 meters) seabed surrounding a continent where the depth gradually increases before it plunges into the deep ocean. Around Antarctica the continental shelf is up to 1600 m deep as a result of millions of years of glacial erosion. The deepest parts of the Antarctic continental shelf are near the present ice margin and depths generally decrease offshore.

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    Story Source:

    The above story is reprinted from materials provided by British Antarctic Survey.

    Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

    Journal Reference:

    1. Larter et al. Subglacial bedforms reveal complex basal regime in a zone of paleo-ice stream convergence, Amundsen Sea embayment, West Antarctica. Geology, 2009; 37 (5): 411 DOI: 10.1130/G25505A.1

    APA

    MLA

    British Antarctic Survey (2009, May 5). New Antarctic Seabed Sonar Images Reveal Clues To Sea-level Rise. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 19, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/05/090505072502.htm

    Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

    Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

  • How Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian can spend $ 18m without adding a single train

    A case of mission impossible, out of the frying pan into the fire. Don’t expect any significant improvements from this lot in the foreseeable future.

    Neville

    How Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian can spend $18m without adding a single train

    0

    NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Justin Lloyd Source: The Daily Telegraph

    TRANSPORT minister Gladys Berejiklian has spent almost $18 million on private consultants in her first 10 months of office – without adding a single new train or bus service.

    While the minister has yet to deliver on her promise to add another 135 express services to the city from western Sydney and the Central Coast, she has managed to pay private contractors up to $1.8 million a month to tell her what’s wrong with the state’s public transport system.

    Winners in the outsourcing bonanza include managing consulting firm Booz and Company, which is collecting $9.8 million from the government. This includes $6.3 million to design and deliver a reform program for RailCorp and $2.8 million to provide “transition expertise and change management support” to the Transport Department.

    Another company, Parsons Brinckerhoff, collected $271,000 for six months’ work analysing commuter transport needs and data collection.

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    TRAIN fares will be slashed by up to $240 a year – more than double what commuters were expecting after RailCorp found it could deliver more savings.

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    The government has also engaged a number of firms to undertake “community relations services” to support projects.

    But Ms Berejiklian defended the spending, saying the state government had launched crucial, once-in-a-generation reform, including a reform of RailCorp and the creation of integrated transport authority Transport for NSW.

    She said the government was “comprehensively reforming the transport system” and they required “independent, expert advice” to ensure the new organisations were efficient and effective.

     

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  • SWEARING VIDEO”S RELEASE UNUSUAL

    sADLY THE DETAILS ON THE ITEM BELOW APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN BLOCKED, THIS APPEARED IN TODAY’S sUNDAY tELEGRAPH. sHOWS rUDD UP IN A VERY BAD LIGHT.

    Swearing video’s release ‘unusual’

    Kevin Rudd

    9:51AM LABOR’S leadership battle escalates, with Kevin Rudd suggesting video of himself swearing was held in the PM’s office or department.

    124 comments on this story

  • Linking human evolution and climate change

    Science News

    … from universities, journals, and other research organizations

    Linking Human Evolution and Climate Change

    ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2012) — It’s not a take on climate change we often hear about. But Mark Collard, a Simon Fraser University Canada Research Chair and professor of archaeology, will talk about how climate change impacts human evolution at the world’s largest science fair.

    The 2012 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference runs Feb. 16 to 20 at the Vancouver Convention Centre in downtown Vancouver.

    Collard will give a talk called Environmental drivers of technological evolution in small-scale populations during a seminar called Climate Change and Human Evolution: Problems and Prospects.

    Collard will argue, “we need to better understand the ways that climate and related environmental variables have affected historically-documented small-scale societies before we can accurately track the impact of climate change on human evolution.”

    The director of SFU’s Human Evolutionary Studies program, Collard will also present data that his research team is analyzing. Their research suggests environmental variation significantly influenced the number and intricacy of food-gathering tools that historical hunter-gatherers made.

    “The basic pattern,” explains Collard, “is that people living in harsh, risky environments, such as the Arctic, produced and used many more complex tools than people living in less harsh and risky environments, such as tropical rainforests. Food gathering tools make up a large part of known early archaeological records. So our findings are providing us with a way to track the impact of climate change on human evolution.”

    Collard can relate his findings to current thinking about the impact of climate change on the dispersal of modern humans globally and the evolution of their cultures during the last couple of hundred thousand years. Our species, Homo sapiens, evolved during that time period.

    As a discussant in another seminar, Constructing a Human World Fit for Nature, Collard will look for common themes in six speakers’ presentations. They will flesh out the research behind an evolutionary conundrum that is the central theme of this seminar.

    The conundrum — while evolution has enabled ancestral hominins (humans) to adapt well to diverse ecological niches, modern humans are now transforming local ecosystems and the global climate at the peril of their own existence.

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  • Continents in Collision: Pangea Ultima

    Continents in Collision: Pangea Ultima

    Creeping more slowly than a human fingernail grows, Earth’s massive continents are nonetheless on the move.

    Link to story audioListen to this story (requires RealPlayer)

    October 6, 2000 — The Earth is going to be a very different place 250 million years from now.

    Africa is going to smash into Europe as Australia migrates north to merge with Asia. Meanwhile the Atlantic Ocean will probably widen for a spell before it reverses course and later disappears.

    Two hundred and fifty million years ago the landmasses of Earth were clustered into one supercontinent dubbed Pangea. As Yogi Berra might say, it looks like “deja vu all over again” as the present-day continents slowly converge during the next 250 million years to form another mega-continent: Pangea Ultima.

    see caption

    Above: A map of the world as it might appear 250 million years from now. Notice the clumping of most of the world’s landmass into one super-continent, “Pangea Ultima,” with an inland sea — all that’s left of the once-mighty Atlantic Ocean. Image courtesy of Dr. Christopher Scotese.

    The surface of the Earth is broken into large pieces that are slowly shifting — a gradual process called “plate tectonics.” Using geological clues to puzzle out past migrations of the continents, Dr. Christopher Scotese, a geologist at the University of Texas at Arlington, has made an educated “guesstimate” of how the continents are going to move hundreds of millions of years into the future.

    “We don’t really know the future, obviously,” Scotese said. “All we can do is make predictions of how plate motions will continue, what new things might happen, and where it will all end up.” Among those predictions: Africa is likely to continue its northern migration, pinching the Mediterranean closed and driving up a Himalayan-scale mountain range in southern Europe.

    see captionWhat’s it like to see two continents collide? Just look at the Mediterranean region today.

    Africa has been slowly colliding with Europe for millions of years, Scotese said. “Italy, Greece and almost everything in the Mediterranean is part of (the African plate), and it has been colliding with Europe for the last 40 million years.”

    That collision has pushed up the Alps and the Pyrenees mountains, and is responsible for earthquakes that occasionally strike Greece and Turkey, Scotese noted.

    Above: The possible appearance of the Earth 50 million years from now. Africa has collided with Europe, closing off the Mediterranean Sea. The Atlantic has widened, and Australia has migrated north. Image courtesy of Dr. Christopher Scotese.

    “The Mediterranean is the remnant of a much larger ocean that has closed over the last 100 million years, and it will continue to close,” he said. “More and more of the plate is going to get crumpled and get pushed higher and higher up, like the Himalayas.”

    Australia is also likely to merge with the Eurasian continent.

    “Australia is moving north, and is already colliding with the southern islands of Southeast Asia,” he continued. “If we project that motion, the left shoulder of Australia gets caught, and then Australia rotates and collides against Borneo and south China — sort of like India collided 50 million years ago — and gets added to Asia.”

    Meanwhile, the Americas will be moving further away from Africa and Europe as the Atlantic Ocean steadily grows. The Atlantic sea floor is split from north to south by an underwater mountain ridge where new rock material flows up from Earth’s interior. The two halves of the sea floor slowly spread apart as the ridge is filled with the new material, causing the Atlantic to widen.

    see caption“It’s about as fast as your fingernails grow. Maybe a little bit slower,” Scotese said. Still, over millions of years that minute movement will drive the continents apart.

    Left: NASA’s LAGEOS II satellite measures tiny shifts in continental positions from Earth orbit. [more information]

    That part of the prediction is fairly certain, because it is just the continuation of existing motions. Beyond about 50 million years into the future, prediction becomes more difficult.

    “The difficult part is the uncertainty in (new behaviors),” Scotese said.

    “It’s like if you’re traveling on the highway, you can predict where you’re going to be in an hour, but if there’s an accident or you have to exit, you’re going to change direction. And we have to try to understand what causes those changes. That’s where we have to make some guesses about the far future — 150 to 250 million years from now.”

    In the case of the widening Atlantic, geologists think that a “subduction zone” will eventually form on either the east or west edges of the ocean. At a subduction zone, the ocean floor dives under the edge of a continent and down into the interior of the Earth.

    “The subduction zone turns out to be the most important part of the system if you want to understand what causes the plates to move,” Scotese said.

    Like cold air drifting down from an open attic in winter, the cold, dense seabed at the ocean’s edges sometimes starts sinking into the playdough-like layer beneath the crust, called the “mantle.”

    see captionAbove: A diagram showing the major processes of plate tectonics.

    “As it sinks, it pulls the rest of the plate with it,” like a tablecloth sliding off a table. This accounts for most of the force that moves the plates around, Scotese said.

    This “slab pull” theory for the mechanism driving the motion of the plates stands in opposition to the older “river raft” theory.

    “For a long time, geologists had this model that there were ‘conveyer belts’ of mantle convection, and the continents were riding passively on these conveyer belts, sort of like a raft on a river,” Scotese said. “But that theory’s all wrong.”

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    If a subduction zone starts on one side of the Atlantic — Scotese thinks it will be the west side — it will start to slowly drag the sea floor into the mantle. If this happens, the ridge where the Atlantic sea floor spreads would eventually be pulled into the Earth. The widening would stop, and the Atlantic would begin to shrink.

    Tens of millions of years later, the Americas would come smashing into the merged Euro-African continent, pushing up a new ridge of Himalayan-like mountains along the boundary. At that point, most of the world’s landmass would be joined into a super-continent called “Pangea Ultima.” The collision might also trap an inland ocean, Scotese said.

    “It’s all pretty much fantasy to start with. But it’s a fun exercise to think about what might happen,” he said. “And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place.”

    For now it appears that in 250 million years, the Earth’s continents will be merged again into one giant landmass…just as they were 250 million years before now. From Pangea, to present,
    to Pangea Ultima!

    Web Links

    PALEOMAP — Web site for the project that produced the predictions of the future positions of Earth’s continents. The site also has reconstructions of the past positions of the continents, as well as estimates of past climate.

    Information on Plate Tectonics — By the U.S. Geological Survey

    On the Move — Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics –Learn more about NASA’s Role in Investigating Continental Drift

    Dr. Christopher Scotese — Information about the scientist from the University of Texas at Arlington Web site.

    Join our growing list of subscribers – sign up for our express news delivery and you will receive a mail message every time we post a new story!!!Moresays 'NASA NEWS'Headlines

    For lesson plans and educational activities related to breaking science news, please visit Thursday’s Classroom Author: Patrick L. Barry
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    Responsible NASA official: John M. Horack

  • Experts disturbed by frontline bushfire strategy

    Scientists have raised new concerns about the frontline strategy to reduce the impact of bushfires in Australia.

    As Victorian authorities strive to triple the amount of prescribed burning they do in response to the Royal Commission recommendations after the Black Saturday fires, other states are also adopting the policy.

    But several scientists have told Radio National’s Background Briefing program they may be adopting a deeply flawed policy.

    Michael Clarke, who heads Zoology at LaTrobe University, was on the Royal Commission’s expert panel on fuel reduction.

    He says the push to burn so much more bush means big areas of bush away from human populations are being targeted ahead of the forest surrounding human populations.

    “My observation is there is strong pressure on the Department of Sustainability and Environment to meet the 5 per cent target, which equates to something like 390,000 hectares,” he said.

    It’s bad enough for [the bushfire strategy] to be applied at a state-wide level and to say ‘well, here’s a rule of thumb’. To then say this is applicable to south-west Tasmania and also to tropical Queensland is ecological madness.

    Michael Clarke, LaTrobe University

     

    “That’s incredibly hard for them. I don’t think they’re adequately resourced to do that.

    “I think it creates a false impression of security in the public’s mind if we meet this target, are the people in the Dandenongs and Mt Macedon that much safer?

    “I think that’ll be the big question at the next Royal Commission, heaven forbid that we have one.”

    Dr Clarke says not only are the people most at risk from bushfires being potentially short-changed, but there could be serious ecological consequences of burning so much more forest.

    “We have real concern based on our data that this could have negative consequences for a range of wildlife. I mean that there is a risk that some species, may go locally extinct and that certainly isn’t the intention of the Royal Commission’s recommendation.”

    ‘Disturbing’ plan

    Western Australia already had a higher prescribed burn target than Victoria and evidence on prescribed burning in WA strongly informed Victoria’s new policy.

    But since the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, Victoria’s plan to burn 5 per cent of public lands has gained popularity nationally.

    Dr Clarke says it would be foolhardy for other areas of Australia to adopt a hectare-based target.

    “I think that’s really disturbing, it’s bad enough for it to be applied at a state-wide level and to say ‘well, here’s a rule of thumb’. To then say this is applicable to south-west Tasmania and also to tropical Queensland is ecological madness,” he said.

    Dr Clarke is not the only scientist to raise the alarm – a number of other ecologists and fire experts support his concerns.

    Associate Professor Ian Lunt from Charles Sturt University says the top-down approach of the target does have the potential to skew the results.

    He says large areas of bush must be burnt to make up the target and the danger is that fuel reduction burning is being done under the name of ecological burning.

    “We’re looking at really large scales huge areas where there is a very clear conflict potentially between those two agendas and we are burning under the name of ecological burning for what is essentially a political response to the need to preserve to save assets,” he said.

    But Dean of Agriculture at the University of Sydney, Professor Mark Adams, who was another of the Royal Commission’s experts on fuel reduction, says more prescribed burning is needed to manage ecosystems properly and the risk of bushfire to people.

    “If we’re really about using prescribed fire to protect lives and property then we’re going to need to have a landscape-wide approach,” he said.

    If we’re really about using prescribed fire to protect lives and property then we’re going to need to have a landscape-wide approach.

    Mark Adams, University of Sydney

     

    “We can’t just have ‘well we’ll run a little fire around the back fences of the settlements and call that strategic and leave it at that’.

    “If we take that approach those defences will be overcome by the next crown fire that heads towards us.”

    Painstaking process

    The Victorian Minister for Bushfire Response, Peter Ryan, says the Royal Commission was one of a number of inquiries which have said Victoria must increase its prescribed burning.

    “The commission went through this painstakingly. They called evidence from anybody and everybody. Before that we had a very protracted and extensive all-party consideration of this by our environment and natural resources committee who also reported on it,” he said.

    He says the policy has been carefully designed to protect biodiversity.

    “These [burns] are very, very carefully planned, they are very, very carefully conducted and they are modified to accord whatever might be the topography – what is the biodiversity, what is the fuel load, do we need a cool burn which can be just lit and and allowed to creep through [or] do we need something stronger,” he said.

    “You have to just adjust all these things and … [along] with the prevailing weather conditions, all these things are taken into account by the experts we have engaged to undertake this task.”

    Tune into Background Briefing on Radio National for the full program.

    Topics:bushfire, disasters-and-accidents, fires, royal-commission-victoria-2009-bushfires, states-and-territories, vic, australia

    First posted February 18, 2012 09:19:17