Saturday, June 20, 2009

Best Animal Fathers


June 18, 2009--Father's Day, which falls this year on Sunday, June 21, annually honors committed human dads. But seahorse fathers (above, a newborn hitches a ride on dad's tail) might just blow those proud papas out of the water.

Seahorses are a type of fish in which the males actually get "pregnant." The female seahorse deposits her eggs in the male's specialized pouch, and the male carries up to 2,000 babies during its 10- to 25-day pregnancy.

"They're fascinatingmales have more or less become females, [almost] transgendered," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in the U.K. "They're devoted fathers."

In general throughout the animal kingdom, males leave parenting to the females, because males have more chances to reproduce and so can create many more offspring, Pagel said.

Pagel calls this a "cruel bind [that] often favors men"--as soon as the female gets pregnant, the male just runs off.

U.S. comedian Chris Rock has said that "a man is only as faithful as his options," he noted, and "that's exactly what happens with animals."

But there are exceptions, and "what's wonderful," he said, "is that the range goes all the way from males that simply provide sperm that are never seen or heard from again through to seahorses, where females just provide eggs and are never seen or heard from again."

CO2 Levels Highest in Two Million Years

What happens when carbon dioxide levels skyrocket? Most climate scientists think they know the answer: global warming.

But to determine just how high temperatures may climb and how climate patterns may shift, researchers may need to pinpoint, for comparison, a time in our planet's past when a similar carbon dioxide jump happened.

Doing that may have just gotten a lot tougher—a new study says atmospheric carbon dioxide levels haven't been this high in more than two million years.

(Pictures: Five Global Warming "Tipping Points.")

Fuzzy But Far-Reaching New View

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas that is also released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, for example in cars and power plants (causes of global warming).

"We really don't know how high CO2 has been in the geologic past. Thus we don't know how sensitive the surface temperature of the Earth is to CO2," said Don DePaolo, head of the Earth Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California.

Most global warming predictions are based on fluctuations in CO2 levels and temperature that happened between a relatively recent series of ice ages, said DePaolo, who was not involved in the new study, which will appear in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

Chemicals in ice cores, for example, can show how CO2 levels have changed over time, down to five-year intervals.

But ice core records only go back about 800,000 years.

By studying chemicals in long-dead, single-celled plankton called foraminifera, though, the team behind the new study was able to extend the climate record back 2.1 million years (prehistoric time line).

The method doesn't provide as much detail, but it does give a pretty clear picture of what was going on at roughly thousand-year intervals.

Though he'd like to see the study results replicated for good measure, DePaolo is impressed by the report. For dates where the ice-core and plankton data overlap, the CO2 levels match, which suggests the new data for older time periods is accurate too.

Ice Age Theory Debunked?

The study team, led by geochemist Bärbel Hönisch, found evidence disproving the theory that the longer, stronger ice ages that kicked in about 850,000 years ago were caused by a steady, ongoing drop in CO2. Instead, CO2 levels seesawed over the 2.1 million years, dropping during ice ages then bouncing back.

What's more, the average CO2 level during warm periods was 38 percent lower than the average we see today.

That's significant, because it means that scientists will have to look back even further in time to find global warming answers.

Hönisch's next goal is to do just that.

"We know from the geologic record that, around 55 million years ago, the deep-sea temperature suddenly rose by 8 degrees C [14 degrees F]," said Hönisch, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York.

"It's a time that we would like to study, because it's probably the closest thing we'll find to what's happening today. And that's the best way to make estimates for our future."

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Ramadan kemuncak El Nino


Ramadan kemuncak El Nino

Oleh AMREE AHMADamree.ahamad@kosmo.com.my
Cuaca paling panas berikutan fenomena El Nino dijangka berlaku pada bulan puasa nanti.
JEREBU yang sedang melanda Kuala Lumpur merupakan petanda awal kedatangan El Nino.
LAZIMNYA, antara ungkapan popular yang sering menjadi petua orang kita mengenai petunjuk ketibaan bulan Ramadan ialah azan Maghrib semakin awal. Juga suhu panas pada tengah hari sesuai dengan maksud asal Ramadan dalam bahasa Arab.
Perkataan itu yang dirujuk kepada bulan kesembilan dalam takwim Hijrah dipercayai digunakan masyarakat Arab kerana keadaan panas sepanjang bulan tersebut. Tidak hairanlah Rukun Islam ketiga itu begitu sinonim dengan suasana cuaca panas.
Namun Ogos ini, umat Islam khasnya di sekitar Lautan Pasifik buat julung kali akan merasai ‘kehangatan’ Ramadan seiring kemunculan fenomena El Nino. Kali ini ujian sebenar Ramadan menyamai saudara seagama di bumi gersang Asia Barat.
Apa tidaknya, Jabatan Meteorologi Malaysia pada Selasa lalu meramalkan negara mungkin mengalami fenomena itu ekoran cuaca panas kering. Ia berikutan tiupan angin Monsun Barat Daya yang dijadual berlaku sehingga akhir September depan.
El Nino dikatakan tanpa disedari sudah terbentuk namun kekuatannya cuma dapat dikenal pasti mulai Ogos ini. Justeru Kementerian Sumber Asli dan Alam Sekitar merangka beberapa langkah awal bagi mengurangkan kesan fenomena itu.
“Ironi tidak jelas apakah tindakan dilakukan pihak berkuasa termasuk mengekang aktiviti pembakaran terbuka yang meningkatkan jerebu. Adakah membakar sate secara terbuka untuk dijual juga dilarang?,” soal Mohd. Nizam Mahshar.
Koordinator Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) itu ketika dihubungi bagaimanapun mempersoalkan kurangnya persediaan bagi menghadapi El Nino. Ini kerana fenomena itu bukan cuaca luar biasa malah selalu berulang pada setiap empat tahun.
Malangnya, kita seperti tidak belajar daripada sejarah dan ia dapat dilihat ketika kejadian El Nino terburuk berlaku pada 1982, 1983, 1997 dan 1998. Waktu itu, negara teruk dilanda jerebu dan lebih parah, mengalami kekurangan bekalan air mentah.
PERSEDIAAN untuk menghadapi ketidaktentuan cuaca tidak boleh dibuat secara ad-hoc.
“Banyak empangan kering-kontang dan puncanya kerana kawasan tadahan di sekitarnya terjejas akibat penebangan hutan tanpa kawalan sekali gus mengancam zon penampan. Kini kita kembali ‘bising’ apabila El Nino datang semula,” katanya.
Mohd. Nizam seterusnya menambah, sepatutnya tahun 2009, negara kita menghadapi El Nino dengan penuh persediaan rapi, bukan digerunkan dengan amaran krisis air yang bakal melanda akibat beberapa empangan mengalami susut stok tadahan.
Keadaan panik sekarang ujar beliau, muncul kerana Malaysia setakat ini masih belum memiliki dasar jelas berhubung pelan tindakan kesan perubahan iklim sejagat. Jawatankuasa yang dibentuk kini biasanya bersifat ad-hoc dan bukan tetap.
“Sewajarnya daripada El Nino yang lepas, negara tidak perlu risau empangan kering dan jerebu ekoran pembakaran terbuka, tetapi apa berlaku, kita diberi amaran itu dan ini mengenai El Nino semacam esok dunia hendak kiamat,” jelas beliau kesal.