Trump makes major change to US climate change narrative

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Coal fired power plants like this one faced restrictions under President Obama

"This is, I think, one of the most historic attacks on climate and environmental action __that the US has ever seen," said Liz Perera from the Sierra Club.

Her words are certain to cheer Trump supporters everywhere.

Green "job-killing" regulations limiting energy production have long been a red rag for Donald Trump, as candidate and President.

His new energy independence executive order seeks to radically change the US narrative on climate change, its causes and its importance. The best way of fighting global warming according to the new outline is to create prosperity. Environmental regulation should be about air and water. CO2, in this light, is your friend.

Supporters believe __that cutting back Obama climate regulations will create thousands of jobs in the newly liberated oil and gas industries.

His opponents agree the new order will be a job creator - but they'll be jobs for lawyers, not in the coal fields.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption President Trump plans may reduce regulations on coal but can't guarantee jobs

Front and centre is practical action on the Clean Power Plan (CPP), the Obama project to cut fossil fuels from electricity production. Although it has long been tied up in the courts, the CPP will be left to fester there while the new administration comes up with a much weaker replacement.

"Undoing the rule will not be straightforward," said Prof Bruce Huber, from the Notre Dame law school.

"For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse course, it will have to propose a new rule, with all the lengthy procedures that entails. When President George W Bush tried to reverse course on some of President Clinton's signature environmental regulations, those efforts took years and were not entirely successful."

In terms of coal, the new executive order will allow the Department of the Interior to lift a moratorium on the sale of new coal leases on federal lands. However, boosting coal as a source of energy, and jobs, will be very difficult.

Many coal plants have shut down not because of Obama's carbon restrictions but because of mercury pollution associated with burning the fuel. Thanks to fracking, cheap natural gas has soared as a source of power generation, and renewables are taking an every bigger share.

Former State department climate adviser Andrew Light now works for the World Resources Institute. Both of his grandfathers were coal miners.

"They were paid by the tonne for the coal they pulled out of the ground, but those jobs are gone, and technology has moved beyond that and I hope it's the case that voters in the coal states will recognise that their jobs aren't magically coming back because of this executive order," he told BBC News.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption EPA administrator Scott Pruitt says that CO2 is not a primary contributor to global warming

President Obama sought to put consideration of climate change at the heart of all government policy - but by revising the social cost of carbon measure and encouraging an immediate government review of all rules that inhibit energy production, President Trump is signalling a change in the widely held philosophy that CO2 is the enemy, the main driver of climate change.

While rolling back Obama era ideas like the role of climate change in national security, or how climate change should be considered in relation to the National Environmental Policy Act, the Trump plan does not directly attack the key finding on which much of America's carbon restrictions are based.

Back in 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide gas was a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

In response, the EPA ruled in 2009 that CO2 and other gases were responsible for contributing to climate change which results in a threat to the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

This "endangerment finding" compels the federal government to regulate emissions of CO2. And according to some environmentalists, this finding is the solid rock that Trump's plans will be dashed against.

"The law of the land is that CO2 endangers my public health and welfare," said Liz Perera from the Sierra Club.

"So they have to regulate it. What they are doing now is saying that all the Obama regulations were wrong but that means they are going to have to put something forward in their place and by the law it has to be adequate or we can sue them every step of the way."

Other experts believe that the ultimate goal of this executive order will be to overturn the Supreme Court ruling on CO2 as a pollutant.

They believe that the declaration of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt that CO2 was not a "primary contributor" to climate change is instructive of the direction of travel.

"It is fundamental," said Andrew Light. "I believe that Scott Pruitt wants to go after the endangerment finding. Their argument is that climate change exists, but it is not the case that humans are causing it.

"It is the endangerment finding that draws that tight connection between the fact that humans are making it and the fact that global warming is happening. Once you destabilise that point then you can go for the endangerment finding. That would be the biggest win they could get."

But Liz Perera, for one, believes that won't happen.

"We have the economics on our side, we have the market on our side, we have the public on our side, and we have the law on our side - that this is endangering public health and welfare. They can't change any of those things."

But in many ways, extended court battles are exactly what President Trump and the fossil fuel lobby are looking for.

"Delay is what they want," one green source told me. "Delay is winning."

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How to turn a spinach leaf into a human heart

Spinach could be good for your heart in more ways than one. It’s packed with fiber, vitamin A, and the branching vasculature necessary for cells to absorb nutrients.

Which is why bioengineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute decided to try growing human heart cells on the scaffolding of a humble spinach leaf. And it worked. They published their results online in the journal Biomaterials in advance of the May 2017 print issue.

When you look at a spinach leaf, you probably see a dark, leafy green __that belongs alongside dried cranberries and apples. A bioengineer sees veins. There’s a central stem with smaller branches peeling off towards the edges, much the same way __that the blood vessels in your heart grow. And though spinach doesn’t have blood, the vasculature in the leaf and in your heart are used for essentially the same purpose: delivering nutrients.

It’s easy to think of your circulatory system as mainly large veins and arteries all connecting in one big loop. But perhaps the most important part of that system are the capillaries, the minuscule tubes that get the blood to that last stage, where a lot of the oxygen and nutrient delivery actually happens. Without the capillaries, you couldn’t survive. The cells in your organs can’t survive very far from a capillary—they have to be within about 100-200 micrometers, or one or two hairs’ width. And because cells have to have this intricate web of capillaries, it’s hard to grow human tissues artificially. It’s actually one of the hardest things about manufacturing organs. Cells have ways of inducing blood vessel growth inside your body, but outside it’s not so easy. And you can’t just transplant a mass of cells into a body and expect them to create their own vasculature, because they’ll die off before they even have a chance. So if you want to create an organ from scratch (or even just a chunk of one), you have to find a way to create at least a simulacrum of blood vessels.

There are a bunch of ideas on how to do this, and spinach scaffolding is just one of them. In 2012, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania 3D printed “blood vessels” made of sugar, then got liver cells to grow around the network. Once the cells had taken hold, they simply dissolved the sugar away, leaving behind a hollow web of tubes that could function as capillaries. That approach doesn’t have a very natural structure, though, since you’re limited by the geometric way in which 3D printers can lay down threads of sugar.

These bioengineers took a different approach. They dissolved all of the cellular material inside a spinach leaf using detergents, leaving the cellulose background behind. Once they had an empty shell of spinach, they could add in human heart cells and get them to adhere to the structure. The cells could still beat the way a heart should and the vasculature could support blood flow, though the engineers didn’t put real blood into the system—they used a red-dyed liquid meant to look like blood to prove that it worked.

Spinach leaves wouldn’t be suitable scaffolding for all tissues. The branching design is similar to how the vessels in a heart grow, but other organs have different capillary networks, so other plants might work better for different parts of the body. These bioengineers also proved their concept using parsley stems and the little hairy roots on peanuts, and they point out that in theory you could use something like wood to mimic the way bones grow, or a thick-stemmed plant like jewel weed to form a piece of an artery.

They’re not yet sure how well these bits of organ would transplant into an actual human. It’s one thing to grow a piece of a heart and another to get a body to accept that artificial structure as part of itself. Grafts fail to take hold pretty regularly, even when they’re not made from plants. And even Popeye would have trouble becoming one with a spinach leaf. At least for now.

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To save their land, they unveiled the world’s biggest dinosaur footprint

The Goolarabooloo people have been singing about dinosaur footprints for thousands of years—they just don’t call them ‘dinosaurs.’

To the indigenous tribe, those tracks were left by ancient, spiritual beings who walked those lands during the Creation Time. The men tasked with maintaining the laws and rituals for the Goolarabooloo people have passed down lyrical stories about the footprints. These so-called ‘song cycles’ detail the paths __that their supernatural predecessors took, as demarcated by the enormous tracks they left behind. So they’ve known for thousands of years __that these footprints existed, they just weren’t about to open up their homelands to a bunch of outsiders.

That is, until 2008 when the Australian government wanted to build a gas processing plant in the Walmadany area, where most of the dino prints are located. The Goolarabooloo wanted to protect their lands and they knew they might have a bargaining chip up their sleeves. If the prints that their folklore was based on were valuable to paleontologists, then maybe the land would be protected. And they were right.

Salisbury footprint tweet

Leaders from the group reached out to Steven Salisbury, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, hoping that he could investigate the tracks. And investigate he did. Salisbury and his colleagues found 21 different types of fossil prints embedded in the sandstone in Walmadany, making it perhaps the most diverse region of dinosaur footprints in the world. The site confirms that the stegosaurus once roamed Australian lands and includes a five-foot-nine-inch long footprint from a sauropod, the largest footprint ever found. Salisbury and his colleagues finally published five years’ worth of research in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on Friday.

The Walmadany region is especially significant for Australian paleontology because there are so few prehistoric fossils in the area. Low, flat plains aren’t ideal for finding fossils. You need areas of rock that are in the process of being unearthed by geological activity, such that you can see the fossils before they’re destroyed by total exposure.

Even these tracks were only visible at low tide, forcing the researchers to brave sharks and crocodiles to reach them. Welcome to Australia.

Fortunately, the land has now been designated a National Heritage site and the gas plant plan fell through, so paleontologists can keep investigating the thousands of tracks in the area. And since they’re significantly older than the fossils found elsewhere in Australia—which are a mere 90 to 115 million years old—these prints could hold clues to more ancient history.

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Bombing Antarctica, flying into hurricanes, and drinking your own pee: Fantastic tales from the field

Jeff Williams, NASA astronaut and U.S. record holder for total days spent in space

"On Earth, not all water tastes the same. Some water is delicious, but some can leave a funny taste in your mouth—the result of a particular mineral or metal. This doesnʼt happen on board the International Space Station, even though youʼre drinking recycled sweat and urine. You donʼt sense any unusual flavors. The water—and the beverages we make from it—consistently tastes pretty good.

The process of treating wastewater up there isnʼt all __that different from the natural water cycle on Earth—the runoff, the evaporation, clouds, and rain. The planetʼs water cycle turns water we might consider nasty into water we consider drinkable; so do the ISSʼs systems. And we test it almost every single day, so weʼre confident __that our drinking water is clean. NASA has very strict standards for it. We joke about it a lot, but we really donʼt think much about what our drinking water used to be. Iʼve been on board with 55 or so different people, and Iʼve never seen anyone hesitate to drink it. We drink the Russian water, and they drink ours."

As told to Sarah Fecht

Rick Gelting, U.S. Public Health Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

"When you’re in a water emergency, it’s really not the time to try something new. In 2010, when the cholera outbreak hit Haiti, the local government invited us to help implement a water-cleaning system. We had to work quickly to get clean water to small communities fighting against the waterborne disease. But we also couldn’t introduce any new technologies or products that local workers and residents might not be familiar with.

Chlorine was our go-to: It’s available, inexpensive, and incredibly effective. Problem is, there are different types of chlorination, so we had to trace where people got every drop of their water—whether they piped it in, hauled it from wells, or got it elsewhere. This is where local knowledge comes in handy.

For large community water systems, we used locally available materials to drip a liquid chlorine solution directly into storage tanks, a method that Haiti’s national water and ­sanitation agency (DINEPA) developed. But some people were bringing in small batches of water from other places. In those cases, special chlorine tablets and solutions let ­individual households treat their own water.

Working with DINEPA was key because they knew the local conditions and communities better than we did. Local knowledge ­ensures that what you build will sustain itself and make a difference in the long term—­because you will eventually leave."

As told to Claire Maldarelli

Robert Rogers, meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization

"When we fly Hurricane Hunter aircraft into cyclones, a lot of the data we gather is to monitor for “rapid intensification.” That’s when a storm increases in strength by 35 miles per hour or more within a 24-hour period, and it’s a big concern for the forecast community. The nightmare scenario is for this to happen to a Category 1 hurricane just before landfall on the U.S. coast: It goes from a Category 1 to a catastrophic Category 4, and no one has any warning.

Back in 2007, during Hurricane Felix, we flew into a Category 2. But at 10,000 feet, I saw flashes—at first I thought someone took a photo, but then I realized it was lightning. When you see lightning in the core of a storm, it’s a sign that it’s really intensifying. We wound up hitting such a strong updraft, maybe 60 miles per hour, that we hit zero g for a couple of seconds. My notebook started to float, and drops of water from the cup next to me were hovering in the air. At that point, the mission switched from collecting data to just getting home safely."

As told to Rachel Feltman

Nick Holschuh, Geophysicist at the University of Washington

"If you were to melt Antarctica, the global sea level would go up by around 60 meters, which would obviously be pretty bad. But to understand how and when the ice sheet might melt, we need to measure its physical properties—the material of the rocks beneath, the temperature of the ice, defects gliding through the system. For something one and a half times the size of the United States, thatʼs a crazy-difficult task.

So how do we do that? Well, if you use a thermometer to measure temperature, youʼre actually measuring the behavior of alcohol or metal within the thermometer itself. I used a similar principle to measure temperature through the ice. We sent sound waves down into the subsurface to get information on physical properties—like temperature—that affected them on the way.

Explosives happen to be a great source of sound. First, we bored a 20-meter hole down into the ice with a hot-water drill. Then we stuffed in a pound of Pentex H boosters and packed them in with snow. We covered the surface in an array of microphones. Then—boom!

After the explosion, we listened for echoes. Logistically speaking, itʼs not the simplest method of measuring the properties of ice, but having a variety of data-collection techniques at our disposal helps us understand how human behavior affects this massive system.

On quieter days, I use radio waves to peek through the ice sheets—to look at the configuration of the ice and the properties of the material itʼs sitting on top of—and I use satellite data to see how the surface is changing over time."

As told to Sophie Bushwick

Emily Sutton, meteorologist and storm chaser at KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City

"When you're chasing a storm, hydro-planing and hail are usually scarier than the tornado itself. It’s like driving on black ice in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception."

As told to Rachel Feltman

Andrea Dietrich, water consultant for utility companies

"About 25 years ago, some people would turn on their ­faucets and smell cat urine. It was one apartment in a building, or one house in a neighborhood. Residents would say, 'We don’t have a cat.' We were stumped for more than a year until a utility employee said, 'It’s not our water; it’s residents’ new carpets.'

He was half right, anyway. At the time, maybe 0.1 percent of utilities in the United States disinfected their water with chlorine dioxide. But chlorine dioxide isn’t water soluble, so when people opened their faucets, it would quickly fill the surrounding air. There, it reacted with chemicals in new carpets to create the signature stench. My colleague and I went to his church, which had a new carpet, to test the theory. We sprayed chlorine dioxide into the air, and sure enough: cat urine."

As told to Sarah Chodosh

These articles were originally published in the March/April 2017 issue of Popular Science, in the “Tales From The Field” section.

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Popular foods that grow in somewhat startling ways

Cherries grow on trees, strawberries on vines, but how do cashews grow? Thanks to our current food system, we can get crops from almost anywhere in the world—vanilla from Madagascar, bananas from Ecuador. Of course, the downside of receiving produce from far-off lands is __that we can’t exactly run into the fields to see how they’re grown. For many, the manner in which fruits and veggies emerge from the earth can be something of a mystery. Here are some of the more unexpected ways plants propagate before they make their way into our meals:

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Groundhog day for a keystone cop-out?

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Sections of the pipeline prepared but not yet used for Keystone XL

According to Donald Trump, the Keystone XL will be an "incredible pipeline", but could it be __that the official signing of the permit in the Oval Office will be the high point for this long-winded process?

Let's look at some of the issues __that might see TransCanada, the company behind the project, eventually walk away.

First, making oil from the bitumen-rich Canadian tar sands is a messy and expensive business.

Separating the liquid from the sand requires huge amounts of water and heat, and environmentalists say the process causes about 17% more greenhouse gas emissions than standard oil extraction.

However, both Democrats and Republicans have over recent years supported, however reluctantly, this massive project, which would send more than 800,000 barrels of the tarry oil from Alberta, Canada, to the US Gulf Coast every day.

Back in 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the Obama administration was "inclined" towards approval, based on an assessment of environmental and economic impacts.

The State department, which carried out the review, believed that there would be at least some jobs created in the short term, and the environmental and safety impacts of diverting that much oil from railroad cars were beneficial.

Environmentalists, though, were aghast at the thought of the overall effect on climate change from endorsing the tar sands source.

But for several years, much to the despair of the green movement, Obama remained conflicted over the project, torn between opting for dirty but secure Canadian oil over cleaner but vulnerable middle-eastern sources.

Problem solved

In November 2015, global warming gave him a way out of the dilemma.

Just a month before the key Paris climate meeting, John Kerry wrote that "moving forward with this project would significantly undermine our ability to continue leading the world in combating climate change". Obama scrapped XL, and it helped persuade the world to sign the Paris Climate Agreement.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption President Trump signing the permit to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to go ahead

But the new administration has made clear that jobs and infrastructure top climate change as priorities.

In January, President Trump asked the State department to re-assess the project. It has now found that the economic case makes sense and the pipeline "serves the national interest".

Mr Trump, struggling with healthcare reform, is very keen for a "win" on infrastructure and jobs, and the pipeline fits the bill.

But his rush to approve may actually end up delaying it significantly.

"Trump required the State department to make a decision within 60 days. That didn't allow them to do another environmental review of the project and meet that deadline, as US environmental law requires," said Anthony Swift from the National Resources Defense Council, who are looking to challenge the decision in the courts

"Allowing a decision to be made that flaunts the minimum requirements of our country's environmental laws would set an alarming precedent," he told BBC News.

There are many other complications, most of them centred around the state of Nebraska.

TransCanada has not had a route through the state approved, and that application process will take at least 8-12 months. Many landowners are reluctant to sell to the company and there are ongoing worries about polluting water sources.

"We're living in what feels to be the worst version of Groundhog Day imaginable, as every morning we're waking up to yet another decision made by Trump that would be disastrous for our climate, our communities, and our health," said Michael Brune, from the Sierra Club.

"But Trump will not succeed. The pipeline will pollute our air and water, destroy farmers' and ranchers' property, and enrich the foreign oil barons and corporate polluters that have been stocking Trump's cabinet and pulling his strings from the get-go."

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Previous attempts to move forward with Keystone have drawn protests on the streets

The low price of oil makes XL (which stands for export limited and not extra large!) extremely expensive right now and the prospects of getting a good return on that investment is very distant.

As oil companies like Shell look to get rid of their tar sands holdings, a more pressing problem for the pipeline may be getting any oil to put in it.

"The chances of it opening in the next couple of years would appear to be pretty low," said Anthony Swift.

"TransCanada also has to find enough tar sands companies to back the pipeline, to make it economically feasible and in the current market it is hard to see which companies will be willing to commit to that kind of new production for 20-30 years."

And even if Keystone XL is built, it may not fulfil a key Trump requirement - to be constructed with "American steel". It seems that the TransCanada Corp has already ordered sufficient Canadian and Mexican supplies. Oops!

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New 'super yield' GM wheat trial gets go-ahead

Image copyright ROTHAMSTED RESEARCH

Image caption In greenhouse tests, the new wheat has shown increased yields of between 20-40%

The planting of a new experimental crop of genetically modified (GM) wheat will take place this spring after the UK government gave the final go ahead.

The GM wheat has been engineered to use sunlight more efficiently and has boosted greenhouse yields by up to 40%.

Researchers in Hertfordshire now want to see if they can replicate these gains in the field.

Critics say __that boosting wheat yields is not an answer to global food shortages.

Against the grain

Several GM trials of crops have taken place in the UK over the past 20 years, often attracting protesters who have attempted to destroy the plants.

Even when trials managed to avoid disruption, they have not always been scientifically successful.

This latest effort aims to see if the spectacular gains in productivity of 20-40% in GM wheat grown in the greenhouse can be reproduced in the open air.

Last Autumn, the scientists at Rothamsted Research submitted an application to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) seeking permission to carry out small field trials at a secure site near Harpenden between 2017 and 2019.

After an independent risk assessment and a public consultation, __that permission has now been granted.

The researchers say they want to test newly developed wheat plants that have been modified to carry a gene from a wild relative called stiff brome.

The Rothamsted team, which is working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Essex and Lancaster University, believes this enables the modified wheat to carry out photosynthesis more efficiently, converting more sunlight and CO2 into grain.

Image copyright ROTHAMSTED RESEARCH

Image caption Attempts to improve wheat with GM technology have not yet proved successful

"It makes the plant bigger in the greenhouse, it makes the leaves grow bigger, and that's because you have more of this photosynthesis going on," Dr Malcolm Hawkesford from Rothamsted told BBC News.

"Once you start to produce grain all of that CO2 fixation starts to get targeted into the production of more grain. You end with bigger plants and more grain."

With a rapidly growing global population, food production will need to increase by 70% by 2050 to meet the demand, say researchers.

The problem for wheat is that yields have reached a plateau in recent years and the scientists involved in this new trial say they have gone as far as they can in boosting growth via conventional means.

However, replicating the gains made under glass will not be easy.

"At the moment with traditional methods if you get one percent you are pretty happy," said Dr Hawkesford.

"Anything more than a few percent would be super yielding. I would be happy if we could get 5-10; anything more than that would be absolutely massive."

Feeding the world

But the planned planting is not without its critics.

Around 30 green organisations lodged objections to the plan, pointing to concerns about the potential for the GM wheat to escape into the wild, as has repeatedly happened in the US. Campaigners say they are "disappointed" that the trial is now going ahead.

"People aren't starving because photosynthesis isn't efficient enough; people are starving because they are poor," said Liz O'Neill from GM Freeze.

"Techno-fixes like GM wheat suck up public funding that could make a real difference if it was spent on systemic solutions like waste reduction and poverty eradication. Then we could all enjoy food that is produced responsibly, fairly and sustainably."

But supporters of the technology point out that if the GM wheat boosts yields it could allow farmers to grow greater amounts of the crop with fewer inputs such as nitrogen, decreasing emissions of CO2 as well.

Another concern is that the go-ahead for the new trial signals a different approach to GM as the UK faces up to Brexit. In the House of Commons last autumn, farming minister George Eustice indicated that the government was open to re-examining the position after the UK leaves the EU.

"As part of the preparations for EU exit, the government is considering possible future arrangements for the regulation of genetically modified organisms," he said in a written statement.

"The government's general view remains that policy and regulation in this area should be science-based and proportionate."

Both supporters and critics say the new trial does not signal a change in position.

"I don't believe it will make a huge difference to us," said Dr Hawkesford.

"This whole project was planned prior to Brexit. I honestly don't know if it will influence future trials, but at the moment the British government has its policy, we stick to the rules, and I wouldn't say there's any impact I would definitely see about Brexit."

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Climate may have shaped the evolution of the human nose

In the late 1800s, British anthropologist and anatomist Arthur Thomson posited __that people with ancestral origins in cold, arid climates were likely to have longer, thinner noses, while those who came from warm, humid regions were inclined to have noses __that were shorter and thicker.

His theory was that climate has a profound influence on the shape of the human nose, more so than any other evolutionary factor, because one important job of the nose is to warm and humidify air inhaled through the nostrils. This suggests it is an advantage for people in colder climates to have narrower nostrils, and vice versa.

Over the years, scientists have tested Thomson’s Nose Rule, as it came to be known, with skull measurements, but until recently no one had ever studied these dimensions in live people.

Pennsylvania State University researchers did just that in a study published Thursday in PLOS Genetics, confirming that Thomson was onto something. They concluded that the size and shape of noses evolved, at least in part, as a response to local climate conditions.

“We are primarily interested in understanding how human variation arises,” says Arslan Zaidi, a postdoctoral fellow in biology and the study’s lead author. “The questions we ask are: why do we look different from one another? Why do males and females look different? Why are there differences among humans from different populations? We focused on the nose because there is a huge body of work suggesting that it may have evolved in response to climate.”

The research is important because studying human evolution and adaptation can have significant implications for human health. For example, people of Northern European ancestry — because of their light skin — carry an increased risk of sunburn and skin cancer when they are near the equator. Similarly, dark-skinned individuals carry an increased risk of vitamin-D deficiency at higher latitudes.

“These risks are a direct consequence of our evolutionary history,” Zaidi says. “Dark skin evolved to protect us from overexposure to ultraviolet radiation, and lighter skin evolved to allow us more absorption of UV so that we can synthesize more vitamin D. If nose shape evolution has indeed been driven by climate, does moving to a different climate increase our risk of respiratory disease? This is unclear at this point, but important to pursue.”

The researchers looked at a variety of nose measurements. Using three-dimensional facial imaging, they examined the width of the nostrils, the distance between nostrils, the height of the nose, nose ridge length, nose protrusion, external area of the nose, and the area of the nostrils. They focused on individuals of four different ancestries: South Asian, East Asian, West African and Northern European.

They asked two questions: Are some aspects of nose shape more varied across populations than expected with genetic drift? (Genetic drift is a random evolutionary process leading to differences among populations over a long period of time, simply by chance.) If so, can this variation be explained by climate?

“In other words, if two populations are isolated for a long time, we expect their noses to look different just by chance, because of genetic drift,” Zaidi says. “We needed to rule this out to show that the variation among human populations was more than that expected just by genetic drift. Out of the seven measurements describing nose shape, we found two measurements related to the width of the nose to be significantly more differentiated among populations than expected by genetic drift. This means that the difference in nose width among human populations is more than is expected by random chance.”

Researchers found a positive correlation between nostril width and temperature and humidity, suggesting that natural selection likely plays a significant role in human nose evolution. Natural selection is the process by which organisms that are well adapted to their environment tend to survive and pass their traits to succeeding generations, while ill-adapted organisms tend to die off.

But humans have always moved around, and these days it's not uncommon for someone from a long line of cold climates to live by the equator. They'll likely sport the narrow nostrils of their forbears.

“Evolution takes a long time,” Zaidi says. “If nose shape has evolved in the past to adapt to local climate, it likely took tens of thousands of years. So, my great-great-great grandkids are likely still going to have wider noses — I’m Pakistani — even if they continue to live in a colder climate, as long as they continue to marry other South Asians.”

Moreover, “human variation does not agree with notions of race,” he adds. “There are more similarities among humans from different populations than there are differences, both genetically and phenotypically. Traits such as skin pigmentation and nose width appear more different because they are examples of external traits that are exposed to the environment, and have evolved faster than most other human traits. They are an exception rather than the rule. This is an important caveat to make, because people often tend to focus on differences and ignore the similarities.”

The researchers also noted that other factors may also be involved, such as gender differences. Men tend to be larger than women, for example, so their noses tend to be larger as well. Other variations emerge because people may prefer mates with smaller or larger noses. Still, concepts of beauty may be related to how well-adapted a nose is to the local climate, according to the scientists.

As for the future of the schnoz, Zaidi says that evolution is “a wildly random” process, making it difficult to predict what will happen to the human nose in response to global warming.

“Human evolution, at this point, is very different from evolution in the past,” he says. “Our lifestyles aren’t what they used to be, and we move around the world way too much. That makes it very complicated to predict the future evolutionary trajectory of the nose with the changing climate.”

Marlene Cimons writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture.

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Introducing the world's oldest plant-like fossil

When you think fossils, you probably think of impressively preserved bones; the last remains of dinosaurs __that strolled (or flew) across the Earth eons ago.

But it took evolution a long time to work up to dinosaurs. Or any kind of animal, for __that matter. For about 2 billion years in Earth’s early history (give or take a few hundred million years) single-celled organisms ruled the planet. Then, life started branching out.

In a paper published Tuesday in PLOS Biology, researchers from the Swedish Museum of Natural History announced the discovery of the earliest known evidence of plants in the fossil record; 1.6 billion-year-old red algae that lived alongside mats of bacteria in our planet's shallow waters.

These particular fossils were found in India. “Back in the days when they were living and growing this would have been a shallow marine system with plenty of sunlight,” says study co-author and geobiologist Therese Sallstedt.

Instead of frolicking fish or even decorative corals, these sunny, warm waters were filled with a different life form: vast mats of photosynthesizing, slimy cyanobacteria—single-celled organisms that grow in colonies.

And among these cyanobacteria were at least two different kinds of red algae, one forming thin threads, and one forming a fleshy mass.

Sallstedt was originally studying the cyanobacteria, which are preserved in bulbous formations of rock known as stromatolites, when she came across the fossils.

The algae are tiny—the thread-like fossils are microscopic, and the tissue-like organisms only a few millimeters across—but for Sallstedt, it was a big find in more ways than one.

“I’m used to studying cyanobacteria, which is even smaller,” Sallstedt says, laughing. At least one of the algae fossils is visible to the naked eye, if only barely. “Usually my stuff is a lot smaller than that,” she says.

And finding fossils of such an advanced age is no small feat. At 1.6 billion years, they outstrip the next oldest red algae specimens by 400 million years.

“From what we know today, these are the oldest red algae ever found,” Sallstedt says.

That also makes them the oldest plant-like fossils—with distinct cell structures like walls and tiny organelles (likely chloroplasts) that are distinct to red algae—ever found.

These fossils fit into an interesting period of evolutionary history, long before the eruption of biodiversity known as the Cambrian explosion 550 million years ago. Both bacteria and algae met their end in a sudden event—perhaps a rapid burial—that preserved their little ecosystem for 1.6 billion years. This portrait was painted in phosphate, a mineral that can help preserve even tiny details of a cell’s structure.

The minuscule fossils of a time long-past might not seem to have much of an influence on your daily life. But in reality, we owe these pioneering lifeforms a huge debt. Though tiny, organisms like cyanobacteria and the red algae eventually altered our world entirely.

“[Cyanobacteria] changed forever the state of the atmosphere, releasing oxygen that we breathe,” Sallstedt says. “As did plants, in a way. They didn’t invent photosynthesis, but they took it to the next level.”

Remember that the next time you ponder the plants in your yard or algae in a pond. It’s not mere scum: it’s next-level biology, with the potential to change the world.

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Plagued by predators in the sea, these fish are moving onto land

On the remote Pacific island of Rarotonga, some fish are fleeing to land.

Scientists have long suspected __that blenny fish leapt out of water to escape the many sea creatures __that seek to eat them, but the blennies' true motivations remained a mystery. Now, in a study published this week in The American Naturalist, researchers show that these sausage-shaped fish were over three times more likely to be devoured in the sea than on land, giving credence to this theory.

"It turns out the aquatic environment is a nasty place for blennies, full of enemies wanting to eat these small fish. But life is less hostile on the rocks, with birds their main worry,” says Terry Ord, the study’s lead author and evolutionary ecologist from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia.

Amphibious blenny fish leaping about on an intertidal rock ledge on Guam

To find out, Ord and his team visited Raratongo Island, where several species of blenny are regularly found lying on the ground near the water. The team fashioned 250 fake plastic blennies, about 2.5 inches long, with lifelike colorings and patterns. Half of the mimics were put in the water, and the other half were fully exposed on dry land. Predatory attacks on the mimics were observed over eight days, and the results suggest that blennies are much safer on land. “There were at least three times more attacks on our model blennies placed in the water than there were on models positioned on land,” says Ord.

So although being hacked to death by predatory seabirds surely isn’t a great way to go, it seems the blennies prefer that alternative to whatever ravenous creatures lurk in the sea.

The team also observed the behaviors of real-life blennies. At low tide, most of the blennies migrated to the rocky shelves above the water. And as the tide rose, they moved with it, taking refuge at higher ground, “apparently to avoid being eaten by aquatic predators coming in with the rising water,” explains Ord.

Ord doesn’t think this is just a survival technique, like mountain lions and bears scrambling up trees when they sense danger. He thinks that blennies are in the process of moving out of the sea and colonizing land on a more permanent basis.

Although lacking legs, they do seem comfortable on the ground. They don’t just spend a considerable amount of time there (although Ord notes it's difficult to measure how much time each blenny spends out of water), they also hop around to different rock crevices and socialize with each other, explains Ord. Perhaps most compelling, there’s a blenny species that hangs out on the same rocks as the truly amphibious fish, and “spends its entire adult life out on the rocks in the splash zone,” he says.

What’s more, the land-seeking habits of the blenny are seen in disparate places around the world. Ord cites Guam and Japan in the North Pacific, Tahiti and Rarotonga in the South Pacific, and Mauritius and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean as examples.

The blenny has a long way to go before it’s a full-fledged land-dweller, but it’s doing pretty well—for a legless fish. They breathe mostly through their gills, but can get some oxygen through their skin, says Orb. And they’re “reasonably agile out of water because of their general sausage-shaped body, and by use of their tails to shuffle and even hop across intertidal rocks,” he says.

In time, we’ll see if the blennies continue their march towards dry land, a place where they’re less likely to be chomped and munched on. For now, let’s keep mum about their ambitions, lest more predatory sea birds—or Guam’s two million snakes—catch on to the scheme.

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A simulated tornado, ghosts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and other amazing images of the week

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Etna escape: 'Pelted with the deadly, hot debris'

Image copyright Sam Robinson

Image caption Etna is usually doing something. That makes it a draw for scientists and tourists

When we arrived in Sicily, we discovered __that we were in luck: Mount Etna had just started to erupt again.

I was part of a BBC team who had come to film a report on volcano monitoring.

Getting to witness an awakened Etna was about as exciting as it gets for a science correspondent. I just didn’t intend to have quite such a close encounter.

The conditions were perfect - blue skies and barely any wind. And as we travelled towards the snow-covered summit, the thunderous booms as Etna spewed magma from its south-east crater reverberated all around.

Media captionRachel Price kept the camera rolling as we retreated

We had come to see a lava flow __that had appeared overnight. A giant stream of rock, glowing red, was oozing down the slopes - and we had been taken there by a scientist from Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, who was monitoring its progress.

Dozens of tourists had also been brought by Etna’s guides to see the spectacle.

The lava was so slow moving it’s not usually considered dangerous, and the fierce heat as the rocks fizzled and crackled preventing anyone from getting too close.

Image caption Clothing was burnt through as the hot rock fragments came down

But about 20 minutes after arriving, a burst of white steam emerged from the lava – it didn’t make much of a noise or look especially threatening – but the guides started asking people to move.

Then, moments later, there was an explosion. The lava had mixed with snow and ice, and boiling rocks and boulders were flung up high into the air. They started to rain down in every direction.

Everyone started to run, pelted with the deadly, hot debris. But it was impossible to see – steam from the explosion had caused a whiteout.

Image copyright Sam Robinson

Image caption People had gone up the mountain to see a new lava flow

I fell as I was trying to get away, trying to cover my head. All I could hear was the thud of rocks hitting all around.

Image copyright Sam Robinson

Image caption We were on Etna to learn about new monitoring techniques

I truly thought that we were going to die. Somehow, our camerawoman Rachel Price kept on filming – her footage is astonishing.

Even when a boiling rock fell into her coat, quickly burning through her clothes and reaching her skin, she kept the camera rolling.

Producer Alison Francis, too, was hit by falling debris – her coat was peppered with burns where rocks had struck, and her hat saved her from a more serious strike to the head.

Amidst the chaos, the sound of an engine rose, and the driver of the snowcat vehicle that had taken us up the slopes started to beep its horn to help us locate it.

Dodging more flying rocks, we got on. A guide screamed in agony from a dislocated shoulder, others were bloody, burned and bruised – but we had all managed to escape.

Image caption We climbed into the snowcat with cuts, bruises and small burns

Badly shaken, I spoke to the volcanologist whose work we had been filming. Bleeding from a hit to the head, he told me it was the most dangerous incident he’d ever experienced at Etna, which he’d spent 30 years studying.

As we took stock and spoke to the medics who had quickly appeared on the scene, it was astonishing to realise that there were no serious injuries or even deaths.

Watching Rachel’s footage back, we can see that we all had an extremely narrow escape. It reminded us just how dangerous these forces of nature can be.

Image copyright Copernicus Sentinel data (2017)/ESA

Image caption Europe's Sentinel-2a satellite pictured Thursday's lava flow from space

Follow @BBC Morelle on Twitter

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Mount Etna: BBC crew caught up in volcano blast

Media captionMoment BBC crew caught in Etna eruption

A BBC team and a number of tourists have suffered minor injuries after being caught up in an incident on the erupting volcano Mount Etna in Sicily.

"Many injured - some head injuries, burns, cuts and bruises," tweeted BBC science reporter Rebecca Morelle.

Lava flow mixed with steam had caused a huge explosion, which pelted the group with boiling rocks and steam, she said.

About eight people had been injured, with some evacuated from the mountain by rescue teams, she added.

Image copyright Heather Sharp

"Bbc team all ok - some cuts/ bruises and burns. Very shaken though - it was extremely scary," she relayed in one of a series of tweets as she ran down the mountain.

The BBC reporter said a volcanologist at the scene told her it was the most dangerous incident he had experienced in his 30-year-career.

Image copyright AP

Image caption Mount Etna is Europe's tallest active volcano

She said a guide had suffered a dislocated shoulder, while a 78-year-old woman had been very close to the blast, but managed to get away safely.

Members of the group ran away from the blast, trying to reach the safety of a snow mobile, she added.

Image copyright Rebecca Morelle

Lava ran into snow - Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent

Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. That makes it a big draw not only for the scientists who want to understand better how these mountains work, but also for tourists who want to be amazed by a spectacular show of fire.

But you do not just wander up the mountain. If you're a reporter, you go with an experienced science team; if you're a tourist, you go with guides who are familiar with the sights and sounds __that spell danger.

But even so, a volcano can often do something __that catches everyone by surprise.

In this case a flow of lava ran into snow, producing superheated steam that sent fragments of rock flying in all directions. Everyone counts themselves lucky to have escaped with just cuts and bruises.

Rebecca Morelle's team was on site filming for a report about advances in volcano monitoring. What happened illustrates just how much we still need to learn about these mountains.

Everyone had been taken from the mountain by a team of rescue workers who were "brilliant", Ms Morelle said.

Media captionFootage from Thursday shows Etna spewing rock into the air

The Catania operation centre of Italy's volcanology institute confirmed that three of its volcanologists had been on the mountain when the explosion took place, and said some had suffered injuries, but gave no detail.

Mount Etna, which is Europe's tallest active volcano, spewed lava up into the sky in the early hours of Thursday morning, for the third time in three weeks.

Image copyright Copernicus Sentinel data (2017)/ESA

Image caption Europe's Sentinel-2a satellite pictured Thursday's lava flow from space

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No let-up in Cyprus bird poaching

Image copyright BirdLife Cyprus

Image caption Acacia bushes provide an ideal roosting spot for migrating birds

British authorities in Cyprus have been criticised for failing to effectively tackle the poaching of songbirds on a military base.

Some 1.7 million birds were illegally killed across the Republic of Cyprus in 2016 according to a new report.

More than 800,000 were killed on the British military territory __that extends for around 100 sq km (100 sq miles).

The UK authorities in Cyprus said __that their efforts had helped to halt what had been a rising trend.

Hot spot identified

The study was carried out by the RSPB and Birdlife Cyprus, during the autumn migration season between September and October in 2016.

Within the territory is a spot where nearly half of migratory bird species from Europe, Africa and the Middle East are thought to stop to rest - Cape Pyla.

According to today's report, Cape Pyla is the worst spot in the country for trapping.

The songbirds are sold on the black market to be pickled, roasted or fried and eaten in secret as a local delicacy. Criminal gangs are thought to earn huge sums from the trade.

Image copyright BirdLife Cyprus

Image caption The mist nets can hold up to 400 birds and are almost invisible when strung between poles in the bushes.

Along with the British bases, the survey covered the popular holiday destination areas of Famagusta and Larnaca along with Ayios Theodorus - Maroni.

The poachers have found that the most efficient way of trapping birds is to use a "mist net" strung between acacia bushes.

Acacia is an invasive species that spreads like a weed and is the right height and density to make an inviting roosting spot.

Fake birdsong is played from MP3 players hidden in the branches which deceives the birds into thinking it's a safe place. They then fly straight in to the near-invisible net. One net can trap 400 birds. Getting rid of the bushes would make it very difficult to set effective traps.

But today's report criticises the British military authorities for not pressing ahead with plans to clear acacia bushes from the territory. An operation to remove the bushes was stopped after a protest last year when trucks were used to blockade the main road in and out of the base.

Image copyright BirdLife Cyprus

Image caption Around 800,000 birds were killed on British territory in Cyprus in 2016 according to most recent figures.

Martin Harper, RSPB Conservation Director said: "This report sadly highlights that the British base is the number one bird killing hotspot on the whole island of Cyprus. Many much loved garden bird species are being trapped and killed for huge profit by criminal gangs. The trappers' brazen prevention of the removal of their criminal infrastructure from MoD land could never be tolerated here in the UK."

According to a spokesman for the Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs): "The UK is committed to tackling illegal bird crime and is pleased that the RSPB has recognised a significant increase in enforcement activity that has led to a record number of arrests, equipment seizures, prosecutions and fines. For the second year running we have halted the rising trend in numbers of birds killed."

The spokesman also pointed out that from a force of 142 officers, 11 are dedicated to anti-poaching.

However while some poachers have been hit with fines of up to 17,000 euros, only two or three have ever ended up in prison.

The SBA is limited in what it can do to reduce demand for the songbirds. The songbird dish is called "ambelopoulia" and almost all of the restaurants serving it are found in the Republic. A meal of 12 birds can cost up to £60. A poacher can demand £1 a bird. It is a lucrative, tax-free income.

Martin Hellicar, Director of BirdLife Cyprus said: "While our latest findings clearly show that the worst bird killing hotspot in Cyprus remains on MoD land, we cannot ignore the distasteful fact that the restaurants serving trapped birds operate within the Cyprus Republic. Enforcement against these law-breaking restaurants has been limited - at best - in recent years, and the Cypriot authorities must change this."

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Plastic microbeads to be banned by 2017, UK government pledges

Image copyright Thinkstock

The UK government has announced plans to ban microbeads used in cosmetics and cleaning products by 2017.

The small pieces of plastic commonly found in toothpaste, exfoliating body scrubs and other household products and are thought to damage the environment.

Environmentalists fear they are building up in oceans and potentially entering the food chain.

A consultation on how a ban would work will start later this year, Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom has announced.

A number of cosmetic companies have made voluntary commitments to phase out the use of microbeads by 2020.

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How do you know if a product contains microbeads?

Image copyright Thinkstock

Products __that contain the tiny bits of plastic won't necessarily say "microbeads" in the list of ingredients.

Instead, look for the words polyethylene, polypropylene and polymethylmethacrylate - the chemical names for plastics. Nylon may also be listed as well as the abbreviations PET, PTFE and PMMA.

There are several websites listing products __that do and do not include plastic such as Beat the Microbead. It also has a free app where you can check products by scanning the barcode with your smartphone camera.

Many cosmetics brands include information on their websites. Johnson & Johnson which produces face scrubs under the brands Neutrogena and Clean & Clear has committed to phasing out microbeads by the end of 2017.

Proctor and Gamble which owns Crest toothpaste, Gillette and Olay, has also promised to stop using them by next year.

Read more: Why are microbeads controversial?

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The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee last month said the government needed to step in to protect the environment as soon as is practicable, after it was revealed a single shower can result in 100,000 plastic particles entering the ocean.

Mrs Leadsom said: "Most people would be dismayed to know the face scrub or toothpaste they use was causing irreversible damage to the environment, with billions of indigestible plastic pieces poisoning sea creatures.

"Adding plastic to products like face washes and body scrubs is wholly unnecessary when harmless alternatives can be used."

She said it was the "next step in tackling microplastics in our seas" following the introduction of the 5p plastic bag charge, which was introduced in England in October.

Image copyright SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Image caption Microbeads are used in cosmetics, including toothpaste, to add body and provide abrasion

Professor Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from Plymouth University, welcomed the decision.

He said: "Over 680 tonnes of mircrobeads are used in the UK alone every year. That's substantially more than all of the litter we pick up on our beaches in voluntary beach cleans each year, so it's not a trivial quantity.

"The sooner we can make progress with avoidable, unnecessary emissions, because it's not clear to me at all why we need to cleanse ourselves by rubbing our skin with millions of small, plastic particles. What's the societal benefit there?"

The environment committee's report suggested microplastic pollution could be more damaging to the environment than larger pieces of plastic because its size makes it more likely to be eaten by wildlife and then potentially enter the food chain.

As an example, it said a plate of six oysters can contain up to 50 particles of plastic.

More than 280 marine species have been found to ingest microplastics, but the committee said much more research was needed into plastic pollution because there was huge uncertainty about the ecological risk.

It added there was "little evidence" about the potential human health impacts of microplastic pollution, but said further research was "clearly required".

'Credit to May'

Commenting ahead of the government's move, Greenpeace UK senior oceans campaigner Louise Edge said: "It's a credit to Theresa May's government that they've listened to concerns from the public, scientists and MPs, and taken a first step towards banning microbeads.

"Marine life doesn't distinguish between plastic from a face wash and plastic from a washing detergent, so the ban should be extended to microplastics in any product that could be flushed down the drain.

"If Theresa May wants to show real leadership on this issue, that's the kind of ban she should back."

The US recently became the first country to announce it would ban microbead use in cosmetics, with pressure growing globally to take action.

The European Commission is also currently developing proposals to ban them in cosmetics across the EU, following calls from a number of member states.

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Accumulating 'microplastic' threat to shores

Image caption Concentrations of microplastic were greatest near coastal urban areas, the study showed

Microscopic plastic debris from washing clothes is accumulating in the marine environment and could be entering the food chain, a study has warned.

Researchers traced the "microplastic" back to synthetic clothes, which released up to 1,900 tiny fibres per garment every time they were washed.

Earlier research showed plastic smaller than 1mm were being eaten by animals and getting into the food chain.

The findings appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"Research we had done before... showed __that when we looked at all the bits of plastic in the environment, about 80% was made up from smaller bits of plastic," said co-author Mark Browne, an ecologist now based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"This really led us to the idea of what sorts of plastic are there and where did they come from."

Dr Browne, a member of the US-based research network National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, said the tiny plastic was a concern because evidence showed __that it was making its way into the food chain.

"Once the plastics had been eaten, it transferred from [the animals'] stomachs to their circulation system and actually accumulated in their cells," he told BBC News.

In order to identify how widespread the presence of microplastic was on shorelines, the team took samples from 18 beaches around the globe, including the UK, India and Singapore.

"We found that there was no sample from around the world that did not contain pieces of microplastic."

Image caption The smallest fibres could end up causing huge problems worldwide

Dr Browne added: "Most of the plastic seemed to be fibrous.

"When we looked at the different types of polymers we were finding, we were finding that polyester, acrylic and polyamides (nylon) were the major ones that we were finding."

The data also showed that the concentration of microplastic was greatest in areas near large urban centres.

In order to test the idea that sewerage discharges were the source of the plastic discharges, the team worked with a local authority in New South Wales, Australia.

"We found exactly the same proportion of plastics," Dr Browne revealed, which led the team to conclude that their suspicions had been correct.

As a result, Dr Browne his colleague Professor Richard Thompson from the University of Plymouth, UK carried out a number of experiments to see what fibres were contained in the water discharge from washing machines.

"We were quite surprised. Some polyester garments released more than 1,900 fibres per garment, per wash," Dr Browne observed.

"It may not sound like an awful lot, but if that is from a single item from a single wash, it shows how things can build up.

"It suggests to us that a large proportion of the fibres we were finding in the environment, in the strongest evidence yet, was derived from the sewerage as a consequence from washing clothes."

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Assessment questions plastics' non-hazardous ranking

Image copyright Jon Brack

Image caption The report says policy makers and producers must find ways to deal with waste __that can harm the environment

A study has questioned plastic's non-hazardous ranking, as an estimated 150 million tonnes "disappears" from the global waste stream each year.

Researchers outlined measures __that can be used to shed light on the wider environmental impact of waste plastic.

An estimated 150 millions of tonnes of plastic "disappears" from the global waste stream each year, much of it is believed to end up in the environment.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"The issue with plastic waste in the environment is that plastic has a non-hazardous ranking," explained co-author Mark Browne, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"It has the same ranking - at the moment - as food scraps or grass clippings. This is in contrast to electrical goods, which have a hard ranking attached to them.

He added: "As you don't really have a structure to deal with the plastics we use in packaging or products, they find their way into the environment."

Quoting the estimated 150 million tonnes of "lost" plastic, Dr Browne - a member of the research team at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) - said the unaccounted plastic was a concern.

"We cannot account for it in the waste stream," he told BBC News.

"There is a real issue there, both in terms of the quantity and in terms of impacts.

Known knowns

Previous work by researchers at the NCEAS had shown that microscopic pieces of plastic (known as microplastic) were ingested by organisms, having a detrimental impact on their health.

Dr Browne observed: "We know a lot about the sub-lethal impact of bits of plastic but what about the ecological impacts?

"Are there impacts on populations or assemblages? Is this having an impact on ecosystems themselves?"

Dr Browne and his team set about reviewing existing literature to build up an understanding about what was known about plastic waste's large-scale impacts.

"We looked at combining all of the studies to try and find out what the evidence base was.

"What we found was that these types of plastics (from microscopic flecks to plastic nets stretching for hundreds of metres) could cause a whole range of impacts."

However, the team identified that most studies were isolated and did not provide a comprehensive overview needed by policymakers.

Dr Browne suggested that it was necessary to "plug the gap" between the materials' non-hazardous ranking and the scientific evidence that challenged that ranking.

In their paper, the team wrote: "Studies are required at multiple levels of biological organisation (from molecular and cellular levels through to populations and assemblages) that consider what is causing observed patterns of change to populations or assemblages at contaminated sites."

Dealing with the problem

It was important for policymakers and producers to fill the void in current measures to deal with waste that could harm the wider environment, they added.

"Through this, we shift the focus from traditional endpoints to developing mechanistic understanding of effects of debris at lower biological scales (where most is known) to lesser known and more worrisome ecological and policy-relevant effects."

Dr Browne added: "There has to be a concerted effort to either do the necessary research to find out how large those problems could be."

"If there is research available then it is used in the decision-making process and polices are adapted to take in the types of hazards."

He explained that there were already examples of where the release of plastic products were tightly regulated.

"It is quite interesting that within the medical field… a plastic product, such as an artificial joint, cannot go on the market until it has been adequately tested to determine how safe it is.

"But when it comes to products used in the environment, or could make their way into the environment, we do not see that sort of testing happening."

Dr Browne acknowledged that plastic products were omnipresent in modern society but he called on policymakers and manufacturers to move to an approach that "used science to make the decisions for us".

He added that there were other materials that had long been recognised as pollutants or hazardous, yet systems had been developed to control or manage the risks to the environment.

"The ones they treat most seriously are the ones that can cause impacts on a whole range of assemblages and populations, and there are a whole series of tools available.

"Yet - at the moment - before plastic products are going on the market, these tools are not being used."

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Video captures moment plastic enters food chain

Media captionDr Richard Kirby's footage shows plankton ingesting plastic microfibre

A scientist has filmed the moment plastic microfibre is ingested by plankton, illustrating how the material is affecting life beneath the waves.

The footage shows one way __that waste plastic could be entering the marine and global food chain.

An estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic "disappears" from the world's waste stream each year.

Waste plastic in the world's seas has been recognised by the United Nations as a major environmental problem.

"When I saw it, I thought __that here was something, visually, to convey to the public the problem of plastic in the sea," said Richard Kirby, who recorded the footage.

"What intrigues me is that because the fibre has made a loop inside the animal's gut, you can actually see the consequences of something as small as the arrow worm consuming microplastic.

Dr Kirby, a self-styled Plankton Pundit, said that people were familiar with the idea of large marine animals - such as whales, seals and birds - swallowing plastic bags.

"But here we have something where we actually see that at a tiny fibre has caused a blockage in something as small as a Sagitta setosa, a member of the plankton, stopping food progressing down.

"An arrow worm's gut extends for the whole length of its body, so this has stopped anything moving down the gut from about just below its head."

Choking oceans

Although Dr Kirby had witnessed the effects of microplastic on plankton before, this was the first time he had filmed it.

He added that this incident was not an isolated occurrence, saying that the sight of plankton ingesting plastic was a relatively common sight in the sample he had collected from British waters.

The issue of plastic waste in the marine environment has been rising up the political and policy agenda.

The United Nations has estimated that there are 46,000 pieces of waste plastic per square mile of sea.

The international body's environment agency, UNEP, has launched a #CleanSeas campaign.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign, the organisation's head, Erik Solheim, said: "It is past time that we tackle the plastic problem that blights our oceans."

He added that plastic waste in the ocean was allowing the material to enter the food chain.

Mr Solheim stated: "We've stood by too long as the problem has gotten worse. It must stop."

The UN estimated that as many as 51 trillion (500 times as many stars estimated to be in our galaxy) particles of microplastic are in the world's seas and oceans.

The widespread presence of plastic in our waters meant that it was a problem for arrow worms, said Emily Baxter, senior marine conservation officer for the North West Wildlife Trusts.

"Their scientific name, chaetognaths, means bristle jaw, and that comes directly back to what they look like," she told BBC News.

"There are about 100 species worldwide. In UK waters they tend to be about one to two centimetres in length.

She added: "They play a really important ecological role in the marine food web. They are voracious predators of other planktonic animals and also represent an important food source for fish, squid and other things that eat plankton.

Dr Baxter said that the video posed a very worrying scenario.

"Even if we stopped producing plastic today this problem is going to continue for a long time. We see it now coming into the bottom of the food chain and potentially affecting the food chain all the way up.

"That problem is not going to go away," she observed.

'Genie out of the bottle'

Dr Kirby said that the "genie was out of the bottle" and that this was visual evidence of the impact of plastic waste in the marine environment.

Previous studies have highlighted the problem of plastic waste in the world's oceans. Researchers have voiced concern over the fact that plastic is listed as non-hazardous waste.

Dr Mark Browne, who has published numerous papers on the effects of plastic waste on the marine environment, said: "Plastic waste is infiltrating the ecosystem at a global scale and this video footage adds to the growing body of evidence showing that polymers are routinely ingested by animals.

"The key question remains: does this material cause ecological impacts and why are governments not using robust science to replace problematic products with safer alternatives?

"This could be done if they tasked ecologists and engineers to work together to identify and remove features of products that (if found as debris in habitats) might cause ecological impacts," he told BBC News.

"Similar approaches are already used to engineer infrastructure ecologically or to make less toxic 'biocompatible' medical devices."

Follow Mark on Twitter: @Mark_Kinver

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NOAA’s satellites are on the chopping block. Here's why we need them.

On Friday, The Washington Post reportedly obtained a memo from within the Trump administration about proposed funding for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The memo outlined steep cuts to several divisions, including the elimination of the $73 million Sea Grant research program, cuts to climate research divisions, and more.

But the biggest cut The Post reported was to the agency's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service—NOAA’s satellite division—which would see its budget cut by 22 percent, or $513 million. The operates 16 satellites __that orbit the Earth at a wide variety of altitudes and positions, gathering data __that researchers in both the public and private sector rely on to do their jobs.

The 45th administration has previously proposed deep cuts to NASA’s Earth Sciences division. NOAA and NASA frequently work together to launch satellites capable of monitoring conditions here on Earth. Cutting both programs to the bone would impact not only climate researchers, but the lives of everyday citizens.

Here are 14 things that NOAA’s satellites help monitor, from agriculture to baseball.

They help us see what’s coming.

If you've ever checked the news before a big weather event, you’ve already seen NOAA’s satellites in action. While some images of major storms are captured by NASA satellites, it’s NOAA satellites that are tasked with monitoring weather 24/7 as it’s forming, following everything from blue skies to blizzards.. While the NOAA division that is responsible for much of the forecast—the National Weather Service (NWS)—would only see a budgetary cut of about five percent, the NWS frequently relies on data from NOAA satellites to make their forecasts more accurate.

They help other people see what's coming, too.

The world is a big place. It’s far too large for any one country to monitor all the weather alone. But just focusing on what’s happening inside our national borders isn’t very useful when a Polar Vortex moves down from Canada, or a Hurricane skirts the Bahamas en route to Florida. NOAA’s satellites are part of a global network of countries around the world that cooperate and exchange satellite imagery, dispersing data on ocean temperatures, weather patterns, and more. They even coordinate on responses to natural disasters.

They help farmers.

NOAA satellites don’t just monitor weather. They also monitor agriculture across the country. Data from NOAA satellites is essential in the USDA’s monitoring of plant and crop health. In addition to measuring soil moisture, precipitation, and temperature, NOAA satellites help farmers get information about plant health, vegetation heights, and water supplies (like lake levels) which can help farmers keep their crops healthy, or help them prepare for a bad year.

They give us a better perspective.

NOAA satellites help us get an otherwise impossible perspective on severe weather events. They monitor wildfires from space, helping firefighters get a wider view of whats happening in the inferno they’re fighting on the ground. They also monitor ice conditions in rivers in winter, which can help predict and prevent severe winter floods. Knowing where the ice is and how it's moving allows officials to warn people downstream before the ice dam breaks.

They’re getting better all the time.

NOAA’s latest satellite, GOES-16, can do things that no other satellite can do. On Monday, NOAA showed off one of the satellite's most shocking new features—a lightning tracker that allows forecasters to get an even more advanced view of thunderstorms, giving them a heads-up when a storm is intensifying. The satellite enables forecasters to give the public more warning when a serious storm is about to strike.

They help find faster trade routes.

NOAA’s satellites monitor sea ice, which is rapidly thinning. While that’s not great in general, melting in the Arctic does mean that the Northwest passage, a route between Asia and Europe across the Arctic, is slowly opening up. That means faster trade, but only if shipping companies (or cruise lines) know when the sea ice has receded enough for safe travel. NOAA satellites are ready to give captains a heads up.

They save hundreds of lives each year.

In 2016, NOAA satellites helped save 307 lives. The satellites are part of the Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) System, a global network that helps pinpoint emergency beacons on land and sea, helping search and rescue operations rescue people stranded just about anywhere on the planet.

They’re helping baseball teams.

Even Major League teams turn to NOAA to play ball. Last winter, an undisclosed team contacted NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, part of the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service that also oversees satellites. The team was looking for weather data. Even small changes in altitude, humidity, and temperature can change how the ball moves during a game. Sure, it’s a small thing—and not nearly as important as wildfires or storm tracking—but it is the great American pastime.

They can see public health risks before we can.

You can’t necessarily track individual mosquitoes from space. But NOAA can and does track malaria risk using satellites by monitoring vegetation in malaria-prone areas. It can also track the development of algal blooms, which can be toxic to ocean life (and, by extension, to the humans that rely on those fisheries.)

They help keep the lights on.

GOES-16, DSCOVR and the other NOAA satellites aren’t just pointed at the Earth. They’re also watching what’s coming in from space. NOAA is the agency that gives power companies a heads-up if they notice any solar flares or coronal mass ejections streaming off the sun. Solar wind can cause serious issues with power grids on Earth, which is why energy companies rely on NOAA to keep our power-hungry society going strong.

They help us fly safely.

NOAA’s history with flight goes back to the very beginning. Their precursor, the U.S. Weather Bureau, helped the Wright Brothers choose Kitty Hawk as the site for their very first flight. That legacy continues today. Satellites monitor aviation hazards like volcanic ash.

They help us clean up after ourselves.

When the Deepwater Horizon disaster struck in 2010, NOAA’s satellites tracked the oil slick as it spread. Since then, NOAA has continued developing technologies that would make responses to future oil spills even more detailed.

They help us stay hydrated.

While some of the best data on droughts comes from on-the-ground measures of soil moisture, precipitation, and other factors, satellites can help measure the extent of droughts ravaging communities and farmland. NOAA satellites track droughts using multiple measures, including vegetation health.

They help us get the big picture.

The only way to figure out how much the climate is changing is to actually monitor those changes over a long, sustained period of time. NOAA has monitored the Earth from space for decades, observing not only ocean and land temperatures, but also environmental changes like shifting snowpacks, migrating ocean nutrients, the spread of smog-causing aerosols, and rising floodwaters.

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