Know This

by Mr. John Brockman

  Doing More with Less

  Freeman Dyson

  Theoretical physicist; author, Dreams of Earth and Sky

  One of the scientific heroes of our time is Pieter van Dokkum, professor in the Yale Astronomy Department and author of a recent book, Dragonflies. The book is about insects, illustrated with marvelous photographs of dragonflies taken by van Dokkum in their natural habitats. As an astronomer, he works with another kind of dragonfly. The Dragonfly Telephoto Array consists of ten 16-inch refractor telescopes arranged like the compound eye of a dragonfly. The refracting lenses are coated with optical surface layers designed to give them superb sensitivity to faint extended objects in the sky. For faint extended objects, the Dragonfly array is about 10 times more sensitive than the best large telescopes. The Dragonfly is also about 1,000 times cheaper. The ten refractors cost together about $100,000, compared to $100 million for a big telescope.

  Dragonfly recently discovered forty-seven “ultra-diffuse” Milky-Way-sized galaxies in the Coma cluster, more than were expected from computer models of galactic evolution. Each galaxy is embedded in a halo of dark matter whose mass can be determined from the observed velocities of the visible stars. The galaxies have about 100 times more dark mass than visible mass, compared with the ratio of 10 to 1 between dark and visible mass in our own galaxy. The Dragonfly observations reveal a universe with an intense fine-structure of dark-matter clumps, much clumpier than the standard theory of Big Bang cosmology had predicted.

  So it happens that a cheap small telescope can make a big new discovery about the structure of the universe. If the cost-effectiveness of a telescope is measured by the ratio of scientific output to financial input, Dragonfly wins by a large factor. This story has a moral. The moral is not that we should put all our money into small telescopes. We still need big telescopes and big organizations to do world-class astronomy. The moral is that a modest fraction of the astronomy budget, perhaps as much as a third, should be reserved for small and cheap projects. From time to time a winner like Dragonfly will emerge.

  The “Specialness” of Humanity

  Kurt Gray

  Assistant professor of psychology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”—Genesis 2:7

  Humans have always been convinced of our own specialness, certain that we sit at the center of the universe. Not long ago, we thought ourselves to be God’s favorite creation, placed on a newly created Earth, which was orbited by all other celestial bodies. We believed that humans were fundamentally different from other animals and possessed intelligence that could never be duplicated. Those ideas made us feel comfortable and safe and so were easy to believe. But they were wrong.

  Copernicus and Galileo revealed that the Sun, not the Earth, lay at the center of the solar system. Charles Lyell revealed that the Earth was much older than previously thought. Darwin revealed that humans were not fundamentally different from other animals. Each of these scientific discoveries challenged our presumed specialness. Of course, even if people were just apes with large frontal cortices, at least we could claim that humans are part of a very special club—that of living creatures. We marvel at the beauty of life, the diversity of plants, animals, insects, and bacteria. Unfortunately, one recent theory undermines the specialness of all life.

  The MIT physicist Jeremy England has suggested that life is merely an inevitable consequence of thermodynamics. He argues that living systems are the best way of dissipating energy from an external source: Bacteria, beetles, and humans are the most efficient way to use up sunlight. According to England, the process of entropy means that molecules that sit long enough under a heat lamp will eventually structure themselves to metabolize, move, and self-replicate—i.e., become alive. Granted, this process might take billions of years, but in this view living creatures are little different from other physical structures that move and replicate with the addition of energy, such as vortices in flowing water (driven by gravity) and sand dunes in the desert (driven by wind). England’s theory not only blurs the line between the living and the nonliving but also further undermines the specialness of humanity. It suggests that what humans are especially good at is nothing more than using up energy (something we seem to do with great gusto)—a kind of specialness that hardly lifts our hearts.

  J. M. Bergoglio’s 2015 Review of Global Ecology

  Stuart Pimm

  Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology, Duke University; author, The World According to Pimm

  The year 2015 saw the publication of an impressive tour d’horizon of global ecology. Covering many areas, it assesses human impacts on biodiversity, the subject that falls within my expertise. Like all good reviews, it’s well documented, comprehensive, and contains specific suggestions for future research. Much of it has a familiar feel, although it’s a bit short on references from Nature and Science. But that’s not what makes this review news. Rather, it’s because it reached a well-defined 1.2 billion people, plus uncountable others—putting the citation statistics of other recent science stories in the shade. The publication is “On Care for Our Common Home,” and its author is better known as Pope Francis.

  How much ecology is there in this? And how good is it? Well, the word “ecology” (or similar) appears eighty times, “biodiversity” twelve, and “ecosystem” twenty-five. There’s a 1,400-word section on the loss of biodiversity—the right length for a letter to Nature.

  The biodiversity section starts with a statement that Earth’s resources “are also being plundered because of short-sighted approaches to the economy, commerce and production.” It tells us that deforestation is a major driver of species loss. It explains that a diversity of species is important as the source of food, medicines, and other uses, and that “different species contain genes which could be key resources in years ahead for meeting human needs and regulating environmental problems.” A high rate of extinction raises ethical issues—in particular, the idea that our current actions limit what future generations can use or enjoy.

  We learn that most of what we know about extinction comes from studying birds and mammals. In a sentence that E. O. Wilson might have written, it praises the small things that rule the world: “The good functioning of ecosystems also requires fungi, algae, worms, insects, reptiles and an innumerable variety of microorganisms. Some less numerous species, although generally unseen, nonetheless play a critical role in maintaining the equilibrium of a particular place.” There is no point in a complete catalog, but this short list exemplifies its insights and comprehensiveness. Knocking pieces from any complex system—in this case, species from ecosystems—can have unexpected effects.

  Technology has benefits, but Bergoglio eloquently rejects unbridled technological optimism: “We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.” We not only destroy habitats, but we fragment those that remain behind. The solution is to create biological corridors. He continues: “When certain species are exploited commercially, little attention is paid to studying their reproductive patterns in order to prevent their depletion and the consequent imbalance of the ecosystem.”

  Whereas there has been significant progress in establishing protected areas on land and in the oceans, there are concerns about the Amazon and the Congo (the last remaining large blocks of tropical forest) and about replacing native forests with tree plantations, which are so much poorer in species. Overfishing and discarding large amounts of bycatch diminish the oceans’ ability to support fisheries. Human actions physically damage the seabed across vast areas, radically altering the composition of the species living there. The section ends with a statement that might have come from a Policy Forum in Science, arguing as it does for increased effort and funding:

  Greater investment needs to be made in research aimed at understanding m
ore fully the functioning of ecosystems and adequately analyzing the different variables associated with any significant modification of the environment. Because all creatures are connected, each must be [conserved], for all . . . are dependent on one another. . . . This will require undertaking a careful inventory of [species] with a view to developing programmes and strategies of protection with particular care for safeguarding species heading towards extinction.

  The biodiversity section would make an outstanding course outline for my graduate course in conservation. Its coverage is impressive, its topics of global significance. Its research is strikingly up-to-date and hints at active controversies.

  The encyclical includes lengthy sections on pollution, climate change, water, urbanization, social inequality and its environmental consequences, both the promise and threat of technology, intergenerational equity, policies both local and global. All these topics would appear in a course on global ecology. But this is not why its publication made news. Rather, it’s an incontestable statement of the importance of science in shaping the ethical choices of our generation—for Catholics and non–Catholics alike. It asks all religions and all scientists to grasp the enormity of the problems that the science of ecology has uncovered and to seek their solutions urgently. The author deserves the last word—and it is a good one—on how we should do that:

  Nonetheless, science and religion, with their distinctive approaches to understanding reality, can enter into an intense dialogue fruitful for both. Given the complexity of the ecological crisis and its multiple causes, we need to realize that the solutions will not emerge from just one way of interpreting and transforming reality. . . . If we are truly concerned to develop an ecology capable of remedying the damage we have done, no branch of the sciences and no form of wisdom can be left out, and that includes religion and the language particular to it.

  Leaking, Thinning, Sliding Ice

  Laurence C. Smith

  Professor and Chair, Department of Geography; professor, Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, UCLA; author, The World in 2050

  Recently the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other prominent news outlets around the world have been granting an abnormally high level of media coverage to scientific news about the world’s great ice sheets. The news conveyed is not good.

  Through unprecedented new images, field measurements, and modeling capabilities, we now know that Greenland and Antarctica, remote as they are, have already begun the process of redefining the world’s coastlines. More than a billion people—and untold aspects of our economies, ecosystems, and cultural legacies—will be altered, displaced, or lost in the coming generations.

  Five studies in particular commanded especial attention. One showed that the floating ice shelves ringing Antarctica (which do not affect sea level directly but do prevent billions of tons of glacier ice from sliding off the continent into the ocean) are thinning, their bulwarking ability compromised. Another, through the use of drones, satellites, and extreme field work, found pervasive blue meltwater rivers gushing across the ice surface of Greenland. A major NASA program called Oceans Melting Glaciers, or OMG, showed that the world’s warming oceans—which thus far have absorbed most of the heat from rising global greenhouse-gas emissions—are now melting the big ice sheets from below, at the undersides of marine-terminating glaciers. A fourth study used historical air photographs to map the scars of 20th-century deglaciation around the edges of the Greenland ice sheet, showing that its pace of volume loss has accelerated. A fifth, a long time-horizon study, used advanced computer modeling to posit that the massive Antarctic ice sheet may disappear altogether in coming millennia, should we choose to burn all known fossil-fuel reserves.

  That last scenario is extreme. But if we choose to bring it to reality, the world’s oceans would rise an additional 200 feet. To put 200 feet of sea-level rise into perspective: The entire Atlantic seaboard, Florida, and the Gulf Coast would vanish from the United States, and the hills of Los Angeles and San Francisco would become scattered islands. Even 5 or 10 feet of sea-level rise would change or imperil the existence of coastal populations as we currently know them. Included among these are major cities like New York, Newark, Miami, and New Orleans in the U.S.; Mumbai and Calcutta in India; Guangzhou, Guangdong, Shanghai, Shenzen, and Tianjin in China; Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya in Japan; Alexandria in Egypt; Haiphong and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; Bangkok in Thailand; Dhaka in Bangladesh; Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire, Lagos in Nigeria, and Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The risk is not simply of rising water levels but also of the enhanced reach of storm surges (as illustrated by Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy); and of private capital and governments ceasing to provide insurance coverage for flood-vulnerable areas.

  Viewed collectively, these studies and others like them tell us four things that are interesting and important.

  The first is that ice sheets are leaky, meaning that it seems unlikely that increased surface melting from climate warming can be countered by significant retention or refreezing of water within the ice mass itself.

  The second is that the pace of global sea-level rise, which has already nearly doubled over the past two decades (and is currently increasing approximately 3.2 mm/year, on average), is clearly linked to the shrinking ice volumes of ice sheets.

  The third is that warming oceans represent a hitherto unappreciated feedback to sliding ice.

  The fourth is that the process of ice-triggered sea-level rise is not only ongoing but accelerating. Many glaciologists now fear that earlier estimates of projected sea-level rise by the end of this century (about 1 foot if we act aggressively now to curb emissions, about 3.2 feet if we do not) may be too low.

  Sea-level rise is real; it’s happening now and is here to stay. Only its final magnitude remains for us to decide.

  Glaciers

  Robert Trivers

  Evolutionary biologist; professor of anthropology and biological sciences, Rutgers University; author, Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist

  Glaciers throughout the world are melting at an unprecedented rate. Glaciers throughout the world will continue to melt at an unprecedented rate. Try living with an average sea level 5+ meters higher.

  Our Collective Blind Spot

  Jennifer Jacquet

  Assistant professor of environmental studies, NYU; author, Is Shame Necessary?

  Scientists and the media are establishing new ways of looking at who is responsible for anthropogenic climate change. This expanded view of responsibility is some of the most important news of our time, because whomever we see as causing the problem informs whom we see as obligated to help fix it.

  The earliest phases of climate responsibility focused on greenhouse-gas emissions by country and highlighted differences between developed and developing nations (a distinction that has become less marked as China and India have become two of the top three emitters). Then, in the first decade of the 21st century, the focus, at least in the U.S., narrowed to individual consumers. However, this century’s second decade has brought corporate producers into the spotlight, not only for their role in greenhouse-gas emissions but also for their coordinated efforts to mislead the public about the science of climate change and prevent political action.

  Although we have traditionally held producers responsible for pollutants, as in the case of hazardous waste, a debate followed about whether it was fair to shift the burden of responsibility for greenhouse-gas emissions from demand to supply. New research revealing how some fossil-fuel companies responded to climate science has placed a greater burden on the producer. Since the late 1980s, when the risks of climate change began to be clear, some corporations funded efforts to deny climate science and worked to ensure the future of fossil fuels. Producers influenced public beliefs and preferences.

  One reason for the recent research into corporate influence is the growing number of disciplines (and interdisciplines) involved in cli
mate research. While psychologists were some of the first to conduct headline-generating climate-related social science (which helps explain the focus on individual responsibility and preferences), researchers from other disciplines, like sociology and history of science, began documenting the role of corporations and a complicit media in the failure to act on climate change.

  The mounting evidence for producer culpability has happened relatively quickly, but its timing remains embarrassing. Over the last two decades of the climate wars, scientists have been accused of being bad communicators, of emphasizing uncertainty, and of depressing and scaring people. I find none of these lines of argument particularly convincing. But the failure of researchers and the media, until recently, to neither see nor document industry’s legerdemain as partly responsible for the stalemate over climate represents their (our) biggest failure on climate action. We might be able to blame corporate influence over politics and the media for the public-opinion divide, but that doesn’t explain why researchers and journalists overlooked the role of corporations for so long. Now that we’ve recognized industry’s important role in climate change, let’s hope this doesn’t regress into our collective blind spot.

  Three De-carbonizing Scientific Breakthroughs