Like many of you, I’ve been closely following the developments at the Fukushima reactor complex. Below is a set of links to articles I’ve written for the Stranger, as the events have unfolded.

3/12/2011
Explosion at Fukushima Nuclear Plant, Cesium Detected

3/14/2011
Don’t Panic

Geiger Counter Readings Rise in Tokyo

3/15/2011
What’s on Fire at the Fukushima Reactor?

Will Radioactive Particles from the Leaking Reactor Reach Washington State?

The Fukushima Fifty

3/16/2011
“We believe that radiation levels are extremely high” (A discussion of acute radiation injury)

3/17/2011
Video from a Helicopter Flyover of the Fukushima Plant

The Health Effects of Radioactive Isotopes from Fukushima

3/20/2011:
Radiation from Fukushima, in Seattle

3/24/2011:
How Radiation Is Measured

3/27/2011:
Radiation From Fukushima, in Seattle, Tells the Story

What’s going on here? Let’s talk macroeconomic theory!

Money, as an abstraction, represents a sliver of the total productive ability of the economy. So, the value of the $20 bill in your pocket is ultimately determined by the productive ability of the economy divided by the total amount of money available at the moment.

Let’s assume that the productive capacity of the United States is stable. If North Korea manufactured a million $20 bills and handed them out to people on the street, the value of your twenty dollar bill would decrease. The term for this–when the growth in the supply of money exceeds the growth in the productive capacity of the economy–is inflation. If you have a wallet thick with $20 bills (you have lots of savings), inflation is working against you. If you owe money, inflation is great. Paying off the same debt (in dollar terms) requires less productive effort.

Assuming again the intrinsic productive capability of the economy is stable, let’s think through what would happen if trillions of dollars were suddenly evaporated–say by a gigantic retail bank failure obliterating checking accounts. Now, the $20 in your pocket represents a larger share of the economic output. That’s deflation. The winners and losers are opposite from inflation. The more savings you have, the better deflation is for you. If you’re indebted, you’re doomed.

Borrowing and saving are both critical for the health of the economy. Inflation discourages saving, deflation strongly discourages borrowing. Therefore, keeping a stable relationship between the productive output of the economy and the total money supply in the economy is the goal.

Here’s the rub: The productive capability of the economy is constantly in flux, and affected by an astonishing multitude of factors: New technologies, the availability of resources, monopolization of supplier companies for other companies, the weather, the overall enthusiasm of entrepreneurs, the number of work-capable people, the amount of labor each person can produce, the number of new ideas worth investing in, the state of infrastructure and on and on and on. Observing this, objectively, is beyond a difficult task; predicting the future productive state of the economy is even more difficult.

The old way to deal with this problem was to ignore it. Under the gold standard, the amount of money is fixed to be equal to the amount of gold in reserve. You could, at any time, exchange your crumpled dollar bill for a fixed amount of shiny metal. Therefore, the growth in amount of money was determined by how fast this one metal could be mined and refined from the earth. You can’t eat gold. You can’t make a home out of gold. And gold clothing is just tacky. The gold production rate is a poor correlate for the growth of the overall economy. The result–particularly during periods of rapid technological advancement in areas beyond metallurgy–were repeated cycles of catastrophic crashes. When an advancement dramatically increased the productive capacity of the economy, the money supply stayed relatively fixed–resulting in sharp, rapid deflation. The deflation stopped borrowing, stopping investment in new endeavors, crashing the economy over and over again. It was a terrible system, whose success depended almost entirely upon luck and faith in divine providence. Of course, Beck loves it.

Instead, we now attempt to measure as well as we can the state of the economy, and forecast how fast it is growing, and then ‘print’ enough new money (or, in theory subtract enough money) so that the ratio of the two stays roughly the same. While not perfect, it’s the far more rational way of dealing with the problem–harnessing mathematics, economic theory and plain-old empiric data.

Assessing and predicting the current and future state of the dollar-based economy is the primary mission of the Federal Reserve. Based on these predictions, the Federal Reserve adds (and theoretically subtracts) from the total money supply–in an attempt to keep the ratio of productive capability to money stable. Hence, the Beckian feverish repetition of, “…. how much money we’re printing at the Federal Reserve.” They (the Fed) are ‘printing’ money to replace that lost by catastrophic (entirely abstract) investments and reflect growth in the productive capability of the nation.

In it’s arsenal–to accomplish this herculean task–the Fed collects data on almost every aspect of the economy. Among all this data is a calculation of the inflation rate of the economy. A basket of goods (representing a cross section of productive output of the economy) is priced out in dollar terms on a regular basis. The rate of change in the price for the collection of goods is used as a measure of the inflation rate. This measure is probably the best sign of how well the Fed has done their matching job. High inflation rates mean too much money supply, low rates of inflation (or negative rates, reflecting deflation) represent too little money is being ‘printed’. Since the economic crisis that started in 2008, the rate of increase in this measure has been historically low–despite the historically large increases in the money supply by the Fed. Based on this measure, the Federal Reserve hasn’t printed enough money, to replace that lost by bankers in their spreadsheets.

There are reasons to be concerned about run away printing of dollars by the Fed–but it’s worth noting that the Fed is a quite conservative organization. At a baseline, the Federal Reserve tends to err on the side of too little growth in the money supply–fitting with the catering to the needs of the wealthy before the needs of the working that dominates US leadership generally. For now, there is no reason underlying the hysteria of the right-wing commentators.

There really isn’t much to debate.

The US healthcare system, in its present state, is a failure. It fails those with and without coverage. We spend more, care for fewer and are sicker than the citizens of any other industrialized nation.

We’ve studied it. Americans of all socioeconomic strata are less healthy on every measured basis than their UK counterparts–before or after adjusting for the less healthy lifestyles of Americans. Putting it even more bluntly, the richest Americans, lavished with the finest private health insurance our nation can muster, in the epicenter of global medical and biological research, have more diabetes and higher blood pressure than the poorest of English citizens. Even within our country, Americans within the Veterans Affairs system, a little socialized corner of our healthcare system, are similarly healthier than their privately insured doppelgangers.

As far as the uninsured in this country, an unprecedented phenomenon in the industrial world, allow the independent Institute of Medicine to state the case:

Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage.

The case for socialized medicine in this country has been made, and it has won. Back in June of this year, an overwhelming supermajority of Americans were in favor of a public health plan option. After the long summer–filled with hideous farces of Town Hall meetings, Teabaggers and endless anti-reform propaganda–support remained at supermajority levels. The Senate vote on the package seems to be a fait accompli.

The core of the opposition is an all out appeal to selfishness. Think of the taxes you’ll pay. Seniors, think of what you’ll be forced to share with those younger than you. You might have to wait in line for care if anyone can get it. The hideous core throbbing at the center of all this summer’s hysterics is the toddlerization of Americans as selfish and self-centered consumers–relentlessly stripped of any sort of adult notions of empathy, responsibility for others, investment in the future or delayed gratification. The whole movement has been lead by paid-for shills for the moneyed interests endangered by healthcare reform.

The mob of mooks compelled by these appeals to selfishness–capable only of braying about ‘socialism’ and ‘the constitution’ with no sense of what either really represents–are the rhetorical equivalent of suicide bombers. This summer’s protests reminded me of nothing less than Kermit Roosevelt‘s handiwork, undoing Mosaddeq’s attempt to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. The intent was to drive terror into the hearts of the elected representatives Democratic supermajority–to generate the illusion of mass discontent. The absurdity of the arguments posed at the Town Halls–Death Panels! Marxism! Obama is Hitler for trying to provide Americans with healthcare!–was the entire point. The feeling of being strapped to a bomb generated by having these cretinous and credulous fools
as countrymen is best diffused by ignoring it as bad theater.

It’s worth considering why American doctors are so expensive, where the costs of drugs and medical devices arise. Healthcare reform is, astonishingly enough after nearly a century of struggle, about to happen. These are the points we should be debating and struggling with as the end details are being written.

Layers of cost build up as we dive deeper and deeper into the life of a medical drug or device. At the shallowest depths are the most obvious additions to costs, the vast sums of money spent on marketing to consumers and doctors alike. Next down are the costly FDA trials, phase I, II and III that must be completed before a medical device or drug comes to market; it’s these studies that also ensure safety and efficacy. At the beating heart of all of this, typically, is in an idea from a publicly funded academic research lab.

The basic biological research done in the United States is the envy of the world. From the investments of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) an the National Science Foundation (NSF) and even more esoteric government sources (the Department of Energy largely bankrolled the Human Genome Project), legions of academic labs have been pumping out the foundation of the medical revolutions of the past few decades. The massive, freely accessible and well-curated libraries of genes, genomes, proteins and even entire metabolic pathways were built through US government funding. Simply put, it would not be possible to do modern biological or medical research at any level without these tools. It’s from these laboratories that we know how, say, cholesterol is absorbed, made processed, eliminated and even turned pathologic in the human body. This knowledge is how drug companies figure out how to test new drugs, measure their effects and safety.

It’s at this level, in academic labs, where the epiphanies behind new devices and meds occur. The discovery of a new pathway, the teasing apart of a bit of physiology, or simply a new understanding why some are protected from disease when others are not all lead to ideas of new drugs and devices. If it’s a really good idea, if the potential seems ripe, it becomes the core of a startup company.

The idea is teased out. If it really looks good in animals, the phase I human trials start at about this point. (Phase I trials are small scale, and focused on establishing safety and reasonable doses or ways of application.) Money is raised (the first big cut of cash taken by the parasitic financial industry). Most often, the goal is to make the idea look good enough for one of the supersized biotech companies (essentially a pile of money and lawyers blended into the equivalent of the Borg cube) to buy up the whole company, idea and all. (The next major step where the financial industry takes a cut.) Somewhere about this point, Phase II human trials begin (small scale, but now focused on both safety and efficacy.)

The last step before a drug or device can be sold is a phase III human trial, large scale and required to statistically demonstrate in a randomized and controlled trial efficacy and safety of the new idea. A typical phase III trial costs ring up at about a billion dollars. Only the Borg-cube level of biotech can really take them on. For a genuinely new idea–an entirely new kind of drug or device–this is the riskiest step. All sorts of unexpected things happen–sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. (Both Minoxidil and Viagra started as entirely new blood pressure pills; they worked terribly at controlling blood pressure, but excellently at helping old men feel better about themselves.) The payoff is an exclusive, time-limited, patent. For a new drug or device that genuinely solves a large and unaddressed problem, this adds up to tens of billions of dollars over the ensuing years of legalized monopoly.

The patents for drugs work as the founders intended; they’re just long enough to make the investment worth it, but not so long as to prevent real competition forming while the drugs are still useful. Generic drugs are those that have gone through this whole process, and been on the market long enough for their patent to expire. These copycats mimic the molecular structure of a drug already proven through the phase I, II and III human trials by someone else. Without the R&D costs (or marketing costs), they become instantly cheaper than their parents.

Most drugs on the market today, including new drugs, are actually based on old ideas. Prozac was followed by a dozen or so drugs that work in the same way. (Viagria was followed by Cialis and Levitra.) It’s here where consumers get soaked. As soon as a lucrative drug is about to go off patent, the parent biotech company will typically come out with a new, improved (in some minor way) version. The repeated phase III trial tends to be much cheaper, and with a near certain outcome. The new drug is then relentlessly marketed, driving as many customers as possible away from the imminent generic competition. For the big biotech companies (heavy on money and lawyers, light on genuine risk taking science), developing new ideas isn’t a strength. Instead, they devote vast sums of money into promoting these derivatives, certain that the government funded labs will keep churning out new ideas worth picking off in the future.

In a somewhat ugly way, the whole process works surprisingly well. At this point, most of the drugs most of us will need to take (statins like simbastatin to reduce cholesterol, ACE receptor antagonists and HCZ for blood pressure, SSRIs for depression) are available in generic form. They work well, are cheap and safe. Find a doctor who still reads, and doesn’t have to learn about new drugs from a rep paid to tout the newest (but not necessarily meaningfully better) and more expensive drug, and you can game it all fairly well. That’s to say, the problem of expensive drugs and devices is as much one of this system as that of the poor continuing medical education of many physicians.

The average family medicine doctor in the United States pulls down about $200,000 a year. The average internist or pediatrician earns about $175,000 a year. A general surgeon earns about $290,000 a year.

In comparison, a primary care physician (comparable to an internist, family doc or pediatrician) in the UK, under the NHS, earns between £53,249 to £80,354, about $90,000 to $130,000 at current currency rates.

The salaries of American doctors are huge, terrifying, for anyone trying to bring down health care costs in the United States. Why are American doctors so damn expensive? Medical school is a big part of the answer.

Per the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), the median cost per year (tuition, fees and health insurace) to attend a private medical school in 2008 was a whopping $42,622. Public medical schools were only slightly cheaper, $41,429 for out-of-state and $22,984 for residents.

Add in at least $15,000 a year in living expenses, and the cost of a four-year bachelor’s degree and a newly minted medical student in the United States is easily hauling around three-quarters of a million dollars of debt by time they saunter out with an MD degree. The obligate first job of any medical school graduate is residency, typically a brutal three to five years of work, paying about $40,000 a year.

Running right down the median costs, paying off that $800,000 or so in debt (financed at about 5% a year) over the next thirty years of work eats up about $4300 a month; paying it off in ten years would cost nearly $8500 a month. A pediatrician or internist can expect to make about $14500 a month before tax; paying off this debt over thirty years will cost them about a third of their gross income. About half of that money will go to the financial services industry, in the form of interest.

If you want physician’s salaries to come down in the United States, without a true reduction in physician compensation, the natural choice would be to aggressively subsidize medical education and ensure young doctors come out of school carrying much less debt. A small amount of public investment up front will reduce a massive and ongoing source of inefficiency in the American medical system.

For the first time, scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission have detected sodium salts in ice grains of Saturn’s outermost ring. Detecting salty ice indicates that Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which primarily replenishes the ring with material from discharging jets, could harbor a reservoir of liquid water — perhaps an ocean — beneath its surface.

Such an ocean would vastly increase the chance of life elsewhere in our solar system, beyond our own planet.

It’s a pretty clever idea. Nobody has been able to make it work. Tumor cells seem to know the trick, and have potent means of telling the immune cells “back off, guys. We’re cool.”

Dendreon, focusing on prostate cancer (very common in older men), figured it out. In this most recent trial, they demonstrated efficacy of this new treatment to the satisfaction of the FDA. Since this therapeutic method is so new, the trial and standards were more stringent than for a more typical chemotherapy drug.

Not only is this really good news for prostate cancer patients, it’s also good news for the local economy. The intellectual property generated by the company should be applicable to other forms of cancer. Prepare for billions of dollars to start flowing into the state, as we are now the global leaders in a new way of tackling cancer.

Let’s look at the bios of the CEO and scientific leadership team:
Dr. Mitchell Gold: President and CEO.
“Dr. Gold is a former urologist at the University of Washington and currently serves on the boards of the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Prostate Cancer Institute and the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association.”

Dr. Urdal: Chief Scientific Officer.
“Dr. Urdal received a B.S. and an M.S. in public health and a Ph.D. in biochemical oncology from the University of Washington.”

Huh. UW. You know, the highly productive public research University that brings in a billion dollars a year (or so) of out-of-state funding and is the largest employer in the city of Seattle. Also, the same University facing a 25-35% budget cut from the State and is planning to lay off 1000 people in a couple weeks, while jacking up tuition and cutting student rolls. After these cuts, Washington State will be 42nd out of 50 in State funding for higher education.

Who needs higher education? Taxes are baaad for the economy. The Republican superminority in State government tells us so. We already have a raging state economy. Raging! Sure, Boeing needed billions of dollars of state-funded life support during the boom years, has a commercial aviation division that can’t build aircraft and is facing cuts in orders to its most profitable aircraft, and a military division still reeling from the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union twenty years ago. It’s not like China is going to figure out how to build aircraft! Never! And Microsoft’s monopoly is firmly entrenched, with no serious competitors on the horizon. Businesses are snapping up Vista and cannot wait for Windows 7. XP is long forgotten. Nobody wants that stuff. Nor is piracy of Microsoft products a serious problem, certainly not in the future markets of Brazil, Russia, India or China.

And our high tech economy has no need for well-trained employees. None at all. Sure, public universities are incredibly efficient at generating superbly trained and prepared staff for companies. But, why would Boing, Microsoft or other tech companies want to hire Washingtonians? If UW is gutted, all it’ll take is more H1B visas. With all the tax dollars we’ve saved, we can make our kids happy in the burger-flipping and car washing jobs that are the future.

Yes, our governor and democratic supermajority in the state legislature are faced with an impossible set of circumstances: a gaping budget hole caused by ill-advised earlier tax cuts and subsidies for failing industries, one of the world’s largest collections of idle wealth residing in the state, and an antiquated and ultra-regressive sales tax based revenue structure. What possible solution could be crafted from this raw material? Mysterious clues have been found in a yet-indecipherable code: aiseray axestay onay ichray. To help them in their quest of balancing the books, the governor has crafted a website where you can cut funding, and pick exactly which seed corn we should feast on now.

Should be a smashing success. Thanks, UW spinoff Dendreon, for showing us what we won’t miss at all.

Dear Science,

Is reading The Stranger online actually any greener than reading the printed-in-Yakima hard copy? Doesn’t it take a shitload of electricity to run the servers and keep them cool? How would one even figure out how to compare the carbon footprint of, say, going to the coffee shop once a week and reading the print version versus reading it online, as well as checking in with Slog on a regular basis? Folks talk about the internet as being green, but part of me suspects that all it does is put its pollution somewhere out of sight.

Usually, when I get a question like this, I do a search to see if anyone else–particularly in the scientific literature–has done an analysis. All I could find was a high-on-sensation, low-on-content article from a Harvard professor touting his company.

It was time to roll up my sleeves and do some real, primary, research on the question. (If you just want the answer, go read the column for the condensed answer.) Allow me to show my work.

For print on paper, I assumed the two major carbon impacts would be the manufacturing of the paper itself, and the physical distribution of the printed copies.

The EPA maintains a fantastic online calculator intended to help manufactures figure out ways of reducing their carbon impact by using recycled materials. Newsprint is one of the categories. Kevin (at The Stranger) was kind enough to tell me the amount of recycled paper (pre- and post-) consumer: 40% pre-consumer, 40% post-consumer recycled and 20% pulp from freshly cut down trees. As my column notes, only the use of post-consumer recycled paper reduces the carbon impact. Both pre-consumer recycled paper and pulp require the cutting down of trees. As I noted in another column, trees actively sequester carbon. Cutting them down, if you’re accounting properly, has a really nastly net impact on the atmosphere.

I independently calculated the tons of paper needed each week by weighing a single copy (150 grams) and multiplying by the total circulation. The total weekly weight was about 13,500 kg (about 30,000 pounds) of paper. Kevin confirmed this was about right. For the mix of recycled paper used, that worked out to 5.2 metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE) released into the atmosphere each week for just the paper. If The Stranger used (much more expensive) 100% post-consumer recycled paper, this would drop to a mere 0.30 MTCE per week–17.5 fold less than currently emitted.

For the distribution, I first started with the semi-truck from Yakima to Seattle–140 miles at about 5 miles per gallon, or about 28 gallons of diesel fuel consumed per trip. Burning a gallon of diesel fuel releases about 2.8 kg of carbon into the atmosphere, so 28 gallons is about 0.08 MTCE emitted.

The in-town distribution consumes another 76 gallons of gasoline per week. Burning gasoline releases about 2.4 kg of carbon per gallon, making the total emissions from the in-town distribution 0.19 MTCE per week.

The total for the physical delivery of the paper? 0.26 MTCE per week. The overall total (paper + distribution) carbon impact for the paper each week worked out to about 5.5 MTCE per week, almost all of which coming from the newsprint itself. Divide by the current circulation of The Stranger, and that works out to about 71g of carbon equivalent per printed paper: 67.4 g for the paper itself, 3.4g for distribution.

Were my assumptions valid? I’m ignoring the energy costs of running the printing presses, figuring they are probably predominantly powered by non-carbon emitting hydroelectric and wind power. I’m also ignoring the carbon impact of manufacturing the soy-based ink, assuming it’s a small contributor. That might be dangerous, as farms are massive contributors to atmospheric carbon emissions. I couldn’t find a good source for the MTCE per gallon of soy-based ink. If anyone knows, I’ll be glad to incorporate it into my analysis.

For online, we have a few things to consider: how much energy does it take to serve, deliver and read the content.

A nicely done study figured it takes about 12.5kWh per gigabyte of data served and delivered on the internet. On average in the US, generating one kWh of electricity emits 0.00012 MTCE into the atmosphere.

Anthony was kind enough to provide me with hard numbers for the number of visitors and views on The Stranger‘s website in a week. I measured a bunch of pages to calculate the average pageview on The Stranger‘s website weighs in at about one megabyte. The total weekly carbon imact of serving and delivering the content on The Stranger‘s website is about 1.7 MTCE; interestingly, that’s more than the weekly carbon impact of distributing the physical paper. Per unique visitor, that works out to 9.4 grams of carbon equivalent each just on the delivery.

The carbon impact of reading things on the internet really is dependent upon which computer you are using–and how many watts the computer uses. A relatively modern laptop, consuming 45 watts, emits 5.4 grams of carbon equivalent per hour to operate. A big honking desktop PC, weighing in at 250 watts, emits 30g per hour.

I have no clue how many hours a week people spend reading and commenting on The Stranger‘s website, nor the mixture of computers. So, I cannot make an honest estimate of the total carbon impact of the online presence of the paper. I can tell you about 11.4 hours of online reading on a laptop, per week, has about the same carbon impact as a single paper copy. Reading on a desktop PC? Only two hours equals the carbon impact of the paper.

Want to calculate for your own PC? Here’s the formula:

(Watts of your PC) * 0.00012 * 1000 = your grams of carbon emitted per hour.

For the number of hours until reading online on your PC equals the carbon impact of a single paper:

61.6 / (grams of carbon per hour from your PC) = number of hours.

How are my assumptions here? I’m not considering the carbon impact of manufacturing the laptops and computers. But, I’m not considering the carbon impact of manufacturing the roads, trucks either.

And, as I end my column noting, reading isn’t even close to your biggest carbon impact. A single cheeseburger emits the equivalent of a kilogram of carbon. Driving the average car on the road today one mile emits more carbon equivalent into the atmosphere than a single paper.

Darwin’s major accomplishment was to condense a lot of thought on the origins of life into two basic concepts: new traits arise randomly (mutation) and the most adaptive of these new traits would become dominant in the population (natural selection)–forming the first cohesive theory of evolution.

For proof, in these early days, we had Darwin’s observations on the Galapagos Islands and the fossil records showing the rise of new traits in the living population to match changes in or introductions to new environments.

Building off of Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and mutation generating new traits came Mendel, and his conception of genetics, a systematic way by which traits are passed from parents to children. Mendel’s genes passed unchanged from parent to child cause traits of living things. An individual has two copies of each gene, one from each parent. If you have a mixture of genes for a trait, one of these genes can dominate over the other, hiding the weaker recessive gene’s trait for the generation.

Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin‘s discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950′s gave genes a physical manifestation—understandable with fairly simple chemistry. The central dogma of biology followed shortly after, in which DNA encoding for genes is transcribed into messenger RNA and in turn proteins that cause the traits first observed by Darwin hundreds of years before.

Human understanding of life has come in these spurts, separated by decades of consolidation and grappling with new data or new ways of thinking about biology. We’re, right now, in midst of another spurt in our understanding of life.

Until about a decade ago, we only really knew DNA–the long ordered strands of the four basic letters of life–in patches and spurts, with little sense of the overall map of any living thing. With enormous effort and cost, we sequenced the human genome–the vast majority of all the DNA in a human cell. We discovered that a human being has about twenty-thousand pairs of Mendel’s genes.

In the past few years, sequencing DNA has become shockingly less expensive. What once cost four billion dollars can now be done for a few thousand. And the price is dropping dramatically every few years. As a result, we now have sequenced the genomes of many other organisms–fish, cows, dogs, mice, opossums, frogs, chickens, chimps to name just a few.

If we think about Darwin’s traits as tasks a living thing must accomplish–eating, carrying oxygen and so on–and Mendel’s genes as means of accomplishing these tasks–a beak, a histone protein to wrap DNA around, hemoglobin in red blood cells–by comparing the DNA sequences for given traits (a gene’s locus) in different organisms, we can see how evolution has adapted each organism to its environment and lifestyle.

Storing DNA should be little different for a fish, frog, mouse or human. The task is as ancient as eukaryotic life. Let’s look at the genetic locus coding for a protein responsible for this DNA-storing trait, comparing how close various other organism’s DNA is to human’s sequence.

(click for a larger version)

Each row represents the equivalent gene in another species (zebrafish, xenopus frogs, chickens, opossums, mice, dogs and macaque respectively.) The higher the blue, the closer the DNA sequence matches that of humans; given that our common ancestor with these organisms were millions, hundreds of millions for the majority, of years ago, this is a very high degree of sequence conservation. The task hasn’t changed (the goals of the trait) so the gene hasn’t changed much either.

Now let’s look at the gene responsible for the trait of carrying oxygen in our blood, the beta-chain of hemoglobin. For a fish or a frog, the demands of the task of capturing and carrying oxygen are dramatically different than those for a purely land-dwelling animal; we’d expect the DNA sequence for the equivalent gene in these animals to be quite different from human’s.

Indeed, that’s the case:

Today, on Darwin’s 200th birthday, I encourage you to browse around, comparing human genes to those of our distant and close relatives in the animal kingdom. (Check out Opsin 1, for color vision, or the NMDA neurotransmitter receptor for some other fun genes.) You are living in a golden age of biology, in which our understanding of life is jumping by leaps and bounds every year. Within your lifetime already, we’ve gained astonishing abilities to peer into the nature, structure and function of life. Despite the centuries of advancement, Darwin’s (and Mendel’s) carefully crafted ideas of evolution and genetics have not only endured, but provided an invaluable map to understanding this vast new collection of data. Be proud.

The optimistic among us assume that, eventually, new technology or new political movements will stop carbon release into the atmosphere. One of the comforting assumptions about climate change is that the effects of humans putting carbon into the atmosphere can be reversed. Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, right? So, if we just stop adding more, eventually carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere should drop, and the adverse climate changes should reverse.

Nope, at least not according to Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions in this week’s PNAS.

Now, that’s a provocative title. The authors made such a claim very carefully. (I suggest reading the paper in whole, I’ll just summarize it here.)

First, they only considered climate changes that are:

1. going on now–not predicted for the future in a computer model, but instead directly observable today.

2. by direct evidence, caused by human activities.

3. caused by a basic physical process that is well understood by science.

4. projected by multiple and reliable computer models to worsen with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

That is a very strict set of criteria. As far as irreversible, the authors considered effects that would remain around until at least the year 3000, even if humans totally stopped adding new greenhouse gases into the atmosphere today.

Well, what made the cut?

1. Atmospheric CO2 levels are staying high, no matter what.

When CO2 is dumped into the atmosphere, only about 20% remains in the air. About 80% dissolves into the oceans, becoming carbonic acid in the process.

CO2 (carbon dioxide) + H20 (water) <--> H2CO3 (Carbonic Acid) <--> H+ + HCO3-

This absorption of carbon dioxide into the oceans is reversible, but only in the surface water. Since the deep waters of the ocean are only rarely overturned to the surface, this happens very slowly. How slow can be observed by comparing the ratio of radioactive carbon-14 CO2 to non-radioactive carbon-12 CO2 in the air versus the ocean water, giving us a very good sense of the pace.

The results:
If we stopped adding carbon to the atmosphere right now, even a thousand years from now we still wouldn’t return back to pre-industrial levels. In fact, we can expect that carbon levels would only drop by about 60% from the peak. Since human carbon emissions have been growing by about 2% a year since the industrial revolution, this peak is still rocketing upwards.

This is nasty business.

Acidification of the oceans causes a whole mess of problems, including the potential collapse of the entire aquatic food chain, or the loss of all shelled ocean life forms (as acidic ocean water dissolves away shells.)

2. Global surface temperatures are going up.

The persistence of the carbon means global average surface temperatures will remain elevated for millennium after the last bit of human-produced carbon is added. All that carbon keeps trapping solar energy. If you recall from my earlier writing, increased temperatures alone are going to cause serious problems for food crops, regardless of water supply.

3. Ocean levels are going persistently higher

Ocean levels are rising will stay that way, not just by melting of glaciers but just by simple thermal expansion of the existing oceans. Warm water takes up more volume than cold. The expansion in ocean volume we can expect from even very modest increases in average surface temperature are likely to cause serious problems for coastal areas worldwide, with ocean levels staying about 1-2 meters higher long after we’ve stopped adding CO2 to the atmosphere.

4. Precipitation patterns are going to change.

Rainfall is going to go down in the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and parts of southwestern North America and become less predictable everywhere.

This is a damning and bleak report–made all the more so by the obvious care and caution that went into the analysis. I’m taking it seriously. You should too.