Rainmaking Bacteria Ride Clouds to "Colonize" Earth?

From National Geographic News

Rainmaking bacteria that live in clouds may have evolved the ability to spur showers as a way to disperse themselves worldwide, a recent study found.

The research gives scientists a first glimpse into the link between biology and climate, and into how the tiny organisms globe-trot with the weather cycle.

The microbes—called ice nucleators—are found in rain, snow, and hail throughout the world, according to previous work by Brent Christner, a microbiologist at Louisiana State University.

Christner had shown that, at a high enough concentration, these organisms may be efficient drivers for forming ice in clouds, the first step in forming snow and most rain.

But he hadn't been able to pinpoint their source—until now.

In the recent study, Christner and colleagues found that the critters hail from snow, soils, and young plant seedlings in such such far-flung sources as Antarctica, Canada's Yukon Territory, and the French Alps.

The bacteria may be part of a constant feedback between these ecosystems and clouds.

"This is sending ripples through the atmospheric science community," Christner said.

"This idea would have been viewed as crazy 25 years ago, but these new findings have invigorated research … in the role that biology may play in atmospheric processes."

Colonizers
On the ground, researchers found ice nucleators alongside aerosols—tiny particles suspended in air—that could be chemically traced back to clouds.

In some places, the nucleators had come mostly from soil and plant ecosystems, the results showed.

One possible explanation is that the bacteria rely on the atmosphere—and rainfall—to disperse, much like plants rely on windblown pollen grains to colonize new habitats, Christner said.

For instance, an organism specialized to live on plants may become airborne, spur ice formation in clouds, and then travel back to Earth with that precipitation.

This may be an important and yet unrecognized component of a bacteria's normal life cycle, according to Christner, whose results were published in November 2008 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Piggyback Rides
The theory—called bioprecipitation—was pioneered by David Sands, a plant pathologist at Montana State University, in the 1980s. But little information existed on how the rainmaking bacteria moved through the atmosphere until Christner and his colleagues began their work in 2005.

Sands told National Geographic News that the critters may even employ creative means of transportation: For instance, they could "ride piggyback" on pollen or insects.

"We thought [the bacteria] were just plant pathogens [germs], but we found them in mountain lakes, in waterfalls, in Antarctica—they get around," Sands said.

Scientists still haven't identified most of the important ice nucleators in the atmosphere. For instance, a whole host of other microbes—as well as pollen grains, fungi, and other organisms—may be producing the ice nucleators detected, study author Christner added.

The vast majority of ice nucleators that are active at temperatures higher than 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) have been found to be biological or bacterial.

Roy Rasmussen, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, studies Earth's wintertime water cycle.

The theory that bacteria can shape the water cycle is "an interesting hypothesis, but one that is not verified, Rasmussen said in an email.

"The real issue is whether the concentration of these cells is high enough to impact precipitation formation in any significant way."

No Rain Dancing
Scientists had already suspected that cloud bacteria may be linked to plants and soils in a "feedback loop," a system of exchange between ecosystems.

In fact, these bacteria may have evolved with plants over millennia, building a dependent relationship, Sands said.

The concept also ties into Sands's ongoing study of the idea that drought cycles are connected to bacteria in clouds.

(Related: "Sun's Cycles Can Forecast Floods, Drought?" [December 10, 2008].)

For instance, if people overgraze lands, "these bacteria are without a home … and can have serious consequences, possibly, for lack of rainfall," Sands said.

Simply put, a lack of vegetation may lead to a lack of bacteria, which could limit clouds' ability to shed rain.

But drought-affected farmers have alternatives, Sands said: They may be able to choose plant species that harbor more bacteria.

"It's better than rain dancing," he added.

Sands and colleagues have a network of researchers already observing bacteria in croplands in Syria, Uzbekistan, and New Zealand.

However, he said, "We're only halfway there. We haven't proven all these things yet."

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It seemed like a good idea at the time

Frmo SFGate.

Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.

But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.

Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.

The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions, the study said.

"The lessons for conservation agencies globally is that interventions should be comprehensive, and include risk assessments to explicitly consider and plan for indirect effects, or face substantial subsequent costs," Bergstrom said.

Located about halfway between Australia and Antarctica, Macquarie was designated a World Heritage site in 1997 as the world's only island composed entirely of oceanic crust. It is known for its wind-swept landscape, and about 3.5 million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals migrate there each year to breed.

Authorities have struggled for decades to remove the cats, rabbits, rats and mice that are all nonnative species to Macquarie, likely introduced in the past 100 years by passing ships.

The invader predators menaced the native seabirds, some of them threatened species. So in 1995, the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania that manages Macquarie tried to undo the damage by removing most of the cats.

Several conservation groups, including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Birds Australia, said the eradication effort did not go far enough and that the project should have taken aim at all the invasive mammals on the island at once.

"It would have been ideal if the cats and rabbits were eradicated at the same time, or the rabbits first and the cats subsequently," said University of Auckland Prof. Mick Clout, who also is a member of the Union's invasive species specialist group.

Clout and others said the Macquarie case illustrates the struggle that Australia and New Zealand have had trying to remove invasive species from their islands, mostly in a bid to protect seabird populations. They have targeted dozens of islands over the past few decades with mixed success.

Cats were removed from Little Barrier island off New Zealand, but it took a second campaign against a growing rat population. On the remote Campbell island off New Zealand, authorities successfully removed sheep, cattle, cats and rats in one of the biggest eradication projects to date.

"The whole ecosystem is recovering superbly," Clout said of Campbell island.

Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations.

"The alternative was to accept the known and extensive impacts of cats and not do anything for fear of other unknown impacts," Wren said.

The parks service now has a new plan to use technology and poisons that were not available a decade ago to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice from the island.

The project to be launched in 2010 will use helicopters with global positioning systems to drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, Wren said.

Some of the earlier critics are now behind this latest eradication effort to remove the island's last remaining invasive species.

"Without this action, there will be serious long-term consequences for the majestic seabirds...and for the health of the island ecosystem as a whole," said Dean Ingwersen, Bird Australia's threatened bird network coordinator.

Nice Huntington Post entry by Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win.

It just doesn't square with the right wing narrative. They painted Barack Obama as an unpatriotic, "terrorist sympathizing" candidate whose values are foreign to the American way of life. How could it be that his ascendance to the presidency should be the occasion for the new patriotic spirit sweeping America?

Yesterday on the mall in Washington hundreds of thousands belted out "This Land is Your Land" led by 90-year-old labor activist and folk singer Pete Seeger who was blacklisted in the 50s. The eyes of white middle aged working guys moistened as they listened to a black children's choir sing "America the Beautiful". And throughout the crowd -- even among the aging 60s activists who had struggled against the Vietnam War -- there was a genuine, deep admiration for the men and women who risk it all every day in our armed forces.

And it's not just in Washington. As unlikely as it might seem to the right, the election of Barack Hussein Obama has caused an intense feeling of patriotism to well up across the country. I think there are four reasons why:

First and foremost, Obama and his call to service -- to commitment -- has touched our most fundamental self interest -- our desire for meaning. Obama understands that to have a real sense of significance, you have to have a commitment to something outside of yourself. You have to be willing to sacrifice. The right wing's belief that if every one simply pursues their own individual interest the "invisible hand" will assure that the public interest is served doesn't work in practice -- a lesson delivered graphically by the 2008 crash of Wall Street. But more important, it doesn't address our overwhelming need to live lives that mean something.

Eight years ago, my wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, decided that -- as painful as it was -- she should attend the swearing in of George W. Bush. I accompanied her and sat with the other Congressional spouses. Most of the spouses that year were Republicans women who were decked out in diamonds and furs. Bush's speech was pretty unremarkable, with few applause lines - at least until he called for tax cuts. With that the fur bedecked spouse section leapt to its feet and gave the new president a standing ovation. How far we had come from "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

The last eight years have demonstrated that true patriotism isn't about xenophobia. It isn't about "where's mine". It isn't about Bush's call on everyone to "go shop" after September 11. Patriotism is about commitment to other people - and willingness to sacrifice for the common good. And that's why President Elect Obama chose to commemorate Martin Luther King Day- his last day before taking the oath - by calling on Americans to participate in a day of service.

Second, Obama -- his campaign and his transition - have been unequivocal in their willingness to hold up and unapologetically celebrate the principles that lie at the heart of traditional progressive American values: unity not division; hope and optimism not fear and cynicism; tolerance not prejudice; that it's the right thing to help your neighbor not just yourself; that we're all in this together -- not all in this alone.

They have refused to allow the right wing to claim the symbols of America for their nationalistic, exclusionary vision of "patriotism". Instead Obama has reattached those symbols to the traditional progressive values that have always defined what is best in America. In his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, political strategist and author Mike Lux documents that tradition and challenges us all to be part of creating its next chapter.

Third, the new patriotism results from relief. Americans are relieved that they once again can be proud of the way their government acts in the world. Obama has pledged unequivocally to end torture, secret prisons, the practice of capturing people on the streets of foreign nations to "rendition" them (or disappear them) to other countries. He has pledged to end the Neo-Con doctrines of unilateralism and pre-emptive war. In other words he has pledge to return America to its standing as a moral leader in the world -- a country that holds fast to the principles of human rights - a country that understands that if our children are to be prosperous and free, the children of every nation must have that opportunity as well. Americans are relieved that in our dealings with the world, we have returned to the progressive principles elaborated by John Kennedy in his inaugural address 48 years ago:

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" -- a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Finally, the election of Obama makes us proud of ourselves. We are proud that we have elected the first African American president. We are proud that from the all-white "Norman Rockwell" communities of Iowa; to the roadside bar with "Rednecks for Obama" on the marquee; to the suburbs of Philadelphia -- our fellow Americans have been willing to put centuries of prejudice behind them. And we are proud that we have reaffirmed America's founding principle: that we are a society that truly believes that all human beings are created equal; that America truly is a society where every child, of whatever background, can aspire to be President of the United States -- or anything else he or she wants to be.

Tomorrow will be a day that Americans will remember for years to come. It will be a day when most Americans -- whatever their partisan bent -- will feel particularly good about our country. But it will also be a day when people around the globe look at America differently than they did the day before. And they too will be inspired that everyday Americans mobilized successfully to take our country back -- that America did not fail them. The world will celebrate that we chose to chart a future governed by the American principles that they have long admired -- not the arrogance and selfishness they had come to loath.

So tomorrow the celebration will not be limited to the mall in Washington, or the inaugural events that that exploded across our country. America flags will be waved by people of every background, on every continent. Tomorrow will be a day to be especially proud to be an American -- an American citizen of a new World.

Obama Reaches Out for McCain’s Counsel

From the NYTimes.com
.

Over the last three months, Mr. Obama has quietly consulted Mr. McCain about many of the new administration’s potential nominees to top national security jobs and about other issues — in one case relaying back a contender’s answers to questions Mr. McCain had suggested.

Mr. McCain, meanwhile, has told colleagues “that many of these appointments he would have made himself,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close McCain friend.

Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of politics at Princeton, said: “I don’t think there is a precedent for this. Sometimes there is bad blood, sometimes there is so-so blood, but rarely is there good blood.”

When the Supreme Court gave Bush the Presidency in 2000, I thought that this would be a great opportunity to have a unity government. After all the vote was extremely close. It would have been simple good politics for Bush to do what he could to work with Gore. In addition, Bush labeled himself a uniter instead of a divider. Instead, as we know, Bush has been one of the most partisan and divisive presidents in history. He really had an opportunity to be better. He just was unable or unwilling to take advantage of it.

Heckuva Job

My friend Bob Weber pointed out this piece in the Obsidian Wings blog by Hilzoy (Johns Hopkins philosophy Professor Hilary Bok) on Bush.

ThinkProgress had a snippet of Bush's 2000 inaugural address, and for some reason I decided to reread it. Looking back on it after eight years, it's pretty breathtaking. For instance:

"Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness.

Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace, the stakes of our debates appear small.

But the stakes for America are never small. If our country does not lead the cause of freedom, it will not be led. If we do not turn the hearts of children toward knowledge and character, we will lose their gifts and undermine their idealism. If we permit our economy to drift and decline, the vulnerable will suffer most.

We must live up to the calling we share. Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this commitment, if we keep it, is a way to shared accomplishment."

Read this and think of Bush's response to Katrina:

"Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens, not problems, but priorities. And all of us are diminished when any are hopeless."

And consider this:

"America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected.

Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the commitments that set us free.

Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our freedom.

Sometimes in life we are called to do great things. But as a saint of our times has said, every day we are called to do small things with great love. The most important tasks of a democracy are done by everyone.

I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well.

In all these ways, I will bring the values of our history to the care of our times.

I completely agree. But I see no evidence at all that Bush meant a word of it. Worse, I don't see any evidence that he even understood it. Conscience and civility matter enormously. They are, as Bush said, matters of character that turn on "uncounted, unhonored acts of decency". Before Katrina, putting a talented, competent person in charge of FEMA, or making sure that the Department of Justice operated fairly before the US Attorneys scandal broke, would have been uncounted, unhonored acts of decency.

But Bush couldn't even manage honored, counted acts of decency, like not torturing people, or coming up with something resembling an honorable response when the implications of his administration's policies became clear.

He's a small, small man, who ought to have spent his life in some honorary position without responsibilities at a firm run by one of his father's friends. Instead, he ruined our country, and several others besides. He wasted eight years in which we could have been shoring up our economy, laying the groundwork for energy independence, making America a fairer and better country, and truly working to help people around the world become more free. Instead, he debased words that ought to mean something: words like honor, decency, freedom, and compassion.

To this day, I do not think he has the slightest conception of the meaning of the words he took in vain.

Sometimes, when I write things like this, people think I am trying to excuse Bush -- as though I cannot condemn him unless I take him to be a scheming leering monster. I disagree. I think that when someone who is not mentally incompetent gets to be Bush's age, if he has no conception of the meaning of honor or decency, he has no one to blame but himself. And to say of a person that he does not understand those things -- that he could stand before the nation and speak the words Bush spoke in 2000 with so little sense of what they meant that it's not clear that we should count him as lying -- is one of the worst things I think it's possible to say about a person.

Especially if you add one further point: the one and only thing that might have mitigated Bush's failings would have been for him to be sufficiently self-aware not to have assumed responsibilities he could not fulfill. Obviously, Bush did not have that kind of self-awareness. But it amazes me to this day that becoming President did not force him to recognize the nature of the responsibilities he had been given, and to try his best to live up to them. Honestly: I don't know how it's possible to become President and, not try your absolute best to appoint really competent people ('Heckuva job, Brownie!'), to ask obvious questions that people don't seem to have focussed on, like 'have we actually planned for the occupation of Iraq?', and so forth -- not to do any of those things, but instead to just go on being the same petulant lazy frat boy you've always been.

Apparently, though, it is possible. And we all get to pay the price.

PS: Special Peggy Noonan flashback:

"Mr. Bush's eyes filled with tears as he took the oath of office--quite possibly a historical first--and people have discussed why. Family redemption, old losses now avenged. Maybe. But I suspect they were the tears of a 54-year-old man who hadn't amounted to much in his first 40 years--poor student, average athlete, indifferent businessman, all of this in contrast to his father's early and easy excellence. He had struggled to find himself and his purpose; amazing and fantastic things had happened, and he had gone on to make himself a president--"Called to do great things."

I think as he stood with his hand held high he felt deep gratitude, deep love, and a hunger to do right, to actually serve and not only dominate his country."

If only.

A marriage in trouble

From As Economy Shifts, So Do Traditional Family Roles - NYTimes.com.

As unemployment has hit a 16-year high and Wall Street shakes off tens of thousands of jobs, affluent couples in the New York area find their families suddenly in flux. It’s not only the high-flying income and the attendant abundance that have evaporated. For many couples, it’s also the assumption of what their marriages would look like; the traditional model — executive husband and stay-at-home wife — may be a little dated, or unworkable.

One mother in TriBeCa, who is married, at least for now, to a Wall Street executive, put it rather bluntly: “My job was to run the household and the children’s lives,” she said. “His job is to provide us with a nice lifestyle.” But his bonus has disappeared, and his annual pay has dropped to $150,000 from $800,000 a year. “Let me just say this,” she said, “I’m still doing my job.”

This woman is complaining about having to live on only $150,000/year. I'm glad I'm not married to her.

Calvin and Hobbes

from Barry Ritholtz:

(Click for a larger image.)

State of the economy

Here's my basic analysis. For the past 2+ decades we have been engaged in a self-inflicted Ponzi scheme -- during more or less the same period in which Madoff was doing the same thing but to other people. We (the entire world) did it to ourselves. We recently reached the point where it became clear that it really is a Ponzi scheme and that the money we all thought was there isn't. That's actually not a particularly complex systems issue. It's pretty straightforward. Lots and lots of people have a lot less money than they thought they did. (See this nice piece about bubbles.)

The question is: now what?

One of the interesting things about a financial crisis is that nothing is actually destroyed. No manufacturing plants are damaged. No power plants are destroyed. Nothing is bombed. The world's farm land has not been poisoned. Nothing physically has changed. It's just that a lot of people now know that they have a lot less money than they thought.

One thing that's happening is that people are a lot more careful about spending money. That ripples through the economy putting people out of work, which causes even less money to be spent, etc.

It would seem that it should be possible to achieve a new stable state. But no one seems to know what that state will look like or what can and should be done for people who are suffering during the transition. It's also not clear whether the monetary and fiscal policies are helping us get there.

So it seems to me that the basic questions are: what are the possible new stable states and how can we get there with the least pain?

P.S. By a stable state I don't mean a government-run economy but one that is in relative equilibrium -- but obviously not complete equilibrium or there would be no evolutionary progress.

RISK Mismanagement - What Led to the Financial Meltdown

A great line from an article in the NYTimes Magazine.

Nothing ever happens until it happens for the first time.

These items just arrived on my computer. From Forbes.

SHANGHAI (XFN-ASIA) - China A-shares ended the morning higher in the first trading session of 2009, spurred by Friday's strong rally on Wall Street.

Resources stocks were in favor after a rebound in global commodities prices, dealers said.

Telecom stocks gained on news that China's cabinet, the State Council, approved the issuance of third generation mobile phone licenses on Dec 31.

Steelmakers and automakers also got a boost from hopes that government will soon announce detailed plans to support both sectors.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended the morning up 39.04 points or 2.14 pct at 1,859.84 after losing 9.8 pct over the previous eight trading days.

The Chinese markets were closed on Thursday and Friday for the New Year holidays.

And more from Forbes.

BANGKOK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Thailand's stock index was up 2.96 percent at 463.28 at 0339 GMT on Monday, the first trading day of the year. The index opened up more than 2.3 percent, cheered by strong gains in U.S. and Asian stocks, brokers said.

ENERGY BIG CAPS RALLY AS OIL PRICES RISE
A jump in the oil price helped heavyweight energy shares lead the market rally, with oil and gas majors PTT up 4.57 percent at 183 baht, PTT Exploration and Production up 6.5 percent at 114 baht and coal miner Banpu up 7 percent at 244 baht.

BANKS GAIN
Investors snapped up battered banking shares, with top lender Bangkok Bank rising 2.2 percent to 70.50. Number three Kasikornbank gained 3.3 percent to 46.50 baht and fourth-ranked Siam Commercial Bank rose 3.6 percent to 50 baht.

Immediately aftewards came this from Paul Krugman.

Recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression. …

Here’s my nightmare scenario: It takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. As a result, the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy — well, you can see where this is going.

So this is our moment of truth. Will we in fact do what’s necessary to prevent Great Depression II?