Global Precipitation Changes

One of the key indicators on environmental change and civilisation is the water cycle so changes in precipitation with global warming will be critical.

Looking at current projections, it looks like there will be big changes in global power. Europe and the USA are going to be hit hard.

The south will be devastated, notably equatorial Africa, Brasil, S. Africa and Australia.

Unless there is some sort of game changer in the next couple of decades we are going to see the biggest political upset since the Fall of Rome and Persia.

It's Lonely Out There - Baen Books

Photo by NASA

It's Lonely Out There –
The Evolutionary Explanation For The Fermi Paradox

by John Lambshead

The Fermi Paradox is named after Enrico Fermi, who postulated it in 1950 during informal discussion. It can be summarised as: if the truth is out there, why haven't we seen some evidence? Or to put it another way, where are the intelligent aliens? Not a single shred of evidence has ever been found of a piece of technology that is not human. All around us broods a silent universe, the silentium universi (things sound so much more authoritative when translated into Latin, don't you think?).
Physicists have dominated discussion on the Fermi Paradox, Fermi was a physicist, because it appears to be an issue of astronomy. But actually it is an issue of biology since it is about evolution.
In this paper I am going to address two points: How common is life in the universe, and how common is intelligent life. To gain an insight into the second point, I will be obliged to consider how intelligent life might evolve. For the purposes of this essay, intelligence is defined as human-level intelligence, i.e. the capacity to create a technological civilization....



You can read the rest of this article for free on the Baen site, my publisher, as well as an original short story by New York Times best-selling author, Timothy Zahn.

Life is a funny business. My most successful scientific project came to fruition after I retired.
See Nerc News

http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=867_

John

Environmental Sequencing

A marine nematode 'roundworm'.

Second-generation environmental sequencing unmasks marine metazoan biodiversity

I retired from active scientific research a few years ago but had initiated projects that are only now reaching a conclusion.

This paper is the culmination of a long programme and core to the work on which I spent thirty years. At the moment it can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/index.html

This is part of a revolution in taxonomy and environmental research and environmental monitoring.