The report addresses the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change, bringing together the latest advances in climate science, and combining multiple lines of evidence from paleoclimate, observations, process understanding, and global and regional climate simulations.
If you have never pondered the nature of exponential change/growth in knowledge, consider this.
The human brain is one of the most complex structures in existence. Google, in collaboration with Harvard University, have released a browsable 1.4-petabyte reconstruction of a very small part of the human cortex.
This is every cell and connection in a cubic millimeter of the human brain.
Petabyte connectomic reconstruction of a volume of human neocortex. Left: Small subvolume of the dataset. Right: A subgraph of 5000 neurons and excitatory (green) and inhibitory (red) connections in the dataset. The full graph (connectome) would be far too dense to visualize.
The volume spans all six cortical layers.
The map includes 50,000 cells, all rendered in three dimensions. They are joined together by hundreds of millions of spidery tendrils, forming 130 million connections called synapses. The data set measures 1.4 petabytes, roughly 700 times the storage capacity of an average modern computer.
“A whole mouse brain is only 1000 times bigger than this, an exabyte instead of a petabyte,” says Lichtman. “It’s on a scale where we probably will be able to do that within a decade, I suspect.”
What is the Human Cortex? The cerebral cortex is the thin surface layer of the brain found in vertebrate animals that has evolved most recently, showing the greatest variation in size among different mammals (it is especially large in humans). Each part of the cerebral cortex is six layered (e.g., L2), with different kinds of nerve cells (e.g., spiny stellate) in each layer. The cerebral cortex plays a crucial role in most higher level cognitive functions, such as thinking, memory, planning, perception, language, and attention. Although there has been some progress in understanding the macroscopic organization of this very complicated tissue, its organization at the level of individual nerve cells and their interconnecting synapses is largely unknown.
According to Google, it’s the largest brain map at this level of detail to date, and it’s freely available to scientists (and anyone) online. The link is here.
Accepting the 2006 TED Prize, Dr. Larry Brilliant talks about how smallpox was eradicated from the planet, and calls for a new global system that can identify and contain pandemics before they spread.
Corona Virus
By Photo Credit:Content Providers(s): CDC/Dr. Fred Murphy – This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #4814.Note: Not all PHIL images are public domain; be sure to check copyright status and credit authors and content providers., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=822112
Just ask yourself what an emissions trading scheme is all about. It’s a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one. – Tony Abbott
2017 – Coal
This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared – Treasurer Scott Morrison
2019 (April) – Fire Chiefs Warn of Climate Threat
It’s just frustrating to hear the lip service being given to ‘Oh yes, we now believe in climate change and need to do something’ when every effort to do something about it is rubbished. – Greg Mullins, the second-longest serving fire and rescue commissioner in New South Wales and now a councillor with the Climate Council.
2019 (Sept) – United Nations
I want children growing up in Australia to feel positive about their future, and I think it is important we give them that confidence that they will not only have a wonderful country and pristine environment to live in, that they will also have an economy to live in as well.
I don’t want our children to have anxieties about these issues.
From top to bottom, these stripes use Bureau of Meteorology data to show how temperatures have changed in Australia since 1910. The colours indicate how much the average temperature of each year is above or below the average temperature from 1961 to 1990.
A blue line means that year was below average; red means it was above average. As you can see there is a pretty clear trend happening — from cool to warm — over the past century. Over this time the world has warmed 0.81 degrees Celsius, and Australia has warmed even more, hitting 1.14 degrees last year.
In essence, zero net emissions by mid-century is required… [can you hear the crickets?] I await the thoughtful and reasoned, complex and nuanced responses from our elected representatives.
Limiting warming to 1.5oC is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” – Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.
and…
Human activities are currently emitting about 42bn tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, and at that rate the carbon budget – allowing us a 50-50 chance of keeping warming to 1.5C – would be exhausted within 20 years.
Even 1.5C of warming would have brutal consequences, according to the report. Poor people, in particular, would suffer as the threat of food and water shortages increase in some parts of the world.
But the report makes clear that allowing warming to reach 2C would create risks that any reasonable person would regard as deeply dangerous.
– Nicholas Stern
Consider the Spiral from 2016. What do you think has changed?
