James' World 2

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CLIMATEWIRE | The world still isn’t sucking enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to meet the Paris climate targets, scientists said Tuesday. And the gap grows wider every year that humanity delays meaningful cuts to global greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s the punchline of a new report on the state of global carbon dioxide removal, the practice of drawing CO2 out of the air to help tackle climate change. It’s an update to the report’s first edition, which was published in January 2023.

Nations worldwide are scrubbing about 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, mainly by planting trees, the report says. But experts estimate they’ll need to remove at least 7 billion tons annually by midcentury.

Meanwhile, global emissions must fall rapidly to stay on the Paris track. Humanity spews nearly 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year through the burning of fossil fuels.

Scientists agree the primary strategy for tackling climate change is through a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly by phasing out fossil fuels and halting deforestation. But they also agree at least some carbon removal is necessary to keep global warming below 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, the major goals of the Paris Agreement.

That’s because global emissions must reach net zero within a few decades to meet the Paris timeline, meaning any remaining carbon going into the atmosphere must be counterbalanced by an equal amount coming out.

Carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, is the “only way really to provide a balance of net zero if we still have residual emissions in the system,” said Steve Smith, a climate science and policy expert at the University of Oxford and a lead author of the new report, at a press conference Tuesday.

The simplest way to hit net zero is to stop pouring carbon dioxide into the air. But some sectors of the economy likely cannot be fully decarbonized within the next few decades, either because the technology doesn’t exist yet or it can’t be scaled up quickly enough.

That means some residual emissions will be leftover by midcentury, and world leaders will need to offset them with carbon removal.

There are a variety of ways that can be done. Planting forests is the most popular strategy today, accounting for nearly all the carbon removal happening around the world. But researchers are working on a range of novel techniques on the side, from giant carbon-guzzling machines to special minerals that help the land or the ocean absorb more CO2.

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If you’ll permit me a rant—I promise to make it fact-filled and interesting—I am sick of the articles that seem to pop up every few months claiming that we are all eating “too much” protein. They convey an inaccurate picture of how the body uses protein, and they demonize perfectly healthy meals that happen to be high in protein. It’s time to set the record straight.

How can these articles be so wrong? I think the authors are usually well-meaning, but their facts don’t support the conclusion. They tend to bolster their argument with statements that are true, like the fact that the RDA of protein is set at 0.36 grams per pound of body weight, that protein-boosted foods are trendy, and that it is possible to get plenty of protein while eating a vegan diet. But the framing and the conclusions don’t follow, because eating more than the minimum doesn’t mean that you’re getting “too much” protein. 

What foods contain protein? 

As a refresher, protein is one of the three calorie-containing macronutrients (fats, carbs, protein) that make up our diets. Proteins are made of amino acids, and they are required for the growth, repair, and functioning of our body. 

We can get protein from a variety of sources. Meats are particularly protein-dense; a chicken breast contains about 35 grams of protein. Other animal products, like milk and eggs, are also rich in protein. Plant-based foods tend to have less protein, but it’s not hard to meet or exceed protein requirements even on a vegan diet. Beans, grains, and soy products like tofu contain significant amounts of protein, for example. 

If you’d like a cheat sheet on how much protein you’re supposed to eat based on your activity level, you can find one here. And that’s a good place to start dissecting this “too much protein” myth, because before we can declare an amount of protein to be “too much,” we need to understand how much is “enough.”

The RDA is meant to be considered a minimum 

The government communicates targets for different nutrients to encourage us all to eat a healthy, balanced diet. These targets are the basis for the “% daily value” labels on the back of packaged foods, and for the nutrient makeup of school lunches. The RDA, or recommended daily allowance, is defined as “the average daily dietary intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all (97 to 98 percent) healthy individuals in a group.”

So how is that “nutrient requirement” determined? For protein, it is based on nitrogen balance. Humans break down proteins, excreting nitrogen, as part of the body’s daily function. If you eat enough protein (which contains nitrogen), the amount of nitrogen you excrete will be the same as, or more than, the amount you eat. In other words, if you aren’t breaking your own body proteins down (in excess of what you eat), then whatever you’re eating must be, in some sense, enough. 

In this way of thinking, the RDA is the minimum to stay healthy. More is fine; less would mean that you may not be getting enough. For some nutrients, there is also an UL, or upper limit, telling you that more than a certain amount is too much. Upper limits are calculated for vitamins and minerals; there is no upper limit defined for protein.

Therefore, there is no official definition for “too much” protein. If somebody eats more than the RDA, they’re not eating too much; they’re just eating more than the minimum. You’re supposed to eat more than the minimum. 

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Credit: Elena Shashkina – Shutterstock

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CLIMATEWIRE | The world is careening toward a major planetary milestone, leading meteorological organizations said Wednesday. Nations are striving to halt global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius — yet global temperatures already are nudging temporarily above that threshold.

A new report from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service warns that the last 11 months in a row have all seen global average temperatures above the 1.5 C threshold. And the last 12 have all been characterized by record-breaking monthly heat; temperatures last month hovered about 1.52 degrees above Earth’s preindustrial average.

Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday that there’s an 80 percent chance at least one of the next five calendar years will exceed a 1.5 C average. Nearly a decade ago — in 2015 — that chance was nearly zero.

It wouldn’t be the first time a 12-month span has crossed 1.5 C. Copernicus reported earlier this year that the yearlong period between February 2023 and January 2024 averaged 1.52 C above preindustrial levels, marking it the hottest 12 months on record at the time.

Temperatures have continued to inch higher since then. The yearlong period that just ended in May saw global temperatures average about 1.63 C above preindustrial levels, making it the new hottest 12-month span.

Still, temporary fluctuations into 1.5 C territory don’t suggest the threshold has yet been permanently crossed.

The Paris climate agreement doesn’t explicitly outline the definition of when a temperature threshold has passed. But most scientists agree that the 1.5 C target refers to a long-term average. The exact amount of time that defines “long term” is also debatable, but it generally refers to years or even decades.

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At the start of training camp, early last October, the Boston Celtics’ social-media team posted a video of Jaylen Brown, the team’s All-Star guard, practicing his dribble. In it, Brown, his back to the camera, pounds a few hard dribbles with his right hand, then shifts the ball to his left. The ball begins to stray. Brown hitches it back. Then the ball swings farther to the left, and Brown pulls it back too sharply; he has to step forward to corral it. He regains control for a few dribbles, but, when the clip cuts off, the ball is about to bounce out of the frame.

The video disappeared from the Celtics’ channels, but not before it was widely shared, often with unflattering commentary. Just weeks earlier, Brown had signed a contract for about three hundred million dollars, the largest in N.B.A. history. This was not a surprise; he was the first player to be eligible for so much money, partly on the basis of being named to a list of the league’s best players in the season prior. And he is an aggressive, dynamic scorer, plus a tenacious defender capable of guarding anyone. Still, there was the matter of that dribble. The last time Brown had played in an N.B.A. game, in the deciding contest of the Eastern Conference Finals, against the Miami Heat, he’d had eight turnovers, many of them mishaps while dribbling with his left hand.

The favored Celtics lost that game, and, with it, the series, to the underdog Heat, in a blowout. Never mind that the team’s best player, Jayson Tatum, had got injured just after the game began—the reasonable consensus was that the Celtics, who were playing in their fifth Eastern Conference Finals in the past seven years, should have beaten the Heat easily. The loss was an embarrassment; the inconsistent performances of Tatum in clutch situations were picked apart, over and over. The team’s rookie head coach, Joe Mazzulla, who had led the team to the second-best record in the conference, was criticized as not being ready for prime time. People questioned the fit between Brown and Tatum, who did not always complement each other’s strengths in quite the way that some of the league’s most famous duos did. Brown’s name popped up in trade rumors. In the end, Brad Stevens, who had coached Brown and Tatum when they arrived in the league before moving to the front office, signed Brown to the big contract—then traded half of the rest of the team’s rotation.

When the new season began, the Celtics played like one of the best teams in N.B.A. history. They had the highest-rated offense of all time and a defense that was nearly as good. Their net rating, a statistical calculation of a team’s overall performance, put this year’s Celtics alongside the league’s most legendary teams, including Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Steph Curry’s Golden State Warriors at their peaks. Boston won multiple games by more than fifty points, something only two teams had done before. And yet many commentators, and even some of the team’s fans, seemed reluctant to accept this evidence. “The Celtics record (76-20) & point differential (+10.4) say they’re an all-time team,” a popular sports talk-radio host tweeted recently, after the Celtics swept this year’s Eastern Conference Finals, against the Indiana Pacers. “The eye test says they are not close to that.” Why, when it comes to this team, do people see something different from what the results suggest? What do we think greatness should look like?

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Boeing’s Starliner’s first-ever astronaut mission is underway.

Starliner, Boeing’s new astronaut taxi for NASA, soared into space today (June 5) from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, notching a huge milestone after nearly two decades of commercial crew planning.

Veteran NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Suni Williams, both

former U.S. Navy test pilots, with 11,000 flight hours between them, are riding aboard the Boeing Starliner capsule, which launched today at 10:52 a.m. EDT (1452 GMT) atop a United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) workhorse Atlas V rocket. As it was for Starliner, this was also the first time astronauts have launched atop an Atlas V in its 22-year flight history.

“We all know that when the going gets tough, as it often does, the tough get going, and you all have,” Wilmore said while waiting on the pad for liftoff. “Let’s get going, let’s put some fire in this rocket. “

“Let’s go Calypso, take us to space and back,” pilot Sunita Williams said just minutes before launch, referring to the name of the Starliner capsule.

Starliner is headed toward the International Space Station (ISS), where Wilmore and Williams will spend about eight days putting the spacecraft through a series of tests toward operational crew certification. Rendezvous is scheduled for Thursday (June 6) around 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT). You can follow the mission with our Starliner live updates page.

The fiery launch brings NASA within reach of a goal the agency set more than a decade ago: getting two American commercial vehicles up and running for astronaut missions to the ISS. It’s been a long road to get here, as the roots of this goal go back to at least 2006.

The newly launched Starliner mission, a roughly 10-day jaunt known as Crew Flight Test (CFT), was originally scheduled to lift off on May 6. But that attempt was scrubbed about two hours before launch, when team members noticed a “buzzing” valve on the Atlas V’s upper stage.

ULA decided to replace the valve, which required rolling the rocket off the pad and back to the company’s vertical integration facility. That work delayed the planned liftoff until May 17, but then another issue arose: a slight helium leak in one of the reaction-control thrusters in Starliner’s service module.

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Many people today worry about how to find time to keep fit and healthy in the midst of their busy lives. Believe it or not, but this was also a problem in ancient times.

So, how did ancient people deal with it?

A universal problem

The physician Galen, who lived from around 129 to 216 AD, dealt with thousands of patients in the city of Rome.

He used to complain some people didn’t devote enough time to keeping fit. In his treatise, Hygiene, Galen wrote one of his patients, a philosopher called Premigenes, was such a workaholic he stayed inside all the time writing books. Because of this bad lifestyle, Premigenes got sick.

Galen said Premigenes needed to work less, and devote more time to getting exercise and some sun.

Some 2,000 years later, most of us will be able to relate to this. The World Health Organization has a number of recommendations for the amount of exercise one should do each week. But it can be difficult to balance work and other commitments with our health and fitness.

The trade-offs of a busy life

People in the Greco-Roman period recognized that being busy has an effect on health.

The writer Lucian of Samosata, from the 2nd century AD, talks in his essay On Salaried Posts in Great Houses about how certain jobs offered workers no time to maintain their health. A bad diet, endless labor and a lack of sleep all contributed to making them unhealthy:

the sleeplessness, the sweating, and the weariness gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption, pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the gout. You stick it out, however, and often you ought to be in bed, but this is not permitted. They think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your duties. The general consequences are that you are always pale and look as if you were going to die any minute.

The doctors of the time also noticed this problem. Galen said, in his opinion, one of the determinants of whether we are able to be healthy or not is the amount of free time we have.

He recognized some people had no choice but to be “bound up with the circumstances of their activities” – such as those taken into slavery – but noted others seemed to have

chosen a life caught up in the circumstances of their activities, either through ambition or whatever kind of desire, so they are least able to spend time on the care of their bodies.

Galen was also affected by this problem. As a doctor, he had little free time, and his normal routine was often interrupted by patients’ problems. Nonetheless, he explains how, in his 20s, he started adhering to a daily health routine:

after I reached the age of 28, having persuaded myself that there is an art of hygiene, I followed its precepts for the whole of my subsequent life, and was never sick with any disease apart from the occasional ephemeral fever in some degree.

This routine involved eating one full meal each evening, and doing some sort of exercise every day. One of these exercises may have been wrestling, as he also mentions dislocating his shoulder while wrestling at the gym at the age of 35.

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Mosaic at the Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily. Wikimedia Commons

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A small, unassuming fern-like plant has something massive lurking within: the largest genome ever discovered, outstripping the human genome by more than 50 times.

The plant (Tmesipteris oblanceolata) contains a whopping 160 billion base pairs, the units that make up a strand of DNA. That’s 11 billion more than the previous record holder, the flowering plant Paris japonica, and 30 billion more than the marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus), which has the largest animal genome. The findings were published today in iScience.

Study co-author Jaume Pellicer, an evolutionary biologist at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona in Spain who also co-discovered P. japonica’s gargantuan genome, had thought that the earlier discovery was close to the genome size limit. “But the evidence has once again surpassed our expectations,” he says.

Genomic giants

The world’s genomic champion, which is native to New Caledonia and neighboring archipelagos in the South Pacific, is a species of plant called a fork fern. Its colossal number of base pairs raises questions as to how the plant manages its genetic material. Only a small proportion of DNA is made of protein-coding genes, leading study co-author Ilia Leitch, an evolutionary biologist at London’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to wonder how the plant’s cellular machinery accesses those bits of the genome “amongst this huge morass of DNA. It’s like trying to find a few books with the instructions for how to survive in a library of millions of books — it’s just ridiculous.”

There’s also the question of how and why an organism evolved to have so many base pairs. Generally, having more base pairs leads to higher demand for the minerals that comprise DNA and for energy to duplicate the genome with every cell division, Leitch says. But if the organism lives in a relatively stable environment with little competition, a gargantuan genome might not come with a high cost, she adds.

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Welcome to The Twilight Zone. Not some ­science fiction fantasy, but a real place where up to 90 percent of us spend the majority of our waking lives.

We have built a world that hides us from daylight in dimly-lit offices, and then illuminates the night. We talk of burning the candle at both ends. The midnight oil. There not being enough hours in the day. We depend on night shift workers to mend our roads and staff our hospitals.

Small wonder, then, that a third of us are ­struggling to sleep. Finally, though, the degree to which we’ve been playing a dangerous game with our biology is being understood. 

Until recently, sleep science was ­often synonymous with circadian science, but the latter is now emerging out of the shadows. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists in the field of circadian rhythm. As a result of theirs and others’ breakthroughs, we’re waking up to the power of the body’s internal biological clock. 

Like plants and animals, we too are preprogrammed to do certain activities at specific times of the day. Our ­circadian rhythms are controlled by circadian clocks, present in every organ and every cell, and these clocks tell our brain when to sleep, tell our gut when to digest our food optimally, tell our heart to pump more blood, and when to slow down.

The health risks associated with a disrupted circadian rhythm

Ignore them at your peril. In the short term, you may feel lethargic, ­suffer insomnia, and weight gain. One report showed that 57 percent of junior doctors have had a crash, or near miss, on the way back from a night shift. 

And the long-term effects? Chronic disease, such as type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cancer, have been linked to disruption of our circadian rhythm. The impact of disrupting our circadian sleep rhythm is such that night-shift workers have a higher mortality rate. The 24-hour society comes with a high price tag.

For Dr Satchin Panda, one of the scientists at the forefront of the circadian science revolution, the challenge for humanity is to rethink the world which we have built over the past 100 years. 

“It’s an asbestos moment,” he says. “We figured out asbestos was harmful in the Seventies, and we’re still removing it now. We’re going through that moment with circadian disruption, but it will take a generation to implement change.”

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China has landed on the moon’s mysterious far side — again.

The robotic Chang’e 6 mission touched down inside Apollo Crater, within the giant South Pole-Aitken basin, at 6:23 a.m. Beijing Time on Sunday (June 2) , according to Chinese space officials. It was 6:23 p.m. EDT (2223 GMT) on June 1 at the time of the landing. The probe “successfully landed in the pre-selected area,” China’s space agency said.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) now has two far-side landings under its belt — this one and Chang’e 4, which dropped a lander-rover combo onto the gray dirt in January 2019. No other country has done it once.

And Chang’e 6 will make further history for China, if all goes according to plan: The mission aims to scoop up samples and send them back to Earth, giving researchers their first-ever up-close looks at material from this part of the moon.

“The Chang’e-6 mission is the first human sampling and return mission from the far side of the moon,” CNSA officials said in a translated statement. (To be clear: Chang’e 6 is a robotic, not crewed, mission.) “It involves many engineering innovations, high risks, and great difficulty.”

Sampling a new environment

Chang’e 6 launched on May 3 with a bold and unprecedented task: haul home samples from the moon’s far side, which always faces away from us. (The moon is tidally locked to Earth, completing one rotation on its axis in roughly the same amount of time it takes to orbit our planet. So observers here on Earth always see the same side of our natural satellite.)

Every lunar surface mission before Chang’e 4 targeted the near side, largely because that area is easier to explore. It’s harder to communicate with robots operating on the far side, for example; doing so generally requires special relay orbiters, which China launched ahead of both Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 6. China’s newest moon relay satellite, called Queqiao-2, aided the Chang’e 6 landing, CNSA officials said.

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