Europan Fish Sticks

Freeman Dyson rarely disappoints:

Every time a major impact occurs on Europa, a vast quantity of water is splashed from the ocean into the space around Jupiter. Some of the water evaporates, and some condenses into snow. Creatures living in the water far enough from the impact have a chance of being splashed intact into space and quickly freeze-dried. Therefore, an easy way to look for evidence of life in Europa’s ocean is to look for freeze-dried fish in the ring of space debris orbiting Jupiter. Sending a spacecraft to visit and survey Jupiter’s ring would be far less expensive than sending a submarine to visit and survey Europa’s ocean. Even if we did not find freeze-dried fish in Jupiter’s ring, we might find other surprises — freeze-dried seaweed, or a freeze-dried sea monster.

Freeze-dried fish orbiting Jupiter is a fanciful notion, but nature in the biological realm has a tendency to be fanciful. Nature is usually more imaginative than we are. Nobody in Europe ever imagined a bird of paradise or a duck-billed platypus before it was discovered by explorers. [E.A.]

From The Atlantic.

Red Onion

The Onion has been sold to China.  Enjoy (if you know what’s good for you)!

Environmentalism Disaster Looms

No, you didn’t misread the headline.  From The Atlantic:

Just a decade ago, every one of these schemes was considered outlandish. Some still seem that way. But what sounded crankish only 10 years ago is now becoming mainstream thinking.

By now, even staunch environmentalists and eminent scientists with long records of climate-change concern are discussing geo-engineering openly.

Spread powdered iron over the surface of the ocean, and in very little time a massive bloom of plankton will grow, [oceanographer John Martin] predicted. “Give me half a tanker of iron,” Martin said, “and I’ll give you the next Ice Age.”

Another scheme involves spewing sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to scatter sunlight; still another proposes pumping carbon underground or into the oceans.  [Coal mining in reverse?]  All of them pose far greater risk to you and me than a negligible risk of insignificant temperature increase, and by golly, they’re going to execute one or perhaps several of them with some software mogul’s grant money!

The scariest thing about geo-engineering, as it happens, is also the thing that makes it such a game-changer in the global-warming debate: it’s incredibly cheap. Many scientists, in fact, prefer not to mention just how cheap it is. Nearly everyone I spoke to agreed that the worst-case scenario would be the rise of what David Victor, a Stanford law professor, calls a “Greenfinger”—a rich madman, as obsessed with the environment as James Bond’s nemesis Auric Goldfinger was with gold. There are now 38 people in the world with $10 billion or more in private assets, according to the latest Forbes list; theoretically, one of these people could reverse climate change all alone. “I don’t think we really want to empower the Richard Bransons of the world to try solutions like this,” says Jay Michaelson, an environmental-law expert, who predicted many of these debates 10 years ago.

Enjoy your next sandwich, folks.