Little Birdies

Bela Lugosi as mad scientist — We can rely upon scientists like this one. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Should you watch your intake of caffeinated drinks? Perhaps so.

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I’m neither a climatologist nor a meteorologist, but I share these items for your consideration:

“11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’ caused by climate change”

(I confess that I could have done without the seemingly obligatory mention of Greta Thunberg.)

“I’m a Climate Scientist Who Believes in God. Hear Me Out. Global warming will strike hardest against the very people we’re told to love: the poor and vulnerable.”

But it’s not all bad news. There are some promising developments:

“MIT Engineers Unveil ‘Revolutionary’ Carbon Capture Tech to Absorb CO2 Using ‘Significantly’ Less Energy and Money: MIT engineers have developed a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air. The process could work on the gas at virtually any concentration—from power plant emissions to open air.”

“In New “Mind-Blowing” Study, Planting Trees Reduces Carbon Better Than Carbon Taxes”

Arbor Day Foundation

Of course, there’s also this:

“Report: Lots Of Yelling At Each Other Expected To Fix Things Any Day Now”

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T-Rex in NHM, London — Just when you thought it was safe! (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

A piece in the 13 December 2014 issue of the Economist reported on an article that had just been published in Science.

It seems that a major research project had recently sequenced the genomes of 48 different species of modern birds, showing that the Neoaves, the biological “clade” that contains 95% of modern bird species (though not chickens and ducks), “arose in a spectacular burst of evolution and diversification just a few million years after the asteroid strike” roughly 65 million years ago that killed the dinosaurs off. But it didn’t kill them all off: The study also appears to demonstrate what scientists had long theorized — namely, that most of our birds descended from the theropods, a category of two-legged dinosaurs that, among others, included Tyrannosaurus rex.

Next time you find yourself watching the sparrows on your lawn or the hummingbirds vying for domination of your bird feeder, think about that. And shiver. Maybe Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds wasn’t so far off, after all.

However, while we’re thinking about birds, here’s another item on the subject:

“These birds form surprisingly complex societies: And that’s despite not having particularly large brains.”

But it’s not only birds:

“Vampire bat friendships endure from captivity to the wild: The animals form social bonds that persist from a lab setting to the outdoors”