My top three talks from the AGU Fall Meeting

So I've been listening to a lot of the AGU Fall Meeting talks and there is a huge selection, ranging from hard core geology to more easily digestible topics such as social issues and communication in the Earth Sciences. Climate change is also a huge focus as you would expect. Here is my pick so far.

The Race to Understand a Changing Planet

Piers Sellers from NASA/GSFC gives an entertaining talk on biogeochemical modelling. This talk is well worth watching just to see the videos of the best and latest climate models of the Earth. These are the models that future climate predictions are based upon and include aerosols, weather and meltwater from areas such as Greenland. These geophysical models really are stunning, and make you realize how advanced the science has become. He also gives a bit of an insight into how climate predictions are made and from what sources the data is retrieved.

Union Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture - Professor Sir Bob Watson

The keynote address, from Sir Robert Watson from the Tyndall Center, was a fascinating and at times frightening, broad reaching address, on current climate data. He explains that we can essentially forget about the fantasy of a 2 degree warming world, in which all of the current economic response models are geared towards. According to him, projected emissions will have us on track for something resembling a 4 degree world by 2100. He then goes into some of the gory details. Highly engaging.

Ira Flatow, NPR Science. Science is Sexy.

This is a brilliant talk from Ira Flato who hosts “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday,”  He is the founder and president of a nonprofit company dedicated to creating radio, TV and Internet projects that make science "Sexy". I personally think science communication is one of the largest issues facing modern society if we are going to engage people's critical thinking and avoid the idiocracy scenario. Very encouraging talk and relates more to the communication of science, rather than the hard science itself.

Organic molecules everywhere!

So there are chlorinated organic molecules on Mars it seems?? Or is there? Wait.... uh.. well, probably not actually.

From the reports, it seems that dicholoro- and trichloro- methane was detected, which would certainly be interesting if it was Martian in origin. It is quite likely though, that the carbon from these molecules hitched a ride all the way from earth and got fired up in the SAM detector, where it reacted with the chlorine. The chlorine however is apparently martian in origin (isotope ratios?) and most likely resembling something like Mg-perchlorate hexahydrate which was detected by the pheonix lander in 2008.

While these are a relatively simple compounds, it isn't exactly what you would expect to find if there was remains of ancient life or even active biota in Martian soil. That is ofcourse assuming that said life bore any resemblance to earth life. Not to say that life on earth doesn't do some very wierd things from time to time but chlorinated methyl compounds like that would decompose into hydrogen chloride fairly quickly.

Either way... we certainly didn't put organic molecules on Mercury, that's for sure.

Strange times indeed...

AGU Fall Meeting is on.

The AGU Fall Meeting is in full swing during it's third day of lectures. The nice organisers have put a lof of effort into catering for 'virtual attendees' this year, so if you are like me and a visit to the AGU is just a hazy dream in the far off future, then you can access many of the talks through the virtual meetings page and recorded talks.

There is a veritable slew of talks on geochemistry, geology, natural hazards, climate science and space science delivered by the worlds best scientists. This year it seems there is a big focus on Earth System Science and an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability. Seems like the penny is finally starting to drop, which is great considering the mess we find ourselves in. I'm a bit behind viewings due to starting my summer scholarship this week, but I'll definately be watching a lot of these over the next week and posting up some favourites.