Tag Archives: climate science

How climate change affects bunnies

Along with rising sea levels, warmer winters, and worsening heat waves, climate change could raise our odds of getting malaria or other parasite-born diseases. One reason for that is because mosquitos and other disease-carriers are able to expand into areas that used to be too cold for them.

Earlier this week, Penn State biologist Isabella Cattadori published a paper about how climate change can impact parasites living in the soil, therefore impacting infection.

Cattadori and colleagues observed Scottish rabbits for nearly two and a half decades and found that the warming climate over that period enabled soil parasites to live longer, putting the rabbits at an increased risk of infection. The extent to which this increased risk affects the severity of an infection, she says, depends on the strength of the host’s (in this case, the rabbit’s) immune response. Cattadori’s findings could eventually help treat and prevent infections in humans from similar parasites.

She tells us more in the video below:

Members of the news media interested in talking to Cattadori should contact Barbara Kennedy at 814-863-4682 or bkk1@psu.edu.

Mixed messages can create hazy climate change understanding

Ice melt Northwestern Glacier Alaska
Northwestern Glacier. With few exceptions, glaciers around the world have retreated at unprecedented rates over the last century. Left: 1940 photo taken by unknown photographer Right: 2005 photo taken by Bruce F. Molnia. Courtesy of the Glacier Photograph Collection, National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology.

If you gave a weather report on climate change, you would need to issue two forecasts. For climate scientists — at least 97 percent of them — it’s absolutely clear and bright: global climate change is happening and humans are the primary cause. For the general populace, it’s cloudy and unpredictable: while they believe the climate is changing, only half say it’s humans who are at fault, according to Eric Plutzer, professor of political science and academic director of the Survey Research Center, Penn State, and his colleagues.

The researchers report in the current issue of Science that the key to this discrepancy may lie in how climate science is being taught in schools. Science teachers are offering lessons in climate science, it seems, but their own values and knowledge may be causing a mixed message for students.

I caught up with Plutzer for a brief question and answer on this paper, which was published yesterday afternoon.

Keep reading for the Q&A.  Continue reading Mixed messages can create hazy climate change understanding

A Banner Weekend for Penn State Research

At the AAAS annual meeting last weekend I learned a lot, such as:

  • How our preconceptions of viruses as nasty things may have thwarted our knowledge of the long list of positive interactions humans have with these microbes.
  • How evolution changed us from furry creatures into lean, mean, skin-covered, sweating machines.
  • And how we can now take pictures and make movies of atoms. Actual atoms.
jablonski
Dr. Jablonski addresses media questions at AAAS news briefing.

One thing I did not learn is that I am not a great photographer. I have known that for a long time. In fact, if you couple my lack of photographic skills with my out-of-focus iPhone camera, the pictures of the atom have finer resolutions and were much clearer.

But I tried.

Continue reading A Banner Weekend for Penn State Research