Science Megathread

[Kamala's side hoe]

https://scitechdaily-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/scitechdaily.com/nasa-makes-first-of-its-kind-detection-of-reduced-human-co2-emissions/amp/

NASA Makes First-of-Its-Kind Detection of Reduced Human CO2 Emissions
By Jessica Merzdorf Evans, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on Apr 02, 2022

For the first time, researchers have spotted short-term, regional fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) across the globe due to emissions from human activities.

Using a combination of NASA satellites and atmospheric modeling, the scientists performed a first-of-its-kind detection of human CO2 emissions changes. The new study uses data from NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) to measure drops in CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic from space. With daily and monthly data products now available to the public, this opens new possibilities for tracking the collective effects of human activities on CO2 concentrations in near real-time.

Previous studies investigated the effects of lockdowns early in the pandemic and found that global CO2 levels dropped slightly in 2020. However, by combining OCO-2’s high-resolution data with modeling and data analysis tools from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), the team was able to narrow down which monthly changes were due to human activity and which were due to natural causes at a regional scale. This confirms previous estimates based on economic and human activity data.

[Kamala's side hoe]

My guess is that the hottest it can get on Earth because of Global Warming is 8*C/14.4*F hotter than it is today. The average temperature over the whole world was 55*F in 1850 and now is around 57*F. So in a worst case scenario, I think we could see an average global temperature of 20*C/69*F. That's about what Jacksonville is today. So no. The world isn't suddenly going to be like Venus or something like that. What it could mean is that our society can't adapt and collapses us into a Dark Age or something like that. I think the typical bad ending will be something out of the documentary Earth2100.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/gcb.15871

Climate change research and action must look beyond 2100

Anthropogenic activity is changing Earth's climate and ecosystems in ways that are potentially dangerous and disruptive to humans. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise, ensuring that these changes will be felt for centuries beyond 2100, the current benchmark for projection. Estimating the effects of past, current, and potential future emissions to only 2100 is therefore short-sighted. Critical problems for food production and climate-forced human migration are projected to arise well before 2100, raising questions regarding the habitability of some regions of the Earth after the turn of the century. To highlight the need for more distant horizon scanning, we model climate change to 2500 under a suite of emission scenarios and quantify associated projections of crop viability and heat stress. Together, our projections show global climate impacts increase significantly after 2100 without rapid mitigation. As a result, we argue that projections of climate and its effects on human well-being and associated governance and policy must be framed beyond 2100

Wow, sounds like my NationStates worldbuilding written as a scholarly article

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: US approves chicken made from cultivated cells, the nation’s first ‘lab-grown’ meat

https://apnews.com/article/cultivated-meat-lab-grown-cell-based-a88ab8e0241712b501aa191cdbf6b39a

For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

I will be curious to see how this develops. Not just because of an interview I saw from a researcher who said the tech for lab cultivated meat is nowhere near ready to be deployed at scale, but also to see whether this becomes yet another culture war flashpoint/conspiracy about how the WEF wants to ban real meat, and instead force people to eat fake meat (that turns kids gay, probably) cooked on electric stoves while trapped in 15-minute cities.

[Kamala's side hoe]

NBC News- FDA approves sickle cell treatment using CRISPR

The therapy, called Casgevy, from Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, is the first medicine to be approved in the United States that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR, which won its inventors the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2020.

“I think this is a pivotal moment in the field,” said Dr. Alexis Thompson, chief of the division of hematology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who has previously consulted for Vertex. “It’s been really remarkable how quickly we went from the actual discovery of CRISPR, the awarding of a Nobel Prize, and now actually seeing it being an approved product.”

The approval marks the first of two potential breakthroughs for the inherited blood disorder. The FDA on Friday also approved a second treatment for sickle cell disease, called Lyfgenia, a gene therapy from drugmaker Bluebird Bio. Both treatments work by genetically modifying a patient’s own stem cells.

Until now, the only known cure for sickle cell disease was a bone marrow transplant from a donor, which carries the risk of rejection by the immune system, in addition to the difficult process of finding a matching donor.

Casgevy, which was approved for people ages 12 and older, removes the need for a donor. Using CRISPR, it edits the DNA found in a patient’s stem cells to remove the gene that causes the disease.

https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1733165402471924014
Great news. However, the treatment will cost around "$2 million per patient".