The top leaders of China and India, two of the world's top emitters of greenhouse gases

The top leaders of China and India, two of the world's top emitters of greenhouse gases, aren't planning to attend this month's United Nations summit on climate change, according to a diplomat at the UN.

President Xi Jinping of China and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon they won't be at the day-long meeting of world leaders on Sept. 23, the person said, requesting not to be identified discussing the leaders' plans. That deals a blow to a gathering meant to lay the groundwork for a global agreement to reduce carbon dioxide, which is blamed for global warming.

"The issue for us is really on the commitments that countries will bring and the secretary general expects member states to come with strong and bold commitments on climate change," Ban's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said today in New York. He said he has nothing to add when asked about the leaders' attendance.

China is the world's top greenhouse-gas emitter, and India is third, after the U.S., according to World Bank data. Together China and India account for nearly a third of total emissions, and their carbon footprint is growing while it remains flat in the U.S. and Europe.

This old supercluster: Scientists measure the (massive) place we call home

The next time someone asks you where you live, you can answer with a straight face: Laniakea – roughly translated as "spacious heaven."

That's the Hawaiian name a team of astronomers has given to the 521-million-light-year wide supercluster the Milky Way inhabits. The christening marks the first time astronomers have clearly defined the boundaries of a supercluster.

Superclusters are some of the largest structures in the cosmos, built from galaxies, which gather in local groups, which then form galaxy clusters. The Milky Way's local group, for instance, contains more than 54 galaxies, is about 10.1 million light-years across, and has an estimated mass about 1.3 trillion times the mass of the sun. Laniakea hosts roughly 100,000 galaxies that collectively tip the scales at 100 million billion solar masses.

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The effort to precisely map this large-scale structure could help astronomers better understand how events at the dawn of the universe gave rise to the structure we see today.

Subtle quantum fluctuations in the earliest moments of the Big Bang – the enormous release of energy that gave rise to the universe – are thought to have ultimately led to visible variations in the universe's density. Astronomers have detected these variations in the early universe as ripples in the cosmic microwave background – the afterglow of the Big Bang. Now, understanding the structure of superclusters better could allow scientists essentially to start working backward from what they see today to see how closely the picture dovetails with other observations on the evolution of structure.

The work was conducted by a team of astronomers from the US, Israel, and France led by University of Hawaii astronomer R. Brent Tully and is described in a paper set to appear in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

The team did more than define Laniakea's boundaries. It also revealed another "important" measure, says Mauro Giavalisco, an astronomer at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst: "The gravitational pull that the supercluster has exerted on the surrounding matter during the cosmic eons."

"This allows characterization of the size, matter, and basically how the supercluster grew," says Dr. Giavalisco, who was not a member of Dr. Tully's team of cosmic surveyors.      

Originally, the team's goal was simply to improve the accuracy of distance measurements to galaxies in the local universe, notes Tully in an e-mail.

"Going in, we had no thought about bounding Laniakea," he writes. The boundary "just fell out of our analysis. We made progress because we had more and better distance data than had been available."

They also developed a highly sophisticated analysis approach for interpreting the data. It showed how galaxies were moving in relation to one another, revealing patterns and groupings. 

Observations with ground-and space-based telescopes yielded accurate distances to 8,161 galaxies in all regions of the sky, allowing the team to build a 3D map of their distribution. The distance measurements allowed the team to calculate the theoretical pace at which the galaxies should be receding with the expansion of the universe. But the data also provided the actual recession velocities, which were different from the theoretical calculations. The difference shows how a galaxy or cluster is being influenced by the gravitational tug from other relatively nearby galaxies or clusters. This is known as a galaxy's peculiar velocity.

The team used peculiar velocities to see where galaxies were headed. Based on those observations, they defined the supercluster's boundary as the region along which the motion of galaxies diverge. In principle, this is much like the Continental Divide, the boundary along the spine of the Rocky Mountains that determines whether water flowing down hill will head east or west. But the boundary between superclusters is not so sharply defined, because galaxies are far more diffuse at the supercluster's outer edges, says Giavalisco.

In Laniakea's case, the supercluster's galaxies and galaxy clusters are headed toward a region of enormous mass that has been dubbed The Great Attractor. Recent studies have shown that the attractor is a close pair of very dense clusters.

Intriguingly, within Laniakea, there are filaments and sheets of galaxies separated by voids – which mimics the structure of the universe on the largest scales. The researchers note that over time Laniakea, like other components of the cosmic web, will dissipate with the accelerated expansion of the universe from the influence of dark energy.

Meanwhile, Laniakea may be on a trip of her own.

"Laniakea appears to be moving toward an even bigger structure called the Shapley concentration. This feature is currently poorly understood. Are we part of something even bigger than Laniakea? This possibility remains to be explored," Tully writes.

As for the Milky Way's place in all this? It lies on the outskirts of Laniakea, on a galactic cul-de-sac the end of one peculiar-velocity roadway toward the Great Attractor.

While astronomers have long known about the existence of superclusters, a consistent definition has been elusive. Indeed, if the team's definition meets with general acceptance, some of the clutches of galaxies within Laniakea may wind up being demoted from superclusters to mere clusters.

Cave drawings show early humans’ creativity, archaeologists say

A series of lines scratched into rock in a cave in Europe could be proof that a type of early human called Neanderthals were more intelligent and creative than previously thought.

The X-shaped engravings inside Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar are the first known examples of Neanderthal rock art, according to a team of scientists. The find is important because it shows that modern humans and their extinct cousins shared the capacity for creative expression.

“We will never know the meaning the design held for the maker or the Neanderthals who inhabited the cave, but the fact that they were marking their territory in this way before modern humans arrived in the region has huge implications for debates about what it is to be human and the origin of art,” said Paul Tacon, an expert in rock art at Australia’s Griffith University.

Not all archaeologists are convinced that Neanderthals made the carvings. A recent study reported that Neanderthals and modern humans overlapped by several thousand years.

“Any discovery that helps improve the public image of Neanderthals is welcome,” said Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England. “We know they spoke, lived in large social groups, looked after the sick, buried their dead and were highly successful in the ice-age environments of northern latitudes. As a result ,rock engraving should be entirely within their grasp.”

“What is critical, however, is the dating,” Gamble said. “While I want Neanderthals to be painting, carving and engraving, I’m reserving judgment.”

Nearly two dozen fish species off U.S. West Coast deemed sustainable

(Reuters) - Nearly two dozen species of fish have been deemed sustainable seafood options once again after rampant overfishing left areas off the U.S. West Coast devastated, a marine watchdog group said on Tuesday.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program upgraded the status of 21 species of bottom-dwelling fish, including varieties of sole, rockfish and sablefish, to "best choice" or "good alternative" from the group's "avoid" classification.

The designations allow consumers, restaurants and seafood retailers to be confident in the sustainability of the once over-harvested species.

 

The change comes after fishing grounds off the coast of California, Oregon and Washington state were declared an economic disaster by the federal government in 2000. Overfishing in those areas brought some species to dangerously low levels and caused fishing income to drop sharply.

"The turnaround in such a short time is unprecedented," said Jennifer Kemmerly, director of the Seafood Watch program.

"Fishermen, federal agencies and our environmental colleagues have put so much effort into groundfish recovery, and now we're seeing the results of their work," she added.

The group attributed the region's revitalization to government-imposed fishing quotas, the creation of marine protected areas, and the use of better monitoring and control of catches.

Now, 84 percent of commercial groundfish caught off the West Coast are sustainable options, according to the Seafood Watch program.

"This recognition highlights the success of the West Coast groundfish catch share program," said Frank Lockhart, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's West Coast recovery efforts.

"Not only has it reduced impacts on the species we need to protect, but it has allowed fishermen increased flexibility to fish more effectively for the species they want," he said.

The West Coast's recovery mirrors improvements seen elsewhere in the United States following updates to the federal fishery law passed by Congress in 2006, the Seafood Watch program said.

China and Indian Leaders Said to Skip UN Climate Summit

The top leaders of China and India aren’t planning to attend this month’s United Nations summit on climate change, signaling tepid support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gases among two of the largest emitters.

President Xi Jinping of China and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon they won’t be at the day-long meeting of world leaders on Sept. 23, according to two UN diplomats, requesting not to be identified discussing the leaders’ plans. Their absence undercuts the summit, although it may not be fatal for negotiations set to wrap up by the end of 2015.

China is the world’s top greenhouse-gas emitter, and India is third, after the U.S., according to World Bank data. Together China and India account for nearly a third of total emissions, and their carbon footprint is growing while it remains flat in the U.S. and Europe.

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“I was completely shocked and very disappointed to read today that Chinese President Xi and Indian Prime Minister Modi may not make it to Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit,” said Tony deBrum, the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands, in the northern Pacific Ocean, in a statement. “For the small island states of the world, the science says we might be forced to pay the biggest price of all -- the loss of our countries. We expect solidarity from our developing country compatriots, not excuses.”

Resisting Cuts

Both China and India have pushed rich nations to pony up the $100 billion promised to poor countries to help deal with the threats of climate change, and have resisted sharp cuts in their own output. Both are also heavy users of coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, and have announced their own internal efforts to boost renewable energy.

“The issue for us is really on the commitments that countries will bring and the secretary general expects member states to come with strong and bold commitments on climate change,” Ban’s spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said yesterday in New York. He said he has nothing to add when asked about the leaders’ attendance.

The UN meeting on Sept. 23 is not a negotiating session but a gathering of world leaders, business executives and environmentalists to discuss ways to combat global warming, and how to mitigate its impact. The meeting includes three concurrent sessions in the morning at which leaders are to make “national action & ambition announcements,” according to the schedule.

‘Turning Point’

“I hope the Climate Summit will be a turning point for generating climate action and mobilizing political will for a meaningful, universal climate agreement next year,” Ban said in a blog post this week.

This UN meeting will be followed by a negotiating session in Lima in December, and then one in Paris next year at which leaders seek to hammer out a new global agreement on cutting emissions.

An official with the Chinese mission to the UN declined to comment and a call to the Chinese embassy in Washington wasn’t answered. The Indian mission to the UN didn’t have an immediate comment.

Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, declined to comment on the decision by Xi not to attend, which was previously reported by the online publication China Dialogue, and said he couldn’t comment on whether the move would affect U.S. President Barack Obama’s plans to attend. Bloomberg BNA reported July 25 that the White House had confirmed Obama would attend, without naming its sources.

Climate Risks

The summit comes as scien

tists are increasingly warning of the risks of climate change. Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change, according to a draft UN report.

“Without additional mitigation, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts globally,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in the draft, obtained by Bloomberg News last month.

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