Melting Arctic sends a message: Climate change is here in a big way

Scientists on Arctic sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, surrounded by melt ponds, July 4, 2010. NASA/Kathryn Hansen

Scientists have known for a long time that as climate change started to heat up the Earth, its effects would be most pronounced in the Arctic. This has many reasons, but climate feedbacks are key. As the Arctic warms, snow and ice melt, and the surface absorbs more of the sun’s energy instead of reflecting it back into space. This makes it even warmer, which causes more melting, and so on.

This expectation has become a reality that I describe in my new book “Brave New Arctic.” It’s a visually compelling story: The effects of warming are evident in shrinking ice caps and glaciers and in Alaskan roads buckling as permafrost beneath them thaws.

But for many people the Arctic seems like a faraway place, and stories of what is happening there seem irrelevant to their lives. It can also be hard to accept that the globe is warming up while you are shoveling out from the latest snowstorm.

Since I have spent more than 35 years studying snow, ice and cold places, people often are surprised when I tell them I once was skeptical that human activities were playing a role in climate change. My book traces my own career as a climate scientist and the evolving views of many scientists I have worked with. When I first started working in the Arctic, scientists understood it as a region defined by its snow and ice, with a varying but generally constant climate. In the 1990s, we realized that it was changing, but it took us years to figure out why. Now scientists are trying to understand what the Arctic’s ongoing transformation means for the rest of the planet, and whether the Arctic of old will ever be seen again.

Arctic sea ice has not only been shrinking in surface area in recent years – it’s becoming younger and thinner as well.

 

Evidence piles up

Evidence that the Arctic is warming rapidly extends far beyond shrinking ice caps and buckling roads. It also includes a melting Greenland ice sheet; a rapid decline in the extent of the Arctic’s floating sea ice cover in summer; warming and thawing of permafrost; shrubs taking over areas of tundra that formerly were dominated by sedges, grasses, mosses and lichens; and a rise in temperature twice as large as that for the globe as a whole. This outsized warming even has a name: Arctic amplification.

The Arctic began to stir in the early 1990s. The first signs of change were a slight warming of the ocean and an apparent decline in sea ice. By the end of the decade, it was abundantly clear that something was afoot. But to me, it looked like natural climate variability. As I saw it, shifts in wind patterns could explain a lot of the warming, as well as loss of sea ice. There didn’t seem to be much need to invoke the specter of rising greenhouse gas levels.

Collapsed block of ice-rich permafrost along Drew Point, Alaska, at the edge of the Beaufort Sea. Coastal bluffs in this region can erode 20 meters a year (around 65 feet). USGS

In 2000 I teamed up with a number of leading researchers in different fields of Arctic science to undertake a comprehensive analysis of all evidence of change that we had seen and how to interpret it. We concluded that while some changes, such as loss of sea ice, were consistent with what climate models were predicting, others were not.

To be clear, we were not asking whether the impacts of rising greenhouse gas concentrations would appear first in the Arctic, as we expected. The science supporting this projection was solid. The issue was whether those impacts had yet emerged. Eventually they did – and in a big way. Sometime around 2003, I accepted the overwhelming evidence of human-induced warming, and started warning the public about what the Arctic was telling us.

Seeing is believing

Climate change really hit home for me when when I found out that two little ice caps in the Canadian Arctic I had studied back in 1982 and 1983 as a young graduate student had essentially disappeared.
Bruce Raup, a colleague at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, has been using high-resolution satellite data to map all of the world’s glaciers and ice caps. It’s a moving target, because most of them are melting and shrinking – which contributes to sea level rise.

One day in 2016, as I walked past Bruce’s office and saw him hunched over his computer monitor, I asked if we could check out those two ice caps. When I worked on them in the early 1980s, the larger one was perhaps a mile and a half across. Over the course of two summers of field work, I had gotten to know pretty much every square inch of them.

When Bruce found the ice caps and zoomed in, we were aghast to see that they had shrunk to the size of a few football fields. They are even smaller today - just patches of ice that are sure to disappear in just a few years.

Hidden Creek Glacier, Alaska, photographed in 1916 and 2004, with noticeable ice loss. S.R. Capps, USGS (top), NPS (bottom)

Today it seems increasingly likely that what is happening in the Arctic will reverberate around the globe. Arctic warming may already be influencing weather patterns in the middle latitudes. Meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet is having an increasing impact on sea level rise. As permafrost thaws, it may start to release carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, further warming the climate.

I often find myself wondering whether the remains of those two little ice caps I studied back in the early 1980s will survive another summer. Scientists are trained to be skeptics, but for those of us who study the Arctic, it is clear that a radical transformation is underway. My two ice caps are just a small part of that story. Indeed, the question is no longer whether the Arctic is warming, but how drastically it will change – and what those changes mean for the planet.

Mark Serreze, Research Professor of Geography and director, National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What is hell?

The abyss of hell. Sandro Botticelli.

The recent dispute over whether Pope Francis denied the existence of hell in an interview attracted wide attention. This isn’t surprising, since the belief in an afterlife, where the virtuous are rewarded with a place in heaven and the wicked are punished in hell, is a core teaching of Christianity.

So what is the Christian idea of hell?

Origins of belief in hell

The Christian belief in hell has developed over the centuries, influenced by both Jewish and Greek ideas of the afterlife.

The earliest parts of the Hebrew Bible, around the eighth century B.C., described the afterlife as Sheol, a shadowy, silent pit where the souls of all the dead lingered in a minimal state of silent existence, forever outside of the presence of God. By the sixth century B.C., Sheol was increasingly viewed as a temporary place, where all the departed awaited a bodily resurrection. The righteous would then dwell in the presence of God, and the wicked would suffer in the fiery torment that came to be called “Gehenna,” described as a cursed place of fire and smoke.

Early depictions of the afterlife in ancient Greece, an underworld realm called “Hades,” are similar. There, the listless spirits of the dead lingered in an underground twilight existence, ruled by the god of the dead. Evildoers suffered gloomy imprisonment on an even deeper level called “Tartarus.”
 
Beginning in the fourth century B.C., after the Greek King Alexander the Great conquered Judea, elements of Greek culture began to influence Jewish religious thought. By time of the first gospels, between 65 and 85 A.D., Jesus refers to the Jewish belief in the eternal fire of Gehenna. Elsewhere, he mentions evildoers’ banishment from the kingdom of God, and the “blazing furnace” where the wicked would suffer sorrow and despair and “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Jesus also mentions the Greek Hades when describing how the forces of evil – “the gates of Hades” – would not prevail against the church.

Depiction of the seven deadly sins and the four last things of man (death, judgment, heaven and hell). Hieronymus Bosch or follower.

 

Medieval ideas of hell

In early Christianity, the fate of those in hell was described in different ways. Some theologians taught that eventually all evil human beings and even Satan himself would be restored to unity with God. Other teachers held that hell was an “intermediate state,” where some souls would be purified and others annihilated.

The image that dominated in antiquity eventually prevailed. Hell was where the souls of the damned suffered torturous and unending punishment. Even after the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world, the wicked would be sent back to Hell for eternity.

By the beginning of the fifth century, this doctrine was taught throughout western Christianity. It was reaffirmed officially by popes and councils throughout the Middle Ages.

Medieval theologians continued to stress that the worst of all these torments would be eternal separation from God, the “poena damni.” Medieval visions of the afterlife provided more explicit details: pits full of dark flames, terrible cries, gagging stench, and rivers of boiling water filled with serpents.

Cerberus, with the gluttons in Dante’s third circle of hell. William Blake

Perhaps the most fulsome description of hell was offered by the Italian poet Dante at the beginning of the 14th century in the first section of his “Divine Comedy.” Here the souls of the damned are punished with tortures matching their sins. Gluttons lie in freezing pools of garbage, while murderers thrash in a river of boiling blood.

Hell is God’s absence

Today, these images seem to be part of a past that the 21st century has outgrown. However, the official textbook of Catholic Christianity, the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” reaffirms the Catholic belief in the eternal nature of hell. It omits the gory details found in earlier attempts to describe the hellish experience, but restates that the chief pain of hell is eternal separation from God.

The Vatican insisted that the pope was misquoted by the journalist. But theologians have pointed out that Pope Francis has stressed the reality of hell several times in recent years. Indeed, for today’s Catholics at least, hell still means the hopeless anguish of God’s absence.

Joanne M. Pierce, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How the search for mythical monsters can help conservation in the real world

aleks1949 / shutterstock

After fears the Loch Ness Monster had “disappeared” last winter, a new sighting in May 2017 was celebrated by its enthusiasts. The search for monsters and mythical creatures (or “cryptids”) such as Nessie, the Yeti or Bigfoot is known as “cryptozoology”.

On the face of it, cryptozoology has little in common with mainstream conservation. First, it is widely held to be a “pseudoscience”, because it does not follow the scientific methods so central to conservation biology. Many conservation scientists would find the idea of being identified with monsters and monster-hunters embarrassing.

Moreover, in the context of the global collapse in biodiversity, conservationists focus their attentions on protecting the countless endangered species that we know about. Why waste time thinking about unknown or hypothesised creatures? Most people are rightly sceptical of sightings of anomalous primates or plesiosaurs in densely populated regions that have been surveyed for hundreds of years.

However, while there are strong ecological and evidence-based reasons to doubt the existence of charismatic cryptids such as Nessie and Bigfoot, conservationists should not automatically dismiss enthusiastic searches for “hidden” species. In fact, cryptozoology can contribute to conservation in several ways.

Known unknowns

Firstly, the process of mapping out the world’s species is far from finished. Conservationists aim to protect and preserve known plants and animals – but it is not always appreciated how many remain “undescribed” by scientists. Since 1993, more than 400 new mammals have been identified, many in areas undergoing rapid habitat destruction. The number of undescribed beetles, for example, or flies, let alone microscopic organisms, will be huge.

The pygmy three-toed sloth was identified in 2001. It exists only in one 4sq km mangrove forest in Panama. MaxPixel

We are entering a new age of discovery in biology with descriptions of new species reaching rates comparable to the golden era of global exploration and collection in the 18th and 19th centuries. The advent of methods such as DNA barcoding offer the possibility of automated species identification.
A recent mathematical model predicted that at least 160 land mammal species and 3,050 amphibian species remain to be discovered and described. Other predictions suggest that a large proportion of undescribed species will go extinct without ever being recorded or conserved at all – a phenomenon we might term “crypto-extinction”.

The father of cryptozoology, Bernard Heuvelmans, argued that “the great days of zoology are not done”. In the sense that so many species remain undiscovered, he was correct. The main principle behind cryptozoology is soundly zoological: species exist that humans have not discovered or described. The quest to locate and protect the world’s biodiversity is one that conservation and cryptozoology share, even if cryptozoologists tend to focus their attentions on the large, mythical and monstrous, over the small, plausible, and non-mammalian species in our midst.

Cryptozoology involves rampant speculation and unconventional surveying methods. But controversial new “findings” can inspire a renewed quest to better map out the natural world. This was the case with the cryptid spiral-horned ox, never seen by a scientist in the flesh and known only from a few horns found in a market in Vietnam. The debate between rival camps of zoologists about whether the ox existed pulled together historic accounts, local folklore, and samples of museum specimens – all classic cryptozoological methodologies.

Shared histories

The second reason why conservationists should not automatically discount cryptozoology is its shared history, co-evolving with conservation in the 20th century and interesting many conservationists along the way.

One notable connecting thread comes through Peter Scott, the founder of the World Wildlife Fund and creator of the Red Data Book method of classifying endangered species. Scott first grew interested in Loch Ness Monster reports in 1960 and in the same year wrote to Queen Elizabeth offering to name the – undiscovered – cryptid Elizabethia nessiae in her honour. Although the Queen was said to be “very interested”, her advisers wrote back saying it would be inappropriate to attach her name to something viewed as a monster or likely to be a hoax.

Loch Ness Lizzie? Khadi Ganiev / shutterstock

In an infamous article in Nature in 1975 Scott published underwater photographs appearing to show a creature with a diamond-shaped flipper. Scott and his co-author, the American Nessie enthusiast Robert Rines, named the creature Nessiteras rhombopteryx with the intention that it could then be preemptively protected under the Conservation of Wild Creatures and Wild Plants Act (1975).

Although he knew that grainy photographs were insufficient taxonomic evidence in the long term, Scott argued “the procedure seems justified by the urgency of comprehensive conservation”. For Scott, conservation was at the heart of the hunt for Nessie.

Scott was not the only curious conservationist. In his book Searching for Sasquatch, Brian Segal examines several other mainstream conservationists who grew interested in cryptozoological ideas and endeavours.

More recently, when specimens of a species named Homo floresiensis were found on the island of Flores in Indonesia in 2003, Henry Gee, an editor at Nature, wrote:

If animals as large as oxen can remain hidden into an era when we would expect that scientists had rustled every tree and bush in search of new forms of life, there is no reason why the same should not apply to new species of large primate, including members of the human family.

Homo floresiensis went extinct around 50,000 years ago. Tim Evanson / Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, CC BY-SA

 

Cryptozoology - in from the cold?

Given conservation’s haunting relationship with the problem of absence, is it time to bring cryptozoology, in some form at least, in from the cold? A rapprochement would demand changes on both sides.

Cryptozoology’s appeal currently comes from its celebration of the anomalous and monstrous. A “post-monstrous” outlook might aid in forging new coalitions, and a stronger focus on plausible undiscovered species (such as the thousands of smaller amphibians and mammals predicted to exist) than on charismatic, but highly unlikely, cryptids.

The third way that cryptozoology can contribute to conservation is through the sense of wonder. From the conservation perspective, something might be learned from the Nessie and Bigfoot hunters about telling new stories of weird and wonderful discoveries alongside the more familiar tales of flagship species decline.

Instead of rebuffing them, conservationists might consider enlisting cryptozoologists as part of a wonder zoology that accelerates conventional taxonomic efforts. Indeed, the EDGE of Existence conservation initiative is doing exactly this by focusing its attention on “weird” endangered species.
Other examples of wonder zoology include the descriptions of new (although known to local people) primates by Marc van Roosmalen in the Amazon, and the “lost world” of new species found in or near Vietnam’s Vu Quang Nature Reserve in the 1990s.

The saola, or Vu Quang ox, was first discovered in 1992 and first photographed in the wild in 1999. Bill Robichaud / Global Wildlife Conservation, CC BY-SA

One promising model of how conservationists and cryptozoologists might engage is sketched out by the paleozoologist Darren Naish. Naish’s “sceptical cryptozoology” does not dwell on the question of whether cryptozoology is pseudoscientific or not but focuses instead on the ground it shares with conventional zoology.

Stories of the discovery and rediscovery of species routinely punctuate the depressing catalogue of extinction after extinction. Wonder and speculation – however untethered – must play a role in energising conservation actions.

Although no one expects conservation NGOs to start searching for Bigfoot, it would be remiss of them to ignore the powerful ecological imagination that can be inspired by cryptozoology.
Bill Adams, Moran Professor of Conservation and Development, University of Cambridge and Shane McCorristine, Visiting Researcher, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What if Antarctica's dormant, ice-covered volcanoes wake up?

Harvepino / shutterstock

Antarctica is a vast icy wasteland covered by the world’s largest ice sheet. This ice sheet contains about 90% of fresh water on the planet. It acts as a massive heat sink and its meltwater drives the world’s oceanic circulation. Its existence is therefore a fundamental part of Earth’s climate.

Less well known is that Antarctica is also host to several active volcanoes, part of a huge “volcanic province” which extends for thousands of kilometres along the western edge of the continent.

Although the volcanic province has been known and studied for decades, about 100 “new” volcanoes were recently discovered beneath the ice by scientists who used satellite data and ice-penetrating radar to search for hidden peaks.

Some of the volcanoes known about before the latest discovery. antarcticglaciers.org, Author provided

These sub-ice volcanoes may be dormant. But what would happen if Antarctica’s volcanoes awoke?
We can get some idea by looking to the past. One of Antarctica’s volcanoes, Mount Takahe, is found close to the remote centre of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. In a new study, scientists implicate Takahe in a series of eruptions rich in ozone-consuming halogens that occurred about 18,000 years ago.

These eruptions, they claim, triggered an ancient ozone hole, warmed the southern hemisphere which caused glaciers to melt, and helped bring the last ice age to a close.

Mt Takahe grew over hundreds of thousands of years and its 8km-wide caldera now towers above the ice sheet. NASA / Jim Yungel, CC BY-SA

This sort of environmental impact is unusual. For it to happen again would require a series of eruptions, similarly enriched in halogens, from one or more volcanoes that are currently exposed above the ice. Such a scenario is unlikely although, as the Takahe study shows, not impossible. More likely is that one or more of the many subglacial volcanoes, some of which are known to be active, will erupt at some unknown time in the future.

Eruptions below the ice

Because of the enormous thickness of overlying ice, it is unlikely that volcanic gases would make it into the atmosphere. So an eruption wouldn’t have an impact like that postulated for Takahe. However, the volcanoes would melt huge caverns in the base of the ice and create enormous quantities of meltwater. Because the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is wet rather than frozen to its bed – imagine an ice cube on a kitchen work top – the meltwater would act as a lubricant and could cause the overlying ice to slip and move more rapidly. These volcanoes can also stabilise the ice, however, as they give it something to grip onto – imagine that same ice cube snagging onto a lump-shaped object.

In any case, the volume of water that would be generated by even a large volcano is a pinprick compared with the volume of overlying ice. So a single eruption won’t have much effect on the ice flow. What would make a big difference, is if several volcanoes erupt close to or beneath any of West Antarctica’s prominent “ice streams”.

A velocity map of Antarctic ice streams as they move toward the ocean. NASA/JPL, CC BY-SA

Ice streams are rivers of ice that flow much faster than their surroundings. They are the zones along which most of the ice in Antarctica is delivered to the ocean, and therefore fluctuations in their speed can affect the sea level. If the additional “lubricant” provided by multiple volcanic eruptions was channelled beneath ice streams, the subsequent rapid flow may dump unusual amounts of West Antarctica’s thick interior ice into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise.

Under-ice volcanoes are probably what triggered rapid flow of ancient ice streams into the vast Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica’s largest ice shelf. Something similar might have occurred about 2,000 years ago with a small volcano in the Hudson Mountains that lie underneath the West Antarctica Ice Sheet – if it erupted again today it could cause the nearby Pine Island Glacier to speed up.

The volcano–ice melt feedback loop

Most dramatically of all, a large series of eruptions could destabilise many more subglacial volcanoes. As volcanoes cool and crystallise, their magma chambers become pressurised and all that prevents the volcanic gases from escaping violently in an eruption is the weight of overlying rock or, in this case, several kilometres of ice. As that ice becomes much thinner, the pressure reduction may trigger eruptions. More eruptions and ice melting would mean even more meltwater being channelled under the ice streams.

Mt Erebus is one of Antarctica’s most active volcanoes. The rocks in the foreground are the remnants of several younger subglacial volcanoes. antarcticglaciers.org, Author provided

Potentially a runaway effect may take place, with the thinning ice triggering more and more eruptions. Something similar occurred in Iceland, which saw an increase in volcanic eruptions when glaciers began to recede at the end of the last ice age.

So it seems the greatest threat from Antarctica’s many volcanoes will be if several erupt within a few decades of each other. If those volcanoes have already grown above the ice and their gases were rich in halogens then enhanced warming and rapid deglaciation may result. But eruptions probably need to take place repeatedly over many tens to hundreds of years to have a climatic impact.

More likely is the generation of large quantities of meltwater during subglacial eruptions that might lubricate West Antarctica’s ice streams. The eruption of even a single volcano situated strategically close to any of Antarctica’s ice streams can cause significant amounts of ice to be swept into the sea. However, the resulting thinning of the inland ice is also likely to trigger further subglacial eruptions generating meltwater over a wider area and potentially causing a runaway effect on ice flow.
John Smellie, Professor of Volcanology, University of Leicester
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Bearing witness to Cambodia's horror, 20 years after Pol Pot's death

How do survivors find healing? Chum Mey, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, walks past a portrait of Nuon Chea, a former Khmer Rouge leader. AP Photo/Heng Sinith

Twenty years ago, on April 15, 1998, Pol Pot, the leader of Cambodia’s genocidal government during the late 1970s, died in his sleep at the age of 73. Born Saloth Sar, Pol Pot was never held accountable for the crimes committed during the three years, eight months and 20 days his Khmer Rouge government subjected the Cambodian population to a reign of terror. Almost 2 million people, one-fourth of the country’s population, perished during this time from starvation, disease and execution.

In the search for truth and justice, many Cambodian survivors have looked to the U.N.-assisted tribunal currently in progress in the capital city Phnom Penh. Convened in 2006, the tribunal has sentenced the head of the main Khmer Rouge torture center to life in prison.

The tribunal’s second trial is nearing completion and is expected to result in life sentences for two additional high ranking Khmer Rouge leaders as well. At that point, the tribunal will mostly likely close its doors, and the U.N.-appointed judges and lawyers will go home. The tribunal is a classic example of “justice delayed is justice denied.”

For the past 30 years, I have studied the legal, political and literary responses to the Cambodian genocide. It is the literary responses – accounts written by survivors themselves – that show how in breaking their silence and in speaking on behalf of those who died, they were able to seek justice and healing.

The Killing Fields

Two important texts, Haing Ngor’s “A Cambodian Odyssey,” published in 1987, and Vann Nath’s “A Cambodian Prison Portrait,” published 11 years later, reveal the extraordinary events that led to their writing and publication, as well as the authors’ reasons for recording their literary testimony.

Haing S. Ngor, in a photo from May 8, 1985. AP Photo/Wally Fong

Before the Khmer Rouge took power on April 17, 1975, Haing Ngor was a successful gynecologist at a medical clinic in Phnom Penh. During the genocide, Ngor was arrested and severely tortured by the Khmer Rouge on three separate occasions. Each time, Ngor’s wife Huoy nursed him back to health from the brink of death. Ironically, near the end of the genocide, Huoy died in childbirth, because Ngor lacked the simple medical equipment to save her and their first child.

Ngor was able to survive the genocide. He was given refugee status by the American government and resettled in Long Beach, California, which has the largest population of Cambodians in the United States. However, he continued to be racked by guilt over not being able to save Huoy’s life.

In the early 1980s, the first film about the Cambodian genocide, “The Killing Fields,” was made based on the book by New York Times war correspondent Sydney Schanberg, who reported on the Vietnam War from Phnom Penh. In casting the role of Dith Pran, Schanberg’s Cambodian translator, Ngor was selected out of a crowd at a Cambodian wedding in Los Angeles.

A trailer of the ‘The Killing Fields’ documentary.

Despite no previous acting experience, Ngor won the 1985 Academy Award for best supporting actor. Ngor’s instant fame from wining the Oscar transformed him from an anonymous survivor into the world’s most prominent witness of the Cambodian genocide.

Two years later, Warner Books published his 500-page literary testimony, “A Cambodian Odyssey,” which describes the conditions of extremity under the Khmer Rouge and specifically chronicles his relationship with Huoy, from the time they met prior to 1975 until her tragic death during the genocide.

Bearing witness to Huoy’s senseless death was essential to Ngor’s process of healing. His newly acquired status as an Oscar-winning actor provided him with the platform to affirm the truth of the Khmer Rouge’s crimes. By identifying the victims and perpetrators of the genocide, he attempted to fulfill his responsibility to Huoy and his family members who died. In the book’s introduction, Ngor states:

“I have been many things in life: a medical doctor … a Hollywood actor. But nothing has shaped my life as much as surviving the Pol Pot regime. I am a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust. That’s who I am.”

Prison Portrait

Vann Nath explains a painting depicting torture at his exhibition in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. AP Photo/Heng Sinith

The second book that I want to highlight is “A Cambodian Prison Portrait,” written by Vann Nath, a painter by trade before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. During the genocide, Nath was arrested and sent to Tuol Sleng prison, where approximately 15,000 people were forced to confess to bogus crimes under torture and subsequently executed. Nath was spared execution at the last moment in order to paint portraits of Pol Pot.

Within a year, the Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power by Vietnamese forces, and Tuol Sleng was transformed into a museum to show the world the atrocities that took place there during the genocide. As one of only seven prisoners known to have survived Tuol Sleng, Nath was asked to paint the scenes of torture and execution he had witnessed to be displayed at the museum.

Deeply traumatized by his year in captivity at Tuol Sleng, Nath later tried to rebuild his shattered life and opened a small coffee shop in downtown Phnom Penh. Two humanitarian workers who frequented the coffee shop befriended Nath and convinced him to tell his story, resulting in the writing and publication of “Prison Portrait,” in 1998.

In 2009, Nath also served as a primary witness at the U.N.-assisted tribunal during the trial of Duch, the Tuol Sleng prison chief, who was eventually sentenced to life in prison. Similar to Ngor, informing the world of the conditions at Tuol Sleng fulfilled a deep responsibility to speak on behalf of those who suffered and died under the Khmer Rouge.

By publishing their personal accounts, as I found in my research, survivors attempt to fulfill a deep responsibility to speak on behalf of those who died. In doing so, they begin to assert some control over the traumatic memories that haunt their lives. These writers act against forgetting in the hope that the world will never allow another Pol Pot to try to silence the voice of the people.
George Chigas, Senior Lecturer in Cambodian Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why losing a dog can be harder than losing a relative or friend

Dogs are a big part of their owners’ routines – which makes their loss even more jarring. 'Silhouette' via www.shutterstock.com

Recently, my wife and I went through one of the more excruciating experiences of our lives – the euthanasia of our beloved dog, Murphy. I remember making eye contact with Murphy moments before she took her last breath – she flashed me a look that was an endearing blend of confusion and the reassurance that everyone was ok because we were both by her side.

When people who have never had a dog see their dog-owning friends mourn the loss of a pet, they probably think it’s all a bit of an overreaction; after all, it’s “just a dog.”

However, those who have loved a dog know the truth: Your own pet is never “just a dog.”

Many times, I’ve had friends guiltily confide to me that they grieved more over the loss of a dog than over the loss of friends or relatives. Research has confirmed that for most people, the loss of a dog is, in almost every way, comparable to the loss of a human loved one. Unfortunately, there’s little in our cultural playbook – no grief rituals, no obituary in the local newspaper, no religious service – to help us get through the loss of a pet, which can make us feel more than a bit embarrassed to show too much public grief over our dead dogs.

Perhaps if people realized just how strong and intense the bond is between people and their dogs, such grief would become more widely accepted. This would greatly help dog owners to integrate the death into their lives and help them move forward.

An interspecies bond like no other

What is it about dogs, exactly, that make humans bond so closely with them?

For starters, dogs have had to adapt to living with humans over the past 10,000 years. And they’ve done it very well: They’re the only animal to have evolved specifically to be our companions and friends. Anthropologist Brian Hare has developed the “Domestication Hypothesis” to explain how dogs morphed from their grey wolf ancestors into the socially skilled animals that we now interact with in very much the same way as we interact with other people.

Perhaps one reason our relationships with dogs can be even more satisfying than our human relationships is that dogs provide us with such unconditional, uncritical positive feedback. (As the old saying goes, “May I become the kind of person that my dog thinks I already am.”)

This is no accident. They have been selectively bred through generations to pay attention to people, and MRI scans show that dog brains respond to praise from their owners just as strongly as they do to food (and for some dogs, praise is an even more effective incentive than food). Dogs recognize people and can learn to interpret human emotional states from facial expression alone. Scientific studies also indicate that dogs can understand human intentions, try to help their owners and even avoid people who don’t cooperate with their owners or treat them well.

Not surprisingly, humans respond positively to such unrequited affection, assistance and loyalty. Just looking at dogs can make people smile. Dog owners score higher on measures of well-being and they are happier, on average, than people who own cats or no pets at all.

Like a member of the family

Our strong attachment to dogs was subtly revealed in a recent study of “misnaming.” Misnaming happens when you call someone by the wrong name, like when parents mistakenly calls one of their kids by a sibling’s name. It turns out that the name of the family dog also gets confused with human family members, indicating that the dog’s name is being pulled from the same cognitive pool that contains other members of the family. (Curiously, the same thing rarely happens with cat names.)
It’s no wonder dog owners miss them so much when they’re gone.

Psychologist Julie Axelrod has pointed out that the loss of a dog is so painful because owners aren’t just losing the pet. It could mean the loss of a source of unconditional love, a primary companion who provides security and comfort, and maybe even a protégé that’s been mentored like a child.

The loss of a dog can also seriously disrupt an owner’s daily routine more profoundly than the loss of most friends and relatives. For owners, their daily schedules – even their vacation plans – can revolve around the needs of their pets. Changes in lifestyle and routine are some of the primary sources of stress.

According to a recent survey, many bereaved pet owners will even mistakenly interpret ambiguous sights and sounds as the movements, pants and whimpers of the deceased pet. This is most likely to happen shortly after the death of the pet, especially among owners who had very high levels of attachment to their pets.

While the death of a dog is horrible, dog owners have become so accustomed to the reassuring and nonjudgmental presence of their canine companions that, more often than not, they’ll eventually get a new one.

So yes, I miss my dog. But I’m sure that I’ll be putting myself through this ordeal again in the years to come.

Frank T. McAndrew, Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, Knox College
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What might explain the unhappiness epidemic?

Although measures of teen and adult happiness dropped during the high unemployment rates of the Great Recession, it didn’t rebound when the economy started to improve. ASDF_MEDIA/Shutterstock.com

We’d all like to be a little happier.

The problem is that much of what determines happiness is outside of our control. Some of us are genetically predisposed to see the world through rose-colored glasses, while others have a generally negative outlook. Bad things happen, to us and in the world. People can be unkind, and jobs can be tedious.

But we do have some control over how we spend our leisure time. That’s one reason why it’s worth asking which leisure time activities are linked to happiness, and which aren’t.

In a new analysis of 1 million U.S. teens, my co-authors and I looked at how teens were spending their free time and which activities correlated with happiness, and which didn’t.

We wanted to see if changes in the way teens spend their free time might partially explain a startling drop in teens’ happiness after 2012 – and perhaps the decline in adults’ happiness since 2000 as well.

A possible culprit emerges

In our study, we analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders that’s been conducted annually since 1991.

Every year, teens are asked about their general happiness, in addition to how they spend their time. We found that teens who spent more time seeing their friends in person, exercising, playing sports, attending religious services, reading or even doing homework were happier. However, teens who spent more time on the internet, playing computer games, on social media, texting, using video chat or watching TV were less happy.

In other words, every activity that didn’t involve a screen was linked to more happiness, and every activity that involved a screen was linked to less happiness. The differences were considerable: Teens who spent more than five hours a day online were twice as likely to be unhappy as those who spent less than an hour a day.

Of course, it might be that unhappy people seek out screen activities. However, a growing number of studies show that most of the causation goes from screen use to unhappiness, not the other way around.

In one experiment, people who were randomly assigned to give up Facebook for a week ended that time happier, less lonely and less depressed than those who continued to use Facebook. In another study, young adults required to give up Facebook for their jobs were happier than those who kept their accounts. In addition, several longitudinal studies show that screen time leads to unhappiness but unhappiness doesn’t lead to more screen time.

If you wanted to give advice based on this research, it would be very simple: Put down your phone or tablet and go do something – just about anything – else.

It’s not just teens

These links between happiness and time use are worrying news, as the current generation of teens (whom I call “iGen” in my book of the same name) spends more time with screens than any previous generation. Time spent online doubled between 2006 and 2016, and 82 percent of 12th-graders now use social media every day (up from 51 percent in 2008).

Sure enough, teens’ happiness suddenly plummeted after 2012 (the year when the majority of Americans owned smartphones). So did teens’ self-esteem and their satisfaction with their lives, especially their satisfaction with their friends, the amount of fun they were having, and their lives as a whole. These declines in well-being mirror other studies finding sharp increases in mental health issues among iGen, including in depressive symptoms, major depression, self-harm and suicide. Especially compared to the optimistic and almost relentlessly positive millennials, iGen is markedly less self-assured, and more are depressed.

A similar trend might be occurring for adults: My co-authors and I previously found that adults over age 30 were less happy than they were 15 years ago, and that adults were having sex less frequently. There may be many reasons for these trends, but adults are also spending more time with screens than they used to. That might mean less face-to-face time with other people, including with their sexual partners. The result: less sex and less happiness.

Although both teen and adult happiness dropped during the years of high unemployment amid the Great Recession (2008-2010), happiness didn’t rebound in the years after 2012 when the economy was doing progressively better. Instead, happiness continued to decline as the economy improved, making it unlikely that economic cycles were to blame for lower happiness after 2012.

Growing income inequality could play a role, especially for adults. But if so, one would expect that happiness would have been dropping continuously since the 1980s, when income inequality began to grow. Instead, happiness began to decline around 2000 for adults and around 2012 for teens.
Nevertheless, it’s possible that concerns about the job market and income inequality reached a tipping point in the early 2000s.

Somewhat surprisingly, we found that teens who didn’t use digital media at all were actually a little less happy than those who used digital media a little bit (less than an hour a day). Happiness was then steadily lower with more hours of use. Thus, the happiest teens were those who used digital media, but for a limited amount of time.

The answer, then, is not to give up technology entirely. Instead, the solution is a familiar adage: everything in moderation. Use your phone for all the cool things it’s good for. And then set it down and go do something else.

You might be happier for it.

Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Cutting Down The Tree To Reap The Fruit

Once there was a tall, verdant tree at a royal court. The tree was richly laden with ripe, lush fruits, however, the tree was very tall. One day a man came to this royal court. The king asked him, “This tree has wonderful fruits but all the branches are too high. Can you think of a way to get at the fruits?”

The man replied, “Although this tree is very tall, there is still a way to get at its delicious fruits.” Then without more ado, the man took an axe and felled the tree. He expected it would be easy to pick the fruits once they became ripe. However, they waited and waited, but no fruits ever grew on the tree anymore. In fact the tree had withered and died.


The precept tree of the Buddha grows wonderful fruits. If we want to eat the fruits, we must keep the precepts and practice good deeds. A person who breaks the precepts is like the man who chopped down the tree. When the tree is dead and the roots dried up, it would be impossible to restore its life.

The author of this story is unknown and greatly appreciated!
 

Extinguishing The Fire

 

“Fire! Fire!” In the midst of a great feast, the villagers turned their heads in a drunken stupor. Through their hazy vision, they saw rapidly spreading flames, threatening to engulf them. They desperately looked around for a way out, but were too drunk to get up.

“We’re done for! We might as well all get ready to die,” somebody started to weep. However, one clear-headed person called out, “Isn’t the most honored and venerated Buddha staying in our village right now? Oh, Buddha, please help us escape from this disaster wrought by the God of Fire!”

Everybody prayed quietly, and a few moments later the Buddha appeared as if from nowhere. At once, his strong and solemn voice brought on a sense of calm. “Each sentient being has three fires burning within them: the fire of greed; the fire of anger; and the fire of ignorance. I will use the water of supreme wisdom to put out these fires. If what I say is true, this raging fire will be instantly extinguished.” Miraculously, in the flash of an eye, the fire disappeared without a trace.

“This is wonderful!” The villagers, with newfound faith in and gratitude for the Buddha, wept in joy. Then, the Buddha began to speak eloquently of the Dharma. Upon hearing him, the villagers were all liberated and attained the first level of enlightenment.

The monks who came with the Buddha witnessed this and thought it was unbelievable. “Buddha,” they asked, “what did they do in that past so that their lives can be saved and their minds purified today?”

The Buddha slowly began to tell them the story about how he had forged good relations with the villagers during the past three great kalpas when he was perfecting the bodhisatva practice.

“One day, a ferocious wind came and caused the bamboo bushes to chafe together with such violence that they caught fire, setting the whole mountainside forest ablaze, so all life would surely end. Then a parrot called Joy, feeling sorry for creatures without wings to fly away, soaked up water with his small wings from the nearby sea. It flew back and forth, hundreds of thousands of times, between the sea and the forest, trying to extinguish the fire. His steadfastness moved Indra, a heavenly god, who enquired, “How can you, being so small, hope to put out such a great fire?” The parrot replied, “My heart is more powerful than the fire! Even if I cannot put out the fire in this lifetime, I swear I will do it in the next.” Indra was deeply touched and, using supernatural powers, sent brimming clouds to rain on the mountainside, thus instantly saving every living being on the mountain.

The Buddha stated, “In a previous existence I was the parrot. The birds and the beasts in the forest were the villagers in a previous life. At that time, I put out the fire to save their lives. This time, again, I put out the fire to save their lives, and also extinguished the destructive fires in their hearts so they might attain peace.”

The monks carefully reflected on the meaning of this story, and then asked the Buddha, “How can the villagers attain the first level of enlightenment straight away?” The Buddha replied, “That’s because when the Kashyapa Buddha first appeared, they had the strength of purpose to keep the five precepts. Due to their steadfast observance of the precepts, they are able to truly realize the truth today and reach first stage of arhatship!”

The author of this story is unknown and greatly appreciated!

Goodbye Kepler, hello TESS: Passing the baton in the search for distant planets

Imagined view from Kepler-10b, a planet that orbits one of the 150,000 stars that the Kepler spacecraft is monitoring. NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry, CC BY

For centuries, human beings have wondered about the possibility of other Earths orbiting distant stars. Perhaps some of these alien worlds would harbor strange forms of life or have unique and telling histories or futures. But it was only in 1995 that astronomers spotted the first planets orbiting sunlike stars outside of our solar system.

In the last decade, in particular, the number of planets known to orbit distant stars grew from under 100 to well over 2,000, with another 2,000 likely planets awaiting confirmation. Most of these new discoveries are due to a single endeavor — NASA’s Kepler mission.

Number of confirmed exoplanets continues to grow. NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel and The University of Texas at Austin/Andrew Vanderburg, CC BY

Scientists can determine the size or radius of a planet by measuring the depth of the dip in brightness and knowing the size of the star. NASA Ames, CC BY

Kepler is a spacecraft housing a 1-meter telescope that illuminates a 95 megapixel digital camera the size of a cookie sheet. The instrument detected tiny variations in the brightness of 150,000 distant stars, looking for the telltale sign of a planet blocking a portion of the starlight as it transits across the telescope’s line of sight. It’s so sensitive that it could detect a fly buzzing around a single streetlight in Chicago from an orbit above the Earth. It can see stars shake and vibrate; it can see starspots and flares; and, in favorable situations, it can see planets as small as the moon.

Kepler’s thousands of discoveries revolutionized our understanding of planets and planetary systems. Now, however, the spacecraft is nearly out of its hydrazine fuel and will end its fantastic life sometime in the next few months. Luckily for planet hunters, NASA’s upcoming TESS mission is waiting in the wings and will take over the exoplanet search.

Prepping the Kepler spacecraft pre-launch in 2009. NASA/Tim Jacobs, CC BY

Kepler’s history

The Kepler mission was conceived in the early 1980s by NASA scientist Bill Borucki, with later help from David Koch. At the time, there were no known planets outside of the solar system. Kepler was eventually assembled in the 2000s and launched in March of 2009. I joined the Kepler Science Team in 2008 (as a wide-eyed rookie), eventually co-chairing the group studying the motions of the planets with Jack Lissauer.

Originally, the mission was planned to last for three and a half years with possible extensions for as long as the fuel, or the camera, or the spacecraft lasted. As time passed, portions of the camera began to fail but the mission has persisted. However, in 2013 when two of its four stabilizing gyros (technically “reaction wheels”) stopped, the original Kepler mission effectively ended.

NASA scientists figured out how to use solar pressure to stabilize Kepler. NASA Ames/W Stenzel, CC BY

Even then, with some ingenuity, NASA was able to use reflected light from the Sun to help steer the spacecraft. The mission was rechristened as K2 and continued finding planets for another half decade. Now, with the fuel gauge near empty, the business of planet hunting is winding down and the spacecraft will be left adrift in the solar system. The final catalog of planet candidates from the original mission was completed late last year and the last observations of K2 are wrapping up.

Kepler’s science

Squeezing what knowledge we can from those data will continue for years to come, but what we’ve seen thus far has amazed scientists across the globe.

We have seen some planets that orbit their host stars in only a few hours and are so hot that the surface rock vaporizes and trails behind the planet like a comet tail. Other systems have planets so close together that if you were to stand on the surface of one, the second planet would appear larger than 10 full moons. One system is so packed with planets that eight of them are closer to their star than the Earth is to the Sun. Many have planets, and sometimes multiple planets, orbiting within the habitable zone of their host star, where liquid water may exist on their surfaces.

As with any mission, the Kepler package came with trade-offs. It needed to stare at a single part of the sky, blinking every 30 minutes, for four straight years. In order to study enough stars to make its measurements, the stars had to be quite distant – just as when you stand in the middle of a forest, there are more trees farther from you than right next to you. Distant stars are dim, and their planets are hard to study. Indeed, one challenge for astronomers who want to study the properties of Kepler planets is that Kepler itself is often the best instrument to use. High quality data from ground-based telescopes requires long observations on the largest telescopes – precious resources that limit the number of planets that can be observed.

We now know that there are at least as many planets in the galaxy as there are stars, and many of those planets are quite unlike what we have here in the solar system. Learning the characteristics and personalities of the wide variety of planets requires that astronomers investigate the ones orbiting brighter and closer stars where more instruments and more telescopes can be brought to bear.

Once launched, TESS will identify exoplanets orbiting the brightest stars just outside our solar system. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY

Enter TESS

Duration of TESS’ observations on the celestial sphere, taking into account the overlap between sectors. NASA, CC BY

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, led by MIT’s George Ricker, is slated to launch in the next few weeks and will search for planets using the same detection technique that Kepler used. TESS’ orbit, rather than being around the Sun, will have a close relationship with the Moon: TESS will orbit the Earth twice for each lunar orbit. TESS’ observing pattern, rather than staring at a single part of the sky, will scan nearly the entire sky with overlapping fields of view (much like the petals on a flower).

Given what we learned from Kepler, astronomers expect TESS to find thousands more planetary systems. By surveying the whole sky, we will find systems that orbit stars 10 times closer and 100 times brighter than those found by Kepler – opening up new possibilities for measuring planet masses and densities, studying their atmospheres, characterizing their host stars, and establishing the full nature of the systems in which the planets reside. This information, in turn, will tell us more about our own planet’s history, how life may have started, what fates we avoided and what other paths we could have followed.

The quest to find our place in the universe continues as Kepler finishes its leg of the journey and TESS takes the baton.

Jason Steffen, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Understanding Facebook's data crisis: 5 essential reads

What will Mark Zuckerberg say to Congress? AP Photo/Noah Berger

Most of Facebook’s 2 billion users have likely had their data collected by third parties, the company revealed April 4. That follows reports that 87 million users’ data were used to target online political advertising in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

As company CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress, Facebook is beginning to respond to international public and government criticism of its data-harvesting and data-sharing policies. Many scholars around the U.S. are discussing what happened, what’s at stake, how to fix it, and what could come next. Here we spotlight five examples from our recent coverage.

1. What actually happened?

A lot of the concern has arisen from reporting that indicated Cambridge Analytica’s analysis was based on profiling people’s personalities, based on work from Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan.

Media scholar Matthew Hindman actually asked Kogan what he had done. As Hindman explained, “Information on users’ personalities or ‘psychographics’ was just a modest part of how the model targeted citizens. It was not a personality model strictly speaking, but rather one that boiled down demographics, social influences, personality and everything else into a big correlated lump.”

2. What were the effects of what happened?

On a personal level, this level of data collection – particularly for the 50 million Facebook users who had never consented to having their data collected by Kogan or Cambridge Analytica – was distressing. Ethical hacker Timothy Summers noted that democracy itself is at stake:

“What used to be a public exchange of information and democratic dialogue is now a customized whisper campaign: Groups both ethical and malicious can divide Americans, whispering into the ear of each and every user, nudging them based on their fears and encouraging them to whisper to others who share those fears.”

3. What should I do in response?

The backlash has been significant, with most Facebook users expressing some level of concern over what might be done with personal data Facebook has on them. As sociologists Denise Anthony and Luke Stark explain, people shouldn’t trust Facebook or other companies that collect massive amounts of user data: “Neither regulations nor third-party institutions currently exist to ensure that social media companies are trustworthy.”

4. What if I want to quit Facebook?

Many people have thought about, and talked about, deleting their Facebook accounts. But it’s harder than most people expect to actually do so. A communications research group at the University of Pennsylvania discussed all the psychological boosts that keep people hooked on social media, including Facebook’s own overt protestations:

“When one of us tried deactivating her account, she was told how huge the loss would be – profile disabled, all the memories evaporating, losing touch with over 500 friends.”

5. Should I be worried about future data-using manipulation?

If Facebook is that hard to leave, just think about what will happen as virtual reality becomes more popular. The powerful algorithms that manipulate Facebook users are not nearly as effective as VR will be, with its full immersion, writes user-experience scholar Elissa Redmiles:

“A person who uses virtual reality is, often willingly, being controlled to far greater extents than were ever possible before. Everything a person sees and hears – and perhaps even feels or smells – is totally created by another person.”

And people are concerned now that they’re too trusting.
Jeff Inglis, Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation
This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Find Out the Truth About Tap Water

(Family Features) While the tap water you drink may look clean, it may contain harmful contaminants like lead, pesticides and industrial pollutants. These and others may be picked up on the journey from your water treatment plant through miles of pipes to your home.

To help clear up any misconceptions about what’s really in your water, the experts at PUR offer this myth-busting advice:

Myth: Living close to a fresh water source makes tap water safer to drink.
 
Truth: Even if you live close to a fresh water source, your water goes on a long journey through an often aging infrastructure before it reaches your tap. According to Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc., up to 10 million lead service lines are still in use in the country today, potentially allowing lead particles to enter into your water.

Myth: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates all contaminants.
 
Truth: There are about 100,000 potential contaminants in drinking water. According to the EPA, its Safe Drinking Water Act only regulates 103. That means water that meets the government’s safe drinking standards may not meet yours.

Myth: All water filters are created equal.
 
Truth: While both pitcher and faucet filters remove unwanted contaminants, a faucet filter is usually a step up from a pitcher because it has a longer life and can remove even more contaminants, including lead.  As every brand is different, it’s important to check the types of contaminants each filter removes and confirm it is certified by NSF and the Water Quality Association for contamination reduction. Doing so can help you get the healthiest, cleanest tasting water possible.

Myth: You can determine if tap water is safe to drink by how it looks, smells and tastes.
 
Truth: While your water might look, smell and taste clean, it could contain contaminants that are potentially harmful to your health, like lead, which is colorless, odorless and has no taste.
“Knowing what’s in the water you drink and cook with is important, but determining the quality of your local water supply can seem daunting,” said Keri Glassman, registered dietitian, nutritionist and PUR spokesperson. “Fortunately, there’s a free online resource called KnowYourWater.com that allows users to type in any address to easily learn about lead and other possible contaminants in their water.”

Myth: Boiling water removes lead.
 
Truth: Boiling water may reduce bacteria found in the water, but will not remove lead. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the lead concentration of water can actually increase slightly when water is boiled because some of the water evaporates during the boiling process.


Myth: Drinking filtered water is expensive.
 
Truth: Using a faucet filtration system for one year is comparable in cost to purchasing enough bottled water to last only two months. An option like the PUR Advanced Faucet Filtration System is an on-demand solution for filtered water right from the tap and is certified to reduce over 70 contaminants, including 99 percent of lead, 96 percent of mercury and 92 percent of certain pesticides.

Get your individual water quality report and learn more at KnowYourWater.com.
SOURCE:
PUR

The tragic story of America's only native parrot, now extinct for 100 years

John James Audubon’s ‘Carolina Parakeets.’ Wikimedia Commons

It was winter in upstate New York in 1780 in a rural town called Schoharie, home to the deeply religious Palatine Germans. Suddenly, a flock of gregarious red and green birds flew into town, seemingly upon a whirlwind.

The townspeople thought the end of the world was upon them. Though the robin-sized birds left quickly, their appearance was forever imprinted on local lore. As author Benjamin Smith Barton wrote, “The more ignorant Dutch settlers were exceedingly alarmed. They imagined, in dreadful consternation, that it portended nothing less calamitous than the destruction of the world.”

You and I know that the birds weren’t a precursor of mankind’s demise – but in a way, there was impending doom ahead. These birds were Carolina parakeets, America’s only native parrot. Exactly 100 years ago this February, the last captive Carolina parakeet died, alone in a cage in the Cincinnati Zoo, the same zoo where the last captive passenger pigeon, named Martha, died four years earlier. The last “official” wild Carolina parakeet was spotted in Florida just two years later.

Why did these birds go extinct? It remains a mystery. Given that parrots today are at greater risk for extinction than other major bird groups, is there anything scientists can learn from the Carolina parakeet?

Unraveling parakeet mysteries

Over the past six years, I’ve been collecting information about where the Carolina parakeet was observed over the last 450 years.

The extinct Carolina parakeet, mounted on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

I spent hours upon hours reading historical documents, travel diaries and other writings, ranging from the 16th century all the way into the 1940s. I’ve often become lost in the stories surrounding these parrot observations – from the first accounts of Europeans exploring the New World, to the harrowing tales of settlers traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1800s, to grizzled egg hunters scouring the swamps of Florida in the early 1900s.

I also dug through natural history museum collections, looking at what many would just see as just some old, dusty, creepy dead birds. But I see them differently: beautiful in their own way, each with a story to tell.

My goal was to unravel some of the lasting mysteries about the Carolina parakeet – like where it lived. Historically, people used to determine a species range by plotting the most extreme observations of that species on a map, drawing a polygon around them and called it a day. Because of this, people long thought Carolina parakeets lived from upstate New York all the way to Colorado and down to the Texas coast.

But birds are often seen in areas where they don’t normally go. For instance, the range of the snowy owl – like Hedwig of “Harry Potter” fame – doesn’t really extend all the way to Bermuda, though one was once spotted there.

The historic distribution of the extinct Carolina parakeet. The green area represents new understanding of where the eastern subspecies lived. The blue is where the western subspecies lived. The red line is based on a range map for the species published in 1891. Ecology and Evolution (2017), CC BY

What’s more, scientists don’t know what really drove these parakeets to extinction. Some thought it was habitat loss. Some thought it was hunting and trapping. Some thought disease. A few even thought it was competition with nonnative honey bees for tree cavities, where the parakeets would roost and nest.

Thanks to the data I compiled as well as cutting-edge machine learning approaches to analyze those data, my colleagues and I were able to reconstruct the Carolina parakeets’ likely range and climate niche. It turned out to be much smaller than previously believed. Generally, their range extended from Nebraska east to Ohio, south to Louisiana and Texas. The eastern subspecies lived mostly along the southeastern coast from Alabama, through Florida and up to Virginia.

We were also able to confirm the longstanding hypothesis that the parakeets in the northwest part of their range migrated southeasterly in the winter, to avoid the blistering cold of the Midwest.

Why it matters

In a world that faces extinction on a scale not seen in the past 65 million years, some of you may wonder: Aren’t there more important things to study?

While this may seem rather minor, some scientists consider the Carolina parakeet one of the top candidates for “de-extinction.” That’s a process in which DNA is harvested from specimens and used to “resurrect” extinct species, not unlike “Jurassic Park” (but way less action and decidedly less Jeff Goldblum).

If someone were to spend millions of dollars doing all of the genetic and breeding work to bring back this species, or any other, how will they figure out where to release these birds? Given the effects of climate change, it’s no longer a given that scientists could release birds exactly where they used to be and expect them to flourish.

Whether or not de-extinction is a worthwhile use of conservation effort and money is another question, best answered by someone other than me. But this is just an example of one potential use of this type of research.

In many ways, the history of the Carolina parakeet’s decline parallels the history of American growth over the course of the 19th century. All that prosperity came with many terrible costs. As the U.S. expanded and remade the landscape to suit its needs, many native species lost out.

Today, parrots face a serious threat of extinction. Parrot diversity tends to be highest in areas around the world that are rapidly developing, much like the U.S. during the 19th century. So whatever lessons the Carolina parakeet can teach us may be crucial moving forward.

I continue to study Carolina parakeets, and other recently extinct species, in the effort to hear and relate these lessons. As cliche as it is to say, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Kevin R. Burgio, Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut
This article was originally published on The Conversation.