Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction

by Newitz, Annalee

  2. In modern parlance, the term “diaspora”: William Safran, “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1 (1991). See also Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction—Second Edition (New York: Routledge, 2008).

  3. UC Berkeley archaeologist Carol Redmount: “Bitter Lives: Israel In and Out of Egypt,” from The Oxford History of the Biblical World (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1998).

  4. But then in the eighth century: Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: The Free Press, 2001).

  5. adopting the local language, Aramaic: “Into Exile: From the Assyrian Conquest of Israel to the Fall of Babylon,” Mordechai Cogan, from The Oxford History of the Biblical World (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1998).

  6. Yehudim, or Jews: Ibid.

  7. As geneticist David Goldstein notes in his book: David B. Goldstein, Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008).

  8. we know from contemporary sources: Leonard Victor Rutgers, “Roman Policy Towards the Jews: Expulsions from the City of Rome During the First Century C.E.,” Classical Antiquity, vol. 13, no. 1 (April 1994): 56–74.

  9. Ostrer wanted to know: Personal interview, April 6, 2012.

  10. researchers at the Jewish HapMap project scoured their data: See Gil Atzmon, Li Hao, Itsik Pe’er, Christopher Velez, Alexander Pearlman et al., “Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era: Major Jewish Diaspora Populations Comprise Distinct Genetic Clusters with Shared Middle Eastern Ancestry,” The American Journal of Human Genetics 86 (June 11, 2010): 850–59. You can also read Harry Ostrer’s popular account of their work in Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  11. hints about where people’s ancestors settled in the diaspora: Scientists can even narrow down the time period when different groups likely split up and headed in different directions. Earlier in this book, we talked about how evolutionary biologists tracking the origins of Homo sapiens can trace the divergence of two species by looking at DNA shared between them and assuming a fixed rate of mutation, or change over time. The divergence of two or more haplotypes can be traced the same way. Syrian Jews and Eastern European Jews, for example, share many long strands of DNA. But in the centuries since those two groups split apart, those strands have accumulated a lot of random mutations. Assuming a fixed rate of mutation over time, scientists like Ostrer can estimate that the two groups likely split up roughly 2,500 years ago. And, by looking at the geographical distribution of haplotypes over Europe, some scientists have even started to track migration paths. See W. Y. Yang, J. Novembre, E. Eskin, and E. Halperin, “A Model-Based Approach for Analysis of Spatial Structure in Genetic Data,” Nature Genetics 44 (2012): 725–31.

  12. once again sent Jews running: Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999).

  13. A group of Portuguese anthropologists: Inês Nogueiro, Licínio Manco, Verónica Gomes, António Amorim, and Leonor Gusmão, “Phylogeographic Analysis of Paternal Lineages in NE Portuguese Jewish Communities,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 141 (March 2010): 373–81.

  14. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness: Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (Reissued Edition) (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1993).

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: ADAPT: MEET THE TOUGHEST MICROBES IN THE WORLD

  1. Its subsequent 3.5-billion-year career: T. N. Taylor and E. L. Taylor, The Biology and Evolution of Fossil Plants (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993).

  2. cyano evolved inside other cells: This account of plant-cell evolution is called endosymbiotic theory, and originated over a century ago. Today it’s fairly widely accepted and is backed by genetic evidence. See, for example, Geoffrey I. McFadden and Giel G. van Dooren, “Evolution: Red Algal Genome Affirms a Common Origin of All Plastids,” Current Biology 14 (July 13, 2004): R514–16.

  3. Brett Neilan, a biologist at the University of New South Wales: Personal interview, January 15, 2012.

  4. circadian rhythms of light and dark: Hideo Iwasaki and Takao Kondo, “The Current State and Problems of Circadian Clock Studies in Cyanobacteria,” Plant Cell Physiology 41 (2000): 1013–20.

  5. ubiquitous and sustainable: At least until the Sun incinerates the Earth in about a billion years.

  6. One of these scientists is physicist-turned-biologist Himadri Pakrasi: Personal interviews, January 6 and March 8, 2012.

  7. “You know why most plants are green?”: Personal interview, March 9, 2012.

  8. Environmental engineer Richard Axelbaum: Personal interview, March 8, 2012.

  9. As a result, the only by-products: S. A. Skeen, B. M. Kumfer, and R. L. Axelbaum, “Nitric Oxide Emissions During Coal and Coal/Biomass Combustion Under Air-fired and Oxy-fuel Conditions,” Energy & Fuels 24 (2010): 4144–52.

  10. his team made an incredible breakthrough: Anindita Bandyopadhyay, Jana Stöckel, Hongtao Min, Louis A. Sherman, and Himadri B. Pakrasi, “High Rates of Photobiological H2 Production by a Cyanobacterium Under Aerobic Conditions,” Nature Communications 1 (December 14, 2010).

  11. Steven Chu has talked about replacing the oil economy: “The Alternative Choice: Steven Chu Wants to Save the World by Transforming Its Largest Industry: Energy,” The Economist (July 2, 2009).

  CHAPTER TWELVE: REMEMBER: SWIM SOUTH

  1. Charles Melville Scammon wrote about his experiences hunting grays: Charles Melville Scammon, The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America (San Francisco: JH Carmany, and New York: Putnam, 1874). Full text available via the Internet Archive at http://archive.org/details/marinemammalsofn00scam.

  2. Their brains “sleep”: Most scientists believe that gray whales, like other cetaceans, experience “unihemispheric slow wave sleep,” where only one hemisphere of the brain “sleeps” at a time. Whales also experience little to no REM sleep. See, for example, Oleg I. Lyamin, Paul R. Manger, Sam H. Ridgway, Lev M. Mukhametov, and Jerome M. Siegel, “Cetacean Sleep: An Unusual Form of Mammalian Sleep,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 32 (October 2008): 1451–84.

  3. 2.5 million years ago: N. D. Pyenson and D. R. Lindberg, “What Happened to Gray Whales during the Pleistocene? The Ecological Impact of Sea-Level Change on Benthic Feeding Areas in the North Pacific Ocean,” PLoS ONE 6 (2011): e21295.

  4. Harvey, now a professor at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories: Personal interview, February 2, 2012. All subsequent quotes from Harvey are from this interview.

  5. grays are migrating later in the year: John Upton, “Scientists Look Far to the North to Explain Young Whale in San Francisco Bay,” New York Times (March 17, 2012).

  6. got caught in the frozen Artic in 1988: This story is recounted by the journalist Tom Rose, in his book Big Miracle (Reprint) (New York: St. Martins, 2011). Originally published in 1989, under the title Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World’s Greatest Non-Event.

  7. A large group of grays lived in the Atlantic for thousands of years: Scott Noakes, “Georgia’s Pleistocene Atlantic Gray Whales,” Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary, http://graysreef.noaa.gov/science/research/gray_whale/welcome.html.

  8. 20,000–30,000 individuals: This number is a point of some debate, as populations change every year, and the only way we can count them is by observing how many different individuals pass by observation stations along the Pacific Coast. The number that scientists seem to agree on most is 22,000 individuals, based on average numbers from data collected over the past two decades. The population is growing by over 2 percent every year, and in 2012 over 200 babies were born. I’m basing my numbers on two sources: S. Elizabeth Alter, Eric Rynes, and Stephen Palumbi, “DNA Evidence for Historic Population Size and Past Ecosystem Impacts of Gray Whales,” PNAS 104 (September 18, 2007): 15162–67, and the annual population est
imate reports issued by NOAA, which collects data from several observation stations along the coast from Alaska to Mexico (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/sars/).

  9. Korean-Okhotsk grays: O. Yu. Tyurneva, Yu. M. Yakovlev, V. V. Vertyankin, and N. I. Selin, “The Peculiarities of Foraging Migrations of the Korean-Okhotsk Gray Whale (Eschrichtius robustus) Population in Russian Waters of the Far Eastern Seas,” Russian Journal of Marine Biology 36 (March 2010): 117–24.

  10. in 1949 the newly formed International Whaling Commission: The IWC was established in 1946, and included several member states such as the United States, Japan, and the then Soviet Union. You can see a record of every annual meeting online (http://www.iwcoffice.org/meetings/historical.htm). What’s interesting about this and other early conservation groups is that it combined the interests of environmentalism with commercial interests. It’s also worth noting that some Inuit groups are still permitted to hunt a small number of grays every year.

  11. Others argue, based on genetic data: Alter et al., “DNA Evidence for Historic Population Size.”

  12. Several studies suggest that noise pollution: Many of these studies are collected in Scott D. Kraus and Rosalind M. Rolland, eds., The Urban Whale: North Atlantic Whales at the Crossroads (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2007).

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: PRAGMATIC OPTIMISM, OR STORIES OF SURVIVAL

  1. “To try to foretell the future”: Octavia Butler, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence (May 2000).

  2. Butler recalled visitors making casually racist remarks: Octavia Butler, “Octavia Butler’s Aha! Moment,” O, The Oprah Magazine (May 2002).

  3. Devil Girl from Mars: Octavia Butler, “Devil Girl from Mars: Why I Write Science Fiction,” MIT Communications Forum, http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/butler.html.

  4. In her trilogy of novels called Lilith’s Brood: Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000). Original trilogy of novels published in 1987, ’88, and ’89.

  5. Parable of the Sower and its sequel, Parable of the Talents: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000). Originally published in 1993. Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2000). Originally published in 1998.

  6. “I used to despise religion”: “Octavia Butler: Persistence,” Locus (June 2000).

  7. “There’s no single answer”: Octavia Butler, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE MUTATING METROPOLIS

  1. In the past decade, the number of people on Earth living in cities: The highlights of “World Urbanization Prospects” (last revised April 2012), a U.N. Report on population demographics in cities, gives us this statistic, adding that “urban dwellers will likely account for 86 percent of the population in the more developed regions and for 64 percent of that in the less developed regions.” You can view the U.N.’s World Urbanization Prospects report, and the data that informs it, on the U.N. website at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.htm.

  2. The World Without Us: Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007).

  3. It would require us to regulate the bodies of billions of women: I am talking here about what it would take to lower the population over the next half century. Many studies have shown that birth rates plummet dramatically in countries where women receive the same educational and economic opportunities as men. It is my fervent hope that over the long term, women’s equality with men around the world will lead to a population size that is better adapted to the Earth’s environment. Until that happens, however, we must accept that our population is growing and prepare for it.

  4. Jane Jacobs, in her groundbreaking 1961 book: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961).

  5. Some call it an emergent property: See, for example, Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (New York: Scribner, 2002).

  6. And the fantasy author Fritz Leiber dubbed it “megapolisomancy”: This is from Fritz Leiber’s incredible 1977 urban fantasy novella about San Francisco, Our Lady of Darkness.

  7. “battle suits for surviving the future”: Matt Jones, “The City Is a Battle Suit for Surviving the Future,” io9.com (September 20, 2009), http://io9.com/5362912/the-city-is-a-battlesuit-for-surviving-the-future.

  8. Anthropologist Monica L. Smith, who researches the development of cities: Monica L. Smith, ed., “Introduction,” The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003).

  9. Spiro Kostof suggested the same thing: Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston and London: Little, Brown and Company, 1991).

  10. Cities were born in two very different regions of the world: A helpful primer on ancient Peruvian cities can be found in Kimberly Munro, “Ancient Peru: The First Cities,” Popular Archaeology 3 (March 18, 2011). And my information about ancient Mesopotamian cities and their relationship to agriculture comes from Charles Gates, Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome (Second Edition) (London and New York: Routledge, 2011).

  11. Ian Hodder, who has led excavations at Çatalhöyük: Ian Hodder and Craig Cessford, “Daily Practice and Social Memory at Çatalhöyük,” American Antiquity 69 (January 2004).

  12. Anthropologist Elizabeth Stone has been excavating ancient cities: Personal interview, April 25, 2012.

  13. The differences between ancient and medieval cities are just as stark: For much more nuanced representations of historical urban development, see Kostof, The City Shaped; Josef W. Konvitz, The Urban Millennium: The City-Building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985); and Richard T. LeGates and Frederic Stout, eds., The City Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 1996).

  14. As Harvard economist Edward Glaeser puts it in his book: Edward Glaeser, The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011).

  15. Urban geographer Richard Walker believes the San Francisco Bay Area provides: Personal interview, June 16, 2012. For Walker’s insights into San Francisco as an environmental city, see also his book The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2007).

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: DISASTER SCIENCE

  1. experimental reconnaissance robots: See, for example, “Robots Converge on Disaster City,” Disaster Preparedness and Response: TEEX (March 22, 2010), http://www.teex.org/teex.cfm?pageid=USARresc&area=USAR&storyid=984&templateid=23.

  2. At Oregon State’s tsunami lab: Officially called the O. H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, the facility makes its data publicly available so that other researchers can build simulations based on what other scientists have learned about wave behaviors. A good example of how this data-sharing works can be found in this paper: T. E. Baldock, D. Cox, T. Maddux, J. Killian, and L. Fayler, “Kinematics of Breaking Tsunami Wavefronts: A Data Set from Large Scale Laboratory Experiments,” Coastal Engineering 56 (May–June 2009).

  3. I met the UC Berkeley civil engineer Shakhzod Takhirov inside a three-story warehouse: Personal interview, February 16, 2012.

  4. Richard Iverson has created hundreds of landslides to learn more: Personal interview, June 26, 2012. You can also see an incredible collection of videos from Iverson’s experiments on the USGS Debris Flow Flume site: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1315/.

  5. George Thomas, a former structural engineer: All comments are from his public presentation “Smarter Cities,” at Washington University in St. Louis (March 7, 2012).

  6. Japan was unprepared for the calamity: Emily Rauhala, “How Japan Became a Leader in Disaster Preparation,” Time (March 11, 2011).

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: USING MATH TO STOP A PANDEMIC

  1. David Blythe manages health surveill
ance for the Maryland public-health department: Personal interview, January 26, 2012.

  2. “In this classic urban-plague scenario”: N. C. Stenseth, B. B. Atshabar, M. Begon, S. R. Belmain, E. Bertherat et al., “Plague: Past, Present, and Future,” PLoS Medicine 5 (2008): e3.

  3. In its report, the WHO speculated: “WHO Issues Consensus Document on the Epidemiology of SARS” (October 17, 2003), http://www.who.int/csr/sars/archive/epiconsensus/en/.

  4. Tini Garske is a mathematician and researcher with the Imperial College London’s: T. Garske, H. Yu, Z. Peng, M. Ye, H. Zhou et al., “Travel Patterns in China,” PLoS ONE 6 (2011): e16364.

  5. “SARS quarantine in Toronto was both inefficient and ineffective”: Richard Schabas, “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome: Did Quarantine Help?” Canadian Journal of Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology 15 (July–August 2004): 204.

  6. Brian Coburn, and his colleagues claim that school closures: Brian J. Coburn, Bradley G. Wagner, and Sally Blower, “Modeling Influenza Epidemics and Pandemics: Insights into the Future of Swine Flu (H1N1),” BMC Medicine 7 (2009): 30.