Pumice and the Origins of a Potential Origin of Life

Image courtesy of Flickr user "Hypocentre", used under Creative Commons

Pumice is interesting stuff. For one thing, it’s light. Really light. It has such a low density that it can and does float in water. It’s also very English muffin-like in its myriad nooks and crannies. These and some other key properties have had some who study the origins of life (here and on other planets) thinking hard about pumice as a possible starting place for life.

In the September issue of the journal Astrobiology, Martin D. Brasier and coauthors lay out their case for pumice (Brasier 2011).

Figure 2 (Brasier 2011), click to embiggen.

And I think pumice has a strong case indeed. But what really intrigues me is that Brasier, et al. seem to think they’re on to something… novel.

They write:

The notion of tiny rock compartments acting as reaction vessels for the synthesis and development of early organic molecules is not, of course, a new idea (see Nisbet, 1985). Others have argued for the potential of micropores within feldspar and zeolite minerals (Parsons et al., 1998; Smith 1998; Smith et al., 1999). The potential of such fabrics for RNA synthesis has lately gained support from computer modeling (Branciamore et al., 2009). But the potential of pumice for the emergence of early life—plus the diagenetic mineral suites to which pumice can play host—has not received attention. Below, we therefore explore the possibility that extensive rafts of pumice were positioned for hundreds—possibly thousands—of years at the interface of the early ocean-atmosphere-lithosphere system, concentrating metals, phosphates, catalysts, and organic polymers. We explore whether such deposits could have provided a remarkable setting for the emergence of the first life on Earth

Interesting stuff. But there’s a slight problem. Pumice as the location of the origin of life has “received attention”. Curtis Ebbesmeyer coauthored (with Akira Okubo) a letter and submitted it to Nature back in 1993 on exactly this subject, entitled “Origin of Life in Floating Pumice”. Nature did not accept the letter for publication, suggesting further work to bolster their case. Ebbesmeyer published the submitted letter in the journal Oceanography a few years later as part of a tribute issue to Akira (Ebbesmeyer 1999).

I first came across Ebbesmeyer’s pumice hypothesis ten years later, in the book Ebesmeyer coauthored with Eric Scigliano recounting Ebbesmeyer’s oceanographic career entitled Flotsametrics. (Ebbesmeyer achieved notoriety by using Nike footwear and rubber duck bath toys lost at sea to track ocean currents.)

Excerpt from "Flotsametrics" (Ebbesmeyer 2009).

To be clear, I don’t think that Brasier et al. have done anything untoward. It’s not as though Ebbesmeyer and Akira Okubo actually published their paper in a conventional manner. And had I not had Ebbesmeyer’s book recommended to me, I wouldn’t have any idea that someone got there first.

I think the pumice idea is a fascinating one, and Brasier et al. seem to have written the kind of paper that Nature suggested Ebbesmeyer and Akira resubmit with. I hope if any negative attention comes out of this that it will at least spark a greater interest in this fascinating candidate for the first place life called home.

References:

• Brasier, M.D., et al. (2011): Pumice as a Remarkable Substrate for the Origin of Life. Astrobiology, 11(7), 725-735, doi:10.1089/ast.2010.0546.
• Ebbesmeyer, C. (1999): Pumice and Mines Afloat on the Sea. Oceanography, 12, 1, 17-21.
• Ebbesmeyer, C., and E. Scigliano (2009): Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man’s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science. Smithsonian, ISBN: 0061558419.

Outstanding science writing

Via Ed Yong (who is no slouch himself), an excellent piece by Carl Zimmer: The Human Lake. Go read it right now.

A test for establishment climate journalists

Image courtesy of Flickr user just.Luc

Over at Keith Kloor’s blog, I wrote:

Keith, respectfully- either you can acknowledge that [Bjorn Lomborg] engages in blatant misrepresentation of key indicators of climate change like [sea level rise] and [temperature] trends, or you cannot.

If you can’t, I’m not particularly interested in whether it’s a refusal to do so due to adherence to some imagined journalistic allegiance to neutrality or out of a lack of ability to understand that he’s doing it.

If climate journalists either can’t see what he’s doing or refuse to acknowledge it, then we’re in far worse trouble than I ever imagined.

I’ve submitted a similar question to Dot Earth. Can establishment climate journalists acknowledge what Lomborg does? If not, what hope is there that the general public can make an informed assessment of his credibility?

Untold gallons of figurative ink have been spilled over the efforts of climate “skeptics” to discredit Michael Mann and colleagues’ paleoclimatic reconstructions on the grounds of bad statistics. Republicans even went so far as to get “statistics expert” Ed Wegman to put an official seal on the supposed discrediting, and we can see how that’s all working out for them. Meanwhile, the overall conclusions of the Mann et al. papers have been upheld by independent reviews, other multiproxy reconstructions, and independent lines of paleoclimatic evidence, even though some of Mann’s initial statistical choices could have been better.

By contrast Lomborg takes a metric like temperature or sea level rise and then cherry-picks an interval to get the lowest possible trend out of it. If it’s an interval of two years at the time of press, so be it. If he needs to write another article and using the same interval no longer gives the lowest possible trend, he’ll use four. It’s inarguable that using his own intervals from previous claims completely contradicts his current ones, and that there is no physical, statistical, or logical justification for doing so. He is just cherry-picking. Period.

But you’d never know it reading Andy Revkin’s or Keith Kloor’s blogs. Why not? What good is climate journalism if it must slavishly attend to largely unfounded claims of “skeptics” but can’t identify clear-cut cases of misrepresentation by people like Bjorn Lomborg?

Blog Action Day 2009 – Climate Change

Of Moles and Whacking: “Mojib Latif predicted two decades of cooling”

Or: Journalists should report what climate science actually “says”, rather than what they mistakenly “believe” it to say – Part II

In Part I we looked at some issues relating to climate science that the Houston Chronicle’s “SciGuy” Eric Berger was mistaken about and had blamed “climate scientists” for. And while pointing out that it isn’t particularly fair for Mr. Berger to blame climate scientists for his misunderstandings, it would also be unfair to say that his confusion was his fault alone.

Fred Pearce wrote a recent column for New Scientist claiming climate modeler Mojib Latif predicted that up to two decades of cooling were coming: “We could be about to enter one or even two decades of cooler temperatures, according to one of the world’s top climate modellers.” Pearce’s claim was promptly picked up by the denialosphere and has been cited by “skeptics” as well as those who believe climate science is undergoing some sort of shake up, like Mr. Berger. Pearce’s story is greatly misleading both in terms of what Latif actually said and the role climate scientists believe natural variability plays in the climate system.

Of moles and whacking: “Climate models didn’t predict this lack of warming”

Or: Journalists should report what climate science actually “says”, rather than what they mistakenly “believe” it to say – Part I

Not everyone who writes misleading or confused stories on climate change does so for the partisan reasons that the Jonah Goldberg’s of the world do. Sometimes the writer is simply incorrect about what the science says, and his or her errors are made in perfectly good faith. Such problems often arise when the writer mistakes the “conventional wisdom” or individuals’ opinion on climate change for what the science actually says. A case in point is a recent column by the Houston Chronicle’s “SciGuy”, Eric Berger, entitled “Climate scientists should talk about what ‘may’ happen, rather than what ‘will’ happen”. Predictably, the post is being lauded in the denialosphere.

It appears that Mr. Berger has made some unfortunate assumptions about climate science that turn out not to be supportable. Finding these assumptions to be mistaken, Mr. Berger disappointingly chooses to blame climate scientists instead of digging a little deeper into his misconceptions to see where he went awry. Doing so ourselves may help illuminate not only how and why Mr. Berger came to such unsupportable conclusions, but also how we can avoid doing so in the future.

Ones for the Road

• Playing the telephone game with the denialist right
• I’m not asking you to hang a baby by a broomstick, but…
• Essential or non-essential defense spending?
• Everybody relax. Turns out climate sensitivity is virtually zero.
• Remembering Apollo 11 [via BA]

Ones for the Road

• Committed terrestrial ecosystem changes due to climate change [Nature Geoscience]
• Dinodontology
• Obama, climate legislation, and Abraham Lincoln
• Discounting the Discount Rate [via OIIFTG]
• Goosse H., P.Y. Barriat, W. Lefebvre, M.F. Loutre and V. Zunz – Introduction to climate dynamics and climate modeling

Ones for the Road

[I used to have a list of things I was currently reading heading up my blogroll, but I axed it sometime back as the scrolling to get to some of the blogs listed towards the bottom was tedious enough. I'm going to test out periodically posting a "what I'm reading" list and see how that works. It does seem to be all the rage these days.]

• Is the Ag Committee ruining everything WRT climate legislation? [Via] Or will Waxman fend off Big Corn and bigger stupid?
• GONG might just be the sound of a resurgent solar cycle.
• Prometheus is an ex-blog. Officially.
• Oxygen-18 of O2 Records the Impact of Abrupt Climate Change on the Terrestrial Biosphere [Science]
• Forests, climate, and Bonn climate change talks

Monterey Bay Aquarium: Carnival of the Blue 24 and Seafood WATCH

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Notes blog is hosting Carnival of the Blue 24, check it out. I’d also encourage sea food lovers, conservationists, and others concerned with sustainability to stop by another Monterey Bay Aquarium site, the Seafood WATCH Program.

By signing up to be a “Seafood WATCH Advocate”, you will receive a number of awareness-raising aides, including the indispensable pocket seafood guide, “Thank You cards” to deposit at eateries that offer and promote sustainable seafood choices, and more.

[Also of note, if you have joined the Cult of Apple, the WATCH program has a free iPhone app that puts up-to-date info on sustainable seafood eating at your fingertips, even when you're outside phone service areas. To be honest I thought the app was a bit gimmicky at first and didn't think I would use it, as I carry a folded guide in my wallet. I've already used it twice in the week that I've had it, however. I think I might pass my wallet guide along to a friend.]

Even those who agree on the dire need for our fisheries to be managed sustainably don’t always agree on how to express their concern through personal behavior. Jennifer Jacquet, Carnival of the Blue 24 contributor and blogger at Guilty Planet (formerly of another SciBlog, Shifting Baselines) argues at The Reef Tank from the perspective that fish should be treated as wildlife rather than commodities and thus not be eaten at all. She doesn’t suggest that all adopt her stance, but argues that expanding the conversation to include points of view such as hers could shift debate somewhat away from the seemigly pathological focus on consumption.

What do you think?