Hello r/science! From space, NASA has been keeping an eye on Earth’s energy supply from the Sun for more than 40 years. For a long time, scientists assumed the Sun’s energy output was unwavering, they called it the ‘solar constant.’ But, by the 1980s, we learned that solar energy reaching Earth was not constant, and fluctuates with solar activity on a roughly 11-year cycle. This change in the total solar irradiance is just one of the Sun’s influences on Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and climate. We are here to talk all things TSIS-1 and Sun-Earth interactions. Joining you today will be: Peter Pilewskie, professor of ocean and atmospheric science, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder Dong Wu, Earth scientist NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Doug Rabin, solar physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Jae Lee, Earth Scientists at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Candace Carlisle, Project Manager TSIS-1 at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Charles Ichoku, NASA Earth Scientist We’ll be back to answer your questions at 3 pm ET (12 PT), Ask Us Anything!

I’m Rivka Weinberg, Professor of Philosophy at Scripps College, which is one of the Claremont Colleges, in way too sunny California. I grew up in Brooklyn (before it was cool), worked my way through Brooklyn College as a paralegal, and got my PhD. from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Most of my philosophical work has focused on the ethics and metaphysics of creating people. It still surprises me that so many people just go ahead and create an entire new human without really thinking through what they are doing to that person. It surprises me even more that so many people seem to think that life is inherently good and that living is a privilege and a treat. I find that outlook very hard to understand, though I haven’t given up trying. My book, The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible, is a culmination of my many years of thinking about what we are doing when we create a person. As the title reveals, I think we are imposing life’s risks on that person, and I consider when and why that set of risks may be permissible to impose. Although it might seem foreign to think about having a baby as imposing life’s risks on someone, I don’t think it’s as counterintuitive a conception of procreation as it might initially seem. It’s not odd to think that a teenager shouldn’t have a baby because that baby will have lots of disadvantages, i.e., face the high degree of significant life risks that are associated with being born to teen parents. It’s not unusual to think that people who carry genes for terrible diseases, such as Tay Sachs, should try to make sure that they don’t partner with another carrier and bear a child who will have to suffer so terribly. Many people think that they shouldn’t have children who would be at a high risk for a life of abject poverty. And those are all ways of thinking about whether the life risks we impose on those we create are permissible for us to impose. So that is my framework for thinking about procreative ethics. Within that framework, I think about what kind of act procreation is, whether it is always wrong, whether metaphysical puzzles such as Parfit’s famous non-identity problem make it almost always permissible (short answer: so not!), and what makes someone parentally responsible. In my book, I arrive at principles of procreative permissibility based on a broadly contractualist framework of permissible risk imposition. I am currently finishing up some papers on whether parental responsibility has a set endpoint, or indeed any endpoint; and on some aspects of risk imposition that are unique to, and uniquely problematic for, procreative acts. I am also thinking a lot about pointlessness, about how life is not the kind of thing that can have a point or purpose, and whether we can rationally find that disappointing or even tragic. I probably should have thought that through before I had children who now have to live pointless lives, like everyone else. Ah well. Fun fact: I have two children, and ten siblings. Links of Interest: My book: The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May Be Permissible An article of mine reviewing David Benatar’s antinalist book (Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence): “Is Having Children Always Wrong?” NewBooksNetwork podcast interview on my book “The Moral Complexity of Sperm Donation” Short piece in Quartz: “Is it unethical to have children in the era of climate change?” Another short piece in Quartz: “When is it immoral to have children?” EDIT: That’s it for my time! Thanks everyone for your questions and I will try to look again later.

Hi Reddit, My name is Caspar Hallmann and I am PhD candidate at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. My research focuses on population dynamics of birds and plants in relation to landscape and climate changes. My name is Eelke Jongejans and I am Assistant Professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. My research focuses on spatial population dynamics: I’m interested in the demographic and driving processes that can explain why certain populations increase in number, while others dwindle. We recently published a study titled More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas in PLOS ONE. The aims were to see whether the total weight of insects flying in German nature areas has changed over time, and whether a change can be understood by considering climate change, land use change and local changes in plant species composition. The insect biomass data were painstakingly collected by our German co-authors of the Entomological Society Krefeld, using highly standardized traps from 1989 till 2016. Approximately every 11 days they placed a new bottle with ethanol, resulting in 1503 samples collected in 63 different sites. About half of the sites were visited in more than 1 year, resulting in 96 site-year combinations. To analyze this complex dataset we modeled daily biomass as a function of explanatory variable like habitat cluster, weather variables, plant species richness, proportion of land covered by agricultural fields in a 200m radius. While these variables explained a considerable amount of variation between the collected samples, they could not explain the overall 76% decline in insect biomass that we found over the 27 years. We will be answering your questions at 1pm ET – Ask Us Anything! Unsure what to ask? Read an interview with Caspar Hallmann on PLOS Research News.

Hi reddit! I’m Dr Todd Hartman, Lecturer in Quantitative Social Science at the Sheffield Methods Institute in the UK. I am also the SMI’s Q-Step Director and a Statistical Ambassador for the Royal Statistical Society. My research focuses on political psychology. Last month I published a paper with my co-author Dr Benjamin Newman at UC Riverside on Mass Shootings and Public Support for Gun Control in the British Journal of Political Science. Polling over the last twenty years shows support for gun regulation in the US has decreased, but the number of mass shootings is rising. The US is also a bit of an anomaly compared to countries like the UK and Australia where mass shooting incidents were followed by stricter gun control legislation. We wanted to find out what effect living near a mass shooting had on residents’ attitudes towards gun control. We also wanted to see whether this effect was different depending on a person’s political leanings and other factors such as local gun culture. As part of our study we identified mass shootings in which three or more members of the general public were injured or killed with a firearm. This gave us a dataset of 210 incidents between 1966-2015 where a shooter opened fire on seemingly random members of the public. We paired this with several large and respected public opinion surveys, the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study and 2010 Pew Political Independents Survey, which measured respondents’ opinions on gun control and included other essential control variables. The zipcode information in the surveys allowed us to measure how close respondents were to a mass shooting event. Our study found that living near a mass shooting resulted in a 20 per cent increase in the probability of supporting stricter gun control. This increase in support was true for both Democrat and Republican voters. The effect also appears to be larger 1) for respondents who live near multiple mass shootings, 2) for shootings with higher numbers of victims, and 3) for more recent events. For mass shootings with more than 20 victims, for instance, the difference in probabilities more than doubles in both the 2010 CCES and the 2010 Pew data. Likewise, living near multiple mass shootings increases the estimated effect from .14 for one shooting, .35 for two shootings, and .43 for three shootings in the 2010 Pew data. I’ll be here to answer your questions at 11am (EST). Ask me anything! Edit: Thanks for the questions! Edit: I just wanted to thank everyone for all of the great questions. I really appreciate your interest in the topic and thoughtful contributions to the AMA. Hopefully, you found it stimulating. Ok, I’m going to sign off for now but may check back if there are additional questions or follow-up discussions about anything else.

EDIT: …. and that’s a wrap! Thank you all for your great questions. We had so much fun answering them. We look forward to interacting with you again in the future! Hi Reddit! We are Martin Van Kranendonk, Tara Djokic, Dave Deamer, Bruce Damer, Jonti Horner and Graham Lau from several institutions around the world. We are Astrobiologists and our research concerns the origin and evolution of life on Earth and the search for life elsewhere in the Universe. Martin and Tara published a paper in Nature in May this year which offers the oldest evidence of life on land found in a hot spring environment: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15263. Their findings pushed back the earliest known evidence of life on land by a staggering 580 million years and has huge implications for the search for life on Mars. Watch this short video about their work: https://youtu.be/UdMKO2l-DzA Martin, Tara and Dave also wrote an article for Scientific American on the story behind their stunning findings. Their research represents an important piece of evidence in the Terrestrial Origin of Life Hypothesis conceived by Bruce, and supported by many lab experiments conducted by Bruce and Dave. Jonti’s research includes the search for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets), the formation and evolution of our Solar system, and the nature of habitability. Graham’s research focuses on characterising the geochemistry of rare mineral forms in extreme environments and he is interested in how biology on Earth relates to the search for extraterrestrial life on worlds such as Mars and Europa. So far we can be certain that life has emerged once in the Universe: on Earth. NASA and other space agencies are working on designing probes and rovers that can be sent to other planets and planetary objects in the solar system to look for signs of life. The discovery of water on Mars in 2015 is a watershed moment for the Astrobiology community and we are anticipating many such important discoveries in the near future. It is an exciting time to be an Astrobiologist and we look forward to your questions! We will be back at 3pm ET to answer your questions. Ask us anything! Prof. Martin Van Kranendonk [MVK] website, Professor of Geology at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and the Director of the Australian Centre for Astrobiology Tara Djokic [TD] website, PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Australia Prof. Dave Deamer [DD] website, biologist and Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA; author of ‘First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began’ Dr Bruce Damer [BD] website, associate researcher in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz, USA Associate Prof. Jonti Horner [JH] website, astronomer and astrobiologist in the Computational Engineering and Science Research Centre at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia Dr Graham Lau [GL] website, astrobiologist and science communicator at Blue Marble Space

The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) is hosting the SETAC North America 38th annual meeting this week and we have tied this AMA to a specific session, “Microplastics in the aquatic environment.” Experts from across academia, government and industry are here to answer questions on this topic. Microplastics are in the news regularly, but what do we know about them specifically? Researchers will be presenting on the ecological impacts generally, on oysters, from tires; they will explore how to remove microplastics in wastewater treatment, and so much more. Please note that we are asking members of the society who represent researchers from a variety of disciplines and sectors; the answers are not official SETAC positions. We encourage discussion and debate! Just please keep it professional. For more information on SETAC see http://www.setac.org Post your question and the organizers of the conference will find someone to answer it as soon as possible. Answers to questions will be most active during the session break at 3PM-4PM EST and immediately following 5PM-6:30PM EST, ending at 6:30PM EST.

At NASA, we use the vantage point of space to study Earth and the life it contains. And, so far, our planet is the only one with life (that we know of). The more we learn, the more this question comes into focus: Maybe Earth is the weird one? As we begin the search for alien life, the knowledge and tools NASA developed to study Earth are among our greatest assets. We will discuss how Earth science informs the search for life beyond our planet – on exoplanets and even within our own solar system. So, what do you want to know? We will be back at 4 pm ET to answer your questions, AMA! Morgan Cable is a NASA research scientist searching for life and interesting chemistry on ocean worlds such as Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan. Tony Del Genio is a NASA Earth climate scientist and planetary scientist who uses global climate models to understand the kinds of exoplanets that are most likely to be suited to the emergence of life as we know it. He once thought planets orbiting other stars wouldn’t be found in his lifetime, but now he tries not to underestimate exoplanet scientists. Shawn Domagal-Goldman is an astrobiologist at NASA who looks for ways to identify signs of life, and ways to detect those signs from far away using space-based telescopes. Stephen Kane is a planetary astrophysicist at the University of California, Riverside, who has been researching exoplanets for more than 20 years. Andrew Rushby is a NASA astrobiologist who uses computer simulations to try and understand those few planetary environments that could support life in the deathly cold, vacuous expanse of our galaxy. UPDATE @ 3:24 pm ET: A new feature story and video on this topic are now posted at nasa.gov – https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/our-living-planet-shapes-the-search-for-life-beyond-earth UPDATE @ 3:49 pm ET/1:49 pm MT: We are online and ready to start answering questions! In fact, we are all together in Laramie, Wyoming at the Habitable Worlds 2017 workshop. Looking forward to this! https://twitter.com/NASAEarth/status/930903145923989504

My name is Nicola Jones, and I am a freelance science journalist who writes for Yale Environment 360, Nature, New Scientist, Sapiens and more. My scientific background is in chemistry and oceanography, but I have reported and written on stories across the physical sciences, from climate change to quantum physics. I live in Pemberton, BC, where the wildfire smoke was so bad last summer that I had to evacuate my own family to a hotel for a week. In my recent story for Yale Environment 360, “Stark Evidence: A Warmer World Is Sparking More and Bigger Wildfires” [https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-evidence-is-clear-a-warmer-world-means-more-wildfires], scientists Stefan Doerr and Mike Flannigan join me to investigate the factors behind the increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires around the world. My name is Mike Flannigan and I am the director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science and a Professor of Wildland Fire at the University of Alberta. My research interests include wildland fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change, lightning-ignited forest fires and landscape fire modelling. In Canada, we are already seeing the impact of climate change with longer fire seasons and more area burned. My name is Stefan H. Doerr, and I’m a Professor of Physical Geography and leader of the Environmental Dynamics Research Group at Swansea University in the United Kingdom. My research centers on wildfire impacts, including fire effects on landscape carbon dynamics, on soils and on water quality, as well as global fire patterns, trends and risk. The wildfire season is getting longer—it has increased by 19% from 1978 to 2013. The burned area in the U.S. West has gone from 250,000 acres in 1985 to 1.2 million acres in 2015. Siberia is seeing its worst fires in 10,000 years. In short, there’s an increased risk for fire on every continent, and things are only slated to get worse. Many of the causes of these fires are anthropogenic—but climate change isn’t the only factor. Other human effects, including forest management policy, have also played a role. Why are wildfires increasing, what should we expect wildfires to look like in the future, and what can we do to help prevent them? We will be answering your questions at 1 pm EST – Ask Us Anything!

We’re Radley Horton, Lamont Associate Research Professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York and Sarah Doherty, Senior Research Scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington in Seattle. We were both Lead Authors on the recent Climate Science Special Report (http://www.globalchange.gov/content/cssr), which focused on climate change in the U.S. and part of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. We’re here to talk about how our climate is changing, what causes it, and what to expect in the years ahead. We’re looking forward to your questions! We’ll be back at 1pm ET to answer your questions, ask us anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science (sharingscience.org) program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org.

I am Joel Thornton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. My research focuses on microscopic nano-scale particles in the atmosphere, where they come from, and what they do to air quality, weather, and climate. These particles come in many shapes and sizes, from a variety of sources like wildfires, sea spray, desert dust, vegetation, and our own pollution from power plants, diesel trucks, cargo ships and so on. These particles can be toxic to human health, with the smallest more numerous ones getting into our lungs, but they are also good at reflecting sunlight to space, and they are the seeds on which every cloud droplet or snowflake forms so they have an out-sized influence on weather and climate. For example, my colleagues and I recently showed (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074982/full) that lightning is twice as frequent above busy shipping lanes, likely because of the particles emitted in the ships exhaust! Ask me anything about atmospheric particles and how the nano-scale can effect the global scale. Ask me anything! I’ll be back at 12 pm Et to answer your questions, ask me anything! The AGU AMA series is conducted by the Sharing Science (sharingscience.org) program. Sharing Science: By scientists, for everyone. More at sharingscience.agu.org.

Hello, I’m Joe Scherrer. I spent the first part of my career as an information technology and cybersecurity innovator with the U.S. Air Force, culminating as the commander of the Air Force’s only combat-coded deployable communications wing. Now, I am director of the cybersecurity initiative and program director of graduate studies in information systems management and cybersecurity management at Washington University in St. Louis, where I help to train future leaders in cybersecurity who can deal with the constant threat of security breaches by large organizations. I’ll be back at 3 pm ET to answer your questions, AMA! Edit: Thanks for all of the great questions. I enjoyed this!

The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) conducts scientific ocean drilling expeditions throughout the world’s oceans in search of clues to Earth’s structure and past. Right now we are currently in the middle of Expedition 369, sailing along parts of the southern and western coast of Australia. We are interested in finding out more about what the Earth was like during the Cretaceous Period when the Earth was experiencing an extreme greenhouse climate. During this time period, Antarctica had no ice cover and was actually attached to Australia. About 94 million years ago, they broke apart. Part of the expedition is also studying this plate tectonic movement. The scientists we have onboard who will be answering your questions include: Dr Brian Huber is one of the co-chief scientists for Expedition 369. He works at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. His research focuses on changes in global climate between 115 to 35 million years ago and the microscopic organisms called foraminifera during that time interval. Dr Richard Hobbs is the other co-chief scientist for Expedition 369. He is a professor in the Department of Earth Science at Durham University in the UK. His research focuses on understanding more about seismic waves and he’s currently involved with several different projects that will help scientists better study and understand the seismic data they collect. Dr Vivien Cumming is a freelance writer and photographer focused on bringing science to the public. She has a background in Earth sciences with a PhD from Durham University and postdoctoral research experience from Harvard and McGill Universities. Lauren O’Connor is sailing as an organic geochemist, and her role is analysing gas from core samples and determining the amount of carbonate and organic carbon in the rocks we’re drilling. She just finished her PhD at the University of Oxford. She is a palaeoclimatologist working on the Late Cretaceous (66-100 million years ago), reconstructing changes in ocean temperature, and how those temperature changes compare to changes in atmospheric CO2, ocean circulation, and the orbit of the Earth. Dr Lloyd White is a Lecturer in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London. Lloyd’s research focuses on understanding how plates break apart and how mountains form in plate collision zones. The JOIDES Resolution is the only research vessel operated by the United States dedicated to scientific ocean drilling. As Us Anything!