[BRIEF NOTE] On Canada's three by-elections yesterday

On Monday, Canada had three federal by-elections: one in Victoria (a British Columbia riding in the city of that name, going NDP with the Greens in hot pursuit, the Conservative and then Liberal candidates in behind); one in Calgary Centre (an Alberta riding in the city of that name, going Conservative with the largest share of the remaining vote split between the Liberal and Green candidates); and, one in Durham (a semi-rural riding on the eastern fringe of the Greater Toronto Area, going Conservative with the NDP candidate scoring second). In all these ridings, the Liberals did fairly poorly, suffering slight declines in voter numbers in Victoria and Durham and not capitalizing on a potential breakthrough in Calgary Centre.

Over at his blog, A BCer in Toronto, Liberal Party supporter Jeff Jedras argues that this doesn't indicate a declining Liberal Party.

We’re holding. Yes, there is much work to be done. The renewal process is barely underway and it won’t yield results overnight. Yes, the success of the Greens is impressive. The NDP showed continued strength in Ontario, which should concern Liberals.

Look at where the movement was, though. In Victoria, the Conservatives lost 10 points and the NDP 13; it all appears to have gone Green. In Calgary, a 20-point Conservative drop went Liberal, Green and NDP. And in Durham, the NDP took most of their five points from the Conservatives. In none of these three ridings did the gains come at Liberal expense.

Now, it is fair to say that, with the exception of Calgary-Centre, there were swing votes up for grabs and the Liberals failed to grab them. There is work to be done to again be the credible, go-to alternative to the status-quo. My point though stands: there's no data here to support the ridiculous dying party narrative. In three unheld ridings we held our own in two and made historic gains in the third.

And there are lessons to be drawn from each to apply going forward. In Durham, Grant Humes used the freedom of a by-election campaign to step outside the usual national party messaging and draw national attention to a major issue: the deplorable Conservative treatment of Canada’s veterans. In Victoria, Paul Summerville ran a campaign with micro-targeting at its core, which will yield lessons to inform future campaigns across the country. And in Calgary-Centre, Harvey Locke showed that there is no area of the country that Liberals can’t hope to compete with the right candidate and the right message.

Perhaps. As I said in the comments there, inspired by late-night chats with a reader here, at the very least this does indicate a certain stagnation on the part of the Liberal Party. The new strength of the Green Party particularly should be worrisome: if a political party that has had only a single MP elected ever does as well in western Canada as a political party that was traditionally one of Canada's two natural parties of government, this implies terrible weakness on the part of the second party. (The strength of the NDP, also, should not be missed.)

[URBAN NOTE] "Rob Ford's brother won't rule out Toronto mayoralty bid"

CBC's reports on one possible outcome: city councillor Doug Ford may run for the office of mayor vacated by his brother if a by-election is called. (Karen Stintz, a city councillor who gained some measure of popularity by breaking with Ford on transit issues, is another possible.)

Toronto Coun. Doug Ford would not rule out running to replace his brother as mayor if Rob Ford is barred as a candidate in a byelection ahead of the 2014 municipal election.

[. . .]

The ruling allows Ford to remain mayor for 12 days, but he can apply for a stay or appeal the judge’s decision.

If those moves fail to keep Ford in the mayor’s chair, city council has the option of appointing a new mayor or calling a byelection to replace him.

Doug Ford on Wednesday would not confirm or deny a report in the Toronto Star that he would seek the mayoralty if his brother Rob was barred from running in a byelection.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," he told CBC News. "I'm not denying it, I'm saying I'm focused on Rob here. Rob's the mayor and I'm going to support Rob to the bitter end."

[. . .]

Ford also said supporters of the mayor have been calling and voicing their opposition to the judge's ruling.

"We have the base rallied like we've never had the base rallied before," he said. "If the election was held today, in my humble opinion Rob would be mayor the next day after the election."

[URBAN NOTE] "TTC stations, vehicles to use Presto card by 2016"

CBC reports that the Presto smart card, used in almost all of the Greater Toronto Area's public transit systems save for a TTC that uses it only in a limited way, is going to be introduced system-wide by 2016.

A Toronto Star question-and-answer goes into more detail. One question that concerns me is whether or not the TTC's Metropass, which offers unlimited TTC-wide travel on a monthly basis, will be offered by the new Presto. Did I miss something or was this question not answered?

The electronic fare card is already in use throughout the GO Transit system and at 14 TTC stations. More than 400,000 transit riders in the GTA already use Presto, which allows users to pay their fare by tapping the card against an electronic reader.

The reader also automatically deducts money from an amount the rider pre-loads onto the card.

The card saves riders the trouble of paying their fare with change or tokens. It also enables riders whose trips span two different transit systems to travel more easily throughout the region.

The plan is to have Presto cards eventually replace tokens by 2016.

TTC chair Karen Stintz said Presto machines will first be installed at subway stations, with the goal of having them in all stations by late 2013.

Stintz said the new streetcars set to enter service starting in 2014 will be equipped with Presto readers, so the readers won’t be added to the existing streetcar fleet.

After streetcars, the readers will be installed in buses, Stintz said.

[BRIEF NOTE] On bacterial life in Antarctica's Lake Vida

Laura Zuckerman's Reuters article takes a look at the unusual biota of Lake Vida, a hypersaline lake in Antarctica isolated under a layer of ice.

A study by polar researchers has revealed an ancient community of bacteria able to thrive in the lightless, oxygen-depleted, salty environment beneath nearly 70 feet (20 metres) of ice in an Antarctic lake, giving insight into the unique ecosystem.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, provides clues about biochemical processes not linked to sunlight, carbon dioxide and oxygen – or photosynthesis.

The study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, came out of a collaborative effort of polar researchers from a number of institutions, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, Montana State University and the University of Colorado.

The energy driving bacterial life in Lake Vida, a mostly frozen, brine lake below the Antarctic ice shield, may be derived from chemical reactions between the salt water and the underlying, iron-rich rock, researchers said.

Conditions at Lake Vida are similar to habitats on Mars and are believed to be present elsewhere in the solar system, creating a potentially new framework for evaluating the likelihood of extraterrestrial life and how it might be sustained.

“It can tell us about the origins of life on Earth and it also educates us about looking for life elsewhere,” said Peter Doran, principal investigator with the Lake Vida project and environmental sciences professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

[. . .]

The microbes in the isolated lake contain representatives from eight major bacterial groups, suggesting a complex ecosystem instead of a remnant population of a single life form, the research shows.

“It’s a dual-edged sword: We don’t want to sensationalize the findings but, at the same time, it’s very exciting,” Fritsen said.

The paper in question is "Microbial life at −13 °C in the brine of an ice-sealed Antarctic lake". The abstract is below.

The permanent ice cover of Lake Vida (Antarctica) encapsulates an extreme cryogenic brine ecosystem (−13 °C; salinity, 200). This aphotic ecosystem is anoxic and consists of a slightly acidic (pH 6.2) sodium chloride-dominated brine. Expeditions in 2005 and 2010 were conducted to investigate the biogeochemistry of Lake Vida’s brine system. A phylogenetically diverse and metabolically active Bacteria dominated microbial assemblage was observed in the brine. These bacteria live under very high levels of reduced metals, ammonia, molecular hydrogen (H2), and dissolved organic carbon, as well as high concentrations of oxidized species of nitrogen (i.e., supersaturated nitrous oxide and ∼1 mmol⋅L−1 nitrate) and sulfur (as sulfate). The existence of this system, with active biota, and a suite of reduced as well as oxidized compounds, is unusual given the millennial scale of its isolation from external sources of energy. The geochemistry of the brine suggests that abiotic brine-rock reactions may occur in this system and that the rich sources of dissolved electron acceptors prevent sulfate reduction and methanogenesis from being energetically favorable. The discovery of this ecosystem and the in situ biotic and abiotic processes occurring at low temperature provides a tractable system to study habitability of isolated terrestrial cryoenvironments (e.g., permafrost cryopegs and subglacial ecosystems), and is a potential analog for habitats on other icy worlds where water-rock reactions may cooccur with saline deposits and subsurface oceans.

[URBAN NOTE] "Ford adversary Stintz casts her eye on mayoralty"

Toronto city councillor Karen Stintz, The Globe and Mail notes, seems ready to run for the mayoralty of Toronto in the case of a by-election.

The North Toronto councillor made headlines when she led a council revolt against Mr. Ford’s unfunded, underground-only transit vision, but she has made a habit of playing down her political ambitions.

That’s no longer the case.

Ms. Stintz is no longer ruling out a run at the city’s top job if the mayor loses his appeal of a judge’s order to oust him from office and a by-election is called.

“All options are open and at this point I wouldn’t close the door,” she told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “I’ve always said I would never run against Rob Ford. If Rob Ford wasn’t running, that would certainly be one obstacle that would no longer be there.”

In her fight to save the TTC’s light-rail plan, Ms. Stintz showed she could build alliances across council, a trait that many speculated at the time would make her a formidable candidate for mayor.

“I would expect there would be a number of councillors that would be interested [in running in a by-election,]” she said. “Until we know the outcome of the appeal it is premature to speculate on what anybody would do.”

Councillor John Parker, a TTC commissioner and close confidant of Ms. Stintz’s, is urging her to throw her hat in the ring.

“I would expect that a lot of folks are offering advice right now and encouraging her to take a serious look at it,” he said. “I think she should go for it. I think she would be good on the job and I think she would be a strong candidate.”

[BRIEF NOTE] On a cold early Mars

James Nicoll and Will Baird each linked to a paper published at arXiv, "3D modelling of the early Martian Climate under a denser CO2 atmosphere: Temperatures and CO2 ice clouds", suggesting that even with the densest plausible carbon dioxide atmospheres, the faintness of the early Sun makes it unlikely that Mars would have been more hospitable than Antarctica in winter. This has obvious implications for the potential for life.

On the basis of geological evidence, it is often stated that the early martian climate was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface thanks to the greenhouse effect of a thick atmosphere. We present 3D global climate simulations of the early martian climate performed assuming a faint young sun and a CO2 atmosphere with pressure between 0.1 and 7 bars. The model includes a detailed radiative transfer model using revised CO2 gas collision induced absorption properties, and a parameterisation of the CO2 ice cloud microphysical and radiative properties. A wide range of possible climates is explored by using various values of obliquities, orbital parameters, cloud microphysic parameters, atmospheric dust loading, and surface properties.

Unlike on present day Mars, for pressures higher than a fraction of a bar, surface temperatures vary with altitude because of the adiabatic cooling and warming of the atmosphere when it moves vertically. In most simulations, CO2 ice clouds cover a major part of the planet but greenhouse effect does not exceed +15 K. We find that a CO2 atmosphere could not have raised the annual mean temperature above 0{\deg}C anywhere on the planet. The collapse of the atmosphere into permanent CO2 ice caps is predicted for pressures higher than 3 bar, or conversely at pressure lower than one bar if the obliquity is low enough. Summertime diurnal mean surface temperatures above 0{\deg}C (a condition which could have allowed rivers to form) are predicted for obliquity larger than 40{\deg} at high latitudes but not in locations where most valley networks are observed. In the absence of other warming mechanisms, our climate model results are thus consistent with a cold early Mars scenario in which non climatic mechanisms must occur to explain the evidence for liquid water. In a companion paper by Wordsworth et al., we
simulate the hydrological cycle on such a planet.

In the comments to James' post, Will wonders whether the existence of an ocean--such as is hypothesized for Mars' northern hemispheric North Polar Basin--might have changed things. Thoughts?

[LINK] "On Debris Disks and Super-Earths"

Gliese 581, a dim red dwarf star some 22 light years away noteworthy for hosting two planets which could conceivably support Earth-like environments, and 61 Virginis, a Sun-like yellow dwarf star 28 light years away supporting three close-orbiting superterrestrial planets, are noteworthy for hosting only relatively low-mass planets but relatively dense Kuiper belts, disks of icy debris orbiting distantly from the star. Synthesizing two papers, Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster wonders if there might be an actual correlation at work.

[W]e have interesting new work from the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory announcing that Gl 581, along with the G-class star 61 Vir, another nearby planetary system, shows the the signature of cold dust at -200 degrees Celsius.

It’s an abundant signature, too, meaning that both these systems must have ten times the number of comets found in our own Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. The two papers on this work grow out of a program called, fittingly, DEBRIS (Disc Emission via a Bias-free Reconnaissance in the Infrared/Sub-mm). What the researchers working these data are suggesting is that the lack of a large gas giant in the two systems may relate to the dense debris cloud. Instead of an era of heavy bombardment triggered by gas giants disrupting the Kuiper Belt, as occurred in our system, these stars may have experienced a much gentler inflow of volatiles.

[. . .]

An older star like Gl 581 would have had two billion years or so for a substantial amount of water to be delivered to the inner system and, of course, to any potentially habitable worlds that reside there. What we now believe about the planets circling Gl 581 is that they have masses between 2 and 15 times that of the Earth, all located within 0.22 AU of the star, while the debris disk extends from 25 AU to 60 AU. A Neptune-class world further out, however, is a possibility. The researchers believe the large amount of dust Herschel has detected must be the result of cometary collisions, which could be triggered by a planet — perhaps about as large as the close-in planets — orbiting near the debris disk.

So we are looking at larger debris disks around systems where there is no Jupiter-class planet, and far less dense disks around stars where large gas giants are found.