Welcome to Melting World!

Quote of the day from me for August 30, 2012

" An ant resting on a firecracker on the 4th of July need not ponder the fate of the universe"

THOUGHT FOR LAST MONTH

Recently there have been MORE AND MORE AND MORE AND MORE PEOPLE.

7 billion in fact          .

Although we do not know exactly how many of us there are on this one planet there really are about 7 billion and let me show you how many that is.

I have a quest to meet all my fellow human beings and shake their welcoming hands.

"How do you do I am Gary"   *handshake and smile*

This takes about a second if I speak quickly.

I am going to live to be 220 years old to meet all 7 Billion of you if I do absolutely nothing else.

What are the repercussions with regards climate change?

Interestingly not as much as you think.

The important factor here is individual carbon footprint.

Numbers alone do not make the difference. It is lifestyle and within which industrialized nation you live, that does.

As populous Second World nations become more and more First World then...we have a problem (as if we didn't already).

Why only just the other day a new study blamed Global Warming for shrinking new species... to say nothing of the warnings of more than 90 percent of scientists in this field so it came as quite a surprise to me recently when a friend said "the jury is still out."

Which jury would this be my dear and how long should mankind be sitting idly and awaiting?

THOUGHT FOR PREVIOUS MONTH

Boo!

NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just drawn to our attention that Texas has just experienced the hottest summer for any state in the US ever.

Oklahoma came in second with both states beating records set in the infamous Dust Bowl of the 1930s!!!

How cool is that?

THOUGHT FOR SEPTEMBER

We remember 9-11. On this 10th commemorative, like so many other days since, it is hard to forget. ..to say nothing of the consequences.

Hypothetically, in a future world fraught with hostile and changing climate where civilization is less secure and less stable are acts of terrorism more or less likely to occur?

PHILOSOPHY FOR THIS WEEK

Ever wanted to read one short piece which contains all the secrets of the Universe?

...one simple straightforward document (with pictures) that clarified all those confusing thoughts you have been having?

Wait for it!!!!! Here it is....live and on location in New Zealand.

                            Climate Change                

                                                          The Big Picture

There are two very important things this institution teaches you:

1, to learn how to learn.

This leads to life long discovery.

 and

 2 critical thinking.

This is so you will not go through life easily duped, swayed by every advertisement or slogan and susceptible to propaganda.

 You are constantly bombarded by money and power, financial and political agenda.

 Your critical thinking is your anchor in this storm and your protection..

 For example: Has anyone ever asked you;

“Do you believe in Global Warming?”

 There is no place for the word “belief” in Science. “Belief may belong in religion or opinion or myth but there is no place for it in Science. Global Warming is an established fact.

There was some debate in the 1960’s. Mostly disinterest but this is an unsettling thought to civilization, to say nothing of powerful energy and finance companies. As the evidence has become overwhelming “the deniers” have largely shifted their position from “Global Warming is not happening” to

“Global Warming is happening but IT IS NOT US…. It is something else… something natural.”

 Of course, in a sense, everything is natural, including us.

Failing to come up with evidence and science to support this claim has lead to all sorts of their bizarre theories such as Sunspots and the like. If we travel beyond Science we are in the realms of Magic. 

 There is no place for personalization in Science.

This issue is not about Al Gore. I have met Al Gore I find him a very honorable man. He was Vice President and was voted President of the United States but it doesn’t matter what any individual thinks, how passionate or how convincing they speak. It doesn’t matter what I say. All that matters is the science behind the words:

Geological Time.

Our atmosphere did not come with the planet.

It is easy to think it all came as a complete package. We look up and see the big blue sky stretching into infinity but it is an illusion created by the atmosphere scattering light in the visible spectrum.

Climb a mountain and it is colder because the air is thinner… go any higher and you are going to need oxygen. You can travel for thousands of miles around the earth but you don’t have to travel very far straight up to be in space.

The atmosphere is a thin veneer around a huge Earth and its composition has been changed by the evolution of life itself.

The Early flora created the O2 in the atmosphere and with a preponderance of flora and high O2 levels in the Carboniferous Epoch arthropods grew to be huge with some insects measuring feet across and with lightning storms that literally exploded.

Climate Change is the way in which we divide the Geological Time of the Earth into Epochs. You have probably heard of some of these:

Mesozoic, Cambrian, Cretaceous, Jurassic?

Catastrophic changes in Climate and atmospheric composition and mass extinction actually divide eras of time relatively stable over thousands and sometimes millions of years.

These catastrophic events are often linked to an extra terrestrial event (Yes, a UFO as I am sure they were not correctly identified at the time) or catastrophic volcanism.

We have one of these changes now on planet Earth: temperature change, mass extinction and a change in atmospheric composition but where is our extra terrestrial event?! Furthermore this is happening in only one human lifetime, not even a blink of the Earth’s eye.

We haven’t been hit by a comet so what can this catastrophe be?

 Perhaps it is a species that has changed the topography over the entire inhabited land surface?

The Milankovitch Cycles the natural cycles that largely determine glaciation and global temperature places us 6,000 years along a cooling period which should continue for another 23,000 years and yet we are warming! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

 Incidentally I enjoy coming to enlightened schools like this one where I do not need to also explain evolution and that the earth is older than the biblical 4,000 years.

Here is something to ponder. Given that nearly every religion is based, in some way, on the natural world, how would religion be changed by a hostile changing climate?

Now we are living in a new era. We have global temperatures measured from space by NASA. The Earth is surrounded by a haze of satellites.

 We have measured  CO2 pouring into our atmosphere and it has been carbon dated. It is OLD carbon as in Fossil old, as in Fossil Fuels, as in us. We are responsible for pouring trillions of tons of CO2 into our thin veneer of an atmosphere.

Furthermore SCRIPPS Oceanic Research has measured a corresponding decrease in the amount of atmospheric O2.

     http://sio.ucsd.edu/

It is a scientific fact that CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorb long wavelength electromagnetic radiation. They keep heat in. If we take a broader look we see the Earth in space with two neighbors orbiting the same order of distance from the Sun. Both planets are dead worlds. Venus, our sister planet, you would expect to have a climate not too different to the Earth and yet temperatures there melt lead!

Why? Because the greenhouse gases of methane and CO2 trap the Sun’s heat energy.

On the other side of us is the barren and cold Mars.

 Mars did have liquid water, an atmosphere and life but the loss of its atmosphere diminished all three.

The moon, we know now, has water but among these celestial bodies we are the only beautiful, blue jewel of life. If we are changing that AT ALL we can upset the natural balance.

 Here is the most absurd and difficult thing the deniers are asking us to BELIEVE and they want us to believe this without any supporting evidence to their claim that:

‘”we can pour trillions of tons of CO2 into our thin veneer of an atmosphere and it will do NOTHING WHATSOEVER.”

Changes in the atmosphere are nothing compared to changes in our mighty oceans.

 We are an ocean planet our weather comes from the oceans, life came from the oceans and the surface layer is measurably warmer.

 CO2, when it dissolves in water, becomes carbonic acid, H2CO3. The more CO2 the more acidic and the less alkaline the oceans become. Very low on the food chain, supporting all those above, are delicate creatures that flourish or die depending upon Ph.

For example; take any quiet stream. Just by changing Nitrogen levels a few parts per million kills many delicate organisms.

 You may have heard “we don’t have to worry about ice melting in water as the water level will not change”…. but what about ice on land, like Greenland for example? Or glaciers melting all over the world, ice thousands of years old thinning. The loss of aldedo; all that white no longer bouncing the Sun’s heat back into space.

All this has a direct effect on us. E.g.; There are billions of people at risk should the Tibetan glaciers, the source of the mighty Ganges in India and the Mekong and Yellow rivers of China, continue to shrink.

You have heard Al Gore’s graph shows global temperatures preceding CO2 levels and not following them.

 This can not be determined from that graph. The graph is at an angle. There is error within every date, within all experimental data. Sometimes temperature appears to precede others times to follow.

 All that can be said is that the graph shows is a definite correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.

If you would like to view graphs a few seconds search will show you increases in atmospheric CO2 levels since Industrialization, but dramatically since the 1960s. CO2 levels have even increased further since Al Gore's graph.

Now back to the Big Bang

Not long ago, about 13 billion years, the Universe began. That is not a lot of time when you consider that 4 billion years ago the Earth formed and life evolved 2 billion years later. Every molecule in you and me and all around us had to come from another star that had lived and died before us.

The Sun has only Hydrogen and Helium. We are made of heavier elements, the products of a nova, a stellar explosion.

 So about 13 billion years ago our universe began and had been expanding ever since so the obvious question was will this expansion continue or will the gravity of matter in the universe slow this expansion and the universe finally crush back in on itself?

 Just as we discovered there was enough matter in the universe to slow down this expansion we also discovered the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate! What is this but the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Einstein was trying to find one equation that defined the laws of the entire Universe. It was thought that magnetism and electricity were separate forces but they are part of the same force; the Electromagnetic force. This force in turn combines with the nuclear weak force at high energy. So scientists thought there may be an equation that would unify all laws and String Theory was created to unify these laws for the very small, Quantum Mechanics, to the very large in Cosmology.

String Theory mathematically proposed new dimensions to explain why gravity is so weak. One little magnet can defy the entire gravitational pull of the Earth! This lead to an understanding that our universe is attached to a three dimensional membrane or 3brane. Gravity, the theory explains, not attached to this membrane, dissipates into the other dimensions…not only other dimensions but other universes and that we are one of a Multiverse of universes with different physical laws.

It was discovered our universe has a Cosmological Constant. It seems almost perfect and allows matter to exist but with only a little change to this constant, matter, (stars, galaxies and therefore us,) does not form at all.

 But of course it is perfect. We are looking at it. We exist and are here to perceive this constant.

Here is an analogy to ponder; A golfer hits the ball onto a huge green. There is nothing special or preordained in that from the golfer’s perspective, but from the one blade of grass’s perspective, hit by the ball, it is a miracle of chance and physics.

Wait for it:

A current cosmological understanding of the universe is the Anthropic Principle. We exist and so our universe had to have the correct Cosmological Constant for us TO exist.

 In a way we are the consciousness of the Universe.

 Man now can be found even in the cold, dispassionate understanding of Physics just as our species has created the Anthropocene; our current era in Geological Time.

We evolved in the last moments of Geological Time and our existence is very fragile. Our present and future is determined almost solely thorough the civilization we have constructed.

Civilizations work the opposite way you would expect. We tend to personalize everything even countries and give them human characteristics but in fact an individual behaves differently to a mob, a tribe and a country.

 We, as individuals, have the luxury of choosing to be happy. To be glad of what we have, appreciate it and be content. We may not but we have that option. Countries do not. They must always expand and take another’s resources. It is part of their 5,000 year design, much like a company. Countries expand and the thousands of years of wars and causes of conflict no longer seem such a mystery.

Humans have compassion. The first reaction to seeing your neighbor injured on the side of the road is compassion, to help. When a country’s neighbor falters the reaction is to “expand into the vacuum”, divide it up and take its resources.

 In fact most wars throughout history are fought against neighbors and people the same. It is only relatively recently, through naval power, that we have been able to go to war with people who are different.

For your Global Perspectives question ponder: Why is New Zealand here?

Two events made the British colonization of New Zealand possible:

The loss of the Spanish Armada (mostly accomplished by the weather)

and The Battle of Trafalgar.

All empires fall. We have developed a flawed system. This should not come as a shock. Furthermore we think the leader runs the country but actually the country runs the leader.

 Ponder this: take out every name in the history books so those people never existed and surprisingly history would be basically the same. Other that hearing slightly different music all the technology would be the same as would the collisions between nations simply because of these underlying principles we seem powerless to control.

I will leave you with a pressing Climate Change and energy dilemma I would like you to solve for me:

The well-meaning Green Party and the nuclear crisis in Japan have done away with Nuclear Power’s future in both Germany and Italy, with other countries likely to follow.

Nuclear Power does not create CO2 but currently we have no alternative primary, high energy fuel source. Nuclear power is far from perfect but we need a short term solution now before alternatives can be effective.

 We could not run a 900 Gigawatt civilization like the US on wind and solar power. Solar power is a finite resource per square meter. Panels would be the size of cities or larger to run cities and they themselves create ecological problems to say nothing of the loss of albedo from the panels themselves.

 Even the advanced solar powered Prius requires 8 hours standing in the sun to drive 30 or so miles down the road.

What are we going to do?  It may well be up to you.

 It has been a pleasure speaking with you on science and superstition and I will be happy to send the student concerned about the end of the world in 2012 an email after 2012.

THOUGHT FOR LAST MONTH 

The August Heat in Washington, DC

No one can dispute the importance of a AAA credit rating in assisting any country combating Climate Change... or anything else for that matter.

What is wrong with this picture?

Yes, Palms and Snow!... currently typical throughout the country of New Zealand,

which is, of course, quite atypical.

Shades of Gray and Blue

150 years after the event

with a cast, literally, of thousands

and nothing like it since the Circus Maximus of Rome....

the 150th , the Sesquicentennial reenactment, of the Battle of Bull Run at Manassas.

Quite the spectacle with pageantry, the cacophony of sound and sight, the magnificent authenticity and dedication of the thousands of reenactors.

The history books are replete with the strategy and tactics of this battle: the spectators from Washington, DC awaiting the easy victory, caught in the chaos of the rout.

Stonewall Jackson standing .. well like a stone wall.

The human tragedy and misery and loss of such young life.

(It really wasn't much fun at all.)

Those wool uniforms! There is the thing. Such a lot is made of the inadequate uniforms of this battle. Not only the many colors:

the non uniform uniform

the bright red Zouaves on both sides

even the opposing flags were similar

original Confederate flag                                                                                 contemporary Union flag

some confederates wore blue so who was who?

...and there again there were those cosy, wool uniforms in the middle of such a sweltering day. Much is made of that.

So, just how hot was it ?

In 1861 .... battle     81 degrees F

Today .......battle    100 degrees F with a heat index of up to 110 (high humidity and moisture in the air.)

...and just when you were wondering how this was ever going to relate to climate change, but, as we all know, one point on a graph means little. Is there currently unusual weather in many places?

Funny you should ask:

Many generations of New Zealanders grew up without ever seeing or touching snow. Certainly there was snow on the mountains in winter and maybe an occasional dusting in Dunedin, or the deep south, but not every child got to travel there.

Now there is snow everywhere!

That is also more moisture in the air. There is more moisture in some places on the Earth and less in others, like Somalia where, in the civil war and famine ravaged country, rains have failed for two consecutive seasons. The effects of climate change can be even more brutal and deadly than a civil war.

PHILOSOPHY FOR PREVIOUS WEEK

The Hunley

A Confederate Civil War submarine

The first submarine in human history to sink an enemy ship

Discovered by marine archaeology and returned to Charleston Harbor after one and a half centuries

I am sure you are starting to wonder what this has to do with Global Warming?

The Hunley set out with its crew of eight crammed into the metal cylinder of a cold forbidding hull on a winter's night, February 14, 1864, knowing full well the disastrous fate of two previous crews.

Each man had to push a crankshaft to propel the ship forward.

I looked down 150 years later through the ridiculously small hatch realizing how difficult for me it would be to even enter the compartment let alone leave it. Yet one of the crew was tall, 6'1''. They were all incredibly brave.

There were many theories for over a century as to why the submarine did not return after sinking the Union ship Housatonic. All were thought drowned but now it seems the compartment remained intact and the crew succumbed to lack of oxygen and high levels of CO2.

The return of the ship to Charleston harbor all these years later was as if the crew had finally completed their mission by returning home.

Had they surfaced and breathed today's air they would be breathing an atmosphere of a different composition to the air of the Civil War.

Ironically they would find an atmosphere lower in O2 and higher in CO2 than they had left.

In fact the last time atmospheric CO2 levels were this high there were no humans yet evolved on the Earth.

Weather and Climate