Wrapping This One Up

I've decided to wrap-up this blog and just concentrate on the one, Tales From The Travels. Things have just gotten too crazy in my life again and I need to cut back on things. Plus, starting a new job in a new location will take a lot of my time and concentration.

For right now, I'm going to leave this blog up. I think I will gradually transfer my postings over to Tales and then shut this one down. But, I like the feel of Blogspot, so I'm not sure if I want to stay at Wordpress, or not.

We'll see. Right now, I'm just too busy to make that decision.

Save the Sharks!

To most people, the idea of saving sharks may seem rather ridiculous. Kind of like saving serial killers. But, the fact is that sharks are a critical part of the ocean environment and are being fished so severely that their populations are in danger of collapse. The fact is, very few shark species are dangerous and all are important to the environment.

Now, the Australians are planning to issue permits for shark fishing with gill nets inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Though the idea of fishing in a marine park seems like a bad idea (Why have a marine park if you're just going to treat it like the rest of the ocean?), the Australians plan on going through with it. Sharksavers.org has a petition to sign on-line. If you would like to do something small to help the environment, log onto their site and sign their petition. Fisheries lobbies are powerful and dedicated to getting their way and once this happens there will be no going back. And, with gill nets no less, the most indiscriminate killer of all.

My name is on the petition. I hope your's will be too.

LHC Data

The Large Hadron Collider, a 27-kilometer circumference ring underground on the border between Switzerland and France, is the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher. Although it is a European project, there are experiments there from nations all over the world. What I found interesting was what I read about an American experiment there.

This experiment, the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment (Here is the outreach site), involves 700 scientists from 48 different institutions in the U.S. What I found really fascinating is that this detector is reported to weight 12,000 tons. I was stationed on a destroyer when I was on active duty in the Navy and it weighed 7,000 tons. This detector is almost twice the size of that destroyer.

All told, all detectors at the LHC are expected to generate about 15 trillion gigabytes of data every year, that's about 15 billion terabytes and is more than the total amount of data on the entire World Wide Web. As a measure, the fastest systems, located at the University of Nebraska, can transmit a terabyte in about one hour. At that rate, one center would require 1.7 million years to tramsmit an entire year's worth of data.

Arctic Sea Ice

This image consists of two maps showing the age of the Arctic sea ice. The one on the left is the average of 1985 to 2000, while the one on the right shows the age of the ice in 2008. Comparing the two maps shows that the ice in the Arctic is getting much younger. Ice is going to form during the long winter nights, but then melt in the summer. These maps show that the old ice is being replaced by young ice, meaning more and more of the Arctic Ocean is going to be ice free by the end of summer every year.

The large, dark landmass at about the 8 o'clock position is Greenland, with North America on the left side and Europe and Asia on the right. The north pole is in the center of the maps. As we can see by comparing the two, the change is not subtle. Red shows ice that is one-year old and the amount of red on the right map is much greater than on the left one. Conversely, purple shows ice that is six-years old and older. The amount of purple on the right is much less than what we see on the left. So, going from the left side to the right, we see that the amount of old ice has greatly decreased and has been replaced by much younger ice. If we include the ice between one and six years old, we can see there has been an almost 100% recycling of the sea ice in the last five years.

These two maps show us just how much the Arctic region is changing and how quickly those changes are occurring. This is not a good thing. You have to wonder just how much huge changes like this are going to affect us. This starts a whole series of changes and, sooner or later, we will end up feeling the effects of those changes.

Antarctica and Global Warming

I have read and heard many arguments that global warming doesn't exist. This is, in my mind, quite incredible. It is one thing to say that you don't believe human activity is responsible for global warming, it is a completely different thing when you say that it doesn't exist at all. One of the frequent arguments that I've heard cited as supporting the non-existence of global warming concerns Antarctica. The claim is that Antarctica is actually getting colder and the sea ice is increasing. Just as with all of the other anti-global warming claims, these are false. So, I was thinking about these claims this evening while reading a scientific report on the Arctic and Antarctic.

The report was in Eos, the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, volume 89, no. 19, dated 6 May 2008. This report says:

In 2007, the summer minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic was 40% below the minimum sea ice extents of the 1980s and more than 20% below the previous record minimum of 2005. Autumn temperature anomalies were greater than +6 oC relative to the 1958-1998 mean. In contrast, within the past two decades sea ice extent and temperatures in the Antarctic have not been unusual in any season, except along the Antarctic Peninsula, which experienced the largest positive temperature anomalies of anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, e.g., a 2 oC increase since 1980 at the Faraday (Vernadsky) Antarctic research station.

Workshop participants concluded that the dramatic Arctic sea ice reduction in 2007 was caused by a combination of increased temperatures in response to greenhouse gas increases, fortuitous timing in the natural variability of the atmospheric general circulation, and positive feedbacks associated with a reduction in sea ice. In the Antarctic, a strengthening of the atmospheric circulation around the continent has occurred in recent decades due to seasonal stratospheric ozone depletions and greenhouse gas increases. As levels of stratospheric ozone recover, increased temperatures are expected on the central plateau and coastal areas of Antarctica.

In other words, Antarctica is not getting colder, it is staying about the same. And, the reason for this is understood. The currents around the continent of Antarctica are affected by the depletion of the ozone layer and these currents are shielding the continent and helping to keep the system there stable. Proof of this is shown in the Antarctic Peninsula. This is the only part of Antarctica that extends outside of the current shielding and it is experiencing the greatest temperature increases in the entire Southern Hemisphere.

As the ozone depletion diminishes over the coming years, these currents will stop protecting the continent and Antarctica will begin to see the temperature changes witnessed in the Arctic region.

Once again, we see that the arguments against global warming simply do not conform to the observed facts.

Psychic Detectives

Just because I'm a Wiccan and believe in some admittedly off-main stream things, that doesn't mean I believe in just anything. Psychic ability is near the top of my list of things that I don't believe in. Very simply, as a scientist and a Wiccan I believe only in the laws of nature. Everything MUST conform to the scientific method. If it fails in this regard, then it is not valid.

I have long believed that psychic detectives were bogus. I've heard stories of how psychics have accurately provided clues to crimes, but my personal investigations show this is a false claim. What happens is that when there is a publicized unsolved crime, people start providing tips and clues, including self-styled psychics. Let's say that some mystery attracts a dozen psychics providing one clue each and that there are a dozen such mysteries, that means there will be 144 psychic clues. The odds are that at least one of these will be somewhat similar to the actual circumstances of the mystery. This becomes particularly true if the 'clues' are very vague.

The fact is, there are more than a dozen psychics per mystery and they provide more than one clue each. Here is an excellent article where someone investigated just how effective the psychics were in solving a missing persons case. This reporter's investigation confirms exactly what I had thought. About thirty psychics provided clues, and none of them were of any use. In fact, they were just the opposite because they consumed police resources that could have been used in the investigation.

Stories such as this one show that psychic abilities fail to pass the scientific method. There is a theory (Certain people have psychic abilities that transcend natural abilities of others), leading to a prediction (These psychic abilities will provide clues to solve a mystery), followed by a test (The clues are investigated), and results are observed (The clues bear no resemblance to the actual facts of the case once it is solved). By the scientific method, this final observation leads to a new theory: Psychics have no abilities that transcend the natural abilities of others.

There are no real psychics and I challenge anyone to prove to me otherwise. If they can show to me, via the scientific method, that they really have psychic abilities, I will publish a retraction of my statement.

End of the World Scenerios

It is strange how so many people have a fascination with end-of-the-world scenarios. I routinely have to field questions in my classes and at parties about how this claim or that shows how the world will end on some given date. Without any real evidence, people will jump on these and become convinced the world will end, even to the point of suicide. These people will grab at the flimsiest evidence to support their beliefs and will reject mountains of evidence that undermines it. But, when faced with real evidence of the real natural disaster of global warming, they will rationalize it and reject it.

Why is this? Why would people leap to believe in a fake end-of-the-world scenario, but reject a real one? The answer, I believe, has to do with power. Simply, the people pushing the fake scenarios have power over people, while no one is being empowered by the global warming scenario. If I start a cult that claims God/UFOs/Cosmic creatures/whatevers will end the world on a certain day, then I am in a position of power when people believe me. If I say global warming is going to result in gradual worldwide change over the next 100 years, I am not empowered when people believe me. There is no Church of the Global Warming Prophet. I checked and there really isn't one, at least not one I could find anywhere. Maybe there should be, if that's what it takes to make people listen.

I've made several postings in an attempt to show how global warming is real and the arguments against the evidence is in error (No, I'm not the 'prophet'), and I will continue to make these kinds of postings. But, I want to write a couple of postings the next few days about two end-of-the-world claims that I've been hearing about. One is the world will end on December 21, 2012 when the Mayan calendar runs out. The other is that the end of days or a great calamity is coming in 2014/2015. The former is one I hear about a lot. I have already had to spend a lot of time on this one and this will only get worse in the next 4 1/2 years. The other one is new and I just heard about it for the first time this week. I'm sure I will have to start answering questions about it soon.

Of course, the real answer to the second one is that it is obviously wrong because we already know the world will end on December 21, 2012. I should be able to get away with that answer for a couple of years.

So, check for these postings soon.