I must congratulate Daniel Swahn Lindbergh for a spirited reply to my arguments which were set out in my previous post, ‘Facebook Physics: Heat Retention.’ I will attempt to answer him.

What is it that distinguishes the so-called Greenhouse Gases? They are all opaque to incoming and outgoing Infrared radiation, known as Near IR and Far IR, unlike Oxygen and Nitrogen, which are transparent to both Near IR and Far IR. 

We can see this most clearly with Water Vapour, which in the form of clouds is clearly opaque, both against radiation and also visually. When, on a hot day when the Sun is shining brightly high in the sky, a great black cloud passes in front of the Sun, what happens? The radiation is scattered and there is an immediate cooling that any child can sense.

On the far side of the Moon lies the Maunder crater, named after two British astronomers – Annie and Walter Maunder. Annie worked alongside her husband at the end of the 19th Century, recording the dark spots that pepper the Sun.

The name Maunder is still known in scientific circles, yet Annie has somehow slipped from history.

“I think the name Maunder is there and we have all rather forgotten that that’s two people,” says Dr Sue Bowler, editor of the Royal Astronomical Society magazine, Astronomy and Geophysics.

“She was acknowledged on papers, she published in her own name as well as with her husband, she wrote books, she was clearly doing a lot of work but she also clearly kept to the conventions of the day, I think.”

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGES

Out of the Nobel Prize winners that have been announced so far this year the average age is 72, but it was not always this way. The 2016 Nobel laureates for physics, medicine and chemistry: all men, at least 65 years old and mostly over 72.

Go back to the first half of the 20th Century, however, and the average laureate was “only” 56. Physics laureates, now typically a group of men in their late-sixties, used to have an average age of 47.

In fact, in all of the traditional sciences there has been a significant trend of Nobel laureates winning prizes later in life, starting from around the 1950s and continuing into the present day.

SLASHING SULFUR DIOXIDE pollution in the United States and Europe over the past decades counts as one of the biggest environmental success stories. Air pollution kills. The US Clean Air Act will add more than a year of life to the average American. But decreasing this pollution also comes with an important, unintended, and unexpected consequence: a warming planet.Aerosols, the fine particles in air pollution, reflect a small portion of sunlight back into space and, thus, actually help keep global warming in check. That’s true despite the carbon dioxide emissions coming from the same smokestacks that warm the planet.

Global warming doubters now like to point to fears of global cooling in the 1970s as proof that climate scientists can’t get their story straight. That assertion is entirely wrong. Concerns in the 1970s—and predictions around global cooling—were correctly based on the cooling power of aerosol pollution.

The US National Academy of Sciences released a report in 1975 that got this point exactly right, noting that the warming power of long-lived carbon dioxide would eventually overwhelm the short-lived cooling power of aerosol pollution. Predictions around global cooling proved incorrect because the US and Europe managed to slash sulfur dioxide pollution and, at the same time, accelerate the massive increase in carbon dioxide.

Since the 1970s, Europe has managed to cut sulfur dioxide pollution by 75 percent. This has brought huge benefits, but it has also likely increased temperatures in the Arctic by half a degree Celsius since 1980. A conundrum: Society ought to cut air pollution much further, but it doesn’t want the additional warming, faster sea-level rise, and more intense hurricanes that come with it.

What then if the world were to reduce aerosol pollution in the lower atmosphere while deliberately injecting sufficient aerosol into the upper atmosphere to keep global temperatures in check? The former would very clearly save lives.

The latter is called solar geoengineering. Early research suggests it is quite promising, and it might require only one-fiftieth of the amount of aerosols now polluting the lower atmosphere to achieve the same cooling. It, too, could save many lives. Aerosols in the upper atmosphere appear to have much smaller health impacts for the same amount of cooling, while decreased global warming comes with many direct positive climate and health benefits.

Much more research is needed on solar geoengineering—both on its efficacy and on potential risks. The US National Academy of Sciences and environmental groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council support careful research. The Chinese government has a small research program.

To date, there is no US government program, likely because of fears that mere talk of solar geoengineering lets polluters off the hook. Of course, solar geoengineering alone cannot stabilize the climate. The world must cut carbon dioxide emissions. But solar geoengineering is unique because it can help address already committed climate change—future climate change locked in due to past emissions. Cutting carbon emissions alone will not have immediate effects, given the length of time that carbon already in the atmosphere stays there.

The tradeoff between aerosols in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere) and deliberate aerosol injection at high altitudes (the stratosphere) adds another important moral dimension. In the ideal world, society would have cut both tropospheric aerosols and carbon dioxide pollution a long time ago. It has not.

Given where we are, would it be morally justified to argue for a slight increase in stratospheric pollution to offset the global warming caused by the decrease in tropospheric aerosol pollution?

We think so. Why accelerate global warming as the world cleans up regular (tropospheric) air pollution? This tradeoff provides a clear moral case for researching solar geoengineering, even though we do not think it is the only one. Much like the world should cut tropospheric aerosol pollution regardless—to save lives now—we believe the world must take solar geoengineering’s potential seriously, quite independently of the tradeoff between tropospheric and stratospheric aerosols.

The ratio of societal benefits of solar geoengineering to direct costs is so large—somewhere in the order of a thousand to one—that it puts solar geoengineering in the same league as some vaccinations. Unlike vaccinations, there is some real potential for risks imposed on those not wanting any solar geoengineering. That is why standard benefit-cost arguments are, in fact, not the right decision criteria.

The decision ought to be focused on risk-risk tradeoffs: risks of unchecked climate change compared to risks of doing solar geoengineering. Add to that the real costs of tropospheric aerosols, and the ideal policy sequence becomes clear: Cut both greenhouse gases that warm and tropospheric aerosols that cool the planet. In addition, explore solar geoengineering as a safer way to keep the total aerosol cooling effect constant as a bridge to a cleaner future.

Read more at www.wired.com

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ABOUT

David Keith is a professor of applied physics and public policy at Harvard. Gernot Wagner is a research associate at Harvard and co-author of the book Climate Shock.

 

For fans of the hit #Netflix series ‘Stranger Things’, reality is becoming stranger than fiction. At least according to U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. Speaking on the Netflix-only Chelsea Handler show yesterday, Moniz was asked about a range of issues, and one was about the parallel universe depicted in Stranger Things (Review).

(Spoilers ahead) Handler asked Moniz if the DOE was actively investigating whether parallel universes exist like they do on Stranger Things, and if so, what did he know about them. Surprisingly, Moniz answered that he believes a “fictional DOE laboratory was operating in the 1980s. You can draw any inference you need from that.” He went on to say the DOE does work in parallel universes but didn’t elaborate. He also said that while he hasn’t seen a parallel universe himself, he was aware of its existence.

John Muir noted 150 years ago that Yosemite’s Lyell Glacier was a river of ice that stretched for 1,000 yards, but since that time has shrunk to 66 acres. Called a living glacier by Muir, global warming alarmists point to it as proof of#Climate Change. So did President#Obama this summer. There’s only one problem: the glacier has been steadily melting since we left the Little Ice Age in 1850.

Those who visit the Lyell Glacier can hear the steady whoosh of water flowing under its massive base, exposing bedrock up its spine. Obama pointed to Lyell Glacier as evidence of climate change when he visited Yosemite National Park in early June. Obama said the glacier had once been a mile wide, “but now it’s almost gone.” His visit came shortly after the United Nations released a report on famous landmarks that global warming may destroy. It was a perfectly orchestrated plan to justify more regulations before leaving office.

All of Human civilization fits neatly into the current interglacial period. The development of agriculture, settlements and societies were all enabled by a beneficial climate  for the last  10,000 years.

Interglacials usually average ~10,000 years so is our luck about to run out? It turns out that the answer is no, because we are very fortunate that human society has developed during an interglacial when the earth’s orbit  has very low eccentricity.

Eccentricity is important because it regulates the strength of polar maximum summer insolation caused by precession of the equinoxes every 21,000 years.  Precession determines the distance from the sun during a Polar summer. If summer coincides with the earth’s perihelion then summer insolation can be up to 20% higher than average. However if the earth’s orbit is nearly circular, as it is today,  then precession has little effect at all. That is why we have about 15000 years left before cooling begins.

The future of hydraulic fracturing sounds a lot like science fiction. Fracking companies could eventually “beam up” oil and natural gas from the ground using microwaves, according to news reports.

Microwave fracking would zap shale formations with a beam as powerful as 500 household microwave ovens to release the valuable oil or gas. Experts estimate the first microwave fracking systems could be deployed in the field by 2017 and start producing oil by the end of that year.

The new tech would have major environmental advantages over conventional methods. Disposal of wastewater from fracking is the biggest objection to the process from environmentalists, who claim getting rid of the water can contaminate the ground and potentially cause very small earthquakes.

It would cause “a whole shift in the paradigm,” Peter Kearl, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of the microwave fracking company Qmast, told Ozy.com. “We don’t need water for our process and we don’t have wastewater to dispose of afterward.”

The high demand for the lithium ion batteries that power electric vehicles like those produced by Tesla Motors could potentially do more harm than good to the environment, according to a report Sunday from The Washington Post.

The electric vehicle automaker uses Panasonic batteries, which, according to the report, uses graphite derived from mines in China. The mines are raining graphite particles down on the residents of several villages in northeastern in the country. 

Tesla told reporters its batteries do not include graphite from the Chinese company BTR, yet declined to identify its graphite source. Nearly 75 percent of the world’s graphite comes from the northeastern section of the China. The company’s refusal to explain where its graphite is produced could raise questions about the environmental soundness of its vehicles.

Dataism is the word coined by Yuval Noah Harari in his essay for an optimistic, practical implementation of Scientism.

Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data. This novel creed may be called “Dataism”. In its extreme form, proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system — and then merge into it.

As an example, he says, “Every day I absorb countless data bits through emails, phone calls and articles; process the data; and transmit back new bits through more emails, phone calls and articles. I don’t really know where I fit into the great scheme of things, and how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers.”

In 1982, NASA showed about 10 mm of sea level rise from 1955 to 1980. Now they show almost 40 mm of sea level rise during that same period. They quadrupled recent sea level rise by altering the data, or perhaps went back in time and took some new readings.

NASA 1982    NASA 2016

But quadrupling sea level rise wasn’t enough for NASA experts, so in 1993 they switched over to satellite measurements, which immediately doubled their already quadrupled sea level rise. Satellite orbits decay over time, and it doesn’t require a lot of decay to bring them 1.7 mm closer to earth over the period of a year.

James Hansen, NASA’s ex-climate chief at the forefront of the global warming movement, has a new paper that previews an apocalyptic future from#Climate Change unless we stop emitting all carbon dioxide. And he wants the fossil fuel industry to foot the trillion-dollar bill. 

For Hansen, these types of papers are nothing new. He has been warning of Earth’s looming demise since 1988 when he told Congress that the Earth was heating up and it was our fault; he gave a ten-year temperature prediction that was off by 300 percent. Other predictions over his storied career were just as unsuccessful. Now the scientist-turned-activist wants fossil fuel companies held responsible and forced to pay for the so-called climate change problem via judicial activism. And he wrote this paper to support his contention.

In 2004 NASA’s top climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt, said that Antarctica had cooled significantly in recent decades.

Pubs.GISS: Abstract of Shindell and Schmidt 2004

NASA showed this clearly in their 2005 map.

SVS: Antarctic Heating and Cooling Trends

This didn’t suit NASA’s agenda, so by 2009 they erased the decades of cooling and turned it into a half century of warming.

NASA – Satellites Confirm Half-Century of West Antarctic Warming

NASA says Antarctica is gaining glacial ice.

NASA Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses | NASA

Sea ice around Antarctica has also increased.

seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png (1122×912)

Thermometers show Antarctica rapidly cooling. Sea ice is increasing. Glacial ice is increasing. But facts don’t suit the NASA climate agenda, so they simply changed the data.

Read more at realclimatescience.com

You may have noticed in recent news headlines, one company “here” is getting sued by the government “there” for multi-billions and another company “there” is getting sued for similar billions by the government “here.”

Is it just a coincidence or something of a “tit-for-tat” game? Frankly, I’m not sure. Perhaps each side has some legitimate reasons to complain.

There is one thing for sure though: in the end, the consumer is going to pay more. Any individual that may have been wronged by one or the other is rarely going to see any re-compensation for any loss sustained. The governments – both here and there – are going to make sure of that. After all they are in the business of protecting you and, so they argue, any fine is due to them – not you.

Fewer than 10{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of Americans believe that human activity is causing the globe to warm, a position contrary to what many politicians embrace. (Perhaps that is why some people now use the term “climate change,” because the climate is always changing.)  Because so few Americans believing in Anthropogenic Global Warming (man-caused climate change), several state attorneys general have chosen to investigate what they call “climate change deniers,” to build a criminal case of fraud.  Apparently, if people do not believe that human activity is warming the globe, it must be because industry uses secret funds to mislead us. 

Last spring, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, and 16 other attorneys general (15 Democrats and one independent) announced that they’re investigating energy companies and scientists who do not embrace global warming with the certainty of Euclidian geometry.

Advanced, unconventional nuclear reactors could shake up the industry as soon as 2030, according to a new reports by leading scientists. 

If the government promoted advanced nuclear technology and streamlined the permitting process, such reactors could become operational in the next 15 years, according to Britain’s government-backed Energy Technologies Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The report found that the biggest hindrance to unconventional reactors is bureaucratic delays in government approval processes and the public’s fear of nuclear power.

“Like any other nuclear power technology, this one is potentially compelling because the world desperately needs carbon-free sources of non-intermittent power,” the MIT Technology Review report states. “But fears about the safety of nuclear plants have made them so costly as to discourage investors.”