Thursday, February 28, 2019
When were each of the planets first discovered and who did it?
Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781... He was the first astronomer to correctly describe the spiral structure of our Milky Way Galaxy.
https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question16.html
1781? Wow.
Saturday, February 23, 2019
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Re: CBS News: Grand Canyon tourists reportedly exposed for years to radiation
Grand Canyon tourists reportedly exposed for years to radiation
CBS News
A safety manager for the park says the exposure came from uranium rocks stored in buckets Read the full story
CBS News
A safety manager for the park says the exposure came from uranium rocks stored in buckets Read the full story
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Climate change argument on Facebook
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* My Facebook comment.
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The numbers are not very impressive. Since 1880, which is the measure most people use, on average the CO2 level has gone up less than 1 part per million per year and the temperature has gone up less than 1/100th of a degree celsius per year. You could argue that since about 1970 things have accelerated a little, but a little less than double. The temperature went up on average of 0.016 degrees celsius pear year. It is going take a very long time to reach the five degrees needed to melt the polar ice caps, which are according to every source going to take 5,000 years to melt. Meanwhile we will be out of most fossil fuels by the year 2100 and coal will be gone by the 2150. The only thing that will save us from running out of energy will be nuclear fusion, which fortunately is not that far off.
Three years ago I wrote this:
The amount of carbon on planet Earth by definition remains pretty much the same. Man has been burning fossil fuels, which puts carbon into the atmosphere. Where did the carbon in the fossil fuels come from? It mostly came from plants and bacteria that got buried underground due to geological processes. Over millions of years natural processes turned the plants and bacteria into fossil fuels. Where did the plants and bacteria get their carbon from? They got it from the atmosphere. The carbon that we are now putting into the atmosphere originally came from the atmosphere.
To better understand this, we have to understand the complete history of atmospheric carbon dioxide on planet Earth. The original earth atmosphere was an amazing 43% carbon dioxide compared with the roughly .04% that we have now. That original atmosphere had so much pressure that it could crush a man flat. About 2.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria began using photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide into free oxygen, which lead to the creation of our oxygen rich "third atmosphere" 2.3 billion years ago. At that time the carbon dioxide levels were about 7,000 parts per million, but it went into a somewhat steady but uneven decline because geological processes would sequester carbon underground. The decline was uneven because as part of the "carbon dioxide cycle", sometimes geological processes like volcanoes would cause massive amounts of carbon dioxide to be released back into the atmosphere.
Thirty million years ago during the Oligocene Epoch, the average temperature of the earth was about 7 degrees Celsius warmer than it is now. There was no ice on the poles, but the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was in rapid decline during this epoch. About 23 million years ago, at the beginning of the Neogene period, ice began to form on the poles. About ten million years ago, a series of intermittent ice ages began that continue to this day. I found one source that said that we are still technically in an ice age because we still have ice at the poles.
These ice ages helped create human evolution. The ice ages caused Africa to dry up which lead to some deforestation. This forced some arboreal (tree dwelling) apes to venture onto land. About 7 million years ago, the first apes that could comfortably walk upright appeared. They had evolved a new type of pelvis that allowed upright locomotion, which is about three times more efficient when trying to cross land.
The first tool making ape that resembled modern humans, Homo habilis, arose 2.5 million years ago. It would be soon followed by Homo erectus, and then about 200,000 years ago, modern humans, Homo sapiens would arise. However, Homo sapiens almost died out. About 50,000 years ago an ice age in Europe had caused Africa to almost completely dry up. The total human population had dropped to 7,000 individuals living on the southern coast of Africa. During this period humans learned how to fish, make new tools, and create permanent dwellings. When the ice age abated, these humans with their new tools spread out to rest of the world at a pace of about a mile per year. This was the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic (Late Stone Age) period.
More ice ages would follow, and during each ice age human population would decline. It is no coincidence that all of human civilization (i.e. agriculture, use of metals) would arise during a "brief" warm period between two ice ages starting about 10,000 years ago. I have heard that no matter what we do, we will enter a new ice age in about 10,000 years from now, but I have also heard speculation that the next ice age will be delayed by global warming. This actually should be our goal, since humans have always declined during the ice ages and always prospered during the intermittent warm periods.
During the geological time period of the earth, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been on an uneven decline and mostly disappeared. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is necessary for plant growth, and I have read that we were running dangerously low on atmospheric carbon dioxide, about 00.02%, before mankind at least temporarily reversed the trend. I just read a wikipedia article that said that atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually get so low that all plants and animals will die off. What mankind has done is put carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that was previously there, thus possibly delaying the next ice age. Currently the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 00.04%.
Carbon dioxide by itself cannot cause significant global warming. There are diminished returns. Carbon dioxide has to double again to produce the same effect as the last doubling. The effect is not linear but logarithmic. What the alarmists are worried about, and they could be correct, is positive feedback. The warming of the earth causes more water vapor to enter the atmosphere, and water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, thus causing more warming. If this were true, however, the last warming period around the year 2000 should caused a continuous positive feedback, a runaway greenhouse, which didn't happen. Instead temperatures went into a major decline and hit a really big low point in the year 2007.
The skeptics believe that increased cloud cover reflects sunlight back into space thus causing a negative feedback. The skeptics are not "global warming deniers", which is a pejorative phrase used by global warming theorists to make the skeptics sound like holocaust deniers. These skeptics actually believe in global warming. At least, the legitimate skeptical scientists do. They just think that global warming is happening at a rate slower than predicted by the theorists. I can point you to an article that shows that the positive feedback models have been contradicted by the actual temperature data, which in reality has been closer to the negative feedback models.
The worst case scenario is that the polar ice caps will melt. If that happens we will lose some coastlines and all of Florida due to sea level rise. However, according to what I just read, it will take 5,000 years for the polar ice caps to melt. In other words, these are processes that take a very long time to happen. In this century we are only looking at modest temperature increases. In the meantime, humans are very adaptable. We are only five to ten years away from creating the first workable prototypes of nuclear fusion. It might take 25 years for this to be practical, but at that point if we wanted to get rid of fossil fuels altogether, we could. I think that we will also see advances in solar power, which is already happening, and battery technology to store the energy created by solar. In other words, we have it within our means to avoid any possible disasters that might be coming.
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Best wishes,
John Coffey
P.S. Figure 4 here is interesting: https://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4167
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* How people responded
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Hank Mayo Gish: gallop of nonsense by a Facebook nobody looking for attention.
Joey Jordan: John Coffey where to begin? Let's just begin and end with the notion that CO2 levels haven't spiked dramatically as a result of human activity and that the global temperature rise is insignificant.
The significance of even a half a degree of warming when an additional 1,1-2,6 under the most optimistic of models.
Hank Mayo: Joey Jordan ...just WOW! You took on this utter nonsense and started unpacking it.
Ralph Philips John Coffey ...Can you just stick to one lie at a time?
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* My Response
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People throwing out insults shows what jerks they can be. Let's talk about facts.
I didn't deny a spike in CO2 nor did I a deny human cause. You try to counter my claim that the rise in temperature is not significant, but you don't give any temperature data. Here is what we know:
The temperature rise since 1880 is about 1 degree celsius. I have seen different figures that range from .8 to 1.1, so for now I will just say 1 degree. Over the 139 year period, that is still less than 1/100th of a degree per year. According to what I have read, the temperature increase since 1970 has been on average 0.16 degrees per decade, or 0.016 degrees per year.
Your graph shows the current CO2 level at 400 PPM, which if correct would be an increase of 120 PPM over 139 years. However, the last time I had checked this, we were around 408, but a google search shows it to now be 412 PPM, and the same google search shows this is 3 PPM higher than this time last year. Although the average increase since 1880 is still about 1 PPM per year, I am concerned about whether this trend of 3 PPM increase per year will continue.
Whether or not this is significant depends upon where you draw the endpoints of your graph. I should point out that your graph shows that during previous periods of glaciation the CO2 level got down to 180 PPM, which is just 30 PPM above the level where all the plants die off. Plants have been starved for CO2 and the increase that we have made has been very beneficial for crop yields. However, if you look at the graph that I gave a link to, you will see that the the CO2 level has been in a nosedive for the last 30 million years or so.
Now somebody might say it doesn't matter what the CO2 level was 30 million years ago, we like where it is right now. However, a lot more people die from cold than from heat. Given a choice of living in a colder climate or a warmer climate, most people would choose a warmer climate. During the Medieval Warm Period, people were able to grow crops far further north than they could otherwise. People talk about corn crops dying, but it just means that area where corn can be grown will be further north.
Besides, the numbers we are talking about (so far) aren't that significant, and that's my point. I feel like people keep moving the goalposts. There has been much debate and disagreement over what the Climate Sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is. Some people were saying it is 12 degrees, with others saying it is 5 or 6 degrees, which is still terrible because that is enough to melt the polar ice caps and all our coasts are going to get flooded. However, if you calculate Climate Sensitivity from existing CO2 and temperature data you only get about 2.3 degrees. The IPCC gives a predicted range of 1.5 to 4.5 claiming an average of 3. As part of this, the IPCC accepted a paper where 20nth century data showed the Climate Sensitivity to only be about 1.5 degrees celsius.
The reason why I think that people are moving the goalposts is not only has the IPCC over time lowered the numbers they give for Climate Sensitivity, but now people are claiming that we should be worried about the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees celsius. I have heard some climate scientists scoff at this, because they say that in a typical day we will see a 30 degree range and people are making a fuss over a couple of degrees.
These changes are happening at a glacial pace, excuse the pun. Some changes will happen between now and the year 2100 and people will adapt. Not all these changes are bad. Slightly warmer climates will have some benefits.
But long term, over geological time periods, the trend is much more ominous, and not for reasons you think. We will be running out of fossil fuels in 100 years and headed for another ice age in 10,000 years. Natural processes will continue to cause a decline in atmospheric CO2. At some point in the long distant future will have to find a way to put CO2 back into the atmosphere to survive.
Best wishes,
John Coffey
Monday, February 11, 2019
Friday, February 8, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Sunday, February 3, 2019
Saturday, February 2, 2019
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