Category Archives: CounterCurrent

Freeman Dyson- Climate Skeptic

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An excellent entry into interesting and high quality articles on the net can be found at Arts & Letters Daily. I found an interview of physicist Freeman Dyson. In the interview, the writer is trying to understand how someone of Dyson’s stature could be skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. Basically, Dyson is skeptical of the models used and is skeptical of the assumption that the pre-industrial climate is automatically a valid baseline climate. Dyson accepts that there may be more desirable climate scenarios and that climate change is not automatically bad.

What is lost in most of the public discussion is the history of climate over the past million or so years. The fossil and geological record does not support the assumption that the global climate is static. We’re presently 10 or 12 thousand years past the latest glaciation episode in a series of glaciation episodes. As I recall, the interglacial periods in North America have averaged something like 10-15 thousand years.

What happens to atmospheric CO2 levels as the temperature rises or falls? Does rising atmospheric CO2 lead to a temperature rise or is it a result of a temperature rise? I have not encountered an adequate explanation taking into account the temperature sensitivity of carbonate equilibrium.

CO2 is not an inert substance. It reacts strongly with water to form carbonate.  Obviously CO2 will get absorbed by the biosphere. Do the atmospheric models take the various carbon sinks into account? Perhaps a reader knows.

Water vapour is a potent greenhouse gas and is certainly more abundant than CO2. It must account for some aspect of atmospheric temperature change. Do cloud aerosols and sea spray absorb significant CO2? It’s kinda complex.

Epiphany at Joe’s Crab Shack

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Whilst knoshing on broiled tilapia and shrimp at Joe’s Crab Shack last night, I innocently offered the question “Who recorded the song that is playing?” As I washed down my entree with ice water and neatly dabbed my napkin at the corner of my mouth, our friend’s teenage son (who was sitting quietly across the table from me) twiddled his wireless device and a minute later handed it over to me.

As I looked at the display it slowly dawned on me what I was viewing. The device had sampled the music and provided a list of song titles (with the artists) that matched the sample!  WTF!? 

Crimony! I need to get out more. I had no flippin’ clue that this capability was available for use outside the NSA!

There is a saying that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable with magic. That was the case for me last night.

Talibanistan

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Holy smokes. Who’da thought that Pakistan’s western frontier would fold like a lawn chair to an invasion of jabbering, hairy, religious freaks? Someone has commented that while most countries have an army, Pakistan was really an army that had a country. It is difficult to understand the dynamics of this part of the world and how Pakistan could allow the Taliban warriers such a generous incursion.

North Korea is another army that has a country. As bad as the Pakistan situation is and no matter how belligerent the Iranians are, I suspect it will be North Korea who pops off the first nuclear warshot since Nagasaki. The question is, will it be against Japan, South Korea, or the US Navy? 

Then there is China which is apparently in possession of anti-ship ballistic missile technology (ASBM). This capability basically nullifies US superiority in force projection in the China Sea by our carrier fleet. US surface ships are helpless against attack by smart ballistic missiles raining in at Mach 10 or whatever the particular hypervelocity is.

May Linkfest

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A friend sent me the link to Wolfram|Alpha  just a while ago. So far it seems to be a bit lean in textbook-style content in the chemistry area. For instance, when you enter “aromatic solvents” into the dialog box, it returns with

Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.

But if you type in “toluene”, suddenly it is the CRC and is flush with data. The stated goals of the Wolfram|Alpha developers are-

Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

I do not yet know enough about this resource, but it seems to be a data engine rather than a prose engine.

Landscheidt Cycles Research is a site devoted to the Planetary Influence Theory. This theory pertains to the possible gravitational influence of the planets on solar cycles. it is worth a look.

Watts Up With That? is a blog concerned with global climate issues. The blogger and many of the commentors seem to have their facts straight about global climate change. The site is very data intensive.

If you are a scientist or manage scientists, it is worth considering the file drawer effect.

An online NMR predictor can be found at nmrdb. In my experience the splitting and chemical shifts seem to be in the “not too awful” range.

Biohackers

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A recent article in the WSJ solemnly described several amateur biologists who were doing simple molecular biology experiments in their homes. Naturally, this has not escaped the attention of certain authorities and certain deeply conservative establishment news corporations.

What is distressing is the reflexive conclusion that their activity is automatically dangerous and likely to be symptomatic of malevolent intent.  It is common for those in power to look over their ramparts and view the world as a spectrum of threats. And so it is in this case that distrust has arisen and reporters are using the words “weapons of mass destruction” or “ebola virus”. 

Could it not be that some people outside of the heavily in-bred fields of science have a genuine and scholarly interest in molecular biology but no interest in grad school?

The entrance to scientific activity is highly formalized with layers of degree requirements, preferred pedigree, institutional infrastructure, regulatory complications, and a mafia-like oligarchy that disperses the resources and opportunity that is so necessary for buoyancy in science.

How does a creative amateur scientist get to take a jouney of discovery in a field that is institutionally inaccessible to them? And how does an interested individual who is clever enough to conduct experiments deal with a government whose reflex is to see WMD and terrorists behind every lilac bush? There are serious civil liberties problems here that pit the brain stem against the frontal cortex.

It is in the nature of some people to be distrustful and find threats behind every shrub. It has been my observation that people who default into a distrustful posture are very often not trustworthy themselves. The distrustful often invoke slippery slope arguments as rhetorical devices to block their opponents move into new conceptual turf. What the distrustful and paranoid fail to see is that we live every minute of every day on multiple slippery slopes, yet we somehow survive and thrive.

“Don’t Even Taste Like Sewage”

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I spent 4 1/2 hours saturday touring our town’s water system from both ends. It was quite a detailed tour and, since it involved chemicals, how could I not tag along?

We began with the sewer reclamation plant first. Lots of interesting details here. Turns out that one of the big problems to running a waste treatment plant has to do with keeping large debris out of the pumps- rags, underwear, shoes, plastic parts, etc.  Once you get past the shock of learning what your fellow citizens can and do flush down the toilet, it is plain to see that a bit of money spent on screening out the the big chunks is returned in the form of reduced down time and pump repair costs.

Our little hamlet of 6,000 souls sends 450,000 gallons of waste water to the reclamation plant on an average day. The flow peaks at about 8 am every day in the form of a sudden 5-6 x increase in flowrate. It takes about 90 minutes for an average volume (i.e., a flush) of wastewater to get to the plant. A lot of groggy citizens hop into the shower at around 6:30 am.

After the incoming stream passes through a grit removing station at the entrance, it is lifted to the first treatment operation for aeration and fermentation. This is the physical high point in the process, meaning that the stream is subsequently transferred by gravity for the remaining process steps.

I won’t go into further process details other than to say that the final step prior to discharge into the stream is a sanitizing step where the effluent is exposed to a large jolt of UV radiation. At this point in our tour, the plant manager dipped a sampler into the flow and withdrew one liter of clear, colorless liquid with a few strings of algae floaters. Only too eager demonstrate his faith that the water was sanitary, he dipped a finger into the effluent, put it into his mouth and exclaimed with a grin as wide as his mullet

“It don’t even taste like sewage!” 

As he passed the sample around so others could share in the experience, I wandered over to the control panel and feigned interest in the LCD display. The UV just renders the wee beasties non-viable. Their little microbial carcasses are still there. Pathogen free it may well be, I didn’t have the stomach to taste it. Yes, I know that microbes are everywhere and that our notions of what constitutes “clean” are merely a fantasy. But I just couldn’t do it.

Libertarians and Epidemics

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If the USA were more substantially libertarian in construction and demeanor, how would we respond to the arrival of an epidemic or pandemic of some nasty pathogen like swine flu? If the USA were decentralized into quanta of individual market units, each responsible for his/her own well being, how could the spread of contagion be averted?

Would a libertarian republic be philosophically opposed to collectivist activity like combining resources to marshal a defense against a virus. Or, would the Austrian-school economists brush off the event as nothing more than a Malthusian disturbance in the direction of a much needed equilibrium between resources and population? If you cannot afford to protect yourself, then you are lazy or sadly unlucky. In any case, you’re on your own.

Would a Libertarian system first act to protect property and guns? Would libertarian economists issue a statement condemning collectivism and promoting the rights of individuals to buy as much Lysol, duct tape, plastic drop cloths, and surgical masks as the market will allow? Perhaps a Libertarian President (whatever that means) would put a team of economists on a pandemic, or better yet, the lowest bidding epidemiologists available from Craigs list?

Libertarians make a good deal of noise about the horrors of taxation and their unflinching admiration for the genius of the marketplace, property, and the right to stockpile guns and ammo.  I agree, we’re paying too much in taxes. Government is way too big. And the dynamics of the market do provide lots of cool stuff for better living. True enough.

But the market is like a stomach (I had a better analogy, but it was rather unwholesome). It only knows that it is hungry. The stomach has no brain. The stomach only wants more. The stomach did not invent antibiotics, polyethylene, Buicks, antacid, jet engines, or bikinis. But the stomach did facilitate the invention of each of these items. We need a market mentality, but we also need an overarching sense of direction. We need a market that can sense and avoid driving off a Malthusian cliff.

Civilization is about infrastructure. And part of the infrastructure that the country as a whole can provide is biotechnology.  Biotechnology was not developed by Warren Buffett or Ronald Reagan or the legions of celebrated MBA’s. It was slowly developed by publically financed university institutions over many years of apparently irrelevant research projects. University educated scientists were hired by private and public corporations who began to find ways of marketing biomedical technology.  It evolved into molecular biology and medicine and eventually commercialized as a result of front funding by millions of skeptical and myopic taxpayers over several generations. Yes, the market has a big part in this in terms of the rational distribution of goods.

As a result of all of the initial “collectivism” through publically funded science, we have a first class infrastructure (the CDC) that is capable of monitoring the onset and progress of contagious diseases. This system funded originally by the public is able to mobilize vaccines and small molecule medicines to prevent suffering and the spread of disease.  It is able to coordinate efforts and resources to benefit even the chronically irritable Libertarians.

Liptonian Symbolism

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Never one to allow reason to interfere with sentimentality, my blackened heart is softened somewhat by the recent shipment of Lipton Tea bags delivered to Th’ Gaussling from an online admirer via the US Postal Service. 

The tea in this gift shall be symbolically applied to the local waterway, but not before being used to formulate some refreshing iced beverage via aqueous extraction.  A vessel filled with aqueous goodness (OPE-Our Pure Essence) will be charged with the anthocyanin and alkaloid laden forest litter for extended exposure to solar radiation. Brownian motion will be relied upon to disperse the colloidal value away from the biomass.

Once so processed, the fortifying beverage will be passed through a pair of kidneys as a symbol of my dark contempt for the IRS. This nephro-raffinate will be discharged into the municipal fluid collection system for a kind of Nicene rectification that will provide further philosophical processing of the symbolic gesture. Finally, after the Liptonian fluids have been subjected to Libertarian aeration and Calvinist filtration, the clarified symbol will be discharged into the river for its turbulent hero’s journey to the drinking water inlets of New Orleans and beyond.

GOP Apparachiki Rattling Sticks in Bucket of Swill

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It certainly seems as though the GOP is orchestrating a pageant of contrived television events meant to draw in followers who may have gone astray. Tea parties and theatrical outrage over alerts issued from homeland security. Broadcasters find this kind of thing irresistable and, like stray cats, are drawn to lap up footage from a saucer of engineered controversy.

Tejas Governor Perry will probably have to eat his words about independence. If he is smart, he’ll realize that crow is best eaten while still warm.

What is striking about post-election GOP behavior is the magnitude of the mean spiritedness and the heat of the invective spewing from the right. These people are pissed off about their role as the minority party.

The fact of power is the act of power.  What is so telling about the character of the GOP core is that despite the mandate of the last election, GOP soldiers continue to vociferously spout expired doctrine despite the will of the majority of voters. Contrary to the interest of voting citizens, these people are gaming every rule, squirting glue in all the locks, and dropping flaming bags of political shit on every doorstep they can find.

This is a valuable insight into the party of “character and values”. Instead, they have betrayed themselves as the party of “win at all costs and take no prisoners”.

Green Propellants

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Notes from the Field-

There appears to be a movement in the gun and rocket propellant field away from perchlorates.  Propellants that are comprised of substances that pose minimal potential for the dispersal of adverse and environmentally persistant substances are referred to as “green propellants”.  Substances that qualify as adverse include arylamines, perchlorates, and certain rheology modifiers. Substances that are thought to be endocrine disrupters have been specially targeted for replacement.

While it may seem absurd to attempt to produce a weapon system having a reduced toxic signature, the  fact is that between practice projectiles and warshots, a good deal of hazardous residues are released in the use of these devices. Reducing the chemical environmental insult is a step in the direction of reduced collateral damage.

One expert in the area of perchlorates said that people with adequate iodine intake shouldn’t worry about perchlorate contamination of water. Hmmm. While that may be true, it sounds like a poor basis for policy.