Category Archives: Current Events

Global warming talk

7 Replies

Our local ACS section meeting tonight featured two speakers with opposite views on anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  One was a senior scientist from CIRES and the other was a retired physics prof from UCONN. 

The physicist did what physics profs like to do which is to say, reduce the problem to constituent elements. To make a long story short, the physicist tried to demonstrate that CO2 levels are the result of warming, not the cause.  He applied Henry’s law and did a lot of handwaving and criticism of climate science and modeling as well as some old fashioned back of the envelope calculations. It was a rather good demonstration of the climate deniers art.

The CIRES guy’s talk was really quite comprehensive and tied in observations from a wide variety of types of experiments to support the notion that CO2 has rapidly ramped up coincident with the industrial revolution- say the last 200 years or so. What was most persuasive to me were the isotopic data showing the deficit of C13 in the recent CO2 buildup. This data suggests that the accumulated atmospheric CO2 levels are measurably tipped towards biomass or fossil fuel origin rather than of inorganic origin.

As near as I can tell, much of the audience of chemists seemed to incline towards the climate denier. A vocal few were certainly skeptical of the data in the sense that the limits of the instrumentation had to be accounted for. But this was the normal skepticism one sees chemists display everywhere. I’ve done it myself.

Obviously, I’m not a climate scientist and would never be confused with one. I’ve been on the fence about AGW until tonight. I think I’m tipping slightly towards AGW now based on the isotopic findings. 

What I saw tonight was more like the parable of the three blind men and the elephant. The AGW denying physicist and more than a few in the audience understood at least part of the data and concepts. And from the area of expertise they held, felt they had a unique perspective on the problem. I gathered this from the nature of the questions asked.  

This is emblematic of the situation and in a similar vein to creationist “science”.  Creationism has all kinds of problems as a model of reality.  But what I often observe in its adherents is a limited knowledge of the theory they are trying to defeat.  In fact, I would offer that creationists comprise a kind of scholarly archtype. Creationists have the answer already and spend their time collecting data in support of it. This is characteristic of people who read devotionally rather than analytically.

I think learned people can fall into a kind of intellectual cul-de-sac from which many never escape. A lot of AGW deniers spend their time trying to debunk the IPCC data rather than performing experiments to achieve greater clarity.  AGW deniers are certainly well represented with conservative affiliation.

I was accosted by a coworker the other day who was so disgusted by my liberal ways and neutral attitude towards AGW that he couldn’t be bothered to expend the energy to fully dress me down for it. It just wasn’t worth the effort, apparently. Thanks friend. Where are all of these liberals the conservatives keep bitching about? I’m not seeing them.

Well Endowed Chair

Leave a reply

The camel’s nose has been snuffling under the tent at Florida State University.  According to Kris Hundley at tampabay.com, Charles G. Koch pledged $1.5 million a few years ago to support faculty in the economics department.  Not unusual at first glance. But what Koch was able to wangle out of the Dean was the right to screen the faculty he is supporting. They want profs cut from a certain cloth. Of course everybody wants that, but the Koch’s are able to write the checks.

You see, Mr. Koch is very smart.  He knows that to properly manage staff, you have to hire well, write their job description, have them agree to goals, and then follow up with annual evaluations. That’s how they do it in business. Why shouldn’t you expect the same from the academy? It’s about inputs and outputs. And the outputs should always be more valuable than the inputs.  You drop a wad of cash on FSU, you expect a return.

I’m sure Dean Rasmussen is very satisfied with this arrangement. I’m sure that he looks very savvy for making this deal. He said that they are now able to offer 8 more classes because of this.  Deans are a very special kind of academic animal. They are nearly always former profs who caught the allure of administration.  They keep their association with their department, but climb the spiral staircase into the stratosphere of Old Main.   From their lofty perch they herd the frequently squabbling but always loquacious cats through the annual cycles of academic life.  Something happens to people once they become a dean, and it’s not always good. All of a sudden student teaching evaluations become insightful and important.

 As Gaye Tuchman explains in Wannabe U (2009), a case study in the sorrows of academic corporatization, deans, provosts and presidents are no longer professors who cycle through administrative duties and then return to teaching and research. Instead, they have become a separate stratum of managerial careerists, jumping from job to job and organization to organization like any other executive: isolated from the faculty and its values, loyal to an ethos of short-term expansion, and trading in the business blather of measurability, revenue streams, mission statements and the like. They do not have the long-term health of their institutions at heart. They want to pump up the stock price (i.e., U.S. News and World Report ranking) and move on to the next fat post.    William Deresiewicz, The Nation, May 23, 2011 Edition.

The Koch’s are engaged in a kind of social reconstruction through the formation of institutions, the backing of political movements, and now penetration of the academic veil. They have the resources and the self-assurance that comes from being highly successful businessmen.  They are very acquisitive fellows- a natural attribute of wealthy industrialists. 

Their corporate cosmology defines a universe of transaction possibilities.  All the world is a market and greater market share is the raison d’etre.  I’m sure that when the Koch brothers look out the window, they see a landscape of markets and a sky full of profit potential.  People like me see rooftops and air handling units. 

In a market-based society, the only real opposition I can apply to the Koch’s is to quit buying Brawny paper towels, Dixi Cups, or Stainmaster carpeting. The average indivdual’s power in the real marketplace is approximately zero.  Self-determination in the marketplace  is proportional to your wealth.  No wonder the Koch’s and their ilk want to see less gov’t and more market. They get to be in charge.

Gravity Probe B Results

Leave a reply

NASA has just announced the results from its Gravity Probe B mission.  The mission found data that support the hypothesized phenomena of frame dragging.  This effect is the result of vortex-like distortion of space-time around the earth resulting from the earths rotation. The earth distorts space-time owing to its mass and this effect is further shaped by the earth’s rotation.  The effect of this is minute.

Scientists and engineers assembled 4 ultra-precise niobium coated spheres which when spun individually in a hard vacuum and at liquid helium temperatures, produced a highly stable superconducting gyroscope. This superconducting gyroscope produces a weak magnetic field which can be monitored with a SQUID.  Wobble induced by frame dragging would be detected as changes in the alignment of the gyro’s magnetic axis relative to a star in the background. 

All of this is super precise work and a great deal of credit goes to the all those involved.  It is an amazing experiment. It is a true wonder.

US Caps Bin Laden

Leave a reply

Even though I’ve become a bit of a peacenik I have to say that my reaction to the news of the death of Bin Laden is the same as everyone elses. Killing is a nasty business at its best, but at some point the herd has to cull some of its most dangerous members.  

It sounds like this fairly selective takedown was the result of good police work rather than, say, dropping 500 lb laser-guided bombs and letting God sort them out. I hope this lesson isn’t lost on the next few presidents or their secretaries of defense. The US had time on its side and seems to have used it well.

The 21st Century. The Century of China or Malthus?

Leave a reply

I’m trying hard not to be gloomy, but I’ve just been over at the The Oil Drum reading a post written by Jeremy Grantham, Chief Investment Officer at GMO Capital. This essay is notable in that it is written by someone in Grantham’s position. What I find so gloomy is the sense that our modern world is like a runaway train in terms of resource consumption.

People have been talking about peak oil and the importance of petroleum in nearly every material aspect of our lives since the Arab oil embaro of the 1970’s.  What free market enthusiasts and libertarians fail to emphasize is that the market is a social phenomenon; it is not physics. It is a phenomenon that is driven by desire.

The market is like a stomach- it has no brain. It only knows that it wants more.

The idea that you remove all elected government oversight and allow this stomach to reign free across the world is just another type of politics. Inevitably and always, money aggregates into the hands of a few percent of the human population and into the wire-transfer hands of synthetic people called corporations.

In a world of increasing scarcity the prospect of reduced consumption confounds political and business practices devoted to growth, since growth typically means increased consumption.

The key psychological barrier is this- How do we feel like we’re improving as we’re making do with less?

As the cost of manufacturing increases due to increased raw material costs, unit prices will rise. The invisible hand of price elasticity of demand will inevitably partition out the elastic from the inelastic goods on the market.  Whole industries relying on discretionary income will feel exposed. 

The challenge for our leaders is to maintain a vibrant economy even though natural resources are becoming ever more scarce. Power is manifested in the allocation of resources. China has pointedly focused on Africa as a source of raw materials for its growing economy.  The act of power is the fact of power. By throwing a lot of money around, and by controlling the flow of resources, China is exercising power. You don’t need to march an army around to demonstrate your power.

China is executing  industrial policy by forging alliances and allocating resources to global sourcing action. The USA dithers with self-destructive party politics, foreign military adventures, and a narcissistic indulgence in “greatness”.  Instead of wearing our hearts on our sleeves, we should roll them up and get to work building a robust and healthy culture.

South Pole

Leave a reply

A friend and colleague is currently wintering over at the Amundson-Scott station on the south pole.  She is sending us periodic email updates on life at the station.  As they come along I’ll share bits of them.  A colleague of hers posts his observations on his blog. They recently celebrated their once-per-year sunset at the equinox.

There are all sorts of station closing activities I volunteered for early on. I trained for what is called “Flight Following” to man the Comms Center in the winter whenever any flights are flying farther South than 60 degrees. South Pole’s unique position on top of the plateau makes radio reception unusually clear while closer to the coast it is often obscured. So our job is to relay messages if we hear the pilot unable to reach his coast air traffic control. I also periodically do checks in the Power Plant so those people can occasionally get a day off.

It’s almost like a commune down here. Or at least what I assume communal living would have been like in the ’60s, Kind of a fun existence for a few months. But it is damn COLD! I took my glove off to operate my camera to film sunset up on the roof of the station – our daily temps are about -80 F, with windchill well below -100 F. A gust of wind kicked up after I had been filming for less than 2 minutes and I almost couldn’t make my hand work well enough to climb back down the steps. Today there is still a blister on my pinkie finger from frostnip. Human flesh freezes within a minute when exposed to that sort of cold. –South Pole Susan

I guess I won’t be complaining about the cold anymore.

Things to notice about the disasters in Japan

Leave a reply

Everyone is rightfully concerned about Japan and what is to become of the region around the Fukushima Dai’ichi generating station. The quality of information by the various broadcast outlets is improving somewhat in my estimation. What the rest of the world should take note of is the stoic and highly admirable manner in which the Japanese have responded to the earthquake*tsunami*nuclear-disaster trifecta that has fallen upon them. In a US city there’d be looting and widespread felonious mischief as local criminal entrepreneurs rose to the occasion.

Another thing that I hope is noticed is the manner in which the failures initiated and propagated at the power station.  The unfortunate low elevation of the emergency generators is the obvious one.  But there is something else that is dramatically affecting how the incident propagates.  If you look at the cutaway diagrams of the plant you will see the highly compact nature of the facility.  The footprint of the buildings are quite small given the amount of equipment and processing that occurs there. In particular, the location of the cooling pools for the spent fuel assemblies is at the upper level of the structure, above the reactor spaces. 

The upper level with the cooling pools has an overhead crane that can move along the length of the facility. The fuel elements can be pulled up and out of the reactor and moved laterally into the pool.   The General Electric design is quite efficient in the use of acreage. But in the event of a major upset with fire, explosions, major radioactive material release, and structural damage, the compactness of the facility and the elevation of the spent fuel cooling pools works for prolonged incident propagation and against termination. 

The very altitude of the cooling pool spaces presents a major hurdle to taking control of the situation.  Having this problem at ground level where you could directly apply resources to the event would be bad enough. But to have it many stories above ground places huge constraints on the responders.  Designers of power plants should be thinking about where hazardous energy can be released and how responders will deal with it. Problem- all facilities design projects are constrained by severe cost considerations. Designers prefer to think about the most efficient designs, not how their brain child is going to fail.

Credible Information on Fukushima

Leave a reply

It is difficult to find truly informed opinion on the Fukushima reactor disaster in Japan.  The Daily Kos Community site by Richard Blair seems very credible from what I can discern.  The writer claims to be a Nuclear Power Operations-certified systems engineer in GE Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs). I have no reason to disbelieve it.

Actually, Rachel Maddow (and writers) did a very even handed presentation this evening of the basics of reactors, radiation, and nuclear power generation on her show. 

Blair (writing under the pseudonym Richard Cranium) shares some interesting insights on the Fukushima boiling water reactors. It’s worth a look.  It is part of a larger effort at information aggregation called the Japan Nuclear Disaster: Mothership.