The Pope Knows

Pope Benedict XVI has publicly urged caution on the part of ecomaniacs when it comes to their crusades against “man-made” global warming … see: The Pope Knows Galileo must be spinning in his grave to see the Catholic Church coming down on the side of reason instead of superstition. (Source: The Drudge Report.)

A Scientist on Global Warming

The following was written by Joe Bastardi, a noted Climatologist and a contributor to Accuweather, a very well respected web site that gives weather forecasts tailored to your specific area. See for yourself: http://www.accuweather.com/

Our knowledge of the past should serve as a foundation for actions in the present. While not dismissing those who are concerned about global warming, I am disturbed that they often base their conclusions on data that, in the context of time, are only a grain of sand on the beach. They cite temperature changes from the last 10, 50, or 100 years, ignoring the fact that climate history and cycles didn't start 10 years or even 10 centuries ago.

Nothing that is happening today is new or different. I have yet to have a global warming "true believer" tell me why over the past hundreds and thousands of years, before any significant or even detectable human influence, there were periods where carbon dioxide and temperature levels were well above those of recent experience. There are also places in our northern plains that have been covered with glaciers at one time and tropical rain forest at others, all without man's influence. There is no reason to think that this can't happen again no matter what we do. Anyone with a true understanding of climate history knows that the relatively small changes experienced over the last 100 years could easily be "natural."

After ignoring the past, some analysts then use computer projections to predict temperatures for the next 100 years or more. It is astounding to see people put so much faith in these man-made computer models, yet ignore the actual facts of the past. As someone who has made a living at pointing out the folly of worshipping the false idol of atmospheric models, I find these projections to be a classic case of being blinded by the lure of the latest technological fad. Perhaps this is the most telling difference between those who are accepting of the "global warming hypothesis" and those of us who are skeptical. The former tend to base their conclusions on the guesses of computer models. We skeptics focus on actual climate history and conclude that nothing out of the ordinary is occurring.

I consider myself an environmentalist. Steps should be taken to make sure we use God's blessings with a sound sense of stewardship. This is the role of science, to provide us with the information necessary to make intelligent decisions. The advancement of science in all areas necessitates open dialogue.

Unfortunately, I fear that the policies being promoted in the name of global warming are not being driven by a search for scientific truth, but by a political agenda. Many great scientists, more gifted than I, have had their voices muffled when they dissent from what might be considered the "politically correct" version of the global warming story. For example, there are many climate scientists whose work uses actual climate data from satellite and weather balloons and shows little to no warming.

Global-warming alarmists and most of the media, despite the fact that these are the most reliable data sets available, routinely ignore their work. This is just one of many examples that could be cited. As a scientist, I find it discomforting to see people trying to shut down debate on this matter by ignoring research that doesn't fit preconceived conclusions.

Furthermore, I fear that this political agenda may be at odds with the ideas that have led to the establishment of our nation as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. A policy aimed at reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a gas that is essential for life as we know it, would necessarily restrict human freedom and economic growth. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption must be reduced, with restrictions on the choices we can make about how we live, travel, and produce goods and services.

The state of North Carolina may soon consider implementing policies geared toward reducing CO2 emissions. People need to take the time to look at all sides of the issue. Unfortunately much of the rhetoric in this area is meant to appeal to a generation reared on "Fern Gully," with no sense of sound science or history. I ask people of good will to at least consider the arguments here. I sincerely hope that the fight is for the betterment of the gift God gave us, Earth - not a hasty effort based on self-guilt that could derail America's train of freedom.

And by the way, enjoy the weather; it's the only weather you got.

AUTISM

There has recently been lots of hysterical commentary linking thimerosal, a mercury-based ingredient in childhood vaccines, with the increase in incidents of childhood autism. Robert Kennedy Jr. and Imus (in the Morning) have been two of the more vocal of these maniacal accusers. But, working against this frenzy have been numerous scientific studies pooh-poohing such a relationship. (See the NY Times Article published today.) To me, there are two possible explanations for this autism phenomenon: 1) The increased incidents of childhood autism are a function of our increased sensitivity to the symptoms of this malady (and the increased services offered to autism sufferers) and/or 2) some environmental substance that seems to be disturbing the genetic construction of these autistic children … possibly through their parents. Now, if this substance is not thimerosal, what chemicals are now so rife that they might be candidates for such genetic disturbance? Two candidates come immediately to mind – alcohol and designer drugs. However, alcohol has been around for eons whereas the increased popularity of designer drugs seems to coincide much more closely with the perceived growth of childhood autism.

How should we go about proving or debunking such a relationship? First, we must get around the political incorrectness of such a theory. Second, we need to probe the incidents of childhood autism in developed countries where designer drug use is much lower than in the United States (if there are any) to see if such a relationship might exist. And finally, if the previous results suggest, we need to investigate the history of designer drug use by the parents of autistic children and then perform statistical relationships between each of these drug-use patterns and the possible autism among their issue.

I think that such a study is very much worth the social disruption that it might cause. After all, our children are our future.

Hole in One

Astronomers Find Huge Hole in Universe
By SETH BORENSTEIN,
AP (Aug. 24) - Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is 1 billion light years across of nothing. That's a giant expanse of nearly 6 billion trillion miles of emptiness, a University of Minnesota team announced Thursday. Astronomers have known for many years that there are patches in the universe where nobody's home. In fact, one such place is practically a neighbor, a mere 2 million light years away. But what the Minnesota team discovered, using two different types of astronomical observations, is a void that's far bigger than scientists ever imagined.
"This is 1,000 times the volume of what we sort of expected to see in terms of a typical void," said Minnesota astronomy professor Lawrence Rudnick, author of the paper that will be published in Astrophysical Journal. "It's not clear that we have the right word yet ... This is too much of a surprise."

Never daunted by the lack of scientific credentials, I offer these possible explanations for this hole in our universe:

1) I know that the accepted astronomical paradigm for the universe is likening it to the edge of an expanding balloon with no real “center.” But isn’t it possible that this hole is, in fact, the locus of the big bang? In others words, the big bang obviously threw enormous amounts of fundamental matter out from some point in space. Could it not be that this hole is due to such a vacating of the universe’s “Garden of Eden”?

2) We generally know and somewhat understand black holes … spots of enormous gravity that suck everything back down into their centers … even light. Could it not be that black holes have an antithesis, or white holes? And that such white holes in space are filled with anti-gravity (anti-gravitons?) that push all matter away?

3) We have all read in science fiction about worm holes – connections to other universes or other time-space continuums. Could not this (these?) vacuum of space be a portal to such a worm hole?

4) Is it possible that there was a spot (or spots) in our nursery universe where matter and antimatter existed in roughly equal quantities … and that these dipoles, early-on, annulated one another to leave a great nothingness?

God’s Gifts

"The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe." - Albert Einstein

I am not a religious person but I do find it remarkable that man inhabits an ecosystem that enjoys a plethora of possibly providential coincidences … any of which, if missing, would likely doom us to annihilation. And there are other, often man-evolved extras (primarily, I think, stemming from man’s obsession toward species survival), which make our lives on Earth much more livable and tolerable. I have listed below many of these gifts, generally in order of importance, with a line separating those which seem essential versus those that are just palliative (the latter, collectively may be called civilization):

-Gravity/Celestial Dynamics – Otherwise the Earth and all of its creatures would go flying off into space
-Electricity/Magnetism – Otherwise the Sun’s cosmic rays would strip away our atmosphere and cook us all like so many shish-ka-bobs
-Atomic Fusion/Fission – Otherwise our Sun would be provide us no warmth, light, or sustenance … with predictable results
-Photons/Electromagnetic Spectrum – Otherwise we would be without light and all the benefit that light and other radiations provide us
-The Limit of Speed (Speed of Light) – Otherwise all the radiation from all the universe’s sources would be instantaneous and very likely lethal
-Number and Variety of Elements (Periodic Table) – Life could not exist without this wide array of elemental building blocks
-Earth’s Self-Regulating Atmosphere – Without these feedback mechanisms (including the ozone layer), our planet would be as devoid of life as Mars or our moon
-Photosynthesis – Otherwise the source of all nourishment on Earth would not exist and carbon dioxide might smother our atmosphere
-Light Ice – Ice, strangely, being lighter than water, floats and insulates the water beneath it … otherwise, life might only exist within our tropics
-Combustion (Oxygen/Carbon Dioxide Cycle) – Otherwise energy and what it brings to life (locomotion, warmth, etc.) would be very scarce
-DNA/Evolution/Organic Chemistry – Otherwise life, if it existed at all, would be extremely primitive and short-lived
-Vast Variety of Molecules/Inorganic Chemistry – Otherwise, most of our planet’s basics (water, carbon dioxide, ozone, etc.) would not exist
- Water's Capillary Action -- Otherwise water and its solutes could not travel against the pull of gravity and most plants would not exist
- Carbon-Based Life Forms – Other-element-based life forms are problematic and, if sustainable, would be quite inefficient
___________________________________________________________
-The Concept of Time – Keeps man grounded relative to his limited lifespan
-Human Procreation/Sex -- Enables man to ensure the continuation of his species
-Crop Cultivation – Enables man to manage his carbohydrate food supply and thus to multiply and prosper
-Animal Husbandry -- Enables man to manage his protein food supply and thus to flourish
-Language/Writing/Information Technology -- Enables man to pass on useful information efficiently and thus maintain a knowledge base
-Man’s Creativity/Tool-building Genius -- Enables man to multiply his muscle and brain power and thus to thrive
-Man’s Work Ethic -- Enables man to better utilize his time and thus be more productive
-The Scientific Method/Mathematics -- Enables man to better understand his condition and thus control life’s randomness
-Doctoring/Medicine -- Enables man to survive longer and therefore magnify his productivity with experience
-Money/Accounting/Economics -- Enables man to understand and organize his endeavors better and thus to prosper
-Social Organization/Government (occasionally benign) – Enables better cooperation and efficiency within man’s societal groups
-Man’s Emotions (Humor/Love/Fear/Hate/etc.) – Inspires man to higher levels of achievement
-Religion/Ethics – Meant to provide the society of man with more benevolent motivations and, thus, less self-destructive strife ... and religion helps mankind deal with the vagaries and randomness of life

-Beauty/Aesthetics – Provides man with a more satisfying life experience and an avenue to celebrate his uniqueness
-Taste Buds/Odor Receptors – Motivates man to eat a wider variety of foods and therefore achieve better nourishment
-Music/Harmonic Scales – Provides man with a more relaxing life experience and, therefore, less anxiety
-Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches – On toasted rustic white bread with fresh ground pepper and lots of mayonnaise

Ecomania

The only certain thing in life is change. The earth has, over the course of its 4 ½ billion years life, gone through many dramatic shifts in its ecology. Today, there are roughly one million animal species on earth. But throughout history it is estimated there have been at least one hundred times this many … the rest having disappeared. During the days of the dinosaurs, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were as much as ten times what they are currently. During the world’s ice ages, glaciers were thousands of feet thick over most of what we now know as New England. Around 250 million years ago, all the world’s continents were part of one massive land mass called Pangaea … which then broke into pieces and drifted around the world to their current locales. Even what we now know as India broke off much later from Africa and, after about 40 million years, slammed into Asia, creating the Himalayan Mountains in the process. (And this, I assume, is why we have elephants and tigers in both locations.) About 700,000 years ago the massive caldera that sits under Yellowstone Park blew its top and darkened our entire world for years, dramatically changing our world’s ecology. And it is expected to duplicate this climatic act sometime during the next few thousand years (perhaps even tomorrow).

And yet today, many of the human species believe that the way things are now are inviolate and should never change even the slightest bit … else it is man who is at fault. If the ecology of the snail darter changes and this fish is not able to adapt to these changes, then man must reverse these ecology changes so that the snail darter can survive throughout eternity. This syndrome I like to think of as “ecomania” … that is, the belief that man owns (and can control) nature and ecology and not the reverse. This, of course, is as silly as watching an egomaniac prancing and preening on the world’s stage as though he/she will live forever. (Remember Bette Davis in her latter years, face sagging from a stroke and not realizing she was a crone, behaving as though she were still 30 and vivacious). I’m afraid that nature will teach us all in the end that we are but a trivial adjunct to our earth’s ecology. (If the billions of humans in the world were all stacked like cordwood in the Grand Canyon, they would only fill a few miles of this river gorge.) To think that we can control and remedy nature’s ways, I think, comes from man’s harnessing of atomic energy. This has inflated our collective ecomania far beyond logic and may, in the end, contribute more to our undoing than atomic weaponry.

Nature will eventually teach us all that the current mass hysteria about how we are despoiling our environment is but a flip of a butterfly’s wing in the hurricane that is nature’s true way.

Higgely Piggely

Physicists in the U.S. and Europe are each spending billions of research dollars in a competitive search for the Higgs boson (named after the physicist, Peter Higgs who first postulated it), the last elementary particle (yet to be discovered) to complete the Standard Model theory of elementary particle physics. The U.S. is using the Fermilab in Batavia, IL and Europe will be using the new Large Hadron Collider at CERN on the border between France and Switzerland (due to be opened in 2008). Now the Higgs boson is particularly intriguing because it is the elusive elementary particle that is supposed to lend mass to all atomic structures (or matter) – a very meaningful attribute. I have, in the past, speculated on the possibility of gravity existing separately from matter (see this) and this Higgs boson would seem to support this premise … since gravity is proportional to the mass of any two entities. And, without mass, where is the gravity?

But what intrigues me more is why this mass-producing particle is so fleeting (thought to last only a few microseconds in the cloud chambers of these very high energy particle accelerators before it decays into other known subatomic particles)? After all, mass is far from being an elusive physical characteristic … and the converting matter into energy is a fairly complicated process (just ask Mahmoud Ahmabdinejad of Iran.) So why would the Higgs boson be so shy? Perhaps it is because it can only persist in the presence of a specific menu of other subatomic particles (such as those that make up a proton). If this be the case, then it would seem that most if not all Higgs bosons must have been created shortly (within a few hundred million years) after the Big Bang and so bonded to other subatomic particles to create the mass of the universe. And, to expand on my other blog’s speculation, gravity might also have been simultaneously acquired by the universe’s matter that had thusly acquired mass. The excess matter that never acquired the Higgs boson during this period of creation might then have become anti-matter (admittedly, a somewhat loopy speculation but it would explain why there is so much more matter than anti-matter). And the residual gravity that had not been acquired by matter (via something like a graviton) could be, as previously speculated, now represented by what we now call “dark matter.”

Those subatomic particles that are thought not to have any mass, such as photons and neutrinos, may then also be bereft of Higgs bosons (thought to be a relatively large subatomic particle). However, if on the other hand, photons and neutrinos do indeed have a tiny, tiny, miniscule mass (as I have speculated about in past blogs), then this suggests that there might be a spectrum of Higgs boson types (and therefore sizes.) Remember, you read it here first and, I would ask that, this being the case, the smallest of the Higgs bosons be then christened the “Higgs-Potts boson.”

Screaming Memes

Talk radio recently had a discussion about children misbehaving in restaurants. There were some truly hair-raising incidents related by callers. (One complainer was thrown out of a Starbucks instead of an arrogant mother and her screaming brat.) A long time ago I was on a subway in New York City where a young child was bawling its head off. I was somewhat agitated and, as I looked around the car, a number of others also seemed to be suffering similar angst. This got me to wondering why we humans generally get so uncomfortable when we hear a crying child. I concluded that the probable reason goes way back to human prehistory when a clan's children were its future security. So a crying child could be a threat to a tribe's future. We may be consequently genetically programmed to resolve, as a group, the reason for any child's crying … otherwise we might lose this precious community asset.

So our current discomfort in such situations seems likely to be vestigial of our days in bearskins.

FRANKENFOODS

Those ever-present nihilistic radicals who love to and perhaps live to whip up social controversy have found another cause celebre to frighten consumers around the developed world. And they have tagged it with a very clever, angst-producing word – “frankenfood,” that is, consumables that contain genetically altered plants and/or animals. The idea that is conveyed by this moniker is that one who eats any such food will be ingesting nutrients that are taboo (e.g., human genes in meat) or that have never before existed in nature (e.g., constructed, insect-resisting genes in wheat) … and therefore, may poison such consumers with unimagined and draconian consequences, ala Frankenstein.

I suppose that it is conceivable that the addition of certain genes might cause plants or animals to produce proteins that are toxic or even carcinogenic. However, it seems that such dangers would be easily caught in animal testing long before such products enter the human food-chain. Certainly, toxicity would be quickly and easily recognized. Carcinogenic characteristics might be more problematic. But I take a certain solace from the fact that digestive juices are quite powerful and, except for well-known toxic chemicals, would quickly break down most foreign organic agents until they would behave very much like that which would emerge from digesting known benign organic agents.

Besides, don’t we put heart valves from pigs in humans, vaccinate ourselves with sera that have been incubated in chicken eggs or even Rhesus monkeys, and ingest a wide variety of exotic holistic herbs proscribed by the equivalent of witch doctors? (Watch some of those voodoo health claims made on late night cable TV.) I, myself, would prefer eating corn flakes that had been made from grain that had been genetically altered to resist rodents or insect infestations … rather than have microscopic parts of these vermin mixed in with my milk and bananas.

CARBON DIOXIDE

Acolytes to the First Church of Global Warming should be reminded that the primary sources of the “greenhouse gas,” carbon dioxide, (after the burning of fossil fuels) are animal respiration (breathing) and the outgassing of the world’s vast variety of carbonated beverages. Therefore, I propose that, in order to keep all the Greenland glaciers from melting and flooding out all the beach houses in Malibu, Easthampton, South Beach, St. Barths, and St. Tropez … that the UN encourage, nay initiate genocide anywhere in the world that it might pop up; the PETA people reverse course and ban the killing of plants (that use up carbon dioxide) while encourage the slaughter of carbon dioxide producing livestock; and that the eco-terrorists force all the Coca Cola, PepsiCola, Budweiser, Kirin, Fosters, etc. bottling plants around the world to cease production.

Dino's Demise

No, I’m not talking about Dean Martin. I’m referring to the extinction of dinosaurs and what we can infer from this event about our climate, past and present. As I have previously posted in this blog, Robert Rohde of the University of California at Berkeley offers the following chart of carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

I believe that this seems a thoroughly researched attempt to track carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere over the last 600 million years. In viewing this chart (you may want to print it out to better follow the following discussion), I got to thinking about how this might correspond to the waxing and waning of the Earth’s flora and fauna. So back to Google I went and came up with the following rough biota chronology which I would like here to relate to Rohde’s chart:

4.5 billion years ago -- The Earth was thought to be formed.

3.5-3.9 billion years ago -- First primitive life forms inhabited the Earth’s seas.

450 million years ago -- First land plants appeared on Earth. These plants, through their acquired ability to carry on photosynthesis, could absorb carbon dioxide and water and produce hydrocarbons and emit oxygen. Please note that the Rohde chart has carbon dioxide volume levels at this point at about 6,000 parts per million (about 0.6%)

230 million years ago (during the Triassic period) – Dinosaurs first appeared. Please note that the Rohde chart has carbon dioxide volume levels at this point at about 1,000 parts per million (about 0.1%). This says then that, over the previous 220 million years, plants, through photosynthesis, had seemingly reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide to one-sixth the level that it was when land plants first appeared. This can begin to explain the surfeit of hydrocarbons buried in the earth in form of oil, gas, coal, etc. The chart also shows a dip in carbon dioxide levels to a nadir of around 500 parts per million (0.05%) at around 320 million years ago which suggests to me that this is when the Earth’s salad bar was most plentiful. It was also during this period that Pangaea had started to separate itself into our present continents.

150 million years ago (Jurassic period) – Many species of dinosaur had already gone extinct and many others had taken their place. There were two primary types of dinosaurs: plant-eaters (rhoetosaurus, acrocanthosaurus, brachiosaurus, etc.) which were often gigantic (often weighing more than 80 tons) slow-moving creatures … and plant-eater eaters (often fast-moving raptors). Back at about 320 million years ago a plant-eating population probably began to appear (possibly including proto dinosaurs) which reduced the flora cover and allowed carbon dioxide levels to resurge and peak at around 2,500 parts per million (0.25%) during the Jurassic period.

70 million years ago (Cretaceous period) – Dinosaurs were thought to have gone extinct during this period. Note that carbon dioxide levels started to drop precipitously at about 100 million years ago to about 700 parts per million (0.07%) which suggests that plant life was resurging and plant-eaters diminishing most likely due to raptors holding sway. And as the plant-eating dinosaurs food supply of these raptors was reduced, the raptors began to go hungry (since they were unable to munch on plants.) Many scientists believe that it took almost 10 million years for this extinction event to occur. However, a stressed population of dinosaurs might have been dealt a coup de grace with an event like a comet strike or a massive caldera explosion. With these plant-eating machines of dinosaurs gone, plants once again had an open field and continued to reduce carbon dioxide.

5 million years ago – proto man first appeared on earth. Obviously man has, over the millennia, nurtured plants with his agriculture and exploited them for shelter and fuel. But carbon dioxide levels have not fluctuated that much during man’s sway on earth … not nearly to the magnitude as before he arrived. Obviously, because of drastically reduced carbon dioxide levels, our Earth seems to have become more susceptible to periodic ice ages (probably caused by other exogenous factors). These ice ages, in turn, have caused short-term increases in carbon dioxide levels as much of the world’s flora was buried under huge glaciers. These increases in carbon dioxide levels may have been the feedback that eventually raised the Earth’s temperature and melted much of the ice. Today carbon dioxide levels hover around 370 parts per million (0.037%) after possible recent lows of 310 parts per million (0.031%) about 40 years ago.

The Dark Side

Astrophysicists recently have been mapping the presence of “dark matter” in the universe. Dark matter had been postulated to exist because all the gravitational effects demonstrated in the universe cannot be explained by all the observable matter. Thus, it was concluded that there is matter, composed perhaps of exotic fundamental particles, that is invisibly affecting things. Scientists speculate that dark matter might comprise 2/3rds of the entire universe’s mass. This mapping of this dark matter has been recently accomplished by measuring, with the Hubble telescope, the gravitational deflection that dark matter is causing the light from distant galaxies (ala Einstein’s theory that gravity can bend light). This is called a “gravitational lens” and the amount of dark matter (with its gravity) is measured by the size of these deflections. The more dark matter in a particular section of the sky, the more bending has been observed to occur. Also this dark matter apparently can also be located three-dimensionally by how the various light wave lengths are affected – the redder the deflected light, the further away the dark matter is (ala the “red shift”). The interesting new result of this exhaustive work is that dark matter seems to be mainly co-located with visible matter.

Also “dark energy” has be scientifically surmised because, given all the universe’s matter and dark matter, its expansion should be slowing down. In fact, the edge of the universe is speeding up. Therefore, scientists feel there must be some unknown energy source that is pushing against all this gravity to cause this unexplained universe’s expansion acceleration. They are currently devising experiments to try to measure this dark energy and it location.

Now gravity is a force … and force is defined by “mass x acceleration”. Obviously gravity has more to it than just being a force and saying that gravity as we know it (canonic gravity) exists for dark matter (whose mass is undefined) is somewhat suspect. I would like to speculate there might be something called “virtual gravity”. That would be a form of gravity that exists without any discernable mass. This could exist if, during the Big Bang, gravity was created (gravitons?) along with other fundamental particles (matter), energy, etc. Quickly thereafter virtual gravity attached itself to matter (mass) and became canonic gravity … but there was still a surfeit of virtual gravity after the entire universe’s mass had been so sated. And since it seems relatively rare to create new matter out of energy, there still should exist a large excess of virtual gravity in the universe. (I have speculated in the past about how any new matter, when created, acquires gravity.) This extra virtual gravity could, in fact, be what we know as dark matter.

A more interesting speculation is that, since virtual gravity has no discernable mass, astrophysicists’ calculations requiring the existence of “dark energy” may well be greatly overstated. In fact, if one removes “mass” from the equation for virtual gravity’s force, one is left with only “acceleration” … which is exactly what the edge of the universe is supposedly doing.