Hot, Cold, And In Between

Many of the science and all that stories in the newspapers are nicked from Science Daily dot com and too often mucked about and misinterpreted by unpaid interns for easy reading. Here for a change is a full item from last year. Global Warming and Global Cooling, take your pick, is a complicated business.


Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth's rotation and axis.


Researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth's rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.


The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years.
"Solar radiation was the trigger that started the ice melting, that's now pretty certain," said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU. "There were also changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean circulation, but those happened later and amplified a process that had already begun."


The findings are important, the scientists said, because they will give researchers a more precise understanding of how ice sheets melt in response to radiative forcing mechanisms. And even though the changes that occurred 19,000 years ago were due to increased solar radiation, that amount of heating can be translated into what is expected from current increases in greenhouse gas levels, and help scientists more accurately project how Earth's existing ice sheets will react in the future.


"We now know with much more certainty how ancient ice sheets responded to solar radiation, and that will be very useful in better understanding what the future holds," Clark said. "It's good to get this pinned down."


To make their analysis, the researchers used an analysis of 6,000 dates and locations of ice sheets to define, with a high level of accuracy, when they started to melt. In doing this, they confirmed a theory that was first developed more than 50 years ago that pointed to small but definable changes in Earth's rotation as the trigger for ice ages.


"We can calculate changes in the Earth's axis and rotation that go back 50 million years," Clark said. "These are caused primarily by the gravitational influences of the larger planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, which pull and tug on the Earth in slightly different ways over periods of thousands of years."


That, in turn, can change the Earth's axis – the way it tilts towards the sun – about two degrees over long periods of time, which changes the way sunlight strikes the planet. And those small shifts in solar radiation were all it took to cause multiple ice ages during about the past 2.5 million years on Earth, which reach their extremes every 100,000 years or so.


Sometime around now, scientists say, the Earth should be changing from a long interglacial period that has lasted the past 10,000 years and shifting back towards conditions that will ultimately lead to another ice age – unless some other forces stop or slow it. But these are processes that literally move with glacial slowness, and due to greenhouse gas emissions the Earth has already warmed as much in about the past 200 years as it ordinarily might in several thousand years, Clark said.


"One of the biggest concerns right now is how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will respond to global warming and contribute to sea level rise," Clark said. "This study will help us better understand that process, and improve the validity of our models."


The research was done in collaboration with scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada, University of Wisconsin, Stockholm University, Harvard University, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Ulster. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies.

Energy, Physics, Economics, & Start Worrying

ENERGY AND THE DISMAL SCIENCE – NEW THINKING

The quote below is taken from “The Oil Drum” web site. In other places I have seen it argued that the Age of Capitalism and one or two other mass production “isms” of the last 150 years coincide with the age of cheap energy, notably oil, with the implication that if the sources of energy increase substantially in price and cost then it will impact on all our present economic and social systems.

Quote:

The New York Times published an article yesterday about a conference that we advertised on The Oil Drum, and several staff attended, called the 2nd Annual Biophysical Economics Conference. The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

A small but growing group of academics believe the latter is true, and they are out to prove it. These thinkers say that the neoclassical mantra of constant economic growth is ignoring the world's diminishing supply of energy at humanity's peril, failing to take account of the principle of net energy return on investment. They hope that a set of theories they call "biophysical economics" will improve upon neoclassical theory, or even replace it altogether.

There were about 50 in attendance at the conference at State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry. The NYT reports:
The new field shares features with ecological economics, a much more established discipline with conferences boasting hundreds of attendees, but the relatively smaller number of practitioners of biophysical economics believe theirs is a much more fundamental and truer form of economic reasoning.

"Real economics is the study of how people transform nature to meet their needs," said Charles Hall, professor of systems ecology at SUNY-ESF and organizer of both gatherings in Syracuse. "Neoclassical economics is inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics."

Central to their argument is an understanding that the survival of all living creatures is limited by the concept of energy return on investment (EROI): that any living thing or living societies can survive only so long as they are capable of getting more net energy from any activity than they expend during the performance of that activity.

The article notes that biophysical economists readily accept the peak oil hypothesis, and differ in that way from many other economists, such as the "Chicago School". Nate is quoted as saying:

"The main problem with neoclassical economics is that it treats energy as the same as any other commodity input into the production function," Hagens said. "They parse it into dollar terms and treat it the same as they would mittens or earmuffs or eggs ... but without energy, you can't have any of that other stuff."


Regarding the prospects for oil production, Charlie Hall is quoted as saying: "It isn't that there's no technology," Hall said. "The question is, technology is in a race with depletion, and that's a whole different concept. And we think that we can show empirically that depletion is winning, because the energy return on investment keeps dropping for gas and oil."

Unquote.

Allied to physics and biosystems there are several other theories and as Charles Mackay wrote 150 years ago “Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness of Crowds”. Gillian Tett of the FT has suggested that many problems relate to the principles of anthropology and the human condition of the herd instinct.

Perhaps you don’t have to be mad to be an economist, but it helps.

Les Fleurs Du Mal

More on the way we live. Slinking through town, trying to avoid the many charity collectors, I saw someone from up the road leaving a florists shop. She was one of a couple who bought at the top of the market and had spent a lot of borrowed money on improvements. The front garden was turned into hard standing for the three cars, his, hers, and the big one for the dogs. At the back what did not go under the decking became a barbecue picnic area where they spend happy hours carbonising organic sausages and hand made burgers.

She had bought some flowers, probably farmed in central Africa on irrigated land owned by a company based in the Cayman Islands, purchased from a government agency funded by British development funds and staffed by former peasant tribes dispossessed by law. The flowers will have been conveyed by air freight operating on a just in time distribution system associated with a major trucking firm. As she was leaving, the florist gave the lady’s flowers a good going over with a spray can of fragrances that looked suspiciously like a male deodorant.

The florist continued to spray the outside flowers, and then went inside to give all the stock the same treatment. Not that it was needed because there were a number of air fresheners dotted about. Taking my life in my hands and putting my head through the door, I asked her about the flowers, then about the spray. It seems that despite the flowers being developed for a scent much stronger that in the past, it is not enough, and lasts but days, not weeks. The customers now want flowers that smell strong until the last leaf has withered on the stem. So she sprays them. An antibacterial is in the mix, and in the air freshener, it seems the customers don’t like the idea of bacteria on or near flowers.

The florist then started to cough, took out a packet and popped a pill, then gave her mouth and throat a good go with an inhaler. Enquiring if it was hay fever, she told me that her doctor had diagnosed asthma with a chest infection, and had been on antibiotics for over a year. Especially as she now had IBS. Eager to avoid any more medical revelations, I withdrew, muttering polite phrases. But I was anxious to be out. I had recognised the air freshener and knew its antibacterial. Not only is it a biocide, capable of taking out all the bodily bacteria in the stomach and the gut, bad, good, or critical to function, but it acts as an effective spermicide as well.

As I went past the window of the shop, I saw the big notice put up to bring in the passing trade. It said “Say It With Flowers”.