outsidethecube

Friday, February 23, 2007

Climate model self destructs in El Nino conditions

God does not play dice.
Albert Einstein

The IPCC the international convention on advanced computer games for followers of Nostrodamus tell us they can predict the climate for the next 50-500 years using advanced computer algorithms.

In reality they cannot predict 10 months in advance. James Hansen the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies distributed the following paper in march 2006 predicting a super el Niño for 2006-2007.

The interesting title tells us all.

Early model predictions of global warming proved accurate,the Pacific Ocean seems charged for a potential super-El Nino,and global temperature is poised to reach record,perhaps dangerous,levels.

by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, Ken Lo, David Lea and Martin Medina-Elizalde
DRAFT March 29, 2006

SUPER EL NINO IN 2006-2007? We suggest that an El Nino is likely to originate in 2006 and that there is a good chance it will be a "super El Nino", rivaling the 1983 and 1997-1998 El Ninos, which were successively labeled the "El Nino of the century" as they were of unprecedented strength in the previous 100 years (Fig. 1 of Fedorov and Philander 2000). Further, we argue that global warming causes an increase of such "super El Ninos". Our rationale is based on interpretation of dominant mechanisms in the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) phenomenon, examination of historical SST data, and observed Pacific Ocean SST anomalies in February 2006.

In the "normal", La Nina, phase of ENSO the east-to-west trade winds push warm equatorial surface waters far to the west such that some of the warmest SSTs on the planet are located in the West Pacific Warm Pool. In this normal state the thermocline is shallow in the East Pacific near the coast of South America, where upwelling of cold deep water occurs, and deep in the West Pacific (Fig. 2 of Cane 2005). Associated with this tropical SST gradient across the Pacific is a longitudinal circulation pattern in the atmosphere, the Walker Cell, with generally rising motions and heavy rainfall in the West Pacific and sinking motions and drier conditions in the East Pacific. This Walker circulation enhances upwelling in the East Pacific, causing a powerful positive feedback, the Bjerknes (1969) feedback, which tends to maintain the La Nina phase, as the temperature gradient and the resulting higher pressure in the East Pacific support east-to-west trade winds.

This normal state is occasionally upset when, by chance, the east-to-west trade winds slow down, allowing the warm water piled up in the west to slosh back in the direction of South America. If the chance fluctuation is large enough, the Walker circulation breaks down and the Bjerknes feedback loses power. As the east-to-west winds weaken, the Bjerknes feedback works in reverse, and warm waters move more strongly toward South America, reducing the thermocline tilt and cutting off the upwelling of cold water along the South American coast. In this way a classical El Nino is born.

Given the high degree of chaos in weather and climate, there is great variability among El Niño’s and some arbitrariness in the definition of when one has occurred. Enough time since the preceding El Nino needs to elapse for the West Pacific to "recharge" with warm water and for the thermocline to regain its strong tilt such that it is deep in the West Pacific and approaches the surface near South America. An El Nino has the best chance of forming in Northern Hemisphere spring, when the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is close to the equator, SST is a maximum, and equatorial upwelling is weakest. Thus, as Mark Cane (priv. comm.) has stated, once the West Pacific is recharged, we can think of Mother Nature as "rolling the dice" each spring to see if there will be an El Nino.


Unfortunately the dice landed on snakes eyes

Summary: The 2006/07 El Niño has ended
The 2006/07 El Niño has ended. All the main ENSO indicators show that neutral conditions have returned to the Pacific Basin. Along the equator, sea-surface temperatures are cooling rapidly and have been below their El Niño thresholds for about a month now. The Trade Winds have mostly been close to or somewhat stronger than normal since December, the SOI has been neutral for three of the past four months and central-western Pacific cloudiness is close to average. Computer models indicate further cooling in the Pacific, with a La Niña not out of the question (see third paragraph).

El Dorado The secret of the soils and the mystery of the carbon sinks part 2

As we previously noted here. Our current knowledge is ambiguous whether the rest of the CO2 is being detached by oceans or by terrestrial sinks (soil or vegetation) (Baldocchi et al., 1996).Indeed the missing carbon sink around 20% of the gcc is one of the unanswered questions for the IPCC.

Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (VAM, or just AM) for its role in phosphorus transport as well as sequestration of massive amounts of carbon in the durable form of glomalin which is the threadlike remains of dead VAM lacing undisturbed soil.
Phosphorous isn't the only thing VAM transports.


Fungal hyphae play a greater role in the spread of bacteria in the soil than was previously suspected. . . For the first time, scientists have been able to prove that bacteria are able to travel through the soil on the mucous membrane of living fungi. . .

As Science daily reports.

“For the bacterium a harmful substance is not harmful,” explains Wick. “It simply breaks down the carbon compounds, producing the energy and substances that it needs to live.” But before it can do this it has to get at its ‘food’. Air and lack of moisture present insurmountable obstacles. “This is why certain pollutants are broken down so slowly in the soil. Often it is not a lack of biochemical capacity, but rather a lack of contacts.” The scientists at the UFZ are therefore studying the paths followed by the bacteria.

Mycelia appear to act as a kind of underground highway for bacteria. This is the conclusion reached by Lukas Wick and his team. In the laboratory experiment they succeeded in demonstrating that the bacteria move through the soil on the mycelium. The ingredients: one pollutant, separating layers made of glass pellets, uncontaminated soil and a bacterium called Pseudomonas putida. The bacteria have to fight their way through all these layers to reach the phenanthrene, their ‘food’. This polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon is a widespread pollutant produced during every combustion process: at petrol stations, in car exhausts, during forest fires, in cigarette smoke and in old municipal gas works.

“We deliberately make the bacteria work their way upwards against gravity so that people can’t say there could be a small amount of water trickling down and carrying the bacteria with it,” says Wick. “We have tried to rule out any doubts and objections from potential critics.” The bacteria made it to the top only in places where there was a mycelium running through the soil. In the identical parallel experiment without a mycelium the bacteria were unable to surmount the barriers. “With this paper we have shown that there is an infrastructure.”

The fungi used in the experiment, Fusarium oxysporum, is not the only one in soil, and the pollution gobbling bacteria studie


When exploring the history of Geochemistry in Russia the first name one comes across is VladimirIvanovich Vernadsky (1862-1945). The Vernadsky Institute for Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry in Moscow is named after him. He is considered to be the father of geochemistry, biogeochemistry,radiogeology and cosmochemistry in Russia. L.Margulis states in the foreword of the English version of Vernadsky’s book The Biosphere that “Just as all educated westerners have heard of Albert Einstein, George (Gregor) Mendel, and Charles Darwin, so all educated Russians know of V. I. Vernadsky”

From 1881-1885 Vernadsky was a student of the physical-mathematical faculty (natural-scientific section) of St. Petersburg University. The most influential of his teachers was V. Dokuchaev, who was a founder of modern soil sciences and of a large naturalist school. V. Dokuchaev became the supervisor of Vernadsky’s master and doctoral theses. Dokuchaev’s integrative approach of considering soil formation as a product of different environmental factors, including the interactions between living and dead matter, might have laid the cornerstone of V. I. Vernadsky’s theory of biosphere. In 1888 V. I. Vernadsky left St. Petersburg to study mineralogy in Munich. He then moved to Paris in 1889 where he worked with Le Chatelier, who helped him to find his dissertation subject in the field of silicate mineralogy. One year later Vernadsky settled in Moscow, where he started a twenty-year professorship in crystallography and mineralogy at Moscow University. In this period, Vernadsky founded a new scientific school detached from soil sciences and mineralogy.

In the interaction between dead and living matter Vernadsky not only focuses on the solid Earth but also emphasizes the effect of living organisms on the composition of the atmosphere. Vernadsky points out that the “gases of the entire atmosphere are in an equilibrium state of dynamic and perpetual exchange with living matter”. He refers to a presentation of J. B. Dumas and J. Boussingault given at a conference at Paris in 1844 when stating that living matter can be taken as an “appendage of the atmosphere”

In his book The Biosphere Besides qualitative aspects of processes in the biosphere, Vernadsky also aims at a quantitative understanding of these processes. The numbers he derives for the quantity of free oxygen on Earth, the global net primary production, or for the total biomass on Earth vary significantly from recent data but the approach of creating global budgets of biogeochemical cycles was very innovative when The Biosphere was written and is still a major subject of present biogeochemical research. Vernadsky uses quantitative considerations in particular to illustrate the effect of the totality of living matter on element migrations on a global scale and to support his idea of living matter as a major geological force on the Earth’s surface. In addition to budget calculations Vernadsky derives an expression for the “kinetic geochemical energy of living matter”. The kinetic geochemical energy of an organism is related to its mass and its speed of transmission.The latter depends on the size of the organism and the optimal number of generations per day and is normalized to the surface area of the Earth. Vernadsky frequently refers to the geochemical energy in The Biosphere especially to emphasize the enormous biogeochemical potential of microorganisms.

As we previously identified in the terrestrial biosphere vegetation accounts for 20% of the carbon sink,the vadose zone the soils and detritus materials 80%.

Environmental groups who have other agendas argue against pastoral farming of livestock due to the emissions of methane.The methanogenic bacteria that inhabit all animals, as well as rice paddies and “conservation wetlands” are not alone in the microbiological biosphere.Other inhabitants are methanotrophic bacteria that inhabit soils.These are consumers of methane, we also observe they respond to increases in atmospheric methane.

These estimated cell-specific CH4 oxidation rates are sufficiently high to allow not only maintenance but even growth on atmospheric CH4 alone.

The constancy of biomass over geological time is a part of the empirical generalizations Vernadsky formulates at the beginning of The Biosphere:

1)During all geological periods there have never been traces of abiogenesis (direct
creation of a living organism from inert matter).

2)Throughout geological time no azoic geological periods have ever been observed.

3a)Contemporary living matter is connected by a genetic link to the living matter of
all former geological epochs.

3b)The conditions of the terrestrial environment during all this time have favored the existence of living matter and conditions have always been approximately what they are today.

4) In all geological periods the chemical influence of living matter on the surrounding environment has not changed significantly; the same processes of superficial weathering have functioned on the Earth’s surface during this whole time, and the average Chemical compositions of both living matter and the Earth’s crust have been approximately the same as they are today.

5) From the unchanging processes of superficial weathering, it follows that the number of atoms bound together by life is unchanged; the global mass of living matter has been almost constant throughout geological time. Indications exist only of slight oscillations about the fixed average.

6) Whichever phenomenon one considers, the energy liberated by organisms is principally (and perhaps entirely) solar radiation. Organisms are the intermediaries in the regulation of the chemistry of the crust by solar energy.

In The Biosphere, Vernadsky extensively discusses the different roles of chemo- and photoautotrophic bacteria in the biosphere and he highlights the importance of anaerobic bacteria in biogeochemical processes occurring in subsurface environments in several sections. The appreciation of the importance of microorganisms in element
transformations at the Earth’s surface is another example of Vernadsky’s scientific foresight.

Chickens come home to roost another Greens biblical prophecy roasted

Last year we were told of forthcoming apocalyptic cataclysmic events both economic and geophysical due to our “sinning “by the use of hydrocarbons.

Apart from the end of the world climate predictions ,we heard that oil had peaked and $100 a barrel was going to end the suburban middle class.In addition the cost of meeting our Kyoto obligations was to be in access of 1.5 billion dollars in purchasing credits,and treasury with its conservative prediction baselines had its head in the sand.

Not withstanding the absurdity of Kyoto and emissions trading being a really good idea like dehydrated water,we observe the reality.

Since then oil has decreased in price as we predicted here by 35%.

The carbon futures market has reduced from 15 euros to .85 euros yesterday.

I am predicting a new ice age due to the inverse correlation between the Greens,and reality.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Compact fluorescent lamps and the Hippocrites

The fever that is inflicting us all the Global warming melody has the new religions preachers warning us of apocalyptic calamities unless the fever is abated by their science of alchemy and their cure of the 4 humors by bloodletting(aka taxation).The industry that will arise will see numbers of leeches(lawyers and politicians practicing their task with earnest.

Interestingly enough the first two horsemen of the apocalypse are the directors of the emission trading investment fund,are David BLOOD and Al GORE.

The traditionally held "Father of Medicine" was the Greek physician Hippocrates (460-370 BC), who taught medicine on the island of Cos. One of his major precepts was the rule of harmony, the theory that all body systems were in balance and that disease resulted from an imbalance. Galen (130-201 AD) was the physician to Marcus Aurelius and became the heir to Hippocrates and one of the most influential physicians of all times. He taught the importance of maintaining balance between the four bodily fluids, or "humors" blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each fluid was associated with a specific personality characteristic. Blood was associated with a sanguine personality, that is laughter, music, and a passionate disposition. Someone with a phlegmatic personality was sluggish and dull, while yellow bile represented an individual quick to anger or choleric (cholera meaning yellow as in yellow fever). Lastly, black bile represented a melancholic or depressed personality, melan meaning black. It was the job of the physician to restore harmony in those four humors by the use of emetics, cathartics, purgatives, and by bloodletting. Bleeding was used to reduce excess circulation, to slow the pulse, and to "reduce irritation", all felt to be the cause of inflammation.

Today we see the local shaman suggesting the mandatory use of Compact fluorescent lamps. Immediately this religious icon is told of producing miracles, saving mankind from the evils of co2 and the modernization of the last 150 years.

Unfortunately as with most cargo cult religions, miracles do not withstand the test of time. In this case 2 minutes. Knowing that fluorescence is a result of plasma physics I wondered what the spectral emissions were, and the properties of the chemical activator coatings.

1 CFLs contain trace amounts of mercury. The amount is not large enough to pose a hazard to users (it is about 1/5 the amount in a typical digital watch battery), but it does become a concern at landfills and trash incinerators where the mercury from many bulbs can escape and contribute to air and water pollution.

2 Here are two main parts in a CFL: the gas-filled tube (also called bulb or burner) and the magnetic or electronic ballast. Electrical energy in the form of an electrical current from the ballast flows through the gas, causing it to emit ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light then excites a white phosphor coating on the inside of the tube. This coating emits visible light. CFLs that flicker when they start have magnetic ballasts; CFLs with electronic ballasts are now much more common.

Compact fluorescent light bulbs are widely considered an environmental solution to replace the ubiquitous incandescent light bulb. Yet few consumers are aware that compact flourescent bulbs have a noisy high voltage, high frequency circuit inside to trigger and maintain their glow. Since the operating frequency of these bulbs is below the AM radio band, there are no restrictions on the amount of electromagnetic radiation that they can generate. Manufacturers have strived to make the lowest cost bulbs using unshielded circuits that generate very high field levels. An example of a compact fluorescent bulb shows that the field strength within one inch of the bulb is an incredible 100mW/cm2

Uv exposure is yet to be quantified ,I suspect we can see mass outrage from the Greens and NGO, letters to the editor,the UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE cited by schoolteachers or is this just the HYPOCRISY of the religious left.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

El Dorado The secret of the soils and the mystery of the carbon sinks

The global transport of carbon (partly in the form of CO2) among the large reservoirs is called the global carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere together with the uptake by the terrestrial sinks and oceans governs the carbon dioxide content observed by the global sampling networks. Currently 40-60% of the anthropogenically released carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere. Our current knowledge is ambiguous whether the rest of the CO2 is being detached by oceans or by terrestrial sinks (soil or vegetation) (Baldocchi et al., 1996).Indeed the missing carbon sink around 20% of the gcc is one of the unanswered questions for the IPCC.

The rhectoric of the sustainable carbon neutral society modification experiment is indeed just that. Propaganda from lobbyists and politicians who want us to lock up forests,or reafforestation programmes that which will have adverse daisyworld climatic effects in the future. Indeed increased forestry in non-tropical climates such as NZ have the effect of decreasing the albdeo(reflection of longwave radiation) and INCREASING local temperatures!

In the terrestrial biosphere vegetation accounts for 20% of the carbon sink,the vadose zone the soils and detritus materials 80%.

Here any policies that impact on the biosphere-atmosphere need to account qualitatively for the adverse effects prior to any policy change.ie that will have any equal adverse response.

Here we look at 2 of the mysteries of the vadose zone ,the greatest change mechanism the bacterial transformers 50% of the worlds biomass will be covered in a later post.

It has long been known that soil carbon, aka organic matter, greatly increases soil fertility by making soil nutrients more available to plants. Several processes have been identified related to soil chemistry and texture, the size and shape of soil particles is important too in supporting chemical processes. This is another way that soil carbon is important for fertility since a shortage would reduce the ability of VAM to transport nitrogen.

Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal fungi (VAM, or just AM) for its role in phosphorus transport as well as sequestration of massive amounts of carbon in the durable form of glomalin which is the threadlike remains of dead VAM lacing undisturbed soil. Phosphorous isn't the only thing VAM transports.

It seems a mighty feat for a microscopic fungus built from threadlike filaments. But collectively, these spindly mushroom relatives help move several billion tons of nutrients out of the soil and into plants each year. . .

"Ignorance (about the movement of nitrogen) limits our understanding ... in what is arguably the world's most important symbiosis," says Yair Shachar-Hill, the lead MSU author on the study. . .

The fungus-plant partnership is one of the planet's oldest and dates back more than 400 million years, when plants began to move out of the oceans and onto land. Plants trade a bit of their sunlight-made sugars for building block nutrients that fungi wring from the soil. Scientists have understood broad outlines of this evolutionary bargain for years, but specific details remained fuzzy, especially those related to nitrogen.

To learn more about nutrient uptake, MSU researchers led by Shachar-Hill, along with collaborators at New Mexico State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture research center near Philadelphia, tagged nitrogen with easy-to-spot atomic markers and then watched as it traveled from soil to fungus to plant roots.

Many had assumed that the fungus would play a modest role. The team found, however, that the fungus acts more like a four-lane highway than a two-track country road in shuttling the nitrogen into plant roots. More than a third of the total nitrogen taken up by the plants came by way of the fungus,

"The really fascinating part is the mechanism underlying the transfer process," says Maria Harrison, a plant biologist at Cornell University's Boyce Thompson Institute and an expert on fungus-facilitated movement of other soil nutrients into plant roots. "Dr. Shachar-Hill and his colleagues were able to show that the fungus acquires the nitrogen from the soil and then links it to carbon and moves this combination molecule towards the plant. Then just before delivery to the plant cell, it unhitches the carbon and releases only the nitrogen to the plant.

There are many implications. Agronomic practices that impede or destroy VAM hugely impact the functional fertility of soil. If the only nutrients available to plants are those in the immediate vicinity of their roots then they can starve in the midst of plenty. This leads to excessive use of fertilizer which is not only an expense that is increasing it is a pollution hazard since excess nutrients end up in ground and surface water.Around 20% of the dark fertile soils of Amazonia are man made,an area around twice the size of the UK.They date to around 2500 years are a product of char and burn agronomy.

"Terra Preta de Indio" (Amazonian Dark Earths; earlier also called "Terra Preta do Indio" or Indian Black Earth) is the local name for certain dark earths in the Brazilian Amazon region. These dark earths occur, however, in several countries in South America and probably beyond. They were most likely created by pre-Columbian Indians from 500 to 2500 years B.P. and abandoned after the invasion of Europeans (Smith, 1980; Woods et al., 2000). However,many questions are still unanswered with respect to their origin, distribution, and properties.

The global carbon cycle has been brought to wide attention due to its importance for the global climate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Global Change (IPCC, 2001) recently confirmed that the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is a reality, which we have to deal with in the future. The atmospheric CO2 has increased from 280 ppm in 1750 to 367 ppm in 1999 and today's CO2 concentrations have not been exceeded during the past 420,000 years (IPCC, 2001). The release or sequestration of carbon in soils is therefore of prime importance.

Soil organic carbon is an important pool of carbon in the global biogeochemical cycle. The total amount of organic carbon in soils is estimated to be 2011 Gt C, which constitutes about 82% of the global organic carbon in terrestrial ecosystems (Watson et al., 2000).

Amazonian dark earths have high carbon contents of up to 150 g C/kg soil in comparison to the surrounding soils with 20-30 g C/kg soil (Sombroek, 1966; Smith, 1980; Kern and Kämpf, 1989; Sombroek et al., 1993; Woods and McCann, 1999; Glaser et al., 2000). Additionally, the horizons which are enriched in organic matter, are not only 10-20cm deep as in surrounding soils, but may be as deep as 1-2m (average values probably around 40-50cm)! Therefore, the total carbon stored in these soils can be one order of magnitude higher than in adjacent soils.

Furthermore, the organic matter in the dark earths is persistent since we find these elevated carbon contents even hundreds of years after they were abandoned.The reason for the high stability of the soil carbon is currently under discussion. So-called black carbon was identified as a probable reason for the high stability (Glaser et al., 2000). Further research is necessary to quantify the recalcitrance of the soil carbon over long periods of time and determining techniques for creating such soils through application of black carbon (or called "bio-char). The structural similarity to charcoal led the authors to assume that accumulation or purposeful application of organic carbon from incomplete combustion may have been the primary reason for the high carbon contents and fertility of these soils (Glaser et al., 2001), a theory that had been proposed by Smith (1980).

Thus any policy change,or incentive/disincentive mechanism must include the total kinetic geochemical cycle in the carbon neutral algoritmn if not it should be shredded and recycled immediately.This will I predict, see the demise of the "carbon balance" industry and its associated ambulance chasing salesman such as Al Gore and his "vested interests"

Friday, February 16, 2007


The sun and its role in the amplification of cooling

2007 is International heliophysical year. What this is the understanding if the relationship between external energy production from both the sun and the cosmos and the amplification and attenuation(modulation) of the terrestrial climate by a number of high energy photochemical process’s.

By reducing the energy measurements to the quantum(lowest devisable level)we can observe that a single IF visible photon is 1 quantum. an x-ray photon 200000 equivalents, and a gamma ray I million times the energy level. Here we see when comparative fluxs are quoted we need very small amounts to produce significant amplification of atmospheric thermochemical dynamics.

The Sun sends to the Earth different types of radiations:

Photons (visible optical OPT, infrared IR, X-rays, gamma rays, etc.) and
Particles (the permanent SW, the sporadic SCR, etc.).

The Sun also generates the interplanetary magnetic field IMF.The whole Solar system is radiated by GCR, which are generated in the supernovae stars and in the Nucleus of the Galaxy in the Galactic Center - GC. The solar wind and interplanetary magnetic fields modulate GCR with their cycles (11- and 22- years, 27- days, etc.).

However GCR determine the chemistry and electrical parameters in the atmosphere. They create ozonosphere and influence actively on O3 processes. GCR transmit to the ozonosphere their solar modulation. But the ozonosphere controls the meteorological solar constant and the thermal regime and dynamics (including the dynamics of the cloud system) of the lower atmosphere,i.e. the weather and climate.This mechanism may be expanded taking into account that the GCR create not only the atmospheric but the hydrosphere and lithosphere part of the ozonosphere also. The so shown mechanism of the solar-terrestrial relationships shows the way to a non-contradictory solution of the key problems of the solar-terrestrial physics.

The inadequacy of analysis to review long term orbital parameters(long frequency)or short term(short frequency) such as the 11 year cycle or the suns 27 day rotational cycle or indeed the energetic upper atmosphere ionisation during solar events(x-ray flaring) Previous observations and modeling of the responses of planetary ionospheres to changes in solar flux have generally compared solar maximum and minimum conditions. Varying solar fluxes also modify the neutral atmosphere,and thus ionospheric changes result from two highly coupled processes. Changes in photon flux due to a flare from far slower changes in the neutral atmosphere, thereby providing a way to constrain or liberate photochemistry. This is particularly important for x-ray photons that carry energy far above that needed to ionize an atom or molecule(around 2.5 magnitudes,a single photon with an energy value of around 36kev can ionize around 200000 molecules.).In such cases,the electron liberated by ionization has so much extra energy that it ionizes other atoms and molecules via collisions. This secondary ionization by photoelectrons has an amplification effect on upper atmosphere chemical genesis (thermo diffusion).

Indeed as an x-ray photon enters a water molecule for example, it severs the chemical bonds,the component parts of the water molecule,which in the presence of O2 form hydrogen and hydroxyl radicals,super oxide ions, and hydrogen peroxide. The process also releases substantial energy as thermal emissions.

Among the most striking natural phenomena affecting ozone are solar proton events (SPE), during which high-energy protons precipitate into the middle atmosphere in the polar regions. Ionisation caused by the protons results in changes in the lower ionosphere,and in production of neutral odd nitrogen (NOx )and odd hydrogen (HOx) species which then destroy ozone in well known catalytic chemical reaction chains. Large SPEs are able to decrease the ozone concentration of upper stratosphere and mesosphere, but are not expected to significantly affect the ozone layer at 15-30 km altitude except during x-class events.

NOx is produced in dissociation of molecular nitrogen by the primary and secondary solar particles and, to a lesser extent, in ion chemical reactions following the ion pair production. Production of HOx is solely due to ion chemistry,involving a rather complex scheme of water cluster ion reactions. The depletion of ozone is due to the increase of NOx and HOx, which accelerates the catalytic ozone loss cycles involving these species.The magnitude and duration of depletion depends on the particle flux, altitude,season(solar illumination level and atmospheric dynamics),and the chemical state of the atmosphere. The short-term ozone depletion due to HOx increase lasts some hours and can be greater than 90% in the middle mesosphere, while the long-term decrease, several tens of percent, is typically seen in the upper stratosphere and is due to NOx increase. Because of the long chemical lifetime of NOx, the effects on ozone can last for months and the produced NOx can be transported from the location of the precipitation, so that lower altitudes and latitudes may also be affected.

Nitrous oxide is a cooling agent for the upper atmosphere and during high energy events from either SPE or during high GCR activity we can see around 5 watts per metre removed from the radiative energy budget.

2007 is solar minima,this year is predicted to be the deepest solar minima in 3 cycles,due to temperatures in the low latitudes of the SH being 0.5-0.9 below 30 year mean and water temperatures of around 0.9-1.1 below 30 year mean we can expect a cold winter..

Sunday, February 11, 2007

The evolution of the New Theory of Climate Change


When ever new or competing theories that challenge the “status quo” of existing scientific theory, we see the enigma of the existing “establishment” refuting the competitor to retain their oligarchial “market” share threatened by paradigm shifts.

"Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research."

We see this today with vitriolic responses from the owners of the Climate Change franchises to competitive forces from astrophysics, and plasma particle scientists.

Those who question prevailing cultural orthodoxies are often treated as immoral, evil people and their arguments depicted as a form of secular heresy.

Many influential figures have a cavalier attitude to free speech, believing that ‘dangerous’ ideas should be repressed. Disbelief in today’s received wisdom is described as ‘Denial’, which is branded by some as a crime that must be punished. It began with Holocaust denial, before moving on to the denial of other genocides. Then came the condemnation of ‘AIDS denial’, followed by accusations of ‘climate change denial’. This targeting of denial has little to do with the specifics of the highly-charged emotional issues involved in discussions of the Holocaust or AIDS or pollution. Rather, it is driven by a wider mood of intolerance towards free thinking.

The majority of scientists in all spheres are more objective,they are interested in the evolution of the theory,its implications,its testability,and improved quatification, and experiment.

Whenever new theories are postulated the orthodoxy reacts, as it challenges the premis of many years of work, existing projects and funding.

We see the publication of new theories that bring the sun-climate coupling as an important feature of climate variability. Svensmark’s publication will bring many crys of outrage but there is a substantial difference as with all solar climate connections.

While we can say rather com-fortably that our Sun is a "typical" main sequence star, we cannot point to a "typical" planet. There is a lesson in that statement and a research challenge of considerable complexity. This monograph deals with a central component of this challenge, namely, to describe the basic structure and dynamics of the upper atmospheres and ionospheres in our solar system and, moreover, to understand their
differences.

Atmospheric scientists tend to divide the gaseous regions above a planet into two broad categories called simply lower and upper atmosphere. For Earth, the study of the lower regions (troposphere and strato-sphere) form the discipline of meteorology. The study of the upper regions (mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere) and their ionized components (the ionosphere) form the discipline of aeronomy. The negative aspect of such a two-fold division is that it encourages thinking of the various atmospheric-spheres as isolated regions of self-contained physics, chemistry, and (in the case of Earth) biology. In reality, there is consider-able coupling from lower to upper regions, an aspect of aeronomy fully appreciated only in the last decade. Com-plimenting this external influence from below, an upper atmosphere has long been known to experience forcing and coupling to and from regions far above it. Aeronomy thus deals with one of the most highly coupled systems in space science --- with neutrals, plasmas, and electromagnetic processes that link the planets, moon, and comets from their surfaces to the solar wind and ultimately to the Sun itself.


In astrophysics a similar challenge was postulated by Alfven that challenged the establishement of western science.His theories were researched and acknowledged by the soviet academies long before the US.

In the world of specialized science, Alfven was an enigma. Regarded as a heretic by many physicists, Alfven made contributions to physics that are today being applied in the development of particle beam accelerators, controlled thermonuclear fusion, hypersonic flight, rocket propulsion, and the braking of reentering space vehicles. At the same time, applications of his research in space science include explanations of the Van Allen radiation belt, the reduction of the earth's magnetic field during magnetic storms, the magnetosphere (a protective plasma envelope surrounding the earth), the formation of comet tails, the formation of the solar system, the dynamics of plasmas in our galaxy, and the fundamental nature of the universe itself.

Alfven was the first to predict (in 1963) the large scale filamentary structure of the universe, a discovery that confounded astrophysicists in 1991 and added to the woes of Big Bang cosmology. Hannes Alfven has played a central role in the development of several modern fields of physics, including plasma physics, the physics of charged particle beams, and interplanetary and magnetospheric physics. He is also usually regarded as the father of the branch of plasma physics known as magnetohydrodynamics.

Attempting to explain the resistance to his ideas, Alfven pointed to the increasing specialization of science during this century. "We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy," he said in 1986. "Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect." Among the causes of this transition, Alfven believed, are territorial dominance, greed, and fear of the unknown. "Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research."

Because his ideas often conflicted with the generally accepted or "standard" theories, Alfven always had trouble with the peer review system, especially as practiced by Anglo-American astrophysical journals. "I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals," Alfven once disclosed, "but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals." In fact, he never enjoyed the nearly automatic acceptance generally afforded senior scientists in scientific journals. "The peer review system is satisfactory during quiescent times, but not during a revolution in a discipline such as astrophysics, when the establishment seeks to preserve the status quo," explains Alfven.
Part of the reason that Alfven's work is neglected in astrophysics may be that Alfven considered himself, first and foremost, an electrical power engineer and rather enjoyed the accusation of encroachment in astrophysics leveled by other cosmologists and theoreticians. Plasma physics has traditionally been neglected in astrophysics, Alfven claimed. "Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century," he argued. "The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory."

And here we see the Paradigm shift, the theories are TESTABLE by physical experiment not solely by some virtual experiment.

2007 is the international heliophysical year a substantial series of publications will be seen,It will be interesting to see if objectivity is still part of the scientifc norm.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Ministry of Truth publishes manifesto

“Fear feeds ignorance” said James Lovelock in the Ages of Gaia,*and a great niche was opened for fear when science became incomprehensible to those who were not its practitioners”

The attachment of a number to anything or anyone implies a significance that was missing from its physical description .A telephone number is valuable tool in comparison the observation that atmospheric abundance of perfluoromethyl cyclohexane is 5.6x10-15 ,or that whilst you have read this line of text a hundred thousand of the atoms in your body will have disintegrated .whilst interesting confer neither benefit or significance to your health.

Last week on Groundhog day the IPCC (aka the scientists of the Grand Academy of Lagado ) issued the Summary for policy makers The physical science basis.In accordance with the celebration of Groundhog day and the covenant of their religious rites they recycled the science ie nothing new except the changing of words to accelerate their manifesto for societal reformation.

As Chris Horner observed in this analysis.

Increasingly,a spectrum of scientists with differing views on the causes, degrees and consequences of global warming are concluding that the UNIPCC’s Kyoto regime is more about,climate politics and less about climate science.That is why a number of former contributors to the science sections of the periodic Assessment Reports have opted out of participating in the 4th assessment process some quite vocally. Unfortunately,this trend will likely facilitate diminished science and enhanced alarmism in the final document particularly the much quoted Summary for Policy Makers.

Others see the process as more about creating schemes for “social justice”and
international wealth transfers than about“saving the planet.” Or as Al Gore has written,more about population control and resolving our collective “spiritual” crisis through forced societal reeducation and a command/control reorganization of society structured around “environmental principles”,whatever that means.

Some perceive it all as more about bureaucracy-building,lavish social gatherings,
economic and political advantage,and saving face than about enhancing the health and
lives of Homo sapiens.The structure,language,and functioning of the Kyoto regime is a lawyer’s dream.

As we see here on page 14 of the Summary the Inconvenient agenda.

B1. The B1 storyline and scenario family describes a convergent world with the same global population, that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, as in the A1 storyline, but with rapid change in economic structures toward a service and information economy, with reductions in material intensity and the introduction of clean and resource efficient technologies. The emphasis is on global solutions to economic, social and environmental sustainability,including improved equity, but without additional climate initiatives.

As Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote in the novel We observed Д-503 lives in the One State an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, where everything is organized according to primitive mathematics. Sleep times are measured out for each day and each individual is given a certain number of other people to have intercourse with based on a system of coupons and scheduling. People move around according to special marches in-step with each other and wear special suits so there is hardly any way to differentiate between different people save by given numbers.

The acceleration of the manifesto by indoctrination of the young by re-education to enable them to inform on their parents was orchestrated the same day in true Orwellian fashion.

Mr Johnson said that influencing the opinions of children was crucial to developing a long term view on the environment among the public.

The implementation of one-party regulation will see this tome become the new Tower of Babel as politicians pretend they can play god.


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