Simply Complex ...

A recent copy of Scientific American contained an article concerning the latest astronomical research on the search for ‘habitable planets’ which might be suitable for ‘life’ or which might, some day, be an alternative home for humanity. It raised the point that our sun is already past ‘middle age’ for stars of its size and type, and entering (or perhaps already in) its first decay phase. Why is that of interest? After all, we are reasonably certain we have something like 7 or more billion years before it actually ‘dies’. 

Turns out, we may have a lot less than that. The problem is that, as it ages, the sun is getting hotter, which means that the ‘sweet zone’ in which our planet sits, is actually migrating outward toward Mars. Already our planet, once thought to be safely in the centre of that sweet zone, is perilously close to the inner edge of it. Which means, in a mere half million years, our oceans will have boiled away, life will be all but extinct in any present form, and the atmosphere will be largely acidic, toxic and probably hot enough to flash water to steam. 

Other articles discussing the drift of continents, volcanism, oceanic circulation, climate change (or not) and quantum physics all convince me that scientists seem to love to do their thing in splendid isolation and with complete disregard for anything in any other field which may impact on theirs. Thus, ‘Climate Scientists’ ignore geologists providing reliable and well proven data concerning historic warm and cold periods. Information from glaciologists is also ignored, unless it accords with the ‘warming’ narrative. As for anything the astronomers say, well that’s ignored as well. 

Into this rich mix of conflicting signals and messages - made even more complex by politicians running with the bits that suit their agendas, and the masses of terminally blinkered ‘laymen’ who refuse to see anything that counters, conflicts or refutes their favoured ideology/beliefs - the quantum physicists, anti-religionists and the media and you rapidly move to a situation where the last thing anyone listens to is ‘reason’. It becomes a scrum, a slanging match of competing ideas, evidence, and argument, and, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it so eloquently, ‘the truth is not in it’. Or perhaps it is, but it is neither as simple as each competing ‘science’ claims, nor as ‘logical’ as their various adherents think.

One of the great misconceptions in the ‘media’ and thus the wider public, is the difference between ‘theory’, ‘hypothesis’ and ‘reality’. A ‘theory’ is something that has been conclusively established, by observation, by hard evidence and by repeated re-examination, experiment and confirmation from numerous sources and vast amounts of research. Thus, the theory of Tectonics, is established by measurement, examination of rock samples, observation of subduction and eduction zones and by evidence gathered from analysis of the chemistry of rocks, gases from volcanoes and so on. Climate Change, on the other hand is still in the hypothesis category, simply because the ‘hard’ proof is proving elusive, and while there is historic and geological evidence to prove that climate changes, what is not ‘proved’ or agreed is what causes it. The media, and here I include the Internet, conflates everything, so any ‘new’ paper that catches the attention is trumpeted as ‘proof’ or ‘conclusive’ when often it is anything but.

And then there is astro-physics and quantum physics. Both branches of mathematics, and both heavily reliant on mathematical models to test and ‘prove’ their theories. Their ‘hard’ evidence comes from telescopes, satellites, photographs, the lander on Mars and now the ESA satellite and lander on a comet, and the Large Hadron Collider. These are the branches of science that always put me in mind of the Wizards in Sir Terry Pratchett’s books. More particularly in the group that inhabit the High Energy Magic building at Unseen University, and who probably wouldn’t recognise ‘reality’ if it attacked them. Thus one can marvel at the paper produced recently by a group of quantum physicists that ‘proved’ (using computer models) that out entire universe is a hologram. 

Quantum Physicists marvel at the fact that some of their (modelled) particles apparently defy Newtonian Physics, and some may even defy Einstein’s theory of Relativity. According to them our universe is a 3-D projection originating in a 4-D Universe, itself a projection from a 5-D Universe, etc., etc., and presumably ours ‘projects’ a 2-D Universe somewhere, and that … These are the guys who get super excited when they can smash an atom and find bits they’ve never seen, which cannot possibly be seen, and which can only exist independently for moments of time we can’t even begin to measure (though I’m sure someone has named them). Sometimes reading about the ‘latest’ revelation in this field, or in genetics and other ‘microscope’ or ‘modelling’ branches of science, one gets the impression that the writers are standing so close to their subject, and so focused on the minutiae, they cannot see the larger world, and sometimes the reality, around them. 

Science is exciting, it is informing us of wonders even our most recent forebears couldn’t have imagined, and it is both exciting and terrifying. Exciting because we are, to abuse a phrase from a more famous author, we are catching glimpses of the Divine, but it is terrifying for the same reason because some of what we are now seeing defies logic, or raises so many more questions we cannot yet answer it suggests we may be better off not poking a stick into these things.

Returning to the American Scientist article briefly, the finding that the sun has got hotter, and the ‘sweet zone’ is migrating past us, it raises a serious question about Climate Change. If, as is now predicted, in less than 500,000 years, we will be sitting on a nearly barren lump of rock being scorched by a slowly swelling and overheating sun, precisely how will we protect ourselves and maintain ‘life’? The answer in the article, is that our survival depends on migrating away from here before that date, yet it seems that no one is interested in that option. There does not seem to be a single body (and as far as I’m concerned the UN would be the worst possible body to do it) that is looking at anything longer than the next five, ten, fifty or hundred years, and all of them are doing so from purely the perspective of ‘how do we keep the voters sweet, the money flowing, and stay in control’.

As I said at the outset, none of the sciences seem to put their data together and see the bigger picture, or indeed, consider what another discipline can tell them that may mean adjusting their own hypotheses. The response when one suggests it (even as a lowly ‘fire investigator’ looking at a complex fire event with ‘specialists’ and ‘experts’ from other scientific disciplines) is, “Ah, outside my field. Not relevant.” So I read in various places that the Tera tons of ice covering the Antarctic continent ‘will be gone in less than a hundred years’ and that the Arctic will be ‘ice free’ within ten, twenty, … take your pick. All claims made by scientists and activists whose purview is restricted to the evidence of their own particular discipline/ideological beliefs and ignoring records from ice cores and geologists that there may be a cycle to this. There is outright denial in some quarters of the fact that in the period 900 - 1200 AD, the Greenland islanders kept cattle, something that is impossible today.

We are constantly told that storms and floods are a result of climate change, yet any engineer will argue that more paving, more roof surface and building in flood plains will all result in greater flow of water into rivers, faster, and more dangerously than even fifty years ago. We are told sea levels are ‘rising’ in places like Manhattan, yet a geologist will tell you that the weight of the buildings etc., on the island is depressing the crust beneath the island, so it is a moot point as to whether the sea level is rising, or the land sinking. We have the same effect in Southern Britain where the land is sinking and Scotland rising slowly as a result of the crust adjusting from no longer being covered by almost a mile thick ice sheet.

The one thing in the universe everyone seems to agree on (except perhaps the adherents to some of the new ‘religions’ of ‘science’ and ‘climate’ who are experts at neither) is that everything is in a constant state of change. Nothing is static, so instead of, as some campaign so passionately for, trying to arrest change, we need to find more efficient ways to adapt. We need to rein in our explosive expansion of the human population and stabilise it - something we can change - and we need to find more ways of co-operating instead of competing.

Isaac Asimov once declared that if humanity is to survive, and to expand into interstellar space successfully, all nations must pool their resources and their expertise. Only then can the full human potential be realised. Only then can we successfully escape the confines of a dying planet and, perhaps, the consequences of our present hubris.

Climate and Weather

Once again I see the terrible weather the UK and Europe have been enduring - the UK in particular taking the brunt of it - is fuelling the 'Global Warming/Climate Change' hysteria. Yet another 'paper' has been rushed into print claiming that 93% of the 'missing heat' (the gap between reality and climate model predictions) is lurking in the oceans. The Polar Vortex responsible for this battering we are currently enduring is, apparently, caused by the ice loss and warming of the Arctic Ocean. The paper also claims that Antarctica is losing its ice shelves, and the reason for the current increase in ice there is - you got it - global warming 'trapping' a vortex over the continent.

I get fed up with selective quotes, buzz phrases (the users of which seldom actually know what they mean) and headlines like "unprecedented" or "worst XXX in history". I get fed up with being told that something has never happened before, when right in front of us is ample evidence that it has, and may even have been worse. Why did the Victorians build the Embankments along the Thames in London? Why did the coastal authorities in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries spend enormous amounts of money (often the landowner's own) and effort building land drains, dykes and sea defences? Because none of these events or storms is "unprecedented" except in the minds of idle ignoramuses who never check their facts and are totally ignorant of any history. In medieval times an entire town vanished overnight in a storm that hit the Frisian coast of Germany. Archaeologists now know that wasn't 'unprecedented' then either. Holland has suffered massive flooding throughout its history, and the Thames suffered 'catastrophic' floods at regular intervals until quite recently. In fact, in February 1928 there was massive flooding in much the same areas now affected, people drowned in the western suburbs of London in the floods. So how is the current flood 'unprecedented'?

There can be no doubt that the climate is changing, but to ascribe it, as so many reports do, purely to the Carbon Dioxide emissions of mankind is pure garbage. "Carbon" has become a 'catch-all' word for everything Greenpeace and its devotees cal a 'greenhouse gas' - in which group they now include water vapour. But how many of the idiots who earnestly repeat this trash actually understand anything at all about the 'gases' they deem to be so harmful? Not many if any of the conversations and news reports I am constantly bombarded with are anything to go by. Once again we see the likes of the Labour Leader, and the Minister for the Environment trotting out the buzz phrase that 'we must de-carbonise society' in order to 'prevent catastrophic climate change'. As I have repeatedly said, the day I see proof they can control the rise and fall of the tides, is the day I will subscribe to this trash. Until then, stop running around like Chicken-licken screaming the sky is falling, and let's get real. The answer to climate change - a natural phenomenon that has been happening since the planet first formed - is to adapt.

Stop building in flood plains would be a good start. The Somerset Levels were a sea marsh until they were drained in the 18th and 19th Centuries, so were the Fens. The other little wriggle is that we now have probably 30 times the number of people living in Britain than at the beginning of the Industrial Age. Urban sprawl has increased run-off, created 'heat islands' and 'micro-climates' which all mess up the weather patterns - so let's take a look at the effect those have as well.

Let's do something positive about finding a reliable and efficient source of electrical energy. I'd love to see the figures for the output of all those damned useless windmills during the storms. I'm prepared to take a bet with the High Street Bookmakers that it was not the vaunted 17% capacity they supposedly give. I'd be surprised if it was as much as 1 or 2% because with the wind speeds reported, most of them will have had to be shut down to prevent damage. So the alternative supplies will have been brought online - massive diesel generating plants quietly installed by the wind generating companies to keep the current flowing when the wind turbines aren't producing. And Drax, the massive coal burning plant currently being converted to burn wood chips imported from Western Canada by rail and ship loads. Yes, I expect that does a huge amount to "de-carbonise" our energy use, Mr Milliband.

Yes, let's replace hydrocarbon fuelled vehicles with electric ones - but let's find a more efficient way of using those than with massive and extremely toxic batteries. Let's find better ways to build and insulate our homes. Let's make those less vulnerable and more efficient even if that means replacing and redesigning all the building stock we currently hang onto as if it were the epitome of architectural and construction achievement. Frankly, most of it was substandard when built, and it hasn't improved with age. I'm not talking about real heritage buildings, but, seriously, what is the attraction of a Victorian Terrace built for "t' workers up t' mill"? The rooms are often damp, cramped and even if the house has been renovated, built right onto the street, has no garden and the street outside is choked with the cars not invented when the houses were built.

Climate Change, like the tides, is unstoppable. Like the tides, or continental drift, we can't stop it. So let's, for pities sake, stop wasting time and money trying to 'stop' it. It's time to get seriously real. The 'Climate Scientists' can't actually say which way it's going anyway, since nature has, so far, refused to conform to their fantasy models, and while Britain is bombarded by rain and storms, the North American continent is being buried in snow and ice. All down to 'Global Warming' you see. Most of these models are using data that has been 'smoothed' or 'averaged' and 'adjusted' to fit the model, which means the data fed into them is pretty close to being worthless - except in terms of how much money can be extracted from the tax payer to keep funding the circus.

So here's a radical idea. Stop funding the research into this. Let the UN pay for it if they can find the money and divert it from the wastage and corruption of that fraudulent organisation. Stop funding the multi-million dollar operations of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, etc., all of which are now become purely political (socialist/communist) organisations. Stop subsidising the inefficient wind farms (a wind turbine is, at best, only 27% efficient, whereas a coal fire power station is at least 43% efficient and most likely more). The money saved could be invested in rebuilding our building stock, and in new generating plants with the latest and most efficient technology. Wind and solar won't do it, and neither are as 'clean and green' as their proponents like to argue.

I think I really must stop being practical. I wonder of the Church of Climate Change dances and uses tambourines in their worship? Might be good for a laugh ...

Energy Demand and Freezing Weather ...

The 'Big Freeze' in the US could have been made a great deal worse by massive power outages. The surprise is what 'saved' the system. It certainly wasn't all those windmills and solar cells, nor was it the coal and gas generating stations, and even the diesel emergency generating stations had problems. The probably unpalatable fact for the 'Green' lobbyists is that it was the nuclear stations that kept going while natural gas lines suffered massive drops in pressure (the gas 'liquified' in the low temperatures and Charles Law took over and did the rest), the diesel generators suffered fuel problems (diesel fuel tends to 'jellify' at very low temperatures) and the coal trains couldn't get enough to the power stations in the snow - and the snow hindered its movement from the storage bunkers to the furnaces where there was enough.

The much maligned and hated nuclear power stations alone had no problem. Need more power in the grid? Run up some more of the turbines and bring them on line. The only thing that could have bothered them was the collapse of the overhead power grid. From Smart Planet, I got the following data in an article entitled The Score After the Deep Freeze: Nuclear Power 1: Polar Vortex 0. When Solar and Wind were shutting down because the extreme weather rendered them unusable, nuclear took the strain. Output figures for New England for the period show:

• Nuclear 29%
• Gas 27%
• Oil 15%
• Coal 14%

It is reported that coal stacks froze solid, and both oil and gas had problems, and diesel generators don't function well in extreme low temperatures (ask the U-boat commanders ordered to operate above the Arctic Circle in the 1940s ...). The remaining 15% of the energy used came from a mix of other sources, though wind provided the bulk of it - when the wind conditions allowed it. Now, remember this is for ONE part of the US, and the freezing weather actually affected the whole of the North and West and extended almost as far South as Florida. Admittedly the New England area is possibly one of the more densely populated areas and therefore has a very high demand for power, but it highlights one of the biggest problems we face in the pursuit of 'clean' energy.

It is true that there are a number of problems associated with nuclear power, but the fear that has been whipped up against it is largely based on general ignorance. The ignorance of the majority of people is ruthlessly exploited by the anti-nuclear lobby who are probably almost as ignorant as those they claim to 'inform' on it. One of the biggest problems is the lack of understanding regarding radioactivity, radiation and the dangers. As a good friend and former colleague who specialised in radiation once remarked, it's a radioactive universe. Yes, the current Uranium based reactor systems do produce some nasty by-products with long 'half-lives' of decay, but the question most folk don't understand is the difference between exposure to Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation sources. The first two are fairly easy to shield, the third is not and is the really nasty one. Ironically, almost every anti-nuclear campaigner I've ever encountered doesn't know this and doesn't realise that the gold rings, ear rings and pendants they wear also emits radiation. So do the rocks used to build houses in places like Scotland or Cornwall.

Had an x-ray recently? You've probably had about half the allowable radiation dose permitted in a nuclear facility. I discovered some years ago talking to a man (then in his late 80s) who had been part of the Manhattan Project team, that their 'safe exposure limits' had been set by halving the exposure limits allowed for x-rays ... No one seems to have ever questioned them since.

Radiation in one form or another is present everywhere, most sources things we take for granted and don't even consider to be 'radioactive'. Until fairly recently if you'd held a Geiger counter near the face of a 'luminous' watch it would have gone crazy. In fact it isn't that long ago a watchmakers premises in London were found to be sufficiently radioactive as to need a massive (and expensive) decontamination process.

The real problem with Nuclear generation is the waste, and here again, there is as much misinformation as there is waste. The truth is that very little of the waste is actually 'high level' waste such as Plutonium, Polonium, Caesium and so on. Most of it is irradiated clothing, tools and other materials which do not have a long 'half-life'. It is this stuff that Greenpeace and CND activists love to find 'improperly stored', and whip up hysteria with often staged and retouched photographs. Of course the stuff is dangerous, but to claim it will 'poison' the ground water, or irradiate anyone walking past is is nonsense. The high level waste is a different matter, but again, there is actually very little of it. The fuel rods themselves are generally recovered and can be reprocessed so that around 80% of the original material is recovered. The nasty stuff can be removed and is first cooled, compressed into cakes, then sealed into solid glass slugs before being encased in concrete and a steel jacket. This is the stuff the anti-nuclear lobby would have the gullible believe is being mishandled and improperly stored - and ignorance is their tool.

The fact is that nuclear is the best alternative to wind, solar, coal and oil electricity generating plants. For one thing there is no CO2 output. Nor do we have to stay with the current Uranium fuelled reactors. The truth is that Uranium was chosen for the simple reason that it does 'breed' Plutonium and that was required to make the atomic bombs. The alternative is to use Thorium which has almost no seriously bad decay products. No Plutonium, no Polonium and no Caesium. In other words, you don't have the incredibly long 'half-lives' of the radioactive wastes we are currently dealing with. There is still waste, and there is still a 'risk' but then the waste from a coal burning power station is seriously nasty - and radioactive.

To those who would rather see a further spread of windmills I would point to the fact that during the recent storms in the UK the National Grid was receiving very little from all the hundreds of turbines around Britain. Most of them were shut down because the winds were too strong - so the power was being produced by all the 'dirty' technologies they are campaigning to have shut down permanently. If you would rather see hydro-electricity increased, there are problems there as well. Building a dam large enough to generate the sort of capacity required causes massive ecological disruption to wild-life and the river systems - take a look at the Aral Sea since the Soviets dammed all the rivers that once fed it. Take a look at the Snowy River in Australia below the dam built on that, or the Murray-Darling Basin once the waters feeding that were diverted to provide water to other uses.Take a look at what is happening now on the Yellow River in China and then take a look at how the Severn eco-system will be affected by a barrage spanning the estuary. Why not dam the Thames at Dartford? Sure, the river upstream will be stable (it currently has an 18 - 21 foot tide) and the outflow/inflow can be used to generate power, navigation will be affected of course, but think of the benefit ... 

Nuclear power generation doesn't impact rivers, landscapes or ecological systems in anything like the same way. Incidents such as Windscale, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima are rare - far rarer than incidents involving other power generating plants, and each one of those involved circumstances that were unique. There are no nuclear plants in Europe or the UK that incorporate the features of Fukushima, much less are built in earthquake and tsunami zones. Nor is it so easy to deliberately crash an aircraft into the reactor building. In fact I would bet that most people couldn't actually identify the reactor building at most such sites. Changing the type of fuel to Thorium would, in fact, change the ball game as well. OK, it isn't as easy as simply pulling one type of fuel rod and replacing it with another, but this is where the current "No Nuclear" attitude is actually holding us back. 

So far all the efforts to cut power use, to reduce reliance on 'fossil fuel' (and there is a huge debate on whether 'oil' is in fact a 'fossil' product) have failed. And they will continue to fail. Our society needs electricity - lots of it - to survive. Those who think we can revert to subsistence farming, are living in Lalaland, and those who think we can maintain our current standard of living and levels of civilisation while reducing our use of electricity and transport are fooling themselves. "Renewable" energy will never replace normal generating plants since they are not reliable, and the fact that ever single one of us is actually subsidising the owners of these things is a disgrace. Data from the National Grid shows that though wind has the capacity to supply 17% of demand, it rarely produces more than 5% of what is required. 

Nuclear is clearly far more reliable, and if the hysterical, misinformed, campaigning mob is faced with reality - as in the removal of all their electric gadgetry whenever their wind turbines drop out of the gird - we might see some real progress. Progress which doesn't mean defacing the countryside and destroying the ecology with their windmills, dams and acres of solar panels. It is time for a major rethink, and for some serious education of the ignorant.  

Climate Changing in the wrong direction?

OK, I'll confess. I've been finding the plight of the Climate Alarmist 'scientist' and his team - plus their tourist supporters - trapped in the ice in Antarctica by 'unprecedented pack ice' when they expected to be able to sail blithely up to the coast itself, hilarious. Especially since it has been widely reported that the satellite measurements, on the ground observations and even overflights have all reported that there is more ice around Antarctica at present than there has been for quite some time. Now I see The Spectator has picked it up. Their article, The Climate Change Trip Stuck in the Ice, makes some serious points about this.

Even funnier is the fact that both the BBC and the Guardian had their climate change reporters on board - no doubt their pre-written reports to the effect that the ice was 'vanishing faster than expected' already filed. Now they'll have to either write the truth, or find some other scam to cover. The fact is that this is not the first such trip undertaken by the True Believers of Climate Change that has been frustrated by nature not following the script. Anyone remember the attempt to row to the North Pole last year? Oh, sorry, failed, because there was too much ice. Or the attempt to walk there the year before? Oh yes, that also failed because ocean currents and wind kept moving the ice around. Then there was the attempt to row a boat through the North West Passage. Oops, not possible. Ice closed the 'passage' for the whole period.

I suspect the writer of The Spectator article has it right when saying that even the 'new' name of Climate Change is so nebulous as to be meaningless. The 'climate' of this planet (and probably every other planet as well) has been 'changing' since it first formed. The idea that humans can do much more than have a small local impact is simply ludicrous, and the idea that we can actually change its direction in any major or meaningful way is so far-fetched it belongs in the sort of science fiction current in the 1940s and 1950s. It would be funny, if it wasn't doing immense damage to the national economies of those nations stupid enough to fall for it.

The current crop of 'interviews' with enthusiastic passengers being rescued by a large Chinese helicopter from the trapped ice breaker are interesting only because they fail completely to mention that the purpose of the trip was to 'prove' the ice pack was vanishing. Guess they forgot to tell Mother Nature that.