Category Archives: Climate
Is there something fishy about radiocarbon dating?
The Vikings started out as raiders, but then, in the way of these things, ended up as rulers, and their influence stretched from Greenland to what is now Russia. They first enter English history in 793, with the sacking of the Monastery of Lindisfarne. By the late 9th century, they were colonising Iceland, and serving as mercenaries to the Emperor of Byzantium. In 862, Vikings under Rurik established themselves in Novgorod, forming the nucleus of what would become Kyivan Rus. In 885, Vikings besieged Paris, and although they were beaten back settled in what is now Normandy (Norman, Northmen). In 865, the Viking Great Heathen Army arrived in England, and a year later, under Ivar the Boneless, captured York, which would remain their capital in England until the defeat of Eric Bloodaxe in at 954.
The Vikings’ goal was to establish themselves as rulers over Anglo-Saxon England, divided at that time into the four kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia, and Wessex, and in this they were almost successful. After establishing their kingdom in York, they swept south, taking control of East Anglia and killing its king, who had earlier provided them with horses. They then spend the next five years consolidating their hold over what had been the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms, Mercia, stretching from the Thames to the Humber, whose king took refuge in Paris. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that in 873-44, a date that will prove significant for us, the army spend the winter in Repton, then a town of some importance. It then divided, one part going north to consolidate control over York, while the other swept south through Mercia into Wessex, which they effectively overran over the next two years.
The then King of Wessex, Alfred, was not obviously born to kingship, but the throne had passed to him after the death of his brothers. He was forced to take refuge in the Somerset marshes, where according to legend he burnt the cakes while busy contemplating his next move. Despite these reverses, he was able to raise an army from Somerset, Wiltshire, and the part of Hampshire not directly under Danish control. There he developed the strategy of building strategically located burhs, some taking advantage of fortifications surviving from Roman times, where the nearby Saxons would gather and organise if attacked. Alfred’s forces inflicted a major defeat on the Danes at the Battle of Edington, after which their leader, Guthrum. made peace with Wessex. Guthrum and Alfred agreed terms of trade and established a boundary to the Danish domain (the Danelaw) stretching roughly from London to Chester, while Guthrum himself agreed to be baptised, with Arthur acting as his godfather. The ruler of Mercia accepted Alfred as a superior and married his daughter, and Alfred assumed the title of King of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danish forces then dispersed. Guthrum himself became king of East Anglia, and some Danish forces returned to the Continent, while others remained in the Danelaw, which was not finally brought under English domination until 954.
English schoolbooks describe the entire episode as a great victory, and so it was from the point of view of Wessex, with the rival kingdoms of East Anglia and Mercia conveniently eliminated. The Danes, however, had managed to gain control of almost the whole of northern and eastern England, where they would retain a major presence for 70 years.
Alfred was probably the most able ruler that England has ever had. He rebuilt London, which had been destroyed in the wars. Realising that the existing militia system responded to slowly to the Danes’ hit-and-run tactics, he organised a standing army and navy paid for by taxation, and located burhs strategically where bridges crossed major rivers. Among his other accomplishments, he established schools and required the children of nobles to be educated, codified laws, and had key documents translated into the English of the time, which became the language of instruction.
There is a large defensive ditch enclosing the Saxon church of St Wystan in Repton, where the Vikings had overwintered. Within the enclosed area is a mound, containing over 250 skeletons, mostly of men between the ages of seventeen and forty-five. This collective grave had been lined with clay at the bottom, suggesting a single mass burial event. There are a few coins, all dated to the period 872-4. Other, smaller graves nearby show Scandinavian-style burial practices and grave goods, including a silver amulet Hammer of Thor, so it would be natural to suppose that we are looking at burials connected with the Viking army. It should be easy enough to test this hypothesis, by radiocarbon dating of the collagen in the bones, but the results of this were quite surprising. While some of the radiocarbon age estimates included the relevant date, others appeared to be about a hundred years older. It was of course possible that skeletons already in the ground at that point had been reburied, but that does seem rather unlikely.
So was there anything about the Vikings that could make their skeletons seem older than they actually were? Yes; they ate a lot of fish.
To understand why that could be making a difference, we need to look closely at how radiocarbon dating works. Most dating methods depend on long-lived radioactive nuclei that date back to the formation of the earth. Carbon-14, however, has a half-life of a mere 5,700 years. The only reason why there is any at all is that it is continually replenished by cosmic ray bombardment of nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere. This new carbon-14 is then circulated through the atmosphere, and taken up by plants and hence by animals. When an organism dies, it is no longer taking part in this circulation and its carbon-14 is no longer replenished as it decays. Thus the radiocarbon age of once-living material would be expected to correspond roughly to the time since death.
However, we’ve known for a long time that if for any reason an organism gets its carbon from a pool that is isolated from the general circulation, radiocarbon dating can be spectacularly wrong. 60 years ago, a freshwater mussel collected live from a tributary of the Mississippi gave a radiocarbon age of 2300 years. The river at that point was flowing over a limestone (calcium carbonate) bed, and if around one quarter of the carbon that ended up in the growing mollusc came from that source, that would explain the result, since the limestone being ancient contains no radiocarbon at all. Less spectacularly, marine environments are known to give anomalously old apparent ages, because of the time it takes for atmospheric carbon dioxide to diffuse into the oceans. The effect is even bigger for river fish, because of the influence of dissolving limestone. As a demonstration, a group of German and Danish researchers tried cooking fish in a clay pot over a wood fire, and then dated the organic residues. The apparent age was 700 years. And you are what you eat; the radiocarbon in your bone collagen will reflect the radiocarbon in your diet at the time the collagen was formed.
So do Viking eating habits explain the anomalous dates at Repton? In order to check this, we need to do two things. We need to show the Vikings really did eat a lot of fish, and we need to show that doing so really does make the expected difference to apparent radiocarbon age. Fortunately, a study of the fate of the Viking settlement in Greenland gives us the answers to both these questions.
The Vikings first settled in Greenland under the leadership of Eric the Red in 985 CE, after he had been banished from Norway for manslaughter. The settlement grew to a population of around 5000, but was abandoned in the mid-15th century. One possible explanation is local climate change. 985 was during the Mediaeval Warm Period, which brought mild climates in the North Atlantic basin, but by 1450 this was giving way to the Little Ice Age. If this colder climate had been responsible for crop failures, this may be reflected in the settlers eating more fish. Moreover, the skeletons in Iceland also gave anomalous radiocarbon ages, with some apparently predating the original settlement.
R: Sheet from Lake Saga of Eric the Red/Eiríks saga rauða; image by Gilwellian via Wikipedia
We can study ancient diets by looking at a stable minor isotope of carbon, carbon-13, present in around 1.1% abundance. Students are often told that different isotopes have different masses, but identical chemistry. This is not quite true. For reasons well understood in terms of quantum mechanics [1], carbon-13 is slightly less reactive than carbon-12, and is selected against to different extents by different kinds of plant. This eventually results in small but measurable changes in human collagen carbon-13 abundance, depending on diet. The amount of carbon-13 can now be measured to high accuracy using mass spectrometry, and is larger in fish eating populations, such as British Columbia First Nations, than with those on a low fish diet such as inland rural populations without major rivers.
The carbon-13 and carbon-14 data for the Greenland Vikings should therefore be examined together. It was found from the carbon-13 data that, as hypothesised, fish became more and more important in their diet at later dates. It was also possible to estimate how anomalous the carbon-14 data were for the skeletons, by comparing them with their woollen grave clothes (sheep do not eat fish). And indeed, the more important fish had been in any individual’s diet, the greater the disparity between apparent and true age. This is in fact a quantitative relationship, so that after measuring the carbon-13 content of a skeleton, we can calculate the expected radiocarbon age anomaly, and correct for this. When this is done, we find as expected that the true age of death of all the skeletons was late night century. Notice that there is no circular reasoning involved here. The relationship between carbon-13 and fish eating was established directly from observations of populations with known differences in diet. The reality of carbon-14 anomalies in dating the skeletons of fisheaters at Repton was established using actual known dates of death from Greenland. It was only after these relationships have been established, that it was possible to calculate the appropriate corrections to the Repton data.
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) reported on this study, shortly after it was published, under the clickbait title Viking Bones Contradict Carbon-14 Assumptions. Their report goes on to say, quite correctly, that when it comes to radiocarbon dating one size does not fit all, and from this draws the inference that scientific evidence (radiocarbon dating) is intrinsically less reliable than eyewitness testimony (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). This of course is exactly back to front; we regard the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is pretty reliable because its account matches the archaeological findings. The ICR article’s author, James Johnson, has a law degree, and arguments based on the correction of scientific errors seem to have a particular appeal to lawyers, who treat the science as they would a witness who had changed their story under cross-examination. This shows total misunderstanding of what is really going on, and it is deplorable that lawyers (and juries) regard eyewitness accounts as more reliable than forensic evidence. There is the further irony that the eyewitness evidence regarding age to which Johnson is appealing is the alleged testimony of the Creator as laid out in Genesis. This, technically, is hearsay evidence, and as any lawyer should know is at best only as reliable as the process of reporting.
What we have here, contrary to ICR’s claim, is an example of science at its best. We had an initial hypothesis that the skeletons were Viking, strongly supported by grave goods and the known presence of the Heathen Great Army in Repton. But there was an anomaly, namely the radiocarbon dating of the bones. A suggested resolution involved the effect of diet on apparent age, but without further confirmatory evidence this will be a highly unsatisfactory ad hoc solution. However, the carbon-13 evidence allows us, using calibration obtained from a separate set of data (Greenland), to apply the appropriate correction, and the anomaly then disappears.
The story has important implications for studies of England and presumably elsewhere during the Viking period. There is long-standing puzzlement among archaeologists about the apparent lack of Viking skeletons, and it now seems that this might be resolved by re-dating skeletons thought to be pre-Viking, applying the appropriate correction for diet. It is also a splendid example of science in action. Hypothesis (that we are looking at skeletons from the Viking Great Army), anomaly (mismatch of measured dates), subsidiary hypothesis (the effect of diet) proposed to resolve the anomaly, and independent support for that subsidiary hypothesis, without which we would have had to suspect special pleading.
As might be expected, radiocarbon dating anomalies play a special role in creationist arguments. We have seen how ICR put a creationist spin on this anomaly. That was back in 2018, when the story was fresh. For reasons I do not understand, Chick Tracts, who describe their output as “Cartoon Gospel Stories That People Love To Read”, featured the story in their most recent product, March 2023, contrasting the unreliability of scientific evidence with the unquestionable weight of eyewitness testimony in the Gospel. Chick Tracts’ most famous offering being Big Daddy?, in which a godless science teacher is converted to Christianity by an evolution-rejecting student, who uses a number of arguments that will be very familiar to anyone acquainted with a creationist literature. Moreover, the science teacher cannot explain what holds atomic nuclei together, until the student tells him that all things are held together by Christ. The current version of Big Daddy? has the student using arguments long since refuted, telling us that Lucy was a chimpanzee, that vestigial organs are not really vestigial because they have vestigial functions, that the use of index fossils involves arguing in a circle, and that polystrate fossil trees prove the reality of Noah’s flood. The original (1972) version was to my mind far superior, invoking instead actual dating anomalies (including the mollusc we met earlier), correctly criticising the then-popular view that the problem of the origin of life had been solved (it hadn’t, and it hasn’t), and pointing out the differences between evolution driven by chance, evolution as progress, and theistic evolution. As the 1972 version shows, the author Jack Chick (1924 – 2016) was at that time powerfully influenced by the misguided but more or less intellectually reputable creationists around Henry Morris, co-author of The Genesis Flood, while towards the end of his life, as shown [2] by the tract In The Beginning, Chick fell under the influence of the extraordinary Kent Hovind, who maintains that income tax is unconstitutional. Hovind has also claimed, among other things, that the US government is using implanted microchips to track people, that “FEMA is already developing detention camps to put prisoners in when they do not agree with the New World Order”, and that 666 in barcodes fulfils a prophecy in the book of Revelation. In The Beginning includes at least two arguments (the canopy, the Glen Rose footprints) that Creation Ministries International has listed among the arguments that creationists should no longer use.
The 1972 version of Big Daddy? thanks Dr Bolton Davidheiser, PhD Johns Hopkins, who wrote genuine scientific papers (about sex determination in beetles) before becoming involved in creationism, cites Melvin A. Cook, Professor of Metallurgy at Utah, and correctly states the findings of several scientific papers, although it misinterprets the implications. The 2000 version refers only to creationist sources, apart from one journal reference (New Scientist September 6, 1999) that does not exist.
Do such changes matter in an intellectually negligible comic strip? Yes, when the world is as it now is, and when the comic strip series in question has sold over 1 billion items.
(Repost of https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/05/is-there-something-fishy-about-radiocarbon-dating.html)
1] Zero-point energy has the effect of causing lighter isotopes to prefer environments in which they are more loosely bound, including the transition states involved in chemical reactions.
2] Private communication from Kurt Kuersteiner, who was generous with information even though aware that I totally disagree with him. Kurt maintains an informative website dedicated to Jack Chick’s work.
I thank Glenn Branch, of the National Center for Science Education, for information and suggestions.
Why a key creationist climate change denier has gone antivaxx
Summary: The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Nature presents itself as a Christian thinktank on environmental ethics. In reality, it is a direct link between evolution denial and climate change denial, with personnel overlapping Answers in Genesis, and
direct links to the Heartland Institute, a mouthpiece for the fossil fuel industry, and the influential Heritage Foundation. It is now engaged in assembling an ideological package, based on rejection of the principle that policy should be guided by scientific knowledge, and linking together everything from evolution to environmental concerns to elementary measures for restricting the spread of Covid. The rhetoric is masterly; the consequences, lethal.
A friend just sent me a copy of materials that the Cornwall Alliance is sending to its supporters. Here is an extract [fair use claimed]:
BE ARMED AGAINST THE DANGERS OF SCIENCE SO CALLED
Question any part of the climate-change “consensus” (how much climate change is going on, how much humans contribute to it, what if anything we should do about it), and you’re instantly declared “anti-science” or even a threat to the future of the human race.
But don’t be intimidated—or fooled. That response is itself anti-science. It is rhetoric designed to win not by persuading others but by silencing them.
And it arises not just about climate change. From good old Darwinism (goo to you by way of the zoo) and Malthusianism (population growth inexorably exceeds food production and causes a sudden die-off), to the Obama Administration’s insistence that employers must provide insurance coverage for contraception and abortion regardless of their religious conscience, and COVID-19 mask, social distancing, travel, church worship, and vaccine policies.
People in America and around the world are in danger of becoming slaves of scientism and scientocracy.
The rest of the piece is a blurb for an essay by John G West that forms part of a forthcoming book on CS Lewis and his views on the relationship between science and religion (science ought to know its place), leading up to an appeal for funds. The Cornwall Alliance is a charity under US law, rather than a political body, and contributions are tax-deductible.
Read the rest of this entryCreationism and climate – birth of a new pseudoscience
The usual creationist nonsense is just tedious. But creationist “climate science” is toxic, disastrous in its implications for policy, and frighteningly well-connected politically
| Major event | Date (using Ussher)1 |
|---|---|
| Creation | 4004 BC |
| Curse | 4004 BC (Day 10 after creation) |
| Global Flood | 2348 BC |
| Tower Babel | 2242 BC |
| Egypt began | After 2242 BC but prior to Abraham going to Egypt (Genesis 12) |
| Call of Abraham | 1922 BC |
| Ice Age peak | 1848 BC (500 years after the Flood) |
| Time of the Judges (Moses was first) | 1491 BC (God appearing to Moses in the burning bush) |
| Time of the Kings (Saul was the first) | 1095 BC |
| Split kingdom | 975 BC |
| Christ was born | ~4 BC |
We are all too familiar with creationist life science (theory of kinds) and creationist Earth science (Flood geology). As I explain in an article at 3 Quarks Daily, recent decades have seen the emergence of a creationist climate science, which is a direct attack on the “secular” climate science of climate change. Creationist climate science rejects, as it must, the palaeoclimatology that helped establish the existence of positive climate feedbacks, and from this draws the inference that our present concern about human effects on climate is unbiblical, unscientific, and exaggerated. This fits in directly with the agendas of the organisations opposing fossil fuel restraint, and even involves some of the same people. We need to pay attention.
Read the rest of this entryAnti-Science Conspiracy Theories, Power, and Morality
By Carl Weinberg, republished with permission. Read the original article here.
[My own comments: It is easy to link creationism to religion, but to me this seems counter-effective, as well as ignoring the many believers who oppose creationism all the more fervently because it is a travesty of their own faith. Debunking the science in “creation science” is an endless activity, but I don’t think anyone ever became a creationist because of things like polonium halos, or alleged gaps in the fossil record. Digging deeper, we can identify creationism as a conspiracy theory. Indeed it could hardly be otherwise, given its claim that the entire scientific establishment and most of the educational system is engaged in a diabolical plot. This is a particularly dangerous conspiracy theory, not only because it is fiercely anti-intellectual, but because it keys into climate science denial and, these days, into even crazier and more toxic beliefs.
Why do people buy into conspiracy theories, and how to thwart those who use such theories to enhance their power?
This raises further urgent questions; why do people buy into conspiracy theories, and how to thwart those who use such theories to enhance their power. Questions for the psychologist, the social scientist, and the historian, as this article exemplifies.]
Almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are inundated with COVID conspiracy theories: Satan-worshipping globalist elites, including George Soros and Bill Gates, deliberately developed and spread the COVID virus around the globe. The COVID vaccine is the Mark of the Beast from the Book of Revelation. Hollywood celebrities caught COVID by drinking infected adrenochrome harvested from live children in a satanic ritual. Mask and vaccine mandates are a communist plot by the Jewish Illuminati. Polling data suggest that millions of Americans—up to 20 percent of the country—believe at least some of these claims.
Read the rest of this entryAlmost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, we are inundated with COVID conspiracy theories…
‘God intended it as a disposable planet’: meet the US pastor preaching climate change denial
This piece,written in October 2020, seems more relevant now than ever. The Reverend John Macarthur returned to this theme in November 2021, repeating his description of the world as disposable and comparing it to a styrofoam cup
Paul Braterman, University of Glasgow
Every so often you come across a piece of writing so extraordinary that you cannot help but share it. One such piece is a sermon on global warming by American pastor John MacArthur. Full of beautifully constructed rhetorical flourishes, it is forcefully delivered by an experienced and impassioned preacher to a large and appreciative audience.
For me, as a man of science, it is the most complete compilation of unsound arguments, factual errors and misleading analogies as I have seen in discussions of this subject. But it’s important because climate change is a big election issue this November in the US, where there is a growing movement of evangelical Christians who deny its existence, while Joe Biden promises a “clean air revolution”.
Read more: Faith and politics mix to drive evangelical Christians’ climate change denial
The minister of the COVID-denying, law-defying Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California – which has encouraged worshippers to congregate as normal despite state COVID-19 restrictions – MacArthur is an impressive figure whose Study Bible has sold almost 2 million copies.
He regards the infallibility of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as essential to his faith, and his sermon about global warming can only be understood in that context. MacArthur’s rejection of the science is shared by other major US ministries and organisations such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International and the Discovery Institute. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZTlYl8E_B14?wmode=transparent&start=0
Read the rest of this entry
‘God intended it as a disposable planet’: meet the US pastor preaching climate change denial
Every so often you come across a piece of writing so extraordinary that you cannot help but share it. One such piece is a sermon on global warming by American pastor John MacArthur. Full of beautifully constructed rhetorical flourishes, it is forcefully delivered by an experienced and impassioned preacher to a large and appreciative audience.
For me, as a man of science, it is the most complete compilation of unsound arguments, factual errors and misleading analogies as I have seen in discussions of this subject. But it’s important because climate change is a big election issue this November in the US, where there is a growing movement of evangelical Christians who deny its existence, while Joe Biden promises a “clean air revolution”.
Read more: Faith and politics mix to drive evangelical Christians’ climate change denial
The minister of the COVID-denying, law-defying Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California – which has encouraged worshippers to congregate as normal despite state COVID-19 restrictions – MacArthur is an impressive figure whose Study Bible has sold almost 2 million copies.
He regards the infallibility of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as essential to his faith, and his sermon about global warming can only be understood in that context. MacArthur’s rejection of the science is shared by other major US ministries and organisations such as Answers in Genesis, Creation Ministries International and the Discovery Institute.
In this sermon, MacArthur paraphrases “a scientist at Cal Tech” (except not a scientist at all, but the novelist Michael Crichton, best known for Jurassic Park), as saying in a lecture:
Consensus science is the first refuge of scoundrels … invoked only in situations where there is a political, social, financial agenda but no scientific support.
The reverend has the most serious reasons possible for rejecting the scientific consensus concerning the age of the Earth, the origins of humankind, the history and prehistory of the ancient near East and the peopling of continents: it is totally incompatible with the Genesis account of creation, Adam and Eve, the flood and the dispersion of peoples from the Tower of Babel.
Error, denial and misunderstanding
As for global warming itself, the reverend channels standard climate change denial, but all his arguments are unsound and have been convincingly refuted to the satisfaction of an overwhelming consensus of climate scientists (see in-depth discussion at Skeptical Science). He understates the amount of global warming, incorrectly describes the full record as dating back only 30 years, and cites the Little Ice Age as evidence that the changes currently taking place are natural. There’s more:
Here’s the key, friends, this is the real deal. Legitimate science recognises a close correlation between sunspots and climate change … The sun is the source of temperature changes because of its infrared variations. … There is absolutely no evidence that CO₂ contributes to warming. On the contrary the opposite is true. Warming produces CO₂ … It’s the other way round.
Here we have a collection of half-truths and misunderstandings, typical of denialists claiming to represent “legitimate science”. As the graph below shows, the 11-year sunspot cycle is a minor deviation, and the temperature increase since 1980 has occurred despite the fact that over that period the amount of solar energy falling on Earth has gone down slightly. Incidentally, this solar energy input is concentrated mainly in the visible, not the infrared, region of the spectrum, and it is the roughly balancing heat outflow from the Earth that is in the infrared.
MacArthur offers a false dichotomy between saying that CO₂ warms the oceans, and warmer oceans release more CO₂. Unfortunately, both these statements are true. There is a positive feedback loop: human-released CO₂ is the primary driver, but its effect is amplified by the fact that yet more CO₂ is then released from non-human sources. Regarding CO₂ itself, MacArthur seems to be even more confused:
By the way, plants produce CO₂. What man produces is marginal … Industry doesn’t affect CO₂ in the environment or atmosphere.
Plants do produce CO₂ but they absorb more than they emit. However, when it comes to humans, their activity may cause only a small imbalance each year between CO₂ emission and natural uptake, but this imbalance is cumulative. CO₂ levels are now 50% above pre-industrial, and subtle atomic differences clearly show that fossil fuel is the source. But according to MacArthur, “There is no scientific reason to believe that ice caps are melting”.
Despite the Arctic Monitoring and Assement Programme’s video on this subject, the reverend does not think that the evidence for ice-cap melting is scientific, and that other factors are at play:
This is all political [and] financial agendas, class warfare, class envy … By the way, US$100 billion has been spent to make a case for global warming … driven by the socialist mentality … even some of the feminist mentality that resents male success.
All is now clear. Talk of global warming is part of a politically motivated conspiracy. But US$100 billion? That’s 600 years’ worth of all federal climate research spending. Clearly, those pesky socialists and feminists are formidable fundraisers. However, none of this matters because environmentalism is fundamentally misplaced. As MacArthur puts it, citing Revelation and the integrity of scripture:
God intended us to use this planet, to fill this planet for the benefit of man. Never was it intended to be a permanent planet. It is a disposable planet. Christians ought to know that.
And that is a statement that would leave anybody who cares about this world speechless.
This piece first appeared in The Conversation, where it has had over 300,000 reads. I thank my editor there, Jane Wright, for many helpful suggestions.
Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world (review; long)
Timefulness: How thinking like a geologist can help save the world, Marcia Bjornerud, Princeton University Press, 2018/2020
There are many excellent overviews for the general reader of how life on Earth has changed over time (see, for a recent example, Neil Shubin’s Some Assembly Required, which I reviewed here recently. The history of the Earth itself has not been so well served, and Timefulness; How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, by Marcia Bjornerud, Professor of Geology and environmental Sciences at Lawrence University, is a welcome and timely addition to this badly under-represented genre. [1] The book is beautifully written, in plain language, with complex ideas explained with great simplicity and the use of strikingly appropriate verbal imagery. Behind this transparency of language lies a deep love and knowledge of her subject. The book should appeal to anyone looking for an overview of the Earth as the abode of life, or a perspective on our place in time, and how recklessly we are compressing the tempo of natural change.
The author presents her book as an argument for what she calls timefulness, the perception of ourselves as living in and constrained by time, of time itself as having both extension and texture, of the acceptance of our own mortality, and of our own responsibilities. This she sees as severely lacking in our society. We expect people to know something about distances on the map, but Read the rest of this entry
Why climate skepticism is not skepticism
Sourcing Skepticism … what factors drive questioning of Global Warming?
Copied wth permission of the author, Adam Siegel, from http://getenergysmartnow.com/2007/09/13/sourcing-skepticism-what-factors-drive-questioning-of-global-warming/
The original was posted on September 13th, 2007 and attracted 23 Comments
Now it seems more relevant than ever, with such “skepticism” the posture of governments from Australia to Washington while the Arctic ice melts and methane begins to rise from the tundra.
Image Diane Tuft, http://dianetuft.com/the-arctic-melt-gallery
Skepticism … the ability to question unquestioned beliefs and stated certainties is a powerful intellectual tool.
Sadly, “skepticism” is receiving a bad name through association with those ready, willing, able, and enthusiastic about denying the reality before their (and our) own eyes about the global changes in climate patterns and humanity’s role in driving these changes.
Questioner … Skeptic … Denier …
Clearly, not every question, not every challenge to data, not every voicing of concern is the same. Nor is every motivation the same. This is not simply about “fossil-fuel-funding” — although it can be at times. This is not simply about seeking Rapture and the end of times — even though it can be. This is not simply about political beliefs creating thought structures for dealing with science — but it can be. Read the rest of this entry
Truth imitates satire (again) at the Environmental Protection Agency
Trump shakes hands with EPA Administrator Pruitt after announcing intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emission
“Human activity impacts our changing climate in some manner.The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue… [C]lear gaps remain including our understanding of the role of human activity and what we can do about it.”
These are among the talking points distributed to EPA staffers this week.
Have you seen this kind of language before? Yes, you have indeed, from Pruitt himself almost actually a year ago. At that time, I pointed out that Pruitt was following the script of BBC’s satire, Yes Minister. I have now tracked down the relevant episode, where UK Cabinet Minister (later Prime Minister) Jim Hacker, asks his trusted Civil Servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, how to deal with evidence that one would rather ignore. Sir Humphrey’s advice:
Discredit the evidence that you are not publishing. This is, of course, much easier than discrediting evidence that you do publish… You say: (a) that it leaves important questions unanswered (b) that much of the evidence is inconclusive (c) that the figures are open to other interpretations (d) that certain findings are contradictory (e) that some of the main conclusions have been questioned. Points (a) to (d) are bound to be true. In fact, all of these criticisms can be made of a report without even reading it. There are, for instance, always some questions unanswered — such as the ones they haven’t asked. As regards (e), if some of the main conclusions have not been questioned, question them!
That, by the way, was about the safety of a chemical processing by-product.
Hacker (L) explaining his dilemma to Sir Humphrey
You might perhaps be concerned about the degree of contact with reality with which the EPA (to quote further talking points distributed this week) “promotes science that helps inform states, municipalities and tribes on how to plan for and respond to extreme events and environmental emergencies, recognizes the challenges that communities face in adapting to a changing climate, [and] will continue to advance its climate adaptation efforts.”
But really there’s no cause to worry, because, according to Reuters, Pruitt has “reaffirmed plans for the EPA to host a public debate on climate science sometime this year that would pit climate change doubters against other climate scientists.” It’s not clear where he’ll find his climate change doubters, but I’m sure he’ll manage, and no doubt the debate will take place with the same level of intellectual content and integrity that we have seen from the Senate Environment Committee, or would expect to see in a debate on evolution organised by Vice President Pence.
So stop making a silly fuss about the Government telling scientists to misrepresent the science.
Image and quotations from EPA talking points via Washington Post, 28 March 2018. Quotation from Yes Minster via http://moksheungming.tripod.com/yes.html. Hacker/Appleby image via yes-minister.com. Temperature image from NASA Goddard via Wikipedia; public domain
Volcanism and sea level fall
If there were decompression melting of magma in the West Antarctic volcanic province as the icesheet thinned, that would not be good news.
If the geological Society link in the article doesn’t work for you, try this one; http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2017/05/26/SP461.7
Most volcanic activity stems from the rise of hot, deep rock, usually within the mantle. Pressure suppresses partial melting, so as hot rock rises the greater the chance that it will begin to melt without any rise in its temperature. That is the reason why mantle plumes are associated with many volcanic centres within plates. Extension at oceanic ridges allows upper mantle to rise in linear belts below rift systems giving rise to shallow partial melting, mid-ocean ridge basalts and sea-floor spreading. These aren’t the only processes that can reduce pressure to induce such decompression melting; any means of uplift will do, provided the rate of uplift exceeds the rate of cooling at depth. As well as tectonic uplift and erosion, melting of thick ice sheets and major falls in sea level may result in unloading of the lithosphere.
During Messinian Stage of the late Miocene up to 3 km…
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