Category Archives: Science (real)

Guest Post: Global Cooling on My Mind

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[Special to the Perspective] — The difference between weather and climate has been explained this way (which seems fairly good to me):

“Weather” is your mood and “Climate” is your personality.
Climate is a more permanent, underlying factor that causes the Weather.

There is also an old Jewish proverb that is one of my favorites: “For example is not proof.” The science of “anthropogenic global warming” is based around a lot of anecdotal evidence, some good data, and government funded computer programs. We have to be equally careful with anecdotal evidence such as the ones in items 1-9 going around lately, but consider the following:

1. The U.S. and Europe have had record, early cold/snow in 2013.
2. Australia has had very late (nearly summertime) snow and cold.
3. Cairo (Egypt, not Illinois) had snow for the 1st time in 100 years. Storm Alexa, the worst storm to hit Jerusalem for 60 years, left snow up to 19 inches deep in some areas.
4. The ice coverage area in the arctic ocean is higher than it has been in the last 7 years and that in the Anctartic has been trending higher for the last 30 years and more.
5. Solar activity is low now and projected to enter a period of 30 years of low activity.
6. Every data collection shows there has not been any global warming since 1998 — ironically the year after the Kyoto Protocol was signed.
7. The models developed by multiple agencies have been wrong in predicting the slight cooling over that period.
8. There are many cases of warmer temperatures than what we have now — such as in the medieval ages.
9. There is increasing consensus within the scientific community that the models have overstated the importance of greenhouse gases and understated the importance of solar radiation.

Add to the anecdotal evidence above a few other factoids:

A. The sun is overwhelmingly the source of heat on the Earth.
B. Carbon dioxide solubility in water drops with increasing temperatures.
C. Heat loss at night (the mechanism presumably responsible for global warming) is strictly based on radiation from Earth’s surface and atmosphere to the sub-zero cold of outer space. This transfer mechanism is not subject to sharp changes (ie a discontinuity), because neither the Earth’s surface temperature nor the blanket of greenhouse gases, nor the temperature of space can change suddenly. Indeed the temperature of space does not change at all and the greenhouse gas concentration has been increasing steadily. So basically nothing can explain reduced radiation at night – the supposed mechanism of globval warming conventional thought.
D. As opposed to the heat losses at night not changing quickly, we do know that solar activity does have ‘rapid’ changes.
E. The rapid changes in warming or cooling, therefore, must be due to higher/lower solar activity and incident radiation coming to Earth.

Combining A and B and E, a reasonable scientist would investigate that it is more likely that atmospheric CO2 lags heating rather than the other (more conventional) opinion that has dominated the public discourse for the last 20 years.

For more information:

o The CDIAC offers a lot of data and facts on concentration and sources of atmospheric CO2. CDIAC is a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy Climate and Environmental Sciences Division of the Office of Biological and Environmental Research.
o The sea ice extent in both hemispheres is available from The University of Illinois (where Dangerous Bill taught for many, many years) Polar Research Group is part of UIUC Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
o A study by Swedish scientist Leif Kullman and others analyzed fossils in the Scandes mountains. They found that tree lines for different species of trees were higher during the Roman and Medieval times than they are today. The temperatures were higher as well.

–Felipe Yanes

Editor’s Note: The literature is full of data, much of which contradicts the official “climate change” arguments. Mr. Yanes has pointed out some of the flaws.

Solar heating deniers (many of whom ask for government credits to add solar devices to private homes) lost the “anthropogenic global warming” argument so they now are trying to change it to the “man-made climate change” argument. Over the millennia, the climate has and does change as solar activity varies, the magnetic poles shift, the moon wobbles, and Earth’s axis tilts a few degrees one way or the other.

Science isn’t “fixed,” permanent, in stasis. Mr. Yanes’ reasonable scientist would discover that narcissistic comic book illustrators and fiction writers who defend AGW know little about actual science and have adopted the now conventional opinion that they have more control over their environment than even Jack Williamson believed.

They have to. Otherwise, they lose control of the rest of us.

 

Liftoff

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It was never a sure thing with the leaden skies and incipient rain and lightning so when we went Red for upper level wind conditions, we were all worried.


The hold was short and the United Launch Alliance Atlas V with the second MUOS satellite aboard lifted off at 9:00 a.m., 44 years after Apollo 11 passed behind the Moon and fired its engine to enter lunar orbit. This was my first in-person launch. WOW, what a birthday present!

“The U.S. Navy’s Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is a next-generation narrowband tactical satellite communications system designed to significantly improve ground communications for U.S. forces on the move. MUOS will provide military users more communications capability over existing systems, including simultaneous voice, video and data – similar to the capabilities experienced today with smart phones.
“MUOS satellites are equipped with a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) payload that provides a 16-fold increase in transmission throughput over the current Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite system. Each MUOS satellite also includes a legacy UHF payload that is fully compatible with the current UHF Follow-on system and legacy terminals. This dual-payload design ensures a smooth transition to the cutting-edge WCDMA technology while the UFO system is phased out.”

The United Launch Alliance (a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing) has three expendable launch systems: Delta II, Delta IV and the Atlas V. These vehicles have carried payloads such as weather, telecommunications and national security satellites, as well as deep space and interplanetary exploration missions for more than 50 years.

Yipee Ki Yay, Baby!The Atlas family isn’t quite the ground pounder that the Saturn V was but it was still enough to lift John Glenn into the first American orbit.

And pound the ground it did.

More than 300 Atlas launches have been conducted from Cape Canaveral and 285 more from Vandenberg.

Once upon a time, not so many years ago, we huddled around our television sets and watched every launch.

I drove down to South Puffin from North Florida last night through a bodacious thunderstorm that stalled all flights out of Orlando and knocked out the Internet and the cash registers at the gas station I sheltered in. They couldn’t even take cash for gas.

Sebring Race TrackI drove through Christmas and then stopped at Sebring. That fabled 3.7 mile, paved road course hosts the 12 hours of Sebring endurance race as well as the Chumpcar World Series, the SCCA Turkeytrot, the American LeMans, and dozens more races each year. It is one of the busiest year-round circuits in North America and held an event I missed this weekend. Still, I drove around, got directions from a very nice airport security fellow, and found my way to the SCCA compound. They welcomed me, even though I forgot to bring beer.

Then they invited me to come back up and flag.

Pretty darned good weekend!


Click here for the good launch photos.
 

Norman Who?

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Today would have been Norman Borlaug’s 99th birthday.

wheatAmerican Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, Ph.D., was a plant pathologist and geneticist. He is often called “the father of the Green Revolution.” Dr. Borlaug’s work doubled wheat yields in Mexico and India and Pakistan which has saved over a billion people from starvation.

Genetically Modified Organisms.

Here in the United States, the Far Green (slogan: “Just Say No to G-M-O”) has made that a dirty word.

I guess those billion people are just an inconvenient truth.

First World Problem

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Did you ever wonder why your stick of margarine comes out of the waxed paper broken in the middle?

margarineWe don’t use a lot of margarine but every stick in the last few pounds out of the freezer has looked like this.

I tried Googling for the answer. Out of about 6,290,000 results, 6,289,004 came back that “No insect will touch margarine and neither should any human.”

I don’t care about the butter aisle wars. Butter was a no-no. Saturated fats are a no-no. Now trans fats are a no-no. Butter is “all-natural.”

Pfui. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 21, butter and margarine each must contain a minimum of 80% fat. The difference between them is simply the source of the fat: butter is made from cream (moo), and margarine is made from vegetable oil. (“For the purpose of this subpart P ‘butter’ means the food product usually known as butter…”)

Margarine can be used just like “butter” in most types of baking. Since margarine is softer than butter, you probably should not use it pastries and candy made from a boiled syrup. For the record, Anne makes excellent pie crusts but she uses lard.

This is a slippery slope and I don’t care what’s at the bottom. I just want to know why the stick is broken.

Heh. Slippery.

The Pennsy1 still ran when my mother and grandmother were at Swarthmore College but that train station is now part of SEPTA. The fare to and from Central Philadelphia is currently $4.25 during off-peak hours, about the cost of two pounds of butter on sale. Despite the fact that butter comes from cows, this is not the story of the cow in Parrish (cows will climb up but can’t come back down the stairs).

It seems a group of students who shall remain nameless because their legacies might still want admission saved their butter from the dining hall for most of a term. Freezers weren’t available then, so I’m not sure I want to know its condition when that same group wandered down to the Media Local tracks and slathered and slathered and slathered. As you might expect, the train rushed into the station and rushed right on through, much to the surprise of everyone aboard.

College students are one reason butter costs so much more than margarine.

Can I freeze margarine?
Yes, but probably not the whipped style or the low-fat brands which charge you to replace about half the fat with water. Place the package in an air-tight container or freezer bag. Freeze before the use-by date on the package, and store frozen up to six months. The limit is mostly to inhibit freezer smells.

I don’t think freezing had anything to do with the broken sticks I have. We’ve been buying margarine on sale and freezing it for most of my semi-adult life. The sticks sometimes come out a little bent at the corners but they rarely look licked and never have been so consistently pre-divided.

The floor is open for suggestions or scientific proofs.

Me? I think someone dropped the entire pallet of margarine off the top rack of the warehouse.

1“The Pennsy” was the affectionate name for the Pennsylvania Railroad, the largest railroad by both traffic and revenue in the U.S. for the first half of the twentieth century. It was at one time the largest publicly traded corporation in the world.

Better Living through Chemistry™

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Rufus likes to remind folks that I am pugnaciously parsimonious. He’s right; in fact, I coined the term and live it daily. I even considered pitching a magazine column with that name but didn’t. See, there are simply too many other skinflints out there writing about it.

Still, cheap bahstidry is a valuable trait but there is thrift and there is cheap.

I mentioned to Liz Arden that I would have to break down and buy some real Febreze™ this morning as I was cleaning my shower. Washcloths take on a life of their own here on my subtropical island. Oh we have a lovely breeze coming through the house but [things] grow when the temperature is 81° and the dew point is 82°.

I need something to take the stink out of the washcloths. The unbranded stuff just doesn’t stand up to whatever comes in on that breeze.

“Dollar Store stuff is mostly snake oil,” Ms. Arden replied.

There’s some truth to that.

Still, Kay Ace swears by “Awesome Bowl Cleaner,” I love “Ovenbaked” brand chocolate-covered graham crackers, and we know that several name-brand manufacturers are now packaging for the dollar market.

The Super Strength Dollar Store de-stinkifier bottle lists water, odor neutralizers, quality control agents, and perfume on its label. I’m down with water as the principle ingredient. After all, gasoline is a lot more expensive and harder to transport. Perfume is another goodie and if they used gasoline instead of water they’d need a lot more perfume which would seriously annoy my nose.

The real questions are what do they think are odor neutralizers and how did they shrink the SCUBA gear down so small that the quality control agents can swim in the spray bottle?

As a corollary, do I have to feed them when the bottle is empty?

skunkOdor neutralizing is the right approach.

In 1993, Paul Krebaum published a recipe in Chemical and Engineering News for a mixture that neutralizes the sweet smell of skunk. Mr. Krebaum, a chemist at Molex, used his extensive experience with thiols (the chemicals that make eau de skunk and rotting fish smell so wonderful to dogs) to discover that an easy way to neutralize the thiols is to induce them to combine with oxygen.

Mr. Krebaum’s skunk remedy works. On skunk smells. It doesn’t work on mildew. And neither do the “odor neutralizers” in the Dollar Store goop.

“Febreze™ is [another] cauldron of chemicals,” according to the Environmental Working Group website.

“Febreze Air Effects™ is showcased as the ultimate odor eliminator, with magical fairy powers. In fact, it’s represented as the one product in all of existence that will get you to breathe happily, as if it were happy pills in aerosol form … as if it were health food in a spray … even an organic cleaning product that works like a magic wand.”

I like magical fairy powers. One of the Interweb writers I admire called himself the Good Fairy in the Gay Nineties. His words had the power to make us laugh, to make us cry. I don’t know if he could get the smell out of my washcloths, though.

The snake oil doesn’t work and Febreze™ costs more than new washcloths, so the tightfisted among us will look to Google for substitutes. The frugal sites all have variations of this FakeFebreze recipe:

1/4 cup of fabric softener
2 tablespoons of baking soda
2 cups of warm tap water

Oh, swell. I’ll have very soft, flammable, musty washcloths. See, the alkaline sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) can absorb and neutralize some acid but mildew can survive within a pH range of 4.0-9.0. Straight baking soda has a pH of 9. It just gets friendlier to mildews as it gets wetter and the fabric softener makes them smell good. Probably tastes good, too.

Back to the (real) Febreze™. The important issue I see is that the active ingredient is Hydroxypropyl beta-cyclodextrin or HPßCD. P&G claims that these molecules bind the hydrocarbons, retaining malodorous molecules like putting them in handcuffs, which “reduces” their release into the air and thus the perception of their scent. It’s better than the perfume that merely masks the odor but the odor is still there. Waiting. With the handcuff key out.

That’s still like painting a skunked dog with expensive tomato juice. I want some inexpensive chemistry that actually eliminates the odor.