Is The Earth Warmer or Cooler? Some Evidence

Despite that Al Gore declared this topic closed, there is much information that can be debated, with proof of global warming or cooling based on facts and science. Consider:

• We are living in an abnormally cool period since the earth’s average surface temperature for most of its history averaged 22 Celsius compared to the present 14 C.
• Ice ages occur at approximately 250-million-year intervals.
• Fossil evidence suggest that during the Mesozoic Era (230 to 50 million years ago) the earth was 10 C to 15 C warmer than today.
• One million years ago the current ice-age (Pleistocene) began.
• Glacial stages last more than 100,000 years and are interrupted by interglacial stages that last about 10,000 years.
• We are now living in an abnormally warm period compared to the earth’s average temperature for the last one million years (during which glaciation has prevailed).
• The current interglacial period has been subject to climatic changes on a smaller scale than the change from glacial to interglacial but still large enough to disrupt civilizations.

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of technology training books for how to integrate technology in education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, Cisco guest blogger, a columnist for Examiner.com, featured blogger for Technology in Education, IMS tech expert, and a monthly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out to publishers next summer. Contact Jacqui at her writing office or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.

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How to Kindle your Child’s Interest in Science

It’s simple: Read about it. Science is more fascinating than fiction or fantasy games or cartoons. Here are five articles in the last Scientific American:

1. Chess. Back in 1859, chess was considered bad for people because it was physical exercise. Imagine that! Do your kids love chess?
2. The first night game in baseball. 1909–log before the first Major League Baseball played at night.
3. the legalities of virtual reality. Can you sue an avatar?
4. Ever hear of Deep Blue? The IBM computer that beat the chess champ? Now they have Watson, programmed to beat us at Jeopardy. (He sounds like Otto–accesses vast amounts of data instantaneously.)
5. Why don’t people have eyes in the back of their head.

Should You Worry About Asteroids?

During Lyta‘s time (the Plio-Pleistocene, around 1.8 mya), Nature was more violent than today. Africa’s volcanics were more common and more violent. Mt. Ngorongoro was still alive and belching smoke, as were its many neighbors, possibly due to the growing Great African Rift (the same one we predict will eventually tear the continent in two). Thanks to the triptych of faults (East Africa sits at a rare intersection of three tectonic plates), Earthquakes shook her terrain. The land was cooling, shedding the rainforests her ancestors enjoyed and adopting the grassy savannas still prevalent today.

And, unfortunately for Lyta, an asteroid hit Earth at the same moment a monstrous volcano erupted. Modern

Is this the asteroid that will hit earth?

scientists agree there is no imminent threat of Earth being bombarded by an asteroid like the one they suspect killed the dinosaurs 65 mya. They also agree we will eventually be hit. The average: about every 100,000 years, we get a bad one. Scientists also agree we have no reliable method of stopping them. Lasers. Nuclear weapons. Nudging them out of the way. They all have their problems.

Lyta lived 1.8 mya. It was her bad luck it was during that once-in-a-hundred thousand years year, and more bad luck–during a volcanic eruption. This confluence of bad luck challenged her nascient human problem-solving skills: She was separated from her infant son, her mate and on the run from that vicious future human, Homo erectus. You can see why I kept Otto focused on her life. Did mankind have the skills as the earliest of the Homo species to solve this sort of multi-problem?

As background for you, I copied this from NASA, to give you an idea how seriously we take potential asteroid impacts:

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.

EPA Vs. Volcanoes. The winner is…

One more thing on volcanoes. This ‘news alert’ was too good to pass up:

EPA to Mandate Reductions in Emissions from Volcanoes

Emission from volcanoes in the future could be greatly restricted under new rules that are part of the Clean Air Planning Act.

Under new rules that are part of the Clean Air Planning Act, volcanoes, long responsible for more particulate and sulfur dioxide pollution than all human-caused emissions, might not get a pass any longer.

The volcanic emissions portions of the legislation was finally agreed upon by congressional negotiators after congress decided to allow states in which eruptions occur to come up with their own enforcement mechanisms.

“We realize that it might be difficult for the states to come up with efficient and cost-effective measures for achieving volcanic emission reductions”, said EPA Assistant Administrator Dr. Susan Vulcan. “That is why the reduction requirements are implemented gradually over time…only 5% each year”.

Dr. Vulcan said that state officials will have a much easier time than some countries will have if the United Nations Volcanic Emissions Negation Treaty (UN-VENT) is ratified. She explained that volcanoes in the United States are not nearly as explosive as volcanoes in other countries. For instance, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Phillipines in June of 1991 emitted millions of tons of sulfur, a pollution event that is well beyond what can be cleansed by scrubber technology now widely used at coal-fired power plants.

Because of the recent reawakening of the Mt. St. Helens volcano, Washington is likely the first state that will have to abide by the new emission reduction targets if they become law. Several companies have already submitted bids to Washington State to build and install massive “mountain scrubbers” that are expected to remove hundreds of tons of emissions per day during a major eruption.

While the new mountain scrubber technology is expensive, most states with volcanic hazards have indicated that they will increase the state sales tax rate on tobacco products in order to raise the additional revenue necessary to pay for the mountain scrubbers.

Volcanic Eruption During the Pleistocene

Untapped power, deadly and beautiful

If you read my last post, you experienced the power of volcanoes. Because Lyta and her kin had no understanding of these geologic forces during the Plio-Pleistocene, how long they would last, how they as primates could survive their daunting power, they might well have considered eruptions as the end of their world.

If they understood life and death…

If they had a concept of  ‘me’ (studies are varied on this concept).

Think about this:

Volcanic activity dominated Pliocene Africa. Earliest man, until Thinking Man arrived, had no written or oral history, and retained no concept of the impact these tectonic forces played in their lives. But the rocks and the soil remembered and wrote the history into the land itself. It described the absolute dominance of Nature over all creatures, and man’s steps to mitigate this control.

Although frequent volcanic eruptions shook this unique African triple junction rift, one particular flare-up (the one Otto showed me which tore Lyta from her child and lover) ranked as the most violent in hundreds of thousands of years. Gelatinous rock found in the mantle was heated to temperatures in excess of 1600 degrees Fahrenheit and rushed up the volcano’s pipe at the speed of a freight train. It broke through Earth’s crust (a weak layer of sand and crushed rock and feldspar about five miles thick) and exploded with the force of ten thousand atomic bombs, blowing the top off the mountain and leaving behind the largest caldera in the world atop the tallest volcano of the Pliocene. The smoke, ash, and tephra shot forty miles through the troposphere, surpassing the level of the clouds.

The volcanic debris migrated on the high-speed stratospheric winds around the world three times. It passed over the ancient North American landscape, crossed the sunken land bridge to Asia, and moved on to what would be called Europe, greeted only by confused mammals. It returned to the African continent where the earliest of the genus Homo pondered the disappearance of Sun, and Cousin Chimp wondered why evening came so early.

And it started its circumnavigation again. A residual band of volcanic particles encircled Earth for months afterward and lowered the mean temperature one degree Centigrade. The sun reappeared to a fiery red sunset complemented by an unusual blue moon, an atmospheric reaction to the abnormal amount of sulfuric particles suspended in the troposphere. It would be several years before Earth’s substratosphere recovered.

The sound emitted from the explosion ranked as the greatest ever picked up by a hominid ear. So loud, it caused Boah (an Australopithecine) to cover his ears with his furred hands, and forced the sabertooth cat to fling his head side to side as he tried to rid itself of the abysmal din. The resultant tsunamis rose as high as today’s tallest skyscrapers and sped along at a speed in excess of the fastest cheetah. They crashed into the East African coastline, as well as the beaches of what would be India.

Two million years ago, one of the modern world’s greatest rifts could be characterized as a common geologic gorge, without the breadth and depth for which it is now famous. It responded to the constant destructive pressure of buried hotspots, fed by the frequent volcanic eruptions and bigger-than-life earthquakes, until it became hundreds of feet wide and high by Lyta’s time. What would become known as the Great Rift Valley changed from a simple fracture in the landscape to a geographic formation that transformed the adaptive radiation of man.

5 Great Science Blogs You Won’t Want to Miss

Here’s a list of blogs I’ve discovered over the past year. Some are well-known. Some are diamonds in the rough. Check them out. Tell me what you think.

Science blogs you won't want to miss

Babel’s Dawn

This is a blog about the origins of speech, a topic that intrigues me. He has posts on

• Beyond Dictionaries and Rules
• What Shapes Language Besides Genes?
• The Minimum Requirements for an Acceptable Theory
• A New Account of Human Origins?
• A Lifetime of Wondering
• Encephalon #90

Who wouldn’t find those interesting?

 

Confusedious, a Science Blog

An entirely readable take on ‘thoughts, reviews and other tidbits from the world of science’. The blogger is a student with an inquirers approach to scientific topics. There have been few posts I’ve not enjoyed. I’m disappointed that the author doesn’t post more often.

The Loom

The webmaster, Carl Zimmer, writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist. He is the author of ten books, the most recent of which is A Planet of Viruses. His blog covers an eclectic mix of scientific topics which I find appealing. For example, this week he’s collecting scientific tattoos. Who else would do that?

Scientist at Work

This blog is the modern version of a field journal, a place for reports on the daily progress of scientific expeditions — adventures, misadventures, discoveries. As with the expeditions themselves, you never know what you will find.

Sentence First

This blog, also covers language, but with a down-to-earth approach I appreciate–even humor. Nice to find in science blogs. I’ve noticed that my posts on words always receive an inordinate amount of attention from readers (they’re over at my writing blog, WordDreams). This trend is borne out by Stan who got 23 comments on a post about the difference between which and that. Probably no one reading this post is surprised. We’ll leave that to the rest of the world.

Some Scientist Stole My Storyline

My day job is teaching tech at a K-8 school. My night job is writing–everything. I write, blogs, book reviews, Amazon Vine Voice reviews, columns for ezines…

And books. My first book was on the paleo-life of Homo habilis. It shared my educated guess on what life was like for man when Nature ruled and we just hung on for dear life. I called it Evolution: A Biography. I started the sequel (Born in a Treacherous Time) about the paleo-life of Homo habilis‘ successor, Homo erectus. By this time in man’s history, we’d acquired tools, rudimentary problem-solving and a small amount of control over our lives. I read a library of books to learn what I needed to know to create these worlds, many of them reviewed for you here.

I still love paleo-history, but a publisher I was trying to convince to publish my paleo-histories, suggested I bring my stories into modern time to widen their appeal. OK. I didn’t mind trying that. I decided to create stories where the sizzle of science and the brilliance of our big brains created the plot’s drama, crises, climaxes and resolutions. I wrote my first thriller about a brilliant scientist, a former Navy SEAL, a quirky almost-human AI named Otto (you see the palindrome?) and how they saved the world. It involved some intriguing science about magnetic signatures and artificial intelligence. I called it To Hunt a Sub.

Book Review: In the Shadow of Man

In the Shadow of Man

by Jane Goodall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read Jane Goodall’s In the Shadow of Man (Houghton Mifflin 1971) years ago as research for a paleo-historic novel I was writing. I needed background on the great apes so I could show them acting appropriately in their primeval setting tens of thousands of years ago. While I did get a marvelous treatise from this book on their wild environ, I also got my first introduction to the concept that they are almost-human, maybe even human cousins.

But I digress. Back to Jane Goodall.

This is the memoir that began her career, that relays her start in the field of anthropology, how she conducted her early studies and the price she paid personally and professionally for her perseverance. She had no formal background in primatology or fieldwork when she began this study. She entered Tanzania with an open mind, a patient attitude and an interest in exploring the capers of wild chimpanzees. From there, she invented everything else that would allow her to investigate these fascinating primates. In the book, she shares every step with readers–how she followed the chimps until they finally accepted her presence without fleeing, how she learned to identify each animal and in that way track their lives, how she came to understand their verbal and body language, how she became a better mother by watching Flo’s parenting skills.

Book Review: Einstein

Einstein: His Life and Universe

by Walter Isaacson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone knows Albert Einstein–smart man, came up with E=MC2, helped create the atomic bomb–but I didn’t know much beyond the hype. That’s why I picked up Walter Isaacson’s award-winning book Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and Schuster 2007). I like to read about smart people. What’s different in how they think than other people? Can they relate to ordinary individuals? Where do they get the amazing ideas they come up with?

As often as not, brilliant people become criminals as successes. That tells me intelligence isn’t the magic bullet to success in the world we-all live in. Someone who is charismatic, friendly, likeable, with good-enough brains is actually more likely to succeed than an individual whose brain never shuts off.

Turns out, that was true for Albert Einstein. This man–whose name most of us equate to the definition of ‘genius’–had a childhood nothing like what we’d expect. The Child Einstein should have been revered for his thinking skills, but it turns out he had the same problems as you and I, including getting along with people, finding a date and struggling in academic classes because his brain didn’t fit into the teacher’s pedagogic box.

So That’s What an Ecosystem Looks Like

Here’s a great visual of the world’s ecosystems by Online Schooling:
Source: Online Schooling

Book Review: Naturalist

Naturalist

by Edward O. Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I think of bugs, I cringe, but that was never the case with Edward O. Wilson. In his autobiography Naturalist, he shares the story of how the study of insects grew from its start in the backwoods of Alabama to the driving passion that made Wilson one of the pre-eminent entomologists in the world.

Even as a child, he was drawn to animals. He loved to observe them, took trips around the natural environs of his home to study them while other children played ball and studied each other. A youthful accident ended in the loss of vision in one eye, so Wilson chose to concentrate on insects as they were easier to see with one eye. That formed his future. His organized brain saw much that others didn’t see. His unique take on the world of insects made him a stand-out in the field. This delightful book chronicles his life, from those modest beginnings, through two Pulitzer Prizes, over forty books published, to his current position as Harvard professor.

Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So often scientific books lose us lay people with their PhD language. Not Bill Bryson. Using his infamous skill as a story-teller, he approaches the history of science with the same non-threatening approach John McPhee applied to the geology of America. Technicalities are dispensed with broad, non-pedagogic strokes while the surrounding humanity draws the reader into the intellectual excitement that is science. Readers can’t fail but want to read more.

Is The Earth Warmer or Cooler? Some Evidence

Despite that Al Gore declared this topic closed, there is much information that can be debated, with proof of global warming or cooling based on facts and science. Consider:

• We are living in an abnormally cool period since the earth’s average surface temperature for most of its history averaged 22 Celsius compared to the present 14 C.
• Ice ages occur at approximately 250-million-year intervals.
• Fossil evidence suggest that during the Mesozoic Era (230 to 50 million years ago) the earth was 10 C to 15 C warmer than today.
• One million years ago the current ice-age (Pleistocene) began.
• Glacial stages last more than 100,000 years and are interrupted by interglacial stages that last about 10,000 years.
• We are now living in an abnormally warm period compared to the earth’s average temperature for the last one million years (during which glaciation has prevailed).
• The current interglacial period has been subject to climatic changes on a smaller scale than the change from glacial to interglacial but still large enough to disrupt civilizations.

Cap and Trade is Working–Without Passing

I love our planet. Personally, regardless the politics, I want to see it thrive under man’s stewardship. We can be curmudgeonly and self-centered, but every once in a while, we humans figure out how to do what’s right for our beloved homeland.

In this case, I’m talking about the atmosphere. Much debate centered around how to protect it, with Dems and Republicans drawing their lines in the sand. In the end, the free market did its job. No government controls (though I’m not

libertarian, I respect their sentiments). Just good old Yankee capitalism:

US HAS CUT EMISSIONS…WITHOUT CAP AND TRADE

While the federal Environmental Protection Administration is about to impose regulations and taxes on carbon emissions by executive fiat – in the name of stopping global climate change – the United States has already dramatically cut its emissions and probably has already complied with the Kyoto/Copenhagen goals for reduced emissions. And this has been done without taxes, without regulations, and without government intervention.

Source 1996 2009Coal 52% 45%
Natural Gas 13% 23%
Nuclear 20% 20%
Renewable 2% 4%Source: US Energy Information AdministrationThe free market, free enterprise system has responded to persuasion and incentives like it does in free societies without the heavy hand of taxation, government regulation, and coercion.These data expose the basic truth: Cap and trade or carbon regulation is not necessary to lower U.S. emissions. The government bureaucratic/environmentalist alliance want these measures to increase public control over our economy, not to fight global warming. Just as the Obama stimulus package was designed to increase public spending, not to stimulate anything, so the environmental regulations are exploiting public concern over climate change to ratify a growth in government power and oversight.And that’s the inconvenient truth!

In 2007, the U.S. emitted 6.12 billion metric tons of carbon. In 2008, emissions fell to 5.92. In 2009, while Obama was promising that the U.S. would cut its emissions to 5.0 by 2015, the American economy and public – on their own – cut the emissions to 5.5 billion. Most likely, by the time the 2010 measurements are in, we will have reached the Obama goal.While many attribute cut to the recession which, presumably, will end sometime, the fact is that emissions dropped before the recession hit and have continued to fall. A big part of the reason is the reduction in the use of coal to generate electricity. As we explain in our new book Revolt! (to be released on March 1), coal accounted for 52% of electric generation in 1996 but only for 45% today. In the past twelve months, coal’s share has dropped form 49% to 45%. Natural gas has almost doubled its share from 13% in 1996 to 23% in 2009 while renewables have risen from 2% to 4%.

What Does Courageous Learning Look Like in a Science Class?

A survey of high school science teachers responded to the question: “What does courageous learning look like in science?” Here are the surprising results:

What Does Courageous Learning Sound Like?

Statistics Sparkle with Hans Rosling

If you haven’t discovered Hans Rosling’s Wonderful World of Statistics, watch this. He is to the dry staid world of numbers what Walt Disney is to theme parks. I discovered him through Timethief over at One Cool Site. What a find. It’s this kind of sharing that is the true power of the blogosphere. You can find any information you want, out there for free, if you spend a bit of time looking.

 

What’s a Space Plane?

In my current novel, Search and Destroy, the F-15 Eagle makes a cameo appearance, designed to whet the reader’s appetite for my next novel where America’s first and last defensive weapon against space-based weapons. With only one successful flight to its credit (as well as the fictional account of Major Amelia Nakamura when she shot the Kosmos 1801 down in Clancy’s Red Storm Rising), the only remaining iterations of America’s foray into defending space sit available, but not used.

The F-15 was designed to launch a defensive attack on a weapon that threatened the US from space. To do that, it would fly at Mach 1.22 at a 65 degree-angle, carrying ASM-135 ASAT missile. The missile is only 18 feet in length and 2700 lbs, small enough to be carried on the centerline pylon of the F-15. The pilot climbs at a sixty-five degree angle at Mach 1.22, and launches the weapon below the path of its target which it destroys by smashing into it.  During its first and only test, Major General Wilbert D. “Doug” Pearson flew the Celestial Eagle 76-0084, destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite orbiting over 375 feet above the planet.

Understanding Early Man

Some twenty years ago, I began a quest to understand man. Why are we the way we are? Can we be a kind and caring species that voluntarily takes care of our brother without asking for

anything in exchange, or is that contrary to our nature, to survival? Were those traits bread in to us so we as the small creature on the savanna without thick skin, without claws and tearing fangs, without the speed of a leopard, could work as a group to out-size, out-muscle the predators that controlled our environ? Did it require the violence that has dogged our existence since modern man emerged, our seemed inability to be kind just for the sake of kindness?

I have no answers, but my curiosity drives me to study our earliest ancestors, starting with the first creatures we considered to be predecessor–Australopithecines. To date, I’ve reached Homo erectus. Along the way, I’ve read a slew of wonderful books by brilliant scientists:

• Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey (actually, all of Johanson’s books)
• The Origin of Humankind by Richard Leakey (and all of all of the Leakeys’ books)
• Java Man: How Two Geologists Changed Our Understanding of Human Evolution by Carl Swisher III, Garniss Curtis and Roger Lewin
• Dragon Bone Hill: An Ice-age Saga of Homo erectus by Noel T. Boaz and Russell Ciochon
• Evolution of Homo erectus by G. Philip Rightmire
• Meeting Pre-historic Man by G.H.R. von Koenigswald
• Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form by Michael Sims
• The Acheulian Site of Gesher Beno Ya-aqov by Naama Goren-Inbar et al

How to Visualize Complicated Ideas

Like Pi. Most people glaze over when you want to have a discussion about Pi. How about if you start with a picture:

US Finally Reaches… Average. Ho Hum

Here’s a disheartening story I read from Education Week:

American students’ science performance climbed to the average for leading industrialized nations, while their mathematics performance remained below the average, despite gains in that subject from the last round of testing in 2006, based on results released today from a prominent international assessment.

In reading, meanwhile, U.S. performance was roughly flat compared with earlier testing cycles, with 15-year-olds staying at about the average for the 34 nations that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.