Category: Science

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Aborting America – “Pro Life” shows its pro-death face

May 15th 2019

Imagine if some religious cult sprang up that declared that cancer was God’s way of calling his children home, and thus it was a sin to do anything to treat cancer. Thus anyone trying to eliminate cancer, including the removal of tumors, should be punished, up to 99 years in prison.

If that sounds pretty whack-a-doodle, reflect on the strange things the mainstream religions in America teach. Bible literalists have to believe such utter nonsense as the talking snake story in Genesis, the Ark story, and the sun holding still in the sky for three days. Non-literalists have to accept such oddities as virgin births, miracles, and power of prayer as being a real thing.

So having a group rising up and declaring that blastomas are an expression of God’s love and must be protected at all costs really isn’t all that far fetched.

That there is no biblical basis for such a belief is pretty irrelevant. After all, ‘God’s Will’ has been used to justify most wars, even against other Christian enemies, an unending bitter strife over mostly worthless land in the middle east, slaughter of indigenous tribes in Africa and the Americas, and even the massacre of cats in Europe (led to the plagues, that, as the rodent population exploded). Jewish and Islamic countries have (and still have) similar atrocities stemming from similar beliefs. Indeed, many of the worst elements of religious savagery in all three main faiths stem from the same source—the Mosaic Law of what Christians call the Old Testament.

But religious-based lunacy can exist independently of weird texts translated hundreds of different times that were originally written by people who didn’t know the Earth was a globe or that lobsters weren’t fish.

This leads to the abortion movement. In America, the Catholic Church always opposed abortion on grounds similar to my hypothetical pro-cancer faith; they thought all human seed was sacred, an expression of divine love, and thus it was a sin to waste seed. At various times and in various places, the church punished and even executed men for the ‘sin’ of masturbation.

When fundamentalists glommed on to the notion of stopping abortion in the wake of Roe v Wade, they brought their own brand of fundamentalist lunacy to the table. Every zygote possessed a soul and was an expression of God’s will.

Years ago, I came across a ‘public service announcement’ put out by some of the religious lunatics that featured an animation of a full-term baby being aborted, and as she (curly blonde hair and pink bow in her hair, the way most female babies are born) is dying, she’s screaming “Mommy! Mommy! Why are you doing this to me? Don’t you LOVE me?”

I laughed at the sheer absurdity of that cartoon, but here we are, 30 years later, and millions of Americans believe a truly savage blood libel spread by Republicans and Fox News that babies—real, actual babies—are being aborted after they are born because that is what Roe v Wade demands.

John Oliver had a clip of some intellectual abortion standing in the Alabama Legislature, droning on about “Baby Fetus” and even providing supposed quotes from this etymological absurdity. Two days later, Alabama passed a draconian law banning all abortion and providing life sentences to anyone performing or getting an abortion.

There’s an old saying: “People who can be persuaded to believe absurdities can be led to commit atrocities.”

It’s not even Biblical. The Bible doesn’t mention abortion, although it does condone ripping babies from the wombs of the women of vanquished foes and dashing their brains out against a rock. The New Testament has nothing to say about abortion, even though Nazareth had no shortage of midwifes who had abortifacient herbs and crude tools to physically induce abortion. Further, in many levels of society in that time and place, it wasn’t uncommon for female babies to be drowned or used to break rocks because female children were expensive and of limited use. For some reason, Jesus never did have an opinion on that.

Dressed up as a religious and moral crusade, the anti-abortion movement is neither. It doesn’t really care about “the life of a child,” as witness the fact that few if any of the people running the movement have any provisions whatsoever for the care and feeding of these involuntary children, or helping the mothers in any significant way, or otherwise assuming any responsibility.

It is, instead, a naked authoritarian power grab. It places a large segment of the female population in a precarious role where they can be effectively enslaved, either by pregnancy or the mere fear of pregnancy. If Alabama’s law is allowed to stand, the move will be on to ban birth control of all kinds. In the name of God, of course.

It’s a political movement, as well. The brownshirts of the GOP have long used the religiously insane as a handy bludgeon to enforce their more authoritarian dictates, such as enforced worship of the police and military, and to justify discrimination and segregation.

And if you take a look at the states joining the rush to knock down Roe v. Wade, with the exception of Ohio, all are in southern states with long histories of repressive authoritarians backed by the iron dictates of corrupt pastors.

It’s time to recognize the ‘pro-life’ for what it is: it’s not pro-anything. It’s anti-women, anti-choice, anti-individual, and anti-freedom. It opposes everything America stands for, including the right for every person not to have someone else’s religious dictates imposed upon them. No woman should be enslaved by some politician lying about God’s will. Nobody should have to follow the religious taboos of some church if they don’t want.

They are anti-America, and should be treated, not as voices of some god, but as enemies to American rights and freedoms.

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Gaetz and Poses – A government of gangsters

February 26th, 2019

As things continue to crumble for the GOP, and the lunacy and flat-out gangsterism that pervades the party has come into full view.

By way of example, Matt Gaetz, the thug representing Florida’s 1st District, tweeted Michael Cohen on the eve of his public testimony before the Committee Gaetz slithered on to Twitter, and wrote, “Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) Hey @MichaelCohen212 – Do your wife & father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she’ll remain faithful when you’re in prison. She’s about to learn a lot…”

In normal times, Congress would be deliberating whether to censure or expel Gaetz for such an illegal act. He’s trying to call it “witness testing,” but it is a clear case of witness tampering: “Talk, and your wifey learns all about that little piece of fluff you have on the side.”

The technical term for that is blackmail. It’s a crime. In fact, it’s a felony. When you use it to intimidate a witness, it’s an even bigger crime, and a major felony.

If Gaetz had enough brains to send that tweet from the floor of Congress, then he is exempt from the law, and only Congress can discipline or expel him. Whether Congress will is another matter: nearly all the Republicans are cowardly and criminal whores, and too many of the Democrats seem afraid of upsetting such vermin. Witness today’s vote in the House, in which only 17 Republicans mustered up the courage and patriotism to put country ahead of Trump.

But if Gaetz was stupid, and sent it from a restaurant or his apartment or whatever…well. Someone call the DA of the district he was in. Open-and-shut case, against a prestige dirtbag. All the DA has to do is show Gaetz sent it, and wasn’t on the floor of the House when he did so. DA s launch political careers convicting morons like Gaetz.

And yes, he’s a moron. Just take a look at his web page:

“Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida is one of the finest and most talented people in Congress. Strong on Crime, the Border, Illegal Immigration, the 2nd Amendment, our great Military & Vets, Matt worked tirelessly on helping to get our Massive Tax Cuts.” [bold text his]

OK, he may be one of the finest and most talented Republicans, but talk about a low bar. I guess he doesn’t know that those “massive tax cuts” don’t apply to the 99% of Americans that he doesn’t give a shit about. They got screwed on the deal. Most of the Republicans realize how close they are to getting lynched over that ‘tax cut’ and keep their mouths carefully shut in the hopes that an armed mob won’t give them credit for it.

As if that wasn’t enough, Trump announced what he calls the “Presidential Committee on Climate Security” This committee will exist to prove that there ain’t no sech thing as global warming. More to the point, the committee will stand for the civil rights of CO2 molecules everywhere.

The council will be headed by National Security Council senior director William Happer, and if you think that being on Trump’s NSC is a prestige position, reflect that against strong objections from members of his own transition team and the Obama administration, Trump named disgraced general and probable traitor Michael Flynn to the group, and, for a few days, the clownish buffoon Steve Bannon. National security isn’t exactly Trump’s top priority, and it shows.

But Happer himself is a real piece of work. He’s putatively a physicist, although at the age of 79, his days of physicking are pretty much in the past. Most of his “scientific expertise” is spoon-fed to him by such entities as the Heritage Foundation, or gleaned from websites such as wattsupwiththat. This enables him to say, with a straight face, things like “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all. . . . We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.” As you might have guessed, he said this at a gathering of the Heritage Foundation. If he had said something like that in front of any actual scientists who weren’t just clowns in lab coats stooging for the fossil fuels industry, he would have been laughed out of there.

CO2 is vital to survival, of course. Plants need it, and we actually have a direct need in that CO2 build-up in the body triggers the instinct to inhale. But too much CO2 is pollution. At above about 445ppm, most plants can’t process any more, and the “greening planet” theory has been shown to be false.

Put it this way: we need oxygen, Without it we can only survive about four minutes. Earth’s atmosphere is about 21% oxygen. If we emitted enough oxygen that that ratio climbed to 30%, we would die. If the wildfires didn’t get us, the corrosive effects of so much oxygen on our lungs and trachea would. Any substance, beneficial or not, is a pollutant if there is too much of it, and too much CO2 is drastically altering our climate. Even Happer can’t come up with a factor that would cause warming when the excess CO2 so neatly fits the bill.

But he previously came up with something that even the Heritage Foundation—which once compared climate scientists to the Unabomber—to possibly reject as too vicious and dishonest. Well, maybe they would.

Happer said this:  “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” and added that “carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.”

Now, don’t get me wrong: carbon and oxygen are two of my favorite elements, and many members of my own family consist of carbon and oxygen. And if a randy carbon atom wants to get it on with a couple of consensual oxygen atoms, well, where’s the harm. (I do have a problem with a monogamous relationship between one oxygen atom and one carbon atom for reasons to involved to go into here). I like CO2 in my soda, and I even exhale CO2 on occasion. I’m not a CO2 hater.

But I think it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that climate scientists have committed genocide against CO2. For one thing, CO2’s population is half again what it was in 1970.

And Jews, as a rule, tend to be life forms. Thank you for not asking about Joe Lieberman. CO2 isn’t a life form and can’t be murdered. I don’t happen to know what Happer’s opinion on Jews might be, but I think he’ll have to admit that a Jew and a CO2 molecule are not the same thing, even if the atoms that comprise both a) include oxygen and carbon and b) are immortal.

Now I’m used to fossil fuel stooges saying ludicrous things. They are paid to lie in the face of overwhelming evidence, and as a result often look and sound extremely stupid and ignorant. But I think Happer set a new standard of sorts, comparing warnings of climate change to the Holocaust.

So what becomes of a whorish moron like Happer in this age of Trump? He’s head of the Presidential Committee on Climate Security.

Perhaps he can persuade Trump to build a wall along the Gulf coast, around Florida, and up to Maine in order to keep huricanes out.

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Happy Yaldā Night! – Solstice 2018

December 20th, 2018

Well, I hoped he would be in prison by now, too. But the walls are closing in, and at this point, it’s a matter of “when,” and for how long, and how many others will be in adjacent cells. He’s going down.

See? You feel hopeful already, don’t you? Well, this is the Solstice Essay, and that’s the whole point of the thing.

So let’s talk about trippy Solstice stuff.

They celebrate the winter Solstice in Iran. I was a bit surprised, because the whole place is south of 40 north, going all the way down to 21 north. While winters in the mountains of Iran can be fierce, and sometimes downright Canadian, most of the country has a fairly wide range of climate, but with fairly mild winters—no worse than, say, Tennessee. If anything, the place is known for its heat, with temperatures often well above 120 in the height of summer.

And it’s sort of equatorish. It doesn’t do midnight suns, and the long winter nights might go 14 hours instead of 20. Nobody is going to mistake it for Sweden.

The government is religious bordering on nuts, and the people are secular, bordering on sane. It suggests that celebrations, even of natural events, might have the sort of tension built in that the Christmas defenders at Faux News can only dream about. But apparently their winter Solstice is free of such. Oh—don’t let the religious police get wind of your wine and beer stash. That wouldn’t be cool.

On the night of the winter solstice, they have the Shab-e-Yaldā (“Yaldā Night”) or sometimes, Shab-e-Chelleh, “Night of Forty”. Shades of Ali-Baba! It isn’t celebrated in Ali-Baba’s home turf, Saudi Arabia, but it is big in Iran, most Kurdish regions, and most of the old Soviet breakaway -Stans.

“Chelleh” means 40, or fortieth. It’s a number that pops up pretty often in writings of the Biblical era, including, of course, the Bible. It’s generally taken to mean, “Nobody’s quite sure how long or big it was, but it was a fair old bit.” They have winter (and summer) divvied up into forty day periods, in a complicated system that suggest that their calendar scheduling was Lent to them by the Catholics. Rather than try to describe it, and thus reaffirming I have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ll just quote from Wikipedia: “There are all together three 40-day periods, one in summer, and two in winter. The two winter periods are known as the ‘great Chelleh’ period (Day to Bahman,[rs 2] 40 full days), followed/overlapped by the ‘small Chelleh’ period (Bahman to Bahman,[rs 2] 20 days + 20 nights = 40 nights and days). Shab-e Chelleh is the night opening the ‘big Chelleh’ period, that is the night between the last day of autumn and the first day of winter.”

Got it? Good. Now explain it to me.

I’m enchanted with the notion of big and little 40s. I can’t help but wonder if there is a medium 40, which is maybe 38-42.

Yaldā is even more fun. It seems that back in the fifth century, a sect of early Nestorian Christians fled to Iran, escaping religious persecution. Their word for ‘birth’ was, as you might have guessed, ‘yaldā.’ Iran then, as now, had the philosophy of dhimma, that they must be protective of minority religions and customs within their own land. They gave the Nestorians sanctuary and freedom. Didn’t help.

The Nestorians did what religionists absolutely love to do, and tore themselves apart over minutiae of doctrinal differences, but before imploding, decided that since the Annunciation was in spring, that meant the birth of Jesus was in early winter, and made Yaldā the regional word that equates to “Christmas.”

There is another word, “yelda” which, while spelled differently in English, is the same in Aramaic. Yelda means “dark night” or “long night.”

Yelda may have migrated from northern Europe, where it is pronounced “yule.”

Hmm. Start of winter, associated with birth and long dark nights, and yule. Oh, and the Christians swiped it. OK, it’s Solstice, all right.

A Viking probably would easily recognize the tone of Yaldā. People gather against the darkness and the forces of evil (“Ahriman”) and tell tales and jokes and recite poetry, and eat the best of the summer crop, mostly fruits. The foods eaten on that particular night have special properties; eating watermelon won’t do anything in particular on Yaldā night, but will protect you from heat exhaustion later on in the summer. Magic watermelons, at least on Solstice night. Some fruits and vegetables protect against insect bites, and garlic prevents rheumatism. In a lot of areas, contraband stashes of wine and beer are consumed, and lights are arrayed in the living areas.

It’s the evening of the 19th as I write this, and I’m in the southern part of California. It’s nearly full dark, but I can still see palms silhouetted against the sky. I was moping a bit, missing the snow and cold that to me is the hallmark of the winter Solstice. But this year, there is no snow where I live—the forth time in the past five years that’s happened—and while it’s cold up there, it’s satisfyingly nippy down here. So I’m not missing Solstice. Not really. It isn’t just winter, as the Iranians show.

I’ll have something nice for Solstice dinner and call family and friends.

And a rocket launch from nearby Vandenberg was scrubbed, and they have rescheduled for the night of…Solstice. Nothing like a bright light in the longest night to celebrate!

Reading that Solstice is celebrated, with its true meaning, in the dry and dusty lands of Persia, cheered me right up. How can you not like people who gather against the long darkness, and tell jokes and sing and enjoy food and drink and dream of a brighter future?

It’s what I hope we’re are all doing on Solstice night.

Don’t lose hope. Never lose hope.

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IPCC – The Scientific World Wants 1.5C: Trump wants 4.0C

October 9th, 2018

Perhaps the most surprising thing is how hopeful report is, with the incredibly wordy title of GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5 °C: an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf.

It all sounds, at worst, survivable. Some samples from the summary are to be found as follows:

B2.1.Model-based projections of global mean sea level rise (relative to 1986-2005) suggest an indicative range of 0.26 to 0.77 m by 2100 for 1.5°C global warming, 0.1 m (0.04-0.16 m) less than for a global warming of 2°C (medium confidence). A reduction of 0.1 m in global sea level rise implies that up to 10 million fewer people would be exposed to related risks, based on population in the year 2010 and assuming no adaptation (medium confidence).

B2.2.Sea level rise will continue beyond 2100 even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C in the 21st century (highconfidence). Marine ice sheet instability in Antarctica and/or irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet could result in multi-metre rise in sea level over hundreds to thousands of years. These instabilities could be triggered around 1.5°C to 2°C of global warming

B3.3.High-latitude tundra and boreal forests are particularly at risk of climate change-induced degradation and loss, with woody shrubs already encroaching into the tundra (high confidence) and will proceed with further warming. Limiting global warming to 1.5°C rather than 2°C is projected to prevent the thawing over centuries of a permafrost area in the range of1.5 to 2.5 million km2

B4.1. There is high confidence that the probability of a sea-ice-free Arctic Ocean during summer is substantially lower at global warming of 1.5°C when compared to 2°C. With 1.5°C of global warming, one sea ice-free Arctic summer is projected per century. This likelihood is increased to at least one per decade with 2°C global warming.

The list goes on, and it doesn’t discuss some of the direst scenarios for a world in which the temperatures average 1.5C above levels observed between 1850 and 1900. But I’m going to.

Dr Goodwin and Professor Williams advise that cumulative carbon emissions needed to remain below 195-205 PgC (from the start of 2017) to deliver a likely chance of meeting the 1.5°C warming target while a 2°C warming target requires emissions to remain below 395-455 PgC.

(Philip Goodwin, Anna Katavouta, Vassil M. Roussenov, Gavin L. Foster, Eelco J. Rohling, Richard G. Williams. Pathways to 1.5°C and 2°C warming based on observational and geological constraints. Nature Geoscience, 2018; DOI: 10.1038/s41561-017-0054-8)

Present emissions are around 550 PgC (pettagrams Carbon). We would have to cut those emissions by 20% starting last year to limit warming to 2C, and 60% starting last year to meet a goal of 1.5C.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

We’re already at .87C above preindustrial levels, and of course it varies, sometimes by quite a bit, and in fact in 2015, during a big El Niño event, we already blew past the 1.5C market, hitting 1.58C.

As the chart shows, the most optimistic scenario has us hitting 1.75C before tailing off slowly to 1.5C by the end of the century. If we maintain present emission levels, the chart says we’ll hit 2.0C and just stay there.

The good news is we’re on course to flatten CO2 annual emissions. No matter what the destructive and purblind Trump administration thinks. In fact, they’ve decided we’re already being raped, so we might as well just accept it, with a report the day before the IPCC Special Report stating that a 4C rise was inevitable. The right wing Chicago Tribune reported, “The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020.”

The horrific thing is that Trump could make this happen, in the name of Disaster Capitalism. Your tragedy is their profit.

Four degrees would be utterly catastrophic. At best, millions would die, and since the huge human and economic dislocations would almost certainly trigger global war, the death toll could easily be in the billions.

The IPCC doesn’t discuss knock-on effects of warmer temperatures. In the case of 1.5C, those effects may be somewhat limited, both in terms of ice and permafrost loss and habitat change (perhaps 15% of existing habitat would be subject to major change). At 2.0C they would be much more pronounced, with ice loss driving Arctic temperatures, already 4C above normal, to about 8C above normal. Ice-free summers would become common (IPCC says one per decade, somewhat optimistically.) Melting tundra and muskeg permafrost would release many gigatonnes of CO2, ocean temperatures would change enough to interfere and even stop some of the main current flows, and habitation and bioregional changes would be dramatic and widespread. Tens of millions of people would have to relocate, sparking already inflamed political tensions.

Greenland and Antarctica, already showing melt rates far beyond what anyone expected, would lose their icecaps altogether, in Greenland’s case before the end of the century.

We’re already well behind what is needed to prevent 2.0C, let along 1.5C. Things aren’t as bad as the Trump administration, which in a burst of unequaled cynicism have decided it’s more profitable to just give up now, says, but Trump and his type want it, because authoritarians prefer suppressed populations that are desperate, frightened, and utterly dependent on the authoritarians to save them.

Another thing that’s Not. Going. To. Happen.

If we want to save ourselves, we have to save ourselves. Vote for candidates strong on climate change, and reject the tawdry self-serving cynicism of Trump and his corporate masters. He isn’t going to save you. In fact, he thinks you’re more useful if you’re struggling to survive and begging him for help. And that’s Not. Going. To, Happen, either.

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The Flare: Lights Out, Folks

By on Saturday, April 28, 2018

The Flare

Lights Out, Folks

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

April 28th, 2018

In my fictional future universe that provides the background for my novels, I have an early 22nd century event that is referred to simply as “The Flare”. The sun emits a mighty burp, and emits a coronal mass ejection classified as X44, roughly one half the strength of which the sun is capable. This hits planet Earth squarely.

The northern lights are not only visible at the equator, but visible in daylight above 80 degrees north. This direct hit destroys vast amounts of the electronics, and immediately kills or incapacitate roughly ten million people, those unlucky to be using cybernetic implants at the time. The ensuing chaos and damage result in the Vast Depression, which lasts nearly a century. Combined with global warming and other misfortunes, by the 24th century only a billion people are alive, and they tell one another lurid tales of kitchen appliances going mad and killing their masters during the flare. On a more rational level, cybernetic technology is non-existent, and while computers still exist, society isn’t as reliant on them as before the Flare.

Not only is this something that can happen; it’s something that will happen. We had such a solar storm hit Earth in 1859, called the Carrington Event after Richard Christopher Carrington, one of two astronomers at the time to observe it. The entire telegraph system went down, and wires and batteries shorted, causing numerous fires. That storm was estimated at X42, about one quarter the size of the X44 monster from my story.

An X20 would be enough to wipe out half the world’s electrical system and most of the computers. The sun has had X20 bursts in 1972, 1989, 2000, 2003, 2006, and 2011. Fortunately, none of them hit Earth squarely.

It’s only a matter of time.

For now, we’re about as safe as we can hope for: we’re approaching a minimum on the 11 year solar cycle, during which big CMEs are less likely—not impossible, just less likely. And there is speculation that the sun is going into a “Maunder Minimum”, an extended period of solar peace that might last for the better part of a century. The last such was from 1645 to 1715. Some of the Climate denialists have been celebrating this, pretending that the half-a-degree centigrade drop in global irradiation will somehow obviate the greenhouse gas-propelled rise of 3-5 degrees presently forecast. Well, that’s why they are called denialists. But even with the twin minimums, the possibility remains. You’re ‘safer’ in much the same way that you are less likely to die in an auto accident at 60 miles an hour than you are in one at 90 miles an hour.

I know a fellow who is a watchdog for public safety, primarily fire (always a major concern here in the west), but also other natural and man-made disasters that might befall us, and he’s recently been trying to get some sort of government response plan set up for a possible electromagnetic pulse (EMP). He’s worried about the sun, of course, since CMEs can produce EMPs world-wide and do several trillion dollars in just a few seconds. It put the lights out over wide areas for hours in 1978 and 1989, and those were near misses by (relatively) moderate CMEs.

There’s a second thing that can put the lights out, and that’s human agency. Nuclear weapons can create EMPs, but only a millionth of what the sun can produce. The effects would be somewhat limited, and if you were the target of such a device, you probably wouldn’t have much time to enjoy the EMP before the hydrogen bomb exploding over your head resulted in an RUD, or Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly, of your body.

However, there is malign human agency that can put the lights out, for months or even years. I even mentioned it in a piece I wrote a few weeks ago during a period of higher-than-usual political tension: “If in the next few days, we have an electronic meltdown in which the Internet, power grid, and banking system all shut down, then it’s safe to assume that Vladimir Putin just declared—and probably won—World War III against the United States.”

It’s rumored that several nuclear powers have nuclear weapons that can be set off in low Earth orbit, and while there would be no blast damage, the EMP could affect electronics over several hundred square kilometers. To that end, the Pentagon has “hardened” most of their communications, protecting them against such, and, it’s claimed, the Russians have war planes that actually use vacuum tubes, which are resistant to the damage an EMP can cause electronics.

Of far greater consequence is the possiblity that malign entities can hack and shut down computer systems, driving the electrical grid, banking records, nearly all communications and systems controlling dams, sewer system, traffic and hundreds of other vital infrastructure systems into an electronic brick wall, possibly destroying them.

It’s possible that World War Three won’t announce itself with bright blue nuclear flashes, or sudden outbreaks of smallpox in major cities, or horrific gases causing thousands to drop, convulsing, in the streets. No, it may be something as simple as a power black out. We often experience those, of course, and don’t think much of them unless they last more than an hour or so.

If you run into a buddy who lives “off the grid”–solar panels, Tesla batteries, satellite for his TV and computer, and he’s complaining his Internet is gone along with TV, then you might assume war has broken out.

In my story, the real damage comes in the months following the flare, when humanity is suddenly trying to feed and water itself with 19th century technology, only there’s five times as many people as that technology could support. And the money’s no good, because it was vaporized along with the computer systems. Only a few million die during the Flare; and virturally none who weren’t wearing electronic implants. But billions die in the six months following, in the chaos and shortages caused by the sudden collapse of our electronic systems.

That public safety fellow is right to be worried about EMPs and their close cousins, cyberattacks. Both can do untold damage, and may announce themselves with nothing more dramatic than your stereo suddenly stopping and your car engine dying.

There’s not a lot you can do to prevent either, but if you want to have something after the events, learn how to build a Faraday cage. They’re pretty simple, really. And consider getting off the grid as best as you can. If you are in a major city, get out. Take survivalist train, cache supplies somewhere you can get to without cars or other transportation. And best of luck.

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Watching the WAIS line

Antarctica unimpressed with GOP declarations that global warming is a myth

February 4th 2012

 Back in the summer of 2002, February and the first week of March, the Larsen B ice shelf on the east coast of the Antarctic peninsula suddenly and shockingly disintegrated. For people who had complacently assumed that Antarctic was too cold for global warming to have an effect, it was a wake up call.

The ice shelf didn’t just calve off the way the sheets of ice pushed into the ocean by the glaciers that formed them always do. If that were the case, it would have made for a big iceberg, about the size of Rhode Island, but nothing too extraordinary. Calving is the inevitable fate of ice pushed into the ocean by the glaciers. And the Larsen B, like the Larsen A before it, was expected to break off. Larsen A broke off in 1995, but since it was only 4,000 years old and was showing signs of calving, it came as no surprise to anyone. But Larsen B, older than the Holocene, was believed to be more stable, and would take much longer to calve off. However, it was the disintegration that was shocking.

Continue reading “Watching the WAIS line”

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Oh Say Can you c?

The Standard Model comes under question

October 22nd 2011

The Standard Model has been a mainstay of physics for over one hundred years. A lot of it has been empirically demonstrated through a variety of experiments, and never shown to be false. For ANY theory to last that long without serious challenge is amazing, especially given how much our knowledge of the universe has expanded in just the past twenty years.
As a result, the Standard Model has gotten a little frayed around the edges. In fact, recent events pose the possibility that after all this time, physicists may have to discard Einstein and start from scratch, a truly shocking possibility.
A little over ten years ago, I discussed some of the problems I was having in coming to grips with modern physics in an essay entitled “…Well, if you say so” I acknowledged then, as now, that I do not possess the math skills needed to really understand the equations that underlie the Standard Model, although I’m in better shape then most people in that I know the three laws of Kepler and Newton, can work out the Lorentz Contractions, and possess a basic working understanding of Special Relativity.
In short, I have just enough knowledge to be a danger to myself.
Continue reading “Oh Say Can you c?”

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Weather or Not

With global warming, the weather is just the same, only more so

May 31st 2011

   I was pleased when I found a plug-in for my blog that gave the average levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.  I regard climate change to be the greatest threat humanity faces over the next century, and the levels attained, according to the display, were terrifying.  393.18 parts per million.
There was just one problem: it was wrong.  It was out of date, and badly so.
The  US government’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, came out with a report this week that CO2 peaked last week at 394.97ppm. That set a new record for greatest concentrations of CO2.
To give the numbers some perspective, the ice core samples show that for most of the last millennium, CO2 levels stayed within a couple of points of 282ppm.  That was high by Holocene standards.  Over the previous 450,000 years, it usually ranged between 290ppm and 190ppm, in a cycle running between 100,000 and 125,000 years.  Big, dramatic falls were known to occur over the period of 10,000 years, usually triggering an ice age.  Over the past 450,000 years, the highest level recorded prior to the past hundred years was 314ppm, some 4,700 years ago. That may have played a significant role in humanity migrating out beyond the tropics.   Continue reading “Weather or Not”

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