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December 21st, 2010

Fingerprinting Carbon Dioxide

by Andrew

For the past two centuries, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising from 280ppm to over 390ppm in 2010. This is an incontrovertible fact. What has been called into question in recent years is the source of this carbon dioxide; it has been asserted by some that humanity is not responsible for this increase. Yet this position not only makes no sense, it is easily disproved.

The first line of evidence is what most people are aware of. The logic is straightforward: Humanity has been burning large amounts of fossil fuels for energy for the past two centuries. The burning of these fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Over the same time period, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen by exactly the same amount as has been released by fossil fuel burning. Therefore, the burning of fossil fuels is responsible for the rise in carbon dioxide. QED.

However, this is not enough for some people; they want more evidence. Climate scientists were happy to oblige. But before I can get into two further lines of evidence, I need to review some high school chemistry. read more »

CategoryScience | Comment7 Comments »

December 19th, 2010

The Carbon Cycle

by Andrew

To understand why climate change is occurring, it is first necessary to understand how carbon dioxide is naturally cycled by the biosphere and ocean. The figure below depicts this process, known as the carbon cycle.

The carbon cycle is a relatively simple concept. There are natural processes that release carbon into the atmosphere and natural processes that remove it from the atmosphere. In fact, these natural processes have managed so far to remove about 40% of the carbon dioxide humanity has emitted from the atmosphere. However, this has not been without a cost; adding carbon dioxide to the ocean has lowered its pH, making it more acidic, to the detriment of much of oceanic life.

There are two major natural cycles. The first is on land, involving the biosphere. The carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere comes from the respiration of animals and the decay of dead organic matter. That same carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, the process by which plants produce energy for themselves and release oxygen back into the atmosphere. You’ll notice from the diagram that these two cycles are balanced with each other; effectively the same amount of carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere as is removed through photosynthesis. read more »

CategoryScience | CommentNo Comments »

December 14th, 2010

Book Review: The Climate War

by Andrew

To call The Climate War “a riveting tale,” as the cover quotes Bill Clinton as saying, would be an understatement. There have been many books written about current events in the past few years that deserve a large amount of praise, but Eric Pooley’s is the first to talk about what history will remember as the defining issue of our time: the fight to begin dealing with climate change.

In just under 500 pages, Pooley lays out in captivating detail the struggle over the past few years to pass a cap and trade bill in the United States Congress. He explains back stories, introduces us to unsung heroes whose names will never appear in the media, and hammers home, time and again, how difficult a problem our country is facing.

The subtitle of the book is telling: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth. This is not an unbiased book. That being said, readers will be surprised by the villains: science deniers and energy executives take a back seat to what Pooley sees as the destructive behavior of the environmentalist movement, from the Sierra Club leftward. There are many heroes in this book, but the two that stand out are Fred Krupp, President of the Environmental Defense Fund, and Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, one of the largest utility companies in the country.

These two men, along with many more individuals, environmental groups, and yes even corporations than can be named, fought side by side to pass a cap and trade bill through Congress. And they almost succeeded. read more »

CategoryCurrent Events, Politics | CommentNo Comments »

December 2nd, 2010

The State of Science

by Andrew

The media has been full of stories today about the press conference held by NASA to announce a paper published in Science. They haven’t done a very good job of explaining what scientists have found, so I’d like to try to clear some things up. I’d also like to use this opportunity to highlight some of the recent stories about the state of science.

The paper, entitled “A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus,” reports a rather significant discovery, but it is not terribly groundbreaking to anyone who has spent some time thinking about astrobiology.

Before I get into what was found, we have to cover some basic science. Life on Earth is mostly based on six elements: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. There are obviously other elements involved in life, but these are the most prevalent. I’m sure everyone remembers vaguely what a periodic table looks like from high school chemistry. For reference, there’s the relevant section of one below. read more »

CategoryCurrent Events, Science | CommentNo Comments »

November 11th, 2010

Veterans Day

by Andrew

Veterans Day falls on November 11th to mark the anniversary of the armistice ending the First World War. Perhaps no other conflict in western history has generated more acknowledgement of the savageness of our species. The furnaces of the Holocaust represent the result of a society gone mad, led by a psychopath into the abyss. The trenches of the Western Front evoke no such emotion. They leave us feeling cold and empty, standing as monuments to, as one song has put it, “man’s blind indifference to his fellow man” as a “whole generation were butchered and damned.”

World War I has not reached the same prominence in the collective memory of the United States as it has in Europe. Perhaps this was due to the brevity of our involvement. Or perhaps we have simply allowed the “great crusade” of the Second World War to eclipse the pointless struggles of the First, seeking comfort in the knowledge that our fellow citizens died fighting evil while forgetting that a good many died for no apparent reason.

Things are quite different in Western Europe. The British cannot forget that, on July 1, 1916, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. One does not have to look far to see why the French and Germans have an equal sense of remembrance; Europe is littered with collections of “countless white crosses.” read more »

CategoryCurrent Events, History, Poetry | CommentNo Comments »

November 6th, 2010

Carl Sagan Day

by Andrew

For some reason, November 6th has been declared Carl Sagan Day, to honor the great communicator of science. I can’t find an explanation for why today was picked; perhaps it was the date of some major achievement in his career.

Last year I believe I posted a passage from his book Pale Blue Dot, a masterpiece of hope for humanity. Sagan always held an optimistic view of our future, a mentality that seems sorely lacking now, fourteen years after his death.

This year I thought I’d post a few videos that capture the same spirit that infused Sagan’s work, capturing both the poetry and majesty of the Cosmos.
read more »

CategoryScience | Comment1 Comment »

September 5th, 2010

The Pace of Climate Change

by Andrew

The above graph is a screenshot taken from An Inconvenient Truth. There are many versions of this graph available; I chose this one because the image in the movie was on such a large scale that the last few decades are actually visible. The graph shows temperatures and concentrations of carbon dioxide over the past 650,000 years, a brief period on geological timescales, but a period that is three times longer than the age of our species. The white line shows temperature; the blue line shows carbon dioxide concentration; the red line shows the projection for 2050 if business as usual continues. (It’s worth noting that, with the exception of the current period of warming, temperatures always rise before the concentration of carbon dioxide. Warmer temperatures lead to greater production of carbon dioxide, which in turn leads to higher temperatures, and so on. This is what is known as a feedback loop. Because of our greenhouse emissions, we’ve started this period of warming at step two).

It’s important that we understand what exactly we are doing to the climate. I’ve already explained what carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are doing to the energy equilibrium of the Earth. And in my first post on climate change I discussed the normally slow pace of climate change. With this post I’d like to begin looking at what exactly is happening today, specifically by addressing the rate at which carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere. read more »

CategoryScience | CommentNo Comments »

August 26th, 2010

2.50%

by Andrew

Today the yield on US Treasury 1-year bonds fell to 2.50%. Three months ago, it was above 3.25%. In April, it had actually peaked at 4%. A falling interest rate means that investors are worried about the long-term economic outlook of the United States. Many people have been arguing for months that we must begin reducing the deficit to improve investor confidence; it has gotten to the point where this is conventional wisdom. Except, that’s not why investors are saying they’re worried.

On August 1st, the Wall Street Journal ran this story about why investors were becoming worried. In short, a stalling economic recovery and fears about deflation. In other words, another Great Depression. The investors interviewed in this article were clear that they were only preparing for the worst and that it might not happen. However, today Bloomberg reported that capital spending declined in July. In addition, within the past month the Presidents of the St. Louis and Boston Federal Reserve Banks have both made it clear that they’re worried about deflation; the current inflation rate is only about 1%.

So how do you deal with a stalled economic recovery and potential deflation? read more »

CategoryCurrent Events | Comment2 Comments »

August 18th, 2010

Climate Forcings

by Andrew

In my previous post, I discussed the relationship between the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and fluctuations between periods of climate warming and cooling. In this post I’d like to explain how that works. I already pointed out that the Earth is currently defying all previous behavior by experiencing warming when it should be entering a period of cooling. The data I present at the end of this post will show why.

Climate change is caused by climate forcings. James Hansen, of Columbia and NASA, has provided this definition of a climate forcing: it is “an imposed perturbation (disturbance) of the planet’s energy balance.” So what does this mean?

The concept is actually fairly simple. The Earth is in energy equilibrium, with that equilibrium defined by how much energy the Earth absorbs versus how much it radiates. In other words, the amount of energy the Earth absorbs from the Sun must equal the amount of heat it radiates into space. If one of these values changes, then the other must adjust. For example, if the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth decreases (as explained in the global cooling scenario in my prior post), the temperature of the Earth must also decrease. This is what causes ice ages. Conversely, if the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth increases, the Earth’s temperature must rise. read more »

CategoryCurrent Events, Science | Comment1 Comment »

August 17th, 2010

How Natural Climate Change Occurs

by Andrew

It is no secret that there is a massive disconnect between what the scientific community understands about climate change and what the general public understands. This has allowed our elected officials and those running for office (most recently the Republican candidate for Senate in Wisconsin) to get away with blatantly distorting the science, if not outright lying about it. This is perhaps the fault of scientists, who have often proved either unwilling or unable to explain their findings to the general public. Or maybe the media is at fault for refusing to accurately report on peer-review research.

When all of the available evidence is considered, it is impossible not to understand that climate change is primarily driven by human activity. The science that backs this up is relatively simple; I’ve found it to be easier to understand than any of the science I learned in high school. This makes me confident that, although my own area of study is biology, I can accurately present the research being done by climate scientists. I hope that what I write will help you to understand this crisis.

As I said, my own field of study is biology and, if the climate scientists won’t speak up, we must. The current extinction rate is 100 times higher than it naturally is and it will only worsen if we continue to burn fossil fuels.

With that introduction, I wish to begin by explaining how natural climate change occurs. read more »

CategoryCurrent Events, Science | Comment5 Comments »

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