Record High Daily Minimum Set Tuesday

By the way, the highest daily minimum temperature ever recorded was just broken this Tuesday in Oman, 42.6°C (108.7°F).

Happy With my Debate Performance

I'm very happy with my performance today for the "debate" on the Lars Larson show. The hour went by very quickly -- I felt we had barely begun when the show was already half over.

I expected to be more nervous, but wasn't nervous at all. I've never done much of this kind of thing. I actually enjoyed it. I wish it went two hours.

Obviously a show like this isn't well set up for a serious debate of the science of climate change. I knew that going in, and I knew I was being set up as a sacrificial lamb. But that wasn't how I thought of myself, and it's not how I feel now that it's over.

Towards the end of the hour things started to get a little heated, especially during the commercials. Mostly by me. Two things got to me:

- the claim that James Hansen's 1988 prediction was all wrong. It wasn't, once you come what actually happened to his assumptions. But the details, on which science turns, don't matter much in today's forum.

- the setup question about the Medieval Warm Period. It wasn't global, and I said so. Neither Lars or Wiese believed me. But, from the abstract of this big study done by several dozen scientists:

"There were no globally synchronous multi-decadal warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age."
-- "Continental-scale temperature variability during the past two millennia," PAGES 2k Consortium, Nature Geosciences, April 21, 2013.
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n5/abs/ngeo1797.html

It's almost like facts didn't matter -- despite Lars saying he goes by the facts and the law. (Speaking of the latter, his show's Executive Producer said I would be asked to sign a document giving them the right to the video, but in fact I was never asked to sign any documents, let alone to the video taken after the debate had concluded. I don't regret anything I said there, but I expected to be asked if it was going to be released to the public. No one asked.)

My opponent, Chuck Wiese, an ex-meteorologist in Portland, didn't offer much in the way of science. He is a hard-core denier who thinks CO2 has nothing to do with climate change. That's just ludicrous, of course, and by the end I could barely contain his rejection of settled and well-understood science. And, for better or worse, I let myself loose to argue about how absurd that position was. For example, here is Wiese speaking in 2008 to/for a candidate for the Oregon state senate. If you watch, you'll see Wiese use blackbody formulas on atmospheric CO2. Today I asked him, off camera I think, what was the definition of a blackbody, and he said it absorbs all radiation incident upon it, but then said BB formulas applied to CO2 near its 15 micron absorption. Which is wacky, of course -- you can't use BB equations in a small part of the spectrum, it's the whole spectrum or nothing -- so the Planck Law, the Stefan-Boltzmann law and Wien's displacement formula do not apply to something that only absorbs in a small part of the spectrum or at discrete points of the spectrum. He didn't have any reply to that, let alone a scientific one. I kept challenging him to publish his claims in the peer reviewed scientific literature -- his response was to repeatedly call me an "idiot" -- then he finally claimed that he had published, at EdBerry.com, a blog run by an even worse denier. What can you do?

Nor could he tell us what natural factors were causing modern warming. Because none are known.

So anyway, that's that. The planet keeps spinning, CO2 keeps absorbing, and the planet keeps warming. Because physics says it must.

Radio Debate Tomorrow (Thursday 6/28)

I'm participating in a debate tomorrow about climate change on the Lars Larson show in Portland. It will be at 1:00 pm PDT, on the radio at 101.1 FM KXL Portland -- the audio will stream there as well -- and both the audio and video will be livestreamed at LarsLarson.com and his Facebook page. (Here's a list of affiliate radio stations that carry the show.) Afterward the video will be up permanently at LarsLarson.com.

Tune in if you're interested.

Understanding Quantum Mechanics

"I've had a whole career without knowing what quantum mechanics is."
    -- Stephen Weinberg, quoted in Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder

(Hossenfelder considers Steven Weinberg the "greatest living physicist.")

When Global Warming Touches Home

Note 6/17/18: this post had been inadvertently deleted; I'm restoring it from Chrome's cache. It was originally posted 6/1/18.
--------------
This wild week we've had an emergency situation in the Willamette Valley of Oregon -- the city of Salem (primarily), but also Stayton (where I live now), Turner, and other communities who get their water from Detroit Lake and the North Santiam River it feeds.

There was an algal bloom found in Detroit Lake on May 8th, one that produces dangerous toxins that can cause harm to children under 6 years of age, those with compromised immune systems, and pets. They say healthy adults aren't at risk.

It's been confusing, and the government hasn't handled this skillfully or competently. On Tuesday evening we all got a warning on our smartphones, a noise I'd never heard my phone make before -- a reverse 911 call, I guess -- saying there was a Civil Emergency Alert. That's all it said, very nondescript.

I suspected it was about the water situation, about which the Salem newspaper had sent out a notification an hour or two earlier. (What people without smartphones knew, I have no idea.) But it wasn't really clear -- I did actually wonder for a little bit if the Big Earthquake had hit, or something.

That message was, we know now, a mistake -- an default emergency message sent out by emergency managers or their systems. About 20 minutes later another squawkish message arrived saying it was about the water.

Except the link it directed everyone to, as did my town's (Stayton) Facebook posting, pointed to a cityofsalem.net site that was unreachable, overloaded with traffic.

So there were two big mistakes in a row -- an emergency message that said nothing and so was confusing, and a link to a government Web site that was overloaded.

Not exactly encouraging for when the Big One hits here (the expected M9.0 earthquake).

(For a brief time I did wonder if maybe the first emergency message was about something other than the water situation. It's hard to resist. My biggest worry about the big upcoming M9.0 eq is that it will hit precisely in the middle of January when I am in the shower -- and left not just wet and cold, but disconnected from my eyeglasses, without which I am like Piggy in Lord of the Flies.)

Once everyone was told it was about somewhat poisonous water, the stores naturally had a run on bottled water. (Strike 3?) I was fine with drinking out of the tap, but replaced my cats' water bowl with distilled water, which was all I had on hand. (It tastes lousy, but is at least wet.) Today I was able to replace that with bottled spring water.

The governor called a state of emergency. The National Guard has started distributing free water to anyone who comes to one of their 10 sites they set up around -- though to me they've seemed pretty shy about telling us where those places are (Strike 4).

Oh, and make sure you have containers for the water, because we all happen to have 5 or 10 empty one-gallon jugs lying around, right? (Strike 5.)

Some people have definitely overreacted, but in the last day or so the big stores around seemed to have worked hard to get lots of water into their stores. Like truckload after truckload.

Meanwhile it's come out that Salem officials knew about the toxicity at least four days before they informed the public. Sweet.

Anyway......

The algae bloom was first found up in Detroit Lake -- on the western slope of the Cascade Mountains -- on May 8th. That's relativity early in the season. They have often occurred here in May and June, but have never before shut down water systems.

Now people are asking questions about this algae bloom:

Salem Mayor Chuck Bennett is calling for an investigation into the toxic algae bloom at Detroit Lake blamed for fouling the city’s water supply.

Toxic algae blooms have been a common occurrence at the reservoir east of Salem, which serves as the source of the city’s water supply.

But this year is the first time those toxins have infiltrated Salem’s water supply at levels high enough to cause harm to vulnerable residents.

What might be a factor in the increasing number of algae blooms?

Bennett pointed to factors such as fire damage, fire suppression practices, historic logging activities and weather conditions as potential culprits.

What the mayor didn't mention was...global warming.

"I think it's fair to say that factors associated with global warming — hotter and drier conditions and a rapid snowmelt — could definitely increase conditions that cause algae blooms," said Rebecca Hillwig, natural resource specialist with the Oregon Health Authority. "There's a lot of factors to consider, but it's fair to say that we have the potential for more of these type of issues in the future."

Salem has warmed about 2.3°F since 1948, and Oregon as a whole (a pretty large inhomogeneous area, to be sure) has warmed by 2.7°F since 1895. I don't have data for Detroit Lake, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're similar.

Maybe at least a few people here will start to grasp what global warming means -- for them personally, if not for the larger world. If not this time, then maybe next. At least it's nice to think so.

Trees and Moon

A great night-sky picture from my friend Jim, who I met here in Oregon a few  years ago and got to know, but who then moved to New Hampshire, where he now lives just across Lake Winnipesaukee from where I lived in Gilford for several years in the late 1990s until about 2003!

Does global warming make tropical cyclones stronger? « RealClimate

A must-read at RealClimate:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/05/does-global-warming-make-tropical-cyclones-stronger/

Book: The Efficiency Paradox, by Edward Tenner

In the mail: The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can't Do, by Edward Tenner, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2018.

From Publisher's Weekly:

Historian Tenner (Why Things Bite Back) argues that supposed advances in technological efficiency can actually be self-subverting in this reasoned antidote to a culture increasingly obsessed with doing more with less. He starts by examining the history of innovations premised on efficiency, first seen in continuous production models such as Ford’s assembly line, and more recently in the rise of digital platform companies, which are “based less on the organization of machines and human labor than the gathering, analysis, and exchange of data.” The book then segues into hot topics such as rideshare apps, GPS, and self-driving cars. Tenner demonstrates how systems such as these, which are premised on efficiency, reduce serendipity, stifle learning, and limit humans’ ability to respond when malfunction occurs; they also, he argues, create substantial lost opportunity cost in the long term. Tenner also addresses the fallacies of big data and how random initial advantages from algorithms (such as Google’s PageRank, which attempts to deliver information that people want rather than what they asked for) can hide the long-term codification of systemic bias. Tenner is no luddite; he evaluates the positives and negatives of technology through a strong base of evidence rather than nostalgia or personal anecdote, and debunks some of the most popular concerns about automation. Tenner’s insightful study of the effects of information technology on society warrants close attention.

Question About Human Vision and Missiles

Consider, say, a missile, 5 meters long and 1 meter in diameter. After it's launched, at what speeds could it be tracked by the human eye? What's the upper limit on that speed? Viz., when does the missile become effectively invisible?

(I know the diameter might not be realistic. I just wanted to make it an easy number.)

This is tangentially related to an article I'm working on.

Note added 5/27: I think my query was somewhat ambiguous, because the ability for the eye to track something depends on how far away it is. (Not too far, but not too close.) You can assume any distance you want.... For that matter, make any assumptions you want about size of the object being viewed.... What if the starship Enterprise (or Voyager) dipped into a planet's atmosphere? When could you see it and when would it be moving too fast to catch?

James Chadwick Accidentally Went Into Physics

"...James Chadwick, the discoverer of the neutron, had studied physics only because he was too shy to point out that he had mistakenly waited in the wrong line when matriculating."

From Warped Passages by Lisa Randall

Latest Ocean Heat Content Data

Global warming continues.

The data for ocean heat content for the first quarter of this year came out the other day for the global regions 0-700 meters and 0-2000 meters. They're warmer. Recall that changes in ocean heat content are the best way to detect the planet's energy imbalance -- over 90% of the heat trapped by our greenhouse gases finds it way into the ocean.

After some spreadsheet fun I get the following:

W=watts, J=joules, m=meters; yrs=years; Z=zetta=10²¹; T=tera=10¹².

Note that the 0-700 m record is almost 5 times longer than the 0-2000 m record, so even though it's about 3 times smaller (in volume) it's not too surprising it's absorbed more heat over its record length. 

The uncertainties don't include autocorrelation -- the reality that one quarter isn't independent of the previous quarter, because a warm quarter is more likely to follow a warm quarter etc -- because I'm lazy and because I'm still not quite sure how to include it for the uncertainties of a 2nd-order polynomial fit. (Anyone know? Can you do it quick and dirty by using the effective sample size n_eff as in equation 9 of this document by Tom Wigley?)

Lots of graphs can be found here.

(In my calculations I've only included the Argo data for the 0-2000 m region, which starts in 2005, shown in red in this last graph.)

Crop Yields Under Global Warming

Up until now I thought that global warming would have a significant impact on crop yields, both in the US and elsewhere.

But I've gathered some numbers, and I'm so sure anymore -- at least for US farmers/farming corps.

My understanding was taken from papers like this one:

“For wheat, maize and barley, there is a clearly negative response of global yields to increased temperatures. Based on these sensitivities and observed climate trends, we estimate that warming since 1981 has resulted in annual combined losses of these three crops representing roughly 40 Mt or $5 billion per year, as of 2002.”
-- “Global scale climate–crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming," David B Lobell and Christopher B Field 2007 Environ. Res. Lett. 2 014002 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/2/1/014002
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/2/1/014002

and this one

“With a 1°C global temperature increase, global wheat yield is projected to decline between 4.1% and 6.4%. Projected relative temperature impacts from different methods were similar for major wheat-producing countries China, India, USA and France, but less so for Russia. Point-based and grid-based simulations, and to some extent the statistical regressions, were consistent in projecting that warmer regions are likely to suffer more yield loss with increasing temperature than cooler regions.”
- B. Liu et al, “Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yields by three independent methods, Nature Climate Change (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate3115, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3115.html 

But -- again, for the US -- these turn out to be quite small numbers, because the market sizes are so big and yields are increasing year-after-year.

So how do crop yields (again, US-only) vary with temperature? Here are some data from the National Climate Assessment (2014), Figure 18.3, p 421

These data are, admittedly, rather scattered and a straight-line trend will have errors. (I don't have the underlying data to calculate those here.) But by eye, I estimate the trends to be, for corn: -0.39 t/ha/°F, and, for soybeans: -0.08 t/ha/°F.

So what are the current yields, and how fast are they increasing? Here is the current yield and trend in corn yields, and the same for soybean yields.

So, plugging in the data, the trend in corn yields = 1.9 bu/acre/yr, and the trend in soybean yields = 0.5 bu/acre/yr. Relative to 2017, these are 1.1%/yr and 1.0%/yr, respectively.

From the same source, 2017 yields are, for corn: 176.6 bu/acre, and for soybeans, 49.1 bu/acre. "bu" is bushels.

I need to know the density of corn and of soybeans: 39.3680 bu/t and 39.7740 bu/t, respectively, from this source.

Translating into metric units: 2017 corn yield = 11.1 t/ha, 2017 soybean yield = 3.1 t/ha.

OK, now we can put things together.

Let's assume the surface warming trend is +0.20°C/decade. That's one degree Celsius in 50 years. (Results for other trends will scale linearly.)

Assuming the current trend in yields continues (iffy?), in 50 years (a long time, granted), yields will have increased by 170% (for corn), and 165% (for soybeans).

But in that time, yields will only decrease due to higher temperature by -6% (corn) and -5% (soybeans).

So agricultural technology will, even if trends continue at only a fraction of their current value, swamp any losses due to global warming.

And it won't take much increase in yields in developing countries for them to cancel out any loses due to higher temperatures, either.

--

Of course, there's no inherent reason to believe that yield increases will continue at their rate of the last 30 years for the next 50 years. Nor will warming stay linear, probably. And we'll need more food to feed ever more people, about 10 B by the middle of this century. And warming won't be limited to just one degree Celsius (we're already at that value anyway).

But I don't anymore see a big problem here. Am I missing something?

Great Lakes Profile

I just think this is a cool & interesting graphic:

Will the Falling Chinese Satellite Hit Someone?

As you probably know, the de-orbiting Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will soon fall to Earth.

This thing is 10.4 meters long and, on launch, weighted 8.5 tonnes.

What are the chances it will hit someone, or something important?

I don't know, and now that I'm reviewing this calculation I feel pretty sure I don't know, but here goes with my original idea.

The satellite will fall between the ± 43° latitude lines. But that's about all that seems known for sure right now.

That area constitutes 348 Mkm², or 68% of Earth's surface area.

Much of this is ocean, but I don't know exactly how much. I'll assume, for better or worse, that it's the same percentage that the ocean makes up of Earth's total surface area, 70.8%, giving a potential land fall area of 102 Mkm².

How many people are in this area? I don't know. All I know to do (without a lot of work) is assume it's the same percentage of the world population as is land, which, extrapolating this trend, was 7.46 B in 2017.

(Amazingly, 90% of the world's people live in the Northern hemisphere.)

When might a person be "hit" by a falling satellite? Let's say if it occurs within a 10 m radius of that person. Thus the danger zone around each person is 628 m², and around all people living in the fall zone is (assuming independence) 3.20 Mkm².

That's 3.1% of the satellite's potential landing zone. Small, but not tiny.

--

I suspect this number is an overestimate, because

(1) I've overestimated the number of people who live between -43 and +43 degrees latitude, since there's more ocean there than I've assumed, and
(2) I've assumed each person's "target zone" is independent of everyone else's (which is obviously not true in cities.)

Much of Europe and Russia lives above 43° N latitude, and all of Canada does -- and I do too, at 45-epsilon degrees. (I often drive past the a sign in North Salem announcing the 45° line, and based on my home's GPS coordinates I've calculated that I'm about 4.4 km south of this line, or at 44.960858° north latitude.)

So, there's a tiny chance of someone being hit by this satellite. 3% seems high -- but I doubt the chances are infinitesimal, even if I'm off by a factor of 10.

Still, good luck out there. Heads up.

Free, Online Climate Textbooks

I've recently come across a few free, online climate textbooks, and thought it worth mentioning here.

A great introduction to the basics:

Introduction to Climate Science, Andreas Schmittner, Oregon State University.

For more advanced students:

Introduction to climate dynamics and climate modeling, by Goosse H., P.Y. Barriat, W. Lefebvre, M.F. Loutre and V. Zunz, (2008-2010).

I guess I can mention Pierrehumbert's textbook Principles of Planetary Climate, though I'm not sure it's on the Web legally. I bought the hardback version and have learned a great deal from it. I heartily recommend it.

My Plastic Brain by Caroline Williams

From my mailbox:

My Plastic Brain: One Woman's Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind by Caroline Williams.

Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Author's Web site

From Kirkus Reviews:

"Readers hoping to improve their own cognitive abilities may feel a bit of a letdown by the author’s old-fashioned, down-to-earth advice: exercise your body, preferably outdoors, learn mindful meditation but also allow your mind to wander, engage in a mentally challenging hobby, and pick the skill you want to improve and practice it in real life."

Valar morghulis.

'Mind over matter': Stephen Hawking – obituary by Roger Penrose | Science | The Guardian

The best Hawking obit I've read:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/mar/14/stephen-hawking-obituary

When the Statue of Liberty Gets Sea Walls

Last night I started watching The Expanse on Amazon Prime. It's been really good scifi so far, and has that nitty-gritty view of future space travel, more Firefly than Star Trek, but even grittier. It's set 200 years in the future, and in an early episode there was this short cut of the Statue of Liberty, with sea walls due to (presumably) global warming:

Another good idea (for the story, at least) was "gravity torture," where those who grew up off-Earth in a lower gravitational environment are tortured by being hung in Earth's gravity for hours:

In Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, kids born on Mars (where g = 38% of that of Earth) eventually become significantly taller than Earthlings.

I appreciate when writers think about the little things and subtly put them in their stories. It's fun to notice them. The Expanse does this very well, so far.

Question About My Blog's Appearance

When you read this blog, is the page too wide for your screen?

Do you have to scroll right in order to see what's beyond the post itself -- the "About Me" module, "Blog Archive," "Good Links," etc.?

I do. So I'm wondering if everyone has the same problem. Other blogspot blogs read fine in my browser.

Thanks.

Equations That Changed the World

A few years ago, mathematician Ian Stewart published a book titled 17 Equations That Changed The World. It's an interesting list:

I would go beyond these 17 and add: 

• 1+1=2, which some unknown someone realized long ago was profound and incredibly useful. The logical proof of this assertion, though, didn't come until Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead three-volume Principia Mathematica. It's a crazy book -- the text looks almost alien or elvish, and it took them several hundred pages of work before they could prove that 1+1=2. Russel said his work on this book "had actually damaged his brain." Here's an interesting discussion of the Principia Mathematica from NPR in 2010.
• Newton's second law of motion, F=ma (really, F=dp/dt, the time rate of change of momentum).
• Planck's Law of radiation (probably).
• The Lagrangian of quantum electrodynamics, because it changed how quantum physics was done ever afterward.
• Einstein's equations of general relativity, because they changed our view and understanding of the universe, and for their sheer elegance and sophistication. 

You?