PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 52/2001 - 4 April 2001
----------------------------
"Muller's biggest idea is a real Nemesis. Or so he claims.
Like a
thorn in the side of mainstream researchers, Muller's Nemesis
theory --
that our Sun has a companion star responsible for recurring
episodes
of wholesale death and destruction here on Earth -- seems to
reemerge
periodically like microbes after a mass extinction. It's a theory
that has
many detractors. And it's a theory that has been beaten down and
left for
dead in the minds of most scientists. Yet it is a theory that
just won't
die."
--Robert Britt, Space.com, 3 April 2001
"A Californian physicist is asking for $1 million to find
the "Death
Star" he thinks wiped out the dinosaurs. Richard Muller
believes a star
orbiting our solar system throws asteroids at the Sun every 26
million years. [...] Muller, based at the University of
California,
thinks Nemesis will be spotted within 10 years. He said:
"Give me a million
dollars and I'll find it."
--Ananova, 4 April 2001
"Since by definition anti-matter isn't matter and even a
tiny black
hole is immaterial, then neither of these could have generated
chondritic 'residues'. As for a UFO, chondritic materials would
be a
particularly strange choice of construction material. You could,
if
you really wanted to, suggest that the UFO was a hollowed out
comet,
or that your mini- black hole had a comet or chondritic dust in
'tow',
however, the simplest explanation by far is that the Tunguska
impactor
was just a pretty ordinary piece of comet that was unfortunate
enough
to run into the Earth."
--Matt Genge, 4 April 2001
(1) NEMESIS: DOES THE SUN HAVE A 'COMPANION'?
Space.com, 3 April 2001
(2) SCIENTIST WANTS $1M TO FIND DINOSAUR-KILLING 'DEATH STAR'
Ananova, 4 April 2001
(3) HOT FLUSH OVER IN A FLASH
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(4) UNDERSTANDING LIFE'S IMPACT
SpaceDaily, 4 April 2001
(5) PRIMITIVE VISITOR FROM SPACE ARRIVES IN UK
Peter Bond <100604.1111@compuserve.com>
(6) FREE-FLOATING PLANETS: BRITISH TEAM RESTAKES DUBIOUS CLAIM
Space.com, 3 April 2001
(7) TOWSON U. PROFESSOR DISCOVERS ASTEROID COMPANION
Excite News, 3 April 2001
(8) SPACE-BASED LASER SYSTEM WILL ENHANCE PLANETARY DEFENSE
TECHNOLOGY
SpaceDaily, 3 March 2001
(9) EM EFFECTS CAUSED BY IMPACTS OF LARGE METEOROIDS
Ivan V. Nemtchinov <ivvan@idg1.chph.ras.ru>
(10) TUNGUSKA AS AN EXPLODING UFO
Matthew Genge <M.Genge@nhm.ac.uk>
(11) MIRROR MATTER TUNGUSKA
Andrei Ol'khovatov <olkhovatov@mtu-net.ru>
(12) LET'S AGREE ON A BETTER SOLAR SYSTEM TREATY
Andy Nimmo <andy-nimmo@ntlworld.com>
(13) MODERN PERSISTENCE OF MEDIEVAL FLAT EARTH
Jon Giorgini <jdg@tycho.jpl.nasa.gov>
=======
(1) NEMESIS: DOES THE SUN HAVE A 'COMPANION'?
From Space.com, 3 April 2001
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/nemesis_010320.html?Enews=y
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance.
It's know'n so
many things that ain't so." -- A favorite quote of Richard
A. Muller, by
19th century humorist Josh Billings.
When you think big, as Richard A. Muller does, you're bound to
create ideas
now and then that are so compelling you just can't let go of them
-- ideas
so outlandish that mainstream scientists are equally eager to
dismiss them.
Muller, a physicist at University of California at Berkeley, has
had his
share of big ideas.
If you don't count the restaurant he owned between 1976 and 1982
("If anyone
near and dear to you wants to open a restaurant, I can now be
hired to talk
them out of it."), Muller's ideas are generally rooted in
solid science and
genius extrapolation. He's got a gaggle of prestigious awards to
prove it,
with titles that say things like "outstanding" and
"highly original."
But Muller's biggest idea is a real Nemesis. Or so he claims.
Like a thorn in the side of mainstream researchers, Muller's
Nemesis theory
-- that our Sun has a companion star responsible for recurring
episodes of
wholesale death and destruction here on Earth -- seems to
reemerge
periodically like microbes after a mass extinction.
It's a theory that has many detractors. And it's a theory that
has been
beaten down and left for dead in the minds of most scientists.
Yet it is a theory that just won't die.
Nemesis is cautiously supported by a handful of scientists, who
often sound
like ringside rooters eager for a victory but thankful they don't
have to
put the gloves on. Muller meanwhile acknowledges the possibility
that the
whole idea could turn out to be wrong, but he is nonetheless
confident that
Nemesis will be found within 10 years.
"Give me a million dollars and I'll find it," Muller
said in a recent
telephone interview.
Brave words for a bold theory that if proven true would shake up
everything
we know about the formation and evolution of our solar system.
Genesis of Nemesis
Muller's idea for Nemesis came to him 1983. Luis Alvarez, then an
emeritus
professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley,
and his
son Walter had recently put forth the theory that a giant impact
had wiped
out the dinosaurs. (This idea, like so many others that are now
widely
accepted, met with staunch criticism when it was introduced
because it, too,
was not mainstream).
Around the same time, two other researchers had suggested yet
another
controversial idea, that mass extinctions occurred at regular
intervals --
every 26 million years or so. Scientists immediately folded the
ideas into a
new and breathtaking possibility: Impacts by space rocks were
causing
massive global species destruction every 26 million years.
Luis Alvarez was Richard Muller's mentor, and he suggested that
Muller try
to debunk the periodicity argument. Pondering this, Muller
dreamed up the
fanciful companion to the Sun as a possible cause, and with
Berkeley's Piet
Hut and Marc Davis of Princeton, worked out the details.
Muller gave the object the name of the Greek goddess of
retribution --
fitting for a killer star that roamed stealthily beyond the solar
system
flicking comets at dinosaurs.
In the end, the idea looked surprisingly plausible to Muller and
his
colleagues, and the results of their work were ultimately
published in the
journal Nature in 1984. Muller then wrote a book about Nemesis,
and he has
pursued the companion star, while also doing other research, ever
since.
Tossing comets at us
Nemesis, as Muller sees it, is a common red dwarf star that would
be visible
through binoculars or a small telescope, if only we knew which of
some 3,000
stars to look at. These are stars that have been cataloged, but
their
distances are not known.
Any one of them could be the Death Star, as Nemesis has come to
be called by
some.
Red dwarfs are the most common stars in the galaxy. They are
small and
relatively cool, dimmer than our Sun. The notion of companion
stars is also
exceedingly common -- more than half of all stars are part of
such a binary
system, in which two stars are thought to form out of a single
cloud of gas
and dust.
Binary stars settle into a gravitational dance around a common
point in
space. The smaller of the two stars does most of the orbiting,
whereas the
larger one is much closer to the center of the dance routine.
It's like two
kids on a seesaw. For the thing to work properly, the heavier
child must sit
closer to the center of the apparatus.
Muller figures Nemesis' orbit ranges from 1 to 3 light-years away
from the
Sun.
On its closest approach, the lethal companion would pass through
a vast, but
sparsely populated halo of primitive comets called the Oort
Cloud, which
surrounds our solar system from beyond Neptune's orbit out to
nearly a
light-year away. (The Sun's nearest known star, Proxima Centauri,
is about
4.25 light-years away).
During this passage through or near the Oort Cloud, the gravity
of Nemesis
would scatter a furious storm of primordial comets that had been
relatively
undisturbed for 4.5 billion years, since the solar system came
into being.
Dislodged from their once-stable orbits, millions or billions of
these
comets would travel to the inner solar system over millions of
years, pulled
toward the Sun by its gravity. A handful would run into Earth
along the way,
and the flurry of would result in mass extinctions.
Simple enough. But Nemesis has for years been dogged by a
misunderstanding,
Muller says. Most researchers think the theory was long ago
dismissed by
competing data that claimed its orbit was not possible.
Far-out idea
The orbit assumed for Nemesis is an unusual one, Muller admits.
No star has
ever been found to orbit so far from a companion. "And that
really bothers
people," he said. "It makes them think that this is a
really far-out idea,
literally."
But computer models developed by Muller and his colleagues
predict that such
an orbit must occur at some point in the evolution of most binary
star
systems. "We just haven't found such systems yet," he
said.
And while Muller appreciates the natural and healthy skepticism
of other
scientists, he figures they are not interested in funding a
search because
they erroneously assume that Nemesis cannot be found.
Jonathan Tate is the director of Spaceguard U.K., which lobbies
for a
government response to the threat of asteroids. Tate is among
those who see
no rush to find Nemesis. He would rather see money spent on more
immediate
searches for asteroids closer to Earth that might prove to be
humanity's
undoing in coming decades or centuries.
As Tate points out, proving that mass extinctions occur every 26
million
years, regardless of the cause, is only of academic interest:
Humans may not
likely to be around to care, as many researchers don't expect our
species to
last that long. If we do survive, there will likely be plenty of
time to
worry.
Questioning periodicity
Meanwhile, many scientists see little or no credibility to the
studies
alleging periodicity in mass extinctions, and hence no need for a
Nemesis
theory.
Numerous studies have reported cycles in either impacts or mass
extinctions.
The period between peaks in these studies mostly range from 26
million to 35
million years. Andrew Glikson of the Australian National
University says
that trying to pin down things that happened so long ago is no
simple
challenge. For one thing, space rocks that land in the ocean
leave few
clues, Glikson points out, and Earth is roughly two-thirds water.
And Earth has always had a crust that is on the move. Evidence
gets buried,
destroyed, and folded into oblivion by the same process that
creates
mountains and moves continents.
"Some of the suggested periodicities are more likely to
represent
statistical artifacts than robust observations," Glikson
said.
David Raup, a University of Chicago paleontologist, made the
original
mass-extinction periodicity argument two decades ago along with
colleague J.
John Sepkoski. The pair studied marine fossil records over a 250
million-year period that they say showed significant spikes every
26 million
years.
"To me, the periodicity idea is as well supported as many
ideas that have
been adopted into the conventional wisdom, but the scientific
community is
heartily skeptical," Raup told SPACE.com. "Of the 15 or
so re-analyses of
our data published since the original paper, about half support
periodicity
and half reject it. It's is still very much in the eye of the
beholder."
Muller supports the statistics more emphatically.
"There is a peculiar pattern in mass extinctions, something
that cannot be
dismissed as a statistical fluctuation," Muller said.
"It requires some
explanation."
Raup, now retired from active research, would not venture a guess
as to when
or whether Nemesis might be found, but he expressed hope in the
idea: "I am
glad Rich [Muller] is still working on it because it may take a
lot of
effort, and he's the best."
The galactic plane, Planet X and black holes
Other ideas have been put forth to explain the alleged
periodicity in mass
extinctions.
The most widely accepted is the suggestion that the solar system,
as it
revolves around the center of the Milky Way, bobs up and down
through the
plane of the galaxy. This plane is full of gas and dust that
never became
stars, which collectively has a certain amount of gravity that
some expect
might dislodge comets from the Oort Cloud.
There are doubts, however, about the amount of mass in the
galactic plane
and whether or not the timing coincides with the periodicity of
mass
extinctions.
Others have suggested a dim failed star known as a brown dwarf
might be
lurking in the distant fringes of the solar system. Muller called
the
increasing rate of discovery of brown dwarfs, including one that
is just 13
light-years away, "extremely discouraging." For if
Nemesis were a brown
dwarf, it would be harder to find.
Yet another enduring idea is that another large planet lurks
beyond Pluto.
This so-called Planet X would be a gas ball up to five times the
size of
Earth, according to some predictions. Even the possibility of a
black hole
has been raised. Few researchers support these two ideas.
Evidence from the Moon
The best evidence for periodic impacts on Earth may ultimately
come from the
Moon. While the Earth's crust has been stretched, squashed and
folded
violently its whole life, the Moon is relatively static,
preserving a far
more accessible geologic record.
A year ago Muller, Berkeley geologist Paul Renne and
then-graduate student
Timothy Culler found the Moon underwent a flurry of impacts
between 400
million and 600 million years ago. The active period (which may
still be
going on) presumably affected Earth as well since both bodies are
in roughly
the same spot in the solar system.
Muller says the sudden increase offers indirect evidence for a
sudden change
in the orbit of Nemesis, which might have been caused by a
passing star.
But the study did not turn up evidence for the 26 million-year
periodicity,
as hoped. Muller says there was not enough data. The study
involved 155
microscopic glass beads formed in the intense heat of lunar
impacts and
later brought to Earth, in a single gram of soil, by the Apollo
14 crew.
But given that there are "several hundred pounds (kilograms)
of [lunar] dust
and rocks that have not been analyzed," Muller plans another
more detailed
study.
Whether or not he finds evidence for Nemesis in Moon dust, it's
clear that
Muller won't stop looking. He is a man of enduring confidence.
But he is
also a remarkably conservative scientist, quick as anyone to
point out that
there is no proof until there is proof.
"I'm realistic," he said. "I may be wrong."
And he recognizes that if the Death Star is not found, the whole
idea could
become a real Nemesis for the big thinker who dreamed it up.
Copyright 2001, Space.com
==========
(2) SCIENTIST WANTS $1M TO FIND DINOSAUR-KILLING 'DEATH STAR'
From Ananova, 4 April 2001
http://www.ananova.co.uk/news/story/sm_264551.html?menu=
A Californian physicist is asking for $1 million to find the
"Death Star" he
thinks wiped out the dinosaurs.
Richard Muller believes a star orbiting our solar system throws
asteroids at
the Sun every 26 million years.
He says some hit the Earth, causing regular mass extinctions, but
most
astronomers dismiss the idea.
The theory first came to him in 1983 when researchers showed the
big
extinctions happen regularly.
He reckons every 26 million years a red dwarf, which he calls
Nemesis but
others call the Death Star, passes through a distant asteroid
cloud.
Some of the rocks become displaced, are sent hurtling towards the
Sun and
some hit the Earth, Space.com reports.
Muller, based at the University of California, thinks Nemesis
will be
spotted within 10 years. He said: "Give me a million dollars
and I'll find
it."
He added: "There is a peculiar pattern in mass extinctions,
something that
cannot be dismissed as a statistical fluctuation. It requires
some
explanation."
Copyright 2001, Press Association
========
(3) HOT FLUSH OVER IN A FLASH
From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
[ http://www.nature.com/nsu/010404/010404-5.html
]
Saturday, 31 March 2001
Hot flush over in a flash
By PHILIP BALL
Evolutionary trees imply that, like the bacteria that today
inhabit hot
volcanic springs, our earliest ancestors liked being boiled
alive. But new
research reveals that the surface of the Earth might not have
been hot
enough for long enough to allow heat-loving bacteria to evolve
from
primal slime [1].
"The length of time the Earth spent with surface
temperatures in the 60 C to
110 C range would have been short," Norm Sleep of Stanford
University and
his co-workers calculate. By 'short' they mean a couple of
million years at
most, and probably less than a million -- not long at all in
geological
terms.
So there is still plenty of room for hypotheses other than the
thermophilic
origin of life as to why the 'oldest' organisms seem to have
liked it hot,
Sleep's team believes. Perhaps, for example, they were the only
survivors of
later massive asteroid impacts that fried all heat-sensitive
life.
The period between the formation of the Earth, 4.6 billion years
ago, and
the appearance of life, at least 3.8 billion years ago, is the
most
mysterious in the history of our planet. These 800 million years
or so were
also the most dramatic the world has ever known.
In particular, it is now widely believed that 4.5 billion to 4.45
billion
years ago a rock the size of a small planet ploughed into the
Earth, nearly
splitting it in two. The debris thrown out from this collision
formed the
Moon.
This giant impact is thought to have vaporized much of the Earth,
leaving it
awash with a global ocean of molten rock. If any life had existed
before the
impact, there was surely none afterwards. Yet by perhaps as
little as 50
million years later, the surface had cooled enough to form a
solid crust,
covered in part with liquid water. The Earth was already on its
way to being
habitable once more.
Thermophilic bacteria could have appeared in this environment as
the first
organisms in the long chain of being. But if the planet cooled
fast, they
would have had to get themselves together pretty quickly, before
their
moment had passed and other, less heat-resistant organisms (like
most modern
bacteria) won out.
How big a window of opportunity thermophiles had, says Sleep's
team, depends
on many things: how quickly heat escaped from the Earth's rocky
surface, how
much sunlight warmed the planet, and how much or how little heat
the blanket
of the atmosphere retained.
Today's atmosphere keeps the planet about 35 C warmer than it
would
otherwise be, because of the way that gases such as water vapour
and carbon
dioxide capture heat (the greenhouse effect). But there was
probably much
more water vapour, and perhaps more carbon dioxide, in the
atmosphere of the
hot young Earth.
Having estimated how long it took for the Earth to acquire a
solid crust,
boiling hot oceans and an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide,
Sleep's group
derives an upper limit on the length of time that the Earth
stayed hot by
considering how such a world might have then evolved.
Assuming that all the carbon dioxide began in the air, the
researchers work
out that the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide would gradually
have
declined owing to reactions with surface rocks to form
carbonates, reducing
its greenhouse warming influence. Today much atmospheric carbon
dioxide is
bound up in this form, or dissolved in hot rock inside the Earth.
[1] Sleep, N. H., Zahnle, K. & Neuhoff, P. S. Initiation of
clement surface
conditions on the earliest Earth. Proceedings of the National
Academy of
Sciences USA 98, 3666-3672 (2001).
Web Links:
* Planetary Science Institute
http://www.psi.edu/
© Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001 - NATURE NEWS SERVICE
=========
(4) UNDERSTANDING LIFE'S IMPACT
From SpaceDaily, 4 April 2001
http://www.spacer.com/news/deepimpact-01d.html
Cambridge - April 4, 2001
The evolution of life on our planet is inextricably linked with
extraterrestrial influences. It is now well-established that
various mass
extinction events identified in the palaeontological record were
triggered
by the cataclysmic explosions produced when large asteroids or
comets
happened to collide with the Earth.
The best-known episode is that in which the dinosaurs died 65
million years
ago, but there have been many other catastrophic impacts both
before then,
and since.
These asteroid and comet impacts were not entirely a bad thing.
If it had
not been for those extinctions, then the age of the mammals and
the eventual
evolution of humans would not have occurred.
However, there is another way in which we should look favourably
on objects
from space that have hit the Earth. Initially our planet was hot
and dry.
The water and organic chemicals that made the initiation of
primordial life
feasible here seem to have been delivered to the early Earth by
comets.
Both of these aspects of planetary science are addressed in two
talks to be
given at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cambridge by Dr.
Duncan Steel
of the University of Salford.
In a public lecture on the evening of Thursday 5 April, he will
discuss the
threat to civilisation posed by large near-Earth objects, under
the title
"The Spaceguard Project: Tackling the Asteroid Impact
Hazard".
As Steel points out, the object that killed the dinosaurs was a
big one
(five to ten miles in size), but just 93 years ago a much smaller
asteroid
(just 60 or 70 yards across) blew up in the atmosphere above
Siberia,
producing a blast which would flatten all of London out to the
M25, should
the next such event have Marble Arch as ground zero.
The chance of that occurring is small, but the consequences are
so
phenomenal that it is a hazard we must take seriously. As a
result, the UK
Government is now considering what it could contribute to the
international
Spaceguard programme.
In a scientific paper to be presented on the morning of Wednesday
4 April,
Steel will discuss the flip-side of the coin: how comets may have
delivered
the basic building blocks of life to the nascent Earth.
In a massive impact, the molecules of water and organic chemicals
of which
comets are largely composed would be pyrolysed (split into
individual
atoms). What Steel has proposed is that organic chemicals might
have been
delivered to the sterile early Earth through the tiny meteoroids
released as
comets come near the Sun.
With his co-worker Dr Christopher McKay of NASA-Ames Research
Center in
California, Steel has shown that heavy organic compounds similar
to tar
would survive heating by the Sun within these small meteoroids
during the
thousands of years between being spawned by a comet and
eventually arriving
in the terrestrial atmosphere.
Until now it has generally been presumed that such meteoroids -
which
produce the familiar meteors or shooting stars when they burn up
on
atmospheric entry - must be made of rock and metal, like most
meteorites.
A prediction of the work by Steel and McKay is that such tarry
meteoroids
would burn up higher in the atmosphere than is feasible for rocky
substances.
The tar would start to evaporate from a meteoroid at around 500
degrees
Celsius - a temperature quickly attained due to frictional
heating when it
plummets into the upper atmosphere at hypervelocity. In contrast,
it takes
much longer for rock to reach its evaporation temperature of over
2000
degrees.
Using a radar located near Adelaide in Australia, Steel has shown
that such
tarry meteoroids are indeed continually entering the atmosphere
now,
representing a rain of organic chemicals onto the Earth.
The implication is that the basic building blocks of life were
also supplied
to our planet in this way around four billion years ago, as the
Earth cooled
from its original, intensely hot beginning.
Copyright 2001, SpaceDaily
==============
(5) PRIMITIVE VISITOR FROM SPACE ARRIVES IN UK
From Peter Bond <100604.1111@compuserve.com>
ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL
SOCIETY
PRESS NOTICE
EMBARGOED FOR 09:00 BST WEDNESDAY 4 APRIL 2001
Date: 31 March
2001
Ref. PN 01/21 (NAM14)
Issued by: RAS Press Officers
Peter Bond
Phone: +44 (0)1483-268672
Fax: +44 (0)1483-274047
E-mail: 100604.1111@compuserve.com
Mobile phone: 07711-213486
AND
Dr Jacqueline Mitton
Phone: +44 (0)1223-564914
Fax: +44 (0)1223-572892
E-mail: jmitton@dial.pipex.com
Mobile phone: 07770-386133
NAM PRESS ROOM.
The press room phone numbers are:
+44 (0)1223-313724
+44 (0)1223-313754
+44 (0)1223-315553
RAS Web site: http://www.ras.org.uk
UK National Astronomy Meeting Web site:
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~nam2001/
PRIMITIVE VISITOR FROM SPACE ARRIVES IN UK
Scientists from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London,
working with
colleagues from the Open University (OU) in Milton Keynes, have
been
examining an intriguing arrival from outer space.
The Tagish Lake meteorite, which fell in the Yukon region of
northern Canada
on the morning of 18 January 2000, contains some of the most
primitive
material ever to have landed on the Earth. Samples from this rare
visitor
are rich in carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and sulphur, confirming
that it is an
extremely unusual meteorite, closely related to comets.
Dr. Monica Grady of the Natural History Museum in London will be
unveiling
some of the secrets of this ancient piece of Solar System history
in a talk
at the UK National Astronomy Meeting in Cambridge on Wednesday 4
April.
FROM FROZEN LAKE TO UNIVERSITY LAB
The Tagish Lake meteorite made quite a spectacle when it arrived
on Earth.
As it entered the atmosphere, it created a bright fireball,
accompanied by a
prominent dust tail.
The following day, approximately 2 kg of meteorite was recovered
from the
frozen surface of Tagish Lake. The material remained frozen
during
subsequent transport and storage at the NASA-Johnson Space Centre
curatorial
facility in Houston, Texas.
A tiny piece of the meteorite (just less than 10mg, about the
weight of a
grain of rice) was flown to the Natural History Museum in London,
then,
after a preliminary optical examination, it was taken to the Open
University
(OU) in Milton Keynes.
Using the specialised equipment only available at the OU, Dr.
Grady was able
to determine that Tagish Lake contained more carbon and nitrogen
than any
other meteorite. The carbon was present mostly as organic
compounds - the
building blocks of life.
Tagish Lake was also found to be extremely rich in interstellar
diamond
grains, showing that it formed in the outermost reaches of the
pre-solar
nebula.
"This exciting and unusual meteorite will give us new
insights into many
areas of research, including comets, asteroids, the formation of
the Solar
System and the origin of life," said Dr. Grady.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Monica Grady is Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History
Museum in
London, where she undertakes research on primitive meteorites,
Martian
material and cosmic dust, using the Museum's state-of-the-art
analytical
instrumentation.
The Natural History Museum houses the UK's national meteorite
collection,
one of the finest collections in the world. Highlights from the
collection
are on permanent display in the Meteorite Pavilion, which was
recently
refurbished with the assistance of funding from PPARC's Public
Understanding
of Science programme.
The Open University is home to the Planetary and Space Sciences
Research
Institute (PSSRI), one of Europe's largest planetary research
groups.
Custom-designed equipment is used to measure the light element
geochemistry
of extraterrestrial materials, using samples too small to be
measured
elsewhere.
CONTACTS:
FOR INFORMATION ABOUT TAGISH LAKE:
Dr. Monica M. Grady,
Mineralogy Dept.,
Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road,
London
SW7 5BD
Phone: +44 (0)20-7942-5709
E-mail: m.grady@nhm.ac.uk
FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE PSSRI:
Dr. Ian Wright,
Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute
The Open University
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
Phone: +44 (0)1908-653898
E-mail: i.p.wright@open.ac.uk
IMAGES AND FURTHER INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND ON THE WEB AT:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/mineralogy/research/meteor.htm
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/mineralogy/grady/grady.htm
http://pssri.open.ac.uk/
http://www.astro.uwo.ca/~pwbrown/tagish/
=========
(6) FREE-FLOATING PLANETS: BRITISH TEAM RESTAKES DUBIOUS CLAIM
From Space.com, 3 April 2001
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/free_floaters_010403.html
By Robin Lloyd
Science Editor
An academic tug-of-war over worlds beyond our solar system
continued
Tuesday, with two British scientists reasserting their claim to
have found
free-floating planets that others say are nothing of the sort.
The battle centers on the celestial status of more than a dozen
points of
light in the Orion Nebula, a giant stellar nursery where
thousands of stars
are being born.
Philip Lucas of the University of Hertfordshire and Patrick Roche
of Oxford
University assert the points of light are huge gas planets, or
"planetars,"
that orbit nothing and float in the gaseous blotch of space.
"It's exciting to find these planet-sized objects floating
around in space,"
Lucas said in a prepared statement, "unlike planets such as
our Earth which
orbit a star."
Lucas and Roche announced the new unpublished data this week at
the U.K.
National Astronomy Meeting, in England, underlining their similar
claim made
in 2000 -- that these same faint points of light in the Orion
Nebula are
free-floating planets.
Using the same telescope as in the previous research -- the
United Kingdom
Infrared Telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii -- the
researchers
looked at new spectra for the objects and calculated their
temperature and
derived their masses. The data again yielded the planetary claim.
The assertion is that the objects have masses that, by one
definition, put
them in the range of a planet -- under 13 times the mass of
Jupiter.
Scientific shorthand for that designation is "sub
13Mjup." That mass is
commonly used as a delineating line because it is the mass below
which
deuterium no longer fuses or burns in the core of a star due to
insufficient
temperature and pressure. Deuterium burns briefly in brown
dwarfs, not in
planets.
Many astronomers have questioned the first and now subsequent
findings
announced by Lucas and Roche. One major point of contention is
the
definition of a planet -- many astronomers believe that a planet
must orbit
a star.
In fact, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) recently made
public its
working definition of a planet. That definition excludes objects
such as
Lucas and Roche have named as planets, encompassing only objects
with a
certain mass orbiting around "solar-type stars." Free
floaters with that
mass (less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter) are to be called
"sub-brown
dwarfs," according to the working group, not planets.
The IAU working group was convened in recent months to deal with
the
features of more than 50 extrasolar planets discovered in the
past five
years. Many of those planets are much more massive than even
Jupiter -- the
most massive planet in our solar system. And many of the planets
beyond our
solar system orbit their suns at unusual distances -- extremely
close or
extremely far away. In other words, astronomers have yet to find
a planet
that comes close to resembling Earth.
"Even if these sub 13Mjup masses were ultimately confirmed,
it is the
opinion of a large number of astronomers that the sources should
in no case
be called planets," wrote Mark McCaughrean of the
Astrophysical Institute in
Potsdam, Germany in a letter to press officers for the Royal
Astronomical
Society. In that letter, he asked the press officers to modify a
notice to
the media of the findings because "calling a bunch of
low-mass brown dwarfs
'planets' is simply the wrong thing to do."
"There is certainly room for legitimate academic debate over
what the
definition of a planet is, but it seems likely that the IAU
working group
studying this question will state that planets should at the very
least be
in orbit around something, not free-floating," McCaughrean
wrote.
Earlier this year, McCaughrean did work that undermined the
plausibility of
Lucas and Roche's original claim. McCaughrean analyzed data on
the faint
objects collected by a different telescope and got results that
widely
varied: Some of the objects were too massive to be considered
planets, some
were knots of nebular gas, some were redder than Lucas and Roche
had found
(and thus turned out to be too massive to fall into their planet
definition), while some didn't exist. For those existing objects,
he
believes they should be referred to as "brown dwarf
objects" and knots of
nebular gas. Brown dwarfs are "failed stars" that lack
the mass and fuel to
ignite and burn like a star.
The Lucas and Roche team also failed to account for the
possibility that
some of the faint objects were actually older brown dwarfs
floating in the
Trapezium cluster -- the group in the Orion Nebula upon which the
debate has
centered, McCaughrean said. Such older brown dwarfs are easily
confused with
those with masses under 13 Jupiters.
The use of the word planet by Lucas and Roche excites the public
and
suggests the existence of other Earths and extraterrestrial life.
To
McCaughrean, it would be more intellectually honest to call the
objects
"very low-mass brown dwarfs" or "unattached balls
of gas," although clearly
that would generate less publicity.
Copyright 2001, Space.com
=============
(7) TOWSON U. PROFESSOR DISCOVERS ASTEROID COMPANION
From Excite News, 3 April 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/uw/010402/university-education-74
By Josh Cohen
The Towerlight
Towson U.
(U-WIRE) TOWSON, Md. -- Towson University science professor Dr.
Alex Storrs
made his mark in the world of astronomy earlier this month by
discovering a
companion to a large asteroid, the fifth companion ever
discovered.
The image was found via the Hubble Space Telescope Program, which
allows
researchers such as Storrs to access and analyze its images.
Storrs examined the telescope's images and photographs as part of
his
independent research funded by the University. He found the small
asteroid
body while explaining the image to a student.
"Discoveries like this capture the imagination as to what
might be out
there," Storrs said regarding his discovery.
Storrs' find is a companion to "107 Camilla," an
asteroid that orbits the
sun between Mars and Jupiter on the Asteroid Belt. Companions are
smaller
asteroids, usually 10 to 100 kilometers in size and follow the
orbit of a
larger asteroid.
The object was found in an image taken on Mar. 1, and discovered
a few days
later. The Johnson Space Flight Center will be analyzing the
image, looking
to confirm the object within a week.
Storrs' professional objective is to study approximately 50 large
asteroids,
but he said he does take time to examine other things, which is
how he found
the companion.
Towson has been steadily building an astronomy program, and hired
Storrs
this semester.
Storrs' believes the University does not get enough credit for
the research
it does, and hopes that this discovery will help direct attention
to the
research efforts of the entire Towson community.
"This discovery casts a light on Towson, and helps build
your stature as a
research organization," Storrs said.
He also believes that this discovery will create an interest in
astronomy
with Towson students as well. Storrs hopes for a greater
investment in the
astronomy program, with more money and better equipment to teach
with as
well as for research purposes.
In addition, Storrs said the discovery of the companion will help
the field
of astronomy as well.
He explained that asteroid research could have many effects on
learning
about our own planet and how it was formed.
"You can't see how a building is constructed if it is
intact, you must
examine it when it is broken in pieces to understand its
composition," said
Storrs.
He said asteroids are believed to be the remnants of a planet
that never
fully developed.
The University's physics, astronomy and geosciences program
maintains a
petrographic microscope laboratory.
Geoscience students have access to the lab in the evenings and
weekends in
addition to an informal lounge area, that aims to provide
students a
supportive learning environment.
(C) 2001 The Towerlight via U-WIRE
=========
(8) SPACE-BASED LASER SYSTEM WILL ENHANCE PLANETARY DEFENSE
TECHNOLOGY
From SpaceDaily, 3 March 2001
http://www.spacer.com/news/laser-01d.html
El Segundo - April 2, 2001
The team of aerospace contractors developing the Air Force's
Space-Based
Laser Integrated Flight Experiment (SBL-IFX) has successfully
completed the
experimental satellite's System Requirements Review, taking a
major step
forward in the ongoing design and manufacturing development
process.
Team SBL-IFX, a joint venture comprising TRW, Lockheed Martin and
Boeing
reviewed SBL-IFX's system-level specifications and key
development
milestones with the Air Force and Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization
(BMDO) during the review, held March 28-29 in El Segundo, Calif.
SBL-IFX is planned as a single satellite carrying a laser payload
comprising
a high-energy chemical laser, a beam director and related beam
control
systems.
Team SBL-IFX and the Air Force expect to launch the satellite in
2012, with
an on-orbit demonstration of the satellite's ability to detect,
track and
destroy a boosting missile target planned for 2013.
A successful test will pave the way for the nation to consider
developing a
constellation of space-based laser satellites as part of a
layered missile
defense architecture.
"Completion of this review is a significant milestone for
the government and
Team SBL-IFX," said Col. Neil McCasland, director of the Air
Force's SBL-IFX
project office. "It has given us a new level of confidence
as we matched our
design work with our top-level system requirements and assured
ourselves,
through rigorous analysis, that the current design is on the
right path and
is ready for the next level of refinement."
Of perhaps greater significance than the review itself is the
process by
which Team SBL-IFX and its government customers developed and
completed the
documentation for SBL-IFX.
"This review really validates the concept of Total System
Authority," said
Barry Waldman, program director of Team SBL-IFX, referring to the
acquisition format under which Team SBL-IFX is responsible for
achieving all
program objectives.
"Since we began the program in 1999, the joint venture has
worked in close
partnership with the Air Force and BMDO to define and develop
requirements
and specifications for SBL-IFX. This cooperative approach has
really
streamlined the requirements development process.
"It has also ensured that, upon completion of SRR, we will
all understand
and agree upon the requirements and technical specifications that
will
assure a successful SBL-IFX demonstration."
Completion of the SRR will allow the team to begin preparing
detailed
specifications for the IFX down to major segments, including the
space,
payload and ground segments of the experiment. Those
specifications will be
completed by the Fall of 2001, in time for the program's System
Definition
Review.
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(9) EM EFFECTS CAUSED BY IMPACTS OF LARGE METEOROIDS
From Ivan V. Nemtchinov <ivvan@idg1.chph.ras.ru>
Dear Benny,
In CCNet on March 22 James Perry wrote: "I am interested in
the assertion
that asteroid impacts generate Electromagnetic Pulse. I have
never heard it
before. I thought EMP was generated only by man-made sources
(e.g. nuclear
explosions)". On March 22, 2001 Luigi Foschini and Collin
Keay commented on
electrophonic bursts, which were detected during the atmospheric
entry of
large meteoroids.
Duncan Steel draws attention to the fact that British Antarctic
Expedition
observed a strong aurora in the long Arctic winter, near the time
of the
Tunguska event, but several hours earlier. It stimulates the
thought that if
the Tunguska object was actually cometary in nature, the Earth
would have
been within cometary the ion tail as it approached from the
sunward side of
our planet.
Gerrit Verschnur in his reply mentioned that Shoemaker-Levy 9
comet
fragments smashed into the Jupiter's southern hemisphere but they
triggered
auroras at the mirror points in its Northern hemisphere.
Please note that SL-9 fragments were about 200-400 meters in
size. We should
keep in mind that the Jupiter's magnetic field strength is by an
order of
magnitude larger than at the Earth, Jupiter's size is by an order
of
magnitude larger than that of the Earth, so the total energy of
the
Jupiter's magnetosphere is by five order of magnitude larger than
that of
the Earth. So magnetic disturbances caused by impacts onto the
Earth with
the same kinetic energy will be much larger than in the case of
Jupiter.
We should add some additional consideration.
EM EFFECTS CAUSED BY IMPACTS OF LARGE METEOROIDS
Estimates of electromagnetic (EM) effects caused by the impacts
of large
meteoroids were given by Adushkin and Nemtchinov (1994). 2D
numerical
simulations of gasdynamic processes associated with impacts were
conducted
for Tunguska-class and larger bodies. For stony and icy bodies
with sizes of
200 m and larger the impactors reach the ground without
substantial
deceleration and create a vapor plume which rises upward with the
maximum
velocity approximately equal to a half of the impact velocity. We
note that
the energy of a 200-m icy body with the velocity of 50 km/s is
about 1000
Mt.
The conical jet moving upwards produces a shock wave. The air
heated up to
1-3 eV is strongly ionized and acts like a conducting piston,
expulsing the
Earth's magnetic field. But even for lower velocities and
temperatures of
the air expulsion of the magnetic field occurs as the air at high
altitudes
is already ionized. Large-scale deformation of the magnetosphere
and
disruption of the Van Allan radiation belts will be the result.
It was suggested in Adushkin and Nemtchinov (1994) that
substantial
ionospheric heating, large amplitude oscillations of the
ionospheric and
magnetospheric plasma, precipitation of trapped particles from
the radiation
belts may be the result of impacts of smaller meteoroids.
Numerical simulations of atmospheric entry processes and
long-term
disturbances of ionosphere caused by an icy body with radius of
30 m and
velocity of 30 m were conducted recently by Shuvalov and
Artemieva (2001)
and Shuvalov (2001). They take into account fragmentation and
evaporation.
If was shown that such a body completelly evaporates at an
altitude of about
10 km but the debris reach the minimum height of about 4 km
(close to the
estimated altitude of the Tunguska explosion).
The most part of hot air and vapor accelerates upward. The
density of a
plume is higher than the ambient air density. Up to about 400-500
km the
hydrodynamic approximation is valid for the shock wave.
The jet continues to move upwards ballistically and expands
radically by
inertia and at the moment of about 500 s reaches altitudes of
about 1500 km,
having a radius of 1000 km, and falls back due to gravity.
Meeting more
dense layers of atmosphere, it compresses and heats air in a
shock wave. At
the moment of 700 s a thin dense and hot (several times higher
than the
normal temperature of the air at the altitudes under
consideration) disk is
formed. It begins to expand upwards and radially (at the moment
of 900 s up
to 500 km while radius reached 1500 km). The lower boundary of
the
disturbance remains at an altitude of about 100 km, where the
boundary
between the strongly stratified and weakly stratified atmosphere
is located.
The acoustic-gravity wave propagating from the zone of reentry
impact will
further increase the size of the zone of ionospheric
disturbances. Large
amplitude oscillations of the ionosphere in large area will
obviously cause
disruption of short radiowave communications in the very large
region of the
Earth as the altitude of radio wave reflection will change in
time and will
be corrugated.
Such effects have been observed in Northern Europe in 1961 after
the nuclear
test at Novaya Zanlya with the yield of 58 Mt at the altitude of
3.5 km.
This energy and altitude are close to the values estimated for
the Tunguska
event.
The Tunguska event of 1908 occurred at the eve of the radiowave
era and no
short-period EM signals were detected. But observatory at Irkutsk
(900 km
from Vanavara) detected magnetic disturbances several minutes
after the air
blast. An attempt to interpret these signals was made by
Nemtchinov et al.
(1999). Oscillations of the atmosphere were analyzed. Simulations
show that
they lasted for at least 1500 sec. These oscillations finally
decay, but
rise the temperature at the altitudes of 100-150 km to about
1000-1500° K.
This decreases density of the atmosphere in that region at high
altitudes.
According to Boslough and Crawford (1997) for the oblique impact
of the
Tunguska-class object the plume mainly moves along the wake, i.e.
there is
the horizontal advection in the direction opposite to the impact
velocity,
i.e. towards Baikal, and that may explain earlier start of the
geomagnetic
signal in Irkutsk.
The local increase of conductivity changes the system of
ionospheric
currents and creates the magnetic disturbances. The calculated
magnetic
field values are close to the observed ones in Irkutsk.
The theoretical consideration does not contradict observations.
We
anticipate that global disturbances of the ionosphere and
magnetosphere for
the meteoroids of the size of about 100 m will become global and
could not
be neglected in estimates of hazards in our information age.
All the estimates given above are of a preliminary character. To
make more
detailed analysis and prediction of the impact consequence,
including
magnetohydrodynamic and EM signals, we proposed to start a
Research program
of the Tunguska-class impactors. It is submitted to the
International
Science and Technology Center in Moscow (Project 1814). Its text
can be
found in the ISTC Web Site (www.istc.ru).
We hope that the ISTC board to be
held in July will accept this program.
We note that the nuclear explosions disturbances substantially
differ from
these caused by impacts, in the latter case we do not have
intense
ionization by the penetrating radiation (neutrons, gamma quanta
and X-rays).
Nevertheless to use all the experience attained in the course of
the nuclear
tests analysis, the scientists from the Russian Federal Nuclear
Center
Arzamas-16 were incorporated into the team.
It is also suggested to use the results of the laboratory
experiments and
geophysical experiments with jets created by cumulative
generators using
high-explosives developed in IDG and detonated at altitudes of
150-300 km
(see e.g. Gavrilov et al., 1999). These generators produce
high-velocity
jets (with velocities up to 40-50 km/s, well in the impact
velocity range of
meteoroids).
We have established collaboration with the US National
Laboratories (Los
Alamos and Sandia), and DLR Institute of Planetary Exploration in
Berlin. We
are searching other possible collaborators.
References
Adushkin V.V., and Nemchinov I.V. 1994. Consequences of impacts
of cosmic
bodies on the surface of the Earth. Hazards due to Comets and
Asteroids (Ed.
T.Gehrels). Univ. Arizona Press, Tucson and London, 721-778.
Boslough M.B., and Crawford D.A. 1997. Shoemaker-Levy 9 and plume
forming
collision on Earth. Near-Earth Objects (Ed. J.L.Remo). Annals of
the New
York Academy of Sciences V.822. New York, 236-282.
Gavrilov B.G., Podgorny A.I., Podgorny I.M., Sobyanin D.B.,
Zetzer J.I.,
Erlandson R.E., Meng C.-I., Stoyanov B.J. 1999. Diamagnetic
effect produced
by the Fluxus-1 and 2 artificial plasma jet. Geophys. Res. Lett.
26 (11),
1549-1552.
Nemtchinov I.V., Losseva T.V., Merkin V.G. 1999. Estimate of
geomagnetic
effect caused by Tunguska meteoroid impact. Physical processes in
geospheres: its manifestations and interaction. Institute for
Dynamics of
Geospheres RAS, Moscow, 324-335 (in Russian).
Shuvalov V.V 2001. Atmospheric entry of Tunguska-like meteoroids:
2D
numerical model. Lunar and Planet. Sci. (Houston) XXXII, # 1124.
Shuvalov V.V., and Artemieva N.A. 2001. Long-term disturbances of
ionosphere
caused by Tunguska-like impacts. Lunar and Planet. Sci. (Houston)
XXXII, #
1123.
=============
(10) TUNGUSKA AS AN EXPLODING UFO
From Matthew Genge <M.Genge@nhm.ac.uk>
Duncan Steel provided some interesting references on the
possibility that
the Tunguska impactor might have been a mini-black hole or a
small body of
anti-matter (CCNET 03/04/01). The best reason, however, for
supposing that
the Tunguska impactor was neither is the same as the reason that
it couldn't
have been an exploding UFO (another regrettably popular notion in
certain
circles). Recent analyses of peat from the region show that the
layer
affected by the event has elevated Pd and Rh contents and a flat
chondritic
REE pattern compared to other layers. This together with an Ir
anomaly and
low C-14 suggest the addition of chondritic debris from the
event (Hou et al., 2000 Planet. Space Sci; Ramussen et al., 1999
MAPS).
Since by definition anti-matter isn't matter and even a tiny
black hole is
immaterial, then neither of these could have generated chondritic
'residues'. As for a UFO, chondritic materials would be a
particularly
strange choice of construction material. You could, if you really
wanted to,
suggest that the UFO was a hollowed out comet, or that your
mini-black hole
had a comet or chondritic dust in 'tow', however, the simplest
explanation
by far is that the Tunguska impactor was just a pretty ordinary
piece of
comet that was unfortunate enough to run into the Earth.
____________________
Dr Matthew J. Genge
Researcher (Meteoritics)
Department of Mineralogy, The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK.
Tel: Int + 020 7 942 5581
Fax: Int.+ 020 7 942 5537
email: M.Genge@nhm.ac.uk
Staff internet page http://www.nhm.ac.uk/mineralogy/genge/genge.htm
============
(11) MIRROR MATTER TUNGUSKA
From Andrei Ol'khovatov <olkhovatov@mtu-net.ru>
Dear Dr. Peiser and All,
Regarding Duncan Steel's post "TUNGUSKA AS AN ANTI-MATTER OR
MINI-BLACK
HOLE" in CCNet of April 3, 2001, I can say that he probably
meant Dr. R.
Foot's recent theory that Tunguska was caused by an object made
of so-called
"mirror matter"
(probably a synonym to "antimatter"?). The first time
the antimatter-idea of
Tunguska was put forward by the famous researcher L. La Paz in
POPULAR
ASTRONOMY , v.58, p.330 (1948)! Unfortunately, until now the idea
has been
little developed. It seems that Dr. Foot has decided to develop
it further.
He, together with a Russian colleague, is supposed to present the
theory in
detail at the TUNGUSKA 2001 International conference in Moscow
this summer.
Sincerely,
Andrei Ol'khovatov
Russia, Moscow
================
(12) LET'S AGREE ON A BETTER SOLAR SYSTEM TREATY
From Andy Nimmo <andy-nimmo@ntlworld.com>
Dear Dr Peiser,
I regret that Mr Nemitz is quite simply wrong on a number of the
points he
makes, though I get the impression our motives are similar, so
we'd probably
be better co-operating than continuing this.
He says, "When an un-owned thing is claimed, it belongs to
the claimant.
This has been true since before the beginning of any
civilization." This is
nonsense. In many countries anything hitherto not owned by a
person belongs
not to the first claimant but to the state. To check this, all
anyone has to do is to look at the laws for 'treasure trove'
around our
planet. In almost every case it belongs to the state, with those
states that
are reasonably generous granting a small finders' percentage or
fee to the
individual or group that find it.
Mr Nemitz states, "Precedent is the very heart of Law,
regardless of what
country is involved. To say that precedents are irrelevant simply
because
there are diverse international considerations is
disingenuous." Nonsense
again! So far as I am aware you are not permitted to quote
precedence in the
courts in the country in which I live, Scotland. You can in
England or the
US, but not here. Is Mr Nemitz trying to say that Scottish law is
not lawful
in Scottish courts?
He says, "The resources in space are un-owned, unless they
have been
claimed. Mr. Nimmo has asserted that the Moon Treaty of 1979 and
the Outer
Space Treaty of 1967 has rightfully claimed all the resources in
the Solar
System and the Universe, for those parties that have signed those
Treaties."
That is not what I am saying. What I tried to point out was that
in the UN
Moon Treaty the UN made a claim on all of our Solar System on
behalf of all
mankind. Some countries agreed and some didn't. However who
agreed or who
didn't doesn't matter in this case as the point was that the
claim had been
made and it is a prior claim to that of Mr Nemitz.
He also says, "These are circular arguments, and as such may
be considered
invalid by any individuals and countries that have not signed the
Treaty. I
did not sign the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, or the Moon Treaty
of 1979. In
either treaty, no mention is made of claims by an
individual." The fact that
Mr Nemitz didn't personally sign the 1967 Treaty is irrelevant.
He has a
vote in US elections and the US Government did ratify that
Treaty. That
makes him bound by it whether he likes it or not.
Mr Nemitz is correct however, in his assertion that no mention is
made in
either of claims made by an individual, but the 1979 Treaty does
include
Article 11: paragraph 1.The moon and its natural resources are
the common
heritage of mankind, which finds its expression in the provisions
of this
Agreement and in particular in paragraph 5 or this article."
and
Paragraph 5 which says:
"5. States Parties to this Agreement hereby undertake to
establish an
international regime, including appropriate procedures, to govern
the
exploitation of the natural resources of the moon as such
exploitation is
about to become feasible. This provision shall be implemented in
accordance
with article 18 of this Agreement."
Paragraph 11 is construed as a claim on all the Solar System by
many of the
nations that did ratify it, and paragraph 5 clearly implies that
as far as
these countries are concerned, claims cannot be regarded as valid
until an
international regime is set up to govern our Solar System. These
are laws in
those nations and they are international so they are
international law, even
if the US, UK and some other nations who did not ratify are not
bound by
these particular laws. Nevertheless, just as these nations may
not impose
their idea of law on us without our consent, neither can any of
us impose
ours on them. That is why US law, nor 'specific legal norms' that
pertain
there but not in all other nations in this particular case, have
to be
regarded as irrelevant and Mr Nemitz, no matter what his claim,
does not own
Eros.
Mr Nemitz says, "Mr. Nimmo implies that what I have done by
making my claim,
is somehow unethical." As it happens I do not believe Mr
Nemitz to be making
an unethical claim - otherwise he'd have billed NASA for a much
higher sum
than he did - but I do believe that if he gets away with this
claim others,
a lot less ethical than Mr Nemitz, will use the loophole he will
have made
in international law for very unethical purposes that will both
put future
defence of Earth in danger and at the same time unreasonably hold
up, rather
than advance (as I and Mr Nemitz both want) the future
development of
commerce and industry throughout our Solar System.
In the circumstances, I suggest that instead of continuing this
ping pong of
minor points, we ought all to co-operate in trying to persuade
our
politicians to propose a better Treaty.
Best wishes, Andy Nimmo
=============
(13) MODERN PERSISTENCE OF MEDIEVAL FLAT EARTH
From Jon Giorgini <jdg@tycho.jpl.nasa.gov>
In response to the Mar 28 CCNet outline of evidence that medieval
belief in
a flat earth was invented by 19th century humanists to disparage
previous
thought, thus more easily replace Dark Ages with their
Enlightenment (as if
the loaded terms themselves aren't a marketing triumph ... and
tip-off!),
Henry Stone takes issue with St. Augustine's disinterest in the
shape of the
earth, providing quotes from "The City of God".
Those interested in the topic should really look at Book XVI,
Chap 9, p 532
(Modern Library) themselves to see what wasn't quoted in Mr.
Stone's
response (what was in the ... ellipses).
One will see St. Augustine explaining that by
"antipodes", he means men
living on the opposite side of the earth. It is the assertion
that people
live other side of the earth that, Augustine points out, had not
been
proven. Not sphericity.
Also not making the cut in Stone's ellipses was this from
Augustine:
"...although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated
the earth is of a
round or spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other
side of the
earth is bare of water; nor even though it be bare, does it
immediately
follow it is peopled." At the time, while the world was
known to be
spherical,
competing arguments vied over whether there was land or the rest
just ocean.
Actually reading the full text of what Mr. Stone refers to, at
the very
least, shows Augustine taking a skeptical, scientific view of the
existence
of humans living on the other side of the earth, correctly
pointing out it
had not been proven because no one was known to have returned
from there,
and scientific estimates of the distance on a spherical earth
suggested such
travel
impossible with 400 A.D. European technology.
For Stone to say "... since the Bible does not inform us
that the Earth is
spherical, St. Augustine argues the Earth cannot be a
sphere..." does an
egregious disservice to the intent of Augustine, in the very
source Stone
references. Augustine's actual instruction was that where
revelation
provided no information, people were free to follow
philosophy. This belief
was later
referenced by Galileo and many others.
It seems the directive to stigmatize the past at all costs, by
assigning
dead people "flat earth" beliefs, remains very real, as
an example
supporting the original Mar 28 discussion.
Jon Giorgini
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*
CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIAMTE CHANGE - 4 April 2001
----------------------------------------------------
"At a time when any scientific uncertainty about changing
climate is
politically charged, researchers are straining to understand the
behavior
of the ice sheets that cover one-tenth of the world and contain
three-quarters of the world's fresh water. The more they learn,
the
more complicated it all seems to be. Indeed, the world's icecaps
are far
more dynamic and complex than anyone would have guessed even a
decade
ago. A flood of new findings is framing a growing political clash
over efforts to control carbon dioxide emissions and the burning
of
fossil fuels. Many scientists believe that the changes they see
in the
world's ice are the first symptoms of global warming, with
potentially catastrophic consequences. But global warming is far
from an
established phenomenon. Ground-based and atmospheric measurements
have
yielded conflicting results: While Earth's northern hemisphere
has warmed
about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution began,
there is
equally compelling satellite data suggesting that the rest of the
world is actually cooling."
--Robert Lee Hotz, Los Angeles Times, 2 April 2001
"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced
two earlier
myths of an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat
of a
nuclear winter. The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole
range of
other myths and attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and
1970s,
including "limits to growth," sustainability,
neo-Malthusian fears of a
population time bomb, pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism,
and an
Al Gore-like analysis of human greed disturbing the ecological
harmony and
balance of the earth. Initially, in Europe, the new myth was
embraced by both right and left. The right was concerned with
breaking the
power of traditional trade unions, such as the coal miners -- the
labor
force behind a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions -- and
promoting
the development of nuclear power. Britain's Hadley Center for
Climate
Prediction and Research was established at the personal
instigation
of none other than Margaret Thatcher. The left, by contrast, was
obsessed
with population growth, industrialization, the car, development
and
globalization. Today, the narrative of global warming has evolved
into
an emblematic issue for authoritarian greens, who employ a form
of
language that has been characterized by the physicist P.H.
Borcherds as
"the hysterical subjunctive."
--Philip Stott, University of London
(1) MELTING RELEASES RIDDLES ON GLOBAL WARMING
Los Angeles Times, 1 April 2001
(2) PRODUCTION OF LARGE ICE BERGS
Jonathan Shanklin <jdsh@bas.ac.uk>
(3) CLIMATE MODEL INADEQUACIES: RADIATION
CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
(4) SOLAR RADIUS VARIATIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH
CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
(5) VARIATIONS IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2, TEMPERATURE & GLOBAL ICE
VOLUME
CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
(6) ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ENRICHMENT & THE EFFECTS OF INCREASED
VEGETATION
CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
(7) COMMENTARY: HOT AIR & FLAWED SCIENCE = DANGEROUS
EMISSIONS
Wall Street Journal Commentary, 2 April 2001
(8) AND FINALLY: GLOBAL WARMING OUT OF CONTROL AS COLD SNAP HITS
TOKYO
ABC News, 2 April 2001
==========
(1) MELTING RELEASES RIDDLES ON GLOBAL WARMING
From Los Angeles Times, 1 April 2001
http://www.latimes.com/print/20010401/t000027891.html
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer
McMURDO, Antarctica--When Douglas MacAyeal jumped out of a
helicopter onto
Iceberg B15A, he landed squarely on a central mystery of global
warming and
climate change.
Wedged against Ross Island near McMurdo Station, the main
National Science
Foundation base in Antarctica, the berg is a leviathan of ice. As
large as
the state of Rhode Island, it contains enough frozen fresh water
to supply
the United States for three years.
At the same time, B15A may be the smallest jigsaw piece of a
global puzzle.
The ice sheets of the world's remotest reaches are central to a
renewed
political debate over global warming and the carbon dioxide
emissions widely
considered responsible for it.
At every end of the Earth, the ice is slowly stirring.
Major ice formations in Antarctica and the Arctic are thinning or
breaking
up. In the alpine highlands of Europe and the tropical ranges of
South
America and Africa, mountain glaciers are in full retreat.
From the snows of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to the Quelccaya icecap
of the
Andes Mountains in Peru, scientists see a world of ice in
motion--shrinking,
flexing, creeping unpredictably, almost like a living thing.
At a time when any scientific uncertainty about changing climate
is
politically charged, researchers are straining to understand the
behavior of
the ice sheets that cover one-tenth of the world and contain
three-quarters
of the world's fresh water. The more they learn, the more
complicated it all
seems to be.
Indeed, the world's icecaps are far more dynamic and complex than
anyone
would have guessed even a decade ago. A flood of new findings is
framing a
growing political clash over efforts to control carbon dioxide
emissions and
the burning of fossil fuels.
President Bush recently reversed himself on a campaign pledge to
seek major
reductions in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and is moving to
abandon a
landmark 1997 global-warming agreement, even as U.S. Energy
Department
statisticians predict that levels of the so-called greenhouse gas
will grow
worldwide nearly 35% by 2010.
Many scientists believe that the changes they see in the world's
ice are the
first symptoms of global warming, with potentially catastrophic
consequences. If the West Antarctic ice sheet melted, for
example, it could
raise sea level by as much as 18 feet, enough to drown
coastlines, cause
higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and change the
ocean
currents that help mediate the world's weather.
But global warming is far from an established phenomenon.
Ground-based and
atmospheric measurements have yielded conflicting results: While
Earth's
northern hemisphere has warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since
the
Industrial Revolution began, there is equally compelling
satellite data
suggesting that the rest of the world is actually cooling.
Satellite measurements of temperatures in the troposphere, the
lowest five
miles of the atmosphere, and independent measurements from
balloons, show no
evidence of significant global warming over the last 22 years,
according to
John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the
University
of Alabama in Huntsville.
Researchers readily acknowledge that it is still hard to
distinguish between
the effects of regional weather trends that may change from one
decade to
the next and the global effect of fundamental changes in the
Earth's
atmosphere because of industrial emissions and the burning of
fossil fuels.
Depending on where they look, the picture changes. In some
instances, it is
all but impossible to distinguish between changes in the ice
caused by
rising temperatures today and those still unfolding from the
global warming
that ended the last Ice Age, almost 20,000 years ago.
During the last 2.5 million years, great mile-thick ice sheets
have
repeatedly gouged North America and much of Europe. Many
researchers
consider the temperate modern climate a relatively short, warm
interval
between glacial advances.
Alaska, where the Columbia Glacier is rapidly retreating, has
been warmer in
recent decades. But Greenland, where the ice edge also is
thinning, has been
colder during the same period, said ice expert Joe McConnell at
the Desert
Research Institute in Nevada.
In the same way, the Antarctic Peninsula, where the ice edge has
retreated
19 miles in the last three years, has been warming steadily. But
on the
other side of the continent, Antarctica's Dry Valleys--the polar
region's
only ice-free areas--have been getting colder. At the South Pole,
temperatures recently have dropped as low as minus 108 degrees
Fahrenheit,
the coldest there in 40 years.
In all, new satellite imaging data reveals that the ice edge in
some parts
of Antarctica has retreated dramatically in the last three years,
even as
the ice advances in other parts of the continent.
At the other end of the planet, the amount of sea ice in Arctic
waters is
shrinking annually by about 14,000 square miles, an area larger
than
Maryland and Delaware combined. The Arctic ice is as much as 40%
thinner,
according to recently declassified sonar records. And the edges
of the
Greenland icecap, the planet's second-largest ice sheet, have
been melting
at a rate of about 12 cubic miles a year.
Still, for all the change, no one knows precisely what to blame.
It could be warmer temperatures or altered ocean currents.
Perhaps
variations in cloud cover, solar radiation and atmospheric
chemistry are at
fault. Greenhouse gases no doubt play an important role.
It could be some subtle recipe of time and the natural rhythm of
the ice
itself.
"We are reasonably confident now that a whole lot of the
things we have been
getting excited about are not [caused by] global warming; we
aren't sure
what they are," said glaciologist Richard Alley at
Pennsylvania State
University, who is chairman of a panel on abrupt climate change
at the
National Academy of Sciences.
"The breakthrough in this decade is the ability to see these
changes. They
are revelations," Alley said. "The breakthrough in the
next decade will be
the ability to understand them."
They are, he said, "weird."
A Huge Puzzle Piece
MacAyeal approached B15A in the Ross Sea for the first time
earlier this
year aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea.
A geophysicist from the University of Chicago, MacAyeal is one of
scores of
glaciologists, geologists and other researchers funded by the
U.S. National
Science Foundation who are systematically taking the scientific
measure of
the world's glaciers and icecaps.
As the outlines of the berg took shape on the horizon, his piece
of the ice
puzzle seemed big enough for any one scientist. Frozen within it
is enough
fresh water to keep the Mississippi River running for four years.
The cracks
that liberated it from the ice front took a decade to form and
were so large
they could be seen from space.
MacAyeal and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin
erected two
weather stations and a set of global positioning system
transmitters on this
forbidding raft of ice. The instruments, working through a
satellite relay,
will allow them to monitor the berg's unpredictable progress
around Cape
Crozier and into the Southern Ocean after the scientists retreat
to the
central heating of their home laboratories.
They will track the iceberg for the next three years until
eventually it
breaks up, melts and melds with the sea.
Some scientists believe that icebergs like B15A might be caused
by warmer
temperatures that make the ice shelves dangerously vulnerable to
cracking.
If so, these unusually large icebergs would be disturbing
symptoms of a
global climate in flux.
The theory is a persuasive notion. Overall, the decade of the
1990s is
considered the warmest on record and the temperature increases
recorded in
the 20th century are considered the highest of the last 1,000
years,
according to a new scientific assessment released in February by
the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Since 1995, five major ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula
have
started to disintegrate. Farther to the south, the Ross Ice
Shelf--the
largest in the world at as much as 3,000 feet thick--has
splintered to form
some of the largest icebergs sighted in the last century.
The biggest of them compare in size to Belgium or Connecticut.
Smaller
fragments are four times the size of Chicago. Hundreds more are
glazed
splinters of blue ice just large enough to sink a Titanic.
MacAyeal and his colleagues, however, are confident that B15A, at
least, has
nothing to do with global warming.
Such icebergs appear routinely once or twice a century, he said.
Similar
oversized bergs have broken off several times in the last 20
years. In 1956
the crew of a U.S. Navy icebreaker spotted an iceberg twice the
size of
Connecticut.
In the case of B15A, the events that set it in motion may have
started 500
years ago with an unexplained weakening that eventually developed
into a
fracture zone as the ice flowed toward the sea. As the berg
slowly broke
free of the ice edge, it calved off six other immense pieces of
ice.
"We think they come in flurries and avalanches," he
said. "Whether the
frequency is starting to change because of global warming, it is
too soon to
tell."
Only a few hundred miles to the north, an immense crack is
growing along the
Antarctic ice front at a rate of 40 feet a day. Landsat 7
satellite images
show the crack has grown to 15 miles long in the last 10 months.
Within a year, NASA imaging experts said, the ice shelf there
will fracture
completely, calving another major iceberg into the Southern
Ocean.
Ice in the Tropics
Lonnie Thompson, unlike MacAyeal, studies ice along the equator,
where ice
fields linger only in the highest mountain nooks and crannies.
Wherever he
looks in the tropical highlands, he is certain that he can see
global
warming at work.
"These glaciers are very much like the canaries once used in
coal mines,"
said Thompson, professor of geological sciences at the Byrd Polar
Research
Center at Ohio State University. "They're an indicator of
massive changes
taking place and a response to the changes in climate in the
tropics."
Atop Tanzania's Mt. Kilimanjaro, four-fifths of the vast ice
field that
covered the top of the highest mountain in Africa has disappeared
in the
last 80 years, he recently reported. At least one-third of that
ice field
has disappeared in the last dozen years.
Speaking at a recent meeting of the American Assn. for the
Advancement of
Science in San Francisco, Thompson said that other researchers
have
documented similar ice losses.
An icecap on Mt. Kenya has shrunk by 40% since 1963. Two glaciers
atop
mountains in New Guinea are disappearing and should be gone in a
decade.
In Venezuela there are only two glaciers remaining where, in
1972, there
were six. In another 10 years, those two are expected to be gone
as well.
In the ice fields of the Tibetan Plateau, Thompson and his
colleagues are
convinced they have found evidence proving that rising
temperatures are
responsible.
The chemical evidence of the oxygen isotopes in ice cores taken
from high
mountain glaciers at the southern edge of the plateau and at its
center show
that the last 50 years were unusually warm in that part of the
world.
At the same time, researchers from the People's Republic of China
analyzed
30 years of records from 178 weather stations spread across the
Tibetan
plateau. Those records show that, between 1969 and 1990, the rate
of warming
had increased.
"We have long predicted that the first signs of changes
caused by global
warming would appear at the few fragile, high-altitude icecaps
and glaciers
within the tropics," Thompson said. "These findings
confirm those
predictions."
If Thompson is right, those receding tropical glaciers are a
harbinger of
disastrous change to come, for world temperatures could rise by
as much as
10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, according to the
U.N.-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The panel's most extreme projections say melting Antarctic ice
could raise
sea levels by as much as 10 feet over the next 1,000 years.
The Antarctic Riddle
Not so many years ago, researchers in Antarctica would have been
quick to
agree. But the more they learn, the more they realize that the
ice sheets of
Antarctica are an unusually intricate puzzle.
Much of the attention has centered on the West Antarctic ice
sheet, which
extends about 360,000 square miles--close to the combined areas
of Texas and
Colorado. Unlike its larger counterpart, the East Antarctic ice
sheet, it is
not completely landlocked. Much of it rests on a marine basin and
is drained
by broad bands of ice flowing through the ice sheet to the sea,
like streams
threading through a river delta.
Squeezed like toothpaste by the sheer weight of the
two-mile-thick
continental blanket of ice, these flows normally move about 3,000
feet a
year from the interior through the gaps in the towering coastal
mountain
ranges that rim the polar plateau. All told, they annually
transport enough
ice to bury Los Angeles under a shelf 1,700 feet thick.
Any change in the behavior of the ice sheet was taken as a sign
of
instability and potential collapse. And the more they looked, the
more
change they discovered.
One ice stream stopped moving 150 years ago. A second major ice
stream has
slowed by half in the past 40 years. A third ice stream, called
the Pine
Island Glacier, which drains much of the West Antarctic ice
sheet, has
inexplicably speeded up in the last five years, Eric Rignot at
the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and researchers at the British Antarctic
Survey
reported.
Researchers don't yet know why these ice streams are moving so
differently.
The ice streams can be affected by the underlying topography over
which they
flow as well as by subtle effects of changing climate.
"We think this is the most unstable part of
Antarctica," Rignot said. "We
see the ice thinning, but we are not sure why. The ice sheet may
be doing
its own thing. It may be driven by climate change. We don't
know."
But researchers today are discovering that these massive ice
sheets are more
firmly anchored to the continent than previously believed.
Some of the changes they see now may be the result of the global
warming
that ended the last Ice Age. If that is the case, it is much too
late to
reverse them.
That slow pace of climate change highlights the problem
scientists face
trying to reconcile planetwide effects unfolding on a geologic
time scale
against a public attention span that measures time in election
cycles and
news breaks. In Antarctica, they believe, the last Ice Age is
only now
coming to a close.
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder recently
discovered
that air temperatures in Antarctica rose 18 degrees Fahrenheit in
just a few
decades as the last Ice Age began to wane, the largest and most
abrupt
warming ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. That
temperature change is
only now making its way to the bottom of the two-mile-thick
icecap, where it
may be affecting how the ice flows.
At its edge, where the ice is thinnest, the ice sheet has been
melting
steadily for thousands of years. The boundary line between
floating sea ice
and the ice shelf thick enough to reach the sea floor has receded
about 800
miles, melting at an average of about 400 feet per year for
thousands of
years, researchers at the University of Washington recently
determined.
At that rate, the ice sheet might collapse in another 7,000
years, the
researchers estimate.
In the same way, the behavior of the ice streams may be changing
because of
the flexible geometry of the immense ice sheet itself over the
last 10,000
years, as stresses and strains naturally shift from one end to
the other,
according to ice expert Slawek Tulaczyk at UC Santa Cruz.
"People have matured in their understanding of how variable
West Antarctica
can be," said Julie Palais, who oversees the NSF glaciology
program. "We
don't know the lifetime of this whole process. The time scales
could be
hundreds of years or thousands of years."
Every year, researchers add to a growing understanding of this
vast,
intricate ecology of ice and the mechanics of its myriad flows,
according to
glaciologist Robert Binschadler at NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center, who
is chief scientist of the West Antarctic ice sheet project.
"That muted some of the 'Chicken Little' aspect of all
this," said Sridhar
Anandakrishnan at the University of Alabama, a glaciologist who
has spent 10
research seasons in Antarctica, studying the behavior of the ice
streams.
"Personally, I think we have not learned enough to put away
these fears,"
Anandakrishnan said.
Now NASA is putting together a more detailed satellite radar
survey of
Antarctica that promises to help scientists better understand
whether the
changes are part of the normal dynamics of the icecap or whether
they are
driven by changing climate.
"We have been studying the West Antarctic ice sheet for over
a decade now
and trying to understand how much a concern it poses,"
Binschadler at NASA
said.
"We haven't solved that yet."
* * *
Breaking Away
From Antarctica to the Arctic, ice sheets and glaciers are
thinning or
breaking up. Researchers concerned about global warming are
trying to
understand why. Along the Antarctic Peninsula, five major ice
shelves have
started to fragment. Farther south, the Ross Ice Shelf--the
largest in the
world--recently spawned some of the largest icebergs on record.
* * *
Source: U.S. National Science Foundation
Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times
===========
(2) PRODUCTION OF LARGE ICE BERGS
From Jonathan Shanklin <jdsh@bas.ac.uk>
Benny - some comments:
RE: NEW POLAR TEMPERATURE DATA
From the Greening Earth Society, 14 March 2001
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/2001/vca9.htm
Things are quite similar in the South Polar regions (Figure 2),
in
which there also is a statistically significant warming of the
winter
(3.7C/100 years) and where there is no trend yet evident in
Antarctic
summer. How then to explain those Delaware-sized icebergs? Stay
tune.
ANSWER
Large (20km + ) sized bergs from the more southerly ice shelves
(for example
the Ronne-Filchner) are produced during the normal life cycle of
the ice
shelf. There is no evidence of any dramatic change in their
frequency. The
situation in the northern and western parts of the Antarctic
Peninsula is
rather different and the simple answer is that it rains more than
it did.
You don't need much of a temperature shift to change the balance
between
snow and rain and this is what is observed. See for example
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/images/13-10-1998/press-release.html
and
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/info/iceshelf.html
(8) EVIDENCE FOR LITTLE ICE AGE DOWN UNDER
From CO2 Science Magazine, 28 March 2001
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2001/v4n13c1.htm
What it means
The results of this study add to the mounting body of evidence
that
supports a global Little Ice Age event. It also highlights the
inherent natural variability of climate, and suggests to us the
high
probability that recent 20th century warming is not of
anthropogenic
origin, but the result of natural variability, as the earth has
recovered
from the now-demonstrated global chill of the Little Ice Age.
There does not seem to be any obvious link to present day
observations in
the material presented. I suspect that the key wording is
"suggests to us".
See http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/gjma/temps.html
for present day
Antarctic temperature trends.
Jonathan Shanklin
j.shanklin@bas.ac.uk
British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, England
http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/public/icd/jds
=======
(3) CLIMATE MODEL INADEQUACIES: RADIATION
From CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
http://www.co2science.org/subject/m/summaries/inadeqradiation.htm
One of the most challenging and important problems facing today's
general
circulation models (GCMs) of the atmosphere is how to accurately
simulate
the physics of earth's radiative energy balance. Of this problem,
Professor
John Harries (2000) states "progress is excellent, on-going
research is
fascinating, but we have still a great deal to understand about
the physics
of climate." That a correct understanding of earth's
radiation balance is
still emerging is evident from the results of several recent
studies.
Zender (1999) builds on the recent discovery that the oxygen
collision pairs
O2 . O2 and O2 . N2 absorb a small but significant fraction of
globally
incident solar radiation. Such collisions, he concludes,
lead to the
absorption of approximately 1 Wm-2 of solar radiation, globally
and annually
averaged, which "alters the long-standing view that H2O, O3,
O2, CO2 and NO2
are the only significant gaseous absorbers in Earth's
atmosphere." This
newly quantified forcing, however, remains to be incorporated
into current
GCMs.
In another revealing study, Wild (1999) compared the observed
amount of
solar radiation absorbed in the atmosphere over equatorial Africa
with the
theoretical predictions of three GCMs, finding that the model
predictions of
solar radiation absorption were much too small. Regional
and seasonal
underestimation biases were as high as 30 Wm-2, primarily because
the models
did not properly account for spatial and temporal variations in
atmospheric
aerosol concentrations. On top of this problem, the models
likely
underestimated the amount of solar radiation absorption by water
vapor and
clouds.
Such gross model inadequacies have also been examined by Wild and
Ohmura
(1999). In their report, a comprehensive observational
dataset, consisting
of solar radiation fluxes measured at 720 sites across the
earth's surface
and the corresponding top of the atmosphere, was analyzed to
assess the true
amount of solar radiation absorbed within the atmosphere.
The results were
then compared with the modeled results of solar radiation
absorption from
four atmospheric GCMs. Again, it was shown that "GCM
atmospheres are
generally too transparent for solar radiation," producing a
rather
substantial mean error close to 20% lower than actual
observations.
Atmospheric absorption of solar radiation is not the only
radiative problem
state-of-the-art GCMs are experiencing. There is much
evidence, for
example, that solar-driven variations in earth-atmosphere
processes are
acting over a range of timescales stretching from the 11-year
solar cycle to
century- and millennial-scale events (see Solar Climatic Effects
in our
Subject Index). Although the absolute solar flux variations
associated with
these phenomena are rather small, there are a number of
"multiplier effects"
that can operate on solar rhythms in such a way that minor
variations in
solar activity can be amplified to significantly affect earth's
atmosphere
and climate. According to Chambers et al. (1999), most of
these nonlinear
responses to solar variability are inadequately represented (in
fact, they
are essentially ignored) in the global climate models used by the
IPCC to
predict future greenhouse gas-induced global warming, while at
the same time
other amplifier effects are used to model well-known
glacial/interglacial
cycles of the past and even the hypothesized CO2-induced warming
of the
future, where CO2 is not the major direct cause of the predicted
temperature
increase but is instead an initial perturber of the climate
system that,
according to the IPCC, sets other more powerful forces in motion
that
produce the bulk of the warming.
Clearly, there seems to be a double standard, best described as
an inherent
reluctance within the IPCC bureaucracy to deal even-handedly with
different
aspects of climate change theory. When multiplier effects
suit their
purposes, they use them; and when they don't suit their purposes,
they don't
use them. This type of behavior does not engender
confidence in their
conclusions. Indeed, it makes them - both the IPCC and
their conclusions -
suspect.
References
Chambers, F.M., Ogle, M.I. and Blackford, J.J. 1999.
Palaeoenvironmental
evidence for solar forcing of Holocene climate: linkages to solar
science.
Progress in Physical Geography 23: 181-204.
Harries, J.E. 2000. Physics of the earth's radiative
energy balance.
Contemporary Physics 41: 309-322.
Wild, M. 1999. Discrepancies between model-calculated
and observed
shortwave atmospheric absorption in areas with high aerosol
loadings.
Journal of Geophysical Research 104: 27,361-27,371.
Wild, M. and Ohmura, A. 1999. The role of clouds and
the cloud-free
atmosphere in the problem of underestimated absorption of solar
radiation in
GCM atmospheres. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth 24B:
261-268.
Zender, C.S. 1999. Global climatology of abundance
and solar absorption of
oxygen collision complexes. Journal of Geophysical Research
104:
24,471-24,484.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
========
(4) SOLAR RADIUS VARIATIONS AND CLIMATE CHANGE ON EARTH
From CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2001/v4n14c2.htm
Reference
Rozelot, J.P. 2001. Possible links between the solar radius
variations and
the Earth's climate evolution over the past four centuries.
Journal of
Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 63: 375-386.
What was done
The author conducted a series of analyses designed to determine
whether
phenomena related to variations in the radius of the sun may have
influenced
earth's climate over the past four centuries.
What was learned
In the words of the author, the results of the analyses revealed
that "at
least over the last four centuries, warm periods on the Earth
correlate well
with smaller apparent diameter of the Sun and colder ones with a
bigger
Sun."
What it means
Although the results of the study were correlative and did not
identify a
precise physical mechanism capable of inducing significant
climate change on
earth, the author reports that the changes in the Sun's radius
are "of such
magnitude that significant effects on the Earth's climate are
possible."
Surely, such findings demand that we explore them thoroughly
before
accepting some other phenomenon as the cause of global climate
change,
especially when that factor may be totally benign, or even
beneficial, as in
the case of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, which significantly
enhances the
growth of nearly all plants.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=========
(5) VARIATIONS IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2, TEMPERATURE & GLOBAL ICE
VOLUME
From CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2001/v4n14c1.htm
Variations in Atmospheric CO2, Temperature and Global Ice Volume
Derived
from the Vostok Ice Core
Reference
Mudelsee, M. 2001. The phase relations among atmospheric
CO2 content,
temperature and global ice volume over the past 420 ka.
Quaternary Science
Reviews 20: 583-589.
What was done
Using proxy data, the author performed a statistical analysis
(lagged,
generalized least-squares regression and bootstrap resampling) to
estimate
the phase relations (leads/lags) of atmospheric CO2
concentration, air
temperature and global ice volume over the past 420,000 years as
derived
from the Vostok ice core.
What was learned
Variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration were found to lag
behind
variations in air temperature by 1.3 to 5 ka (thousand
years). Phase
relations between CO2 and global ice volume were not as clear
cut. When CO2
values were compared with global ice volume data derived from a
delta 18O
record of a marine sediment core, it was shown that between 420
and 196 ka
years ago, variations in CO2 lagged behind changes in global ice
volume by
1.4 ± 3.7 ka, whereas from 150 ka to the present they lead by
6.2 ± 2.7 ka.
A more uniform phase relationship was obtained when comparing the
Vostok CO2
record with a Vostok delta 18O record. Although
considerable scatter
existed in the data, atmospheric CO2 concentration consistently
led global
ice volume by an average of 3.9 ± 0.5 ka.
What it means
The results of this study, along with those of many others we
have described
(see CO2-Temperature Correlations in our Subject Index), should
put to rest
the notion that atmospheric CO2 is a major driver of climate
change.
Throughout the greatest temperature transitions experienced by
the planet
over the past 420,000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentration has
been proven
to have been a follower, and not a leader, of climate change,
rising from
one to five thousand years after major increases in air
temperature, and
falling in similar manner throughout the course of the past four
glacial/interglacial cycles.
Also evident from this study is the even longer delayed response
of global
ice volume to changes in air temperature. Because this lag
stretches an
additional 4,000 to 6,000 years beyond the lag in CO2, it
suggests that any
present decline in global ice volume may be more related to the
warm
temperatures experienced during the Holocene Maximum - 4,000 to
7,000 years
ago, when global temperatures were around 2°C warmer than
present - than it
is to 20th Century warming.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
===========
(6) ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ENRICHMENT & THE EFFECTS OF INCREASED
VEGETATION
From CO2 Science Magazine, 4 April 2001
http://www.co2science.org/subject/t/summaries/treeslongterm.htm
Trees (Long-Term Studies) - Summary
As a growth-form, trees represent perennial vegetation that can
survive and,
in some cases, sequester atmospheric carbon within their woody
tissues for a
millennium or more. Thus, it is important to understand how
long-term
atmospheric CO2 enrichment will affect tree productivity and
growth,
especially in terms of potential carbon sequestration, which can
reduce the
rate of rise of the air's CO2 content.
In many areas of the world, there exist natural vents and springs
that have
emitted concentrated amounts of CO2 into the air for centuries,
thereby
exposing surrounding vegetation to elevated concentrations of
atmospheric
CO2 for their entire lifetimes. Several researchers have
taken advantage of
these natural settings to determine the long-term effects of
atmospheric CO2
enrichment on trees and other woody plants. Stylinski et
al. (2000), for
example, observed that net photosynthetic rates in mature oak
trees
subjected to 700 ppm CO2 for approximately 40 to 50 years were 36
to 77%
greater than those measured in control trees exposed to normal
ambient CO2
concentrations for the same time period. Similarly, 30-year
old Arbutus
unedo trees exposed to a lifetime atmospheric CO2 concentration
of 465 ppm
displayed net photosynthetic rates that were 110 to 140% greater
than those
observed in trees continuously exposed to normal non-CO2-enriched
air
(Bartak et al., 1999). With respect to other parameters,
Tognetti et al.
(2000) found that leaves of three different shrubs exposed to
lifetime
atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 700 ppm exhibited significantly
greater
turgor pressures than leaves of control shrubs, particularly
during the
warmer summer months; and Paoletti et al. (1998) observed a
1.5-fold
reduction in the stomatal frequency of leaves of mature white oak
trees
exposed to 750 ppm CO2 for several decades.
In shorter open-top chamber studies of pine trees, some
interesting
discoveries have been made concerning tree growth and wood
density. Walker
et al. (2000) reported that ponderosa pine seedlings exposed to
twice-ambient levels of atmospheric CO2 for five years displayed
average
heights and trunk diameters that were 44 and 39% greater,
respectively, than
those exhibited by their ambiently-grown counterparts; while
Telewski et al.
(1999) reported that annual growth-ring widths in trees subjected
to an
atmospheric CO2 concentration of 650 ppm were 93, 29, 15 and 37%
greater
than those observed in ambient controls for the first four years
of the
study. Similarly, the average ring densities in
CO2-enriched trees for each
of the four study years were 60, 4, 3 and 5% greater than those
measured in
control trees subjected to 350 ppm CO2.
Finally, in a review of 180 different tree experiments, Idso
(1999) showed
that almost any conceivable growth response to atmospheric CO2
enrichment
could be obtained if the trees were grown in pots or other types
of
root-restricting containers for periods of less than a year or
two. On the
other hand, he demonstrated that if trees were rooted in the
ground and
exposed to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations for longer
time periods,
much more reliable data could be obtained. Based on such studies,
Idso
reported that the mean growth enhancement in four such
experiments involving
three tree species exposed to twice-ambient levels of atmospheric
CO2 was
90% after five years, which is consistent with data reported for
mature
trees growing near CO2-emmitting springs and vents.
In summary, it is evident that as the air's CO2 content continues
to rise,
earth's woody shrubs and trees will likely respond by enhancing
their
photosynthetic rates and biomass production. Moreover,
these species may
reduce their leaf stomatal frequencies, thus reducing water loss
to the
atmosphere and consequently increasing their water-use
efficiencies. With
all these good things happening to them, woody plants will likely
sequester
increasingly larger amounts of carbon in their tissues as time
progresses,
thereby slowing the rate of rise of the air's CO2 content.
References
Bartak, M., Raschi, A. and Tognetti, R. 1999.
Photosynthetic
characteristics of sun and shade leaves in the canopy of Arbutus
unedo L.
trees exposed to in situ long-term elevated CO2.
Photosynthetica 37: 1-16.
Idso, S.B. 1999. The long-term response of trees to
atmospheric CO2
enrichment. Global Change Biology 5: 493-495.
Paoletti, E., Nourrisson, G., Garrec, J.P. and Raschi, A.
1998.
Modifications of the leaf surface structures of Quercus ilex L.
in open,
naturally CO2-enriched environments. Plant, Cell and
Environment 21:
1071-1075.
Stylinski, C.D., Oechel, W.C., Gamon, J.A., Tissue, D.T.,
Miglietta, F. and
Raschi, A. 2000. Effects of lifelong [CO2] enrichment
on carboxylation and
light utilization of Quercus pubescens Willd. examined with gas
exchange,
biochemistry and optical techniques. Plant, Cell and
Environment 23:
1353-1362.
Telewski, F.W., Swanson, R.T., Strain, B.R. and Burns, J.M.
1999. Wood
properties and ring width responses to long-term atmospheric CO2
enrichment
in field-grown loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.). Plant, Cell
and Environment
22: 213-219.
Tognetti, R., Rashi, A. and Jones, M.B. 2000.
Seasonal patterns of tissue
water relations in three Mediterranean shrubs co-occurring at a
natural CO2
spring. Plant, Cell and Environment 23: 1341-1351.
Walker, R.F., Johnson, D.W., Geisinger, D.R. and Ball, J.T.
2000. Growth,
nutrition, and water relations of ponderosa pine in a field soil
as
influenced by long-term exposure to elevated atmospheric
CO2. Forest
Ecology and Management 137: 1-11.
Copyright © 2001. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
=========
(7) COMMENTARY: HOT AIR & FLAWED SCIENCE = DANGEROUS
EMISSIONS
From Wall Street Journal Commentary, 2 April 2001
http://www.junkscience.com/apr01/wsj_stott.htm
April 2, 2001
By Philip Stott, a professor of biogeography at the University of
London and
co-author of "Political Ecology: Science, Myth and
Power" (Oxford University
Press, 2000).
LONDON -- When Environmental Protection Agency Administrator
Christine Todd
Whitman told reporters last week, "No, we have no interest
in implementing
[the Kyoto] treaty," she unleashed a hysteria in Europe
unmatched even by
the United Kingdom's current troubles with foot-and-mouth
disease. It was as
if George W. Bush had pressed the nuclear button. Why?
The reason is simple. In Europe, "global warming" has
become a necessary
myth, a new fundamentalist religion, with the Kyoto protocol as
its articles
of faith. The adherents of this new faith want Mr. Bush on trial
because he
has blasphemed.
Emotional Energy
Nobody will understand this in the U.S. if they fail to grasp
that "global
warming" has absorbed more of the emotional energy of
European green
pressure groups than virtually any other topic. Even
biotechnology fades
into insignificance by comparison. Americans must also understand
that the
science of complex climate change has little to do with the myth.
In the
U.S., the science is rightly scrutinized; in Europe, not so.
"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced
two earlier myths of
an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat of a
nuclear winter.
The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole range of other myths
and
attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s, including
"limits to
growth," sustainability, neo-Malthusian fears of a
population time bomb,
pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism, and an Al Gore-like
analysis of
human greed disturbing the ecological harmony and balance of the
earth.
Initially, in Europe, the new myth was embraced by both right and
left. The
right was concerned with breaking the power of traditional trade
unions,
such as the coal miners -- the labor force behind a major source
of
carbon-dioxide emissions -- and promoting the development of
nuclear power.
Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research was
established
at the personal instigation of none other than Margaret Thatcher.
The left, by contrast, was obsessed with population growth,
industrialization, the car, development and globalization. Today,
the
narrative of global warming has evolved into an emblematic issue
for
authoritarian greens, who employ a form of language that has been
characterized by the physicist P.H. Borcherds as "the
hysterical
subjunctive." And it is this grammatical imperative that is
now dominating
the European media when they complain about Mr. Bush, the U.S.,
and their
willful denial of the true faith.
Interestingly, the tension between science and myth characterizes
the "Third
Assessment Report" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, to
which Europe always turns for legitimation. The whole feel of the
report
differs between its political summary (written by a group
powerfully driven
by the myth) and the scientific sections. It comes as a shock to
read the
following in the conclusions to the science (italics added):
"In sum, a
strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and
modeling,
we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear
system,
and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate is
not
possible."
Inevitably, the media in Europe did not mention this vital
scientific
caveat, choosing to focus instead on the political summary, which
Richard S.
Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts
Institute of
Technology, has described scathingly as "very much a
children's exercise of
what might possibly happen," prepared by a "peculiar
group" with "no
technical competence." This is a damning statement from a
scientist with
impeccable credentials.
And here we come to the nub of the difference between Europe and
the U.S.
For the past few years, the media in Europe have failed to
acknowledge the
science that does not support and legitimize the myth. In
Britain, liberal
newspapers like the Guardian and the Independent have
consistently ignored
virtually all the evidence pointing to complexity and uncertainty
in climate
change, preferring instead to present "global warming"
as Armageddon, a
catastrophe produced by corporate American gas-guzzling greed.
Yet, just in the past three months, there has appeared a whole
suite of hard
science papers from major scientific institutions in major
scientific
journals, including Nature, Climate Research, and the Bulletin of
the
American Meteorological Society, all raising serious questions
about the
relationship between gas emissions and climate.
The focus has been on the role of water vapor, unquestionably the
most
important "greenhouse" gas (not carbon dioxide); the
palaeogeological
relationships between carbon dioxide and temperature; the many
missing, or
poorly known, variables in climate models; and the need to
correct certain
temperature measurements fed into the models, especially those
taken over
the oceans. One paper, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics,
even concludes that "our review of the literature has shown
that GCMs
[global climate models] are not sufficiently robust to provide an
understanding of the potential effects of CO2 on climate
necessary for
public discussion."
Warming Waffle
The science of "global warming" is thus deeply flawed,
but its caution and
rationality are drowned in the warming waffle now emanating so
shrilly from
Europe. Yet, because the science is so flawed and uncertain, why
should
anyone sign up to a treaty that clearly will not work? To put it
simply: The
idea that we can control a chaotic climate governed by a billion
factors
through fiddling about with a couple of politically selected
gases is carbon
claptrap.
Kyoto, however, is ultimately more dangerous than this. It has
taken our
eye, internationally, off the true way by which humans have
always had to
cope with change, whatever its cause, direction or speed --
namely,
adaptation. Above all, we need a new international agenda for
constant
technological adaptation to environmental change, whether gradual
or
catastrophic, remembering always that it is the poor who suffer
the most
from change.
The Kyoto protocol is not the answer.
Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights
Reserved.
=======
(8) AND FINALLY: GLOBAL WARMING OUT OF CONTROL AS COLD SNAP HITS
TOKYO
From ABC News, 2 April 2001
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newsdaily/s269568.htm
Snow has been falling on cherry blossoms in the Japanese capital
Tokyo for
the first time in twenty five years.
Peter Martin reports from the city.
The cherry blossoms came to Tokyo earlier than normal this year,
flowering
in full on Wednesday. The first few days of full blossum are
special, with
parties and picnics to herald the coming of spring held under
trees in the
knowledge that the pink blossums only last a short time. A cold
snap on
Saturday pushed the Tokyo temperature down to a chilly two
degrees at two pm
ending many parties and turned what would have been rain into
unusually late
snow. The phenomenon is called "hanabie" or cherry
blossom chill. It's said
to have last hit Tokyo on April 3 1976.
Copyright 2001, ABC
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