A Small Artistic Tribute

One of the talents my dad possessed was for detailed artwork. He painted murals with fantastic scenes, as well as small scale portraits on any number of topics. But his most endearing work often came about in the simple act of writing a letter - wherein he did a sketch on the top of the letter or made it the entire design for a letterhead.

On this page are four such sketches that I took off four of his letters to me, between 2001 and 2005. The work itself says it all, and the attention to detail. To see that detail, you can click on each image to bring it up!

What is it they say? A picture is worth a thousand words?

Well enjoy the 4 thousand "words" embodied in those sketches!

The Anti-Atheists Get It Wrong....AGAIN!

The Helix Nebula captured by the Hubble Telescope - an engineering marvel and manifestation of human REASON - not superstitutious codswallop.



What exactly is it with those prone to bashing Atheists? Why, given the bounty of information available on the web do they persistently get the Atheist position wrong? Once again we were treated to another spectacle of disinformation and misinformation as well as egregious assumptions in a recent Wall Street Journal letters section ('At Their Outer Edge, All Systems Are Metaphysical', Friday, July 3rd)


Leading off the charge is David Cartwright who asks: "On what basis can an atheist assume there should or will be order in the universe?"


The answer, of course, is that the Atheist makes no such assumption! While Christians and their ilk obsess over "order" the Atheist goes by science and what its actual investigations can uncover.


In truth and fact, barely 7% of the cosmos (according to the latest cosmological findings from an array of data) can be regarded (potentially) as being matter in its normal everyday form, and hence - subject to "mechanical" forces and arranged in what some may ascribe "mechanical order". Even for this fraction, more than 99% is in the form of PLASMA - meaning hot, ionized gas.


Apart from certain instances and exceptions, when plasma wave instabilities (mostly) occur, this form of matter will not display any organizaton, far less "order".The remaining 93% of the cosmos is in the form of either dark energy (70%) or dark matter (23%). The first is currently causing the cosmic expansion to accelerate by virtue of a repulsive force that can be accounted for fully within the scope of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Bottom line here? "Order" is the exception in the aggregate cosmos, not the rule, so the Atheist is definitely under no obligation here ....and certainly not to "assume" a thing. In fact, all the organizational manifestations we behold from our limited vantage point (say for the solar system) can be accounted for by appeal to a mix of gravitational force and electrostatic. Thus, the large original solar nebula would simply have been pulled by gravitational force into a more compact, condensed and hotter form....which became the Sun. As the contraction went on, fragments of the condensing solar gas cloud were spun off, each with their own portion of angular momentum...and these became the planets.


Thus, Cartwright's next question ('And if he sees order, where does it come from?') is also easily disposed of.

The next question 'On what basis can he trust his reason?' is also quickly disposed of.


We, including in the scientific and engineering professions, regular employ reason to devise new methods of investigation, or new machines, applications.

Thus, the success of our reason and its trustworthiness is visible everywhere one might care to look. Like that MRI machine which is making a diagnosis of a medical problem or anomaly. Or, that Mars ROVER spacecract which has been recording the Martian surface with such precision. A craft that traveled over 150 MILLION miles to the Red planet. How? Using the reason embodied in the equations of celestial mechanics which enabled us to forecast just where Mars would be in the time taken for transit, and what path the spacecraft had to take to intercept it.


You think "God" did that? Not in any way! It was applied mathematics under the direction of REASON!

One can also look at the Hubble Telescope which has captured some of the most phenomenal celestial objects in exciting detail. Its placement at 200+ miles up above the planet and its mirror (now having been corrected by reason) to achieve such resolution, is a work of the human mind and imagination unfettered by psychotic, supernatural phantasmagorias and delusions.

Look at that image of the Helix Nebula in Aquarius at the page top! THAT was captured by the Hubble! That was a work of reason in action, leading to the development of an engineering marvel able to deliver to our eyes objects tens of thousands of light years distant. Can your superstitious drivel do that, Mr. Cartwright? Can you trust your hijacked reason?

So, we have far more basis to trust our reason than the likes of Cartwright and his anti-Atheist clones have to trust their "faith" and supernatural delusions and revealed "sacred" books. None of which could have delivered a spacecraft to the planet Mars, or put a working giant telescope in orbit above the Earth!

Not to be outdone by the hitherto pitiful demonsration of his intellect, Cartwright goes on to aver: "Further, the atheist has no explanation for where the world came from"

Which echoes another letter writer (Martin M. Bednar) and his dreck that: If the universe was not created by an almighty God where did it come from?'

Given equivalent levels of doggerel, these two gentlemen can be addressed concurrently, by first giving the proviso that Atheism per se need not show or account for 'where the world-cosmos came from' since it depends on science for the answers. Science, meanwhile, offers a plausible answer in terms of the theory of quantum bootstrapping, that the universe came into being on the basis of a quantum fluctuation in space-time which provided the initial energy.

This can be shown from the energy-time uncertainty principle, given that a small enough variation in time leads to an ample energy to incept a cosmos.

The energy-time form can be written:

delta(E) delta(t) ~ h/bar

where h-bar ~ 1.02 x 10^-34 Joule.sec

Let the variable fluctuation in time be on the order of 10^-40 sec

and the change in energy is:

delta (E) ~ h-bar/ delta(t)

and one can get a handle on the energy available.

More formally, actual quantum gravity papers have been published which show how this can occur (e.g. 'Universe Before Planck Time – A Quantum Gravity Model', in Physical Review D, Vol. 28, No. 4, p. 756. In his model, T. Padmanabhan uses as a time coordinate hyperboloids of constant distance, inside the light cone of a point in de Sitter space. The point itself, and its light cone, are the big bang of the Friedmann model, where the scale factor goes to zero. But they are not singular. Instead, the spacetime continues through the light cone to a region beyond. It is this region that deserves the name, the pre big bang scenario. It is also this basis that provides the model for the instantaneous formation of the universe by a possible quantum fluctuation that arises when one treats the conformal part of space-time as a quantum variable.

As Padmanbhan shows in his paper, such a cosmos from nothing is perfectly expected and indeed, follows from the basis of the tensor set up, the light cone restrictions and so on. As he notes, ff the Euclidean four-sphere were perfectly round, both the closed and open analytical continuations (using complex integrals around specific paths), would inflate forever. This would mean they would never form galaxies. A perfect round four sphere has a lower action, and hence a higher a-priori probability than any other four -metric (x, y, z, t) of the same volume.

I don't doubt that most laymen can't understand conformal space-time or de Sitter space or much (if anything) of Padmanabhan's paper, but that deficiency doesn't mean a God did it!

Therefore, the fact that an explanatory basis does exist means that science need not depend on faith or 'God' for cosmic origin since so doing would commit the fallacy of ignotum per ignotius or explaining the not well understood by the even less understood. Thus, Atheists do have a basis for where the cosmos comes from if they choose to invoke it from scientific hypothesizing!


As for Cartwright's (final) claim that Atheists must fess up to having 'no basis for objective morals' - I am afraid not. What the Atheist avers is that the only basis for a practical ethics must come from humans, since any god-based form is inevitably quixotic and inconsistent.

In line with this, any persistent observer of human social interaction will note that the vast majority of people are law-abiding and decent folk who naturally practice a common-sense, utilitarian ethics. No supernatural law or commandment ordains this behavior. Instead it is the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others is directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you in effect compromise your own. Undermine their welfare and you also undermine your own.

No god is necessary.

By contrast, religious morality is predicated on some formal codification of expected human behavior in terms of absolutist propositions, not subject to debate. The typical moral code of a religionist, whether Muslim, Pentecostal, Catholic or Jewish, isn’t subject to evolution or variation based on contingencies, or externalities. This blindness probably results from a 'control' meme that proclaims the morality as ‘god-ordained’ or revealed in some scripture or other. If ordained by a god - whether Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh or whoever, it cannot be compromised or altered no matter what.

As Kai Neilsson asked in his book (Ethics Without God, Prometheus, 1992) : "Is an act good because God did it, or is it good independent of such action?" For a genuine ethical basis, any human action must be totally independent of whether a god did it (in scriptures) or ordains it. It must be good on its own merits.

A first test, as Neilsson observes, is ethical choice predicated on a humane standard. Consider: if a human parent knows his child is trapped in a burning house, s/he will try to save it however s/he can. There is no way the human parent will simply walk out and allow 'fate' or "free will" of the child to make the decision. If the human parent has an ounce of common decency s/he must intervene. However, god-ists seem quite happy to let their deity off the hook, when and where it suits their fancy.

Start then with the standard deity template, say espoused by 99% of Christians. This entity is posited as both omniscient and omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful). Let us say, as occured back in 1994, It knew from before all time that enraged Hutu tribal killers in Rwanda were headed for its "houses of worship to slaughter Tutsi tribe minorities hiding out there. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to halt the mammoth bloodletting as opposed to letting its church be used as an abattoir. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the Hutus to slaughter the men, women and children within it. All innocents. All dead.

Those (like Cartwright) who would defend such a deity - but who would hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved) - disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans.

Those who beg the question with theo-babble ("we cannot fathom the ways or mind of God") are no better, and do no better. In many ways, they're worse, because they lack even the courage to face their own logic. And the consequences of their definitions! They either invoke the escape clause of "faith" or the impotence of human logic beside the alleged Divine Mind. (And surely, if humans sprung from such a mind, comprehensibility of its ways and modes must follow. Else he, she or it could as well be a Demonic clown who allows humans - innocent children- to be slain for sport) Thus it follows, even from the most generic examples (presupposing a supernatural, omnipotent force) that human ethics trumps divine ethics on its face.

If it does so, then it must also trump any and all human extensions of divine ethics. Whether in the ten commandments, canon law or wherever. Hence, it follows that human ethics and ethical standards can exist independently of invoking any divine or religious fluff, affiliations or baggage.

In terms of said "baggage" what the religionists have done is to take the natural code of (humane) ethics most people follow and embellish it with a blizzard of superstitious precepts and injunctions. These are superstitious since, inevitably, they are linked to the supposed dictates of a supernatural "being" who will not hesitate to "punish" those who disobey "him". Ethics without god then, is ethics elevated to its highest consistent standards without the need for baffling with bullshit.

A very good article for the basis of a godless morality, and especially for ethical imbeciles:

http://www.skepticfiles.org/human/morality.htm


As for letter writer Prof. Thomas Wooley's claim that science flourished in the West only because of the "faith of the curious" - no.

Because those like Galileo did not let their faith dictate their findings. Wooley mistakes the circumstantial condition of their (faith) backgrounds for the driving force behind their scientific methodology that enabled key discoveries (e.g. the heliocentric solar system, as opposed to the geocentric one of the Church) that contradicted the dogmas of faith.

Of course, none of this will stop the next religiously deluded loon from attributing false motives, concepts, insights or assumptions to Atheists. This god-besotted and money-worshipping society has too much invested in supersitition and bilge to stop now.

Isaac Asimov's Warning - Part II

Isaac Asimov as part of his lecture in Barbados, noted the dire consequences of overpopulation. These were dealt with especially in Part I, in terms of dwindling resources for each person. But even before those effects arrive, there will be a diluting effect on democracy and freedoms.

Asimov referenced the U.S. Constitution and Article I which stipulates that "the number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand" This was based on the 1790 census and a then population for the U.S. of 3.93 million.

However, that ratio had grown to 693,000 constituents per rep by 2007, given 435 representatives. Thus, by this measure, U.S. democracy has been diluted by a factor of:

693,000/ 30,000 = 23.1


What makes the difference and why important? Obviously, the more constituents per representative the more difficult for contact to made, in terms of informing about problems, difficulties, efects of legislation etc. Even now, it is nearly impossble to contact a rep directly, and one is left to either email (which are usually ignored) or leave a phone message. The odds of any response are slim to none, and if one does arrive it is usually as a form letter, which the representative may or may not actually sign.

This means that complaints of constituents, unless they are very rich - and contribute to the congressman's campaign purse, are unlikely to be heard. Democracy is thereby undermined.

Asimov actually came up with a postulate that reflects loss of democracy:

"If the size of population grows while the size of the representative body stays constant, the annual rate of the decline of democracy is at least equal to the annual rate of the growth of the population"

Thus, if the U.S. population has grown by 1% since 2007, the democracy in place has declined by 1%. If the U.S. population has grown by 50% since 1951, then democracy has diminished by 50% in the same period.

At first this appears like nonsense, but think about it as Asimov did.

In the 1950s, unemployment rates seldom hit 2% if that. A person could find work, good work, if he or she simply looked hard enough. In addition, bank savings account rates approached 5-6% so people could safely stash money away without putting it at risk, such as in the stock market.

Now, move 50-odd years into the future. The working population has more than doubled, but the rate of new job growth has remained at roughly half that. Even worse, because many of the better jobs are now shipped overseas to India, where workers can be paid at half the rate and there are no benefits.

So, effectively, the number of willing workers outnumbers available jobs by nearly 2 to 1.

With millions of a working surplus population generated, wages (and benefits) can be held to rock bottom levels (vs. 1950 levels, and corrected for inflation) since there will be such a huge backlog of ready and willing workers that virtually 'anything goes'. Guy doesn't want to work overtime for half or no pay? Fine, fire him because there's 200 waiting in line - all with families to feed.

Worse, savings rates have plummeted since bank saving interest has nosedived to not even 0.5%. WHY? Because the growth of population made it too expensive for banks to continue to deliver so much in interest. So they did two things: 1) securitized risks- such as mortgages, by enabling them to be bundled (by the millions) and sold as debt ("collateralized mortgage obligations") on the bond markets, and 2) lowered interest rates to coerce savers to "investing" in the stock market instead.

Governments from the Reagan era played into this using expedient tax cuts, which were "meant to encourage you to invest more in stocks" ('The Demise of the Ownership Society' in MONEY magazine, p. 58, July, 2009)


Adding insult to injury, what had been defined benefit (PENSION) plans, were converted into "401ks" - in which the employee was responsible for his own retirement savings. What happened? Simply put, too many people-workers which made real pensions too expensive for companies to honor over time. This is also why the cost of health care is exploding. Too many people, too much demand for procedures, therapies, operations, etc. - limited supply (of quality) so much higher cost.

In effect, a surplus population acts as a brake on wages and benefits, as well as keeping the hoi polloi in place. (Since there will always be more people than jobs). It also causes limits to be imposed, generaly via external costs, to thereby render quality of life less. Look no further than at the deterioration of our national parks from overuse....or at our healthcare system....which is 37th in the world in terms of quality delivered per dollar paid.


Community costs also increase as the population rises, although the community's income level is hard to sustain.

Costs arrive in the form of: greater traffic volume (requiring more roads, more expense to build them), more schools (requiring higher property taxes to sustain), more hospitals, and more crime. The latter will increase more in locales in which resources are more diluted or diminished, because there will be fewer available as the number grow. In general, one can expect a 1% increase in property crime and burglary for every 10% increase in the population.

In all these cases, personal freedoms and choices are diminished. For example, much higher traffic flows - say taking two hours to traverse a suburb to downtown- will mean more citizens will simply avoid going downtown. The downtown will then "rot" from disuse, or fall into the hands of the wrong element. In all cases then, population increase byond a certain threshold limits personal choice.

As civic problems muiltiply, but tax revenues do not keep pace, cities and counties are forced to cut services. This is currently happening across the nation, and particularly in California. Police and other services are cut, parks closed up, playgrounds shuttered, and civic life is diluted.

Thus, destabilizing pressures inevitably caused by a too large excess population leads to diminished quality of life, which in turn will lead to more crime, more cutbacks in services, and so on.

Not mentioned yet, is the more pernicious form loss of democracy assumes when too many constitutents exist per representative. What happens then, is that the representatives will seek out the opinions, and follow the will of the LEAST number of MAJOR or super-citizens.

In the U.S. right now, these "super" citizens are none other than giant corporations, which are regarded as "persons" under an 1886 Supreme Court ruling (Santa Clara Decision) which extrapolated the 14th amendment to that case. Unlike the normal person-citizen, these are able to potentially live forever, or as close to that sublime state as de-regulating laws allowed. They can live in multiple places at once (branch offices), and even transmogrify themselves via mergers, etc. or 'amputate' themselves into smaller companies bearing the same overall identity, and run by a single interlocking directorate.

These 'corporate persons' were (over time) also able to access a host of special rights and privileges - not afforded ordinary flesh and blood citizens. These included: special tax-write offs, government and state subsidies, as well as deductions.(Like 'tax deferred benefits' packages for CEOs). And, in the late 20th century, a generous form of government subsidy known as 'corporate welfare' .

Since there are far fewer corporate-persons than flesh and blood persons, then our congress critters now acknowledge the priority of their will and rights over those of the (excessive, surplus) flesh and blood citizens. It is easier, after all, to deal with 3,000 neat, organized corporate persons, than 300 million real, scruffy, flesh and blood persons! In effect, the stage has been set for endemic and anomalous political and economic imbalance that has been built into the very legal system, and manner of governance.

This is why, though Asimov didn't use the word, the U.S. is no longer any facsimile of a "democracy" but rather a corporatocracy. This is a system in which elite or corporate interests exert the power of their wealth and influence to control a nation's political and economic destiny. By simple extrapolation, it follows that as the national and global population increase toward 9 billion, we will likely reach a tipping point where all average citizens of the world become corporate vassals, in a giant global slave state.

That, essentially, was Asimov's warning regarding the dimunition of democracy. Not only in the U.S., but globally. Since we are all interconnected now, the loss of democracy in one place easily transfers into its loss in another.

My conviction is that we won't have to worry about a corporate global vassal state, because most of humanity will be gone in the great die off, by the time peak Oil is underway. An end not dissimilar to what the Easter Islanders experienced (Part I) when they consumed more of their resource-energy base than they could replenish.

For more on the basis of the die-off, go to:


http://www.dieoff.org/

Isaac Asimov's Warning - Part I

Isaac Asimov makes a crucial point at his Queen's Park Lecture in Barbados, on Feb. 6, 1976. This photo was part of a write-up in The Barbados Advocate newspaper.



When famed science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov arrived in Barbados in February, 1976, the entire island was in an uproar. Astronomy had taken off, with the courses being offered by members of the Barbados Astronomical Society, as well as visiting lecturers from the preceding year - starting with Prof. Kenneth Franklin of the New York Hayden Planetarium.

At the time of Asimov's arrival (on the QE II, since he never flew) we in the BAS were in the midst of another of our popular 'Basic Astronomy Courses'. However, for one evening the course lecture was called off so as many as possible could attend Asimov's. They were not disappointed.

Asimov's general theme was 'The Moon and What It means To Us' but - as usual- his lecture did veer off into other important areas, especially the increase in human population, and its dire effects on the welfare of everyone.

A metaphor that Asimov used to make his point then has since become known as "the bathroom metaphor" and it works to get people to understand the debilitating, disastrous effects of too many people. As Asimov noted, if two people live in an apartment, and it comes with two bathrooms, they have a comfortable life. Either one can use the bathroom anytime he or she wants, and can remain in there as long as they desire, even reading while doing business.

One can say, that for the purpose of "Bathroom freedom" - 2 is the carrying capacity for a two -person apartment. Now, let there be twenty people occupying the same apartment, and what happens? Bathroom freedom evaporates. Visits now must be regulated by the clock, and no one may stay in for too long. Indeed, a timetable likely has to be set up for each person's bathroom use. (Don't laugh too hard at the improbability of this example, since we now know of numerous cases where immigrants have been found crammed into such conditions - but usually in a house)

The point is, that the liberating use of the bathroom which applied for two persons, no longer applies with twenty, and probably evaporated by the time there were five or six occupants of the apartment. (And we won't even go into where each - unrelated- person sleeps, if there are only two bedrooms).

Such is the way overpopulation degrades the quality of living, and cheapens it for all, making it more discomfiting. "More" is definitely not merrier!

Is Asimov's example a tad too extreme or is there a real world, historical example to support it? In fact, there is, and it can be traced to Easter Island. The Easter Islanders went from a maximum 20,000-odd population ca. 1600 AD to barely 1,000 when the first Europeans landed in 1720. (Massive civil war broke out ~ 1680) The newcomers had found that the natives had descended into war and cannibalism. In the case of the E. Islanders, they expended all their wood, forest stores – and were reduced to living in caves by the time the Europeans arrived.

What happened? The Islanders grew too comfortable with their resources, and began to consume them at a rate beyond their replacement. This had a critical impact because of the fact: a) Easter Island was so remote - closest other island is Pitcairn, 1240 miles west, and b) the trees that formed the base of the resource supply were limited in extent.

Because of the trees, the Islanders could build adequate shelters, plus construct boats able to navigate many miles offshore to catch large dolphin (fish, not mammals) and eat heartily. But they became too sated too soon. Their ability to provide a bounty of food early drove their birth numbers higher. From a base population of ~ 3500, they grew to 5500, then 7800, then 10,000, then 15,000.

As their numbers increased on the tiny island, the demand for lumber did as well. Massive deforestation was now the rule, as they cut down trees to try to keep pace with the exploding population. Before long, new seedlings planted could not reach the maturity needed to build the sturdy fishing boats to go miles offshore and catch dolphin. The populace was now reduced to scavenge for small mollusks near the tidal basin, and to hunt whatever birds there were (the birds were hunted to extinction).

As people, then animals, soon descended to eating the seeds of the trees, collapse set in. By the time the Europeans arrived there were no more wood shelters, and the people had retreated into caves and had been eating each other for decades.

The above is not a pretty picture, but it IS what happens when ANY closed population exceeds its carrying capacity and begins to overwhelm its support system. It doesn't matter if it's an isolated island, or an isolated planet in space ....like Earth. (recall the earlier image I posted of the Earth in space)

Asimov, as part of his lecture, warned that humans had two choices: decrease their population to the carrying capacity limit to live in an equilibrium with the Earth and its resources, or let nature “increase the human death rate” (e.g. by starvation, pestilence, wars over resources etc.)

He also remarked:


"It is now the willingly childless woman who is the heroine of our planet. She is the one who now deserves all the kudos and praise, for helping to do what is necessary to spare humanity from the ravages of over-population"

In the case of 6.9 billion on a limited orb called “Earth” the situation is very analogous-especially in terms of critical life-support resources such as water. In the ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it is noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025. As observed therein (p. 47):

“When a country’s renewable water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic meters per capita (what some analysts call the water stress level) it becomes difficult for the country to mobilize enough water to satisfy all the food, household, and industrial needs of its population.”

Market “solutions” are absurd on their face since water is an absolute life necessity – not a commercial commodity, or one that a vast population can simply "move to" , to access!

The same State of the World’ report notes at present rates of decline and even without factoring in the worst global warming influences – the number of people living in water-stressed countries will rise from 470 million to 3 billion by 2025. More than a sixfold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects (see. eg. recent issues of Eos) and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.

The other point brought out by Asimov is the dangerous argument that "if we increase oil production, or coal production now we can provide for.....x number of people"

It is dangerous and irrelevant because it is always based upon increasing supplies for the existing (assumed fixed) population. Not reckoning in the growth in demand per year(now 2-3%) which will then outpace the supplies, if they can only increase at 1-2% a year!

To fix ideas: Albert Bartlett - in an article in Physics Today (November, 2004, p. 18), noted that in the 1970s there was about 2.2 liters per person per day of oil. Of this, nearly 1.3 liters went to food production, processing, preparation or distribution. And that was in a world with nearly 2.7 billion FEWER people!

Today, we are down to a production level of barely 1.6 liters per person per day while the consumption level approaches 4 liters per person per day. After Peak Oil, the latter will continue to increase, while the former will diminish by about 2-3% per year.

It doesn’t take a math genius to work out that this is a recipe for catastrophic crash – of the human population! Indeed, one can break it down to a basic differential equation embodying a related rate- in this case the rate of decrease of available cheap energy needed as the population continually increases.

According to current stats (Physics Today, Weisz, p. 47, July 2004), the global oil demand is expected to grow 2-3% per year, and the population by 1.5% per year. In this case:

-dQ/ dt ~ {rate of demand on Q per year + rate of population growth translated into a yearly demand on Q)

where the LHS represents the depletion rate of available oil resources, and the RHS gives the “sinks” that deplete them. Note the 1st term assumes only the pure economic, e.g. GDP-“growth” demands for increase, not population)

In concrete terms, if 500 billion barrels (dQ) of relatively cheap oil remain after next year, and (as of 2003), 28 billion barrels of year are consumed per year, and the combined term on the RHS increases this by 4.5% per year – what do you get?

Here is where it sits in most basic terms, in terms of the clear analogy of oil now with the trees of the Easter Islanders: The planet was endowed with ~ 3,000 billion barrels of oil – of which we’ve consumed 1,000 billion barrels. 500 billion barrels of relatively cheap oil remains, after which 1000 billion barrels of “break-even” oil remains (costs as much to access as it delivers), after which 500 billion barrels of very expensive oil remains (costs much more to reach it than it deliver in energy).

At the heart of these considerations is the net energy eqn. (cf. Physics Today, Weisz, July 2004, p. 51)

Q (net) = Q (PR) – [Q (op) + E/T]

In effect, for break-even oil one would find Q(net) = 0

Thus, there is no net gain in energy given the quantity that must be used to obtain it.For the last 700 billion barrels, Q(net) = negative quantity = -Q

since the rate of energy production (Q (PR) must be debited by the energy consumed for its operation Q(op), and the energy E invested during its “lifetime” Thus its Q(PR) will be small in relation to the bracketed quantity.Thus, the problem in a nutshell is not “running out of oil’ but running out of CHEAP oil. Bottom line, we need not run out of the stuff before the world economy runs into problems of untold, unspeakable proportions!




As if this problem were bad, another superimposed one is by way of ethanol. To produce ethanol takes about 0.1 gal more of oil than the quantity of ethanol produced (1.0 gal.) Thus, ethanol is already an energy SINK.

Now add to this that: a) ethanol is less efficient than oil, and b) consumes a food base to manufacture it (corn), and you have a recipe for massive disaster. Even worse, it is federally subsidized at ~ .51 a gallon, and worse yet, the new cap and trade bill has a provision in it to exclude ethanol from all greenhouse warming consideration!

It is as if the Easter Islanders, in addition to consuming all their wood resource base for shelter, boat construction, decided to eat up the tree seedlings at the same time.

Of course, this would have accelerated their total collapse by about 150 years.

Next: Part II Can collapse of democracy ensue with overpopulation?

Those crazy, revolutionary, upstart....ATHEISTS!

We will take a break now from solar physics, and go back to controversies of areligious philosophy, namely dealing with a certain meme that's been floating around the past few years: that atheism is some new, "rambunctious" form of rebellion, devised just to have a riff on organized religion (which long predated it).

Atheists then are relative newbies who just came on the scene and whose sole purpose is to make sport of religions, god beliefs, and other sanctimonious nonsense - such as heaven-hell and "sin". In this regard, atheists have been compared to wild teenagers feeling their oats, trying to make themselves out to be independent before they are ready.

All their arguments, comments and critiques of religion and religious thought amount to simple bravado, the type seen and heard when a teen gets his first car.

Of course, this is all totally wrong. Atheists and Atheism have actually been in existence for thousands of years before Christianity. Thus, the truth is that Atheism represents the "parental" wiser- and judicious philosophy, while religion represents the brash infant. Not the other way around! But whacked out religious zealots have tried to paint Atheism as exactly the opposite: some newfangled form of irreverent revolution just thought up to give the religious grief.

For fixing ideas here, it helps to look at some of the quotes of the ancients. These may be the best evidence of how Atheism dates into antiquity and atheists sentiments were expressed by naturalist thinkers long before Christ walked on Earth (assuming he really did!)

Let us then look at some of these quotes:

Heraclitus (535- 475 BCE):

"Religion is a disease"


Aristophanes (448 - 380 BCE):

"Surely you don't believe in the gods! What's your argument? Where's your prooof?"



Petronius Arbiter (27 - 66 CE):

"It was fear that first brought gods into the world"



Seneca (4 BCE - 65 CE):

"Religion is regarded as the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful"


Abu Al-Ahmad (973- 1057 CE):

"The world holds two classes of men: intelligent men without religion and religious men without intelligence"


Cicero (106- 43 CE):

"What old woman is so stupid now as to tremble at those tales of hell that were once so firmly believed in?"



Epicurus: (341 - 270 BCE):

"Faith is the credulous belief in the reality of phantoms"


Confucius (551 - 479 BCE):

"Why talk of spirits when you do not understand men?"


Pliny the Elder (23 - 79 CE):

"It is ridiculous to suppose that the great head of things, whatever it may be, pays any regard to human affairs".


Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE):

"Men create gods in their own image"



What we discern from the above, is that neither Richard Dawkins nor Sam Harris nor any other modern Atheists have anything on any of these ancients. We also see that compelling and cogent expressions of rejection of religion, faith and deities held firm in ancient minds (at least the most disciplined, and discriminating, intelligent) long before Christianity appeared.

Clearly, it is effrontery of the most onerous kind to therefore have Christians high on themselves ranting against Atheists for being "upstarts"! We are nothing of the kind, and our type was here long before the Christers first pounded a bible.

Of course, none of this will stop them from turning the facts on their heads and trying to create the impression that we atheists are the nouveaux revolutionaries attempting to overthrow established beliefs that were here long before we were.

As opposed to the Atheist being wise and prescient enough to spot bunkum ages before it became organized into formal codswallop. Such as expressed and embodied into fictional works like the King James Book of Fairy Tales. A book that actually needs to have multiple warnings (for mental health of adults) appended to its covers.

Yes, I have a KJV too. I even read it sometimes. To always remind myself of how primitive the mentality of humans used to be, before the dawn of Science and the Enlightenment, and the use of reason. I also use it to remind myself that nowhere in the book was any actual "God" being discussed or referenced, but rather an artifact window dressed as a god-concept.

And we know all of those are relative. Which the ancients like Aristophanes also know - which is why they didn't take them seriously!

The Solar Irradiance Issue

Related to the assorted phenomena pertaining to solar cycles, including spot frequency, spotless days, solar wind intensity etc., is the solar irradiance. This is just the solar radiance - in watts per square meter per steradian - integrated over the full solar disk.

"Steradian" denotes a solid angle measure. See, e.g. the definitional details (with diagrams) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steradian

Needless to say, irradiance has a direct bearing on the issue of climate change and to what degree the Sun is responsible, and especially whether (quantitatively) its irradiance over any one solar cycle or period therein overrides the human-incepted, CO2 -driven, greenhouse effect.

In his lecture at the 40th Meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society ('Solar Irradiance: Recent Results and Future Research Plans') Thomas N. Woods of the University of Colorado dealt with the matter as it pertains to the current cycle, and in particular some recent measurements.

Woods began by noting the assorted recent periods wherein irradiance measurably varied, including: the Medieval maximum, the Sporer minimum (1400s), the Maunder minimum (1600s), the Dalton minimum (1800s). He noted with emphasis that there is no single uniform value to characterize a time interval or period, since the radiance itself can vary hugely on small or local scales. For example, solar flares can propel radiance increases 50 times over normal and thereby affect the irradiance.

On average though, with such violent inputs smoothed out, the Earth's temperature changes by about 0.07 K (kelvin) over a solar cycle. Compare this to the 0.6 K change (increase) in global temperatures over the past 100 years arising from human-caused greenhouse effect. Thus, the human component is over 8.5 times greater.

Even if the solar forcing on climate is enhanced by positive feedbacks the amplification is usually no more than a factor 2. So that 0.07 K increases become 0.14 K increases. The human component is still more important by a factor 4.2, a point made by Woods when he emphasized that the recent results support the hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are the primary contributor. This despite all the politicos, think tanks and yahoos who keep blabbering that climate change arises from "natural cycles" - meaning the Sun is responsible.

The results, numbers simply don't support that and one hopes (eventually) my fellow Mensans and Ilians will finally get that into their libertarian -compromised noggins. (See my earlier blog entry about the effects of agnotology- and the deliberate sowing of doubt by powerful interests, usually economic or political.)

In his envisaging of future results, research, Prof. Woods echoed a plaintive cry I've often made: that for really solid and unimpeachable irradiance quantification we need to be able to detect and record the real total luminosity change from minimum to minimum. Again, one sees money as a core issue and one hopes Obama will make it available soon for more solar work, observation. Especially for cycle 24.

Other questions we need to have addressed to sleep better at night include: 1) How exactly are changes in the solar magnetic field related to irradiance, 2) What specific end-to -end calibrations are needed to obtain the total solar irradiance per cycle?, 3) How can we account for a nearly 8% difference in irradiance as compared to measurements made in the near infrared?

All of these answers are those which inquiring minds want to know. Hopefully before the next solar cycle (25) commences!

Solar Cycle 24: Clearing the Air

LARGE SPOT GROUP photographed on Nov. 4, 1980 at the start of Cycle 21. Will the current cycle witness any similar large spots?

There has been so much babble written concerning solar cycle 24 (the alleged "missing cycle") that itemizing it all would take the better part of a day. Suffice it to say that being able to attend the 40th meeting of the Solar Physics Division definitely helped in clarifying the issues, especially in terms of holding back the sea of codswallop that has been churned out recently by global warming deniers.

Most of these have latched on to solar cycle 24 as an escape hatch, reasoning that because the Maunder Minimum was effectively a missing cycle (few or no spots) and ushered in a brutally much colder span of ~ 70 years, than the same may be true now. And then, because of this assumed new "minimum" we shall not have to fret over carbon-based human engendered warming!

Not so fast!

The papers that were delivered more than showed this viewpoint to be baseless. Also, the extrapolations to a "new Maunder minimum" (or any significant minimum) premature and unjustified.

First, look at comparative spotless days. As noted by Prof. Frank Hill in his Tuesday morning lecture 'A Helioseismic Comparison of the Solar Minima Preceding Cycles 23 and 24', the current cycle is not yet exceptional - certainly in terms of spotless days aggregated.

While 286 total spotless days have been accumulated in 2008, and 128 so far this year, there have been other years with more, including: 311 spotless says in 1913, and 287 spotless days for 1901.

At the same time, it is also true that we currently have the lowest solar wind pressure since cycle 15, as well as the lowest irradiance in the modern (space observation) era. However, this is not as low as that recorded for cycles 13-14.

As for climate issues, what about the assumption that few or no spots for cycle 24 mean it will be overall weaker than cycle 23, and hence portend colder temperatures?

This case also can't be made, since we have the example of a very weak cycle (16) which led to a much more energetic and active one (cycle 17). Thus, cycle 24 could actually turn out to be very active cycle with higher solar irradiance that actually reinforces man-made global warming as opposed to cancelling it.

What we do know is that the behavior of cycle 24 appears to pose more serious questions for solar dynamo theory. This is the theory that every 11 years or so, magnetic fields on the Sun attain a high torsional component which causes them to "twist" up and also move from more northerly to more southerly solar latitudes where most active regions (ARs) form. Typically, this is around 22-23 heliographic degrees.

So far, the torsional oscillation flow for the current cycle is hovering near helio latitude 33 degrees, nearly 10 degrees off. Even moving at about 7 Mm (mega-meters or 10^6 meters) a year southward, this will take over 2 years to reach a latitude of 23 degrees, where large active regions (and spots!) ought to form.

Clearly, the solar dynamo needs refining, and certainly basic concepts such as the emergence of tachoclines, and the meriodonal flows inside the Sun.

To show how amiss we are, one paper presented displayed beautiful, multi-layered cross sectional views of the meriodonal flows in full color. But when the presenter was asked to show the actual observational data that supported it, nearly ninety-five percent of the colored lines and contours vanished! Clearly, there's a lot of unwarranted extrapolation.

For their part, the torsional oscillations tend to occur about 1000 kilometers below the Sun's surface (photosphere) but we have few instruments that can actually probe that deeply. One refrain one heard over and over in terms of supporting dynamo theory was: 'We need more money!'

If nothing else, and I propose extreme caution here- superior instruments (say designed for solar "sounding") might help to discriminate between the classical (e.g. Babcock-Leighton) dynamo theory and new ones involving "shallow" dynamos. In the latter case, ephemeral photospheric regions (EPRs) might be the first phenomena to be accounted for much in advance of actual sunspots seen as "inverse ion hurricanes". (EPRs, as the name implies, are not very stable or long lasting, usually appearing as small pores, then vanishing in 1-2 days)

In order to work then, a proper shallow dynamo theory needs to present sufficient observations to back up the supposition that a super-adiabatic temperature gradient is largest near the surface and its associated latent energy supports the reaction:

H + (energy) -> H+ + e(-) [ionization of hydrogen]

As is known from the standard (sunspot) theory of Parker, the "inverse ion hurricane" represented by a large sunspot enables the basis for the latent energy to translate into a convective collapse process so the luminosity can flow out and around the periphery of spots. The larger the spot (such as the one shown in the image, which I photographed in McMath region 17244 on Nov. 4, 1980) the greater the luminosity and heat discharged.

This is why the more spots there are in a cycle, the higher the solar irradiance, and the higher the mean global temperature of Earth. (One can get variations up to 0.21 K or more). This is often counter intuitive, since spots are actually cooler regions in relation to the Sun's surrounding photosphere, which is roughly 1500 K hotter.

The bottom line is there is much more to learn, and we need more money ....yes, but this must go to better actual instruments to plumb the solar depths...not merely for more sophisticated computers to do more numerical simulations!

In the meantime, we shall keep a close and wary eye on cycle 24 (which is actually interphased with the remnants or last gasps of cycle 23- so the current minimum is technically the "minimum of cycle 23 and 24") to see whether it portends a prolonged era of few or no spots (and hence lower solar irradiance) or much higher spot activity. In which case we had better start from now to induce massive changes in human behavior to lower carbon dioxide emissions!