Transcending The Hype Over The Proxima B Planet

Artist's conception of the view from the new planet circling the star Proxima Centauri B

It appears every time a new exoplanet is discovered, the hype of astronomers (and some physicists)  approaches that of the media commentariat. Three days ago  on CBS Early Show, for example, physicist Michio Kaku was heard to blab that "the holy grail of astronomy is to find an earth like planet that supports life."  Not really. The true "holy grail", if such a term can be applied to astronomy, would be to forge a consistent theory of stellar evolution by which each stage of a star's life cycle can be matched to an exact  sequence of nuclear fusion reactions and reaction cross sections. But, of course, this would likely be too complex for wide consumption.

Enter now a new exoplanet (in terms of its discovery) orbiting the star Proxima Centauri B in the triple star Alpha Centauri system,  roughly 4.3 light years distant. Its discovery began with an observing program  called Pale Red Dot, in early 2016. This was under the auspices of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).  (Not all exoplanet finds have been via the Kepler space observatory). In the case of Pale Red Dot, the goal was, specifically, to find a planet for this star.  This sounds somewhat like putting "the cart before the horse" and in many ways it was. But the ESO team had goon reason: namely, why shouldn't Earth's nearest neighbor star not have a planet or even planetary system?

Now ESO and several other institutions have released statements on their new discovery that yes, there is a new planet. Even better it's only slightly more massive than Earth. Yes, it’s in Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone, meaning there’s a potential for liquid water to exist on its surface.

The journal Nature is due to publish a paper describing the new planet – which is called Proxima b – on August 25, 2016. Guillem  Angada -Escude, an astrophysicist at Queen Mary University, London, said:

"The long-sought world … orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than the Earth and is the closest exoplanet to us — and it may also be the closest possible abode for life outside the solar system."

 Of the three stars in the system, Proxima – a small red dwarf star – is the closest star. Read about the Alpha Centauri system here.  Using Kepler's harmonic law or 3rd law of planetary motion, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/08/solution-to-simple-astronomy-problems-6.html


We can compute that the distance of Proxima b from its parent star is just over 4.6 million miles, or a factor twenty less distance than Earth is from the Sun.  But bear in mind the red dwarf sun is a much cooler star. This means Proxima is plausibly in the not too hot, not too cold "Goldilocks zone". If that is so it is possible that planet also has an atmosphere.



The radial velocity (RV)  plot shown above shows the variations in motion of Proxima Centauri over the first part of 2016.  The negative values denote approaching velocities in km/hr and the positive values denote receding velocities, i.e. when the component is moving away from Earth.  Thus, at some times it is approaching at ~ 5 km/hr and at other times receding at the same speed. As  Anglada Escude explained:

"At times Proxima Centauri is approaching Earth at about 3 miles (5 km) per hour — normal human walking pace — and at times receding at the same speed. This regular pattern of changing radial velocities repeats with a period of 11.2 days. Careful analysis of the resulting tiny Doppler shifts showed that they indicated the presence of a planet with a mass at least 1.3 times that of the Earth, orbiting about 4 million miles (7 million km) from Proxima Centauri — only 5% of the Earth-sun distance."

The greater mass of the planet, of course, means a higher g-value, i.e. for gravitational acceleration. So any Earthman arriving there would weigh more than on Earth. Thus:

g(Proxima b) =   G M/ r²

Where G is the Newtonian gravitational constant, M is then 1.3 x Earth's mass ( 6.0 x 10²⁴  kg)  and r is the radius of the planet.

And the weight would be m g(Proxima b) where m is the Earther's mass in kilograms. (Note: Mass is an inherent property of matter, denoting the number of particles possessed, and hence doesn't change assuming a non-relativistic environment)

According to investigator Angada -Escude:

"The first hints of a possible planet were spotted back in 2013, but the detection was not convincing. Since then we have worked hard to get further observations off the ground with help from ESO and others. The recent Pale Red Dot campaign has been about two years in the planning."

When combined with earlier observations then, the Pale Red Dot data revealed the new planet,  Proxima b.

Obviously, further investigations are still needed to confirm Proxima b's other apparent peculiarities including that the planet doesn't rotate so one side is always facing its star while the other is darker and colder. Add the fact that it is also bombarded with ultraviolet light and x-rays and one can understand why it may be best at this point to contain the hype.

Is Michio Kaku A Pseudo Physicist For Accepting A "Universal Intelligence"?

Michio Kaku: A real physicist - or a pseudoscientist?

In a scathing commentary ('The Dangerous Growth of Pseudo -Physics',)  appearing in a recent (May, p. 10) issue of Physics Today, Prof. Sadri Hassani of Illinois State University rails against pseudoscience that is "rapidly growing" and has now made its way into physics - the most refined and majestic of the sciences apart from mathematics.

In his 1 3/4 page piece he cites a number of examples including:

- The 2014 publication of a "manifesto for a post materialist science" published in a journal entitled Explore "which elevates parapsychology and near death experience to the rank of quantum theory"

- The popularity of the book 'The Tao Of Physics' by Fritjof Capra, which purports to establish a parallel between Eastern mysticism and modern physics

- The enthusiasm for the (1979) book 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters' by Gary Zukav which hints at "conscious" or "intelligent" photons which know where they are in classical two-slit experiments.

- The misrepresentation of energy as "non-material" to apply to nonmaterial spirits and souls.

In response to the last the author asserts (p. 11):

"There is no instance in nature in which mass transforms into energy (or vice versa) without some material particles carrying that energy".  There is no connection between soul-matter equivalence of mysticism and energy-mass equivalence of modern physics".

Earlier, Hassani points out that two primary assumptions of quantum theory (QT) have "been the main source of much confusion and abuse since the inception of non-relativistic QT"  These are:

1) That the square of the absolute value of the wave function y  is the  probability of the state of a system, i.e.

P = ½y  y *½

2) The superposition principle: If there are several paths available to the system the total y  is the appropriately weighted sum of the y s   for each path.


However, I'd suggest that Paul Dirac's original definition of superposition ('The Principles of Quantum Mechanics' Clarendon Press Oxford, 1957,  p. 4) might have more to do with incessant perversions toward metaphysics, i.e.

"If a system is small, we cannot observe it without producing a serious disturbance and hence we cannot expect to find any causal connections between the results of our observations"

Thus, the entire notion of "observer disturbed" systems was born. Without adequate training in QT, however, too many extrapolated this to macroscopic systems when technically it only applied to quantum ones. Thereby ignoring Dirac's initial emphasis "IF the system is small".

These misconceptions  were then carried into whackadoodle land when one read, as in Richard Schlegel's monograph Superposition and Interaction:Coherence in Physics (1980, University of Chicago Press, p. 178,) about  the opinion expressed once by Prof. Eugene Wigner (at a QM conference) that "the consciousness of a dog would effect the projection into a single state whereas that of an amoeba would not."

So hell, if a dog like a French Poodle could "effect the projection into a single state" why not a human who observes LeBron James closely enough in an NBA game to make his jump shot bounce off the hoop at the last moment?  Again, the reason is that basketballs are macro sized objects, as opposed to electrons, protons, etc.

To combat these aberrations of mysticism filtering into modern physics Hassani recommends  reading assignments in high school and college physics courses "to make students aware of pseudoscientific nonsense". He also advocates the liberal use of rational wiki as a resource, e.g.

http://rationalwiki.org


Finally, we come to the recent claims of  Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York (CUNY) and co-founder of String Field Theory.  He seriously  believes that the  theoretical particles known as “primitive semi-radius tachyons” are physical evidence that the universe was created by a higher intelligence.

Kaku, after analyzing the behavior of these sub-atomic particles - which can move faster than the speed of light and have the ability to “unstick” space and matter, has concluded that the universe is a “Matrix” governed by laws and principles that could only have been designed by an intelligent being.

According to an article published in the Geophilosophical Association of Anthropological and Cultural Studies.

 “I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore,”

He went on:

“To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.”

This is an interesting development given that Prof. Kaku only two years ago advocated a mechanistic model of mind, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/michio-kakus-model-of-mijnd-is-too.html
 

Where I pointed out in criticism:
 

"where Kaku runs off the rails, as I did,   is in using this ridiculously simple reductionist metaphor to suggest human self-consciousness can result from an indefinitely large macro-assembly of logic elements.  But again, this is what a reductionist would do since he's trapped in a box of his own making, where his very dependence on component reality means he's unable to conceive of emergence.  It is actually emergence - contingent on the brain as a quantum mechanical entity - that leads to a full model of human consciousness"
 

My point here is that Kaku must have radically altered his take since if one invokes a "universal intelligence" it must embody some kind of consciousness.   This is a conclusion I also arrived at in my 2013 book, 'Beyond Atheism, Beyond God', but by a different route - considering Bell's theorem, quantum nonlocality, and the quantum potential. A synopsis of some of my arguments can be found in this post from 2011:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/04/quantum-mind-isnt-same-as-quantum.html
 

 The key answer to the question of whether Kaku (or myself) would be regarded as a "pseudophysicist" then would appear to depend on whether one accepts monistic or nonlocal physicalism. The second, as quantum physicist Henry Stapp showed ('Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics', 1983) allows for quantum theory to be applied to brain function. The first, based on "particles only"  reductionism, would not.

In the latter case, one would concur with the late Victor Stenger's take ('God and the Folly of Faith', p. 155)  that:

"It does not matter whether you are trying to measure a particle property or a wave property. You always measure particles. Here is the point that most people fail to understand: Quantum mechanics is just a statistical theory like statistical mechanics, fundamentally reducible to particle behavior."

 On the other hand, if one subscribes to nonlocal physicalism he will agree with J.S. Bell (Foundations of Physics, (12,) .989 )

"Although Y is a real field it does not show up immediately in the results of a ‘single measurement’, but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie –Bohm variable X that shows up immediately each time."

The danger of too rigidly adhering to Stenger's reductonist viewpoint was articulated by Bernard d'Espagnat ('In Search of Reality'):

"If scientism were correct, or more precisely, if the view of the world it proposes so forcefully, that of a world ultimately consisting of myriads of small localized objects merely endowed with quasi-local properties were correct, then such an evolution of our mentality would admittedly be excellent. It is always good for man to know the truth! But on the other hand, if the ultimate vision of the world which scientism proposes is false, if its conceptual bases are mistaken, then this development is – on the contrary –quite unfortunate."

New Support for a Quantum Model Of Mind

The issue of the brain and its relation to consciousness is one that interests and intrigues many physicists. The standard take by many is that quantum mechanics isn't involved at all. For example, physicist Mark Alford, writing in the Skeptical Inquirer (  May-June, 2011, p. 8 ) observed:

"It seems improbable that these very delicate processes are the crucial feature in the functioning of the human brain which is not a suitagle environment for quantum subtlety".

But is this so?  For example, we know that the scale of the synaptic cleft is on the order of 200-300 nm and hence subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This is precisely a quantum scale so it makes sense that the Heisenberg Principle would apply at this level, and hence quantum mechanics also.

Using this logic, I introduced a quantum model for consciousness in my book,  'The Atheist's Handbook to Modern Materialism', (Chapter 6), and developed it by appeal to how a quantum computer would operate via "quantum gates" predicated on the Pauli spin operators. This entailed conversion of standard logic gates (NOR, OR, NOT, etc.)  in the classical format - applied to ordinary computers- to counterparts in the quantum format.

For example, the NOT gate can be represented by what is called a unitary matrix, or Pauli spin matrix-operator σ_x = (0,1¦1,0) where the left pair is a matrix 'top' and each right pair a matrix 'bottom' - since they are usually written in a rectangular array form.

Similarly, the other Pauli gates would be defined by: σ_y = (0,-i¦i, 0)and  σ_z = (1, 0¦0, -1), where i denotes the square root of (-1).  Incorporation of such Pauli (quantum) gates meets a primary application requirement for feed forward networks, in describing synapse function. (See e.g. Yaneer Bar-Yam, 'Dynamics of Complex Systems', Addison-Wesley, pp. 298-99.)
The advantage is consciousness is elevated out of the strict machine-like model of an ordinary computer to one that can explain more features of the human experience.

In my book I used this basis to challenge Daniel Dennett's claim (in Consciousness Explained) that quantum mechanics isn't needed and Newtonian classical mechanics suffices to account for any particulate interactions.  But as I pointed out, it was physicist Henry Stapp who first  pointedly noted that uncertainty principle limitations applied to calcium ion capture near synapses showed they (calcium ions) must be represented by a probability function. (Stapp, Henry, P.: 1993, Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics, Springer-Verlag, p. 42.)

I also used it to challenge Michio Kaku's simple deterministic model of mind, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/03/michio-kakus-model-of-mijnd-is-too.html

Now, new support for this view appears to have arrived with the book, 'Life On the Edge', by Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Kahlili - a quantum physicists - reviewed by John Gribbin in the WSJ ('Physics for Bird Brains', Aug 1-2, p. C5).   Gribbin begins by noting "the entangled strands of DNA....are held together by a quantum phenomenon know as hydrogen bonding. The way these strands untwist and build new double helixes is at heart a quantum phenomenon"

So why not brain operation as well? This is one thread in the book, using concepts of "quantum weirdness" and entanglement, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-epr-paradox-and-quantum-nonlocality.html

that ultimately leads to a novel account of brain operation. As Gribbin puts it (ibid.):

"The authors have saved the best - if most speculative idea- for last: that quantum procedures help explain consciousness and the mechanics of thought, as surely as they do photosynthesis... It is an old question going back to philosophers such as Descartes: How does mind make matter move?"

He elaborates a bit more without giving away too many details:

"The new answer presented draws from the physics behind those quantum computers. Where an ordinary computer can be thought of as operating through a series of switches that can be set at 1 or 0, the power of a quantum computer  depends on the ability of quantum entities to be in two state at once, known as a superposition"

Which was exactly the point I raised in my own book. So rather than limit storage to bits (1 or 0), one can work with qubits (truncated for quantum bits) where the superposition of a combined data element (1 + 0) applies:

U = U(1) + U(0)


And the storage capacity dramatically expands as a result.

In general, for any given n-bit combination – with n a whole number, a qubit register can accommodate 2 to the nth power total combinations at one time. Thus, 16 combinations could be held in memory for 4-bits, 32 for 5-bits, and so on. This change marks an exponential (two to the 'n' or 2^n) increase over any classical counterpart. Since, human brains typically can hold the equivalent in memory of whole libraries, it seems that qubit processing is at least worth consideration.

As Gribbin concedes, and the authors as well, all this is still in the realm of conjecture. No one as yet has inserted experimental probes into brains to precisely detect quantum wavepacket collapse, energy exchanges or energy increases owing to repeated superpositions and nonlocal actions.

However, from Bell's theorem there is powerful theoretical support, as the most recent book makes use of.  Indeed, Bell himself may have suggested a clue on how to proceed experimentally (Foundations of Physics, (12,) .989 ):

Although Y is a real field it does not show up immediately in the results of a ‘single measurement’, but only in the statistics of many such results. It is the de Broglie –Bohm variable X that shows up immediately each time.

In other words, the best approach may be a large number of experiments from which multiple measurements are obtained, perhaps similar to those conducted by Dr. Robert G. Jahn (using random number generators), as published in The Journal of Scientific Exploration. (Vol. 1, No. 1).

At the very least this latest work provides more philosophical and explanatory support for the integration of quantum mechanics into brain operation.

No, I’m NOT Doing the “Ice Bucket Challenge”!

Let me admit off the bat I detest all fads,  media gimmicks, and mass-supported "trends" - especially done in the name of a charity.  If any kind of gimmick or faddish action is involved in a charity response, I’m more than likely to ignore it in entirety. That goes for  athletes wearing pink foot wear during any breast cancer awareness campaign as well as this “ice bucket” challenge currently sweeping the country-  which every manjack and his doggie or pet lizard seems to be het up on copying. Each, of course, trying to outdo the other and politicos (like Dumbya Bush ) even challenging others to get on with it.

 

So why don’t I submit to the social and media tidal wave and fall in line?

 First, while a worthy cause, ALS has never been one I've supported and I do not intend to just suddenly jump on a copycat fad bandwagon because every other manjack and his pet monkey is. As I said, I despise copycat faddish promotions no matter how popular.  My causes that I consistently support include: The Prostate Cancer Foundation,  St. Jude's Research Hospital, Maryknoll Sisters, Homeless Missions - in Baltimore and Colorado Springs and Covenant House. Given these charities, I've no intention of adding another - and don't believe in "one offs" - especially merely for spectacle.

A second problem I have, let me be blunt: it’s a frickin’ waste of water for a country and world which will very soon be begging for it.  Yeah, ok, one two gallon bucket is no big deal and it's only one person at a time.  I admit that the illusion of minimal waste is convincing. But multiplied by millions of  imitators – each trying to outdo the others- it is. According to a spot on drought and water (with Physicist Michio Kaku three days ago on CBS Early show)  the volume of water consumed so far in the ice bucket challenge would cover all the land from the Pacific coast to the Great Lakes with 4 inches.  That is a lot of water to pour down the drain for any reason, including a charity gimmick.

Apart from that there are plenty of legitimate reasons to question the philanthropic viral sensation of the summer — from its gimmicky premise to the way it overshadows our own government’s slashing of medical research funding . (As former Sen. John Dingell noted two mornings ago, billions have been cut by the Repukes since 2007) .  Look, give me one buck slashed from medical research budgets by the Repukes for every ten that the ALS gimmickry has collected.  If we had the former we'd be well on the way to a cure.

I concede that it’s hard to argue with the over $31 million raised for ALS so far, or the awareness the stunt has raised for this  incurable degenerative disease.  But I submit that if it takes such hijinks to “raise awareness” and get people off their ass to contribute then something is wrong with the people. My other concern: what will happen to the ALS funding when the fad passes into history as it inevitably must?

Now, the story has even taken a new twist as religious groups are beginning to discourage followers from participating — because ALS research at times relies on embryonic stem cells. This week, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati specifically asked Catholic school leaders at 113 schools to “immediately cease” any fundraising plans connected to the challenge, because the ALS Association funds at least one study using embryonic stem cells — “in direct conflict with Catholic teaching.”  (Of course, those of us who are scientific Materialists vigorously disagree with this – but again that is the Catholics’ choice and ought to be respected.)

 Speaking to Religion News Service Tuesday, ALS Association representative Carrie Munk said, “Currently, The Association is funding one study using embryonic stem cells (ESC), and the stem cell line was established many years ago under ethical guidelines set by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS); this research is funded by one specific donor, who is committed to this area of research. The project is in its final phase and will come to an end very soon.”

 She added that donors “can stipulate where their money goes and can ask that it not pay for embryonic stem cell research.". This is a rational option and certainly ought to be considered before dodging the donations. But still, I maintain the ALS effort can be helped – and mightily – without all the dumping water gimmickry.

As for the wastage of water issue, as a scientific Materialist I take it as more serious than the embryonic stem cell connection to ALS research.  In the ‘State of the World’ report (2000, pp. 46-47), it was noted that the ever increasing water deficits will likely spark “water wars” by 2025.. As they note (p. 47):

Quote:

---

“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! (Hint: nations with their own water may not appreciate it!) One cannot and nations will not, “bargain for water” or permit privatized solutions, such as met with major political crisis in Bolivia four years ago. You are looking, in effect, at mass chaos, bloody guerilla style warfare which no country will be able to prevent inside its borders.

The same ‘State of the World’ report noted 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 six-fold increase. Add in projected new climate change data and likely effects  and the stressed populations increase nine or tenfold.

The cold, brutal fact is that this planet has limited resources, including potable,  fresh water, so must also have a carrying capacity beyond which human needs cannot be adequately met.

Those who toss out gallons of water – iced or not – when they do the formal ice bucket challenge – are therefore ignoring the planet’s resource – water limits and acting as if there will be abundant stores indefinitely.

There are other options:

1)     Just donate money to ALS research without all the spectacle, ego-gratification,  self promotion.

2)     Do what people in So. California are doing and use a small doll or puppet to dump a tiny bit of water on with a toy bucket. I know, not as dramatic or impressive – when you’d rather show off to friends – but it also gets over the point of water conservation.

        3) Use another act to emblemize your spirit, such as gulping down a beer with a taco or burrito.

        4) Rather than wastefully dump buckets of water, get a group of would be contributors together to jump into an ice cold lake.

I am not saying people shouldn't participate, only to think before they do. In particular,  ask yourself: Is this going to be a continuing support commitment or done only as a one-off as part of a national craze? If the latter is the case, and your support ends with the bucket dousing and one check, then it is a waste of time....and water!

Even Pastor Rick Joyner Ought To Take Note of New Climate Change Report

Rick Joyner is high-powered Pastor (a real one) who operates a Mega-Church from Asheville, NC. He was featured in one of the key segments in the "Ice and Brimstone" episode of "Years of Living Dangerously", shown Sunday night on Showtime. Most of the semi-episode dealing with Joyner had his daughter (an environmental sciences grad from University of North Carolina) trying to "convert" her pop to accepting the scientific evidence for human-caused climate change. At every turn - and no matter who she brought forth (including a fellow Evangelical scientist), Joyner fobbed them off with the same recycled codswallop that "there's no hard evidence" and he has "problems with the math". This even after a former denier (Richard Muller) showed him a graph similar to the Keeling curve (above) and how temperatures have inexorably increased from the Industrial  Revolution.

But for Pastor Joyner and other hardheads the time for denial and refusal has really run out after the release of the report yesterday from the National Climate Assessment Panel - which featured inputs from over 250 climate scientists (not mock climate scientists) as well as oil companies. Their findings, following four years of exhaustive study, ought to make every American -denier or not - sit up and take note. (As noted on the news this morning, only 24% of Americans assign climate change top priority. Would they do the same if a planet killer asteroid was about to strike Earth? Well, climate change is analogous to a slowly moving planet killer (ok, "human inhabitants- of- the -planet",  killer).

The report removes all the "maybes" and "ifs" and asserts ravaging climate change is happening in the here and now costing us hundreds of billions in precious treasury money every year.  Torrential rains, flooding, heat waves, drought and wildfires- they're all getting worse, year by year. The time when Americans could look at the tube and pity people in Arkansas, or NJ or Colorado over a climate-related catastrophe - whether F5 tornado, super storm with massive floods, or wildfires - is over. Everyone's turn will now be coming, and if your burg isn't featured on the nightly news this week, it might be next year.

The report notes that average temperatures already have increased 1.5 degrees in the northeast, the southwest and the great plains. This may not sound significant but it's already adversely affecting the maple syrup industry in Vermont, since the trees are not yielding their treasure at the right times, and the quality is down. In the southwest, drought and high temperatures have allowed the spread of the mountain pine beetle which has turned millions of acres of trees into tinder for wildfires. The same has happened in the great plains.

Meanwhile, the average temperature increase overall in the U.S. has been 1.9 degrees F since 1894. The effects this ongoing increase portends are remarkable, and include:

- Most of the northeast  could see two additional months of 90+ temperatures.

-The southeast will have significantly more 95F weather days and rising sea level

- More heat related deaths will occur in the Midwest with many more days hitting 100F or over

- Warmer water will threaten aquatic life in the Great Lakes. The only fish people are likely to see may be Asian Carp. Lake Huron's temperature alone rose 5 F between 1898 and 2002.

- The southwest has had its hottest decade on record with no sign of easing, which has triggered drought, insect infestation and wildfires.

- Alaska has warmed twice as rapidly as the rest of the country over the past 60 years. This has meant widespread glacier retreat.

Sea levels are projected to rise by 1- 4 feet by 2100, which means Miami Beach will be under water unless pumps or dykes are used to stop the inexorable local effects.

The report also warned on the impacts to human health, including our water supply, our crops and livestock. In the case of water, a number of communities, e.g. in Texas, are already having to recycle sewer water because reservoirs are so low. Meanwhile, with increased heat more communities face risks from cryptosporidium as well as possibly amoebic dysentery (in the more distant future). Already in Florida lakes, a form of antibiotic- resistant bacteria thrives which - if you happen to dive into one with a cut - may be the end of you.  And in earlier blogs, I already wrote of the increase in worm infestations, especially of the human brain, e.g.

I noted that the worms (mainly Taenia solium)  spend time as larvae in large cysts, which find their way into the brain and cause a condition known as neurocysticercosis. Lowball estimates suggest 5 million cases of epilepsy arising from this condition, worldwide. The numbers seem to be increasing as temperatures increase accompanied by worm -cyst invasion of the human body in many different locales. And we won't even get into the threat from tropical diseases such as dengue fever spreading northwards.


Of course the Right Wing still expressed doubts, but that is their shtick. They are more invested in ensuring their prime donors - like the Koch brothers and other oil magnates- can run rough shod over the planet, fracking and drilling, never mind leaving a wasted planet for future generations. Thus, you could find a fool and congenital asshole such as Mitch McConnell bloviating:

"This debate shouldn't be about alleviating the guilt complexes of liberal elites."

No, but it ought to be about leaving a hothouse world (with no more seasons)  to your grandchildren, who now will face parasitic infections each time they take a drink of water, as well as possibly having their brains colonized by worm cysts. Not to mention, living without a/c - since all the power girds will have collapsed after 85 straight days of 95+ temperatures. That what you want, Mitch? Really?

Then there was the fake atheist S.E. Cupp on CNN, trying her best to outwit Bill Nye and demanding:

"I want you to look me in the eye and tell me in good conscience, that climate change is our most urgent, number one priority right now."

Of course, Nye, familiar with the data as most perceptive science oriented people are, called the idiot's bluff:

"Climate change is our most urgent, number one priority right now."

The fact 1 in 4 Americans don't agree merely shows they're not paying attention. Or, perhaps a local climate catastrophe (flood, wildfire, tornado) hasn't hit them yet. Give it time! 

Physicist Michio Kaku, this morning on CBS, giving his input on the climate report stated:

"This report is dramatically different from all previous reports on climate change. Previous reports talked of climate change being in the future, maybe decades into the future. This report says, uh-uh, it's here and happening right now. We're talking about a sea change. Also, this is a home grown American study not one done by the UN."

(Kaku's obvious emphasis addressed the fact that many Right wing nuts believe the whole climate issue is based on a UN conspiracy)

The economic impact in 2012  (the warmest year on record, and 15th driest) was $100 billion alone, from droughts, super storms, and wild fires which burned 9+ million acres.. This number will only increase, and more and more homes will be threatened - whether from wild fires, floods, or storms.

Of course, Repukes dismiss the report as an "election year ploy" designed to instill fear with the upcoming elections. This is what we expect knuckle-draggers to say, and that likely includes Pastor Rick Joyner who already demonstrated his personal beliefs trumps scientific evidence.  Thus, each time his daughter presented him with a sober voice on climate issues, Joyner went on a Google binge to seek out only those sites that confirmed his existing bias.  This isn't the behavior of an inquiring mind, but rather the modus operandi of a believer, impervious to new information or evidence.

Had Joyner accompanied Leslie Stahl (in the same episode) to Greenland to actually see the ice sheets and glacier walls collapsing in real time, he might have finally seen the evidence he professed to desire so much.

Well, ok, maybe only if he was actually standing under a falling -collapsing ice mass.

For the rest of us, it's time to pay much more attention and try to do something, anything to reduce the CO2 injected into the atmosphere.

See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/05/greenland-arctic-ice-acceleratingso-why.html

How Global Warming Deniers Get the Better of American Brains

The graphic shown above depicts one of the classic examples of anti-global warming  twaddle I've encountered over the years.  The most incredible aspect is that it didn't emanate from your ordinary clueless, under-educated dummy, but from a member of Mensa. A guy by the name of Evan J. Wright. He firmly believed  I was "writing nonsense" (in one Mensa Bulletin letter) because I noted the much higher absorption of CO2 in the oceans. According to Wright: "That's preposterous! If the oceans absorbed carbon dioxide they'd all turn into carbonated liquid, or soda pop! Does anyone see that? NOOO!"

One wonders how some folks ever got into Mensa! One further wonders how Wright (and his equally know-nothing offspring, Jon Wright, who rushed to his dad's defense, equally uninformed) manage to account for the documented fact of higher acidity of the oceans, arising directly from....tada.....the absorption of enormous amount of CO2 since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. There is now about 30% higher acidity as a result of the chemical reaction: H2O + CO2 -> H2CO3, in other words, the production of carbonic acid.

But the Wright's follies are small potatoes compared to the ways the anti-global warming establishment has used well-defined tactics to attempt to bamboozle the American people. The sad fact is that they actually seem to be working given how 10-12 percent fewer Americans now accept anthropogenic global warming compared to 10 years ago. It is instructive therefore to examine some of these methods:


1) Distorting and framing Uncertainty:

This is perhaps the biggest tactic in use and has to do with what has been called 'agnotology'.  This term,  derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).  Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends .

The agnotologist and his ilk succeed once the following trope is emitted and embraced by the power structure:

‘There is still so much uncertainty, we shouldn’t invest money to solve the climate problem,’

But this is egregious on so many levels that it boggles the rational mind. First, any modern scientific pursuit must include uncertainty. Uncertainty is acknowledged every time I perform a measurement - say of the solar diameter- and express it with plus or minus kilometer values. It signifies that final measurement cannot be presumed free of measuring error which is inherent in all our physics, astronomy etc.

The matter of "too much uncertainty" is also the wrong way to look at the issue for any scientific model or measurement, because they can as easily UNDER-estimate a potential threat or occurrence as over estimate it. Let's take the case of city -busting asteroids which were the topic for discussion today on the CBS Early Show,  with physicist Michio Kaku.  Kaku reported that in fact we have had to readjust our estimates of asteroid impacts based on new observations. Where we once expected a city-buster (say one that could take out a city like New York) every 150 years, we now have to expect it such a killer every 30 years!

In a similar vein, the uncertainty attached to climate models could also be in the direction of under-reporting or under-estimating the full impacts. Thus, the uncertainty could well be such that the runaway greenhouse effect could erupt fifty to one hundred years earlier than previously thought. Or the rising of the sea level owing to melting Arctic (and Greenland) ice sheets could incept a 10m rise as opposed to a 3 m one. This is why uncertainties are expressed as plus and minus values at the end of the measurement.

My point is that the trope expressed above doesn't take into account that the uncertainty implies that the problem is more likely to be worse than expected in the absence of that uncertainty.

It is for this very reason that one would be more justified in applying Dick Cheney's "one percent solution" to the case of both asteroids and global warming. (Cheney's one percent solution was that even if there is a 1 percent chance of a terror attack we must go all out to defend against it).  The reason for adopting the 1 percent solution to climate change and asteroids is because the consequences - should the event occur - would be so horrendous that the costs of repair would vastly exceed the costs of precautionary preparation.

Uncertainty, especially as the asteroid example illustrates, is therefore a reason to do much more to protect against the occurrence as opposed to delay or doing much less.

2) Misrepresenting Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW):

This tactic has worked because too many Americans are not aware of the real consensus among real climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is a FACT that must be acted upon. Perhaps the first researcher to scientifically and statistically establish this was science historian Naomi Oreskes - who first published an initial survey of global warming literature, entitled  “Beyond The Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.”

Oreskes analyzed “928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords ‘climate change.’” She found that 75 percent of papers accepted the consensus view “either explicitly or implicitly,” while “25 percent dealt with methods or paleoclimate,” and took no position on AGW.  Remarkably, she found that none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.  

Later studies have found a small sliver of dissenting views, but the more the consensus has been studied, the sturdier it appears, while the dissenting literature is dogged with repeated problems. For example, in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22 , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

A 2010 paper, Expert credibility in climate change, reconfirmed the 97 percent consensus figure, and found that “the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC [or AGW] are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.” A 2013 paper, Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, examined “11,944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011” and found that “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position,” while a parallel self-rating survey found that “97.2 percent endorsed the consensus.”

Despite that, another Mensan (what's with these characters?) Marty Nemko, in a prominent Mensa Bulletin piece in 2010, actually posed these questions:

- Why does the media imply that the IPCC report reflects the consensus of thousands of scientists, when – as reported by CNN – there are dissenting scientists, like Richard Lindzen of MIT?

- If there’s consensus, why on Dec. 20, 2007, did the U.S.  Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Policy issue a report that 400 scientists now believe the evidence doesn’t support that “consensus"?

Nemko interprets “consensus” in these questions to mean 100% agreement, but this isn’t the case at all.  A consensus in the accepted English definition means the concurrence of an overwhelming majority. We have always known a certain minority hard core of scientists (the contrarians – who probably want more attention than being lumped in with others) have existed. People like S. Fred Singer of the University of Virginia and Richard Lindzen of MIT.  These outlier oddballs will always exist because it's in their interest to object, since either they are part- funded by the fossil fuel industry (Singer) or they are able to carve out a contrarian niche in a field otherwise dominated by concurrence (Lindzen).

But by confusing the meaning of "consensus" they seek to try to make the public believe the issue isn't settled when it is.  It would be analogous to a fundie claiming there's no consensus that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old because a few oddball naysayers, like Jason Lisle and D. Russell Humphreys, choose to differ. This despite the fact that we can actually use radioactive decay to obtain an excellent estimate that puts the Earth's age at 4 1/2 billion years.

As for Nemko's second question, the answer ought to be obvious: it's because the Senate is largely comprised of people who lack any credentials in climate science – and hence are not informed or educated enough to offer a professional scientific opinion – only a political one. Thus, they would not have been able to recognize that most of the 400 scientists "who don't believe the evidence supports a consensus" were not climate scientists.

3) Conspiracist ideation in science rejection:

To summarize this one: when all else has failed in trying to knock down a scientific consensus, then pull out the conspiracy card.  Indeed, when one looks at the history of science denial, there is plenty of evidence that a firm scientific consensus drives deniers into postulating conspiracy — from the opposition to tobacco and industrial chemicals and contamination (as in the Erin Brockovich case) to climate change.

Thus, for the firm climate change consensus, the rejoinder is : "CONSPIRACY! All the scientists are in it together that's why they agree!"   Of course, these pinheads will then look for any supporting "evidence" to support their whacky claims, and no surprise they found it - or what they wrongly thought qualified - in the leaked emails some years ago at East Anglia, and the Univ. of Pennsylvania, which became known as "climate gate".   (Think of Watergate, as in Watergate conspiracy.)

Fortuitously, a voice of reason soon sounded. It arrived with Myles Allen of Oxford University and delivered in a  public comment (Financial Times, July 29, 2010) that it was clear from the accumulated work of climate scientists that human-engendered greenhouse gases was the problem. and in his words (ibid.):

"Climategate never really brought climate science into question at all."

In other words, a storm in a teacup. No "conspiracy" at all. The product of a paranoid embolism erupting in the brains of the ....paranoid!   The leaked emails themselves were simply attributed to an understandable hyper-reactionist tendency in the scientists - tired of seeing their work maimed and misrepresented by the flat Earthers.


A second reason conspiracist ideation crops up  and is invoked in resisting science is that it has greater explanatory reach than science, because it’s not constrained by “the criteria of consistency and coherence that characterize scientific reasoning.”  The recent news that according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll  51 percent question the Big Bang theory discloses that scientific reasoning is alien to most 'Muricans. Indeed, I doubt that any of those who question the Big Bang theory even took a high school physics course.

Getting down to cases, it's interesting that as one salon.com source put it:

“Deniers will claim in the same breath (or within a few minutes) that (a) temperatures cannot be measured reliably, (b) there is definitely no warming, (c) the warming isn’t caused by humans, and (d) we are doing ourselves a favor by warming the planet. The four propositions are incoherent because they cannot all be simultaneously true — and yet deniers will utter all those in close succession all the time.”

Yet, any such string of statements ought to be obviously incoherent to any critical thinker - even one who's never taken a physics course. For example, if (a) is granted as true then how in the hell can (b) be accepted? If you can't measure temperatures reliably how can you assert "there's definitely no warming"?   And if you grant that statement (c) is true - warming exists but not human-caused, how can you also assert (b) is true? It's total poppycock!

Finally, conspiracist ideation is also  immune to falsification, because contradictory evidence (e.g., climate scientists associated with 'climategate' being exonerated of accusations) can be accommodated by broadening the scope of the conspiracy (exonerations are a whitewash), often with considerable creativity.

Until and unless we can effectively parry these tactics it will become increasingly difficult to get the public to support concerted action.