A Medley of Potpourri

Monday, December 9, 2013

Climate Change Opens the Arctic to Climate Disaster -- Think Again

December 9, 2013

The Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise, center, is anchored side by side with a Russian Coast Guard ship, left, near Murmansk, Russia on Oct. 9, 2013. Thirty Greenpeace activists and freelance journalists were initially charged with piracy after protesting at an oil platform in the Arctic. (AP Photo/ Evgeny Feldman)

As climate change transforms our planet and the polar ice caps recede, new, previously inaccessible areas of the Arctic are opening up for business. Ironically, a notable amount of that business has to do with extracting and transporting the fossil fuels that drive climate change.

In September, a large freighter made it through the Northwest Passage, traveling from Vancouver, BC, to Finland. It was the first vessel of its type to ever make the journey and demonstrated the potential to cut costs and shipping times using the new route. The ship was carrying coal for use by a steel producer. (soon it will be using natural gas -- David Strumfels)

Elsewhere in the Arctic, the Northern Sea Route (NSR), a passage maintained by Russian nuclear-powered ice breakers (which is perfect from a climate change perspective -- David Strumfels), saw 71 vessels pass through it. According to the Russian fleet, that figure is up 50 percent from last year. As recently as 2010, only four vessels made the voyage between the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia and Western Russia, and the Bering Strait, between Siberia and Alaska. While the mandatory icebreaker escort costs, on average, $200,000 per voyage, NSR is becoming an increasingly viable shipping path from Europe to Asia — an alternative route, through the Suez Canal, would have taken two weeks longer. Supertankers carrying crude oil were among the most common vessels making the crossing.

DJ Strumfels -- has it also occurred to you that the polar passages are preferred because they are shorter and hence consume less fuel, fossil or otherwise?

Though summer ice cover in the Arctic has dropped by more than 40 percent over the past few decades, shipping companies remain divided over the promise of Arctic shipping. “It’s early days,” Gary Li, a senior maritime analyst with IHS in Beijing, told the Financial Times. “The Northern Sea Route probably needs another 20 or 30 years of climate change to make it fully viable. And even then, it’s got so many constraints.”

But the Arctic is seeing an increase in other new business as well. It is rich in fossil fuels. Experts guess that 22 percent of the world’s remaining undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie below ice at the top of the globe. One US Geological Survey study estimated that 43 of the 61 significant arctic oil and gas fields are in Russian territory, and the country has been ramping up fossil fuel exploration since 2008. Norway, Greenland, Canada and the US have followed suit.

DJS -- Get the facts. No comment needed here.

It’s an issue that came into national focus this year when Greenpeace activists and freelance journalists were arrested by Russia and charged with piracy while attempting to board the first oil platform to drill in the Arctic Circle. The charges were later reduced to “hooliganism” and the activists were released.

In the US, Shell Oil began exploring for oil up north in 2012. But after a drilling rig ran aground and the company encountered a slew of other problems — including fines for air pollution — it suspended its operations in 2013. They may remain suspended through 2014 as well.

In an attempt to control access to these new shipping routes and natural resources, nations are also moving to gain military influence in the Arctic. In 2007, a Russian submarine planted a titanium Russian flag at the base of the North Pole. And in September of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the country was re-opening a Soviet-era military base in the Arctic, abandoned for two decades, to help support (and secure) the region’s sea lanes and natural resources. Canada is also holding an increasing number of military drills in the Arctic and is looking at stationing a permanent force there. Norway and the US are watching the region closely.

DJS -- OK here I agree with you about this.

But the jockeying for control of the region — to the point of countries establishing military bases — makes shipping executives concerned about routes like the NSR. “One thing that makes me nervous is that this route is in Russia’s hands,” a Norwegian shipping executive told the Financial Times. “If they suddenly want to triple rates or impose this condition or that condition, they can.”

And there’s a further irony: the effects of climate change could present new impediments to shipping and drilling in the region, like unpredictable weather.

Environmental groups are opposed to tapping Arctic fossil fuels that will in turn contribute to continuing climate change. Advocates point to the disastrous effect that pollution — in one worst-case scenario, an oil spill — could have on animal and human populations.

DJS -- all this shows is that "environmental groups" are no better informed than you, and deserve the same amount of audience.

“Even the best-prepared, best-equipped and most technologically advanced oil company has no business drilling for oil in the Arctic,” Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in June. “It is simply not possible to do it safely here.” (DJS -- He just knows this, of course. “It is simply not possible to do it safely here.” is a vacuous non sequitur. No energy -- that's right, no -- is perfectly safe.)

David Strumfels Comments Further:

Thank you, Professor Light. We'll all just burn wood and coal and see how that works out for 7+ billion people on this planet. Do you think even a billion will survive you're regressive policies? Don't you care?! On the other hand, if we find (and we probably will) lots of natural gas, we can replace coal with it, saving tens of thousands of lives per year (you're hearing this right, just check the facts) and drastically reducing CO2 emissions and potential further warming.

US Gun vs. Traffic Deaths (2010) -- from Mother Jones magazine

Are Wormholes Everywhere?

Posted by Greg Kestin on Mon, 09 Dec 2013

In a universe where faster-than-light travel isn’t possible, wormholes—hypothetical shortcuts across spacetime that link one part of the universe with another —give hope to romantics who wish to jump millions of light years in a single bound. But are wormholes more than a sci-fi portal to zip us between galaxies? Recent research suggests that they actually describe microscopic channels between particles all around us.

An artist's impression of a large wormhole

As far-out as wormholes sound, they are described by of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the same theory that describes the force of gravity. General relativity expresses gravity as the smooth bending of space and time. For example, the sun creates a dimple in the fabric of spacetime; the planets “roll” around the periphery of the dimple. A wormhole is more than a dimple, though. It is like a tunnel between two parallel sheets of spacetime.
The details about wormholes remain fuzzy, but new research suggests that they may be fundamentally related to quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon where pair of objects are bound together. No matter how far apart they fly, they will “know” about each other—even if they are on opposite sides of the galaxy. Which, when you think about it, sounds a lot like a wormhole.
A pair of independent teams arrived at the same conclusion. Here’s Katia Moskvitch, writing for AAAS Science Now:

Kristan Jensen of the University of Victoria in Canada and Andreas Karch of the University of Washington, Seattle, start by imagining an entangled quark-antiquark pair residing in ordinary 3D space, as they described online on 20 November in Physical Review Letters. The two quarks rush away from each other, approaching the speed of light so that it becomes impossible to pass signals from one to the other. The researchers assume that the 3D space where the quarks reside is a hypothetical boundary of a 4D world. In this 3D space, the entangled pair is connected by a kind of conceptual string. But in the 4D space, the string becomes a wormhole.
Julian Sonner of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge then builds upon Karch’s and Jensen’s work. He imagines a quark-antiquark pair that pops into existence in a strong electric field, which then sends the oppositely charged particles accelerating in opposite directions. Sonner also finds that the entangled particles in the 3D world are connected by a wormhole in the 4D world, as he also reported online on 20 November in Physical Review Letters.

Such pairs of particles are ubiquitous, though we don’t know for certain whether wormholes exist between them. For now, these findings remain theoretical. We haven’t even found hard evidence of large wormholes yet, let alone microwormholes. Both remain hypothetical objects of thought experiments, but as we learned from Einstein, such musings can lead to great revolutions in physics.

RDFRS: Adversarial Journalism and The Selfish Gene

The benefits of realising you're just a brain - opinion - 29 November 2013 - New Scientist

DANGER: RADIOACTIVE – Do Not Drink More than 63,000 Gallons of Water

A lot of the below, though not all, Dr. Robinson (and his predecessor, Petr Beckmann) and I are quite in agreement on. If you read it with an open mind -- this could take some effort -- you just might too. He is, after all, the scientist who discovered Pauling's work on vitamin C a sham -- and was banished and his research destroyed because of it.

My name is Art Robinson. I am Professor of Chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and I publish a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise monthly newsletter, Access to Energy, which in September 1997 began its twenty fifth year. Access to Energy was founded by Professor Petr Beckmann in 1973 and published by him until his death in 1993.
As for those 63,000 gallons, our readers know why they are safe. We don’t ask them to trust and parrot us, we ask them to think.

In this case, we told them how much radioactive iodine 131 is given to a healthy patient in a thyroid check: up to 90 microcuries (a cancer patient is given much more). And we reported the maximum measured activity in rainwater washing out Chernobyl’s iodine over the US: 0.00036 microcuries per liter. There is about 4 liters to the gallon; hence 63,000 gallons of “contaminated” rain water “full of fallout” will give you as much radioactive iodine as you get when you have your thyroid checked.
Does that tiny grain of knowledge make you feel good?

It should, because America’s news media and largest periodicals don’t have it.
They work by the T&P (trust and parrot) method. They may differ in whom to trust and parrot; but they share a common inability to evaluate. They will find two opposing viewpoints and manufacture a “controversy;” for they think objectivity lies halfway between the truth and a lie (or worse, between two lies).

In the Three Mile Island episode, Access to Energy pointed out at the time that the accident would cost more than one life per week: not from any radiation, but in the fuel cycle of the substitute power, mostly coal-fired, that had to be brought in to replace the safer and healthier way of generating electric power nuclear power.

In the Chernobyl accident, too, we pointed out that in its short life of 25 months, Chernobyl Unit 4 saved more lives from coal-fired pollution than it took, or will ever take, by radiation. And we gave the reasons why the Soviets did not even bother to dilute contaminated wheat with grain from elsewhere. “A little cesium and strontium gave the Russians a more varied diet; for unlike Markey, Solarz, Schroeder and the other antinuclear breast beaters in Congress, the Soviets care only about visible deaths.”

But Access to Energy is not just about nuclear energy (which is merely a very blatant target of superstition mongering). It is about the truth and how to arrive at it in scientific fields.
In all other cases of irrational panic, Access to Energy gives reasons, not parroted hunches, for its conclusions; and it tells you where you can check them independently.

If you think these reasons are unimportant compared with the political need of distributing research grants and humoring the sham environmentalists, support the efforts of the EPA and the State Department to ban “ozone-destroying” chemicals. (Not sure I agree here -- David Strumfels.)

If you think corporations can be taxed without passing the tax to the consumer, join Ralph Nader in soaking the rich. (I think he's out of date here. David Strumfels)

If you are looking for somebody to trust and parrot, get your opinions ready-made from the network newscasters and newspaper analysts, who are mostly trusting and parroting each other.

But if you want to form an opinion by rational conclusion from measured data, subscribe to Access to Energy.

Home-school culture shifting away from religious ties

David J Strumfels I see the academic advantages of home-schooling (if done well), but I worry these kids won't get the social education -- just as important -- that they need. Home-schooling parents must make sure their kids don't become socially isolated.

Home-schooling has risen among secular students in recent years. A 2013 National Center for Education Statistics study showed home-schoolers no longer list religion as their top reason for schooling from home.

Gerry Broome, Associated Press

Summary

Eric Peschel and his family have different reasons for home-schooling.
One of his sons was taken out of public school for religious reasons and bullying. Another is taught at home because the public education system wasn't working for Peschel. His daughter was home-schooled too, but "bonding issues" caused the Peschels to put their daughter back into public school.
“Just seeing the difference between what is being taught in public school versus our school, it’s not even close,” Peschel said. “They’re not even close in the vocabulary they’re teaching, the math they’re teaching. It’s off the charts different.”
Though home-schooling has been a historically popular choice for religious conservatives, it's becoming more common among secular students. A National Center for Education Statistics study showed home-schoolers no longer list religion as their top reason for opting out of public or private schools. More than 91 percent see the environment as a reason to home-school, while 64 percent (about 692,299 students) see religion as an important reason to home-school. In 1999, about 327,000 students were home-schooled for religious reasons.
And home-schooling has been on the rise, too. More than a decade ago in 1999, about 850,000 students were home-schooled, which was nearly half of the 1,770,000 home-schooled students reported for the 2011-2012 school year, according to the NCES.
Between bullying worries and lack of belief in the public education system, many parents choose home-schooling to avoid these problems, experts say.
“I’ve seen some remarkable quality educations given to home-school kids in remarkable ways,” said John Edelson, founder and president of Time4Learning, a home-school curriculum organization. “While I see that in public schools, too, parents are a lot more resourceful to give kids quality educations.”
But as home-schooling becomes more popular, it also faces added scrutiny. In Nebraska, the Department of Education is looking to add new stipulations to track attendance for home-schoolers, which requires parents to fill out more paperwork. Other parents worry about the influence Common Core Standards is already having on their ability to shape curriculum to the needs of their children. For many, taking back control of their child's education is a fight that only continues.
A new market
Edelson of Time4Learning said there are three types of home-schoolers: religious people, free thinkers and “accidental home-schoolers,” who are “pragmatically doing what’s best for their kids.”
Because of this, academies that cater to home-schoolers or companies like Time4Learning have to adapt.
Edelson offers students a non-religious curriculum that is part online and part offline. It begins with an opening discussion, then 30 minutes of computer work and 30 minutes of desk work throughout the day.
It's a way of tapping into a new market of virtual home-schoolers, who are on the rise too, Edelson said. Instead of using the traditional method of hiring a home-school teacher, some parents want to enroll their children in an online education system, which they can also do from home, Edelson said.
Jessica Parnell, principal of Bridgeway Home School Academy, which offers curriculum for home-schooling parents, is also marketing itself in new ways by including mainstream and secular curriculums as a way to bring in families who want to avoid religious teachings.
Global Village School, a home-schooling organization that offers online and text-based curriculum, decided to shift its marketing focus in recent months toward secular students due to demand, said Gretchen Buck, the school's manager. She said part of this increased interest in home-schooling is from parents who think their children aren't getting enough attention in public schools.
“We’re not looking to fit all the square pegs in little round holes,” she said of her company's curriculum.
Peschel said public schools also don't have the materials and resources for optimal learning, like textbooks or writing utensils. Sometimes students can't take home a textbook to further develop their understanding, leaving them with less homework and less time to study.
“You want them to learn the material, but the only time they can learn it is when they’re in the class,” Peschel said.
Parnell agreed.
“They’re just not being helped,” Parnell said. “They’re getting passed along."
Another reason for the rise in new home-schoolers is because parents don’t see the traditional classroom setting as helpful for their children, Buck said.
“It doesn’t fit them, and they don’t do well at a traditional desk,” she said.
Parents, then, are taking it upon themselves to start teaching, Parnell said, as they believe they can teach their children better than public school teachers.
"Parents are saying, ‘I want control back,’ ” Parnell said.
In many cases, home-schooling parents will choose to home-school as a “last resort,” Edelson said, when the traditional educational system isn’t working.
“They get all fired up when they get into it and see the possibilities," Edelson said.

Email: hscribner@deseretnews.com Twitter: @hscribner