ROCKY REX'S SCIENCE BITES

As the world warms, rocks that have ice in fractures and cracks begin to fall apart; ice that was solid begins to have meltwater running through channels in the ice mass.    In glaciated regions all rock is a composite of rock and ice, because all rock contains fissures (visible and/or microscopic) and water in those fissures freezes. Any warming causes some melting, which weakens the composite and lubricates any movable surface with meltwater.  At some point the structural integrity of the rock and ice is reduced to the point where there's a catastrophic failure.   In this case, the rock gave way, and part of the glacier sitting on it fell with it. Up to 200 million tonnes of material crashed down a 1 kilometre cliff into a valley, creating a churned up mess of water and pulverised rock, travelling downhill at speed. https://showyourstripes.info/c/asia/nepal/all/

The Green parties around the world are the only political movements that have always understood that "PEOPLE and PLANET" is the most important relationship, more important than countries and economics.  The relationship between "people and planet" has broken down, and the planet's systems have the casting vote. It's time to reset that relationship. . Our system gives no value to global commons such as the atmosphere, the forests, or the oceans, because they are not seen as "scarce commodities". Let's consider a nice old ancient oak tree as a microcosm of the problem. The oak tree has no value if it just goes on photosynthesising, providing a habitat for a whole ecosystem of species, just being a tree. It only has value if it is cut down, the wood is sold, and the land cleared for development. Why? Because there's a built-in idea that the natural world is effectively infinite, there's no scarcity value. And of course "leaving things...

 

 

A photo of the Earth and its atmosphere, taken during the Gemini 5 mission [Aug. 21–29, 1965] The photo includes a view of the lower tip of Baja California and Bahia de la Paz.

THE GOOD ANCESTOR by Daverick Leggett Every day I walk a hundred years to the hill where my great great granddaughter sits. I carry words of blessing and reach to touch her back But feeling me near she turns sad eyed and heavy with grief “What was it like?” she asks “when the great whales swam when the birds sang you awake when the rains came soft and the soil smelled sweet underfoot?” And the blessings catch in my throat On darker days she turns, her famished face charred and eyes, sunk in their bony orbits, burn with curses. And the blessings froth at my mouth with the poisonous spume of betrayal On the darkest of all days I walk the hundred years and find no one there Let today be the bright day. Let today be the bright day I lay my hand upon her back And, feeling me there, she turns and blesses me, saying “Your love was fierce enough, sweet ancestor, your love was fierce enough”

Here's a statement from a UK scientist, made after 5 climate protesters were sent to prison for years. It's long. I’m Dr Tristram Wyatt, Senior research fellow in Biology at the University of Oxford. I’m here on behalf of scientists outraged by this trial. I’d like to begin by reading you Professor Bill McGuire’s response to Judge Hehir’s rulings in the case. He’s not pulling his punches: ● “My name is Bill McGuire and I'm Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL. ● I provided the expert testimony in support of the defendants in last week's conspiracy 5 trial. ● It goes without saying that the trial and the verdict were a farce, marked a low point in British justice, and were an assault on free speech. ● The judge’s characterisation of climate breakdown as a 'matter of opinion and belief' is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. ● Similarly, to suggest that the climate emergency is 'irrelevant' in relation...

In science correlation + mechanism = evidence of a causative relationship Is there a correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures? Here is a 500 million year correlation https://media.springernature.com/.../426313_1_En_1_Fig1... Is there a correlation between anthropogenic CO2 and global temperatures. Here is a 250 year correlation between the two. http://berkeleyearth.org/.../03/results-plot-volcanoes.jpg What is the mechanism for CO2 a a greenhouse gas? That mechanism has been known for 2 centuries. https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm Here is an explanation of the mechanism of the "greenhouse effect". https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/.../intro_atmo_chem... How do we know the increase in CO2 is anthropogenic? Carbon isotope analysis of the ratios of C14, C13 and C12 traces the 50% increase in CO2 since the mid 18th century to the burning of fossil fuels https://www.climate.gov/.../how-do-we-know-build-carbon... What about natural forcings? Natural forcings wou...

  From  https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ Arctic sea ice area changes with the seasons, but there is a long-term decline*, caused by global warming. Most scientific sources suggest there might be a few days of "ice-free" conditions in the Arctic Ocean one summer around mid-century. Ice-free sea (being darker) absorbs heat, while ice reflects heat. Progressively over time, more "ice-free" days are likely, on average.  But what exactly does an "ice-free Arctic Ocean" mean? For measurement purposes, researchers divide the ocean up into small cells. The data cells are 25 km by 25 km. If there is more than 15% ice on a cell, it counts as an "ice-covered" cell. If there is less than 15% ice on a cell, it counts as "ice-free". At some time, the Arctic Ocean one September will meet the 'ice-free' criterion - each cell will be counted as ice-free as long as there is less than 15% ice in the cell. But an 'ice-free' Arctic Ocean ...

Useful graphics    From the following source, where there is plenty of additional material: https://www.wri.org/insights/2023-ipcc-ar6-synthesis-report-climate-change-findings Also:   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/humanity-at-climate-crossroads-highway-to-hell-or-a-livable-future IPCC links.....  (1) Press Release: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/press/IPCC_AR6_SYR_PressRelease_en.pdf (2) Headline Statements: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/resources/spm-headline-statements (3)  Slide-show: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SlideDeck.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1FD9sBJGgFBiDgC_ioAoM2t8qGqj4XktnYP4nwMY1IlLVNfGrxHPrF5Qw

1800-1870  Level of carbon dioxide gas (CO 2 ) in the atmosphere, as later measured in  ancient ice , was about 290 ppm (parts per million). Global temperature for 1850-1870 was about 13.6°C. 1824 Jean-Baptiste Joseph F ourier  calculated that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere.  1856 Eunice Foote   describes filling glass jars with water vapour, carbon dioxide and air, and comparing how much they heated up in the sun. “The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in carbonic acid gas,”    “The receiver containing the gas became itself much heated – very sensibly more so than the other – and on being removed, it was many times as long in cooling.” 1859 John Tyndall  discovered that some gases block infra-red radiation.  He suggested that  changes in the concentration of the gases  could bring  climate change . 1896  Arrhenius  published the first calculation of global warming from huma...

The climate can react to sudden shocks. The weather in  1816  was very strange.    Spring arrived, but then everything seemed to turn backward, as cold temperatures returned.   The sky seemed permanently overcast.  T he lack of sunlight became so  severe that farmers lost their crops.    Food shortages were reported in Ireland, France, England, and the United States. 1816 became known as  "The Year without a Summer"  or "18-hundred-and-frozen-to-death". It was over 100 years before anyone understood the reason for this weather disaster.    The eruption of an enormous volcano on a remote island in the Indian Ocean a year earlier had  thrown enormous amounts of volcanic ash  into the upper atmosphere. The dust from  Mount Tambora , which had erupted in early April 1815, had shrouded the globe.  With sunlight blocked, 1816 did not have a normal summer.   In Switzerland, the dismal summer of ...

"Carbon Burps" ?? What are Carbon Burps? They are sudden releases of carbon from ancient rocks. They show up in the geological record as changes in geochemistry (so they are found by using fairly complex laboratory tests on rocks) They are associated with extinction events, but the scale of extinction varies a lot. The most extreme geological example of events like this is the end-Permian , when igneous activity broke through coal seams in Siberia. The interaction of hot magma and coal produced lots of CO2. The end-Permian event reduced oceanic biodiversity by about 92%. Recovery of biodiversity took about 10 million years - the fossil record from the next part of geological time, the early Triassic, is very thin. Messing with planetary systems isn't wise. One event with possibly closer similarities to what we are doing was about 56 million years ago, the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum . The PETM mechanism (according to some good research) involved volcanic action bre...

What do scientists mean by the " Greenhouse Effect "? When the Sun's energy arrives at the Earth, it travels through the air. Some is reflected back to space, but some hits the Earth and warms it. The warm Earth gives off  infrared radiation  with various wavelengths.   Some of those waves can pass back out of the air to space, but some are absorbed by certain gases in the air. The gases then re-emit the energy into the air. If there are more of those gases, less heat escapes into space. An extreme case has happened on Venus. Concentrated  'greenhouse gases'  on Venus have caused the surface temperature to rise to 735  Kelvin  (462 degrees C; around 900 degrees F) Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen quickly  since people began burning large quantities of fossil fuels. There was carbon dioxide in the air before that, at around 270 parts per million. Without any carbon dioxide, the Earth would be very cold. The temperature would be ar...