The Homely Scientist

Illustration Credit: NSIDC

The National Snow and Ice Data Center here in Boulder has collected data from the 2007 melting season and discovered:

At the end of the melt season, September 2007 sea ice was 39 percent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 (Full Press Release).

These guys watch the ice from all over the planet using satellites with microwave radiometers along with meteorological satellites to get an idea of how much ice there is. Then, as the year progresses, measure how much of it is melting or growing.

In the northern hemisphere, as fall begins, the melting season ends and scientists are beginning to take stock of the damage. The results are pretty disturbing. Arctic sea ice melted so much this year that the northwest passage was opened for the first time ever. What’s more, researchers now think that we may have an ice-free arctic ocean in the summer within our lifetimes:

The sea ice cover is in a downward spiral and may have passed the point of no return. As the years go by, we are losing more and more ice in summer, and growing back less and less ice in winter. We may well see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes. The scientists agree that this could occur by 2030. (Full Press Release)

It was also reported in EOS last week that the Greenland melting season set a new record, with a melting index up 153% greater than average. The melting index is just a number, defined as the melting area times the number of days melting occurred.

Image Credit: AGU/EOS

Technorati Tags: Arctic Sea Ice, greenland ice sheet, NSIDC

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 Yes I know that driving your car isn’t the best thing to do for the environment–or your wallet.  I was passed a link to a Sympatico article with 10 easy things to do to save both fuel and money.  This really easy stuff.  Air pressure in your tires, oil changes, not speeding, keeping a constant speed.  Easy.  I also like using cruise control as much as I can.  Cruise let the engine get into a good steady cruising mode, and by not changing speed you aren’t forcing the engine to rev up and down.

Read the tips and try putting at these a couple in practice this week.

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In case you weren’t aware, The Bay of Fundy has some of the largest tidal variations in the world.  The amount of energy that passes through there is absolutely tremendous.  Having seen the tidal bore–as standing wave of rising tide that is the only true “tidal wave”–first hand, well yeah, it’s freakin’ impressive.  A turbine is being planned for testing in a couple years:

According to local legend in Atlantic Canada, a giant whale in ancient times made such a splash with his mighty tail that the water in the Bay of Fundy sloshes back and forth to this day.

Getting power from that giant splash could be only a couple of years away, as the Nova Scotia government appointed Offshore Energy Environmental Research group just completed a round of six community forums on tidal power in the bay.

Nova Scotia Power has already partnered with Ireland’s OpenHydro Group to provide in-stream underwater turbines and expects to have a 1 megawatt demonstration unit in the water in 2009. Source: Nova Scotia looks at tidal power | Inside Greentech

Honestly I hope this gets off the ground.  It’s a simple thing that could help reduce the need for fossil-fuel powered generation and pressure to fire up more nuclear power plants.

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This came out last week I think.  Turns out the folks at the Goddard Institute made a bad assumption about their data and got called on it:

The Goddard Institute claimed that the cause of the error was a switch to a new data-collection system in 2000. This led to an incorrect assumption that the old and new methods matched, which was proved to be untrue.

According to latest figures, 1934 is now the hottest year on record in the US at 1.25C higher than normal. 1998, the previous front-runner, is now second at 1.23C, followed by 1921 at 1.15C.

The old system put 1998 first, with 1.24C above normal, with 1934 at 1.23C. Next was 2006, now relegated to fourth place, which was placed at 1.23C. Source: Blogger proves Nasa wrong on climate change - Times Online

Now before you start the “see I told you so…” stuff the variation as hundredths and thousandths of a degree different.  Almost, IMHO, within the range of error.  However, that being said, this doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening.

We all know it is.  Climate data are extremely variable and looking at just one factor isn’t going to give you the whole picture.  Looking at ice sheets, plant and ecosystem changes, animal migration patterns.  Together these give a bigger picture.  And it ain’t a pretty one.  I have a long-ish post in my head on climate analogues … essentially explaining what my area of study was.

Maybe later this week I’ll write it up.  Gotta find my old data … which if you can find it online (it is online) and put a link in the comments … well I’ll give you Google points (no prizes right now, sorry … although I have a cool book on electricity!).  That’s it.  First person who puts a link in the comments to my masters thesis data gets my review copy of Much ado about almost nothing … which is a book I’m almost done reading and is a really interesting look at the history of electricity.

Here’s a hint … my data is with NOAA.

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 Think of all the small, free-standing structures you see in a given day.  Bus stops, small sheds, fixed awnings.  They are put there to keep sun (yes and rain, I know) off people.  What about the roofs of those structures?  Looks like there could be a product that will let us take advantage of a lot of small surfaces and use them as solar collectors:

Soliant’s primary customer is commercial building owners but the company’s product design is flexible enough that it has developed a specialized solar-power generator for car parks, or roofs that shade cars during the day.

“One thing we realized about a year ago was that we could make very large panels, which is something that ordinary solar panels can’t do,” said company CEO Brad Hines.

The company’s traditional “heliotube” concentrator, which is meant to be the same size as traditional solar panels, has 10 tubes that shine light onto solar cells.

To make a product to shade cars it used the same basic design, but by stringing together 16 tubes, Soliant makes the panel a little over 8 feet long, said Hines. The company is planning to ship its commercial products by the end of this year. Source: Solar power while you park the car | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

I know I’m sounding like a broken record here, but it’s these kinds of simple innovations that can add up to the big stuff.  Heck I saw one today on GearLive’s unboxing–instead of having a screensaver come on after five minutes, just have the screen turn off then.  Simple, easy and will save a lot of power … a lot.

Let’s just brainstorm and think of more things … like what about micro-hydropower generators in downspouts?  Out here when it rains, it rains.  Why not use the power of the water going down the drain pipe generate a little power.  If nothing else they could charge batteries to power outside lights.

Together I know we can work through this.

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While coastal upwelling is generally a good thing, like many things in nature, you can have too much of a good thing.  In this case the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich deep water causes not only a plankton bloom, but the death and decomposition of the buggers have a dark side:

Unlike the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, which is caused by fertilizer washing down the Mississippi River, the Oregon dead zone is triggered by northerly winds, which create an ocean-mixing condition called upwelling.

This brings low-oxygen waters from deep in the ocean close to shore, and spreads nitrogen and other nutrients through the water column, kicking off a population boom of plankton, the tiny plants and animals at the foundation of the ocean food web.

Normally, this is good for salmon, giving them lots of food to eat. But when huge amounts of plankton die, they fall to the bottom of the ocean, where they decompose, depleting the water of oxygen. Source: Wired News - AP News

How is this connected to global warming?  It’s all in the winds.  Stronger northerly winds cause the upwelling.  Stronger winds come from the increased energy in the whole system because the Earth is getting warmer.  Remember a large portion of our climate and weather is powered by heat.  Hotter, more energy, more energy, stronger winds and storms ….. and so on.

Is it too late?  Frankly I don’t think so, if you think in geologic time.  Pity is that humans might not be around to see things work out.  Or maybe that’s a good thing.

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Nice to start off the week with some good news:

The wind power industry made big strides last year, according to a Worldwatch Institute report released late Thursday.

15,200 megawatts of new wind turbines were installed around the world last year, representing a 26 percent jump in global wind power capacity, according to the study.

By year’s end, total wind power capacity exceeded 74,200 megawatts, enough to offset 43 million tons of carbon dioxide, the institute said. Source:Study: Wind power soared in 2006 | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

Large-scale deployment and adoption of any alternative energy is the key.  Once it hits that magic tipping point, then things just move on their own.  Costs decrease, technology improves by leaps and bounds.  I’d wager that wind-power has hit that point now.  Solar energy is close to that point.  The technologies are improving and with examples like Google’s solar array, I can see reaching that tipping point soon.

Heck, I think the idea of solar panels on laptop bags (which has been done) will start to catch on more.  Imagine charging your gear as you take a walk … double carbon savings!  Use the sun to charge the device (not the Grid) and not use a vehicle!

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Need a daily dose of ideas to help save energy (and the planet…but that is such a huge concept, too distant for many…stick to stuff closer to home and you)?  Check out LiveEarth’s Twitter feed:

Shading windows. It can lower your home’s temperature and reduce your cooling costs by 30%. Source: Twitter / LiveEarth070707

This tip is especially good right now as the hottest part of the summer is coming our way in the Northern Hemisphere (the Dog Day … which are named such because Sirius the Dog Star become visible this time of year).  Another great one is to put a fan at the top of the stairs to your cellar (if you have one) to bring cold air up from there.

The LiveEarth concert is this weekend.  I’m going to try to listen to it as much as possible, but since it should be a nice weekend I think I’m going to get everyone out of the house for some fun.

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About 10,000 years ago humans started domesticating plants and animals–commonly called the Agricultural Revolution.  In doing this people had to stop their nomadic/hunter-gatherer ways and settle down.  Yes, animals were domesticated first in all likelihood–much easier to move your cow/sheep/goat/horse/dog with you as you move than a patch of grains growing.

Settling down and the development of agriculture is generally seen as the first step to modern human society.  People found they had time to do other things and the need to invent things (plows, pumps, more and different tools)–it all started from there.

One of the big questions has always been why would they do this anyway?  Hunter-gatherers have more leisure time than farmers.  They eat just as well.   But that’s now, what about 10,00 years ago?  What was happening then.  10,000 years ago the Earth’s climate was moving from a glacial to interglacial state.  Ice sheets were retreating, sea level was fluctuating, the atmosphere was changing, and it was getting warmer.  All together these factors might have been the catalyst to make stopping in one place to grow food a better survival option than continuing to wander about.

Via Arstechnica and Wired there is research that is putting these pieces together:

It ends up with the big mystery: why did people suddenly think domesticating plants was a good idea? The 10,000 year figure is suspiciously close to the rapid climactic changes that accompanied the end of the last ice age, suggesting that changing temperatures might have disrupted food supplies enough to make domestic plants essential. The end of the ice age also pushed atmospheric carbon levels up by nearly 50 percent, which may have triggered favorable changes in the plants themselves. But it ends on an enigmatic note: maybe there was something cultural going on that we may never be able to reconstruct….” Source: Beyond the Beyond - Wired Blogs

This will be a hard thing to prove, but the work I used to do in paleoecology would be used to try to understand what was going on.  Building models and profiles of how vegetation was changing one could start to see if some areas were suddenly better for some plants over others.  And if the plants that do better can be eaten, well you can see where this is going.

Implications for now is how fast this can happen.  What happens if areas that are breadbaskets now become deserts later?  Would we be ready to start farming in areas that aren’t suitable now?

Makes you wonder sometimes if shouldn’t have just stayed nomadic wanderers.

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Last week I talked about how we could be looking at a disaster of Biblical proportions (think Noah) if some of the major ice sheets melted, now comes word that the largest of the world’s ice sheets, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, is safe for the time being:

While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will “need quite a bit of warming” to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday.

The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice mass more than 1,875 miles across and up to 2.5 miles thick centered on the South Pole, will remain cold enough to prevent significant melting in the near future, the New Zealand-led research shows.

But it eventually may become vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels driven by the melting of other ice sheets, Mackintosh’s team found. Their research was published this week in the journal Geology. Source: Wired News - AP News

This news doesn’t get us off the hook, but at least a huge wave covering most of the coastal cities of the world isn’t looming on the near-term horizon.

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