2006 Letter to Harper on GW

This item is two and a half years old but has recently popped up in an item from the Morano newsletter. It is well worth reading since it was written then in the face of data that still sort of supported the warmers more than the skeptics.

What has changed is that many members of the scientific community who could be expected to support the promoted global warming dream are now having a major change of heart. The claim that the much heralded consensus which was never a consensus is and was intact is been shredded daily.

We have now entered a period in which the dissenters are piling on the bandwagon. Of course, the violent reversal of global temperatures back to the bad old days before the twenty year warming trend got going has even unnerved the true believers. We are now watching them fracture the language as they inch back from the intellectual cliff they jumped over.

It is almost as if Mother Nature was offended that Al Gore and associates got that Nobel Prize.

April 6, 2006
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

An open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

Dear Prime Minister:

As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government's climate-change plans. This would be entirely consistent with your recent commitment to conduct a review of the Kyoto Protocol. Although many of us made the same suggestion to then-prime ministers Martin and Chretien, neither responded, and, to date, no formal, independent climate-science review has been conducted in Canada. Much of the billions of dollars earmarked for implementation of the protocol in Canada will be squandered without a proper assessment of recent developments in climate science.

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based.

Even if the climate models were realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most prudent and responsible course of action.

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formulation. The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

We appreciate the difficulty any government has formulating sensible science-based policy when the loudest voices always seem to be pushing in the opposite direction. However, by convening open, unbiased consultations, Canadians will be permitted to hear from experts on both sides of the debate in the climate-science community. When the public comes to understand that there is no "consensus" among climate scientists about the relative importance of the various causes of global climate change, the government will be in a far better position to develop plans that reflect reality and so benefit both the environment and the economy.

"Climate change is real" is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next.

We believe the Canadian public and government decision-makers need and deserve to hear the whole story concerning this very complex issue. It was only 30 years ago that many of today's global-warming alarmists were telling us that the world was in the midst of a global-cooling catastrophe. But the science continued to evolve, and still does, even though so many choose to ignore it when it does not fit with predetermined political agendas.

We hope that you will examine our proposal carefully and we stand willing and able to furnish you with more information on this crucially important topic.

CC: The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of the Environment, and the Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources

- - -
Sincerely,

Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, former director of Australia's National Tidal Facility and professor of earth sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide; currently adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
Dr. R. Timothy Patterson, professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Fred Michel, director, Institute of Environmental Science and associate professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa
Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former research scientist, Environment Canada. Member of editorial board of Climate Research and Natural Hazards
Dr. Paul Copper, FRSC, professor emeritus, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ont.
Dr. Ross McKitrick, associate professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph, Ont.
Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology, University of Winnipeg; environmental consultant
Dr. Andreas Prokoph, adjunct professor of earth sciences, University of Ottawa; consultant in statistics and geology
Mr. David Nowell, M.Sc. (Meteorology), fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, Canadian member and past chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa
Dr. Christopher Essex, professor of applied mathematics and associate director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
* Dr. Gordon E. Swaters, professor of applied mathematics, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, and member, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Research Group, University of Alberta (* Note: Swaters later recanted his signature on the open letter)
Dr. L. Graham Smith, associate professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.
Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten, professor and Canada Research Chair in environmental studies and climate change, Dept. of Economics, University of Victoria
Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Dept. of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax
Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan, FRMS, climate consultant, former meteorology advisor to the World Meteorological Organization. Previously research scientist in climatology at University of Exeter, U.K.
Dr. Keith D. Hage, climate consultant and professor emeritus of Meteorology, University of Alberta
Dr. David E. Wojick, P.Eng., energy consultant, Star Tannery, Va., and Sioux Lookout, Ont.
Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C.
Dr. Douglas Leahey, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary
Paavo Siitam, M.Sc., agronomist, chemist, Cobourg, Ont.
Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, The University of Auckland, N.Z.
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, emeritus professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.
Mr. George Taylor, Dept. of Meteorology, Oregon State University; Oregon State climatologist; past president, American Association of State Climatologists
Dr. Ian Plimer, professor of geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide; emeritus professor of earth sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia
Dr. R.M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia
Mr. William Kininmonth, Australasian Climate Research, former Head National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology, Scientific and Technical Review
Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
Dr. Gerrit J. van der Lingen, geologist/paleoclimatologist, Climate Change Consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand
Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences, University of Virginia
Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics & geodynamics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.
Dr. Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville
Dr. Al Pekarek, associate professor of geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minn.
Dr. Marcel Leroux, professor emeritus of climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS
Dr. Paul Reiter, professor, Institut Pasteur, Unit of Insects and Infectious Diseases, Paris, France. Expert reviewer, IPCC Working group II, chapter 8 (human health)
Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, physicist and chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, reader, Dept. of Geography, University of Hull, U.K.; editor, Energy & Environment
Dr. Hans H.J. Labohm, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations) and an economist who has focused on climate change
Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, senior scientist emeritus, University of Kansas, past director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey
Dr. Asmunn Moene, past head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway
Dr. August H. Auer, past professor of atmospheric science, University of Wyoming; previously chief meteorologist, Meteorological Service (MetService) of New Zealand
Dr. Vincent Gray, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001,' Wellington, N.Z.
Dr. Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics, University of Connecticut
Dr Benny Peiser, professor of social anthropology, Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University, U.K.
Dr. Jack Barrett, chemist and spectroscopist, formerly with Imperial College London, U.K.
Dr. William J.R. Alexander, professor emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Member, United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000
Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences, University of Virginia; former director, U.S. Weather Satellite Service
Dr. Harry N.A. Priem, emeritus professor of planetary geology and isotope geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences; past president of the Royal Netherlands Geological & Mining Society
Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey professor of energy conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University
Dr. Sallie Baliunas, astrophysicist and climate researcher, Boston, Mass.
Douglas Hoyt, senior scientist at Raytheon (retired) and co-author of the book The Role of the Sun in Climate Change; previously with NCAR, NOAA, and the World Radiation Center, Davos, Switzerland
Dipl.-Ing. Peter Dietze, independent energy advisor and scientific climate and carbon modeller, official IPCC reviewer, Bavaria, Germany
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser, physicist/meteorologist, previously with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.; atmospheric consultant.
Dr. Art Robinson, founder, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Cave Junction, Ore.
Dr. Arthur Rorsch, emeritus professor of molecular genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands; past board member, Netherlands organization for applied research (TNO) in environmental, food and public health
Dr. Alister McFarquhar, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.; international economist
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.

Aviation Industry sees Green Light

This is an update on stories earlier last year. The take home message is that the aviation industry is unexpectedly a possible earlier adopter of algae based fuels. They simply have the flexibility to make a swift conversion and the ability to finance supply.

Once others wake up to this fact it is certain that many other potential suppliers will get their act together. It is easy to envisage hauling truckloads of fuel to the airlines. It is much harder to believe that the local Exxon petrol station will welcome your appearance for half a truck load.

With the industry actively looking for a real answer to their fuel exposure, it is going to be solved fast. Recall that they were nearly bankrupted by $140 oil and the industry was thrown backwards by years on their business models.

These guys are totally motivated to exit the oil industry just as soon as possible, the devil take the hindmost.

If I were operating any form of biofuel business today, I would down tools and focus on this niche right now.

The airlines want long term contracts for supply at fixed prices which is exactly what a biofuel producer can produce.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/flying-on-vegetables/

January 7 2009
Flying on Vegetables
By Matthew L. Wald

Crude oil from algae manufactured by Sapphire Energy for Continental Airlines. Converting the airline industry to biofuels may be easier than converting the car market.

The scheduled flight on Wednesday of a Continental Airlines 737 fueled in part by biofuels made from jatropha and algae was experimental (see my report on the state of biofuels in the airline industry from Wednesday’s paper here). But if the fuel can be certified by international standards agencies, it could become as common as, say, ethanol added to gasoline.

It might be even more so, because the goal is a “drop-in” substitute that can be used at any percentage, in any jet or any airport fueling system.

In theory, people in the industry say, replacing petroleum in airplanes could be easier than replacing it in cars, even though jet fuel has to meet specifications that are of little concern on the highway, like weight (hauling fuel is a major use of fuel, after all), or how well it flows at 40 degrees below zero, which is a temperature big planes face for hours as they cruise in the stratosphere.

Because fuel quality has such importance to safety, some energy experts thought aviation would be the last to switch. “For 40 years we had the philosophy we’d be the ones using the last drop of oil,’’ said Carl E. Burleson, director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Environment and Energy.

But compared to the market for gasoline or diesel, the market for jet fuel is simpler, industry experts say.

The number of fueling stations and customers are both much smaller than for motor vehicle fuel, making marketing easier. The number of engine manufacturers is smaller, too, so there are fewer parties to convince when switching to something new. And unlike the specifications for gasoline, which vary from state to state and country to country, there is a single standard for jet fuel, regardless of where it is sold.

As with substitute motor fuels, though, substitute jet fuel has mixed environmental implications. European carriers have tested fuel made from palm oil, but recent studies have persuaded some environmentalists that clearing tropical jungle to make space for palm plantations is a mistake, releasing more greenhouse gases than the new fuel will save. And the only petroleum substitute in common use now is made from coal, a switch that can save money and petroleum but makes greenhouse gas problems worse.

The precise carbon effect of using algae, jatropha or other substitutes will be studied closely and probably litigated, because airlines say they want to use such fuels to meet European regulations taking effect in the next few years, which will force them to cut carbon output or buy carbon allowances.

Ecogeek on 2008 Cleantech

Ecogeek runs out a pretty good list of innovations from 2008. The only one we have not covered is the light antenna, which is an oversight that I am sure that I will soon get to. This will perhaps remind us that we live in exciting times, and for once that means that we are not dodging bullets.

I would add the not yet visible emergence of real nanotechnology from the labs of which EEStor is a sniff. We can do it, and we are working full out to master the art with our powerful computers.

Expect to see real three dimensional manipulation as part of a manufacturing protocol shortly.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2422/73/

7 Cleantech Stories of 2008 that will Change Everything

Written by Hank Green

Thursday, 01 January 2009

It can sometimes be a little unclear (especially first day of a new year) how the previous year changed the world. No one guessed in 1946 that the Magnetron Spencer Percy was developing for use in a RADAR system (and that subsequently melted a candy bar in his pocket) would one day become the microwave oven. But I like to think that we can make some pretty good guesses about which of this year's innovations are going to be with us, and changing our world, for a good long time.

Here's my list of the top ten clean tech innovations of 2008.

Light Antennas

You know how you can capture and produce radio waves with antennas? Well, what if you could built an antenna so small, it could capture and emit light? The first large array of these nano-antennas was produced this year, and the possibilities for them are endless. They may become efficient light sources, efficient solar panels, or simple ways to transfer energy we feel as heat into energy that we don't feel at all, making them a kind of passive climate control system.

President Barack Obama

Maybe not an innovation in the traditional sense, though, I like to think that it took some innovative thinking to get this man elected president. But President Obama's Administration has already grown to include clean technology advocates and researchers, and carries with it promises of green collar jobs, carbon markets, and restored protections for many of our imperiled ecosystems.

EEStor Begins to Emerge

The power storage company, EEstor, which we're still not 100% sure isn't full of crap did finally begin to tell us some things about their miraculous-sounding power storage technology. If true, vehicles could have batteries lighter than gas tanks, that could charge in five minutes and would never degrade. These ceramic "electrical energy storage units" have not yet seen the light of day (or independent verification) but they do already have contracts with Lockheed Martin and plans to deliver their first unit to an electric car company shortly.

The Gas Crunch

Hey...remember back when gas was freaking ridiculously expensive? Well, while the market may not (the Ford F-150 is, once again, America's most popular vehicle) the innovations that poured into the market to try and help consumers deal with high gas prices will not go away. Better hybrid systems, more efficient engines, massive investments in biofuels, the re-emergence of diesel in America were all direct implications of skyrocketing gas prices.

Solar at Grid Parity

The cost of delivering electrons to the grid has gone up a little bit in the past year, and the cost of delivering electrons to the grid using solar power has dropped dramatically. The first solar electrons costing roughly the same amount as natural gas electrons were produced this year. There's no reason to think that this trend will end, as natural gas gets more expensive, and solar systems get more efficient. In fact, one company is already promising solar power at the same price as coal!

Project Better Place Expands Wildly

While I'm still not 100% sure that Better Place, with it's many battery swapping stations, cell phone-like payment plans and "one sized battery fits all" platform makes the most sense, they have managed to get a lot of governments to bite. California, Hawaii, Australia and Denmark have all signed deals with Agassi's gigantically ambitious electric car program. It could all become extremely passe if EEStor's technology pans out. But otherwise it's one of the few solutions that will work now, instead of waiting for battery technology to catch up with our goals as car drivers.

Pickens Counterbalances Gore with a Real Vision

We've tired of Al Gore. The love affair was great while it lasted, but he's been attacked from too many angles to really latch onto his message anymore. But what about an ultra-conservative, Texas oil man? Now that's the kind of champion clean technology needs! And not only does he provide a different perspective, he provides a clear plan for how he wants to change our energy future. And while it might be a plan that would make him one of the richest people in the world, it's also actually a pretty good plan.

Casimir Levitation

This is a nifty discovery and an obviously important one. And yes, you had better read up on the Casimir effect.

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

This experiment means that we can control the effects sign and this now gives us a powerful tool for designing things in the nanometer scaled world. You may now let your imagination run wild.

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2009/01/mysterious_force_to_help_build_future_nanomachines.html

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Mysterious Force to Help Build Future Nanomachines

http://www.medgadget.com/archives/img/levitating_gold_ball.jpg

Harvard University researchers have finally observed the repulsive Casimir force, a quantum phenomenon that was predicted back in the 1940's. The force comes into effect only when two particles locate themselves very close to each other, provided a few other parameters are true (see Wikipedia entry: Casimir effect). Now with new knowledge of how to use the force (no pun intended), scientists should be able to build more complicated nano devices.

From Harvard:

“Repulsive Casimir forces are of great interest since they can be used in new ultra-sensitive force and torque sensors to levitate an object immersed in a fluid at nanometric distances above a surface,” said Federico Capasso, Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), who led the study. “Further, these objects are free to rotate or translate relative to each other with minimal static friction because their surfaces never come into direct contact.”

The results from Capasso’s and his colleagues’ work will be published in tomorrow's edition of the journal Nature. Capasso's co-authors are Jeremy Munday, formerly a graduate student in Harvard's Department of Physics and presently a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology, and V. Adrian Parsegian, senior investigator at the NIH in Bethesda, Md.

The discovery builds on previous work related to the Casimir force, which was theorized by Hendrick Casimir in 1948 as both attractive and repulsive, pulling materials together under some circumstances and pushing them apart under others.

Until now, however, researchers have only been able to measure the attractive Casimir force, which, in some cases, has created headaches for nano-engineers because it can cause the components of tiny devices to stick together. Discovery of the repulsive version of the Casimir force can potentially help researchers overcome this problem.

“When two surfaces of the same material, such as gold, are separated by vacuum, air, or a fluid, the resulting force is always attractive,” explained Capasso.

Instead of using gold-coated materials, Capasso and colleagues swapped out one of the gold surfaces for one made of silica, then immersed them both in a liquid, bromobenzene. That combination did the trick, switching the attractive Casimir force to repulsive. The Harvard researchers have filed for a U.S. patent covering nanodevices based on quantum levitation.

Harvard news office press release: Researchers see exotic force for first time...

NIH press release: Researchers Levitate Object at a Microscopic Scale ...

Image: An artist's rendering shows a gold sphere, in the foreground, immersed in bromobenzene, allowing it to levitate above a silica plate. When the plate is replaced by one of gold, as seen in the background, levitation is impossible. Image courtesy of Federico Capasso/SEAS

Cold Snap

I cannot believe that anyone has failed to notice that winter is kicking our butts this year. The surprise is to learn that the Arctic cold snap in the northern reaches has exceeded anything in northern Saskatchewan since record keeping began 116 years ago. Mother Nature is now mocking the true believers in global warming.

Any who have read my earliest posts know that I have never thought that the linkage of global temperatures to rising CO2 was a safe research strategy because historical evidence indicated we were likely dealing with normal variation and that such a strategy would surely inflict a damaging reversal. This is a rout and the true believers are becoming very quiet.

This unfortunately does nothing to promote responsible management of CO2 emissions.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has reversed and will likely be gone for decades while we wait for sunspots to pick up again. It was fun while it lasted.

The real surprise was just now fast this reversal was upon us. It took twenty years to modestly improve weather conditions in the north and a mere year or so for all that to blow away. We certainly have gained a far better understanding of the factors that affect our climate and know better what to watch. Just as we came to understand the impact of El Nino and La Nina, we surely now understand the impact of the PDO a lot better and can include it properly in our models.

If the variation of solar energy is sufficient enough to be a primary climate driver, then the Pacific Ocean is the natural transfer mechanism. It is not chaotic and it represents fifty percent of the world’s surface. It also absorbs energy very nicely. Thus it is reasonable in a simple minded way to imagine a surplus of heat expanding the warm surface waters of the Pacific into the northern edge of the Pacific basin which is certainly what happened.

Maybe our salmon fisheries will now vigorously rebound with a minimal support effort.

In the meantime, these folks are experiencing cold weather that is simply dangerous as these reports show. In this country there are times that car failure is a swift and potentially fatal disaster if you are not prepared.

Cold streak sets new record

City experiences 24 consecutive days of -25 C or lower

Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix

Published: Tuesday, January 06, 2009

How's this for cold comfort? Saskatoon's deep freeze is likely the longest streak of low temperatures below -25 C that has numbed this city since record-keeping began in 1892.

The 24-day streak started cruelly Dec. 13 after relatively mild temperatures and continued at least through Monday, said David Phillips, Environment Canada's senior climatologist.

"That's the thing that's brutal," Phillips said from Toronto, where he was enjoying a temperature of -4.

"We can all handle a few (cold) days. It's the long haul that wears you down.

"It's really a shocker, the duration of the cold."

Phillips said he couldn't find a longer cold snap in Saskatoon's recorded weather history during a look through the records Monday. Even during the infamous January of 1950, when temperatures hit -46 and -45 (not counting any wind chill), the cold streak of -25 or lower lasted "only" 21 days.

The first two mild weeks of December kept the month from being Saskatoon's coldest ever. It still averaged -20.6, the sixth-coldest December on record and the most frigid since 1983.

Prince Albert was slightly colder in December, with an average temperature of -21.4, while Regina registered -18. Neither of those burgs have suffered a -25 streak approaching Saskatoon's, Phillips said.
The normal average temperature for Saskatoon in December is -14.3C.

The historic streak could end today. Environment Canada was forecasting a low of -23 for today, before another drop Wednesday.

There's no good news on the horizon.

January is expected to be colder than its normal mean temperature of -17, said Environment Canada meteorologist Bob Cormier. The three-month period of January through March is also expected to be colder than normal, he said.

The frigid temperatures and the bad timing of the New Year's Eve snowstorm has left city snow crews well behind schedule.

As of Monday, snowplows still hadn't touched almost one-third of the priority streets, which range from arteries such as Circle Drive and Eighth Street to bus routes and minor collector streets. The major arteries have been cleared once, but may need a second pass, said Gaston Gourdeau, manager of the city's public works branch.

Ninety per cent of bus routes are cleared, but many minor collector streets still haven't seen a snowplow.
"We're looking forward to warmer temperatures," Gourdeau said. "It's been tough for everybody."

The New Year's Eve storm was a double-whammy for snowplow operators.

Many city staff were on holidays. Hydraulic parts of heavy equipment respond more slowly, like everything else, in the cold, forcing crews to get less done than they normally would.

Gourdeau predicts snow crews will be in some neighbourhoods clearing out trouble spots by the end of the week.

He said he decided against implementing a street parking ban to speed up snow clearing for two reasons.
The city hasn't had the staff to guarantee cleanup within 72 hours until this week.

In frigid weather, it's also difficult to ask residents to move cars off the street to spots where plug-ins may be unavailable, he said.

rnickel@sp.canwest.com

Extreme Alaska cold grounds planes, disables cars

JUNEAU, Alaska – Ted Johnson planned on using a set of logs to a build a cabin in Alaska's interior. Instead he'll burn some of them to stay warm.

Extreme temperatures — in Johnson's case about 60 below zero — call for extreme measures in a statewide cold snap so frigid that temperatures have grounded planes, disabled cars, frozen water pipes and even canceled several championship cross country ski races.

Alaskans are accustomed to subzero temperatures but the prolonged conditions have folks wondering what's going on with winter less than a month old.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Brown said high pressure over much of central Alaska has been keeping other weather patterns from moving through. New conditions get pushed north or south while the affected area faces daily extremes.

"When it first started almost two weeks ago, it wasn't anything abnormal," Brown said. "About once or twice every year, we get a good cold snap. But, in this case, you can call this an extreme event. This is rare. It doesn't happen every year."

Temperatures sit well below zero in the state's various regions, often without a wisp of wind pushing down the mercury further.

Johnson lives in Stevens Village, where residents have endured close to two weeks of temperatures pushing 60 below zero.

The cold has kept planes grounded, Johnson said. Food and fuel aren't coming in and they're starting to run low in the village, about 90 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

Johnson, whose home has no heater or running water, said he ventures outside only to get more logs for burning and to fetch water from a community facility. He's been saving the wood to build a cabin as a second home, but that will have to wait a few years now because the heat takes precedence.

"I've never seen it this cold for this long," he said. "I remember it 70 below one time, but not for a week and a half."

In Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, residents are used to lows of about 10-degree temperatures in January — not 19 below zero, which is what folks awoke to Wednesday morning.

Temperatures finally settled to about 10 below at midday, but that was cold enough to cancel races in the U.S. Cross Country Ski Championships.

Skiers won't compete unless it's warmer than 4 below zero, but the numbers have ranged between 10 below and 15 below.

That has led to four days of canceled or postponed competition with organizers hoping to get a set of races under way on Thursday, the event's final day.

Meanwhile, in Juneau, the state's capital is enjoying balmy weather by comparison with lows in the single digits.

Yellowstone Trembles

This is really not much to get excited about as yet, but the knowledge of this supervolcano’s potential has geologists paying attention. At least they are measuring what is important. The floor of the Caldera has lifted a foot or so over the past three years or so. This is pretty sedate and is likely to end with a small eruption.

When Mt St. Helens blew in the early eighties, no one appeared to understand simple physics, and crowded around the pending event as if it were slightly predictable. One of the last reports before the eruption stated that the mountain was rising up at a rate of several feet per day.

Anyone with a minimal grasp of physics knows that this means that if you multiply six feet of lift with a cubic mile or so of rock that you have massive amount of potential energy. I hope someone has put that problem into high school texts.

When that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy, you are at ground zero of an atomic bomb release. I heard that report and immediately wondered why anyone was within even twenty to thirty miles. It already was committed to a one way trip.

I do not know the dimensions of the caldera, but if the floor has lifted a foot we already have a plenty of potential energy been built up. The smart thing would be to map out 240 cubic miles of caldera rock and then estimate the buildup of potential energy. It may need to add 100 cubic miles of rock before the potential can be achieved. That means that we may really have a few 100,000 years before we get too concerned.

The same cannot be said for Mt Baker outside of Vancouver. It is fully rebuilt and when she decides to go hot, the probability of a major blast will be excellent if not almost certain. Fortunately the prevailing winds blow away from Vancouver which will minimize the impact. Mt Fuji is no better of course as is any well built perfect 10,000 foot volcano. None of them are really dormant either.

From The Times

January 5, 2009

Fears over earthquake 'swarm' at Yellowstone National Park

(William Kronholm/AP)

Yellowstone National Park: the most devastating earthquake hit August 17, 1959, which measured 7.1
Mike Harvey in San Francisco

Hundreds of earthquakes have hit Yellowstone National Park, raising fears of a more powerful volcanic eruption.

The earthquake swarm, the biggest in more than 20 years, is being closely monitored by scientists and emergency authorities.

The series of small quakes included three last Friday which measured stronger than magnitude 3.0. The strongest since this latest swarm of quakes began on December 27 was 3.9.

No damage has yet been reported but scientists say this level of activity - there have been more than 500 tremors in the last week - is highly unusual.

"The earthquake sequence is the most intense in this area for some years," said the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. Some of the larger earthquakes have been felt by park employees and guests, according to the observatory.

The swarm is occurring beneath the northern part of Yellowstone Lake in the park. Yellowstone sits on the caldera of an ancient supervolcano and continuing geothermal activity can be seen in the picturesque geysers and steam holes, such as Old Faithful.

About 1,000 to 2,000 tremors a year have been recorded since 2004. The most devastating earthquake in recent history in the Yellowstone region occurred on August 17, 1959, when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit.

It was centered near Hebgen Lake, Montana and it caused landslides that killed 28 people and caused more than $11 million in damage.

Geysers in Yellowstone National park changed eruption times, and new ones began to erupt. On June 30, 1975, a magnitude 6.4 tremor hit the park.

Professor Robert B. Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Utah and one of the leading experts on earthquake and volcanic activity at Yellowstone, said that the swarm was significant.

"It's not business as usual," he said. "This is a large earthquake swarm, and we've recorded several hundred. We are paying careful attention. This is an important sequence."

The last full-scale explosion of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the Lava Creek eruption which happened approximately 640,000 years ago, ejected about 240 cubic miles of rock and dust into the sky.

Geologists have been closely monitoring the rise and fall of the Yellowstone Plateau as an indication of changes in magma chamber pressure.

The Yellowstone caldera floor has risen recently - almost 3in per year for the past three years - a rate more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923.

From mid-summer 2004 through to mid-summer 2008, the land surface within the caldera moved upwards as much as 8in at the White Lake GPS station. The last major earthquake swarm was in 1985 and lasted three months.

The observatory said similar swarms have occurred in the past without triggering steam explosions or volcanic activity. However, the observatory said there is some potential for explosions and that earthquakes may continue and increase in intensity.

Joe Moore, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, said his office is tracking the events at Yellowstone on a minute-by-minute basis. "It's being followed very closely," Mr Moore said

Administrative Climate Drift

What this report from an expert brings out is that a huge disconnect exists between the consumers of data and the producers. After a century or so of managing a data network, you would surely think that they could get data origination right. Perhaps the system is now so inbred that grand gramma’s witless niece is now in charge. A little like the history of the village water boards.

This is completely the work of utterly clueless people who have no sense of responsibility from the supervisor down.

None of these measuring stations should be anywhere near an urban area to begin with. We surely have not run out of farmers who can look after what today can be automatic equipment. They even respect the importance of good data.

This does support the notion that the drift in temperature data could have an administration component. What a great new variable to add to my climate modeling equation. Administrative climate drift?

Quite honestly, this makes me choke. The rot could have developed for decades and the data is likely badly distorted in many areas. Time for an engineering audit.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/documenting_the_global_warming_1.html

January 05, 2009

Documenting the Global Warming Fraud (continued)
Thomas Lifson

The scientific fraud underlying global warming theory is starting to be exposed (see our first post on the subject), as data manipulations have been discovered, and now, news of the placement of temperature measuring devices in locations designed to yield artificially high readings, such as next door to a crematorium. The excellent site Watts Up With That exposes the data-gathering scandal:

In my 30 years in meteorology, I never questioned how NOAA climate monitoring stations were setup. It wasn't until I stumbled on the Marysville California fire station and its thermometer that that I began to notice just how badly sited these stations are. When I started looking further, I never expected to find USHCN climate monitoring stations placed at sewage treatment plants, next to burn barrels, or in parking lots of University Atmospheric Science Departments, or next to air conditioning heat exchangers. These were all huge surprises. ...

Then I saw this station, submitted from Fort Scott, Kansas:

The reporting station was moved to this location in 2002 from about a block away. In addition to the awkward problem of the furnace, there is this:

From a wider perspective, you can see all the things around it. Not only do we have a fountain (extra humidity), a nearby brick wall for heat retention at night, a large concrete driveway that curves around the station, a tree for shade in the late afternoon, a big brick building with a south facing brick wall, but we also have cobblestone streets and convenient nearby parking. The station is near the center of the city.

As Watts Up notes, all that's missing is a BBQ.

So why on earth would NOAA choose this location? It seems to me that Congressional hearings are called for. But of course that would require a Congress interesting in finding out the truth about alleged global warming.

Arctic Volcanic Multiplier

Piecing together the effect of volcanic activity on the global climate, I recently recognized an oversight. It is that there must be an order of magnitude difference between the impact of an equatorial blast and an Alaskan blast. More importantly, while an equatorial blast has good prospects of affecting the whole globe, an Alaskan blast is going to be limited to the northern portion of the northern hemisphere. This rather obviously coincides with the details of the little ice age.

That also explains the savage impact on climate of the 1159bc Hekla blast that suppressed temperatures for a full generation throughout Northern Europe. It only had to be a much too normal one to three cubic mile event that kept cooking at a smaller scale for a few years to do its job as advertised.

This also makes explaining the Little Ice Age much simpler. Instead of two or three close together, we now need a major volcano that keeps cooking over fifty or more years in the Alaska Russian volcanic arc. Ash and aerosols need to feed into the Arctic weather gyre where escape is difficult and protracted over time. This will induce sharply lower temperatures that then impact Europe.

There is a very good chance that it is a single specific volcano. I say that because there is erratic evidence of a several century long cycle that could easily coincide with the active phase of one volcano. The good news is that we have three or four centuries of good weather before it is heard from again. The bad news is that there are plenty of other volcanoes thinking about it.

Mt Pinatubo in the Philippines impacted our climate for perhaps three years and reduced temperatures by a significant amount. Had it been in Alaska, its effect could well have been multiplied by an order of magnitude and have surely ravaged Europe.

We need to identify an aerosol rich volcano able to charge up the Arctic atmospheric gyre easily and perhaps monitor it if that is not already happening. The known suspects have not been that significant but that only means that the main event is apparently dormant.

This comfortably explains the episodes of radical cooling that have typically occurred in the Northern Hemisphere and cannot be explained as Global in origin or by the more benign Pacific Decadal Oscillation. A three or four degree drop caused by a volcano explains ice on the Rhine, or even the Nile. Fortunately these events are not particularly long lasting most of the time and recovery is pretty predictable. A farmer will have one year of crop failure to deal with before he adjusts to the tougher conditions with more robust crops and we learn to like oatmeal.

By the output been trapped in a small area of the globe, the volcano’s effect on climate is hugely magnified. It fortunately still disperses fairly quickly. The only reason that this is as yet not fully understood is that we have not had the chance to watch it unfold as we watched Mt St. Helens and Mt Pinatubo unfold. We are sure to get the chance.

And yes, let us warm up the earth with reforesting the Sahara. The climate was much better back in the Bronze Age.

2009 Markets

It is a new quarter and a new year. The one thing that I can comfortably predict is that the market indices will be better priced by the end of this year. That is the good news. In the meantime everyone has to work for their money. Even Bernie Madoff will be picking up a new skill manufacturing license plates along with Conrad Black to justify his soup.

The gross global wealth has been halved. Last year, the money managers were scrambling for places to put the piles of cash and credit that they were sitting on. Today they are scrambling to find that same cash and credit anywhere.

The folks who believe in what they are doing will be around knocking on your door looking for your support. If you trust them, give them your support. This is the greatest wealth building era in our lifetimes. There is a reason that Buffet bought Wells Fargo. They are going to win.

For the stock investor there are plenty of sound companies around at knock down prices. Starbucks is a gimme as are the majority of the good food franchises. Go for it. Obscured with all the noise is the fact that technology companies are ready to emerge as hot commodities again. The real breakthroughs are happening at a sprint and development is right behind. They still feel that they have something to prove.

The bad news is that we will be listening to nothing but bad news for the coming year. Every company using leverage is struggling to keep the ball in the air. There will be more casualties, but they will merely fall into the hands of their competitors. There will be plenty of red ink while we all wait for next Christmas.

Real estate has possibly bottomed if the right steps are taken and implemented in the current cheap money environment. It is just that we will get to look at the bottom there for five to ten years. And if I had my way, I would set up a stress skin panel manufacturer and cut half the building costs out of new houses, making sure that cheap new inventory never runs out.

The oil industry is suffering from a huge drop in demand that may last longer than I think possible, even though supply will be slipping also. In the meantime cheap alternate energy is hitting its stride.

I do not think that the stimulus packages will stimulate anything, simply because it cannot replace the demand lost with half the global wealth. It will help business to become whole again. This will allow steady internal growth to sponge up the slack in the economy.

In the meantime, here is some timely gallows humor.

1. The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. It's called the stock market - Jay Leno

2. Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are?? Wall Street is now being called WalMart Street - Jay Leno

3. The difference between a pigeon and a London investment banker. The pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW

4. What's the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie!

5. The problem with investment bank balance sheet is that on the left side nothing's right and on the right side nothing's left.

6. I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be watching our show, if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it's a scam. Don't fall for it - Jay Leno

7. Bush was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was his favourite candy bar - Jay Leno

8. The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President Bush's copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures - Jay Leno

9. President Bush's response was to meet some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small business owners are General Motors, General Electric and Century 21 - Jay Leno

10. What worries me most about the credit crunch, is that if one of my cheques is returned stamped 'insufficient funds'. I won't know whether that refers to mine or the bank's

New Stock Market Terms

CEO -- Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO -- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself For a financial genius.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets No jewelry.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps Crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

Global Warming for Dummies

This item is almost too funny to be real.

For what it is worth, Elizabeth May is a sometime lawyer who jumped onto the green party ticket in Canada and sort of took it over, since up to that point it really barely existed. New government financing arrangements gave the party real life because the Green party name on the ballot picked up about five percent of the vote in any otherwise boring election. In other words it was a one issue party that was on the ballot because it is cheap to do that in Canada. Suddenly government money based on popular vote gave this so called party a budget.

A perfect home surely for a lawyer who feels that sense of entitlement.

Her co-author is Zoe Caron who did this as a fourth year student at Dalhousie in Halifax. What she really did was put together the proposal and sold it to the publishers who somehow went with her and May. The rest is history.

So, unless this book is ghost written, it is written by a couple of folks whose visible qualifications are at best approaching zero. I look forward to browsing this book at Chapters to see if there is any sign of life. I am damned if I will buy it.

January 05, 2009

Global Warming is for Dummies

Larrey Anderson

You know those yellow-jacketed Insert Subject Here for Dummies guides that are omnipresent in bookstores? Well, there is a new one coming out: Global Warming for Dummies. A well-established publishing franchise has staked its reputation on the work of warmist fanatics.

The book is co-authored by two radical environmentalists. True believers. The authors are Elizabeth May and Zoe Caron. May is a Green Party leader in Canada and Caron is on the board of directors for Canada's Sierra Club.

May once asserted that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's position on environmental policies was "as a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis."

And Caron's website contains this whopper:

The world was watching Canada actions at the [COP 14] negotiations to see if they would finally take meaningful action to fight climate change. But sadly for Canadians -- and tragically for those whose nations will be underwater as a result of sea level rise -- Canada did nothing.

Got that? Harper is worse than a Nazi appeaser because he doesn't agree with May and entire nations will soon be under water according to Caron. In short, Global Warming for Dummies was written by two idiots. The title of the book should be: Global Warming for the Gullible.

But have no fear about the accuracy or reliability of their new tome for twits. According to the Monica Graham writing for the Chronicle Herald:

The book was fact-checked by scientists from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 2,000-member body that has created an objective source of climate information.

That's about as close as the IPCC has gotten to the process of peer review in twenty years.

If millions of lives and the world economy were not at stake ... this might be funny.

Reverse Engineering the UFO

Reverse Engineering the UFO

I posted this tidbit in early November. Much more has happened since.

http://globalwarming-arclein.blogspot.com/2008/11/pleistocene-nonconformity-sequel-and.html

What is a UFO?

It is a craft that is designed to operate in a magnetic field and possibly even produce one. Its working skin is a sandwich of single atomic layers that include a semiconductor cooling layer and a high temperature superconductor. We can actually do this in our labs now. Technical finesse will take a lot longer of course. This means that an activated skin sealing off the exterior will exclude the Earth’s magnetic field producing massive lift. Most likely, the larger the craft design is, the stronger the lift as total density drops. With this technology it becomes simple to leave the Earth’s gravity well and perhaps even selectively navigate in the solar system itself.

For my next trick we place a super conducting magnetic ring around the outside edge and use it to produce a directed pinched magnetic bottle steered in the direction desired. It is not that simple but you get the idea.

Therefore leaving the Earth becomes cheap and easy. It we had this technology tomorrow; we could move every human off planet inside a generation. We already know how and it will likely take us only another generation to create a working craft.

The remaining unmentioned issue was energy storage and energy supply. Two months ago we only had a glimmer. We are much better off today. The EEStor battery skin described in the Lockheed Martin patent is a natural design element for the active skin described in my post. If this can be made to work, we have storage system for the massive amounts of electrical energy that is needed.

Yesterday’s post on the Dense Plasma Focus Device (DPFD) finally gives us a compact geometry promising high energy output. This can believably be put into a small craft once it is mastered. It starts small and will only get smaller as load and design are optimized.

Hell, we can even have enough juice to fire a microwave pulse laser to paint a few crop circles while we are at it, if our friends in the British Air force are not up to doing it.

When I was fourteen, I saw that no technical explanation existed for a working UFO. I thought that this represented an interesting problem to reverse engineer. It has taken us over forty five years to reach the correct level of knowledge to simply understand the feasibility of the project. I am now prepared to declare it feasible in terms of present knowledge and achievable within the decade if the DPFD actually works and we can be quick about manufacturing issues that are not minor. Right now the problem list has suddenly become finite, rather than open ended.

Such a craft, while not controlling gravity can be operated the majority of the time with an acceleration of one earth gravity. This makes travelling around the solar system fully feasible while maintaining proper gravity for maintaining human health. Of course a computer does all the real work, but we already have that capability.

Kroll on Cosmological Climate Factors

I have recently become familiar with Hank Kroll’s speculations on the apparent path of our sun and the possibility that that path has impacted on our climate. Hank Kroll is an Alaskan sea captain and fisherman with college background from the sixties who has caught the bug of digging up new science. He has pumped out several books on various subjects and is putting one out shortly on his cosmological ideas.

Like many he is inspired by ancient sources that hint at knowledge that we are trying to rediscover. The danger with that is to rely too heavily on the metaphors used.

What he has put together is that the sun is possibly in an elongated orbit with Sirius whose period is around 100,000 years. The Sirius group of stars including our own is traveling towards the constellation Hercules. In addition he points out that a possibly related star (Barnard’s Loop) exploded three million years ago, possibly altering the dynamics of the Sirius cluster and perhaps destabilizing the sun’s orbit around Sirius.

So far so good. What is lacking is measurement precision. A study was done estimating our velocity against the background of nearby stars and we apparently are 8.5 light years away and are heading back (Why if not an orbit?). A real effort is needed to refine this possible orbit. Barnard’s loop is much more problematic, but in fairness accepted ideas about it are just as problematic. I never forget that astronomy is the science that looks good but cannot be tested except from one viewpoint.

The payoff for this theory is that it places the sun in the Sirius group before three million years ago on an apparent 54 year orbit and subjected to much more UV energy. This allows the unusual conditions of the carboniferous age to even be explained and the additional lack of polar icecaps until recent geological time. As Hank points out, this also provides enough energy to end the initial ice bound state of earth before the emergence of life.

Of course, we still do not know any of this and are in need of an accurate orbital path. What I have just described is plausible and needs to be modeled and tested. And while we are at it we need to look around to see if we are eventually vulnerable to other stellar interactions. I say this because this is a new orbit and it is possibly unstable. This implies that we could easily be captured by another sun within ten light years of Sirius and we cannot anticipate the level of perturbation on a pass by Sirius.

The day is coming when we send a space telescopes out a long ways and start getting an accurate picture of what is happening out there. A moon on Jupiter would be fine.

You can find Henry Kroll and his books at: www.GuardDogBooks.com & www.AlaskaPublishing.com `

Us Geological Survey on Global Warming

This report was pieced together over the past two years and we can assume a strong bias toward the global warming orthodoxy. Even with that, this report is muted if this article is a sample of the best interpretation of the reports contents.

The statement is made that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing 48 cubic miles per year. How that is calculated with the slightest confidence escapes me. That it is no longer likely to be true does not.

More importantly, they are advising that greater volatility is to be anticipated. They likely could have got that from the geological record, because we have had pretty serious shift in climate over the millennia and cooling in particular has shown it to be sudden which is not true of warming.

Over the last eighteen months we have lost a global 0.7 degrees. Imagine this going on for another three years. That would be a total 2.8 degrees. That is a lot and it is abrupt. Yet three volcanoes going of in the tropics could do it nicely or perhaps one Volcano in Kamchatka could do it nicely for the Northern Hemisphere.

In fact, the Little Ice Age needs one nasty volcano. Our real problem is that there are so many to choose from out of Alaska.

Anyway, this report surely started with the global warming premise, so judge it accordingly.

"Faster Climate Change Feared"

... New Report Points to Accelerated Melting, Longer Drought

(Source: Washington Post, 12/25/08)

The United States faces the possibility of much more rapid climate change by the end of the century than previous studies have suggested, according to a new report led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The survey -- which was commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and issued this month -- expands on the 2007 findings of the United Nations Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change. Looking at factors such as rapid sea ice loss in the Arctic and prolonged drought in the Southwest, the new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.

However, the assessment also suggests that some other feared effects of global warming are not likely to occur by the end of the century, such as an abrupt release of methane from the seabed and permafrost or a shutdown of the Atlantic Ocean circulation system that brings warm water north and colder water south. But the report projects an amount of potential sea level rise during that period that may be greater than what other researchers have anticipated, as well as a shift to a more arid climate pattern in the Southwest by mid-century.

Thirty-two scientists from federal and non-federal institutions contributed to the report, which took nearly two years to complete. The Climate Change Science Program, which was established in 1990, coordinates the climate research of 13 different federal agencies.

Tom Armstrong, senior adviser for global change programs at USGS, said the report "shows how quickly the information is advancing" on potential climate shifts. The prospect of abrupt climate change, he said, "is one of those things that keeps people up at night, because it's a low-probability but high-risk scenario. It's unlikely to happen in our lifetimes, but if it were to occur, it would be life-changing."

In one of the report's most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as four feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world's major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.

Konrad Steffen, who directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and was lead author on the report's chapter on ice sheets, said the models the IPCC used did not factor in some of the dynamics that scientists now understand about ice sheet melting. Among other things, Steffen and his collaborators have identified a process of "lubrication," in which warmer ocean water gets in underneath coastal ice sheets and accelerates melting.

"This has to be put into models," said Steffen, who organized a conference last summer in St. Petersburg, Russia, as part of an effort to develop more sophisticated ice sheet models. "What we predicted is sea level rise will be higher, but I have to be honest, we cannot model it for 2100 yet."

Still, Armstrong said the report "does take a step forward from where the IPCC was," especially in terms of ice sheet melting.

Scientists also looked at the prospect of prolonged drought over the next 100 years. They said it is impossible to determine yet whether human activity is responsible for the drought the Southwestern United States has experienced over the past decade, but every indication suggests the region will become consistently drier in the next several decades. Richard Seager, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said that nearly all of the 24 computer models the group surveyed project the same climatic conditions for the North American Southwest, which includes Mexico.

"If the models are correct, it will transition in the coming years and decades to a more arid climate, and that transition is already underway," Seager said, adding that such conditions would probably include prolonged droughts lasting more than a decade.

The current models cover broad swaths of landscape, and Seager said scientists need to work on developing versions that can make projections on a much smaller scale. "That's what the water managers out there really need," he said. Current models "don't give them the hard numbers they need."

Armstrong said the need for "downscaled models" is one of the challenges facing the federal government, along with better coordination among agencies on the issue of climate change. When it comes to abrupt climate shifts, he said, "We need to be prepared to deal with it in terms of policymaking, keeping in mind it's a low-probability, high-risk scenario. That said, there are really no policies in place to deal with abrupt climate change."

Richard Moss, who directed the Climate Change Science Program's coordination office between 2000 and 2006 and now serves as vice president and managing director for climate change at the World Wildlife Fund-U.S., welcomed the new report but called it "way overdue."

"There is finally a greater flow of climate science from the administration," Moss said, noting that the report was originally scheduled to come out in the summer of 2007. "It really is showing the potential for abrupt climate change is real."

The report is reassuring, however, on the prospects for some potentially drastic effects -- such as a huge release of methane, a potent heat-trapping gas, that is now locked deep in the seabed and underneath the Arctic permafrost. That is unlikely to occur in the near future, the scientists said.

"It's unlikely that we're going to see an abrupt change in methane over the next hundred years, but we should worry about it over a longer time frame," said Ed Brook, the lead author of the methane chapter and a geosciences professor at Oregon State University. "All of these places where methane is stored are vulnerable to leaking."

By the end the century, Brook said, the amount of methane escaping from natural sources such as the Arctic tundra and waterlogged soils in warmer regions "could possibly double," but that would still be less than the current level of human-generated methane emissions. Over the course of the next thousand years, he added, methane hydrates stored deep in the seabed could be released: "Once you start melting there, you can't really take it back."

In the near term, Brook said, more precise monitoring of methane levels worldwide would give researchers a better sense of the risk of a bigger atmospheric release. "We don't know exactly how much methane is coming out all over the world," he said. "That's why monitoring is important."

While predictions remain uncertain, Steffen said cutting emissions linked to global warming represents one of the best strategies for averting catastrophic changes.

"We have to act very fast, by understanding better and by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, because it's a large-scale experiment that can get out of hand," Steffen said. "So we don't want that to happen."

Dense Plasma Focus Device

After far too many years, the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics ‘Dense Plasma Focus Device’ is funded through a demonstration unit. I have included the recent news on funding and staffing, as well as the company’s description of the device.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that a number of these devices are in labs around the world and knowledge and experience is been gained. This one will be the second largest.

It is remarkable that very important experiments in fusion control using multiple geometries have been starved for funding for decades while the Tokamak design has received massive funding while producing slim results for as many decades. A proof of concept experiment is not overly expensive and supports theoretical progress.

Realistically Tokamak as configured has failed. It is possible that superior modeling with present computers will improve the situation except that these other exotic systems were even more difficult to model forty years ago. It is fair to say that the aspect of Tokamak that recommended it forty years ago were the inherent symmetries that permitted successful calculation strategies.

Now we should even entertain atomic and molecular fields when we do this work. At least I have thought so, if only because attractive and repulsive forces exist at that scaling as well as shielding. If so called cold fusion has any reality at all, it is because of action at the molecular level. Today we have the computer power to experiment with such geometries.

The claim is made that their understanding of the protocol is now sufficient to generate net power and that is certainly suggested by their description below. Of course we also know just how fickle Mother Nature really is.

I would be much happier if this funding had another zero attached. Any way, no one is going to describe this as cold fusion.

December 18, 2008

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Initiates Two-Year Experiment to Test Hydrogen-Boron Fusion
$1.2 Million Project Funded by The Abell Foundation and Individual Investors

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc., a small research and development company based in West Orange, NJ, has announced the initiation of a two-year-long experimental project to test the scientific feasibility of Focus Fusion, controlled nuclear fusion using the dense plasma focus (DPF) device and hydrogen-boron fuel. Hydrogen-boron fuel produces almost no neutrons and allows the direct conversion of energy into electricity. The goals of the experiment are first, to confirm the achievement the high temperatures first observed in previous experiments at Texas A&M University; second, to greatly increase the efficiency of energy transfer into the tiny plasmoid where the fusion reactions take place; third, to achieve the high magnetic fields needed for the quantum magnetic field effect which will reduce cooling of the plasma by X-ray emission; and finally, to use hydrogen-boron fuel to demonstrate greater fusion energy production than energy fed into the plasma (positive net energy production).

The experiment will be carried out in an experimental facility in New Jersey using a newly-built dense plasma focus device capable of reaching peak currents of more than 2 MA. This will be the most powerful DPF in North America and the second most powerful in the world. For the millionth of the second that the DPF will be operating during each pulse, its capacitor bank will be supplying about one third as much electricity as all electric generators in the United States.

A small team of three plasma physicists will perform the experiments: Eric Lerner, President of LPP; Dr. XinPei Lu and Dr. Krupakar Murali Subramanian. Mr. Lerner has been involved in the development of Focus Fusion for over 20 years. Dr. Lu is currently Professor of Physics at HuaZhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., Wuhan, China, where he received his PhD in 2001. He has been working in the field of pulsed plasmas for over 14 years and is the inventor of an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet. Dr. Subramanian is currently Senior Research Scientist, AtmoPla Dept., and BTU International Inc., in N. Billerica, Massachusetts. He worked for five years on the advanced-fuel Inertial Electrostatic Confinement device at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he received his PhD in 2004 and where he invented new plasma diagnostic instruments.

To help in the design of the capacitor bank, LPP has hired a leading expert in DPF design and experiment, Dr. John Thompson. Dr. Thompson has worked for over twenty years with Maxwell Laboratories and Alameda Applied Sciences Corporation to develop pulsed power devices, including DPFs and diamond switches.

The $1.2 million for the project has been provided by a $500,000 investment from The Abell Foundation, Inc, of Baltimore, Maryland, and by additional investments from a small number of individuals.

The basic technology of LPP’s approach is covered by a patent application, which was allowed in full by the US Patent Office in November. LPP expects the patent to be issued shortly.

The Dense Plasma Focus (DPF): What it is and How it Works

The dense plasma focus device consists of two cylindrical copper or beryllium electrodes nested inside each other. The outer electrode is generally no more than 6-7 inches in diameter and a foot long. The electrodes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber with a low pressure gas filling the space between them. The plasma focus device is shown in the figure below.

http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/images/dpf.gif



A pulse of electricity from a capacitor bank (an energy storage device) is discharged across the electrodes. For a few millionths of a second, an intense current flows from the outer to the inner electrode through the gas. This current starts to heat the gas and creates an intense magnetic field. Guided by its own magnetic field, the current forms itself into a thin sheath of tiny filaments; little whirlwinds of hot, electrically-conducting gas called plasma. A picture of these plasma filaments is shown below along with a schematic drawing.


http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/images/vortex.jpg

This sheath travels to the end of the inner electrode where the magnetic fields produced by the currents pinch and twist the plasma into a tiny, dense ball only a few thousandths of an inch across called a plasmoid. All of this happens without being guided by external magnets.

The magnetic fields very quickly collapse, and these changing magnetic fields induce an electric field which causes a beam of electrons to flow in one direction and a beam of ions (atoms that have lost electrons) in the other. The electron beam heats the plasmoid to extremely high temperatures, the equivalent of billions of degrees C (particles energies of 100 keV or more).

The collisions of the electrons with the ions generate a short pulse of highly-intense X-rays. If the device is being used to generate X-rays for our X-ray source project, conditions such as electrode sizes and shapes and gas fill pressure can be used to maximize X-ray output.

If the device is being used to produce fusion energy, other conditions can minimize X-ray production, which cools the plasma. Instead, energy can be transferred from the electrons to the ions using the magnetic field effect. Collisions of the ions with each other cause fusion reactions, which add more energy to the plasmoid. So in the end, the ion beam contain more energy than was input by the original electric current. (The energy of the electron beam is dissipated inside the plasmoid to heat it.) This happens even though the plasmoid only lasts 10 ns (billionths of a second) or so, because of the very high density in the plasmoid, which is close to solid density, makes collisions very likely and they occur extremely rapidly.

The ion beam of charged particles is directed into a decelerator which acts like a particle accelerator in reverse. Instead of using electricity to accelerate charged particles, they decelerate charged particles and generate electricity. Some of this electricity is recycled to power the next fusion pulse while the excess (net) energy is the electricity produced by the fusion power plant. Some of the X-ray energy produced by the plasmoid can also be directly converted to electricity through the photoelectric effect (like solar panels).

The DPF has been in existence since 1964, and many experimental groups around the world have worked with it. LPP’s unique theoretical approach, however, is the only one that has been able to fully explain how the DPF works, and thus exploit its full capabilities.

Harold Ambler on Global Warming

This is an excellent article that brings much of what is known out there up to date. New information is the breakdown of climate over the past two thousand years into five to six hundred periods of warm and cold climate. I do not know how real that breakdown is, but if accurate or truly justified in any way, then we surely have another four centuries of warm and pleasant weather. That is the good news. The bad news is that it will not last forever and we better use it to reforest the Sahara and other major deserts to restore Bronze Age conditions.

I do suspect however, that this apparent cyclical pattern is way too fuzzy and coincidental in reality. We simply do not have the comfort in our proxies yet, or to be more accurate, we have not spent enough on data gathering yet to be way more comfortable. Detailed wood ring analysis of every bog throughout Europe and pollen collection could provide an annual climate map for the past several thousands of years. That would be convincing. And how about the bogs in the boreal forests of Russia and Canada?

I do not think for a second that the true believers did anything more than impose their unwanted enthusiasm on a convenient apparent trend line. When I started this blog, I stated specifically that on balance the apparent trend line was within the expected range of variability and signified nothing else. I also stated that the CO2 problem was legitimate but for other reasons entirely.

For the last year, the trend line is in rapid decline and possible still has a way to go before it once again plateaus, although I am hoping we are already there. Perhaps it will not bottom until another politician cranks out the upcoming ice age enthusiasm. It can certainly get a lot colder and I would not be surprised if it did, but it cannot turn into an ice age. As I have pointed out in other posts, we are in the Holocene climate regime which has a variance of at most two degrees because the conditions for a northern ice age were altered permanently.

I am not going to reargue that in this post today, but the conforming data is extensive and ignored. It is possibly just too painful for folks to accept.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

Harold Ambler

Posted January 3, 2009 11:36 AM (EST)

Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted

Read More: Al Gore, Al Gore Global Warming, Alternative Energy, Barack Obama, Climate, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Flat-Earthers, Global Temperature, Global Warming, Green News

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will. There has been no stable period of climate during the Holocene, our own climatic era, which began with the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. During the Holocene there have been numerous sub-periods with dramatically varied climate, such as the warm Holocene Optimum (7,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C., during which humanity began to flourish, and advance technologically), the warm Roman Optimum (200 B.C. to 400 A.D., a time of abundant crops that promoted the empire), the cold Dark Ages (400 A.D. to 900 A.D., during which the Nile River froze, major cities were abandoned, the Roman Empire fell apart, and pestilence and famine were widespread), the Medieval Warm Period (900 A.D. to 1300 A.D., during which agriculture flourished, wealth increased, and dozens of lavish examples of Gothic architecture were created), the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850, during much of which plague, crop failures, witch burnings, food riots -- and even revolutions, including the French Revolution -- were the rule of thumb), followed by our own time of relative warmth (1850 to present, during which population has increased, technology and medical advances have been astonishing, and agriculture has flourished).

So, no one needs to say the words "climate" and "change" in the same breath -- it is assumed, by anyone with any level of knowledge, that climate changes. That is the redundancy to which I alluded. The lie is the suggestion that climate has ever been stable. Mr. Gore has used a famously inaccurate graph, known as the "Mann Hockey Stick," created by the scientist Michael Mann, showing that the modern rise in temperatures is unprecedented, and that the dramatic changes in climate just described did not take place. They did. One last thought on the expression "climate change": It is a retreat from the earlier expression used by alarmists, "manmade global warming," which was more easily debunked. There are people in Mr. Gore's camp who now use instances of cold temperatures to prove the existence of "climate change," which is absurd, obscene, even.

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth.Indeed, it is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers. Mr. Gore states, ad nauseum, that carbon dioxide rules climate in frightening and unpredictable, and new, ways. When he shows the hockey stick graph of temperature and plots it against reconstructed C02 levels in An Inconvenient Truth, he says that the two clearly have an obvious correlation. "Their relationship is actually very complicated," he says, "but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." The word "complicated" here is among the most significant Mr. Gore has uttered on the subject of climate and is, at best, a deliberate act of obfuscation. Why? Because it turns out that there is an 800-year lag between temperature and carbon dioxide, unlike the sense conveyed by Mr. Gore's graph. You are probably wondering by now -- and if you are not, you should be -- which rises first, carbon dioxide or temperature. The answer? Temperature. In every case, the ice-core data shows that temperature rises precede rises in carbon dioxide by, on average, 800 years. In fact, the relationship is not "complicated." When the ocean-atmosphere system warms, the oceans discharge vast quantities of carbon dioxide in a process known as de-gassing. For this reason, warm and cold years show up on the Mauna Loa C02 measurements even in the short term. For instance, the post-Pinatubo-eruption year of 1993 shows the lowest C02 increase since measurements have been kept. When did the highest C02 increase take place? During the super El Niño year of 1998.

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore.

Meanwhile, the theory that carbon dioxide "drives" climate in any meaningful way is simply wrong and, again, evidence of a "flat-Earth" mentality. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation. Why not? Because it only absorbs heat along limited bandwidths, and is already absorbing just about everything it can. That is why plotted on a graph, C02's ability to capture heat follows a logarithmic curve. We are already very near the maximum absorption level. Further, the IPCC Fourth Assessment, like all the ones before it, is based on computer models that presume a positive feedback of atmospheric warming via increased water vapor.

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect). Within certain bounds, in other words, the ocean-atmosphere system has a very effective self-regulating tendency. By the way, water vapor is far more prevalent, and relevant, in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide -- a trace gas. Water vapor's absorption spectrum also overlays that of carbon dioxide. They cannot both absorb the same energy! The relative might of water vapor and relative weakness of carbon dioxide is exemplified by the extraordinary cooling experienced each night in desert regions, where water in the atmosphere is nearly non-existent.

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate. Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

Concurrent with the switchover of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation to its cool phase the Sun has entered a period of deep slumber. The number of sunspots for 2008 was the second lowest of any year since 1901. That matters less because of fluctuations in the amount of heat generated by the massive star in our near proximity (although there are some fluctuations that may have some measurable effect on global temperatures) and more because of a process best described by the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark in his complex, but elegant, work The Chilling Stars. In the book, the modern Galileo, for he is nothing less, establishes that cosmic rays from deep space seed clouds over Earth's oceans. Regulating the number of cosmic rays reaching Earth's atmosphere is the solar wind; when it is strong, we get fewer cosmic rays.

When it is weak, we get more. As NASA has corroborated, the number of cosmic rays passing through our atmosphere is at the maximum level since measurements have been taken, and show no signs of diminishing. The result: the seeding of what some have taken to calling "Svensmark clouds," low dense clouds, principally over the oceans, that reflect sunlight back to space before it can have its warming effect on whatever is below.

Svensmark has proven, in the minds of most who have given his work a full hearing, that it is this very process that produced the episodes of cooling (and, inversely, warming) of our own era and past eras. The clearest instance of the process, by far, is that of the Maunder Minimum, which refers to a period from 1650 to 1700, during which the Sun had not a single spot on its face. Temperatures around the globe plummeted, with quite adverse effects: crop failures (remember the witch burnings in Europe and Massachusetts?), famine, and societal stress.

Many solar physicists anticipate that the slumbering Sun of early 2009 is likely to continue for at least two solar cycles, or about the next 25 years. Whether the Grand Solar Minimum, if it comes to pass, is as serious as the Maunder Minimum is not knowable, at present. Major solar minima (and maxima, such as the one during the second half of the 20th century) have also been shown to correlate with significant volcanic eruptions. These are likely the result of solar magnetic flux affecting geomagnetic flux, which affects the distribution of magma in Earth's molten iron core and under its thin mantle. So, let us say, just for the sake of argument, that such an eruption takes place over the course of the next two decades. Like all major eruptions, this one will have a temporary cooling effect on global temperatures, perhaps a large one. The larger the eruption, the greater the effect. History shows that periods of cold are far more stressful to humanity than periods of warm. Would the eruption and consequent cooling be a climate-modifier that exists outside of nature, somehow? Who is the "flat-Earther" now?

What about heat escaping from volcanic vents in the ocean floor? What about the destruction of warming, upper-atmosphere ozone by cosmic rays? I could go on, but space is short. Again, who is the "flat-Earther" here?

The ocean-atmosphere system is not a simple one that can be "ruled" by a trace atmospheric gas. It is a complex, chaotic system, largely modulated by solar effects (both direct and indirect), as shown by the Little Ice Age.

To be told, as I have been, by Mr. Gore, again and again, that carbon dioxide is a grave threat to humankind is not just annoying, by the way, although it is that! To re-tool our economies in an effort to suppress carbon dioxide and its imaginary effect on climate, when other, graver problems exist is, simply put, wrong. Particulate pollution, such as that causing the Asian brown cloud, is a real problem. Two billion people on Earth living without electricity, in darkened huts and hovels polluted by charcoal smoke, is a real problem.

So, let us indeed start a Manhattan Project-like mission to create alternative sources of energy. And, in the meantime, let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated, day after day.

Again, Mr. Gore, I accept your apology.

And, Mr. Obama, though I voted for you for a thousand times a thousand reasons, I hope never to need one from you.

P.S. One of the last, desperate canards proposed by climate alarmists is that of the polar ice caps. Look at the "terrible," "unprecedented" melting in the Arctic in the summer of 2007, they say. Well, the ice in the Arctic basin has always melted and refrozen, and always will. Any researcher who wants to find a single molecule of ice that has been there longer than 30 years is going to have a hard job, because the ice has always been melted from above (by the midnight Sun of summer) and below (by relatively warm ocean currents, possibly amplified by volcanic venting) -- and on the sides, again by warm currents. Scientists in the alarmist camp have taken to referring to "old ice," but, again, this is a misrepresentation of what takes place in the Arctic.

More to the point, 2007 happened also to be the time of maximum historic sea ice in Antarctica. (There are many credible sources of this information, such as the following website maintained by the University of Illinois-Urbana: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg). Why, I ask, has Mr. Gore not chosen to mention the record growth of sea ice around Antarctica? If the record melting in the Arctic is significant, then the record sea ice growth around Antarctica is, too, I say. If one is insignificant, then the other one is, too.

For failing to mention the 2007 Antarctic maximum sea ice record a single time, I also accept your apology, Mr. Gore. By the way, your contention that the Arctic basin will be "ice free" in summer within five years (which you said last month in Germany), is one of the most demonstrably false comments you have dared to make. Thank you for that!

Solar Balloons

I am not sure what we can do with this but somehow a sky full of solar balloons rising to the sun captures my imagination. It would be a nifty system to tie into the eden machine from previous postings.

Of course keeping it directed at the sun may well be the Achilles heel of this design. Another toss off brainstorm that then needs a stroke of genius to make it practical. The trick is to have the focal point oriented at the sun and able to adjust continually.

Party time!

Dec 30th 2008
From Economist.com

http://www.economist.com/science/tm/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12874284&source=hptextfeature

Metallised balloons may be the best way to make solar electricity

http://media.economist.com/images/columns/2008w01/balloon.jpg


Cool Earth SolarBoffins preparing to make light

SOLAR cells are expensive, so it makes sense to use them efficiently. One way of doing so is to concentrate sunlight onto them. That means a smaller area of cell can be used to convert a given amount of light into electricity. This, though, brings another cost—that of the mirrors needed to do the concentrating. Traditionally, these have been large pieces of polished metal, steered by electric motors to keep the sun’s rays focused on the cell. However, Cool Earth Solar of Livermore, California, has come up with what it hopes will be a better, cheaper alternative: balloons.

Anyone who has children will be familiar with aluminised party balloons. Such balloons are made from metal-coated plastic. Cool Earth’s insight was that if you coat only one half of a balloon, leaving the other transparent, the inner surface of the coated half will act as a concave mirror. Put a solar cell at the focus of that mirror and you have an inexpensive solar-energy collector.

Cool Earth’s balloons are rather larger than traditional party balloons, having a diameter of about two-and-a-half metres (eight feet), but otherwise they look quite similar. The solar cell apart, they are ridiculously cheap: the kilogram of plastic from which each balloon is made costs about $2. The cell, whose cost is a more closely guarded secret, is 15-20cm across and is water-cooled. That is necessary because the balloon concentrates sunlight up to 400 times, and without this cooling it would quickly burn out.Like a more conventional mirror, a solar balloon of this sort will have to be turned to face the sun as it moves through the sky, and Cool Earth is now testing various ways of doing this. However, the focus of the light on the solar cell can also be fine-tuned by changing the air-pressure within the balloon, and thus the curvature of the mirror.

The result, according to Rob Lamkin, Cool Earth’s boss, is a device whose installation costs only $1 per watt of generating capacity. That is about the same as a large coal-fired power station. Of course, balloons do not last as long as conventional power stations (each is estimated to have a working life of about a year). On the other hand, the fuel is free. When all the sums are done, Mr Lamkin reckons the firm will be able to sell electricity to California’s grid for 11 cents a kilowatt-hour, the state’s target price for renewable energy, and still turn a tidy profit.That belief will soon be put to the test. Cool Earth plans to open a 1-megawatt plant this summer. If it works, more will follow and, in the deserts of California and elsewhere, it will be party time for solar-energy enthusiasts.