Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

Chris Mooney and Michael Specter along with others did a lecture at MIT last April. MIT has put the video up online and it is well worth a view.

The topic was denialism and disinformation. How can so many people believe things that someone tells them with no critical thinking. (My post on Authoritarians goes along with this quite well I suspect)

I regularly get asked if the world is going to end in 2012, and amazingly I am still getting comments from buyers defending their purchase of the iRenew and Q-Ray bracelets!

You can file a complaint with the FTC over these scams. Click the image above to go to the FTC web page.

In the two months since I wrote the post about what a scam the iRenew bracelet was, I have had more comments than any other post I have ever written. Mostly from people who like me are amazed that people will fall for it. Many other comments explain very well why these scammers will make millions of dollars. The adverts are now all over Fox news and other outlets on late night cable TV.

Q-Ray Is A Scam Too

Do not think I’m exaggerating either. A similar piece of junk, the Q-Ray bracelet has already gotten into trouble with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and were ordered to provide 64 million dollars in refunds. I bet that is a drop in the bucket compared to how much they got away with. You can find out more about the Q-Ray scam and the lawsuits against them on Quackwatch.

While I’m On The Subject Of Scams…

A new scam for those that slept though junior high science Class. Can you say horse hockey? I knew you could...

I saw a new one being touted on twitter the other day. The Zero Point Magnetic Generator. It usually the revolutionary idea of perpetual motion to make free power for your home. Perpetual motion scams have been around for many decades and they have taken millions from the scientifically illiterate.

Just to be clear here- Perpetual motion violates the second law of thermodynamics. That means it will not, cannot, and NEVER will work. Period. A similar scam using a tank of water in your car boot to make hydrogen runs along similar lines.  It’s just as much a scam as the rest.

I mentioned some of those comments I have received on the first post. Many more were political in nature and off topic so they did not get approved. I tried to be more generous than usual in my editing, and here are my fave’s below (with the replies I have held off making).

Comments:

1.after wearing bracelet for 1 week i gained incredible strength, lost 50 lbs, attracted women by the dozen andit cured my cancer. lol people are so &^%ing stupid. I can imagine all the idiots running to their mailboxes in anticipation of their miracle cure. Thanks for putting at least 1 honest review of this scam.

Dan: Your Welcome!

2.Jack Rand

Actually I do have an iRenew bracelet, and it has worked for me! I really don’t care why it works, I only care that it makes me feel better. After I bought the bracelets online I got some pdfs from irenew. After reading a little bit about the theory behind this technology, I did a bit more digging and found this video from the same authors. The video called “The Living Matrix” is really amazing. It really breaks down a handful of technologies being used to help restore or heal a person’s body field.

Dan: Jack you missed the point! There is no such thing as a “body field”. See Barnum P.T. and Gary Stephens reply below.

3. You know – I have to add one thing – If you buy one of these, you should need to pass a test before you are allowed to vote. It is certainly one thing to screw yourself but when you vote, now you are passing on your stupidity to the lives of others. So: I-Renew = I shouldn’t vote

and my favourites:

4.what i find amazing is that there is no negative feedback on this product anywhere,(except here)yet,everyone here with negative feed has (never tried) the product. im reminded of a time when the world was once thought to be flat.with that said, if your going to lead the movement,on this so called fake irenew bracelet,at least try the damn thing first!

and gary stephens Reply:
August 14th, 2010 at 10:18 am

you don’t have to stick your head up a chickens ass to know where an egg comes from.

So in closing, while I do not mean to be harsh, if you bought one of these things, or your plans to build a zero point magnetic generator are in the mail, do yourself a favour. Turn off the TV and visit your local library. Might I suggest Tuning into Science Friday on NPR?  Oh, and quit reading the horoscope in your local paper.

That’s a SCAM too!

Your's truly looking at the ice core from 2,500 meters beneath the Greenland Ice Cap. The science trench where the drill is located is -20C and is about 10 meters below the surface. Dan's pic.

I’ve just returned today from Greenland and am looking forward to seeing my first “night” in 10 days!

The 14 countries that have supported the NEEM ice core project got their money’s worth this week. The two year project to drill an ice core through 2,500 meters of ice finally reached Greenland rock.

Where Is It

NEEM at Midnight- Dan's Pic.

The NEEM site is at 8,300 feet on top of the ice sheet. I arrived there a week ago Tuesday and was a guest for 8 nights. There were 38 of us in a small camp in the middle of a magnificent desolation of white.

The population of this tiny outpost is an international mix of young and older scientists, researchers and ice core drilling experts. Many like Jim White, the Director of the Stable Isotope Lab at INSTAAR are renowned experts in their fields.

It was a fun and fascinating 9 days with top ice scientists from Denmark, France, USA,Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.

There was a riot of different accents but everyone had one thing in common.

Scientific curiosity.

Among those in science, that always transcends national borders, languages and cultures.

About NEEM

James White of the University of Colorado and director of INSTAAR.

I was a guest of Paleoclimate expert  Jim White the director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the Uni. of Colorado. Dr. White arranged the support of the National Science Foundation. After Denmark, the NSF was the second biggest funder of NEEM.

So what did the folks at NEEM do in plain language?

They pulled up ice that was once falling as snow in Greenland around 150,000 years ago! Then they analysed and read it like a climate history book. This was the first time that a boat load of science was done on an ice core as it was being obtained.

This was during the ice age that preceded the Eemian. The Eemian is the warm period before our last ice age. This means we now have an ice core that goes all the way back through the Holocene (The warm period after the last ice age in which we now live), the ice age before the Holocene, and then the warm period before the last ice age (The Eemian) and finally into the penultimate ice age before the Eemian!

This is from the Antarctic VOSTOK ice core. Notice how stable the climate has been during the short blip of time called the Holocene. Virtually all of civilisation developed in the Holocene. Notice how unstable the climate was before! NEEM has now obtained a core from Greenland that goes back a similar period to that shown here. (NOAA)

Knowing what the climate of Earth was like in the Eemian is vitally important. The main reason is because there is overwhelming evidence the Earth will be as warm as the Eemian by the end of this century.

It should not be. The best evidence we have is that the Earth should be cooling slightly. It is actually doing just the opposite because of rapidly rising greenhouse gases.

There is no doubt among the scientists that we will continue to warm. Even if we quit burning fossil fuels tonight, the planet will continue to warm at least another degree. That’s because a lot of the warming has been stored in the oceans. If we keep burning coal and oil, the warming will be much more severe.

There is little debate about that in the science community. Almost none actually.

NEEM Camp- Dan's pic (click to make real big)

The Scary Bit Is What Is Not Known.

Could there be a rapid warming?

A significant jump in temperature that happens in a decade?

Sound crazy?

Think again., The ice core at NEEM and the other Greenland cores all show that this has happened many times in the past. Very abrupt warmings are part of our climate. The question is what are the tipping points that cause these. The bigger question is are we about to reach one.

This ice core at NEEM may hold very important clues.

Pictures and Video

I took thousands of pics and made 5 hours of video at NEEM. We will air reports on WHNT for those in North Alabama and there will be an in-depth documentary about NEEM coming as well from Dave Jones at Storm Center Communications. I was part of the three man team that Dave sent.

My colleagues, David Stroud and Robert Freeland, and I had an incredible adventure. I learned more of the latest climate science in 8 days than I could have in a year at home. (I had captive climate experts to ask questions of and I took advantage.)

We were there when NEEM reached bedrock.

Stay tuned here for the pictures and the story. I think you will find it fascinating.

One thing for sure, the phrase “snow on the toilet paper” will have a significant meaning to me for the rest of my life!

More soon after I sleep for awhile!

Dan

Brian Cox was host of Wonders Of The Solar System on the BBC earlier this year. As I wrote in a previous post, the series was the first I have seen that surpassed Carl Sagan’s COSMOS.

TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) invited Cox to make a talk on exploration. I do not even have to watch it to know that I should post it here.

I cannot imagine that I’ll disagree with it.

OK, so now I have watched it.

Thought you might like to see the original presentation of Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. I have the audio. The pictures are from NASA. I might be pushing fair use but it’s only a small clip of audio from an hour long program, and I think Carl Sagan (If he were alive today, and witnessing for himself the war on science underway in America) would approve.

Oh and this- Look who just got an OBE (Order of the British Empire)! (Read down aways)

Oil slick forecast for Noon Tuesday 1 June. Click for full res. ctsy NOAA

Word has it that the oil slick is now just 17 miles off the sugar white sandy beaches of Dauphin Island, Alabama. The ocean currents push the oil and the winds push the ocean. It looks like the oil will be getting very close to the Alabama Coast in the next day or two.

In the summer a large high pressure cell develops off the East Coast of America. Meteorologists call it the Bermuda High. It actually moves around a bit, but it consistently brings a fairly strong southerly flow to the Gulf Coast region. As this high develops the winds will likely spread the oil slick over a much broader area than has been affected so far.

The latest projections from NOAA are hinting at the oil spreading Northward as well.

There is some closely related news worth mentioning as well. Physicist Joe Romm (MIT) has a fascinating guest post on Climate Progress from Craig Severance on Peak Oil. It seems very likely that we have reached it or soon will.

This is profound. If it’s true ( and a LOT of experts are now coming to the same conclusion. The U.S. Defense Dept. as well.) then the World we know is about to change dramatically. With demand for oil rising and the supply falling, the price will skyrocket. Severance says the fact that the easy oil to get to is already gone is why we have the disaster in the Gulf.

Oil Production forecast from ENERGY WATCH

He also predicts that as the prices rise there will be intense pressure to destroy forests and the ANWAR to get every last drop. Even at the risk of more incidents like what is happening 300 miles to my south as I write this post. The crowd demanding cheap oil and cheap food will indeed be loud, but I choose to beleive that a more educated viewpoint will eventually win the day.

What is interesting is that Craig Severance and James Hansen are saying the same thing. We have to switch to natural gas as a stop gap and begin a crash program to convert to sources of renewable energy. Hansen’s book Storms of My Grandchildren is a MUST read. In his book he also mentions Tom Blees’ book Prescription for The Planet. Another must read.

Physicist Richard Muller of UC Berkeley seems to agree today if the interview with him on MSNBC was accurate.

Blees’ book is mainly about the 4th generation nuclear power plants which can solve the problems of air pollution, climate change, and nuclear waste all at once. I find it amazing that this program was canceled by the Clinton administration.

If Severance and the others are right, then the days of cheap transport and even cheaper cheeseburgers are over. (do read his post linked above to understand why). You may not like it but it’s likely true. Covering the beaches of the World with oil and mowing down most of the remaining forests on the planet to squeeze the black gold out of shaley rock beds will not fix the problem or even hold it off long.

We CAN have cheap transport and cheap cheeseburgers, but not using oil to grow the beef and to drive to the burger joint.

The oil economy is coming to an end and if we don’t make the switch to something more sustainable, it will be an economic and environmental catastrophe.