Benjamin Franklin on Plate Tectonics

Plate tectonics was discovered in 1967. But Benjamin Franklin wrote this in 1782:

Cost of a Space Elevator: $350 Billion (?)

NIST carbon nanotubes for sale

How much will it cost to build a space elevator? Here's one estimate for the raw material alone: $350 billion.

At least, that's the current cost of the carbon nanotubes, if you want ones free of impurities. NIST has started selling single-walled carbon nanotubes, certified to be free of certain contaminants: $865 for 250 mg of the stuff.

That's 61 times the price of gold, per ounce.

As I wrote in my recent Physics World article, a carbon nanotube is the only existing material that is both strong enough and light enough to satisfy the demanding engineering requirements of a space elevator. (Basically, you need a material that can hold up about ten thousand kilometers of itself without breaking.) It remains to be discovered how to combine something that basically looks like a pile of soot into something durable like you'd need for a space elevator ribbon, but let's assume the SmartPeople (maybe these guys) work that out. What's the price of just the CNTs?

Well, the mass of the elevator will depend on its length (which, in turn, depends on how much of a counterweight you can manage to attach its space-end), and on its shape (which would be some kind of taper, widest at geosynchronous orbit). You can play with these (and here is a great spreadsheet by Maurice Franklin that lets you do just that), but the length is likely to be about 100,000 km, and the GEO-to-end taper ratio about 2-4, so the mass is going to be somewhere around 10⁵ kg.

At the NIST list price that will run you about $350 billion, or 0.5% of world GDP. Pricey even for Google.

Of course, this is just NIST's introductory price for uncontaminated CNTs -- it will likely drop by the time the elevator ribbon construction facility gets going.

And NIST will surely give you a big discount if you show up with a checkbook and say you want to buy in bulk.

Comet Lovejoy As Seen From the ISS

NASA has some nice images of Comet Lovejoy, taken yesterday from the International Space Station. More here. (This was the comet that was not expected to survive its passage through the Sun's corona, but did.)

Frozen Fog Here This Morning

"I knew Christopher Hitchens better than you"

Wonderful satire by Neal Pollack, in Salon:

Christopher Hitchens and I were friends for 40 years, plus another five when we were enemies. He took ideas so seriously that if he disagreed with you on a matter that he deemed important, he’d literally throw you in a ditch. It was 1972, the height of our mutual virility. He and I went to a pub to celebrate his most recent intellectual victory over the establishment press. I intimated that sometimes women could be funny on purpose. Even back then, the thought enraged him. Hitchens threw a drink in my face, pressed a lit cigarette into my neck, and hit me over the head with a barstool. The next thing I knew, it was two days later and I was lying hogtied and naked beside the M5. Hitch had already severely damaged my reputation in a vicious essay in the Guardian. But that’s how he operated, and that’s why we loved him.

The rest is here.

Environmental Problems of Days of Yore

And you think we have environmental problems.... from Scientific American, June 1860:

"Last year during three months of very dry weather, old father Thames, that once-classic stream, became a huge sewer sending forth fetid odors over all the British metropolis. A report recently presented on the subject contains the statement that about $88,000 worth of deodorizing materials, $88,000 worth of deodorizing material was thrown into the Thames during the months of June, July and August, chiefly chloride of lime, of which 478 tons were used, and chalk lime, of which 4,280 tons were used. These were chiefly thrown into the sewers [and while] the temperature of the river remained high, from 69 to 74 degrees, the river remained proof against all efforts of deodorization. Great preparations have been made this year to provide a sufficient supply of the perchloride of iron in order to modify the pungent powers of father Thames's snuffbox."

£88,000 then is either £6 million or £53 million today, depending on how you calculate it. In either case, the stink must have been an extremely urgent problem.

(Source)

Sunday Night Stuff

Here's a perfect example of how climate change serves as a proxy for larger issues of contention, as Mike Hulme writes in Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Tidewater Virginia residents who oppose their town planners' efforts to prepare for sea-level rise, in one of the most vulnerable parts of the US to the problem. Ostensibly they disagree with climate change science, but, if you read closely, their concerns are really about distant and unelected technocrats who they think are making rules for their property and their town's. Sure, maybe they have misinterpreted the UN's "Agenda 21" -- but then, what do any of us know about what the UN is really up to, and what could you do about it anyhow? Or, for that matter, the town planners of small towns, who have certainly been known to pull a few shenanigans. So I don't think you can dismiss these kind of things as just more denialist tea partiers.

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A tidy example of a negative climate feedback(*): In the face of a record breaking climate event Texas farmers have reduced the number of cows raised by 600,000, or about 12%. That's like taking 750,000 cars off the road, if this article is correct -- a reduction of 2 million metric tons of CO2 this year. Less cows, less GHGs, less warming, less drought -- negative feedback.

(*) admittedly glossing over all details of attribution.

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I missed this last month, but the WMO-GAW GHG Monitoring Network released their annual report last month. Global atmospheric methane levels are indeed rising again: up 5 ppb in 2010, continuing the increase that resumed in 2006. (Past reports here.) Nobody seems to really know why.

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Last week the NIH said it would no longer fund research on chimpanzees. This is a very good thing. This picture immediately sprang to my mind when I heard about this ban:

Don't tell me these animals don't deserve the same consideration as humans, unless you are OK with being caged, exploited, and butchered if and when a higher intelligence shows up (or is developed) here.

That Amazing Silent Protest at UC Davis

I knew UC Davis students had protested their Chancellor's defense of the police pepper-spraying incident, but I didn't pay attention to the details and I missed their amazingly powerful silent witness on November 19th. It's so impressive I got goosebumps watching it.

Here's an account of that day:

A pretty remarkable thing just happened. A press conference, scheduled for 2:00pm between the UC Davis Chancellor and police on campus, did not end at 2:30. Instead, a mass of Occupy Davis students and sympathizers mobilized outside, demanding to have their voice heard. After some initial confusion, UC Chancellor Linda Katehi refused to leave the building, attempting to give the media the impression that the students were somehow holding her hostage.

A group of highly organized students formed large gap for the chancellor to leave. They chanted “we are peaceful” and “just walk home,” but nothing changed for several hours. Eventually student representatives convinced the chancellor to leave after telling their fellow students to sit down and lock arms.

Here are two videos showing the students simply quietly, with linked arms, simply observing Linda Katehi as she left. The protest was organized by one of the students who was pepper-sprayed. Extremely effective. I heard Thom Hartmann say that Quaker women used to do this, and it's a form of protest I hope is revived.

Sometimes It Seems They Don't Even Try

Christopher Booker in the The Telegraph, yesterday: "I was criticised for pointing this out last week, but as anyone can see, from satellite-based charts on the Cryosphere Today website, the extent of polar sea ice was last year 1.6 million square kilometres greater than its average over the last 30 years – something which could never have been guessed from Attenborough’s dramatic film sequences, carefully chosen to convey the very different message the BBC wanted us to believe."

Actual current data from Cryosphere Today:

Methane Time Bomb in Arctic Seas - Apocalypse Not - NYTimes.com

But Andrew Revkin has much better reporting on the Arctic methane issue than The Independent:

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/methane-time-bomb-in-arctic-seas-apocalypse-not/

Kilometer-sized Methane Bubbles Seen in Arctic Ocean

Russian scientists have reported sighting large amounts of methane coming to the surface out in the Arctic Ocean:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them." 

Semiletov spoke at this year's AGU meeting earlier this month, but here's an AGU blog posting from almost two years ago where he also reported surprising rates of methane emissions. It includes this interview of his colleague Natalia Shakhova:



Last month I blogged about a paper that found a resumed increase in atmospheric methane levels at two sites in Europe.

Roy Spencer's Minimalized Government

Roy Spencer, July 5, 2011:

"I view my job a little like a legislator, supported by the taxpayer, to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to minimize the role of government."

Roy Spencer, today:

It’s true that the “golden age” of state-of-the-art Earth-observation science missions is gradually ending. There is currently a real problem that no government agency has been specifically funded to carry on climate observations into the future....

Perhaps, as Spencer advocates for "poor people," the private sector can coordinate charity for a new satellite.

Inhofe's Inhofeian Statement

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) solidly reassured the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce that ending Don't Ask Don't Tell hasn't "legalized bestiality" in the military:

Inhofe also reassured his audience that the lifting of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gay service members has not “legalized bestiality” in the military.

He explained that, although gay people may now “go in the military, go wide open and use that for their agenda,” sex with animals is still outlawed by military code.

“When you go out and talk to people on the street, they’ll tell you, ‘Oh, they’ve legalized bestiality,’ … but that hasn’t changed.”

What can you possibly say about such an comment -- that it's monstrous? Depraved? Evil? I don't think the word has been invented yet, so I'll go with "Inhofeian."

To their credit the Tulsa Metro Chamber issued a statement that paid appropriate homage to...him...while distancing themselves from his statement: "...while the chamber often supports Senator Inhofe's policy stances related to business matters as mentioned above, his comments at the Dec. 12 forum do not reflect the chamber's view on diversity and inclusion.... The chamber is committed to the belief that an inclusive community improves the economic and social climate in the Tulsa region."

Inhofe has also found another hoax: he said that concerns about side effects of fracking are "a phony issue that's been invented." A peer-reviewed study in PNAS disagrees. (To be clear, this PNAS study found significant contamination by methane that increased the closer one got to the well head -- but no contamination by fracturing fluids. An MIT study and a University of Texas study found no contamination, but the latter found some pollution from above-ground spills. None of these studies qualify as "phony.")

I am still holding to my position that the real hoax is Inhofe himself. It's the simplest explanation that fits all the observations.

Movement on Climategate Investigation

It looks like CG2 has gotten someone to tell the US & UK authorities to get off their butts and see where the hack came from.... But what good does it do to seize home computers? Surely they ought to be seizing servers, or doing some detailed forensics in routing records.

Here's the US DOJ (Criminal Division) notice received last Friday by Tallbloke and Jeff Id.

Big Picture's Series on Homelessness

This is a rather shocking picture, from The Big Picture Blog's series on homeless around the world. They have more.

Another Way Science Writers Have Ruined Science

I wish I could read just one article about the Higgs boson without the phrase "the God particle," but it's probably too late. Is any editor ever going to publish an article without it, now, even if the writer wanted to (and most probably don't)?

The phrase comes from Leon Lederman's 1993 book (written with Dick Teresi) The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?, and that came from Lederman, who had been using it as a joke. This is from the preface to the 2006 edition of the book:

Teresi is a former editor at Omni who has a penchant for titles that try a little bit too hard, such as Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman? A Catalogue of Revolutionary Tools for Higher Consciousness and "Hungarians Think The Darnedest Things," etc. I know writers don't usually have final say on their titles, and I guess someone knew what they were doing since the book has sold over 100,000 copies. Eck, maybe I'm just jealous. But it's an awkward, unnecessary, and misleading conflation of science and religion, as if science gives credence for any of that.

I was wondering how Peter Higgs feels about the name, and found this article from today in LiveScience. It seems a lot of scientists don't like the name:

Vivek Sharma (UC-San Diego), leader of the Higgs search at LHC's CMS experiment: "I detest the name 'God particle.' I am not particularly religious, but I find the term an 'in your face' affront to those who [are]. I do experimental physics not GOD."

Michio Kaku (CCNY) : "It's an awful name. It does not convey the particle's true role, that it is the last missing piece of the Standard Model, and that it gives mass to the other particles."

Matt Strassler (Rutgers): "I feel the term 'God particle,' invented by a publisher to sell books and make money, insultingly misrepresents both science and religion."

Kyle Cranmer (NYU): "[It] carries almost no information about why the Higgs particle is important, it makes physicists sound pompous and arrogant, and it reinforces a very harmful presumption that physicists are trying to replace or compete with 'God,'...."

Gordon Kane (Univ Michigan): "'God particle' is a bad name, in every way. It has nothing to do with the physics. Most (all?) physicists dislike it."

More here.

The article also says:

The story goes that Lederman originally wanted to name the tome "The Goddamn Particle" because of how difficult it was to detect, but was persuaded by his publisher, Delta, to shorten it.

which seems to contradict the preface above, but oh well it's a good little story.

Why Energy Efficiency Isn't Enough

Can energy efficiency and conservation alone solve the CO2 problem? An op-ed in today's Oregonian by Kumar Venkat discusses this and other aspects of the problem.

Can we rely primarily on energy efficiencies in the meantime? Up to a point, yes; but efficiencies are not a panacea for all our energy problems. Energy efficiencies are known to cause rebounds, which can reduce potential energy savings by stimulating additional energy use.

This is Jevons Paradox, and you can see it in gasoline consumption in the US over decades.

Here's a back of the envelope calculation:
Take CO2 and population data from the World Bank, for 2009. Assume that

1. OECD countries cut their per-capita CO2 emissions by 30%. 
2. the per-capita emissions of the non-OECD countries reach a factor F of the OECD countries (currently F=0.29).
3. the world's population increases to 10 billion, with all the increase in the non-OECD countries. 

Then this would be the world's total CO2 emissions, as a function of F, as a factor of 2009's CO2 emissions:

In other words, even if we cut our emissions by 30% and everyone in the world attains this standard of living, emissions would be 2.5 times today's.

You can't even get to today's (already unacceptable) levels of emissions, and F=1, unless the cutback = 72%

I don't see how you can possibly get enough cutback in emissions with conservation and increased efficiency, unless most of the world stays poor. The demographics swamp everything.

And if we have to reduce emissions by 80% of today's, it's impossible without new technologies (at least in energy storage, if not renewable energy). Impossible. You can't even get close.

You must either (1) invent new ways to store energy, or (2) new ways to generate noncarbon energy. Lots of it, on demand. R&D is the only answer.

Note: the only data I used is (2009):

OECD population: 1.225 B
non-OECD population: 5.536 B

OECD per-capita emissions: 9.83 mt
non-OECD per-capita emissions: 2.88 mt

(Remember, US per-capita emissions in 2009 were 16.9 mt.)