Time Immortal

Or: a Toronto-based research team has taken what they think might be the first picture of a planet in orbit around a star other than our own.

After years of searching, astronomers may finally have recorded the first image of a planet orbiting a sunlike star beyond the solar system. The body, about eight times Jupiter’s mass, lies exceptionally far from its presumed parent star — roughly 11 times Neptune’s average distance from the sun.

“If this object is a planet at such a wide separation it would challenge our conceptions of planet and companion formation,” says theorist Adam Burrows of Princeton University.

In an article posted online September 10, codiscoverers David Lafrenière, Ray Jayawardhana and Marten H. van Kerkwijk of the University of Toronto caution there’s a small chance that the object, small enough to be classified as a planet, merely resides in the same part of the sky as the star but is not gravitationally bound to it.

But if the body does turn out to orbit the young sunlike star, which has the unwieldy name 1RXS J160929.1-210524, it could pose a problem for planet formation theories. A widely accepted model suggests that the planet-forming disks of gas, dust and ice that surround newborn stars concentrate most of their material close to their stars.

We ask the heavens, and the heavens teach us. I seem to recall reading a similar sentiment in Job 12, recently.

At any rate, this is a fascinating discovery. But then, I was always a sucker for astronomy. It is among my regrets that I will pass away without ever setting foot on the surface of another celestial body.

Count Roland writes in again with some follow-up regarding my previous response to him.

Agreed.

But the hypothesis was looking at the methane produced by large swaths of putrifying organic matter, as in vast rice paddies. Also, the period of NA buffalo depopulation coincides with the tail end (1700-1850) of a deepening mini ice age between ~1300 and ~1900. At the begininng of that, likely somehow related, the bl;ack death eliminated populations in Eurasia, likely impacting rice production among other things, reducing methane as well.

Also, it did not say that human induced methane production caused global warming - it said that such production slowed global cooling such that by now, given solar output, a pivot point for the commencement of an ice should be well past but we have not arrived at it, yet. But then again, perhaps the sun is acting a little differently this cycle.

However, a point that can be gleened from this hypothesis. If it is solar activity that is the principal factor and is in a ‘downward’ general cycle with some upticks (we are talking 1000’s and 100’s of years respectively) our human global warming, as little as it may be, may be the only barrier between us and and ice age which would cover most of the developed world with ice. Another way to say this is to remember that the last hundred years’ supposed “hockey stick” is but a fraction of an average glacial cycle let alone the longer solar cycles we have yet to gather the data for. Last time I checked, looking at the smallest fraction - a prooftext, of data and giving a conclusion is not good science.

I think the maxim “correlation does not imply causation” is relevant here with regard to the observation of the correlation between buffalo depopulation (1700-1850 AD) and the “tail end” of a “mini ice age” (1300-1900 AD), especially since a) the aforementioned “mini ice age” was already long in progress by the time buffalo depopulation began, and b) while significant, buffalo were not the only source of methane production in the world, and it seems suspect to suggest that even as catastrophic a decline in population as they underwent would precipitate sweeping changes in global average temperature, especially since by the time the buffalo were being hunted to the brink of extinction, the rice paddies would have been back in action.

There is also to be considered the observation that post-1850, the “mini ice age” came to an end (i.e. temperatures began to rise), even though the buffalo herds were no longer churning out massive quantities of methane (and at the time, cattle farming wouldn’t have made up the shortfall; it doesn’t even manage to do that today). One could potentially point to the Industrial Revolution as the culprit in this case, although given the analysis that has been done about the insignificance of CO2 and other industrial emissions as a driver of global temperature change, that thesis also falls deeply into question.

It serves to note that the Sun is only now coming to the end of an unusually energetic cycle that has, among other things, triggered warming trends on other planets in our solar system, Mars and Neptune to name but two. That diminishment in solar activity has already triggered a downward shift in global average temperature that has more or less undone the warming trend that Al Gore et. al. were so up in arms about, as one would expect if one accepts the theory that CO2 does almost nothing to affect changes in global average temperature, and that the Sun effects profound changes in same.

I also question whether it is humanity’s minimal contribution to changes in the average global temperature that stave off a coming ice age; personally, I tend to think that even under the most carefully controlled conditions, nature will do whatever it damn well pleases. Yes, there are cyclical patterns in climate, as there are in many things, but those patterns can shift for any number of reasons. The Sun has been unusually active for the last while, and is now entering a phase where it is much less energetic than it has been. This may trigger a mild drop in the global average temperature, or it may trigger an extreme drop in same, thus ushering in a new ice age. Either way, I don’t think anything humanity does, in terms of emissions, will offset the results to any meaningful extent. It has been said that even if humanity ceased all CO2 production (even from out of our own lungs), we would have an effect on the global average temperature that one would need percents of percents to measure properly — i.e. statistically and quantitatively insignificant. Even if methane had a hundred times the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere, cutting all our methane emissions would still only result in a change in global average temperature of a percent, or perhaps a few percent (if we were lucky).

If humanity wanted to really stave off a coming ice age, we’d find a way to maximize our production of water vapour, since it is vapour that contributes the most to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. But even then — next to the natural water cycles of the planet, our contribution at present is almost meaningless, and it would be a mighty effort indeed to change that.

Jim Whalley writes in, presumably in response to this article concerning a possible correlation between global warming and reduced numbers (and diminished violence) of hurricanes.

I’ve edited Jim’s message a bit, inserting paragraph breaks where it seemed appropriate. Also, in a departure from my norm, I’ll be spacing my replies in a more “interlinear” fashion, between paragraphs as it were.

The chief point appears to be that for the Eastern USA the incidence of hurricanes appears to be dropping as the Northern Atlantic grows warmer as it approaches thermal equilibrium with the tropical and equatorial water masses. What it doesn’t mention is the increase (or decrease) of hurricane (or typhoon) activity worldwide. The temperature differential between polar and equatorial is what is responsible for the winds that make up hurricanes and typhoons.

I’m going out on a limb, not having taken any studies in fluid dynamics or weather patterns, but based on what I’ve learned about things like tornados here in Alberta, the violence of the storm is proportional to the magnitude of the temperature differential. Assuming, then, that the same holds true for hurricanes, a diminished temperature differential between polar and equatorial currents would result in fewer, or less violent, hurricanes.

In other words, it seems logical to conclude that increased warming brings diminished quantities or violence of hurricanes.

The other consequence of warming polar oceans is the sea level change when the polar icecaps melt, with the catastrophic consequences for the millions of people who live within 80 - 100 feet of current sea level. The displacement of coastal populations will be felt even in the US and Canada with large portions of the Atlantic coast under 40 - 80 feet of water, and near sea level areas like the Gulf coast states or the Canadian Maritimes flooded and their resident populations displaced and homeless.

This doesn’t even begin to address the possibility of a catastrophic climate change that would turn most of equatorial Africa into desert, and kill off most of the indigenous plant and animal species in the rest of the world, due to the cascading effect of the elimination of polar icecaps and snow (which reflect a substantial portion of heat back into space).

The problem with any good debate about climate change is that scare numbers inevitably get hauled out by proponents of the various climate change “solutions” being proposed by the likes of Al Gore and the IPCC. Even assuming that the polar ice cap melted in its entirety (which would take centuries to happen, and which did not happen even when, thousands of years ago, the Earth was (in places) as much as 8 degrees warmer on average than it is now). Back then, forests crept as much as 1000 km north of their present limits, and every glacier below 5 km elevation melted.

Notable exceptions included the Greenland ice sheet and, presumably, parts of the polar ice cap. Earth would have to get catastrophically warm — i.e. reach temperatures that could only be caused by the Sun in its death throes — for all polar ice to melt.

And if I do recall correctly, although I seem to have lost the link to the calculations, even if the entire polar ice cap did melt, sea levels wouldn’t rise as far as Jim would have us think. To achieve that rise, the Antarctic ice cap would have to melt entirely as well. And Antarctica is currently cooling, for the most part.

That warming period thousands of years ago also addresses Jim’s comment about equatorial Africa becoming a desert, with the attendant mass death of most plant life. If it didn’t happen back then (and if I do recall correctly, the fossil record doesn’t show evidence of mass extinctions of plant life, or of the animals that would have thus been deprived of food, in that time period), why would it happen now? Especially since the current warming trend falls far short of the 4 to 8 degrees C that happened back then?

Secondary effects of global ocean warming, such as the blooming of toxic bacterial strains which presently live near volcanic undersea vents is possible, but presently still conjecture. If we have to find this out the hard way, it’ll be too late. It may be too late already, as we have set forces into motion which will take at least 200 years to reach a state of equilibrium if we could stop all future CO2 emissions and go back to a pre-industrial level.

Even if humanity stopped all industrial carbon emissions, the warming trend would be affected by less than one percent…less than a percent of a percent, in fact.

Almost all of the atmosphere’s ability to trap heat comes from water vapor, which we do not (and, more to the point, cannot) regulate the emission of. And most of the current warming trend has nothing to do with human industrial emissions anyhow, but with the Sun — we know this because other planets in the Solar System, such as Mars and Neptune, have also experienced warming trends proportional (adjusting for their increased distance from the Sun) to what has been observed on Earth.

I could go on about how our judgment, ethics, and responsibility have taken a beating at the hands of ego and greed-driven capitalism, but that would take a discussion of its own to do it justice.

I think sentences like this, when they are found as a part of any environmentalist’s argument, are telling, because what such sentences reveal is that the professed environmentalism is really just a front, a cover, for a desire to see global socialism become a reality.

If for no other reason than that, it is worthwhile to oppose environmentalism and climate change alarmism. But equally, it’s worthwhile to oppose the use of scare numbers (see above) and shoddy science( see above as well, though not as distantly) in an effort to advance those causes.