Anthonares

Those following the waning “debate” over anthropogenic global warming (AGW) will have noticed a change in its flavor over the last two years. 2005 was the year in which the remaining few credible scientific arguments against global warming in general were eliminated (see this post). Now, even the skeptics, or at least the honest ones, admit the warming is real. The last bastion of true skepticism lies in arguments based on solar forcing of climate, which Real Climate has been methodically debunking.

Indeed we have reached a point at which even most politicians, Sen. Imhoffe excluded, agree that global warming is probably human-induced. That, in itself, is a tremendous triumph for science. There are those who will argue that it’s too soon for scientists to celebrate, but I’m willing to pop the cork a little earlier than some. Nevertheless, I think we’ll see a very large number of books published examining just why it was so hard for scientists to convince the public and policymakers of their conclusions. That is partly the theme of Al Gore’s new book, and of the talk he gave last December at the annual gathering of the American Geophysical Union. But Gore is still on the front lines, so to speak, leading the charge to eradicate the deeply entrenched public skepticism of AGW. Unfortunately, that public skepticism is still being fueled by popular anti-science works like Bethell’s PIG Guide to Science that, while long discredited, still remain on bookshelves.

But this blog is mostly about looking forward, and the trend I see is that the head of the AGW skepticism movement has long been severed, the body just hasn’t found out yet. There is one aspect of the entire phony debate that bothers me the most, and its one that will very likely survive long after AGW is publicly accepted. How is it that the public came to so easily discard the work of so many scientists?
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I’ve just finished reading the first five chapters in Charles Mann’s fantastic 1491 and have been simply blown away so far. But, that will have to wait until a future entry. Today I’m going to share an idea I had when reading Mann’s chapter about the scientific infighting surrounding the Clovis culture. Pardon me if it’s a bit rambling, I’m just beginning to firm up my thoughts here.

For those who aren’t aware of the “Clovis-first” issue, Mann summs it up quite well. For decades, a powerful group of anthropologists headed by Dr. C. Vance Haynes at Arizona jealously defended the idea that the Clovis Culture was the progenitor of all subsequent Native American cultures. A few so-called “pre-Clovis” sites appeared, but none so convincing as the Clovis, New Mexico site that had given its name to the early Americans. This absence of evidence was taken to be evidence of absenc” in light of the beautiful line of reasoning that motivated the Clovis-First hypothesis (for more information, read 1491!).

The basic premise of my argument is this: subsets of, or entire scientific disciplines occasionally become wrangled in debates that seem little to do with the science, but rather with the personalities involved because the theory outpaces the ability of the science to gather and process data. Good recent examples of this include the slow acceptance of the tectonic theory in Geology, impact extinction in archaeology, string theory, and until about two decades ago, anthropogenic global warming.

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One of the treasured axioms of scientific inquiry is that science is incapable of proving something to be true; it can only prove that something is untrue. However, that statement does not mean that science is necessarily capable of proving that something is impossible. Scientists are fond of poking holes in what they perceive as the pipe dreams of technologists. Very often they use theory and fundamental physical laws, with a healthy dose of assumptions, to state their case. Unfortunately for vocal scientists, they’re not always right. In fact, when it comes to space flight, scientists were so wrong that they are still playing catch up.

Within the last few days, there have been two instances of what I consider to be the gross overstating of the impossibility of a task by scientists or science journalists.
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In my undergraduate cosmology class my professor introduced this satellite as having brought about quantitative cosmolgy. While that’s probably just a bit of an exaggeration, this little craft definitely revolutionized the science. Prior to the launch of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) (and to a much smaller degree its predecessor, COBE), cosmology, the study of the evolution of the universe, was a mess of theories and ages. But after a series of papers published in 2003 detailing the first year of data collection from WMAP, the universe suddenly had a definite age, 13.7 billion years, and was shown to be dominated by dark energy.

Since then, WMAP has been the darling of the astronomy community and has undoubtedly led hundreds of eager young undergraduates into cosmology. The science community knew that WMAP was still collecting data, but I’m not sure that anyone really expected the news released last week (discussed at Cosmic Variance and at Bad Astronomy, here are the technical publications). The age of the universe was left unchanged at 13.7 billion years, but the date of first star formation was moved to 400 million years in better agreement with theory. Also, the first true evidence for cosmic inflation was presented as well.

It was an exciting announcement from a team that has already done so much for the field of cosmology. To better understand just why the WMAP mission is so important, I’ve put together this relatively brief summary of the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background in the last decade. These three missions have changed our prospective and refined our vision. Cosmology is now a field of true quantitative prediction that bears little resemblance to the unorganized conjecture of two decades ago.
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When fully operational, the US Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) will focus 192 of the most powerful lasers ever constructed onto a target no larger than a BB. The lasers will combine to produce 2 MJ of energy in a split second–a very split second. For the 4 nanoseconds that the lasers illuminate their tiny target, they will produce 500 TW, roughly 40 times the total energy consumption of the entire world! All of this energy focused on such a tiny target will literally vaporize it, via nuclear fusion.

The NIF is currently under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (click for Google Earth placemark), where 4 of the lasers are complete. They expect to finish construction by the end of this year and see “first light” a year later. NIF will be used to study nuclear fusion for both commercial energy generation and nuclear stockpile maintenance purposes. Because of this highly sensitive mission, it is unlikely that you or I will soon see the actual facility itself. So I thought I would take us all on a tour of this fascinating project to see how many laser beams it takes to implode a BB (sounds like the intro of a very nerdy joke).
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Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams writes about a potential replacement for Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) that would be “faster, better, and cheaper.” The basic idea is that the Coronagraph part of the TPF-C would be an independent, free-flying “Occulter” that would be combined with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to recreate the scientific mission of the TPF-C. The best part is that the Occulter could fit within the budget of NASA’s Discover class of vehicles, for which it currently has solicitations for proposals.

In light of the pressure being applied to NASA because of TPF and Europa Orbiter delays, it seems to me that this potential Occulter mission has risen to a very high scientific priority. Also, combining the effective budget of the TPF mission with the JWST would help stop the slide in its launch date. While I can hardly wait until April when the proposals are due, I am buoyed by the prospect of TPF proceeding after all. Thanks Paul!

The image on the right is an artist’s conception of the view of the Pluto/Charon system from the surface of P2, one of Pluto’s recently discovered moons (credit: NASA). While we’ve known for a month or so that Pluto has two “new” moons the paper announcing the discovery was just published Thursday. Their discovery is a truly fine example of observational astronomy, and I thought I would share some top-rate science with you all. Here I examine a pair of papers, one announcing and detailing the discovery of P1 and P2, the other speculating on their genesis and implications for the nature of the Pluto/Charon system.

Citations

• Weaver, H.A. and 8 others (2006), “Discovery of Two New Satellites of Pluto”, Nature 439(7070), pp. 943-945 [online at CiteULike.org]
• Stern, S.A. and 8 others (2006), “A Giant Impact Origin for Pluto’s Small Moons and Satellite Multiplicity in the Kuiper Belt”, Nature 439(7070), pp. 946-948 [online at CiteULike.org]

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I have been happily attending Michigan State University since the fall of 1999. It has awarded me undergraduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Astrophysics, and is now hosting and funding my studies in the hydrological geosciences. Based in East Lansing, Michigan, MSU is only about an hour from my childhood home, and as such has been my college of choice since at least third grade. In fact, I did not apply for a single other school, and chose to stay here for graduate school because of the amazing opportunities it has given me. At a point in my life where I have watched good friends move away year after year, MSU has been my community. I want to see it thrive and grow as much as perhaps anyone.

So I was truly disappointed when I read in today’s issue of Science that the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) project is being delayed for at least five years. MSU’s National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory has been competing against the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory to design, build, and operate RIA for the last five years or so. The teams have spent millions on development and preliminary designs. And for good reason. In 2003 the DOE listed the RIA project third in a list of 28 major facilities it wished to build.
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Over geologic time, sea level depends on the relative balance of the water stored in ice versus that stored in the oceans. Most of the Earth’s ice is stored near its poles where global warming has had the greatest effect thus far, and is projected to be most severe in the future. Thus predictions of sea level rise largely depend on what happens in Greenland and Antarctica over the next century, but the physics of ice sheet melting are poorly understood. The result is that the most reliable projections of sea level rise use linear extrapolations of ice sheet melting, if this term is incorporated at all. (image credit: JA Dowdeswell)

Late last week we found out that those linear extrapolations may be significant underestimates. Today’s Published Research Synopsis focuses on a paper in Science that provides comprehensive estimates of the rates of melting across Greenland over the last decade. Using combinations of satellite and aerially-sensed data, the velocities and depths of glaciers draining the bulk of Greenland were measured in 1996, 2000, and 2005. The researchers found that between 1996 and 2005, the rate of ice sheet melting has more than doubled across Greenland.

Citation

Rignot, E. and Kanagaratnam, P. (2006), “Changes in the Velocity Structure of the Greenland Ice Sheet”, Science 311(5763), pp. 986-990 [online at CiteULike.org]
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While out to dinner last night (Valentine’s Day) a quick glance about revealed that more than half of the people in the restaurant were drinking wine. Some red, others white. But I’m sure that very few of them were thinking about what makes that wine so distinctive and delectable. Neither was I.

This morning, though, my scientific materialism kicked in again while looking at last week’s issue of Science. It featured a series of perspectives on the field of aromatic compound research, including a short review article on the molecular basis for wine grape quality. Since I’m always of the opinion that whenever I understand something I can appreciate it more thoroughly, as probably are many of you, here’s a Research Synopsis all about that Dionysian delight.

Citation (online at CiteULike.org):
Lund, S.T. and Bohlman, J. (2006). The Molecular Basis for Wine Grape Quality–A Volatile Subject. Science 311(5762), pp. 804-805.
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