randform

Tim and me hereby protest against the current plans to build a car gigafactory in Berlin’s vicinity as it poses a too big threat to Berlin’s water supply. There had been massive droughts in the last two years in Brandenburg and the factory is sought to use up as much water as over 75 000 people (for estimation: approx. the amount of people who arrived during the refugee crises in Berlin). Apart from this it is thought to be partially built into a high degree water protection area. We are joined in this protest among others by Nora and Theresa Lantez (website) who live much closer to the envisaged plant and for whom the impact on their living environment would be very direct and rather destructive. Here you can see Theresa dancing:
Theresa Lantez in Bernau.

update Sept.6, 2021: According to the public plans given by Tesla all of the buildings will be built into water protection zones. Moreover the plant site is surrounded by a special european protection zone the Natura 2000 zones. According to my counting the chemicals in the factory exceed by far the allowed limits for a waterprotection zone. In the town hall meeting a representative of the Tesla factory answered that the allowed limits are not exceeded, if one counts each processing unit as a kind of “separate factory” (in german: Aufteilung in Anlagen), because in this way the volumes and weights of hazardous substances of each “Anlage” stay below the limits.
There are descriptions of what can be seen as a separate “Anlage” in the allowed limits for a waterprotection zone. I am not a law person but it appears to me pretty clear that the argumentation of Tesla is simply wrong.

Since the town hall meeting in 2020 things got worse, because Tesla now wants to set up a battery factory as well, where alone the cathode material exceeds limits by about a factor of 20 and the public town hall meetings for the new plans were cancelled.

In the randform blog post Information about solar irradiance measurements sought, I had posted a visualisation of irradiance data from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). In the post it was discussed that there could be a rise in irradiance based on the data from their SORCE mission. I think the rise is also somewhat visible in this interactive plot at the Interactive Solar Irradiance Data Center (LISIRD)…that is it is visible until about July 2015. In this post I also posted a picture of the line 774nm, i.e. “red light” which is slightly out of the visible spectrum. The reason was that it seemed that specific line ranges displayed a stronger rise than others (see circles in the other image in this post). Back then I even made some screenshots from the LISIRD visualization, here you can see the close-by line 798.83nm:

Here it is again in my visualization:

Both visualizations look pretty much the same apart from some visualization effects. But this is how the line in the above time range (here until Dec 18 in 2016) looks as of today in the new LISIRD app:

So things look very differently since about early summer 2015. Is this a correction?
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This month no new randform post.
The previous post is hard enough to digest.

On a personal note:
The previous post is actually a main result of a phase between mid/end 2012 – spring 2015. In this phase I was investigating in which way I could apply my math/physics and visualization skills to climate science. In 2015 I more or less ended the investigation, since I found that -amongst others- my programming skills were not good enough for a continuation on a more professional level and started to work in a company in which I have been working since then.

Rotatable with your mouse after you click on “Read the rest of this entry“.

Most of randform readers might have heard that the socalled greenhouse effect is one of the main causes of global warming.

The effect is not easy to understand. There are two posts which give a nice intro to the greenhouse effect on Azimuth. One is by Tim van Beek and one is by John Baez.
The greenhouse effect can also be understood in a slightly more quantitative way by looking at an idealized greenhouse model.

In the above diagram I now enhanced this idealized greenhouse model (as of Jan 2017) in order to get an idea about the hypothetical size of the effect of an absorption of non-infrared sunlight and it’s reradiation as infrared light, i.e. the possibly effect size of a certain type of fluorescence.

I sort of felt forced to do this, because at the time of writing (February 2017) the current climate models did not take the absorption of UV and near infrared light in methane (here a possible candidate for that above mentioned hypothetical greenhouse gas) into account and I wanted to get an insight into how important such an omission might be. The simple model here is far from any realistic scenario – in particular no specific absorption lines but just the feature of absorption and reradiation is looked at.
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insert April 24, 2023
My first email asking about the inclusion of shortwave (UV and near infrared) radiation into the radiative forcing of methane to Gunnar Myrhe was on Sept. 10, 2015. The last answer I got was in January 2017, when I pointed out in a new email that there are problems with the evaluation of solar radiation, as explained in the randform post Information about solar irradiance measurements sought (see also What is going on at the Sun?). The answer was basically that he is busy with meetings etc.

Meanwhile I had found out, by searching the internet, that the problems had been somewhat adressed.

That is in: Radiative forcing of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide: A significant revision of the methane radiative forcing by M. Etminan1 , G. Myhre2 , E. J. Highwood 1 , and K. P. Shine it was found that

Methane’s RF is particularly impacted because of the inclusion of the shortwave forcing; the 1750–2011 RF is about 25% higher (increasing from
0.48Wm−2 to 0.61Wm−2) compared to the value in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013 assessment; the 100year global warming potential is 14% higher than the IPCC value.

The new value came from the inclusion of absorption spectra with shorter wavelengths.

The new value was inserted into climate simulations in:
Understanding Rapid Adjustments to Diverse Forcing Agents
Accordingly the new IPCC report writes in chapter 7: 7.3.2.2 Methane:

The SARF for methane (CH4) has been substantially increased due to updates to spectroscopic data and inclusion of shortwave absorption (Etminan et al., 2016). Adjustments have been calculated in nine climate models by Smith et al. (2018b). Since CH4 is found to absorb in the shortwave near infrared, only adjustments from those models including this absorption are taken into account. For these models the adjustments act to reduce the ERF because the shortwave absorption leads to tropospheric heating and reductions in upper tropospheric cloud amounts. The adjustment is –14% ± 15%, which counteracts much of the increase in SARF identified by Etminan et al. (2016). Modak et al. (2018) also found negative forcing adjustments from a methane perturbation including shortwave absorption in the NCAR CAM5 model, in agreement with the above assessment. The uncertainty in the shortwave component leads to a higher radiative modelling uncertainty (14%) than for CO2 (Etminan et al., 2016). When combined with the uncertainty in the adjustment, this gives an overall uncertainty of ±20%. There is high confidence in the spectroscopic revision but only medium confidence in the adjustment modification.

A very new evaluation in Methane’s Solar Radiative Forcing finds:

Including the impact of SW absorption on stratospheric temperature increases tropopause SARF by 0.039 W m−2 (or 7%) compared to the LW-only SARF.

The article Understanding Rapid Adjustments to Diverse Forcing Agents however also evaluated what a 2% increase of the solar constant parameter shows in the climate models and found (see Fig. 1) that the radiative forcing increases as if one would double the CO2 parameter or triple the CH4 parameter.

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The above diagramm shows the earth temperature in Kelvin as a function of two parameters, as given by this enhanced model. The two parameters can be seen as being (somewhat) proportional to densities of a hypothetical greenhouse gas, which would display this type of fluorescence. That is the parameter x is seen as (somewhat) proportional to the density of that hypothetical greenhouse gas within the atmossphere, while y is (somewhat) proportional to the density near the surface of the earth. Why I wrote “somewhat” in brackets is explained below.

The middle of the “plate” is at x=0, y=0 (please hover over the diagram) which is the “realistic” case of the idealized greenhouse model, i.e. the case where infrared absoptivity is 0.78 and the reflectivity of the earth is 0.3. The main point of this visualization is that linearily increasing x and y in the same way leads to an increase of the temperature. Or in other words, although raising x by a certain amount leads to cooling this effect is easily trumped by raising y by the same amount.

As far as I learned from discussions with climate scientists the omission of non-infrared radiation in the climate models was mostly motivated by the fact that an abpsorption of non-infrared is mostly happening in the upper atmossphere (because methane is quickly rising (but there are also circulations)) and thus leading rather to a global cooling effect than a global warming effect and so it in particular doesn’t contribute to global warming. The enhanced simple model here thus confirms that if absorption is taking place in the upper athmossphere then this leads to cooling. The enhanced model however also displays that the contribution of methane that has not risen, i.e. methane that is close to the earth surface, is to warm upon absorption of non-infrared light and that the effect of warming is much stronger than the cooling effect in the upper athmosphere. Unfortunately I can’t say how much stronger for a given amount of methane, since for assessing this one would need to know more about the actual densities (see also discussion below and the comment about circulations). Nonetheless this is a quite disquieting observation.

I had actually exchanged a couple of emails with Gunnar Myrhe, the lead author of this corresponding chapter in the IPCC report, who confirmed that non-infrared light absorption in methane hasn’t sofar been taken into account, but that some people intended to work on the near-infrared absorption. He didn’t know about the UV absorption that I had found e.g. here (unfortunately my email to Keller-Rudek and Moortgat from 2015 whether there is more data for methane especially in the range 170nm-750nm stayed unanswered) and thanked for pointing it out to him. He appeared to be very busy and as drowning in (a lot of administrative) work, so that I fear that those absorption lines still might not have been looked at. That is also why I decided to publish this now. I sent a copy of this post to Gunnar Myrhe, Zong-Liang Yang and John Baez in June 2017, where I pointed out that:

I have strong concerns that the estimations of the global warming potential of methane need to be better assessed and that the new value might eventually be very different then the current one.

– but I got no answer.

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The frequent randform reader knows that a lot of randform posts are concerned with questions about how to keep earth as a habitat for humans. One of the biggest problems seems to be: population growth. That is humans are the root cause of “pollution”, they are to a great extend causing climate change, they massively reduced the habitat for other beings including those in their own food chain and if their own strive for efficiency keeps on like that, then they (partially?) need to abolish themselves and eventually (?) start the AI machine population explosion-if they haven’t wiped themselves out beforehand in their wars for ressources.

But what really are the reasons for this human population growth?

This seems to be a very deep systemic question, but for me it is rather suggestive that this strive or “competition for efficiency” is playing a major role here. So today I would like to discuss this quest for efficiency again a bit at the example of agriculture.

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Sende-Pentode RS289 from radio technology museum Königs-Wusterhausen

There was again a discussion with randform reader Oekologisch Interessierter about the development of nuclear energy production. The original post was in Oct. 2010 i.e. briefly before the Fukushima disaster in Mar. 2011 and the outlook cited there looked quite differently from what actually happened.

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“We will taylor what you want ” Hannah Perner-Wilson explaining the shop concept of her and Mika Satomi’s new shop, the: “KOBA Maßschneiderei”
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Image from NOAA.

In an earlier randform post I mentioned the connection of methane emissions and geological features. In particular in an area called Vestnesa which is about northwest of Svalbard (look at image 3) high methane emissions were due to plate tectonics. In that post I asked wether this fault couldn’t be eventually part of a plate which arises from a break of the Eurasian plate, i.e. in particular whether there are similar plate tectonical ongoings along the (northern part of) Ural. I was in part drawn to that question because of the above image. In the above image you see a plume (CH4 air masses) starting at the Kara sea and then going down south in the west of a line, which seems to indicate the Ob river. I.e. this plume seems to be going down at least along the northern part of the Ural mountains. The image is on a world scale so this is a bit speculative, but still, it looks as if. But since the resolution is so crude it should also be mentioned that east of the Ob there are major gas fields, like at Novy Urengoy.

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A reoccurring question on randform is: how stable is the current ecosystem on earth? And in particular how stable is it as a not too hostile environment for humans?

A possibility to find out is to isolate living systems.
Some of these experiments of such (more or less) closed artificial ecosystems were mentioned in the 2006 randform post Mars on earth.

And at least one of these long-term experiments more or less partially failed (namely the First mission of Biosphere 2) because, as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote: Biosphere 2 members “aired out”:

With an admitted leakage rate of just under 10 percent of its atmossphere yearly, oxygen levels inside dropped gradually over the project’s first 15 months, eventually reaching the levels normally found atop a 13,400-foot mountain. Because the oxygen loss was gradual, the crew members were able to continue functioning but their physical activities were eventually reduced to about 70 prcent of normal because of oxygen deprivation before project staffers outside injected more air.

As far as I know the major reasons, why the oxygen levels dropped were never fully established.
The reasons given in the Pittsburgh are differing from what I thought and wrote about the major reasons in the Mars on earth blog post:

the air supply had to be reenforced due to a miscalculation of the air consumption of bacteria in the soil of the greenhouse

where in retrospective I am unfortunately not sure, whether this reason about the decline of oxygen was given in the TV documentation which I had seen about Biosphere 2 or whether this was just my own interpretation of what had most probably happened.

So the question about the stability of the earth ecosystem is last but not least a question of O2 or not O2. And the balance of very tiny organisms may play a very major role in that question.

So amongst others in the post How much O2 will be left? I suggested that

“melting of permafrost could not only lead to more CO2 in the air but also induce a reagression of O2 (which may e.g. be due to a sudden expansion of aerobic organisms)*”

There are also other randform posts which intrinsically look at the O2 (and also CO2) balance. In particular some posts are dedicated to the oceans via studying phytoplankta.
Like the 2009 post about “The tragedies of marine towns” or the 2010 post about phytoplankton decline. Amongst others the posts illustrate again how complicated it is to infer any future developments, and that is even not easy to monitor the developments of microorganisms. Whatsoever -it seems that rather big changes may be underway, which may point to an out-of-balance situation. But as said this is an ongoing discussion and e.g. the phytoplankton post needs to be updated with the finding that it seems (following an article in the new scientist ) that

The rate at which phytoplankton are disappearing as oceans warm has been vastly overestimated by a glitch in models.

And in particular that

Increased CO2 concentrations often have competing positive and negative effects on phytoplankton, with winners and losers among different species.

Where especially the abundance of diatoms seems to be controversial.
That is the NASA study from 2015 Sept. 23 in Global Biogeochemical Cycles sees a clear decline at least in northern regions, while Nature (pay wall) finds:

Climate change enhances diatom growth mainly owing to warming and iron enrichment, and both properties decrease cellular nutrient quotas, partially offsetting any effects of decreased nutrient supply by 2100.

There are some possibilities to get a better overview over the stability of ecosystems from an more abstract viewpoint (see e.g. this article on Quanta) but still.

And because the balance of the microorganisms is so complicated (and in fact heavily influenced by human activity even in a rather direct way (see e.g. algae fuel)) and since models are only models it is important to conduct concrete experiments with closed ecosystems and at least to monitor direct physical quantities like oxygen levels.

So in fact by looking at visualizations of oxygen concentration in various years at NOAA it had been written in another randform post of 2014 that oxygen saturation in the ocean especially in the north seemed to have declined and eventually likewise the oxygen concentration in the air.

Do we know more now?

Unfortunately it seems things got rather worse. That is despite the fact that meanwhile there had been flamboyant announcements by various people to establish even settlements on Moon and Mars, it seems research on closed environments is rather in decline (a brief update here). That is it seems BIOS 3 closed now for real (thats how it sounded following an article in novosti kosmonavtiki) and the last experiments in the direction of a closed system seem to have been the Yuegong-1 mission in May 2014, but maybe I oversaw something.

Worse however seems to me the fact that NOAA seems to have ceased to produce visualizations of the oxygen concentrations.
Is that true?

At least there seem still to be people who look at things. That is in a recent article my observation in this randform post about the decline in oxygen levels was confirmed. (via CNN)
The confirming article is behind a paywall but if you click on the link in the CNN article it is momentarily visible and it’s written:

We find that the global oceanic oxygen content of
227.4 ± 1.1 petamoles (10^15 mol) has decreased by more than two per cent (4.8 ± 2.1 petamoles) since 1960, with large variations in oxygen loss in different ocean basins and at different depths.

and

Five distinct regions with significant oxygen loss stand out that cannot be attributed to solubility changes. These are (1) tropical regions of all basins, which contain most of the upper ocean OMZ, (2) the North Pacific, (3) the South Atlantic, (4) the Southern Ocean and (5) the Arctic Ocean (Table 1, Fig. 1b, Extended Data Fig. 4).

The authors likewise see microorganisms as a potential major cause for the decrease:

This suggests that either multi-decadal variations or changes in ocean circulation induced ventilation, potentially
enhanced by increased upper ocean biological activity, are responsible
for the observed changes in oxygen below 1,000 m.

However as far as I understood their data went only until 2010 and my alarming observation was from the change between 2009 and 2013.

“End-Hauptbereichsverspannungsmedikamente für Nacknmuskuleere Speerre” collaborative artwork by artists group “Entente Sublimale”

More or less recently I had seen a video in which a famous politician was talking in a way which gave me the impression that this person was on drugs. I may have been wrong, but still. It should be said that in the video the person had to comment on a very tragic event and that was sofar the only time where I saw this politician in this state.
Then there was also Jeroen Dijsselbloems recent controversial remarks about economic failures due to alcohol and women and the following discussions, where it was e.g. remarked that after taking interest payments away, the economics of the Netherlands seems to look actually worse than that of Southern Europe. All this made me look a bit at examples of drugs and in particular opiods in connection with economics and politics.
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