"DEEP IMPACT" SMASHED THE ICY SNOWBALL PARADIGM

If the many past mistakes and follies of science were better known, people would be much less likely to accept uncritically the pronouncements about environmental matters coming from scientists. And even physicists are not immune from folly. On some of the most basic issues in physics, positions are held which are a poor fit to the evidence. Even theories about the origin of the solar system are clung to in a quite amazing way. As I noted on Dissecting Leftism on July 5th., the conventional theory that comets are "Dirty snowballs" is a part of the current dogma and it is a dogma that the recent bombardment of comet Tempel 1 by NASA has thrown into considerable disarray. The following email to Benny Peiser from Max Wallis (wallismk@Cardiff.ac.uk) of the Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology, Cardiff University, UK supports my view of the Tempel 1 results as disconfirming the current theory. Wallis puts forward an alternative theory which in layman's terms proposes that comets are mostly a heap of gravel but other explanations of the results are of course possible

"Deep Impact has surely smashed the Icy Conglomerate paradigm. How did Deep Impact's science team get caught out over the unexpectedly bright outburst and large cloud of ejecta from comet Tempel 1? NASA's website description as a "ball of dirty ice and rock" was evidently wrong. The idea of pristine ices (of water, ammonia, CO2, CO etc.) is no better, as ices can be as hard as rock.

Peter Schultz told the Press Conference it shows the comet is a "soft" target, though the team's Don Yeomans had earlier suggested explaining the big ejecta plume as the result of releasing subsurface pressure on puncturing the comet's crust. Project scientist Mike A'Hearn claimed on the other hand "it rules out really porous structures where you tunnel very deeply".

He's wrong, for the metre-sized impacter may have tunnelled to tens of metres before exploding. What the large cloud of ejecta has ruled out is the porous ice models (used for impacts on icy satellites) in which impact energy is absorbed in crushing the crystalline structure. What's needed is a little theory on hypervelocity impacts. Theory has established the principle of energy scaling, as Keith Holsapple explains in his basic review "The Scaling of Impact Processes in Planetary Sciences" (Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 1993.21.'333 73):

Problems of the effects of nuclear explosions, and, to a lesser extent the effects of conventional explosives, are physically almost identical to those of hypervelocity impacts. In both cases, there is a deposition of energy and momentum in a very small initial region that subsequently is redistributed in a very large region. Ultimate effects and the remaining signature are determined by the physics of that flow and the physics of the material behavior.

Scaling theory has identified a gravity regime and a strength regime. However, 'Deep Impact' could correspond to a third - the "dynamical regime". When gravity is negligible and material strength is low, the blast energy goes very largely into dynamical energy of the crater material, apart from the energy to latent and thermal heating.

If the icy conglomerate paradigm is out, because of low density and low structural energy, what's the alternative? Rather than dirty ice, our competing concept has long been "icy dirt", which still fits the established constraints on elemental abundances. By icy dirt, we mean a loose aggregate dominated by organics and mineral dust (components of carbonaceous chondrites) with chemically bound water or amorphous water ice. The crust and subcrustal material of such a comet model must differ from the loose (pristine) interior, as it has been thermally and chemically processed, and thereby toughened and consolidated (www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk). But being a skin only a few cm thick on Tempel 1, it could scarcely have disturbed Deep Impact. What's surprising is that Halley's comet told us in 1986 that comets have an extremely dark crust that gets hot (greater than 400 K in its case) in sunlight. That was surely enough warning that talk of snow and iceballs is misleading. But it's taken 'Deep Impact' to smash the icy conglomerate model.




Some history: Recent Global Warmth Is Natural, Benefits Humans

The current ice age, called the Pleistocene, became severe approximately two million years ago. One trait of the ice age is its pattern of glacial and interglacial periods, the harsh and cold glacial period persisting roughly 100,000 years, followed by a moderate interglacial period lasting only approximately 10,000 to 15,000 years. Around 10,000 years ago, the cold abated and marked the onset of the present interglacial period, called the Holocene, as massive ice sheets at middle to high latitudes shrank, subsequently raising sea levels and inundating the extended, continental boundaries previously defined by the glacial conditions. The next glacial is expected to begin within several millennia.

Discussions on enacting caps like the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions arise from forecasts by computer simulations of climate conditions centuries in the future. Simulations contain substantive uncertainties and unknowns and are essential scholarly tools; they cannot accurately reproduce major features of climate. Indeed, measurements and analyses of relevant climate parameters suggest so far a much smaller enhanced greenhouse effect than the computer simulations do.

While there was a warming trend in the last decades of the early twentieth century, coinciding with and possibly caused at least in part by the enhanced greenhouse effect, there was a prior warming trend of equal magnitude early in the twentieth century apparently not primarily caused by the enhanced greenhouse effect. If the recent warming trend, observed to be roughly 0.15-0.17 degrees C per decade, is assumed to be caused entirely by the enhanced greenhouse effect, it is somewhat lower than projections from most computer simulations, indicating the forecasts are still uncertain.

Regarding natural climate variability, it should be noted that the nineteenth century was the end of a well-documented, centuries-long cold period in many areas of the world. Hence, the period of unusual cold at the start of the instrumental record may bias the casual observer to believe the second half of the nineteenth century displayed "normal" temperature, and the twentieth century is "abnormal" in warmth.....

Response by humans and ecosystems to the retreat of the glacial period and onset of a more stable and warm climate was swift. With the development of agriculture, human civilization expanded and sculpted extensive, artificial landscapes. Compared to so great a change of the glacial termination, the last one thousand years look fairly calm. But significant fluctuations in local conditions did occur, driving notable ecosystem and human responses.

A broad period of equable climate reached parts of Western Europe as early as the ninth century C.E. and persisted in some areas though the twelfth century. Peoples in Western Europe could grow familiar crops at more northerly latitudes or higher altitudes than had been possible in prior centuries.

By the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, a series of harsher periods set in, some appearing seemingly abruptly. Economies had benefited from agriculture and sea trade; the onset of the climate deterioration eroded economies and shocked cultures. Called the Little Ice Age, it persisted in areas of Western Europe into the nineteenth century. Life expectancy in England, which had gained approximately 10 years during the Medieval Warm Period, fell back to roughly 38 years, according to climatologist Hubert Lamb, by the mid-fourteenth century.

Unusual weather calamities continued to strike in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. One diarist noted that in Smolensk (Central Europe) in 1438 the starvation was so bad "the wild animals ate people and people ate people and small children." Survival meant cannibalism.

In terms of extreme weather, the twentieth century's storminess seems unexceptional. In the example of Western Europe, storminess was very severe four centuries ago. The solution to weather catastrophes--a fear of which is hard-wired in humans--is not to implement ineffective policies out of a vague concept of precaution, but to strive for scientific facts.

More -- much more -- here




The Asbestos Answer

Of all the selfish exploitation schemes that greedy trial lawyers have perpetrated on our justice system, their abuse of asbestos litigation is certainly the worst. Use of asbestos essentially ended more than 30 years ago, yet trial lawyers are still soliciting and bringing countless claims, many of which are frivolous or downright fraudulent. They are clogging the courts and driving good businesses -- many of which had little or nothing to do with asbestos -- into bankruptcy.

To be sure, there are real victims of asbestos, and the extent of their suffering is hard to comprehend. About 2,000 people each year develop the hideous lung disease mesothelioma, a form of cancer that causes unbearable pain. It has only one known cause: asbestos exposure. No one would doubt for a moment that these victims deserve justice. But thanks to the trial lawyers, legitimate victims of mesothelioma are having a harder and harder time getting it.

You see, many years ago, trial lawyers saw a gold mine in mesothelioma claims. The problem was that there weren't enough actual victims. So they started bringing lawsuits on behalf of people who might someday get the disease. Over time, asbestos claims became an industry as lawyers set up "mass screenings" anywhere they could park a mobile X-ray and woo potential plaintiffs with the promise of an easy settlement. After assembling a suitably huge group of plaintiffs, the trial lawyers filed their lawsuits and tried to strong arm the defendants into settling. Most defendants and their issuers usually obliged in order to avoid costly court battles.

Today, asbestos claims from people who do not have any kind of cancer make up 89 percent of all claims filed, according to a RAND Institute study. RAND also reports that more than 300,000 claims are now pending. Meanwhile, the real victims -- those actually afflicted with mesothelioma -- are receiving only a tiny fraction of the awards and having to wait years for justice because so many frivolous and dubious asbestos complaints are clogging the courts.

At the same time, asbestos claims are driving company after company out of business. Nearly one hundred companies have been forced into bankruptcy as a direct result of asbestos liabilities. As many as 60,000 jobs have been lost, with hundreds of thousands more projected to disappear in the coming years. The bankruptcies are also jeopardizing retirees' pension and 401(k) benefits. And the problems are getting worse.

Having driven nearly all of the asbestos manufacturers out of business, trial lawyers turned to other deep pockets. There are now more than 8,400 companies defending against asbestos claims, many of them small businesses. Nearly all these employers never made or installed asbestos. But they have money, so the trial lawyers have put them on the hook.

No one -- except the trial lawyers -- doubts that asbestos litigation has become a crisis that cries out for a solution. Fortunately, there is now a proposal before Congress to create a fund with money from businesses and insurers, not taxpayers, large enough to handle current and future complaints. Such a fund will ensure swift justice for the real victims and provide certainty for companies now facing an endless number of asbestos claims and the infinite payouts that accompany them.

The fund will also mean an end to the wasteful trial lawyer gravy train. Since claimants would only need to show that they are sick with an asbestos-related disease in order to collect from the fund, they won't even need to hire an attorney in order to obtain compensation. At the same time, the fund plan includes medical and exposure criteria to eliminate the fraud that plagues the current system and ensure that money goes to actual victims. The fund will also guarantee that there is money available down the road for those victims who don't yet know that they are sick. Best of all, victims won't need to prove that a particular defendant caused their illness. That will end the complexities and lengthy delays that have become common in the current system. Victims will be able to collect their compensation fast, and the trial lawyers' asbestos jackpot will finally be eliminated.

Some conservatives have condemned the trust fund, asserting wrongly that it will be supported by a tax on businesses. That's simply wrong. In fact, the major corporations and a number of insurers are the strongest supporters of the trust fund. They have concluded that backing the fund will save consumers and investors money in the long run over the current system with its infinite liability. And most small businesses will contribute nothing at all.

Some have also argued that the fund helps trial lawyers. Wrong again. Maintaining the status quo, with its reliance on the court system, mass tort actions, and strong armed settlements is the trial lawyers' most pleasant dream. The defeat of the trust fund proposal would see that dream come true. Granted, no conservative is anxious to see the federal government take action. But just as our country's class action system cried out for national reform, so does asbestos.

Victims shouldn't wait another year. Neither should the countless U.S. employers who will crumble under the weight of asbestos liability, putting hundreds of thousands of American jobs and millions in pension benefits at risk. It's time for Congress to take the next step on legal reform and pass this badly-needed legislation. The asbestos fund is the best way to repair our legal system, ensure justice for victims, and protect our economy ? while ending the trial lawyers' asbestos bonanza. And that would be justice, indeed.

Source




From Tim Blair, 4 July 2005: "John Quiggin believes the Kyoto Protocol is good news, good news, good news, good news, good news, good news! So did New Zealand, which anticipated hundreds of millions of dollars in carbon credits. But now New Zealand faces a massive carbon-trading debt, kind of like that predicted by Bjorn Lomborg (who Quiggin has argued against). It might run to billions. By one estimate, the bill for each New Zealand family will be $900. Which is a little unjust, as Business New Zealand chief executive Phil O'Reilly points out: "New Zealand produces only 0.2% of world greenhouse gas emissions yet is being penalised as if we were big time polluters." Just shut up and pay your billions, New Zealander! Remember, Kyoto is good news! Except if you want to build the Taiwanese economy or grow trees: "Some forests planted before 1990 are being cut down early because owners are worried about Kyoto liabilities".

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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