Ancient Navigators and the Demon Star

  I just read an article that shows that the Ancient Egyptians knew about the eclipsing binary star Algol back in the 13th Century BC.  It occurred to me immediately that this could have allowed ancient navigators to crudely measure longitude!

   Ancient navigators knew how to measure latitude fairly accurately.  All they needed to do was to figure out the apparent height of the North Star, measure the angle, and bingo, they had an estimate for latitude.  But what about longitude?  The easiest way to estimate that is to know that sunrise and sundown happen at different times depending on longitude (or, as we might think of it today,  what time zone you are in).  So if an ancient navigator knew sunrise was supposed to be a 6:55 AM in Oslo, and instead it happened at 7:55 AM, that would tell him that he was positioned 15 degrees West of the reference location, or out in the Norweigian Sea somewhere.  This can very easily be done today, what with electronic watches, but note that a sundial would not work to measure time, because it is based on the position of the sun, and automatically cancels out the effect that you want to see.  Other forms of ancient clocks were not very good.  It is generally assumed that the ancient navigators had no way to measure longitude until 1773, at which time John Harrison produced an accurate marine chronometer.  

    But wait a minute.  The Demon Star Algol (which actually consists of two stars which rotate around each other, Beta Persei A, which  regularly gets eclipsed by the dimmer Beta Persei B) dims by more than a factor of three for 10 hours at a time, dwindling easily seen with the naked eye.  This was recorded by the Ancient Egyptians according to an article that has just appeared in LiveScience.com, by Charles Choi.  

   I frankly had no idea the effect was visible to the naked eye.    But according to Choi, Algol dims by more than a factor of three for 10 hours at a time, which is easily seen with the naked eye.  

     Jiminy Christmas, this is a huge effect, and I can't believe none of us apparently put two and two together before.  The clues are staring us in the face.   Algol, known as the Demon Star, represents the eye in Medusa's head!  Doesn't this suggest that ancients thought this star was a bit unusual??

    The period is 2.867 days now, but back in the 13th century BC it may have been closer to 2.85 days. The slowing is consistent with calculations of the change of mass of the binary as it spirals out.  
      The salient point is that if you know the period accurately, it becomes a universal clock that can be used from any point on the earth (as long as the weather is clear and if the eclipse occurs at night).  That allows the navigator to calibrate his hourglass and get a true calibration to measure longitude.  That could allow trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific navigation.
     An observer could detect up to four events, depending on the sensitivity of the instrument (in this case, the human eye):  the beginning of the dimming phase; the end of dimming, the beginning of the brightening phase and the achievement of maximum brightness.  
    Over many cycles, it is possible to determine the period with great accuracy.  But how accurately can the magnitude or change in magnitude be estimated by the naked eye over a single cycle?  
   An upper bound exists from the ancient Greeks, who classified stars over six magnitudes.  Algol is normally magnitude 2.1, but decreases to about 3.3 and the back to magnitude 2.1 over 10 hours. The change rate is thus 1.2 magnitudes per 5 hours, or 0.24 magnitudes per hour. In recent times, naked-eye astronomer Alan MacRobert describes how to estimate magnitudes by eye to roughly within 0.1 magnitudes.  If so, a sunset-calibrated hourglass could be used to plausibly determine the minimum brightness of Algol within about 24 minutes, allowing a crude estimate of longitude, accurate to some 6 degrees, corresponding to 600 km at the equator.  At northern latitudes, this is roughly the difference between Dublin and London. 

Data from the Northern Houston Astronomy Club  indicate that it is possible to trace the light curve of Algol.  By extrapolating the shape of the curve and directly measuring the time of the minima, it is possible to estimate the time of minimum brightness to within about 0.01 to 0.02 periods, or plus or minus 20 to 40 minutes, or 5 to 10 degrees of longitude. If a highly skilled stargazer were able to improve upon the accuracy demonstrated by the North Houston Astronomy Club, better precision might be obtained. 

    Now, there is absolutely no evidence, as far as I am aware, that the ancients actually used this method to navigate.  The key would have been for ancient astronomers to realize that the brightness variations occur independent of longitude.  But if someone had made that connection, it is clear enough that longitude could have been crudely estimated in ancient times.

For Additional Reading

History of Longitude, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_longitude 

L. Jetsu, S. Porceddu, J. Lyytinen, P. Kajatkari, J. Lehtinen, T. Markkanen, J. Toivari-Viitala, Did the ancient egyptians record the period of the eclipsing binary Algol - the Raging one? (Submitted on 27 Apr 2012)

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6206

Why Are You Booing Your Children?

   Hey, you!  Why are you booing your children?  

 

This is what we want--a happy team getting some healthy exercise with friends.

   Yes, I'm talking to you, the parents of my 10 year old daughter's teammates in kiddie basketball and church league volleyball.  Now, most of the parents are very nice and support the children, and the programs are designed to promote sportsmanship and do a very good job of that.  The child players are really great.  But it seems that some of the parents are kind of weirded out by seeing their children play.

   Oh they don't literally yell, "Boo!  You stink!"  to their 10 year old.  However, some of them--especially Dads--seem compelled to yell more polite things that mean the same thing.  For instance....

    "Jane!  WHAT WAS THAT?"  (translation:  Your performance is unacceptable= you stink.)

   

    "Mary!  YOU DIDN'T CONCENTRATE!"  (Translation:  I would have made that play = you stink).

    "COME ON ALICE!  YOU GOTTA MAKE THOSE."  (Translation:  You have failed = you stink).


    Usually parents are supportive of other kids, thankfully, but with their own kids they show little mercy. The parents seem convinced that their kids can not function without their "gentle constructive" criticism. 


    Now Dads and Moms, I have some boos right back at you.  JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?  THINK ABOUT IT!  Growing up is hard enough without Daddy and Mommy making sarcastic and critical remarks for everyone else to hear. 
  
   These are not teenagers trying to get ready for a pro career, like the kids playing for Bobby Huggins in an effort to land a million dollar contract.  Little girls especially are very sensitive in their young teens, and they are all going through that awkward stage (they usually stay there until at least age 40, by the way).  And, Dad and Mom, you ain't no Bobby Huggins. 

"Oh no!  DId you see that?"

   I notice that the 10-14 year olds on my daughter's volleyball team become afraid to try to make plays when they are criticized.  They stand in one place, hoping that someone else will make a play and save them, rather than trying to make a play.  I suspect that they would rather be doing something else, but they play volleyball in order to try--unsuccessfully--to meet their parents' expectations.


   Dad and Mom, please believe that your daughter knows when she misses a shot.  She does not really benefit from your genius observations pointing out their failures.  And remember that the rest of the kids hear what you are shouting to your kid.  It's not a private conversation.   It ain't cool. 


   I probably did some  booing of my own as an inexperienced parent, but hopefully I have learned a little over the years.  I find that it's much better to use encouragement for young children.  


  "That's okay--you'll get the next one."
  "Good try!"
  "Good hustle!"


   If your child's Coach is on the ball, he or she will make a habit of coaching the NEXT play, and never the LAST one.  Little kids forget whether they are supposed to play defense or offense.  They don't really need you to point out that they missed a short or failed to get a rebound.  Instead, they need to be told to forget about the last play and concentrate on the next one.  


   Perhaps sports can be a training exercise for parenting.  It's an opportunity to show what is really important--not winning or losing or the proper form to shoot a layup--but that parents love their children and will support and encourage them, no matter what.  


   Yay kids!  Have some fun out there, eh?

Will Future Aircraft be Fueled by Natural Gas?

   If you could really make more economical vehicles, what would you do in order to maximize the impact on our society?  One approach would be to use such technology in an ultra-ultra economy car, such as the so-called Smart Car. It would be one thing if you could get people to trade in their Hummers for such a car, but if you are going to compete against Honda Civics and other traditional subcompacts, it's not going to really be all that much cheaper, in my opinion.  The cost of gasoline is going to be about the same per mile driven, and in fact these cars are not going to be driven much anyway. 

How much of an economic impact will tiny economy cars have?  Some, but not very much.  

   If you were really going to make a serious economic impact, you would probably try to use your more economical technology (whatever it is) on vehicles that really consume a lot of energy, such as taxicabs , delivery trucks, fleet vehicles, city buses, locomotives and even aircraft. These vehicles are used for tens if not hundreds of thousands of miles per year, and so if you really have a way to save money, this is where the big bucks are to be found.  


   In that regard, I was interested to see the Boeing is designing an aircraft that would use liquefied natural gas (LNG) in place of jet fuel. Published articles are focused on a very advanced concept in which the LNG would actually be frozen.  That offers the highest performance, but even using today's technology (cryogenic liquids), using LNG in aviation should be a no-brainer.  LNG has more energy per unit weight than gasoline (54 MJ/kg versus about 44 MJ/kg for current aviation fuel).  This extra bang per unit weight means that planes are going to weigh less and travel farther and faster than they can today. Plus natural gas combustion emits less carbon than current jet fuel, it's cleaner than petroleum, and it is about half the cost compared to  aviation fuel. 


    Plus, if you want to continue to rely on petroleum fuel, you have to buy it from countries run by idiots, who like threatening the US with nuclear warfare among other things.  What a great idea that is!
  
   Nevertheless, a great number of Americans believe economic growth is bad for the economy, and moreover they are very comfortable with an occasional ten-year war in the Middle East.  On that basis, there will no doubt be considerable opposition to switching to LNG fuels, as we continue our policy of supporting corrupt foreign despots whenever possible.  Nevertheless, my guess is that common sense will prevail,and thus it will probably happen sooner rather than later. 

If the world starts using liquefied natural gas for aircraft, it's going to be cheaper and faster to fly. 

Post Script

For what it's worth, the modifications needed to run a turbine on natural gas instead of liquid jet fuel are relatively simple, and in fact in the 1990's the Soviet Union built a modified Tupolev 155 jet aircraft that ran on natural gas.  So don't even try to say that it can't be done.  It can be done, and it is a straightforward conversion. 

The use of natural gas for a jet aircraft was successfully demonstrated on a Tupolev 155.

 http://www.tupolev.ru/english/Picture.asp?PubID=1786

For additional reading:

Andrew Webster, Boeing's SUGAR Freeze plane concept runs on cryogenically frozen natural Gas, The Verge, Mar 21, 2012, 
http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/21/2890091/boeing-sugar-freeze-cryogenically-frozen-natural-gas

The Rising Fastball-Myth or Fact?

     "Nolan Ryan has two out in the ninth inning, oh and two on Reggie Jackson.   Here's the windup...and the pitch....STRIKE THREE ON A RISING FASTBALL!!"

 Robin Ventura offers his theory to Nolan Ryan that there is no such thing as a rising fastball. 

    Or was it?  This has been a debate for many years, with technology seeming to support those who believe that baseballs do not rise. Physicists have weighed in the analysis.  Even Mythbusters, one of my favorite shows, did a segment which says that the ball does not rise. 

   

   However, let me offer a bit of a rebuttal.  First, as a physicist of sorts, let me offer some advice on when to trust physicists.  

   a.  Trust them to determine nuclear transitions, discover quarks, design semiconductors, estimate the age of the universe or measure spectra of atoms.

   b.  Do not trust them to change a light bulb,  select a restaurant for dinner, and never ever let them jump start a car.  And do not trust their opinions about sports. 

   Physicists, you see, do not become physicists because they love physics.  They become physicists because no one will pay them to play sports, and they have no other way to attract a mate.  

   Historically, if you go back 80 years ago, physicists used to argue that there was no such thing as a curve ball, because their simple models didn't predict that.  They tried to argue that it was just an optical illusion caused by the spin of the ball.  Hah!  Later on, the aerospace engineers used wind tunnels and measured the rotation rate of the baseball and calculated that in fact baseballs did curve. Today there is very little doubt that balls do in fact curve. 

    Back in the day, the Village Elliot used to play baseball, as ridiculous as that may seem to anyone who knows the rotund research scientist now.  He never had any real ability to play except for one thing:  he could visually track an 80 mile an hour (amateur level) baseball as well as anyone, and thus was a respectable contact hitter even after age 40.  And I know darn well that there IS such a thing as a rising fastball and that it is not an illusion.  If you don't believe me, go to your local amateur league and try to catch one of these kids that throws at near-professional velocity.  Ask for the four seam fastball and see if you don't wind up catching it in your teeth.
    

   When I played baseball, we had a kid named Brian Rasay who had pitched for Cedarville University and he definitely threw a hard riser.  I wouldn't catch him without a catcher's mask for that reason.  

   So what gives?  I think first of all, the physicists need to ask what defines the "straightball."   A trivial case would be an underhand fastball, which starts out from a release point of a foot and which can obviously be thrown with an upward trajectory.  But that is not what is meant by a rising fastball.

    The "straightball" would be thrown on a downward trajectory.  Keeping in mind that the pitchers' mound is about a foot high, the release point may be around six to six and a half feet for a typical (overhand) pitcher, relative to the batter.

Here's a graphic of Brandon Morrow of the Blue Jays, from an excellent article by Mike Fast in Baseball Prospectus, http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12432

     Now the batter calls it a straightball if the ball comes in at belt high, or about 3 feet from ground level, without any additional weird movement.  Obviously, the ball is travelling down about 3 or 4 feet.  

    The physicist can note at this point that the actual trajectory is kind of a parabolic path, with some correction because air resistance slows down the ball a few mph on its way to the plate.  Given that a pitched baseball has a speed of 95 miles per hour, the predicted effect of gravity is that it will deviate by about 1 meter (3 feet) by the time it gets to home plate.  The effect of air resistance is that it will slow down a tad as it gets closer to the plate.  So in other words, the initial trajectory is such that the fastball starts out as if it is going to pass six feet above home plate, but it actually winds up at the three foot level.  The baseball pitcher does not need to study physics to figure this stuff out.  He knows from experience where to release the ball to put it where he wants it.  Similarly, the batter is not a physicist and does not get out a calculator to determine the trajectory of the ball.  He knows what the ball looks like and how it should behave.  The point is that "straight" is defined in some kind of modified parabolic coordinate system, which is simple to the ballplayer but very complicated to describe using mathematical physics. 

  
    What about the effect of spin?  The four seam fastball has maximum air resistance because of its orientation, and if thrown by an overhand pitcher, has a backspin, which results in an aerodynamic force being put on the ball.  The aerodynamicists estimate that the Magnus force on the four seamer is probably about half the force of gravity, and would result in the baseball changing its trajectory by about a foot and a half by the time it crosses home plate.  This is comparable to the distance that a curveball can move, incidentally.  

  The Magnus Force is known to affect the trajectory of spinning baseballs, including the curve ball...AND the rising fastball. 

The Magnus force causes the ball to deviate from the normal trajectory by as much as a foot and a half. This is a real effect, not an optical illusion.  However, since the ball is thrown from a release point of about six feet above the ground, the physicist is probably right that it does not actually have a net rise with respect to ground. 

 

In Cartesian Coordinates, the normal fastball travels downward from the pitcher's release point to the strike zone, and follows a roughly parabolic trajectory.  The riser has less of a downward break. (the y-scale is exaggerated).

Ref

Referenced to the "normal" trajectory, the riser's trajectory can be altered by about 1.5 feet due to the Magnus effect. (y-scale greatly exaggerated). 

   So, the altitude of the baseball does not go from level flight to a rising trajectory.  So if that's how you want to define the rising fastball, it does not exist under normal conditions.  But that is not right way to look at the problem, as baseball players can automatically view the "straight" trajectory in distinctly non-Cartesian systems.  So if you are going to call the rising fastball unreal, the "straightball" or flat trajectory is even more unreal.  

    

  So I think that the physicists have actually calculated the right answer, but interpreted it incorrectly.  The point is that aerodynamic forces can in fact cause a well pitched four seamer to cross home plate at a higher point than a normal two-seam fastball, by about a foot and a half.  It is not an optical illusion. It is a physical change in the trajectory caused by its spin and orientation.    It is usually not a net rise, however, because the pitcher's release point is about six or seven feet above the elevation of home plate.  

    Let me add one trivial point.  If the pitcher is a submarine (underhand) pitcher, with a release point about two feet above the home plate level, do we mean to say that the ball cannot be thrown up around the letters?  Of course not.  The pitcher can throw the ball with an upward trajectory and the ball clearly rises.  The physicist should not be locked into the math to miss the point that the initial trajectory can be upwards.

     So, in summary, the rising fastball is not quite a myth. The elevated mound and the preferred release point of most pitchers ensures that a pitch thrown for a strike is basically downward.  With a hard backspin, the four seamer can deviate from its normal trajectory by as much as a foot and a half by some credible estimates.  This is rising action relative to its normal trajectory.  Moreover, if the pitch is thrown from a low release point (i.e., underhand), it is trivially obvious that the ball can have a net rise by the time it crosses home plate.  The physicists are correct, however, that a pitch thrown from an overhand pitcher to the belt level of the batter does not actually have a net upwards trajectory relative to the level of home plate.  

   

The Medieval Warming Period and the Climate Stasis Hypothesis

 Did Eric the Red really colonize Greenland?  If so, was the weather warmer back then, or was it all a conspiracy?

    The historicity of the Medieval Warming Period is a minor controversy these days.  Almost everyone accepts the data from the 20th Century which shows that global average temperature has increased by about 1.0 degrees Celsius since about 1908.  By the same token, there is only a minor embarrassment that the temperature rise leveled off from about 1946 through 1975, and that once again the temperature rise has slowed since 2002.  This data is not in serious dispute, or at least it is not disputed by the Village Elliot. 

   Given that global temperatures have risen, the next question is whether human activity has been the primary cause.  Conventional wisdome is that human activity is absolutely implicated, based on the presumption that the average temperature of the earth has remained constant, plus or minus about 0.5 degrees Celsius, for thousands of years (referred to as the Climate Statis hypothesis; i.e., that climate change is definitely not natural or at least not on the timescale of "only" 100 years or so).  Hence a temperature rise of 1.0 degrees Celsius is too much to attribute to non-anthropogenic causes, and thus the CO2 Greenhouse Effect can safely be identified as the sole cause for the temperature rise.  Moreover, many mainstream climatologists argue that the world is headed for a climate catastrophe, and major changes are required in the global hydrocarbon economy in order to avert disaster.  

    The Village Elliot is not on board with some of these key principles, despite the fact that the persons making these assements are much better qualified and well studied in these matters.  In particular, I suggested in my last blog that historical climatology is basically blind as a bat if it could not see much unusual about 1816, the Year Without a Summer, in which snow fell year round.  It is thought that tree ring data provides information about the temperature in any given year, which I find amazing, given that on three continents trees reportedly failed to even grow rings that year because they stayed dormant.  The cooling of 1816 was caused by a massive volcanic eruption at Tambora, Indonesia and does not directly affect the CO2 Greenhouse hypothesis.  It does call into account whether the historical records of the 19th century are worth a darn, and specifically whether they allow us to rule out climate change caused by factors other than carbon dioxide.  

    Let us then turn our attention to the Medieval Warming period.  As is the case with the Year Without  a Summer, the Medieval Warming period used to be a historical fact.  Eric the Red colonized Greenland  at the end of the 10th century.  The Vikings flourished there, so that by the 13th century there were over 3000 colonists in 300 farms.   

Some historians have suggested that Eric named Greenland simply as a propaganda ploy to attract new residents.  Maybe so, but someone had to convince crops to grow in a short growing season, and people and livestock to not freeze to death once they did settle there.  These seem close to being historical facts which can not be easily overturned. 

Yet, according to conventional wisdom, global average temperatures changed only slightly during this period, and even the localized temperatures in the North Atlantic were cooler than they are today.

The Village Elliot wonders how this could be true.   Even with today's agricultural technology, it is very difficult to farm in Greenland.  To think that thousands of Vikings could be farming in a wintry wasteland does not make sense.  Morever,  Antactic Ice core data supports the notion that this period was indeed warmer than the later period.  This, plus the general dominance of the Vikings during those centuries, strongly implies that the temperatures were much warmer during that period.

Moreover, the Vikings were not the only group that settled Greenland.  It turns out that the aboriginal Tuniit and Inuits also greatly expanded their territory in Greenland coming from from the northwest, and thrived for a time before receding significantly during what historians can the Little Ice Age (but which most climatologists call a 0.5 degree temperature dip).     

Why it Matters

   The existence or nonexistence of the Medieval Warming period does not contradict the reality of the CO2 Greenhouse effect.   Rather, the reality of absorption of thermal energy by carbon dioxide is pretty much undisputed.   The advancement of the Climate Stasis hypothesis, or the notion that the climate never changed much prior to the 20th century. mainly serves to confuse the modelers and perhaps impart some errors into the assumptions that go into current climate models.  Namely, we may be left with a model of a robust terrestrial climate, which suggest that the earth's average temperature is not strongly affected of volcanos such as Tambora.  The models further suggest that the Year Without a Summer and the Medieval Warming Period never happened, or at least that they were greately exaggerated.  Hence this might lead to understimation of effects other than carbon dioxide.  Moreover, most climate historians seem content with the view that recent climate has been fairly static. 

   The Village Elliot, however, is a habitual contrarian.  Certainly I do not have the tools to prove or disprove the consensus views of professional climatologists.    Nevertheless, in my opinion--and it's just an opinion--future  more objective reviews of history will lead probably climatologists to conclude that there are indeed other factors worth worrying about in addition to  carbon dioxide.   From the standpoint of politics, however, this is a heretical prediction, as we've pretty much settled on a policy of reducing carbon emissions even if it retards economic growth.  

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Oct 30, 2012 Post Script:  It turns out that at least one recent peer reviewed study in fact has in fact vouched for a warmer Warming Period and a cooler Little Ice Age.  You may read about  it here: 

 http://elliotkennel.blogspot.com/2012/10/post-script-medieval-warming-period-and.html
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Additional Reading

Check out the present average monthly temperatures in Greenland, and tell us how Vikings were able to grow crops there if the temperatures were lower in the 10th century than they are now... http://www.greenland.com/en/about-greenland/natur-klima/vejret-i-groenland/gennemsnitstemperaturer.aspx

Kim, B.; Yoon, Ho Il; Kang, Cheon Yun; Bahk, Jang Jun (2002). "Unstable Climate Oscillations during the Late Holocene in the Eastern Bransfield Basin, Antarctic Peninsula". Quaternary Research 58 (3): 234

J. Fabres et al., Branfield Basin fine-grained sediments:  Late Holocene Sedimentary Processes and Antarctic Oceanographic Conditions, The Holocene September 2000 vol. 10 no. 6 703-718  http://hol.sagepub.com/content/10/6/703.abstract

http://elliotkennel.blogspot.com/2012/04/significance-of-year-without-summer.html 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change  http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/ipcc2007.html    

Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Area, HELCOM Thematic Assessment in 2007, Baltic Sea Environment Proceedings No. 111 Helsinki Commission, Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission http://www.helcom.fi/stc/files/Publications/Proceedings/bsep111.pdf

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Stan Lee is a Mutant

  

Today I tried to take my daughter to see The Avengers (well, actually, she was taking me).  We went to the local theater, that had something like 20 showings scheduled, but they were sold out and there was a line about a mile long.  I don't know much about movies, but it looks to me like they have another Mega-hit on their hands.  Like, Marvel Comics might make as much money as some entire nations.  

    What is even more amazing is that the amazing characters of Marvel Comics were created by Stan Lee, who has been doing this since 1939!  1939?  That couldn't be right, could it?   That would mean the guy has been working on comics for 73 years???  He would have to be a mutant for that to be true.

    Well, that's exactly right.  Stan Lee started to work as a child prodigy at the age of 17, at which time he created Captain America, the Human Torch, Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner and others. Now, as a cheery 90 year old, he's still at it. Along the way, he created Thor, Spider-Man, Daredevil and probably a thousand other amazing characters and super villains.  It's incredible to think about doing something you love for such an amazing long time. 

Stan’s superheroes were different from DC Comics’.   Marvel superheros had real problems, ranging from money worries to girl problems, and an occasional hangover from getting too much radiation.  Superman and Batman, on the other hand, were basically super-strong boy scouts in tight longjohns.  Plus, characters like Superman were kind of boring because they had no limitations.  Face it, Superman could fly into the sun and destroy entire planets if he wanted to.  That just didn't make much sense after a while.

   By contrast, Stan Lee created a drama of misunderstood super powered mutants trying to be accepted in a world that just doesn’t seem to care.    That seems to be a theme that others can relate to on some level.  Maybe at times we have all felt that we had some special power or goal in life, only to have it attacked by an ignorant and prejudiced world.   

   Spider-man, in particular, was always going through some kind of crisis.  Poor guy!  If it wasn’t his girlfriend getting mad at him, it was Aunt May having a heart attack, and it was always his fault.  All he wanted to do was save the world...!

 Guys, would you rather have Nastasha (Black Widow) Romanova for a girlfriend, or Lois Lane?  

    Stan must be the most prolific writers of all time. It's one thing to simply create all those characters, but he also wrote stories, dozens per month, for the better part of a century.  Incredible! Definitely, he has to be a mutant, for no one could be that prolific unless some type of super power is involved. 

   One of my professors in Seminary, Tom Boomershine, used to argue that stories of superheros have their roots in the apocalyptic literature in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Heros like Daniel or Enoch (especially in the non-canonical literature) have some similarity to Peter Parker or Steve Rogers, in that they visit strange new worlds and encounter supernatural creatures.  We tend to view the Biblical stories differently because some of them, after all, are part of the Bible, but from a literary point of view there are some common themes.  These may teach us, in some way, about our own nature.

   My eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Stanton, was appalled by my suggestion that William Shakespeare was simply creating popular entertainment at the Globe Theater, and that nobody recognized that it was great at the time.   Thus, by the same token, popular television shows (like Star Trek) might someday be ranked alongside Shakespeare. Poor Mr. Stanton.  He about passed out at that suggestion, but the fact of the matter is that Star Trek has indeed been enormously influential in the world culture.  

 Stan Lee’s creations are in the same category, and based on early returns, it may be that the latest superhero movie may be ranked among the most popular in world history.  At some point, people are going to have to evaluate the impact of such works on society as a whole.   I hope we don't start worshipping them, but I've seen stranger things in this world.

 I might have expanded that argument to include Stan Lee’s creations, which are going to reach audiences far larger than Bill Shakespeare has.  I believe that people will be discussing Lee’s genius in the 25th Century, along with Billy Shake and others.  Moreover, people will certainly recognize the names William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and Toby Maguire.  Not sure about Richard Burbage, though. 

    Well one of these times, my daughter and I will get to see the Avengers.  I can’t wait.  
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Post script
   Well this time the nine year ond I  made it to the show.  It did not disappoint, despite the enormous buildup I gave it.  It lives up to the hype.   The movie succeeds not only in amazing special effects, but also develops the personalities of the superheroes.  I like brilliant inventor Tony Stark (Iron Man), and red blooded true American Hero Steve Rogers (Captain America) the best.  They tend to butt heads a bit.  I think Iron Man is a Democrat, but Captain America is a Republican.  

    The high tech military stuff is incredible.  Basically everything we ever thought of at Air Force Research Labs and then some, it is an engineer's dream.   But ultimately it came down to great acting and the interaction between the characters that outweighed any special effects magic.

    Not sure if the movie reached Shakespearian levels in poetry or plot development, as I had suggested it might.  Nevertheless it will likely have  a certain impact on society.  In particular I think if I were a would-be terrorist, I would hesitate to take on people that make movies like this.  

   On the other hand, The Avengers  is most assuredly not a comedy but there are a few scenes that made me laugh as hard as any movie I have ever seen.  I won't give them away; you'll have to see the movie yourself. 
    
    Also, if you're thinking about taking kids to see it, my nine year seemed to do okay with it.  It was very intense and the special effects were very exciting, but for the most part it was not really gory or upsetting.  However, the six year did not see it, and I'm sure that was the right call.  He was better off watching the cartoon pirates movie. 

The Significance of the Year Without a Summer

In 1815, the Indonesian volcano Tambora exploded in multiple  spectacular eruptions, two of which were major.  In total, it ejected an astonishing 50 cubic kilometers of magma into the atmosphere. the eruptions were heard over 1300 kilometers away (Zollinger, 1855, p.19).

If this estimate is correct, it  is a staggering amount of particulate--about 100 billion tons.  To compare this to coal-derived particulates, in 2012 the world will consume about 7 billion tons of coal.  Only a small percentage of that figure would be airborne ash.  Given that that modern plants emit well under 100 ppm particulate mater, Tambora might have emitted over 100,000 times more particulate matter than annual total created by all the coal power plants in the world!

   That is a staggering amount of mineral matter. 

What History Says

      Given that particulate matter, as well as certain chemicals in smog, are known to be able to partially block sunlight, it would  not be surprising to learn that there were consequences planet-wide.  that the following year, 1816, was known as the Year Without a Summer, or in some quarters, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.   It is a historical fact that in North America the northern US failed to bring a crop to market, and farmers were not able to feed their livestock.  Hence livestock were slaughtered. 

     In Europe, oak trees did not grow rings that year, attesting to the extreme cold.  It also makes me wonder why people who claim to use tree rings to estimate temperature failed to find any evidence of cold weather in 1816--maybe since the ring is missing altogether, some researchers may have ignored the data. 

     According to Higdon, "In New England, eastern Canada, and western Europe, the late spring through early fall of 1816 was extraordinarily cold, an estimated 4-7 Fahrenheit (1.5 to 2.5 Celsius) degrees cooler than normal. In New England alone, wintry weather continued through the summer; snow fell with strong, frigid storms in every summer month and severe frosts destroyed crops repeatedly all season. In Canada, conditions were even worse. Small lakes remained frozen through the middle of July and even the cold-hardy wheat crop failed. The Lancashire Plain of England reported its coldest and wettest July in written history and Geneva, Switzerland had its coldest summer in the span of 1753 to 1960."

  

   According to   De Boer and Sanders, "Weather data for the early nineteenth century indicate a two-to three-year period of weather extremes following the eruption.  Throughout 1816, average surface temperatures in teh Norther Hemisphere were as much as 10 degrees Celsius lower than normal.  A global cooling trend had been in progress for several years before the eruption of Tambora.  The Tambora event accelerated that trend." 

   The basis for the 10 degree number was not specified by De Boer and Sanders, and appears to substantially higher than other estimates.   Schneider. wrote, "In England, the following year temperatures dropped some 1.5 to 2.5 ^oC.  In eastern North America and in Western Europe, the summer of 1816 was reported in places to be 1 to 2.5 ^oC colder than the previous years...In New England the loss of most of the staple crop of Indian corn and the great reduction of the hay crop caused so much hardship in isolated subsistence farms that they year became enshrined in folklore as Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.....Whether Tambora caused these events or was merely a component of them --or even a coincidence--is still debated.  For example, even if the eruption caused a 3  ^oC drop in average summer temperatures in New England, such a large cooling isn’t enough by itself to create mid-summer frosts..."

    Earle et al. claim that tree ring growth shows that the 1816 growth ring is missing altogether from trees in Siberia, indicating that the trees did not leave the dormant state and grow during 1816 , presumably due to the cold. 

 

The Scientific Anomaly

 

    The amount of circumstantial testimony concerning 1816 is impressive, at least to the Village Elliot.  However, the consensus view from climatologists is that no substantial change occured in global temperature during that time.  Nothing much happened, as indicated by the summary graphs below, which are taken from various sources including the famous Mann et al. paper (the "Hockey Stick").  Again, a great deal of fuss has been made about the rise in the 20th century, but I have no major complaint about the 20th century data.  Even if the analysis has some errors, there is just too much data indicating that the global average temperature did in fact increase in the 20th century.

   The part that I find extraordinary, however, is the implicit assertion that global average temperature remained remarkably constant for thousands of years up until the 20th century, including the Year Without a Summer.

 

Why it Matters

    The failure to characterize the Year Without a Summer may be one of the most blatant examples of the failure of researchers to agree with the assertions of history.  Moreover, an explanation for the change is readily available (namely, that the massive Tambora eruption was the most significant cause of the dramatic cooling of the earth in 1816 and 1817).  Thus the existence of the Year Without a Summer does not directly contradict the carbon dioxide hypothesis.   

      It does, however call into account the ability of climatologists to observe changes in global temperature from the past. In my opinion, it is simply weird that the weather could have been so cold that snow and frost occurred in June, July and August in the Northern Hemisphere (Eastern US, northern Europe, and Siberia).  In fact it was so cold that trees on three continents--North America, Europe and Asia-- failed to come out of dormancy in the spring of 1816, so that tree rings did not even grow.  Yet consensus climatology assures us that the tree ring data is consistent with only a mild fluctuation of about 0.1 to 0.3 degrees Celsius, juding from the compilation provided to us by Mann et al as well as other groups.    

    Note that the consensus view also denies that there was a global temperature change associated with the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warming Period.  As will be made clear in a future blog, there are very strong historical reasons for believing that these periods were real.  In particular, it is astonishing to believe that medieval Vikings could have had settlement of 2000 or more people in 600 farms if the global temperature were not substantially warmer than it is today. 

     If the scientific community were to agree that global temperature changes of a few degrees have occurred in the historical past, this does not negate the possibility of the CO2 Greenhouse Global Warming Theory being largely correct.  It would however, imply that the door should be left open, at least a crack, for other factors that might influence global temperatures, in addition to carbon dioxide.  

For Additional Reading


Tambora Volcano:  World's Largest Recorded Volcanic Eruption, J. Daniel Perkins,
http://jdanielperkins.wordpress.com/tag/tambora/

Gerald Stanhill, Shabtai Cohen, Globaldimming: a review of the evidence for a widespread and significant reduction in global radiation with discussion of its probable causes and possible agricultural consequences, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Volume 107, Issue 4, 19 April 2001, Pages 255–278

David G. Streets, Ye Wu, Mian Chin, Two-decadal aerosol trends as a likely explanation of the global dimming/brightening transition, GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L15806, 4 PP., 2006

Mark Z. Jacobson, Climate response of fossil fuel and biofuel soot, accounting for soot's feedback to snow and sea ice albedo and emissivity, JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 109, D21201, 15 PP., 2004

 

P. D. Jones et al., Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS, VOL. 37, NO. 2, PP. 173-199, 1999

Kushner, Paul J., Isaac M. Held, Thomas L. Delworth, 2001: Southern Hemisphere Atmospheric Circulation Response to Global Warming. J. Climate, 14, 2238–2249.

J. Hansen,    M. Sato, and R. Ruedy, Long-term changes of the diurnal temperature cycle: implications about mechanisms of global climate change, Atmospheric Research, Volume 37, Issues 1–3, July 1995, Pages 175–209.

Steven C. Sherwood,    John R. Lanzante, and Cathryn L. Meyer, Radiosonde Daytime Biases and Late-20th Century Warming,  Published Online August 11 2005

Science 2 September 2005: Vol. 309 no. 5740 pp. 1556-1559

M. J. Filipiak, C. J. Merchant, H. Kettle1, and P. Le Borgne, An empirical model for the statistics of sea surface diurnal warming, Ocean Sci., 8, 197–209, 2012

M. Chenoweth, Ships' logbooks and the year without a summer,  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 1996  vol. 77, no 9, pp. 2077-2093.

Rebecca Wood,  The Year Without a Summer,  Centreville Patch 

http://centreville.patch.com/articles/the-year-without-a-summer

Useful Tree Species for Tree Ring Dating,   http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/lorim/good.html

Stoffel, M.; Bollschweiler, M.; Butler, D.R.; Luckman, B.H. (Eds.), Tree Rings and Natural Hazards:  A State-of-Art Series: Advances in Global Change Research, Vol. 41

1st Edition., 2010, XV, 505 p. 177 illus.

Michael Mann et al., “Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millenia,”

Melody Higdon, the Year Without a Summer,   1816: The Year Without a Summer  http://melodyhigdon.com/climotalk/Year_Without_A_Summer.htm

Jelle Zeilinga De Boer, Donald Theodore Sanders,

Volcanoes In Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects Of Major Eruptions

Volcanic dust veils and climate: How clear is the connection? — An editorial Stephen H. Schneider   Climatic Change, VOlume 5 Nujmber 2, 1983, 111-113.s

 

C. Begin and L Filion Tree Rings and Natural Hazards, A State of Art...

C. J. Earle, L. B. Brubaker, A. V. Lozhkin and P. M. Anderson  Summer Temperature Since 1600 for the Upper Kolyma Region, Northeastern Russia, Reconstructed from Tree Rings, Arctic and Alpine Research , Vol. 26, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 60-65

Published by: INSTAAR, University of Colorado

The temperature reconstructions are taken from Wikipedia, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png  (dowloaded April 2012) with the following annotations:

(dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). "High-resolution Palaeoclimatic Records for the last Millennium: Interpretation, Integration and Comparison with General Circulation Model Control-run Temperatures". The Holocene 8: 455-471. doi:10.1191/095968398667194956

• (blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations". Geophysical Research Letters 26 (6): 759-762.

• (light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). "Northern Hemisphere Temperature Reconstruction". Ambio 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). "Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years". Science 289: 270-277. doi:10.1126/science.289.5477.270

• (lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). "Low-frequency temperature variations from a northern tree-ring density network". J. Geophys. Res. 106: 2929-2941.

• (light turquoise 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). "Low-Frequency Signals in Long Tree-Ring Chronologies for Reconstructing Past Temperature Variability". Science 295 (5563): 2250-2253. doi:10.1126/science.1066208.

• (green 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). "Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia". Geophysical Research Letters 30 (15): 1820. doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.

• (yellow 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). "Climate Over Past Millennia". Reviews of Geophysics 42: RG2002. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143

• (orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). "Merging Information from Different Resources for New Insights into Climate Change in the Past and Future". Geophys. Res Lett. 31: L13205. doi:10.1029/2004GL019781

• (red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). "Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data". nature 443: 613-617. doi:10.1038/nature03265

• (dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). "Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records". Science 308: 675-677. doi:10.1126/science.1107046

• (black 1856-2004): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the w:Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre. Global Annual Average data set TaveGL2v [2] was used.