ADAMANT

What In Creation?

Despite years of law school, many in government still experience difficulty in politicizing Earth science,  witness the bipartisan failure of Senators Clinton and Inhofe to memorialize the 6,000th anniversary of the Earth's creation-- 4004 BC-- AD 1997-- in The Congressional Record.   
To bring America's  National intelligent Design Curriculum up to date,

The Seitz System Of Condensed Concordia 
...Integrates noted Revelation scholar & alchemist
.Sir Isaac Newton's Calculus, Archbishop Ussher's
..peer-reviewed addition of Begats & the Geognostic
.Magisterium of late Commonwealth Latin Secretary
.John Milton Esquire &  Doctor John Winthrop
........of  Harvard College ,  into  America's  first
.........BIBLICALLY  CORRECT .............GEOCHRONOLOGY
The postmodern miracle that cuts the span of geological time God-fearing students must memorize by a factor of a million compared to rude "scientific" methods using rocks and mass spectrometers, thus greatly reducing the Tedium of Plate Tectonics

   Copyright MMVIII                                             Russell Seitz    

..           .4004 B.C. : Hadean Era commences with Lucifer's fall to Earth;

  >>> * 4003 B.C.:  Expelled from Eden, Adam and Eve ask Ben Stein for asbestos waders to cover their shame.

    * 3984 B.C.: The first biotechnologist, Cain, patents cyanobacteria.

    * 3804 B.C.: Archaean copper deposits form , kick-starting Bronze Age.

    * 3104 B.C.: Tubal Cain inaugurates banded Iron Age. Sphinx starts to fossilize.

    * 3004 B.C.: Y1K  crisis averted : Gilgamesh unable to count as high as 1000.

    * 2837 B.C. Komatiite lava inundates Mesopotamia ; Noah's Ark incinerated.

    * 2804 B.C.: Methuselah begins to notice passage of geological time.

    * 2604 B.C.: Tired of reading graphic granite, Imhotep devises hieroglyphs.

    * 2584 B.C.: Earliest sedimentation; discovery of slate leads to stone tablets.

    * 2384 B.C.: Breathable atmosphere develops; first sermon preached.

  

  

THE GENESIS OF EXPELLED

                      IN 2002, BEN STEIN ASKED FORBES READERS
                      WHAT'S THE BEST WAY TO  DESTROY AMERICA?
                           He answered  his own question thus :

"Destroy the knowledge base on which all of mankind's scientific progress has been built by guaranteeing that such learning is confined to only a few, and spread ignorance and complacency among the many. Watch America lose its scientific and competitive edge..

Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism--...to an equal status with technology in the public mind... and act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo."

NULLIUS IN VERBA : Lord Rees Replies

Lord Rees , the President of The Royal Society, has taken issue with my Wall Street Journal article last criticizing the Society's attempt to defund critics of its climate policy. Here it is. His reply follows.

......Nullius In Verba

By RUSSELL SEITZ
In 1663, a group of savants formed a London club to discuss "useful knowledge." John Milton's "Areopagitica" was very much on the minds of those early scientists, for it warned that Puritan control of the press could turn into state control of thought. Dissent could get you killed in Restoration England, at sword's point if gentlemen took umbrage, or on the gallows if it traduced royal policy or Holy Writ. So they were mighty relieved when King Charles II agreed to join them, for, with such a patron, the Fellows of the Royal Society (including Oliver Cromwell's brother in law ) would not fear for their necks or purses when speaking truth to power or questioning authority -- until now.

BLUE JADE :

A report on my archaeological work from: 

 

                                      In Guatemala, A Mother Lode Of Jade 

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

For half a century, scholars have searched in vain for the source of the jade that the early civilizations of the Americas prized above all else and fashioned into precious objects of worship, trade and adornment.

The searchers found some clues to where the Olmecs and Mayas might have obtained their jadeite, as the precious rock is known. But no lost mines came to light.

Now, scientists exploring the wilds of Guatemala say they have found the mother lode — a mountainous region roughly the size of Rhode Island strewn with huge jade boulders, other rocky treasures and signs of ancient mining. It was discovered after a hurricane tore through the landscape and exposed the veins of jade, some of which turned up in stores, arousing the curiosity of scientists. The find includes large outcroppings of blue jade, the gemstone of the Olmecs, the mysterious people who created the first complex culture in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the region that encompasses much of Mexico and Central America.

It also includes an ancient mile-high road of stone traversing jaguar territory in a mountain wilderness containing rocks from the Earth’s mantle , called eclogites. The deposits rival the world's leading current source of mined jade, in Myanmar, formerly Burma, the experts say. The implications for history, archaeology and anthropology are just starting to emerge.

For one thing, the scientists say, the find suggests that the Olmecs, who flourished on the southern gulf coast of Mexico, exerted wide influence in the Guatemalan highlands as well. All told, they add, the Guatemalan lode was worked for millenniums, as compared with centuries for the Burmese one. In part, the discovery resulted from the devastating storm that hit Central America in 1998, killing thousands of people and is a touching off floods and landslides that exposed old veins and washed jade into river beds.

Local prospectors picked up the precious scraps, which found their way into Guatemalan jewelry shops and, eventually, the hands of astonished scientists.

“‛Lordy,’ I said, ‛this is Olmec type,’” recalled Russell Seitz, who decades earlier directed a jade hunt in Guatemala for the Peabody Museum at Harvard. “Where did it come from?”

Led by Mr. Seitz and local jade hunters, a team of scientists from the American Museum of Natural History, Rice University and the University of California scoured the forested ravines of the Guatemalan highlands for more than two years. In the end the scientists made a series of discoveries in bus-size boulders of Olmec blue jade, some astride creeks. "It kept getting better and better," said Virginia B. Sisson, a geologist at Rice University who has recently examined jades in Myanmar as well as Guatemala. The blue jade, she said, “is all over the hillsides.”

The exact locations of the outcroppings are not being given, to protect them. Leading archaeologists in Guatemala, though not directly involved, are applauding the finds. Hector Escobedo of the Universidad del Valle called the jade discovery "one of the most significant" in decades of investigating the Mayan past and said the new deposits probably account for "all of the sources for Mesoamerican jades." He added that

PYRITES OF THE CARRIBEAN

    In Which Ye  Author  Most Shamelessly Plugs

  A NATURAL HISTORY OF MUSTIQUE

The only place to read a Patrick O'Brian novel is lounging in the  mizzen top of a brig like Astrid. Nowhere else can a landsman keep track of what the man is talking about.  Running down the Windward Islands from English Harbor to Fort De France, I glanced up to spy that the nearest volcanic peak semed to be  greenly shivvering. So I put down The Nutmeg Of Consolation and swung from the mainyard garnet 'neath the futtocks to the quarterdeck ratlines to  go check the synthetic aperture radar--with a nightmare rig like Astrid's you want plenty of post-modern Nav gear, wired all Bristol-fashion.

Sure enough, the williwaw rustling the cane fields of Martinique's  Mont Pelee' was reaching across the sea-- it was time to shorten sail. From meteorology to ornithology and mineralogy, there's no avoiding natural history cruising the Caribbean. On land and under water , much of it is delightful ; but while  Captain Raul King of Bequia once declared " Nothing in this sea will harm you", you do need to know enough not to grab the fire coral , poke the sea urchins , or steer afoul of its underwater volcano.

With so much to oogle, the naturally curious visitor might well need  A Natural History Handbook to seek out, and sort out all the beautiful creatures, lovely corals, and sparking mineral veins. So I helped write one.

All The News That's Fit To Map

 

                                                                                                                                 It is noteworthy that a generation ago, this asymmetry was drawn from its epicenter  by the late great cartoonist Saul Steinberg:

Of course, publications  change as well as demography Today the culture of cartograpy centers on geophysics , so :

Yangoon Show

When The Sea Comes Up Like Thunder
And  the flying fishes play
O'er the landscape underwater
On the road to Mandalay
Stop reading Goddam  Kipling
There's a cyclone on the way

Burma's  PR  campaign marched on  as  Kipling's original rhyme became a tragic reality. Flying fishes  ruled  Myanmar's highways last week as Cyclone Nargis sucked in a dome of Andaman seawater five meters high and forty kilometers across, and bore it , flying fish and all, a hundred kilometers inland , dissolving half the  Irawaddy  delta into a flowing mudscape that is still running out to sea into a broad diagonal swath that literally extends  to the road  to Mandalay running north from Yangon.

With over  25,000 square kilometers under water, the death toll from this perfect cyclone may come  within a factor of two of the  2004  Boxing Day tsunami. The storm surge obliterated most of the coast  and Irrawaddy  delta reclaimed by ricefield  poldiering and levee construction  under the British Empire ,and in the two generations since.

I suspect Kipling had jumping Asian carp glimpsed from a  Mississippi-style steamboat of the Irawaddy Flotilla in mind, but there is no report  as to whether The  Old Moulmein Pagoda weathered the storm.

If the Goon Show in Yangoon goes on holding up foreign aid, the Burmese may  come up like thunder, before too many dawns have passed.

Before & after satellite photos of Burma.

The Grape of The Locke

AND STOP SHOOTING CROSSBOWS AT APPLES

Oblivious to the sterile  hybrid roses growing on the parliamentary  parterre, and the seedless grapes and melons served in its  dining rooms, the Philosophes in the Swiss bureaucracy  have passed guidelines banning Federal funding of research that affronts the dignity of plants. The object is to stop such horrific affronts to the  sovereign  integrity of the plant kingdom as genetic engineering that deprives vegetables of their independence.

Three hundred years after Locke praised the Geneva Republic, it's bad enough plants don't have the vote ( although they are not subject to compulsory military service either). Nature news reports the Swiss government's ethics committee on non-human biotechnology  has

"issued guidelines instructing researchers how to avoid offending the dignity of plants. If their projects are ruled as affronts to plants, their funding will be pulled.... The committee does not consider that genetic engineering of plants automatically falls into this category, but its majority view holds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to 'lose their independence' - for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce.

Reason  biotech watcher Ron Bailey wonders about :

"such egregious violations of vegetal dignity as grafting cabernet sauvignon shoots to alien American grape rootstock? And might not hybridization be considered forced plant miscegenation? Also, what could be worse for plant "independence" than domestication? After all, domesticated plants can't thrive without human nurturing. We've turned such crops as corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, and tomatoes into photosynthetic slaves. Finally, what could be more outrageously disrespectful to chlorophyll-kind than being eaten by people? The horror, the horror! "

Powering Up The Climate Conference Circuit

  
.IPCC 2012? UNSSN Commodore Gore piping juice ashore East of Java
                                                   (Artiste's Rendition)

It takes a lot of cool heads to think straight about how to avoid a hotter future. That's why the UN  generally assembles ten thousand or so folks from mostly cold countries in places like Bali and Nairobi each year. Equatorial venues may finesse the North-South inferiority complex , but they add acres to the carbon foot print of the climate conference circuit.

Parking 10,000 IPCC conferees and attendant groupies in Bali for ten days means firing up a load of high rise air conditioners - the place is so tropical that keeping the suits suited as they sit recharging their laptops takes a cool ten megawatts , this on an island heavily reliant on burning carbon to make electricity.

Every private jet in the IPCC Air Force moving poobahs and pundits to the podium comes with a PR flack swearing it's somehow carbon offset. The mass of peonage flying in in economy is what really cries out for a portable solution to the ten megawatt power drain the climate circuit wears like the Mark Of Cain. 

Since UN events are planned years in advance, a leisurely solution suggests itself. To pave the way for the gigantic annual migration of Homo climaticus, the United Nations Environmental Program needs a Nuclear Navy.

A single surplus submarine of the sort the Russians sell for a song by the six pack could be sent ahead by sea, and the sixty megawatt reactor cable of the nuclear slowboat plugged into the local grid at dockside, providing not just the delegates hotels, but the homes of the hordes who wait on them with CO2 free juice for the duration. Better still, a small fleet could be dispatched and left behind at the dozen convention cites globally  that can hope to attract so demanding  an outfit as the IPCC to their venues.

Ten nukes dockside would disintermediate one of the coal burning power stations the meetings denounce, without undue proliferation risk, as they can be unplugged and sailed over the horizon should indigenes with rusty cutlasses come clamoring for a cup of plutonium to fete the neighbors. What better way to encourage global Marshall Plans than by showing the world the fruits of Admiral Rickover's ingenious approach to alternative energy ?

But who would volunteer as Commodore of the Fleet ? There's a fellow in Plains, Georgia who knows all about nuclear submarines and UN conference venues. They might get him for peanuts.

Krak's Back

Anak Krakatau, the "Child Of Krakatoa" born from the depths of the caldera left in the seabed by the catastrophic eruption of 1886 seems to be entering its lusty adolescence . I have a Krakatau Number of 3, having talked to Luis Alvarez about the eruption in 1984. He got an eyewitness account from his sometime  WWII boss, Norden, of the eponymous bombsight, who was born in Batavia ( now Jakarta) a dozen years before the big bang.

The Uses Of Doubt

The Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists has published an admirably candid collation of what some high profile climate modelers have to say to each other
The uncertainty in climate modeling   Some  cautionary excerpts follow, but  best read the whole thing

Climate prediction works well for some variables and poorly for others
James Murphy
" are the results too dependent on debatable expert assumptions for some variables, hence precluding predictions that are more than a "best guess" and an uncertainty range?

In practice, the answer is likely to differ from variable to variable, possibly even from season to season. Probability distributions for average future changes in surface temperature and precipitation, for instance, may be within reach, because the main processes expected to drive such changes are captured in the current generation of climate models.

On the other hand, changes in, say, surface evaporation or wind speed are too dependent on basic physical assumptions, which vary between different models--the problem being that we currently lack the detailed observations and understanding needed to distinguish which of the different assumptions is correct. In the latter case, we might decline the challenge of probabilistic prediction. The important thing is to have quantitative methods of determining where to draw the line, rather than relying purely on expert judgement.

In UKCIP08, for example, we are handling this problem by combining results from two different types of ensemble data: .... For some climate variables this works reasonably well, implying that probabilities can reasonably be estimated. For other variables we find much wider divergence between the two types of ensemble data, implying that probabilistic predictions aren't yet feasible.

... We can only judge credibility by assessing whether climate models capture the relevant processes on a case-by-case basis.....t the potential benefits of waiting for better information from future generations of models needs to be made very clear.

Climate modeling is still an abstraction of reality
Leonard A. Smith
... I doubt we can blame the media for many problems climate science seems set to bring upon itself. .., the pivotal question is whether today's models are able to provide additional relevant information, and if so, on what scales?

... Suppose a cup of coffee slips from my hand. I know enough physics to predict that it will fall to the floor. I'm also confident that if I reduce the distance it falls, it's less likely to shatter and create a mess. We know with this kind of certainty that the greenhouse effect has initiated global warming. Yet, I also understand that I don't know enough physics to predict how many shards will result if the cup shatters or where exactly the coffee will splatter. Nor can I usefully estimate a "critical height" below which the cup has an acceptably small chance of shattering. The fact that I know I don't know these things is valuable information for evidence-based decision support: It keeps me from making overconfident plans based on the "best available information." Instead, I act based upon what I do know--the cup is likely to shatter, and therefore, I plan to jump left.

But what if the physicist next to me offers to sell me a probability distribution from his state-of-the-art "falling fluid container" model? His implied probabilities describe whether or not my cup will shatter, what the shards will do if it does, and the trajectory of various drops of coffee after the cup lands (so we know which direction to move to avoid coffee splatter). High-resolution MPEG movies of the model are available for a small extra charge, and they look great!

Should I pay attention to him?
Do we believe that today's models can provide decision-relevant probabilities at a resolution of tens of square kilometers for the year 2060--or even 2020 for that matter? No.... to accept a naive realist interpretation of model behaviors cast as a Bayesian probability distribution is, as mathematician and philosopher Alfred Whitehead surmised, to mistake an abstract concept for concrete reality....Shorn of this context, model results have an aura of exactitude that can be misleading.

Interpreting climate predictions should be collaborative
Claudia Tebaldi
We all seem to agree that our state-of-the-art models aren't satisfactory representations of climate on Earth--at least not to the degree required to make decisions with them. We also agree that people are concerned with climate change ...
Beyond this common ground, we fall on different points of the spectrum between James's pragmatic approach, where he proposes giving decision makers information as our "best guess" about future outcomes nonetheless, and Lenny's highly skeptical position--namely, there's no hope in approximating the real world in any useful sense.

The reader who doesn't dabble in climate modeling or statistics is probably asking herself, "What am I to make of all this?" To which I would say, "That's exactly what I want you to think!"

Let me explain: If I can say anything for sure, it's that I don't want anyone to take a precooked climate projection--whether a single model or a multi-model ensemble, probabilistic or not--and run with it. Any decision will be best served by looking at the available observational and modeled information and listening to the opinion of climate modelers and climatologists. The experts will be able to form an integrated evaluation based on changes already observed,...
... By doing so, we may get closer to a full characterization of the uncertainties that we know exist....As for the unknown unknowns. . . There's no way around those.

Probabilities aren't so scary
James Murphy
Policy makers and planners now accept the reality of man-made climate change and are turning their thoughts toward adaptation. Should they make their decisions now, or wait to see if better climate models can provide more precise information? .... Modeling centers have worked incredibly hard on this during the past decade, yet the range of projections hasn't changed much....There's no obvious reason to expect more than gradual progress,

The scientific credibility of a probability distribution function therefore depends not on having near-perfect, error-free models, but on how well the methodology used to sample the uncertainties and convert the model results into probabilities summarizes the risk of alternative outcomes. This is by no means an easy hurdle, but one I believe we are capable of overcoming.

Of course, the probabilities must be accompanied by sensitivity analyses that educate users not to interpret the probabilities to too high a degree of precision.  room should be made for changing forecasts in the future....perhaps we can be less frightened of telling users what we believe--and perhaps we can credit them with the intelligence not to interpret our current beliefs as everlasting promises.

In planning for the future, make room for changing forecasts
Leonard A. Smith

...Seeking a perfect relationship that would bring decision-support bliss might hinder the development of our warts-and-all models, which, while improving, are in no way converging towards perfection....Gavin notes that the average of many models is frequently "closer to the observations" than any individual model. While true, this doesn't suggest that such an average can support good decision making. Even when the model is perfect, averaging can be a bad idea. Consider the parable of ... three...statisticians who cannot swim but desperately need to cross a river.

Each has a forecast of the change in the river’s depth from one bank to the other; in each forecast, there's a different point at which the river is so deep that the statisticians will drown. According to the average of their forecasts, it’s safe to ford the river. Even though the average is closer to the actual depth profile of the river than any one of the forecasts, action based on that information is not safe--if they cross the river, they’ll drown. .... there are few, if any, examples of purely model-based probability forecasts supporting good decision-making ...

Not all climate models are created equal
Claudia Tebaldi

It's exhilarating to see the fruits of climate research achieve such prominence in the media, political debate, and concerns of industrial and municipal stakeholders. As scientists, though, it's incumbent upon us not to mislead the lay audience...., I wholeheartedly agree with Gavin that these kinds of probabilistic projections aren't appropriate for risk analysis and decision making under uncertainty and won't be for a long time.

Climate models produce projections, not probabilities
Gavin Schmidt

"I'm just a model whose intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood," Nina Simone may as well have sung. Models are fundamentally necessary in all sciences. They exist to synthesize knowledge, to quantify the effects of counteracting forces, and most importantly, to make predictions--the evaluation of which is at the heart of the scientific method...

Climate models are amalgams of fundamental physics, approximations to well-known equations, and empirical estimates (known as parameterizations) of processes that either can't be resolved (because they happen on too small a physical scale) or that are only poorly constrained from data.... models are all limited by similar computational constraints and have developed in the same modeling tradition. Thus while they are different, they are not independent in any strict statistical sense.

Does agreement on a particular phenomenon across multiple models with various underlying assumptions affect your opinion on whether or not it is a robust projection? The answer, almost certainly, is yes. Such agreement implies that differences in the model inputs, including approach (e.g. a spectral or grid point model), parameterizations (e.g. different estimates for how moist convective plumes interact with their environment), and computer hardware did not materially affect the outcome, which is thus a reasonable reflection of the underlying physics.

Does such agreement "prove" that a given projection will indeed come to pass? No... the assumed changes in forcings in the future may not transpire...

So how should one interpret future projections from climate models? I suggest a more heuristic approach. If models agree that something (global warming and subtropical drying for instance) is relatively robust, then it is a reasonable working hypothesis ... while it is seductive to attempt to corner our ignorance with the seeming certainty of 95-percent confidence intervals, the comfort it gives is likely to be an illusion. Climate modeling might be better seen as a Baedeker for the future, giving some insight into what might be found, rather than a precise itinerary."

Very Scary Calimari

IT'S JUST A RUNT
The 26 foot squid  from Antarctica's Ross Sea being dissected in New Zealand , though Colossal,is not Giant- they run more like 46 feet, and are being avidly tracked by hungry oceanographers. 

The hunt for  Captain Nemo's nemesis, Archyteuthys may finally succeed this season , so start stockpiling tartar sauce today

Or view the mighty archive of giant squiddery at New Zealand's Te Papa Blog

Say Again?

Just in case they re-edit Expelled ,to reduce the cognitive dissonance level, note this comment by David Berlinski:

 

Just for the record: I have never endorsed any creationist views whatsoever; and I am a published critic of intelligent design. I take airplanes because I believe in the principles of fluid dynamics; when I must use a cell phone, I place my faith in quantum electrodynamics.

So what?

DB

Pajamas Media Apr 28, 2008 - 11:17 am

The Twenty Kiloton Torch

FIRE FROM HEAVEN CAN BE A HEAVY BURDEN

Lit  without flame by  a solar spark, and consuming mere ounces of fuel a day as it is carried by fleet footed runners, the Olympic torch is acquiring a monumental carbon footprint none the less--it is being spirited across the oceans on a dedicated Chinese Airbus 330  belching forth 129 pounds of CO2 for every mile it travels.

In all , Earthlab estimates the jet will consume 462 thousand gallons of fuel-  petro, not bio. So  it will take 20,130 tonnes of CO2 to see the torch around the world on its meandering 85,000 mile Odyssey from Greece to Beijing