In #Detroit airport and never really sat back and saw how nice an airport it is! It was good to be back for a bit.
First thing's first: anyone know a better way to do pictures in Blogger other than the built-in Picasa interface? It seriously sucks. I can't link to a simple hi-res version, the embedding options suck, and it's a plain old pain-in-the-ass. Yeesh.
Aha! A small reach for Adrian Clayborn, but huge value for both Da'Quan Bowers and Mason Foster. Bowers is a wild card- reports of a microfracture make him a risky talent. Mason Foster was one that I was hoping the Lions could grab, but they looked towards offense (and got good value with LeShoure) in the 2nd round. I like Tampa's draft; they should have a significantly upgraded defense.
Hey, [Carl]. Thanks for the reply.
I think the issues you bring up -- is CO2 the greatest factor in climate change, what other factors are there, etc. -- are good questions and are issues actually being tackled in the climate community. One only needs to follow some of the conversations on [Lab Email] to see all of the factors (including CO2) that are constantly under scrutiny by the scientific community (solar input, the role of aerosols, and more). It is a complex question indeed.
I am CC'ing the climate list again because I believe that your concerns are legitimate but ultimately ones that have been addressed by the scientific community. I do not mean to ridicule whatsoever! The experts on the climate list can address your questions far better than I, and communicating the state of climate science to non-experts (such as myself, see below) is a key part of our careers.
I must admit that I'm not a climate scientist; I merely follow the email list because it interests me. That said, one need not be a specialist to see that the article you originally sent out does not pass the "smell test". The entire article leaves nearly all the work to the reader when it comes to trying to figure out if any of this is true.
A smattering of references (note that they were not placed in the article itself, but rather in the comments section -- this should be a huge red flag) does
very little to settle the matter because if one actually reads them, they are extremely inconclusive. For example, the second reference reports that the recent sporadic pole movement is somewhat expected and not necessarily indicative of a pole reversal. The Nature article (one must find this independently as no link or actual reference is given) concludes with "The evidence relating [pressure systems with magnetic field shifts] is less convincing and there is clearly a need for further comparisons of meteorological data...". This paper is from 1974. If more research was required then, why not include a paper that is more recent? Several articles are --at best -- only tangentially related to the topic.
Some claims are so far fetched that eyebrows should raise instinctively. For example, Mr. Aym says, "And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose." Normally??? He just stated that flips occur every 500,000 years! We have no frame of reference for what is "normal"!
It requires no specialized degree to administer a smell test, just a recognition that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This is why I sent out the picture -- I wasn't sure if you were serious or just trying to stir up some fun on the climate list. Whenever you get an article like this, sniff around to see if any of it stinks.
To get to the core of the matter, however, specialized knowledge of the physics and science behind the article is required. That is a big problem, because this article is written in such a way as to obfuscate issues so that it is difficult for a lay person to know what is real and what sounds real but is false. Though I am not a climate scientist, I am a space plasma physicist who studies the Earth's magnetosphere. There is a lot that is fundamentally wrong with this article; I'll hit some of the main issues.
First off, the major solar driver of climate and weather is light radiation. This is not affected by our magnetic field. Studies to how fluctuations in solar intensity affects climate change are performed frequently; it is important to note that we are in the midst of a historic solar activity minimum while Earth surface temperatures continue to rise (for example, see here).
The idea that the Earth's magnetic field shields us from "cancer causing radiation" is demonstrably false. It is the atmosphere that does the greatest amount of shielding. If there was no magnetic field, particles with energies equal to those captured in the radiation belts would not penetrate very deeply into our atmosphere. Currently, these particles can still penetrate near the magnetic poles, but again only to the extent that only very high altitude flights are affected. To penetrate to ground level, only super-energetic (>>GeV) particles have enough energy, and such particles are already moving quickly enough to be only slightly deflected by the Earth's magnetic field. Cancer causing radiation from the sun, as far as humans are concerned, is better known as ultraviolet radiation. This is not shielded by the Earth's magnetic field but by our atmosphere. If the Earth's magnetic field blocked UV rays, we wouldn't be having this conversation now.
Finally, the assertion that Sun's "magnetosphere" (known as the heliosphere as it is a solar, not terrestrial, body) can affect the Earth's rotation, wobble, and core to any significant degree is again incorrect. While the heliosphere transmits extensive energy to the Earth via the solar wind, this energy is dispersed through well known electric current and plasma flow systems. The energy balance is well accounted for without including any change to the Earth's rotation, etc.. Even if all of this energy was put to changing the rotation, wobble, or core, it could barely make a dent in these high-inertia systems.
This is my honest attempt to answer your original question about the veracity of the article. As for some of your follow up questions, the climate community will do a far better job than I. I hope you found this helpful and I'm happy to discuss it further.
Space is a fluid ..Hence a field of plasma..Hence a 'plasma field'. . Its motion or state of being is 'Guided by Matter'
. Thus an orb or space craft or other type of matter going through it would affect its field. Think of a boat propelling
itself through water - the faster and larger the boat - the more distortion of the water it is going through .
And yes, that was a "reply-all".I don't know [Spacecataz] it sounds as reasonable a cause for the storm changes as saying "CO2 did it." What if it is a mixture of both. Changes in magnetic flux causing increases and decreases in solar energy. Could it be the reason for the model and reality differences. What if the the global warming science and NASA sciences are stuck in own little boxes and neither can look at the forest.
Just saying! I am a cause and affect Engineer and maybe we are just experiencing something that happens. Just think what the knee jerk reaction would be of our government, and our science today if we around during the dust bowl years of the 30's. We would still be riding horses, no power plants would be built, no industry. This is what I'm seeing happening. Something less happens today and we (well China does anyway) build wind turbines and solar collectors, and ridicules light bulbs to fix it. Like riding horses neither of these industries will do anything to help and history will show that we were enlightened fools.
I will let get back to work. I've got to continue making sure there is a [job related stuff about vacuum chambers]. Just with that little bit of energy we move oceans of air. It is amazing why the earth atmosphere is just not in a huge storm.
["Carl"]
What If??? Is there any truth in this?
[Begin Forwarded Message]
Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms
Terrence Aym Salem-News.com
Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.
Courtesy: Weather Snob
(CHICAGO) - NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples…
Now "it" is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world's weather.
Forget about global warming man-made or natural what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.
When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.
Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth's history. It's happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth.
The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating superstorms start erupting.
The superstorms have arrived
The first evidence we have that the dangerous superstorm cycle has started is the devastating series of storms that pounded the UK during late 2010.
On the heels of the lashing the British Isles sustained, monster storms began to lash North America. The latest superstorm as of this writing is a monster over the U.S. that stretched across 2,000 miles affecting more than 150 million people.
Yet even as that storm wreaked havoc across the Western, Southern, Midwestern and Northeastern states, another superstorm broke out in the Pacific and closed in on Australia.
The southern continent had already dealt with the disaster of historic superstorm flooding from rains that dropped as much as several feet in a matter of hours. Tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed. After the deluge tiger sharks were spotted swimming between houses in what was once a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Shocked authorities now numbly concede that much of the water may never dissipate and have wearily resigned themselves to the possibility that region will now contain a new inland sea.
But then only a handful of weeks later another superstorm the megamonster cyclone Yasi struck northeastern Australia. The damage it left in its wake is being called by rescue workers a war zone.
The incredible superstorm packed winds near 190mph. Although labeled as a category-5 cyclone, it was theoretically a category-6. The reason for that is storms with winds of 155mph are considered category-5, yet Yasi was almost 22 percent stronger than that.
A cat's cradle
Yet Yasi may only be a foretaste of future superstorms. Some climate researchers, monitoring the rapidly shifting magnetic field, are predicting superstorms in the future with winds as high as 300 to 400mph.
Such storms would totally destroy anything they came into contact with on land.
The possibility more storms like Yasi or worse will wreak havoc on our civilization and resources is found in the complicated electromagnetic relationship between the sun and Earth. The synergistic tug-of-war has been compared by some to an intricately constructed cat's cradle. And it's in a constant state of flux.
The sun's dynamic, ever-changing electric magnetosphere interfaces with the Earth's own magnetic field affecting, to a degree, the Earth's rotation, precessional wobble, dynamics of the planet's core, its ocean currents and above all else the weather.
Cracks in Earth's Magnetic Shield
The Earth's northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.
Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.
Recently, as the magnetic field fluctuates, NASA has discovered "cracks" in it. This is worrisome as it significantly affects the ionosphere, troposphere wind patterns, and atmospheric moisture. All three things have an effect on the weather.
Worse, what shields the planet from cancer-causing radiation is the magnetic field. It acts as a shield deflecting harmful ultra-violet, X-rays and other life-threatening radiation from bathing the surface of the Earth. With the field weakening and cracks emerging, the death rate from cancer could skyrocket and mutations of DNA can become rampant.
Another federal agency, NOAA, issued a report caused a flurry of panic when they predicted that mammoth superstorms in the future could wipe out most of California. The NOAA scientists said it's a plausible scenario and would be driven by an "atmospheric river" moving water at the same rate as 50 Mississippi rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.
Magnetic field may dip, flip and disappear
The Economist wrote a detailed article about the magnetic field and what's happening to it. In the article they noted:
"There is, however, a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field is about to disappear, at least for a while. The geological record shows that it flips from time to time, with the south pole becoming the north, and vice versa. On average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. Flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago. But, as discussed at the Greenland Space Science Symposium, held in Kangerlussuaq this week, the signs are that another flip is coming soon."
Discussing the magnetic polar shift and the impact on weather, the scholarly paper "Weather and the Earth's magnetic field" was published in the journal Nature. Scientists too are very concerned about the increasing danger of superstorms and the impact on humanity.
Superstorms will not only damage agriculture across the planet leading to famines and mass starvation, they will also change coastlines, destroy cities and create tens of millions of homeless.
Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.
A Danish study published in the scientific journal Geology, found strong correlation between climate change, weather patterns and the magnetic field.
"The earth's climate has been significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field, according to a Danish study published Monday that could challenge the notion that human emissions are responsible for global warming.
"'Our results show a strong correlation between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and the amount of precipitation in the tropics,' one of the two Danish geophysicists behind the study, Mads Faurschou Knudsen of the geology department at Aarhus University in western Denmark, told the Videnskab journal.
"He and his colleague Peter Riisager, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), compared a reconstruction of the prehistoric magnetic field 5,000 years ago based on data drawn from stalagmites and stalactites found in China and Oman."
In the scientific paper " Midday magnetopause shifts earthward of geosynchronous orbit during geomagnetic superstorms with Dst = -300 nT" the magnetic intensity of solar storms impacting Earth can intensify the effects of the polar shift and also speed up the frequency of the emerging superstorms.
Pole reversal may also be initiating new Ice Age
According to some geologists and scientists, we have left the last interglacial period behind us. Those periods are lengths of time about 11,500 years between major Ice Ages.
One of the most stunning signs of the approaching Ice Age is what's happened to the world's precessional wobble.
The Earth's wobble has stopped
As explained in the geology and space science website earthchangesmedia.com, "The Chandler wobble was first discovered back in 1891 by Seth Carlo Chandler an American astronomer.
The effect causes the Earth's poles to move in an irregular circle of 3 to 15 meters in diameter in an oscillation. The Earth's Wobble has a 7-year cycle which produces two extremes, a small spiraling wobble circle and a large spiraling wobble circle, about 3.5 years apart.
For the conclusion of this article, visit: helium.com
Also, as a response to comments, Terrence added this:
2002 - Scientists may have detected the beginning of the field's next such reversal:
[ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=satellites-spy-changes-to ]
2005 - Movement of North Magnetic Pole is accelerating:
[ http://www.physorg.com/news8917.html]
2008 - Earth's Core, Magnetic Field Changing Fast, Study Says
[ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080630-earth-core.html ]
2008 - Magnetic Portals Connect Earth to Sun
[ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/30oct_ftes/ ]
2009 - North Magnetic Pole Moving Due to Core Flux
[ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/12/091224-north-pole-magnetic-russia-earth-core.html ]
2009 - The earth's climate is significantly affected by the planet's magnetic field:
[ http://www.terradaily.com/reports/The_earths_magnetic_field_impacts_climate_Danish_study_999.html ]
Jan 2011 - British Geological Survey *Possible Pole Shift Occurring* South Atlantic Anomaly is Growing:
[ http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/highlights/southAtlantic2010.html]
2009 - A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System:
[ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7276/full/nature08567.html ]
2009 - The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist:
[ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/23dec_voyager/ ]
Find this interesting? Here is the link to Terrence Aym's brand new article published 4 Feb. 2011: Egypt 2011: Preview of America in 2015 - Terrence Aym Salem-News.com
Terrence Aym is a Salem-News.com Contributor based in Chicago, who is well known nationally for his stirring reports on the top ranked site, helium.com. Born in Minnesota, Terrence Aym grew up in the Chicagoland suburbs. Having traveled to 40 of the 50 states and lived in 7 of them, Aym is no stranger to travel. He's also spent time in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Western Africa. An executive for many years with Wall Street broker-dealer firms, Aym has also had a life-long interest in science, technology, the arts, philosophy and history. If it's still possible to be a 'Renaissance man' in the 21st Century, Aym is working hard to be one.
Aym has several book projects in the works. Media sites that have recently featured Aym, and/or discussed his articles, include ABC News, TIME Magazine, Business Insider, Crunchgear.com, Discover, Dvice, Benzinga and more recently, his work has been showing up in South Africa and Russia.
