Scottish Lobbying: GWPF – it's up to you – or it won't be done!

Posted on 2 May 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

For as much as a decade I’ve been writing about the climate. I formed the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum and have had various goes to educate our politicians (both obviously and not so obviously). But over recent years, I noticed a dramatic decline in interest in my climate posts here … and to be frank the more effort I put in, the less anyone seems to appreciate the result. I’m fed up of that feeling that I have to act as unpaid (and due to no funding not very effective) lobbyist.
Despite that, I had mentally allocated time toward a Scottish campaign which would have been timed to ride piggy back on what I had presumed would be action by Trump to end the fraudulent “pause busting” stats coming out the US. Unfortunately nothing much has materialised.
Now with Andrew Montford starting at the GWPF, I think its time to call it a day with respect to the fruitless lobbying of the idiot politicians we have in Scotland (sadly in all parties including Tories!). It is not only soul destroying … but really!! They are the least scientifically literate group I know. Despite that, our politicians and numbskull civil servants have the gall to preach the climate religion to those like me who know the science and know they’re talking absolute bollocks. I’m sick to death of with the crazy system we have in Scotland where scientific illiterates and politicised academics run the system. Even if I had the time or patience to spend, unpaid, teaching basic science to those highly paid civil servants and politicians – they are so contemptuous and illiterate that they wouldn’t know global warming or cooling if it bit them in the arse.
We in Scotland, not only have the craziest politicians, the whole system from academics through to civil servants is positively bonkers. It’s like a Chimpanzee’s tea party, largely I think because the GWPF have done nothing at all in Scotland (as far as I know) and we got no support when we tried to form something equivalent in Scotland. So, unlike England where the climate idiots are regularly slapped down by the GWPF, the idiots in Scotland have been able to spread their madness so that throughout Scottish government, Scottish media, academia, etc,. there is the utmost disdain & contempt for anyone who dares to question their climate religion.
Fortunately, whilst I know their behaviour is extremely economically and socially damaging, immoral and unscientific, I’m able to say that they hardly affect me personally (as long as I only go out after dark when I can’t see the bird-mincers).
Unfortunately, unless someone in the Trump administration finally pulls their finger out their arse and ends the fraudulent metrics from the likes of NASA, … or more accurately the fraudulent temperatures produced by the Trump administration … I think it’s time I stopped giving any pretence that there’s any serious lobbying in Scotland. It’s time to say to the GWPF: I’m not going to do any more lobbying in Scotland – I’m not aware of anyone else who does it, and with Andrew Montford now committed to the (English) GWPF there seems little prospect of anything happening in Scotland.

GWPF – it’s up to you – or it won’t be done”.

Posted in Climate | 9 Comments

Bee-keeping: Playing the odds against catastrophic collapse

Posted on 1 May 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

Last year I was given a beehive and some bees for a birthday present. This year I’ve realised that there’s a lot more to keeping bees than I thought: the biggest problem facing me being one of simple statistics:

The probability of a beehive collapsing
The probability of a bee swarm

To put it simply: with a high probability of beehives collapsing and dying (25-75%) , if you only have one hive, statistics being what they are, you will eventually lose all your bees. But if you have a lot of bees (and not much space) you will almost certainly get bee swarming problems.
This article is my attempt to work out a strategy to keep enough bees to somehow beat the odds with colony collapse whilst preventing the issues of swarming when colonies do too well.

Beehive a few weeks after installation. The plastic bottle contains sugar water to feed them.

Beehive a few weeks after installation. The hive entrance is at the base of the white strip. The lower section contains bees, the upper had a ice-cream carton of sugar water for feed. The plastic bottle contained sugar water to feed them. Note the stunted growth to the right – supposedly an apple tree – whose failure to produce any apples led us originally to wonder if we had any bees left in our area – and consequently the idea of keeping any. Needless to say the tree did not produce any apples again last year after we got the bees.

But first … Climate Control for bees

Global warming is a severe problem for bees … Nah! Just Joking!
But seriously: the climate in the beehive is critical for success. This is because Bees are in effect warm blooded creatures in the sense that they actively heat their hive to keep the temperature of the brood high enough. So temperature control is vital to the health of a bee colony. This is a severe problem in winter with cold external temperatures. Because to keep the temperature high (in man-made hives which are poorly insulation compared to trees) they have to burn a lot of honey reserves – reserves which a beekeeper has stolen for their own use!
And it’s made all the worse, because bees collect nectar (you’re really learning it now!!) and nectar being watered down honey needs to have the water driver off.
Anyone who has teenagers knows the problem: they are constantly in the bathroom in a cold damp climate like Scotland. What happens is that the warm air cools on any surface, the dampness collects and you get a mould problem. The same is true of bees. No! I don’t mean Bees hog the bathroom!! … but they do create a lot of warm moisture which then condenses on the cold outside of the hive causing mould. And this mould then causes problems for the overwintering bees. Not only that but the moisture dampens the wood, reducing its insulation, meaning the bees consume more honey, produce more water and mould. This I believe is a major reason for overwintering collapse.

Sex: the Birds and Bees of … Bees

Continue reading →

Posted in General | 7 Comments

Climate gullibles

Posted on 30 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

I was struck by this headline:

Ottawa Climate March attracts thin but enthusiastic crowd

I started thinking “at least some people have the will to get involved in civic life – even if they’re currently being used by big green to line their own pockets”. But then I saw this:

I WANT TO LIVE MY LIFE WITHOUT RUINING OTHER LIVES

What a complete moron! Even when I still thought the science backed all these bird-mincers, I was still very aware that you couldn’t power a modern society without immense damage to people and wild-life through the bird/bat mincers. I knew people who had had a lifetime of a picturesque view, would have it destroyed by the massive massive eyesoars of wind. What this moron really means, is that he wants to live his life IN A CITY because this kind of idiot only lives in cities, by forcing huge numbers of people in country WHERE HE DOES NOT LIVE to accept the more costly, less reliable far higher visual impact, massive impact on wildlife (compared to e.g. coal) energy from wind – because he’s “too smart” to do anything but gullibly accept the greenblob propaganda.
And then I saw the above. The first irony I saw was the plastic globe – made from oil, and the trees benefiting from higher CO2. Then I saw that the day had clearly been super sunny – and again that is what our generation can be proud to have given to that generation of morons – cleaner skies without the dense pollution of the 1970s (job done around 2000 – so the greens were out of a job – which just happens to be when the “global warming” scare started along with the pause).
Then I began thinking about all the things it showed these morons didn’t realise from shoes made of plastics, to sun-glasses, presumably knicker elastic (if they’re not wearing diapers).
But of cause, without the industrial revolution that stems from our discovery and use of abundant fossil fuels, there wouldn’t have been anything like the current city of Ottawa. And if it weren’t for petrochemical based fertilisers, and oil based fuels to transport food, fertilisers and cotton around the world to Ottawa, we’d not have had the food to feed people, to house them and most of these people would not be alive.
I have to conclude:

being stupid is a luxury our society can only afford because of the wealth created from the ready and abundant availability of fossil-fuels

Posted in Climate | 5 Comments

Sceptics, Gunshots, Meteorites & swarms of dykes.

Posted on 28 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

The moon has craters the earth does not.
Present theories explaining the lack of craters do not seem credible
One possibility is that we are missing the circular features (such as the area around Glastonbury)
Another is that the meteorites don’t leave craters, but pass through the crust like a bullet through glass.

Anyone who has looked at the moon will notice many features:
…that are either not present or are hidden on the earth:

And that is the many craters on the moon. Why then is the earth’s surface apparently devoid of these craters. The traditional explanation for this goes along the lines of: “it’s because the surface of the earth gets wiped clean by tectonic plate movements and glaciation and erosion”. But this is hard to reconcile with statements such as this:

Confirmed: Oldest Fragment of Early Earth is 4.4 Billion Years Old (source)

At least some rocks are almost as old as the earth itself, so surely, if the moon is covered in craters then these oldest rocks should have been exposed to meteorites. So their formations should have been affected by meteorite impacts?
And surely, even if the obvious parts of the features themselves were regularly wiped from the “blackboard”, the craters left would still be present in the rocks beneath their surface? And if those circular features still exist in the geology – there ought to be many many such features to find, yet geologists seem to know of very few such craters.
This suggest these potential hypothesis:

That the craters on the moon represent an era of activity that occurred before the surface of the earth was formed.
That such craters do exist, but for some reason, geologists have not recognised them as such – perhaps because the geological processes distort them so they are unrecognisable or because they look like something else?
That meteors impact the earth in a way that does not leave craters as found on the moon.

The first is a great cop out, because I cannot see anyway to prove or disprove that there was an “era of meteorite hits” which has past. It’s possible. But beyond that nothing much can be said (without travelling to other planets and dating craters).

Craters not being recognised as such.

This is one my favourite explanations, because it gives me an excuse to look at maps and try to identify circular(ish) looking features imagining they may be craters. For example here is a map of the Somerset Levels in England (where Glastonbury is) and we can see that it is roughly oval in shape:
And this is my favourite site, because there’s some evidence it may be true. One linguistic interpretation of “Glastonbury” is that it means the hill of glass. Not far away is the Roman town of bath with it’s hot geothermal springs – and with not too much imagination, you can suggest that the Somerset Levels are an ancient meteorite crater, formed with a glancing blow (hence the oval shape), that Glastonbury tor was formed by a superheating process that turned the sand into glass and that the residual energy is still making its way underground to places like Bath.
But when you start looking you can find many such features, such as this one at Ot Moor just NE of Oxford:

Here we have a circularish feature which has then been infilled to form a flat round depression.
The problem with this approach of looking for such circular features, is that there are many reasons why circular geological features might form for other reasons other than meteorites. For example, just as an irregular rock tends to become rounded into a pebble, so an odd shape which infills from the edge tends to get more circular:

Like the swarms of meteorites in the past, unless we undertook detailed geological surveys of many such circular depression, we will never know. So, let’s examine the last potential explanation. That the meteorites hit in a way that doesn’t leave a crater.

The Gunshot theory of Meteorites

A few days ago, some vile creature from the alarmist religion tried to aim some shots at Roy Spencer and/or John Christy in an act of eco-terrorism.
“A total of seven shots were fired into our National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) building here at UAH over the weekend.
All bullets hit the 4th floor, which is where John Christy’s office is (my office is in another part of the building).”
I presume the image right is of one of the holes left in the glass. Let’s take a closer look at the features of that bullet hole:

We see three distinct features:

A central bullet hole where the glass has been completely removed by the bullet
Concentric cracks formed as rings around the central hole (In this case, only one is distinct, but these concentric cracks are largely what makes up the white “blob” is around the bullet hole )
Radial cracks extending outward from the bullet hole.

But why didn’t the bullet leave a crater like a meteorite? Bullets certainly do leave craters in some surfaces:

Source

The difference is that the window is a layer of hard material whereas if the bullet hits a solid object (or a layer it cannot break through), then it leaves a crater.
But isn’t the main difference between the moon and the earth, that the earth has a molten interior, and so very much like the window, there is a thin solid layer on the surface?

Is it possible that at least some meteorites, instead of forming craters on the surface, passed straight through the crust forming a feature more like a gunshot hole? Obviously, on the earth the hole would have been very quickly filled in by magma boiling up from underneath the crust. So, we wouldn’t expect a hole so much as a centre filled with solidified magma aka Granite. But we would expect to see the radial cracks and perhaps also the concentric ones.
Have a look at the geological map of Skye:

The browny-red centre is granite, in other words a circular “blob” of magma that has come up into a hole. The black lines are all dykes which (allowing for some movement of the crust) tend to come out radially from the central granite plug. And whilst less convincing, to the SE of the granite plug, we can see concentric rings of features.
Now take a look at some others dyke swarms:

Giant radiating graben-fissure systems in the Guinevere Planitia/Beta Regio region of Venus. Topography is shown in the background (after Ernst et al., 2003).

1267 Ma Mackenzie radiating swarm, of northern Canada (after Baragar et al., 1996). Dots indicate areas where flow direction was determined. Arcuate line indicates boundary between vertical flow (close to swarm centre) and horizontal flow (at all greater distances).

And whilst rarer, there are also instances of the concentric dykes and similar features such as this one at Ardnamurchan in the western highlands of Scotland.

There is a striking similarity of features between the bullet holes in Dr Cristy’s building’s and the granite plugs, radial dykes and rarer concentric dykes in the earth’s crust.
But geologists either have not considered meteorites, or if they have, they have dismissed them. The current ideas for the cause of these “Dyke Swarms” (why does it sound like a feminist conference?) all involve volcanoes or igneous processes:

This study proposes three models to explain the mechanism of the three major types of mafic dyke swarms. Parallel dyke swarms form in response to a regional stress field, e.g. the mafic dyke swarms in the North China Craton, whereas small radiating dyke swarm forms due to stress constructions around a plutonic or volcanic edifice, such as the dyke swarm at Spanish Peak, USA. The third type of radiating dyke swarm is giant fan-shaped dyke swarm such as the Mackenzie dyke swarm. Fractures that formed prior to magmatism may play a vital role in dictating the dyke swarm geometry. In most of the cases, the pre-existing fractures are induced by tectonic stresses and not by magma injection though magma injection can increase the fracture size by propagation at the dyke tip. (Source)

However, unless you find the meteorite causing the “Gunshot hole”, it would not be easy to tell whether the volcanic eruption was the cause of the dykes (presumably through heat stress) or whether the volcanism occurred as the result of a meteorite puncture hole to the crust.
Rather like it’s impossible to say the holes in Dr Cristy’s building were definitely linked to earth day and global warming alarmists, so I’m not saying these holes have to be from meteorites hitting the earth, but neither can I see any way to dismiss this theory.
And finally – a video of an impact of a meteorite hitting a spherical hard surface. (Obviously with a lot more fizzing than we’d expect for a meteorite hitting the earth).

Posted in Geology | 16 Comments

Why Volcanoes swell before an eruption

Posted on 27 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

Current models explaining the swelling of a volcano before eruption point to explanations involving an expansion of the magma chamber and an increase in magma volume
Simple calculations presented here show that thermal expansion alone is quite sufficient to explain the swelling
There seems to be a reluctance amongst geologists to consider thermal expansion as a potential driver in geological processes.

A few weeks ago I heard another program about a volcano which talked about the swelling of a volcano before an eruption (as shown on image below). What interested me was the reason they gave for this swelling: an increase in magma in the chamber beneath the volcano. I’d like to suggest a far more plausible mechanism. First however what does it look like:

InSAR—Satellite-based technique captures overall deformation “picture”

The measurements can be made not only by satellite as shown above but also a number of other techniques:

Ground deformation (swelling, subsidence, or cracking) is measured with a variety of techniques, including Electronic Distance Meters (EDM), the Global Positioning System (GPS), precise leveling surveys, strainmeters, and tiltmeters. EDMs use lasers to accurately measure changes in distance between benchmarks (fixed points) with repeated measurements. GPS makes use of satellites orbiting the Earth to determine and track the locations of points. Strainmeters and tiltmeters are used to monitor subtle changes in shape of the ground surface. For more information, please see Monitoring Volcano Ground Deformation in our Activity Section. (link)

And the ground swelling is associated with other effects:

“These signs may include very small earthquakes beneath the volcano, slight inflation, or swelling, of the volcano and increased emission of heat and gas from vents on the volcano,” said U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Volcano Hazards Program coordinator John Eichelberger. (link)

But what do geologists think causes this movement? The descriptions imply that a volume of magma moves into a chamber and it is this volume change that causes the upswelling:

Once the GPS and InSAR data reveal a pattern of ground movement, scientists try to re-create similar patterns using mathematical models. This allows them to estimate possible depths and volumes of the deformation source. Scientists agree that a fluid has moved into the region, causing an increase in volume within the upper 15 km of the crust. Wicks et al. (2006) propose the idea that a small amount of basaltic magma (molten rock) has moved out of the main caldera (causing the ground to subside) and into the area north of the caldera (causing the ground to move upwards). They discern that the magma moved along a northward-dipping sill (sub-horizontal crack) located about 12-15 km beneath the ground surface. In the past, some scientists have preferred models where deformation at Yellowstone is caused by movement of hydrothermal fluid (hot water) or gas, rather than magma. For example, Waite et al. (2002) discussed a swarm of earthquakes that occurred in the western part of the caldera, that coincided with a change from uplift to subsidence in the caldera. They suggested the swarm was caused by movement of hydrothermal fluids (hot waters and gases) from inside the caldera to the northwest. Both types of fluids (magmatic and hydrothermal) may occasionally cause the observed deformation at Yellowstone. Scientists will continue to collect information that can help discriminate among the various possibilities.

However, I have very severe doubts about this kind of explanation. For a start, order to “pump up” the ground there needs to be a source of energy. And if as is implied by the above this is delivered as a change in pressure, then something must be driving the pressure. But since all the magma (at the same pressure) is the same density, unless you start talking about temperature change, you are resorting to mechanisms involving a replacement of one type of magma at one density with another at another.

Temperature

So, I’d like to suggest a much simpler explanation. That explanation is that there is no change in the volume of magma – instead all that happens is that cooler magma is replaced by hotter magma – it then heats the overlying rock – and that it is this heating that causes the expansion, not of the magma chamber itself but of the overlying rock.
So let’s see what temperature change is needed. Here’s a nice example:

Using 19 temporary and five permanent GPS stations, researcher Andrew Newman has been monitoring the expanding deformation of Santorini that began on January 21, 2012. Over six months, the surface of the volcano has expanded by 140 mm at a rate of 180 mm/yr due to a relatively stable magma source located at four km depth that has expanded by 14 million cubic meters. (link)

Let’s assume the rock is ~~basalt~~ Granite with a thermal expansion of .0000085/C . Thus the temperature change across 4km of rock to expand by 140mm is:

C = 140(mm) /( 4000000 (mm) * .0000085)
C = 4C

A change of just 4C in the average temperature of the 4km of rock beneath the volcano will lead to around 140mm of expansion! Let’s turn this around. What length of rock needs heating to the temperature of magma to obtain the expansion? I read magma has a temperature of between 700C and 1300C. Let’s assume we have a change the magma from the coolest to warmest in that range = 600C. Now:

Distance (mm) = 140 (mm) /(600 * .0000085)
Distance = 2.75 m

And yes! That is meters. Not 3km of expansion not 300m but 3m. This shows that even a very small amount of rock, heated by magma could explain the 140mm expansion seen under a volcano.

A new model

Souce: Ocean Explorer

Above is a diagram showing a volcano with its associated gases. Whatever is key, is the flow of heat as indicated by the flow of sea water in the above diagram. All we need to have to explain the swelling of a volcano, is an increase in the temperature of this flow and the consequential heating of the rock beneath the volcano. There is no need to explain anything via an “increase in size of the magma chamber” as seems to be the current model. There is no change in the pressure of the magma in the chamber – it is not the magma “blowing up” that pushes out the rock, it is the surrounding solid rock, being heated that then swells.
I’m not saying there is no change in magma, instead that thermal expansion alone is sufficient to explain all the expansion. Indeed, if I use the figures above, then for a 100C rise in temperature (which could be due to hot water alone) would only need to heat 160m of rock beneath the volcano.

A Model of a Volcanic Eruption

What I suggest may happen, is that for some reason lighter magma (perhaps with gas entrained) makes its way under a volcano. That magma then convects up beneath the volcano raising the temperature of the magma underneath the volcano, which in turn heats the rocks, causing swelling, rock movement, volcanoes and cracking. That cracking in turn creates fissures which allows magma or water to transfer more of the heat upwards causing further expansion, fissuring etc.
In some instances, the heat is eventually dissipated and stability restored. But occasionally, we get a runaway process whereby more and more heat is moved toward the surface via fissures, magma then follows causing further heating, that heating increases the rate of fissure production and widening of fissures, further increasing the rate of magma flow and heating … and we get a runaway process leading eventually to the explosive release of air-entrained magma at the surface aka “a Volcanic eruption”.

Comment

There does seem a reluctance in geology to accept that rocks when heated expand. It’s almost as if they’ve never heard that rock expands. I saw this first when presenting the Caterpillar effect which shows that the temperature change over an ice-age cycle will cause expansion (over land) comparable in scale to “normal” plate tectonic movement (a few mms per year).
Now, I’ve very quickly shown that given the very large temperature changes associated with magma, that relatively little rock needs to change in temperature to explain the swelling seen before volcanic eruptions. But again thermal expansion appears to be ignored, and instead the prevailing concept appears to be that the magma chamber is “blowing up like balloon”, when there is no obvious mechanism to supply the energy to cause the necessary pressure to create that “blowing up” effect of the magma chamber.

Posted in Geology | 2 Comments

Are we, the public, being played like an orchestra by the media?

Posted on 26 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

The fashion industry plan “new” “exciting” “fashion” years in advance in a cynical manipulation of consumers (mostly women).
The way the SNP have been allowed to go on at length about Brexit and referendum in Scotland seems to me to be some form of collusion not just by politicians but by the press.
Is much of our “news” doubly fake: fake because it’s just opinion dressed as fact, but also fake in the sense it is not news at all, but instead cynical “news” planned days, weeks, months, even in some cases years in advance?

A while back I worked in a textile mill – and one day I was shown the colours that would be in fashion in summer – not the summer that was coming up in a few months, but the summer after that.
I learnt that the whole fashion industry would sit down years in advance and plan how to coerce the gullible public to throw away perfectly good clothes and buy a whole new wardrobe of “fashionable” items – which in reality was just the views of a lot of business people about what the public would be gullible enough to accept as “fashion”. And for that reason, the textile mill had to plan to start producing the colours that would be in fashion in several years time allowing the clothes manufacturers to start producing the clothes that would be in summer a very long time in advance of the point where the consumer was told the fashion was “new” and “trendy”.
Following Brexit, and particularly the way it has been covered in Scotland I’ve got to ask whether the news media all get together – in the same way as the fashion industry – and they too plan some kind of outline news agenda years in advance – not competitively as you’d expect them – but all chumming up to each other and planning how they will create “interest” out of nothing but hot air.
The thing that finally prompted me to write was this tweet:

Britain’s divorce ‘could become more COMPLICATED as ALL 27 EU parliaments may get to VOTE’ https://t.co/Oc9zjfBe07

— Cazawilnot.leave (@carole99897) April 26, 2017

For months I’ve been saying: “It took Canada 7 years to get a deal with the EU – the EU is incapable of coming to any agreement with the UK”. It didn’t occur to me that anyone needed telling that the 27 remaining EU members would need to agree – because after years of watching the EU and it’s deliberations, it was obvious they would have to agree.
So, why then is the express leading on the blatantly obvious? Bizarre – unless they were deliberately planning to have this story today and had manufactured it as “news”. Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Scotland | 1 Comment

Could CO2 be a cooling gas?

Posted on 25 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

We all know that according to basic science CO2 is supposed to warm the globe. And based solely on its radiative properties I would agree.
However… I horrible thought crossed my mind the other day.
Anyone who has been reading my blog will know about the effect of pollutants like SO2 which seem to in some way affect cloud droplet formation (they cause more clouds that can have a cooling or warming effect depending on their height and other factors).
It’s also well known it produces acid according to the following equation:

SO₂ + H₂O + 1/2 O₂ → H₂SO₄⇌ H⁺ + HSO₄^–

But doesn’t CO2 behave very similarly to produce an acid in water:

CO2 + H2O ⇌ H2CO3 ⇌ HCO₃⁻ + H⁺

But what if the critical component in cloud nucleation was the H⁺? In other words both SO2 and CO2 could BOTH promote cloud formation (although CO2 being a much weaker acid would have a much reduced effect).
As such there is a possibility that marginal increased levels of CO2 could REDUCE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE (in the presence of an atmosphere with water-droplet formation).

Posted in Climate | 3 Comments

Delayed melting of glaciers

Posted on 25 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

For a while whenever someone mentions Arctic ice – and then I mention growing Greenland surface ice and they counter with the old chestnut “Bulk ice is melting” I then counter with the Haseler rebuke: “but surface ice tells us what is happening now, whilst bulk ice is a lagging indicator”.
So far this has totally flummoxed them as they have no idea what I’m talking about and the alarmists are all so stupid that they don’t dare show their stupidity by asking me to explain (which makes them totally dumb).
But whilst it means I win every argument – what has bugged me is that I never actually worked out how lagging it was. So today, prompted by Paul Homewood’s excellent article: “What The IPCC Said About Glaciers In 1990“, I’ve finally done some calculations. The simple answer is that the thermal diffusivity of ice is not that much different to rock – so my seat of the pants estimations were not that wrong. That means that day-to-day changes penetrate a few tens of centimetres, year-to-year a few meters and thermal changes over an ice-age cycle penetrate a few kms. (Hence the caterpillar theory of plate tectonics).
But first lets get the answer to the simple question:

How thick are glaciers

A good guess is that the ice thickness is about one-half of the surface width of the glacier. Although few glaciers have been measured, the measured thicknesses range from a few tens of meters for small glaciers to about 1,500 meters for the largest glaciers in Alaska. (source)
Antarctic ice is up to 4.7 kilometers (3 miles) thick in some areas. (source)

Looking for more information I found a paper as shown by the graph below:
For details see: Distributed ice thickness and volume of all glaciers around the globe
So Glaciers are between a few 10s of meters and a km thick and ice-sheets from a few meters at the edges to several km in the centre. Continue reading →

Posted in Climate | Comments Off

Election 8th June – a Scottish perspective

Posted on 18 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

In 2014 the Scottish people voted against leaving the UK and for remaining part of the UK.
Last year we in Scotland having committed to take decisions like brexit as part of the UK agreed to leave the EU. As such whilst Scotland rejected the SNP’s call for Scottish self-determination, the UK chose a path of self-determination.
Anyone who has been in a small rowing boat, understands the simile of “rocking the boat”: only one person can move around with risk tipping everyone into the brink. If Scotland had agreed with the SNP to leave the UK then we would have expected the rest of the UK to retain a level of stability and try to stop “rocking the boat” during the difficult transition process as Scotland left the UK.
In contrast, I have watched with absolute horror as the SNP have done all they possibly can to “rock the boat” clearly without concern for the economic interests of the rest of the UK. I have watched with absolute horror as nationalists engaged in a campaign of hate against the English and those voting Brexit labelling us all “Xenophobes”.
We need a government of national unity. Unfortunately, the Labour party is in a mess, as is UKIP (a pity) so as a party, the only ones who seem to understand the need for national unity are the Tory party.
As such I have reluctantly, and for the sake of national unity, decided to join the Tory party to do all I can to ensure that we get the strong government we need to take us through Brexit.

Posted in Climate | 11 Comments

A Sceptic University

Posted on 17 April 2017 by Scottish-Sceptic

The core to the University will be the supervisor-researcher relationship
This relationship will involve a huge commitment from both supervisor & researcher.
With no buildings, the University would in effect be an “academic dating site” matching researchers and supervisors
Whilst using the internet will minimise costs – it also creates issues, which whilst not insurmountable are not trivial.
The University would need to secure additional suitably qualified people for the final assessment and facilitate the process.
An important role of the University would be to publish the research and store supporting (electronic) evidence.

In my last post re a: School of Scepticism I looked at the legal position regarding what might properly be called a research University or Institute. I used the name School because there is nothing barring us using this, but to avoid confusion I will now refer to it as a “University”.
The legal issues are a hurdle, but as I started to think about the mechanics of the research, I realised that the real core of any University would be the key relationship between a supervisor and the researcher. Yes, since the University would be aimed at more mature people, they would need less guidance in some areas – but also being longer out of University and more “entrenched” in their ways, they might need far more help in other areas.
So, not only would the researchers be making a huge commitment to do the research, but the “University” would need to find a supervisor who was willing to make a substantial commitment to that researcher to guide them through the process. So, in some senses what I am proposing is a form of academic “dating” site – where the aim would be to match those willing to undertake research with those willing to guide and council them.
A huge question, is would there be enough people willing to be researchers and supervisors and another is whether this relationship would be financial and if so how would it be funded? My original hope had been that enough goodwill existed to avoid all costs. But as I begin to understand the commitments, a totally cost-free University is looking less tenable.
And like any relationship – what happens if the relationship between researcher and supervisor breaks down – particularly if the researcher has made the supervisor in any way. Even if researchers and supervisors are willing to give their own time for free, there will be a significant investment of time and that needs to be matched with a suitably supportive administration function. That needs to be done professionally which means there will be some costs.

The issues with the internet