Mayan ruins in Guatemala.
This is an email I recently received from statistician Dr. Richard Mackey who writes:
The following appeared on Gore’s blog of Nov 19, 2008:
Looking Back to Look Forward November 19, 2008 : 3:04 PM
A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:
These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system,’ writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.
As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously.
If you haven’t read already read it, take a look at Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse.”
This is a most curious reference.
It means that Gore is advocating the abandonment of the IPCC doctrine and barracking for the study and understanding of climate dynamics that ignores totally the IPCC/AWG doctrine and focuses on all the other variables, especially how climate dynamics are driven by atmospheric/oceanic oscillations, the natural internal dynamics of the climate system and the role of the Sun in climate dynamics.
Brian Fagan in Floods, Famines and Emperors El Nino and the fate of civilisations Basic Books 1999, shows that the Maya collapse, whilst having complex political, sociological, technological and ecological factors, was largely driven by the natural atmospheric/oceanic oscillations of ENSO and NAO. The book is one of three by Brian Fagan, Prof of Anthropology UC Santa Barbara, that documents how natural climate variations, ultimately driven by solar activity, have given rise to the catastrophic collapse of civilisations. The book has a chapter on the Mayan civilisation which collapsed around 800 to 900 AD.
Here are some quotes from his book:
“The “Classic Maya collapse” is one of the great controversies of
archaeology, but there is little doubt that droughts, fuelled in part
by El Nino, played an important role.”
“The droughts that afflicted the Maya in the eighth and ninth
centuries resulted from complex, still little understood atmosphere-
ocean interactions, including El Nino events and major decadal shifts
in the North Atlantic Oscillation, as well as two or three decade-long
variations in rainfall over many centuries.”
“Why did the Maya civilisation suddenly come apart? Everyone who
studies the Classic Maya collapse agrees that it was brought on by a
combination of ecological, political, and sociological factors.”
“When the great droughts of the eighth and ninth centuries came, Maya
civilisation everywhere was under increasing stress.”
“The drought was the final straw.”
“The collapse did not come without turmoil and war.”
Brian Fagan describes how the ruling class (the kings had divine powers, they were also shamans and there was a vast aristocracy and their fellow-travellers that the tightly regulated workers toiled to maintain) encouraged population growth beyond what the land could carry; how the rulers enforced rigid farming practices which were supposed to increase food production and the ruler’s incomes but had the effect of undermining farm productivity and diminishing the quality of the poor soils of the area. When there were heavy rains the soil was washed away. In times of drought the soil blew away.
More quotes from Brian Fagan:
“The Maya collapse is a cautionary tale in the dangers of using
technology and people power to expand the carrying capacity of
tropical environments.”
“Atmospheric circulation changes far from the Maya homeland delivered
the coup de grace to rulers no longer able to control their own
destinies because they had exhausted their environmental options in an
endless quest for power and prestige.”
Gore says that we should use our understanding of the Maya collapse help us solve the climate crisis, noting that “we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental
concerns seriously”.
Given what we know of the Maya collapse, what is Gore really saying?
He is saying that we should take all the IPCC/AWG publications and related papers to the tip and bury them there and put all our efforts into the study and understanding of the reasons for climate dynamics that address every theory except that of IPCC/AWG doctrine.
Specifically, we should understand as well as we can how climate dynamics are driven by atmospheric/oceanic oscillations, the natural internal dynamics of the climate system and the role of the Sun in climate dynamics.
In an overview of his work Brian Fagan concluded: “The whole course of civilisation … may be seen as a process of trading up on the scale of vulnerability”. (Fagan (2004, page xv)).
We are now, as a global community, very high up on that scale.
Allow me to quote a little from my Rhodes Fairbridge paper because of its relevance to Brian Fagan’s work and what Gore is really trying to say, but can’t quite find the right words.
(My paper is here: http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf ).
“In his many publications (for example, NORTH (2005)), Douglass North stresses that if the issues with which we are concerned, such as global warming and the global commons, belong in a world of continuous change (that is, a non-ergodic world), then we face a set of problems that become exceedingly complex. North stresses that our capacity to deal effectively with uncertainty is essential to our succeeding in a
non-ergodic world. History shows that regional effects of climate change are highly variable and that the pattern of change is highly variable. An extremely cold (or hot) year can be followed by extremely hot (or cold) year. Warming and cooling will be beneficial for some regions and catastrophic for others. Brian Fagan has documented in detail relationships between the large-scale and
generally periodic changes in climate and the rise and fall of civilisations, cultures and societies since the dawn of history. The thesis to which Rhodes Fairbridge devoted much of his life is that the
sun, through its relationships with the solar system, is largely responsible for these changes and that we are now on the cusp of one of the major changes that feature in the planet’s history. As
Douglass North showed, the main responsibility of governments in managing the impact of the potentially catastrophic events that arise in a non-ergodic world is to mange society’s response to them so as to
enable the society to adapt as efficiently as possible to them.
Amongst other things, this would mean being better able to anticipate and manage our response to climate change, to minimise suffering and maximise benefits and the efficiency of our adaptation to a climate that is ever-changing – sometimes catastrophically – but generally predictable within bounds of uncertainty that statisticians can estimate. At the very least, this requires that the scientific community acts on the wise counsel of Rhodes W Fairbridge and presents governments with advice that has regard to the entire field of planetary-lunar-solar dynamics, including gravitational dynamics.
This field has to be understood so that the dynamics of terrestrial climate can be understood.
References:
North, D. C., 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change
Princeton University Press.
Fagan, B., 2004. The Long Summer. How Climate Changed Civilization.
Basic Books.”
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lgl (07:10:31) :
Your link says “Gravity emerges not as an actual physical force but as a consequence of space-time geometry”
I can’t see what that has to do with linear momentum.
There seems to be many things you cannot see. I was under the impression that the barycenter effects had to do with gravity in the first place, no?
lgl (05:46:24) :
“This ship’s hull is negatively charged with electrons. As you fly through a solar system, you bypass a positively charged planet (or whatever). What happens?” […] I would have been pushed against the hull and so would you, unless you only have gravitational mass and not inertial mass. But what do I know, I have heard about antimatter, maybe you are made of anti-inertial-matter 🙂
I think you hit it on the head this time. The example had to do with electromagnetic forces, and has nothing to do with mass and in any event the inertial and gravitational mass are equal.
Your error has nothing to do with General Relativity, Inertial/gravitational mass or anything exotic. It is simply that you [among other things] cannot see that “The crucial point is that if all parts of a system undergo the same acceleration then that acceleration cannot be felt.”
So, slowly now: can you agree with the statement that “The crucial point is that if all parts of a system undergo the same acceleration then that acceleration cannot be felt.”?
This is not about gravity, but about the fact that the sun is moving through space in a close to sin-shaped path, period around 20 years, amplitude a couple of solar diameters, and any inertial mass moving like that will feel a force.
lgl (11:05:13) :
This is not about gravity, but about the fact that the sun is moving through space in a close to sin-shaped path, period around 20 years, amplitude a couple of solar diameters, and any inertial mass moving like that will feel a force.
You have still not gotten it:
“The crucial point is that if all parts of a system undergo the same acceleration then that acceleration cannot be felt.”?
Apart from the fact that any mass [inertial or not] moving solely under the force of gravity does not feel any forces. But even if you don’t believe that [which you should as that what 21st century physics teaches].
So, do you agree with the crucial point?
lgl (11:05:13) :
This is not about gravity
Would you not agree that it is gravity that ‘makes’ your Sun move like like? Take away gravity, would the Sun still move as you think it does…? So it is very much about gravity.
Yes gravity is the cause but is still not the point. The sun is moving in one direction and is the forced to change direction, and it’s not a constant force like in a circular orbit. Where is the limit then for when it will start feeling a force? Say if it was bouncing 10 solar diameters in 1 year, would it then feel a force?
Or what if the speed was 10 times higher, 100 times higher?
lgl (15:15:43) :
Yes gravity is the cause but is still not the point. The sun is moving in one direction and is the forced to change direction, and it’s not a constant force like in a circular orbit. Where is the limit then for when it will start feeling a force? Say if it was bouncing 10 solar diameters in 1 year, would it then feel a force?
Or what if the speed was 10 times higher, 100 times higher?
It doesn’t matter what the speed is [until you get up in the neighborhood of light-speed], and it doesn’t matter that the orbit is not circular [it is actually a helix]. And you still don’t get the crucial point: Even if it felt a force, all parts of the Sun would feel it the same way and no rearrangement or alteration of circulations or movements would occur. And I have not asked you, what? seven times? to agree or disagree with the crucial point. One more post ignoring this and no more discussion, and you would not learn anything [perhaps you don’t want to hear an ‘inconvenient truth’…]
Leif
Yes I agree with your crucial point if you can ignore the gravity of the spiral arms.
Yes I agree with you on the speed. I realized that flaw right after posting and to be sure I just verified that in my car. Zig-zaging down the road in 300 km/h gave the same sensation as in 100 km/h, when keeping the frequency and amplitude constant (actually I didn’t have much choice regarding the amplitude) However, when passing 250 the car started shaking badly, especially in the curves, which led me to a plan-B conclusion:
There is an rotational imbalance in the solar system. Because of the high speed this will be more noticable in a bended orbit than when the orbit is more straight.
Since you will probably not buy this plan-B explanation either, what have we?
Plan-A: stranded because we don’t know the properties of the galaxy, it’s getting boaring and Leif will soon go ballistic.
Plan-B was a joke.
What about plan-C? The planets follow elliptical orbits. They are accelerating from aphelion to perihelion. The energy required must be taken form the sun’s momentum and since they are gravitationally bound to the sun they will give this energy back to the sun after passing perihelion. Their orbits are not always in the sun’s equatorial plane leading to disturbances in the sun.
I have a feeling we should probably wait a little with plan-C so that Anthony does not kick me out of here.
From Richard deSousa (10:35:13) :
Certainly the Maunder and Dalton Minimums can be considered natural cycles. Due to our huge population growth we are just as vulnerable as the Mayans. If a catastrophe such as another Maunder or Dalton Minimum befalls us we’re going to suffer a huge die off.
-end quote
This is, IMHO, the closest to the truth. We are more vulnerable than the Maya ever were, though. Populations grow to the limit of their resources. In good times (i.e. warm – optimums) that last a few hundred years, the population can increase a lot. Then a bad time comes (cool pessimum) and populations die off. It doesn’t take total collapse of the food system; all it takes is a ~20% reduction in food crop yields. THAT then leads to disease, social unrest, wars and civilization collapse.
We could avoid it this time. We have unlimited power via nuclear reactors & coal and unlimited fresh water via desalinization. I just think we won’t avoid it. We are not preparing what would let us dodge the civilization collapse.
I’m generally the one with the endless positive attitude that we are unlimited in resources, and technology will set use free. In this case, though, I don’t see us doing what we need to do. I’m also pretty sure that we’re very near the point where that [cold] climate shift is going to bite us. Hard.
I don’t think a Dalton type event would do us in. We could survive that, IMHO, via eating the grains we would otherwise feed to animals. The problem is a minimum AND something like a rock from space (as it seems happened in 535 AD) or a major volcano (Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death).
Why are we more vulnerable? During my lifetime we’ve dropped from a world where we had a 1 to 2 YEARS grain inventory to where it’s measured at a few weeks. We can’t survive even ONE bad crop year globally, never mind 4 or 5. Folks don’t keep 6 months food in the pantry anymore, it’s a 4 days supply in the grocery store… And unlike the Maya, we can’t just go foraging in the jungle if things get tough.
We’ve built a very brittle and unforgiving system predicated on no widespread crop failure. Ever.
BTW, the NH is not the only bread basket of the world. The major exporting countries include Argentina and Australia. In fact, that’s part of the problem.
We, globally, depend on moving grains between hemispheres rather than keeping a year inventory locally after harvest. If we lose the ships somebody dies. Which hemisphere, will depend on who’s harvesting when a meteor strike in the ocean makes a tsuname and wipes out the ships. Not likely in any 1 century, but …
Defending against THAT is where we ought to be spending our money, not on putting CO2 into a hole in the ground.
But nobody wants to hear that putting grain in storage for a year ought to be a national priority. It’s not sexy and their is no grant money…
FWIW, if you want to store your own emergency inventory the best way I’ve found is glass jars. Bug, vermin, and water proof. They keep air out. They are very sturdy to physical abuse if stored in a cardboard box with crushed newspaper or packing peanuts between them. Mine have been through a richter 7.3 and a couple of 5 to 6’s already.
Lentils store the best of all legumes. Several years as opposed to 1 or 2 for peas and beans (which get hard). White rice stores better than brown rice (less oils to oxidize) and noodles keep for a very long time. (I ate some after a decade… but they were a bit bland… but what noodles aren’t 😉 Salt and sugar are indefinite storage life. Lentils, rice and sprouts may not be exciting, but you’ll live after the {quake, flood, freeze, hurricane… and yes, crop failure}. And truth is, I like curry and the spices keep well 8={0} I have some chili spice mix and some canned powdered milk too. Allow one pound dry / person / day for total food needed. It swells…
Wheat berries keep well, but making bread from 100% whole wheat is a pain… better to make heifweizen 🙂 And jars of spaghetti sauce or fruit keep better than cans (couple of years before the flavor drops off and stored upright no liquids are on metals…)
IGL,
There exist galaxies which with respect to us are traveling at very high velocities. That means that if we take one of them as the stationary center of calculations ( the way you are taking the barycenter as the center of calculations) we are traveling at a huge velocity in the cosmos.
Do you feel it? Is your hat blowing off?
lgl (02:25:36) :
What about plan-C? The planets follow elliptical orbits. They are accelerating from aphelion to perihelion. The energy required must be taken form the sun’s momentum and since they are gravitationally bound to the sun they will give this energy back to the sun after passing perihelion. Their orbits are not always in the sun’s equatorial plane leading to disturbances in the sun.
Apart from the physics being totally wrong [but that does not deter some people], observations [which may convince some people – although not others whose faith in their pseudo-science is strong, just think of the 45% of Americans who believe the Earth is 6000 years old] show that plan-C isn’t working either. The Moon is in an elliptical orbit inclined to the Earth’s equator, so should have an influence [according to your fallacious argument] on the Length-of-the-Day. The LOD is carefully monitored. Here is some good data and graphs with that:
http://www.iers.org/MainDisp.csl?pid=95-97
I advocate plan-D: leave astrology well alone.
But the kinetic energy of Jupiter increases by 1/13 and the Earth’s by 1/30 from their aphelion to perihelion, that’s an awful lot of energy. Where is it coming from?
anna v
My point is (was) that the sun is maybe moving fast relative to a hugh mass in the spiral arm.
Actually the 1/13 and 1/30 is the appr mv change and not energy so it’s even worse. http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/jupiterfact.html
lgl (10:51:01) :
But the kinetic energy of Jupiter increases by 1/13 and the Earth’s by 1/30 from their aphelion to perihelion, that’s an awful lot of energy. Where is it coming from?
If you lift a stone in a gravitational field, it is gaining potential energy, when you drop the stone that potential energy becomes kinetic energy as the stone falls. When Jupiter is further away from the Sun it has more potential energy. As it falls closer to the Sun, some of that potential energy becomes kinetic energy, which enables Jupiter to speed up around the Sun in its orbit until it begins to move away again and then slow down, when the kinetic energy again becomes potential energy, and so on the planet cycles.
Leif, your patience is astounding.
If Jupiter was accelerated by a collision or something to above the escape velocity, at next perihelion it would accelerate around the sun but escape, ‘steeling’ some energy from the sun and having more kinetic energy than before perihelion, but what about conservation of energy in this case? All potential energy gone since it’s no longer bound to the sun?
lgl (15:32:08) :
All potential energy gone since it’s no longer bound to the sun?
The potential energy has nothing to do with being ‘bound’ to the Sun. This idea of things depending on something being gravitationally bound to the Sun is false. The laws of Nature works on all objects, ‘bound’ or not. If I throw a stone straight up it gains potential energy by ‘climbing out of the gravity well of the Earth’. With less than escape velocity [say 0.000000000001 mph less] it gains a lot of potential energy as it will go far [assume a non-rotating Earth to keep things simple], but eventually it will come crashing down. With 0.00000000000001 mph higher than escape velocity it will still gain potential energy [in fact, indefinitely]. If some alien far, far out will stop the stone with a gentle push, it will begin its fall back to the Earth, converting all that potential energy back into kinetic energy. You better step aside as it comes down.
lgl, you really are not qualified for this discussion if we have to discuss things at this elementary level and it may only be a question of time before Anthony gets tired of this charade as it brings nothing to the blog, except, perhaps, some embarrassing humor, which with time becomes stale.
When the sun is far away from the barycenter it has more potential energy, then it falls closer to the center and gains some kinetic energy ie. speeding up, right?
Leif,
Correct me if I am wrong- rusty.
As currently modeled by standard theory- Strong, nuclear, and electromagnetic forces are communicated with photons. There is a “particle” interaction “transmitting” this force. In other words, information is being communicated. The electron -or whatever- “notices” this communication.
Gravity is still up for grabs. Some theories suggest a graviton that transmits the “force”, others suggest that it is not a force par se and there is no particle interaction. If gravity is space-time geometry, then no information is communicated by a vehicle and and so it is not “noticed”.
IGl,
When objects are “unbound”, they gain potential energy forever with increasing distance. However, the affects of gravity approach zero as distance increases, so this PE gain also decreases to zero. As Lief alluded, it is better to consider orbital mechanics as total mechanical energy rather than kinetic. This has little to do with your argument with Lief, but is something to keep in mind when thinking about orbiting planets.
A fair question – one that has probably been asked before on this blog – is the following:
How much does Earth respond to the orbit of Jupiter. It should be much more than the effect Jupiter has on the Sun, as our relative distance to Jupiter changes significantly. Do the oceans notice? Is our atmosphere perturbed at all? If yes, then maybe Igl and the gravity-cycle crowd have an argument worth pursuing. If no, then they are likely off target.
lgl (16:29:53) :
When the sun is far away from the barycenter it has more potential energy, then it falls closer to the center and gains some kinetic energy ie. speeding up, right?
Even though you agreed to the ‘crucial point’, you seem to forgotten it again. Even if the Sun speeded up or slowed down or moved crazily because a massive black hole showed up, all parts of the Sun would react the same way and no differential of forces would exist and the Sun wouldn’t feel a thing.
Old Coach (18:03:57) :
If gravity is space-time geometry, then no information is communicated by a vehicle and and so it is not “noticed”.
In General Relativity which has passed all tests with flying colors gravity is just geometry.
How much does Earth respond to the orbit of Jupiter
Not at all, apart from the usual small perturbations in an N-body situation. And even if it did, all parts of the Earth would react the same way and no effect would be felt. This is the crucial point, that lgl cannot get. Imagine you are in a rocket that I shoot at the Moon; as long as the engine is burning fuel, you feel the acceleration [strongly], but the second the engine is turned off and the only ‘forces’ at play are gravitational, you become ‘weightless’ and feel nothing [even if still moving as fast], you fly out to the Moon, around around the Moon guided by the Moons gravity, then fall back to Earth. You change speed, direction, potential energy, the works. And all the time you feel nothing. People have actually done that and that is the way it is.
Leif,
Not long time ago you said: “The sun would not speed up or slow down, but move with constant speed.” so it’s a bit confusing, but the ‘crucial point’ is still fine, just a couple of things. I thought if the rotating sun is accelerated in an arc it would create turbulence or change the rotation speed, but I know you will say thats wrong too, so jumping to the next:
Why can’t you put all the planets in their ‘planetary center of mass’ and use that mass point when calculating the tidal effect on the sun? From time to time that center of mass must be quite close to the sun.
So Leif, would it be true to say that you believe that the Sun is in a free-fall orbit around the barycenter? How does every particle move in tandem with every other particle? It seems counterintuitive with experiments you can do on earth in which an object of varying densities is accelerated (like a glass ball filled with water and air) – not everything accelerates at the same rate.
But, I understand your point and still respectfully, disagree. I don’t think anyone will change their mind but I enjoyed learning about your perspective. Maybe in another 400 years humanity will have this all figured out.
Alphajuno
Careful now you heretic 🙂 The sun is so close to the barycenter it will experience a non-uniform field, so Leif will never buy that.
It’s a mystery to me too why the sun would not be in free fall around the barycenter like all the other objects (bet thats wrong too), but there is probably a good explanation.
lgl (06:00:59) :
Why can’t you put all the planets in their ‘planetary center of mass’ and use that mass point when calculating the tidal effect on the sun? From time to time that center of mass must be quite close to the sun.
Several things wrong with this. First, gravity makes no distinction between the Sun and the Planets and the moons and comets, each is just one of the N-body problem. So, if you want to put the planets at the ‘center of mass’ you must put the Sun in there too. But the whole notion is absurd. Imagine that the Earth has two moons in identical orbits, but 180 degrees apart in longitude, so the moons are always on opposite sides of the Earth. Their ‘moonary center of mass’ would be at the center of the Earth, if the orbits were circular. Image the orbits are eccentric such that the center of mass [or the midpoint between the two moons] would be at the surface of the Earth. Just think of the gigantic tides that would produce if your scheme made sense. No, each planet produces its tides independent of where the other planets were.
lgl (10:03:11) :
It’s a mystery to me too why the sun would not be in free fall around the barycenter like all the other objects (bet thats wrong too), but there is probably a good explanation.
They are all in free fall, including the Sun. If I shoot a rifle bullet straight up, that bullet is in free fall as well.
Alphajuno (06:35:19) :
It seems counterintuitive with experiments you can do on earth in which an object of varying densities is accelerated (like a glass ball filled with water and air) – not everything accelerates at the same rate.
Has 400 years of science been in vain? Galileo [supposedly] proved that objects with different densities accelerate identically by dropping them from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and more recently an astronaut showed to the world that a hammer and a feather fell at the same rate and hit the surface at the same time [on the Moon – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk ].
But, I understand your point and still respectfully, disagree. I don’t think anyone will change their mind but I enjoyed learning about your perspective. Maybe in another 400 years humanity will have this all figured out.
This is a remarkable statement and bodes ill for humanity if this is the level of science literacy that we have. If you understand the point, you cannot with scientific integrity intact, respectfully, disagree. And if your mind cannot be changed by acquired insight, that is deplorable. Humanity figured this out 400 years ago, and if that cannot change your mind, then I doubt that if you should be alive 400 years from now, that you would change your mind then.
You can always claim willful ignorance and respectfully disagree with anything and even refuse to be educated so that you could maintain your denial. This is clearly your choice and nobody would deny you the right to believe stupid things, but say that you foist that belief onto your children, then I would accuse you of a criminal act – like the people that deny their children proper medical treatment because of parental religious belief.
Leif
I did say ‘planetary center of mass’, meaning planets only. Then you have a two body system and both bodies will accelerate towards their ‘perihelion’
(maybe that’s not the right word as their orbits are not stable elliptical)
I know it’s absurd in the context you describe it but my ‘crucial point’
is: Will the sun be accelerating in an non-uniform gravitational field?