Clathrates good, clathrates bad?

There have been quite a few articles and news items over recent months describing the climate change danger posed by methane clathrate. Methane clathrate is a special combination of methane molecules trapped within ice crystals – apparently it looks like dirty ice, feels like sorbet and bursts into flames when touched with a flame. Methane clathrate forms when organic matter decays and releases methane which permeates through rocks and ends up somewhere where the temperature is approximately 0 °C and the pressure is ~50 atmospheres. When this happens ice crystals form that trap the methane molecules. The required conditions occur underneath permafrost and on the seabed at depths of 200-400 metres.

Most of the articles I have read about methane clathrates focus on the concern that if permafrost warms up, the ice crystals may melt and huge amounts of methane (a very potent Greenhouse gas) may suddenly be released. That’s bad news for climate change, really bad news…

However, a recent article in New Scientist, Issue 2714 [27 June 2009] (and Editorial) suggests that it may be possible to extract the methane from methane clathrate fields and then use this as an energy source. So, we can replace our dependence on the fossil fuels of coal, oil and natural gas with a new dependence on a new fossil fuel – methane. I guess that it is better to use the methane productively than to simply warm up the world until it burps out into the atmosphere and, intriguingly, one of the methods being explored for extracting methane from clathrates is to pump carbon dioxide into the clathrate field where it displaces the methane. This means that we may be able to store carbon dioxide safely out of harms way (thereby limiting Greenhouse gas emissions) and at the same time produce a source of energy. Neat.

Actually, for some time I have been wondering (not seriously) whether methane clathrates were made by humans at some past time when we had a problem needing to dispose of Greenhouse gases such as methane in a safe and secure way. Back then, someone might have had a neat idea to pump methane into the permafrost and encourage clathrate formation, thereby removing the methane and helping to prevent past global warming… well, it’s not impossible.

UK weather in the 2080s – or maybe not

Last week, New Scientist, Issue 2714 [27 June 2009] ran a short news item highlighting a new set of climate projections from the UK Met Office for the 2080s (oddly defined as the years 2070-2099). These are presented as a series of maps showing changes in summer mean temperature and summer and winter mean precipitation across the UK based on a 5km grid. The Met Office website also introduces the material and provides a link to the dedicated UK Climate Projections 09 website where the maps can be found. The New Scientist piece points out that some climate scientists feel that the projections are useless, and or misleading, because such fine resolution projections are bound to be upset by processes occuring at the local scale. There is also doubt that the climate models used to make the projections can handle areas of blocking high pressure well enough to make them useful.

So, the projections may or may not be useful or useless depending on who you believe! Nevertheless, I thought I would take a look at the maps and see what they tell me about the likely conditions in Plymouth in the 2080s (I have only just done the mental arithmetic, but I’ll (probably not) be 115 years old in 2080 which has depressed me a little). Anyway, for what it is worth, it looks like it’s going to be 3-4 degrees Celsius warmer and about 40% less wet in the summer and about 10% wettter in the winter…

Wolf of the Plains

If you read my last entry you will probably have guessed that I have been reading a historical novel based on the life of Genghis Khan – you wouldn’t be wrong. Last night I finished reading Conn Iggledun ‘s “Wolf of the Plains”. This is the first book in a series following the life of Genghis Khan and at over 500 pages is a fairly meaty read. The book has been out for a couple of years but I only picked it up after buying the third book in the series at less than half price via an offer linked to The Times newspaper (which I buy on Saturday’s). Having bought the third one to read in the future I thought I should get hold of the first and second titles and was lucky enough to pick up Wolf of the Plains almost instantly in one of the local charity shops on Mutley Plain where I often buy books. I’m glad I did, because I really enjoyed Wolf of the Plains and thought that Iggledun did a great job of weaving together the factual stuff with a story that zipped along nicely with lots of suspense and exciting set pieces (bloody battles etc). I have been reading the historical novels of Bernard Cornwell for some time and have dipped into one or two other authors of this genre but I have to say that Iggledun runs Cornwell close and perhaps even beats him when it comes to producing a good page-turner. The only problem now that I have finished Wolf of the Plains and left Genghis Khan having defeated the Tartar hordes and in charge of a set of newly united tribes is that I’m going to have to get hold of the second title “Lords of the Bow” – I’ll be making plenty of trips to the charity shops over the coming weeks!

Fact or fiction contradiction

The blurb of the book I am reading at the moment includes the following text:

“A remarkable story of heroism and adventure, of a boy who had to become a man too soon…. He would become father to his people. He would be Genghis Khan”

Now, the last time I checked Genghis Khan was a real person – specifically the fearsome ruler of the Mongol Empire around the year 1200. So, I am rather puzzled than in the front pages of the book there is the following disclaimer:

“This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental”

So how does that work then? Am I expected to believe that it entirely coincidental that the author imagined a character who had the same name, and who took the same role in the same general location as a well-known historical character? I don’t think so. The disclaimer is wrong – the author’s just lucky that Genghis isn’t still alive to take appropriate action against him because from what I have read so far, it wouldn’t be pretty…

Properly versus twice

Yesterday I attended the sixth of seven “Essential Leadership Skills” staff development courses that I am following. This one was on “Enabling People to Perform”. During the event the course leader gave a quote (without original source) that appealed to me…

Why do we not get time to do things properly when we do get time to do things twice?

To my mind this nicely captures a common problem that occurs in the workplace. things quite often have to be done more than once because they have to be completed in a rush and the outcomes are incomplete or in some way lacking. How better it would be to always make sure that there is enough time to do a job properly and, as a consequence, only have to do it once.

Contents page added

One problem with a “blog” web-site of this kind is that after a while old entries disappear off the bottom of the list and the only way to find them is to dig down into the Archive or browse the various categories. So, I thought it would be a good idea to have a page that was just a list of the different entries in timeline sequence (most recent at the top) and a few words on each describing what they are about. The list will grow as new entries are added and if I can find the time I will add direct links from each item in the list to the original entry. You can reach the Contents page via the link over to the right →

A tale of two oceans – the seas in 2050

Last weekend The Times newspaper carried various reports publicising The Times Cheltenham Science Festival. One of these focussed on the major threats to the world’s oceans including CO2 emissions, warming and acidification and carried a plea for immediate action. The report was accompanied by a nice graphic showing two versions of the seas in 2050 side-by-side. In the first of these, the major problems had been tackled and the oceans and the ecosystems they contain had “revived” and in the second, problems had not been solved and the oceans and ecosystems are “collapsed”. For each version of the oceans there are 15 or 16 points of note, either positive in the case of the “revived” seas or negative in the case of the collapsed” ones. The article is available online (The Times [06 June 2009]) and pleasingly, so is the colour graphic (either via the link in the article or directly via this link).

Reading list added

Since 2002 I have kept a list of all of the books that I have read. It is interesting to look back and see what I read and roughly when. I thought I would add this list to this site, so there is now a Reading List page (see link to the right) which I will keep updated each time I have a new addition. I still plan to write a short entry each time I finish a book – in fact there’s one of these over-due at the moment.

How to throw away £6.99 in one easy lesson

On my way into work each morning I walk past a branch of a major DVD rental company. Yesterday, a hand-written sign appeared on the door of the branch along the following lines:

“Donate at least £3 to [charity X] and receive a football worth £9.99”

I’ve been puzzling over the idea that lies behind this notice. If it was true, then everytime someone donates £3 and receives a £9.99 ball, the charity is missing out on up to £6.99 that it could have received if the store had sold the football for £9.99 (which, after all is what the ball is worth) and then given the proceeds to the charity. With the way the scheme is set up, the store or whoever is involved buys the football for amount £Y, gives it away for nothing (net loss to store = £Y), receives £3 in exchange (net gain to charity = £3) which comes from the customer (net loss to customer = £3). If the store had sold the ball for its true value and donated the profit to the charity then the net loss to the store = £0, the net gain to the charity = £(9.99-Y) and the net loss to the customer who bought the ball = £9.99. In the latter case the store gains (+£Y), the charity gains (+£9.99 – £Y – £3) and the customer also gains (they’ve given a bigger donation to charity AND, in effect, gained a £9.99 ball for only £6.99). So, given that my idea seems to be a WIN, WIN, WIN situation why doesn’t it occur? Simple, the ball isn’t worth £9.99 so no-one in their right mind would buy it at that price (I suspect that in fact it’s worth almost nothing), and the notice on the store door is untrue…

Microseisms rumble on

Back in the early 1990s when I was finishing off my PhD I was given office space in the Unit for Coastal and Estuarine Studies (UCES) at the then University of Wales, Bangor (in Menai Bridge). This unit was a centre for applied (contract) research and was based on a small island (Ynys Faelog) in the Menai Straits that was reached by a causeway. Anyway, sharing the building was a retired professor, Jack Darbyshire, who used to beaver away on his own little projects and delighted in collaring me to talk about one of these (relating to the formation of beach cusps). The primary area that Jack was interested in was microseisms (tiny earthquakes) that are picked up in seismographs. I can’t actually remember what it was about microseisms that interested Jack so much (he wasn’t the easiest person to understand being something of the classic mad scientist with an added very strong north Wales accent) but I was interested to see microseisms pop up again in New Scientist, Issue 2710 [30 May 2009]. Apparently, when ocean waves break they cause the crust to “hum” and they generate microseisms the intensity of which is related to the size of the storm waves. There is now an idea to look back at the extensive seismometer records that go back for almost a century to see whether there are detectable changes in this wave “noise” that can be used to infer changes in storm patterns due to climate change. This is of interest because the seismometer records go back further in time than good wave measuring systems. Perhaps I should have listened to Jack Dervyshire more carefully all those years ago.