Repost: Global warming skeptics claim Patriots win Superbowl

I realize that I quit blogging two week's ago, but with the superbowl set to be a rematch of the game 4 years ago, I thought a repost of my post-game analysis would be appropriate. Let's hope that the Giants once again prove the denialists wrong. And reposting isn't really blogging, so I'm still not here.

Repost:

I don’t want to call attention to skeptical web sites by actually linking them from this site, but the usual suspects in global warming denialism have homed in on a new target- the Superbowl champions.

The gang of 397.5 is now claiming that the Giants didn’t actually win. And to support this stance, they have trotted out all of their tired old canards:

• By truncating the data at 2 minute warning, a Patriots win is obvious.
  
• Satellite measurements suggest that the 4th down rush failed to exceed the space-based error margins for a first down.


• Increased, undetectable solar irradiance dazzled Tom Brady, and the Giants’ D had nothing to do with his performance.


• The Giants victory is a conspiracy perpetrated by rent-seeking sports journalists who are selfishly trying to increase interest in the dullest Superbowl of all time in order to justify their hegemony of the sports infotainment industry.


• The Manning brothers score regularly on Mars, Titan, Pluto, and many other planetary bodies, so game winning passes here on Earth must be caused by some mysterious exotic power which should constitute interference with the football game.


• Millions of years ago, football scores were both much higher and much lower than in tonight’s game.


• Common sense demands that a team which makes up less than 0.05% of the population of Hudson County can’t possibly be responsible for upsetting the greatest sports franchise on Earth.


• In-con-ceEEEEEI-vable.*


• The consensus view that the team with the most points wins is a self-fulfilling delusion perpetrated by the opaque fraternity of peer review.


• By cherrypicking away all of the Giants’ scoring plays, the game becomes a Patriots shutout.

* I don’t think this word means what they think it means.

Good night

I will be halting my blogging activities for the foreseeable future.

There are other more important areas of my life which are suffering from insufficient attention to detail. And until I become more more efficient (I had a book on organization and effectiveness once, but lost it), the best way to improve key activities like staying employed or raising children is to devote more time to them. And let's be honest: I probably only post one or two really worthwhile things here anyway. I don't earn any money from the blog, and it isn't really tied into work at all, and nobody's bought a SHRIMP based on my posts here, so it's a fairly obvious thing to scale back. If I become an efficient, organized, time manager, maybe I'll start it up again, But don't hold your breath.

Solar energy summary

As I mentioned previously, we recently had a 2 kilowatt photovoltaic solar power system installed on the NW-facing roof of our house. Below is plotted the daily household use and solar generation for the first two weeks or so after we turned it on:



I should point out that we have a family of 4 living in a typical Canberra "ex-govvie" house, which has been extended to a still-modest size of ~145 square meters of single story, basement-free living space.

I would also like to point out that in the southern hemisphere, November is late spring, with lots of daylight- all that sunshine that the NH readers don't have right now.

There are a few interesting points here. Firstly, the increase in usage around day 11 for several days is a result of several days of stormy weather, which led us to use the electric dryer instead of the clothes line. Evidently the clothesline is worth about 2-3 kWh of power- a substantial portion of our usage.

Thanksgiving Dinner stands out like a sore thumb, with double the power usage. I was surprized at this, because I have a gas oven. However, the glowplug that keeps the flames lit obviously consumes a lot of power. I will keep my eyes open for a electricity-efficient gas fired oven when the time for replacement comes.

I also noticed that running high temperature dishwasher loads eats a lot of power as well. Does anyone else have any handy power saving tips? I'll use the most obvious one, and go to bed inst3ead of surfing the web. Good night.

Carbon source or scapegoat?

AGU day 4: diffusion

Dear AGU attendees:

It is not necessary to pack into the standing-room at the back of the lecture hall to the point of blocking people's way when there at 10 rows of empty seats at the front. diffusive equilibrium is a wonderful thing. Try approaching it.

AGU day 1: Geologists 1, Publisher 0

Here at AGU, the wireless is working very well. The only exception is when I try to access Elsevier's sciencedirect.com, which is moving at tectonic plate speeds. Last meeting, I noticed the guy next to me had his tablet out and downloaded each paper mentioned in a talk to follow along. That conference had 78 people. This one has 20,000.

US science tour schedule

I'll be in the SW USA for the next week and a half giving talks about SHRIMP and attending AGU. The talks are:

Arizona State University

Thursday 1 Dec time: TBA, Chemistry dept (probably) Title TBA (this one is pretty informal, if you haven't guessed)

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University of Texas at Austin

Friday Dec. 2

Understanding the SIMS U/Pb calibration

Jackson School of Geosciences
JGB 3.222 at 11 AM.

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American Geophysical Union Fall meeting, Moscone Center, San Francisco

SHRIMP geochronology using an ¹⁸O primary beam

Session Title: V33G. Innovations in Isotope Mass Spectrometry and Isotope Metrology II
Session Type: Oral
Date: 07-Dec-2011
Start Time: 03:10 PM
End Time: 03:25 PM
Location: Room 3022 (Moscone West)

Texas abstract:
In preparation for the production of the new SHRIMP IV, a number of experiments were run to characterize the behavior of the U/Pb calibration under various analytical conditions. Repetition of early SHRIMP One work showed that the calibration appears to primarily reflect the dependence of Pb ionization on oxygen activity. In order to constrain the effects of oxygen, further experiments were performed using an ¹⁸O primary beam, so that the relative contributions of oxygen from the beam (¹⁸O) and the natural samples (¹⁶O) could be discerned.

The use of the ¹⁸O primary has shown that the ratio of sample oxygen to primary oxygen in the secondary ions varies based on the target mineral and the primary beam impact energy. For baddeleyite, there is also an orientation effect. In some circumstances, the ¹⁸O/¹⁶O ratio can be used to correct for scatter along the calibration line, allowing sub-percent level accuracy for Paleozoic U/Pb dating of zircon.

The cause of calibration-related uncertainty is still not precisely known, but can probably be related to a number of factors. This work, combined with recent demonstration of SHRIMP geochronology of chemically abraded zircon, suggests several potential ways of improving calibration accuracy. In addition to the standard approaches of high quality sample preparation and wide energy windows, new approaches include the use of ¹⁸O to correct for source fluctuations, active change neutralization using a medium energy electron gun, and chemical abrasion. These techniques have not yet been used simultaneously on unknown zircons.

AGU abstract:
The key constraint of uranium-lead geochronology is the variation in ionization efficiency of uranium and lead. As the ionization efficiency of Pb is dependent on oxygen availability, a calibration relating the UO/U or UO₂/U ratio to the Pb/U ionization efficiency is commonly used. However, these calibrations have historically been limited to errors of about 1%.
We have identified the origin of the oxygen in the UO and UO₂ species by feeding the primary column duoplasmatron source with ¹⁸O gas. This creates labeled UO and UO₂ isotopologues at nominal masses of 254, 256, 270, 272, and 274, where the ¹⁸O isotopologues contain ¹⁸O from the isotopically labeled primary beam, and the ¹⁶O isotopologues contain oxygen from the natural silicate, phosphate, or oxide geochronology target mineral. The ratio of U¹⁸O to U¹⁶O depends on the target mineral, and primary ion species (atomic vs. molecular oxygen). In zircon, the variation in U¹⁸O vs. U¹⁶O can be used to correct for calibration scatter, allowing for more precise and accurate geochronology. This correction only applies to SIMS instruments such as SHRIMP, which can perform uranium-lead geochronology without the use of a third source of oxygen, such as oxygen flooding.

Billions of years of conference badges

ASI was lucky enough to be the lanyard sponsor at the recent Biennial Geochemical SIMS workshop, held in Hawaii at the beginning of this month. The meeting was fantastic. But rather than do the usual slog of simply plastering our logo on the lanyard, we decided to give it a geological timescale. The scale is one year per angstrom. Various important events are designated by the isotopic system used to define them and/or cartoons. Being very long and skinny, it is hard to display in a blog, but here’s a photo of one curled up (click to enlarge).


We have some extras, so if anyone wants me to bring some to AGU for you guys to wear, let me know and I'll pack some.