Election 2020: The Economy

I guess just about everyone in the world knows by now that we here in the U.S.A. are having a Presidential Election this November. Now in this year’s election the choice could not be starker but it’s important in every election to get past the rhetoric and name calling to try to look at the facts and to me facts mean numbers. Therefore over the next several weeks I will be looking at the issues in the race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden as objectively as I can.

The Choice in this year’s election. Donald Trump (l) versus Joe Biden (r). (Credit: The Atlantic)

In this post I will be taking a look at the US economy, comparing how it has performed under Donald Trump and comparing that to both his promises concerning economic growth but also against that the our Previous President Barack Obama, whom Joe Biden served as Vice-President.

Now in most elections the economy is by far the most important issue. This year however other issues, particularly the Covid-19 Pandemic, have pretty much pushed it aside but nevertheless the economy remains one issue where it is possible to point to unequivocal facts, job growth, GDP growth and federal budget deficits. Because of the quantitative nature of the economy it is possible to make objective assessments.

This year however the economy has suffered a devastating blow because of the Covid-19 outbreak, an event that Donald Trump cannot be blamed for. In order to be fair therefore I will only use the economic numbers from Trump’s first three years as President and compare them to the economy of Barack Obama’s last three years in office, as well as Trump’s own promises about the economy made during his campaign in 2016.

Claims for unemployment exploded in March of 2020. No administration could have been prepared for that initial disaster so economic comparisons for the Trump administration are only valid for the period before Covid-19. (Credit: USA Today)

Let’s start with the jobs figures because that always seems to be the economic measurement most important to politicians. In the first three years of his presidency, again before covid-19 hit, the US economy under Donald Trump gained six million, five hundred and nineteen thousand jobs (6,519,000) an impressive number. That’s an average of 181,000 jobs every month, bringing the unemployment percentage down to a very low 3.6%.

However it has to be remembered that Trump inherited a very strong, job creating economy from his predecessor Barack Obama. Unemployment when Trump took office was already very low, only 4.7%. In fact during the last three years of his presidency the labour market under Obama gained over eight million jobs, 8,067,000 to be exact. More than a million and a half more jobs than in Trump’s economy. The average monthly job gain for Obama works out to be 224,000 jobs. In fact 25% more jobs were created during Obama’s last three years than were created during Trump’s first three years. And remember Obama inherited an economy in the throes of the worst financial crisis since the great depression, the unemployment percentage was 7.8% when Obama took office and dropping rapidly.

Unemployment spiked during the financial collapse at the end of the George W. Bush administration. Barack Obama spend his entire 8 years in office repairing that damage. Trump was merely continued the Obama trend UNTIL the Covid-19 pandemic struck. (Credit: Business Insider)

Not only that but in an effort to create more jobs Trump used the old trick of lowering taxes, which of course led to a sharp rise in the federal deficit. In fact whereas Obama had received a budget deficit of over 1.44 Trillion dollars from President Bush he had in his eight years in office succeeded in lowering that figure to $585 Billion, a 60% reduction.

The tax cut engineered by Trump and the republicans certainly benefited rich Americans. How much of that money did you see? (Credit: ITEP)

The deficit under Trump however has increased to $960 billion, a 64% increase in only three years. If we again compare Trump’s performance in his first three years to that of Obama’s last three years we find that the Trump administration has borrowed $2.4 Trillion, 56% more than Obama’s $1.538 Trillion. And that’s all before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Obama inherited a massive deficit from Bush and spent his 8 years in office trying to get it under control. Trump has again increased federal borrowing and that was BEFORE Covid. (Credit: CNN.com)

  The economic statistic that really captures the overall improvement in the economy is growth in Gross Domestic Product or GDP. GDP is just the sum total of all economic activity, in other words every time money legally changes hands. Every product sold, every bit of labour paid for, it all goes into GPD and a healthy economy has a GDP that is growing faster than inflation.

Growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) since 2000. aside from the financial crisis at the end of Bush’s term there’s really little difference between all three of them. Trump cannot claim to have kept his promise of 4% growth. (Credit: Business Insider)

For the first three years of his presidency Donald Trump has succeeded in growing the economy at an average percentage of 2.5% as compared to Obama’s yearly average of 2.36%. However it should be pointed out that Trump promised a yearly increase in GDP of more than 4%.

That was in many ways his biggest promise, he’s a businessman after all and his ability to handle our economy is supposed to be the chief reason to vote for him. Throughout his career Donald Trump has bragged about his money-making abilities. However the reality of his four bankrupt casinos, the failure of Trump airlines, Trump magazine and Trump steaks tells a very different story.

Remember Trump Magazine? Neither does anyone else. It’s just one of countless business failures Donald doesn’t talk about! (Credit: Politico)

If Donald Trump can’t deliver on his economic promises, if in fact the Trump economy is little different from the Obama economy. If Trump’s only real economic idea was a trillion dollar tax cut, 67% of which went to the richest 1% of Americans, should the self proclaimed ‘King of Debt’ be given another fours years to give away more of our countries wealth?

Donald Trump has frequency proclaimed himself ‘The King of Debt’. Why would any rational person trust someone like that with our Nation’s economy? (Credit: Illinois Review)

The plain fact of the matter is that whatever Donald Trump may say he is not a businessman, never has been and never will be. Donald trump is a salesman who is very good at talking people into doing what he wants, investing in his business ventures, but who is incapable of doing the actual work of managing a business. All of his projects start off in a blaze of publicity only to collapse in a chaos of mismanagement.

Would you buy a used economy from this man? We did! (Credit: Twitter)

 The facts show that Donald Trump is no ‘Stable Genius’ where handling our economy is concerned. Instead, as he has always done, Trump just exaggerates his own achievements while belittling those of anyone else. In the end his claim to being the one man who can restore our economy after Covid-19 has no actual data to back it up. 

P.S. Just a few days after I published this post the New York Times announced that they have succeeded in obtaining Donald Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents for the past twenty years. The Times’ story details how Trump has lied to, cheated and manipulated his investors, the banks who lent him money as well as the US government. I heartily recommend that anyone check out the story by following this link. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

Astronomy News for September 2020.

There were a couple of interesting stories about our Universe that caught my eye. Both deal with celestial objects and events that are among the largest and most powerful known to astronomy.

I’ve written several posts about the Gravity Wave observatories that are the newest field of research in astronomy. (See my posts of 14Jun17, 22Oct17, and 17Nov18) To date the two Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory (LIGO) observatories in the US along with the Virgo observatory in Italy have observed over fifty events including the merger of two black holes or two neutron stars into a black hole as well as black hole and a neutron star into a black hole.

The LIGO gravity wave observatories in the US consists of two detectors, one in the state of Washington the other in Louisiana. (Credit: Caltech)
The inner workings of one of the LIGO detectors. (Credit: Wiley Online Library)

In all of those events observed thus far however the masses of the objects involved were between two and ten times the mass of our Sun. This places them all within a class known as stellar black holes, which are black holes with a mass comparable to that of our Sun.

The merger of two Black Holes sends out waves of gravitational energy so powerful that they can be detected billions of light years away. (Credit: Science)

At the same time astronomers are discovering more and more evidence of super-massive black holes in the center of every large galaxy. These black holes are estimated to have masses anywhere from several million to several billion times that of our Sun. Those observations left a gap however; there was no direct evidence for the existence of black holes with masses between several times ten to several times a thousand that of our Sun.

When the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies consume nearby stars and dust they become active galactic nuclei, also known as Quasars. (Credit: Mesosyn)

Until now, because on April 12th of this year a new gravity wave event, given the designation GW190521, was detected whose characteristics were such that astronomers could determine the initial masses of the two black holes to be 85 and 66 times that of our Sun. The resulting merger gave birth to a black hole with 142 solar masses, the remaining 8 solar masses being completely converted into the energy of gravity waves. That makes GW190521 by far the most powerful gravity wave event yet detected.

Gravity Wave GW190521 represents the first evidence for the existence of intermediate mass black holes. (Credit: NDTV Gadgets 360)

But what interests astronomers the most was that the masses involved, 66, 85 and 142 solar masses all fit into that gap area where no black holes had ever been observed. That makes GW190521 the first direct evidence for the existence of intermediate black holes. While astronomers may have learned a great deal from these first observations you can be certain they are eagerly waiting the next signal from the merger of intermediate sized black holes.

In another story, on an even larger scale, we have all heard of the galaxy of Andromeda, the closest big galaxy to our own Milky Way and the most distant object that is visible to the naked eye. A typical spiral galaxy Andromeda is a vast disk of more than 200 billion stars some 100,000 light years in diameter at a distance of about 2 million light years from us. And you may have also heard that Andromeda is heading straight at us! In fact Astronomers estimate that our two galaxies are likely to collide in just a little over four billion years.

The galaxy of Andromeda is the farthest object visible with the naked eye. Moving in our direction Andromeda will collide with our Milky Way in about 4 billion years! (Credit: Universe Today)

Most of our current theories about how galaxies evolve are based upon such collisions between small galaxies leading to the build up of ever larger galaxies as the galaxies merge.  What kind of a merger will result from the collision of our Milky Way with Andromeda is unknown at present, after all it’s hard to predict the details of something that’s not going to happen for four billion years.

The Whirlpool galaxy is actually a collision of two galaxies. The large spiral on the left is devouring the smaller elliptic on the right. (Credit: NASA)

Now however a group of astronomers are asserting that the collision has already begun. Using the Hubble space telescope these astronomers, led by Professor Nicholas Lehner of the Physics Department at the University of Notre Dame, were trying to determine exactly how big Andromeda is. That’s not actually an easy task since galaxies are not cohesive objects but vast collections not only of stars but huge amounts of gas and dust. In other words galaxies don’t have nice, well defined edges but rather just trail off, becoming less and less dense the farther you get from their center.

The astronomers were able to study the halo surrounding Andromeda by measuring its effect on the light of even more distant quasars located behind the halo. Quasars are the very active cores of distant galaxies powered by the feeding of supermassive black holes in the galaxy’s center. 

Using the Hubble space telescope and by observing the light coming from distant quasars astronomers could measure the size of the halo of Andromeda. (Credit: NASA)

As the light from those distant quasars passes through Andromeda’s halo certain wavelengths of light are absorbed. By studying which wavelengths are absorbed, and by how much the astronomers can learn a great deal about the material making up the halo. And what Professor Lehner and his team have found is that Andromeda has a very, very thin halo surrounding it, and that halo extends at least as far as 1.3 million light years from the galaxy’s center, half the distance to our own Milky Way.

In a couple of billion years, as Andromeda gets ever closer will there still be anyone here on Earth to observe it? (Credit: Earthsky)

But if Andromeda has a big halo, reaching halfway to our Milky Way, shouldn’t our Galaxy have just as big a halo. In fact the team has found evidence that it does, and further evidence that the two halos are already beginning to interact. So in a sense that collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way has already begun, even if the main event is still a long time to come. 

Book Review: ‘The Powers of the Earth’, by Travis J. Corcoran.

President Oprah declares war on an unauthorized Moon colony built by freedom loving CEOs. Yes it’s really almost that bad. In fact ‘The Powers of the Earth’ is only about 10% Science Fiction, another 30% starts off as a spy novel that evolves into a war novel. The remainder is more a political pamphlet than anything else and a rather cartoon version of one.

Cover of ‘The Powers of the Earth’ by Travis J. Corcoran. (Credit: Amazon)

In the short author’s bio at the back of the book, Travis J. Corcoran proudly proclaims himself to be a ‘Catholic Anarcho-Capitalist’ three ideologies that to my mind don’t really fit together all that well. Still Mr. Corcoran has every right to his opinions, his political views. The question is whether or not they serve to enhance a good science fiction novel.

Author Travis J Corcoran. (Credit: Libertarian Futurist Society)

In fact science fiction has long served as a vehicle for social criticism. H. G. Wells for example often brought his socialist ideas into his novels. The Morlocks in ‘The Time Machine’, the Martians in ‘War of the Worlds’ and the Selenites in ‘The First Men in the Moon’ are all described in socio-economic terms, but briefly, the politics don’t get in the way of the story. In some of his later novels, ‘In the Days of the Comet’ or ‘Shape of Things to Come’ Wells does become rather preachy, which is why those novels are not as popular as his earlier work.

In Well’s ‘The Time Machine’ laissez faire economics have forced the proletarian masses underground where they evolve into Morlocks. That description in the novel lasts 2-3 pages and doesn’t get in the way of the story. (Credit: YouTube)

In ‘The Powers of the Earth’ on the other hand, long rhetorical speeches are on nearly every page. And there’s no attempt at evenhandedness, whenever an argument in favour of some form of organized government is presented it is done so only to make it a target for attack. The characters back on Earth are all either idiots or self serving hypocrites, cartoon villains in other words. The inhabitants of the Moon, fully half of whom are CEOs of some company or other, aren’t presented in much better terms. Quarrelsome and unwilling to work together even when they agree if they are Mr. Corcoran’s view of an Anarcho-Capitalist utopia he can keep it!

However the real problem is that the politics just keeps getting in the way of the science fiction. For example, the Lunar colony at Aristillus crater is only possible because of the invention of an anti-gravity drive that the CEOs on the Moon have and the Earth governments don’t. But we’re never told anything about that drive, nothing at all about how it works. At the same time building a colony on the Moon appears to be simply a matter of drilling out enough big tunnels. No mention is ever made about where the air comes from, or the water.

Aristillus Crater on the Moon, the location of the Anarcho-Capitalist colony in ‘The Powers of the Earth) . (Credit: Alcheton)

When I began reading “The Powers of the Earth’ I first thought that Aristillus must be one of the craters near the South Pole where NASA has found evidence of ice. That would at least have served as a source for both the colony’s water and air but the crater isn’t near the South Pole, it’s right in Mare Imbrium, an area that is dry as a bone. There’s no particular reason for Mr. Corcoran to put his colony there that I can think of.

Even when Mr. Corcoran has an interesting idea he doesn’t develop it very well. As a part of the story there are five characters who are literally hiking around the Lunar farside. The hiking party is made up of one human and four genetically enhanced super-intelligent dogs. Now my ears perked up at the idea of super intelligent dogs, I wanted some details about the anatomic changes that allowed a dog to have a bigger brain, the changes to the vocal chords so that the dogs could speak (actually those dogs have some of the longest political arguments in the entire book) plus the changes to their paws so that they can type on their computers. (The dogs are all software whizzes by the way).

   But there’s nothing, no mention is ever made of anything about the dogs other than they can think and talk just like a human. Oh, and there are numerous times where the dogs have to take off or put on their spacesuits? How, with their paws?

IN ‘The Powers of the Earth’ genetically enhanced dogs get into and out of spacesuits on a regular basis. How is never described. (Credit: Ripley’s Believe it or Not)

During the course of ‘The Powers of the Earth’ several of the characters mention the old Robert Heinlein novel ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ and I have an idea that Mr. Corcoran wrote ‘The Powers of the Earth’ intending it to be a re-boot of that novel. Now it’s been nearly fifty years since I read, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ but I don’t recall Heinlein as being so cavalier with the science, neither were his characters so poorly drawn.

Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ has been used several times as a starting point for ideas about revolution in Space. (Credit: Casey Handmer’s Blog)
‘Causes of Separation’ is the second novel in Travis J Corcoran’s series about anarchists on the Moon. (Credit: Amazon)

I do remember that Heinlein, like Wells, used science fiction as a way to describe different possible ways to build a society. Each different novel described a different aspect, a different kind of society. But on the other hand ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ was never intended recipe for a political movement, at least I didn’t get that impression.

But most of all I do remember a Heinlein novel as being worth reading, which I just can’t say about “The Powers of the Earth”. By the end of the story I wasn’t even interested in the dogs.

The annual ranking for Colleges and Universities has been announced.

Today’s post will be a bit out of the ordinary because I will not be discussing science or engineering so much as the places where our scientists and engineers receive their education. I’m talking about the Colleges and Universities of the world. I was prompted to write this post by the release of the annual Times Higher Education survey of the world’s best Colleges and Universities.

Why do we humans always feel the need to rank everything? (Credit: UCLA)

Now which University was chosen as the best, which schools made into the top 10, or which country had the most universities in the top 100 is really nothing more than a competitive exercise of no actual importance. What is important is whether or not new institutes of higher learning are being founded, and whether existing universities are getting better. Still it’s worth taking a quick look at some of the annual survey’s results in order to get an idea of what is going on in the world of higher education.

At the very top of the Times Higher Education list for the fifth straight year is Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Britain also has another spot in the top ten, Cambridge University coming in at number six. All of the other spots in the top ten belong to Universities in the United States from Stanford University at number two to the University of Chicago at number ten. Indeed the first non US non UK University is ETH Zurich in Switzerland coming in at number 14 with the University of Toronto in Canada ranking at #18, and Tsinghua University in China at #20, also appearing in the top 20.

For the fifth straight year Oxford University was chosen as the world’s best place of higher education. (Credit: University of Oxford)
Stanford University took the second spot in the listing. (Credit: Class Central)

Now I’m not trying to brag, and neither should these results be a great surprise. The US and UK have pretty much dominated the world of higher education since the end of World War 2 when most of the world’s other Universities lay in ruin.

During the years when the USSR was pushing education as the way to demonstrate the superiority of Communism several Russian Universities where recognized as among the best schools in the world. However the current Russian government appears to prefer to keep its population ignorant and gullible so the quality of Russian education has declined noticeably.

Lomonosov Moscow State University is Russia’s top school at #194 but just three years ago it placed at #161! (Credit: Schlinder)

Instead it’s now China whose institutes of higher learning are gaining the most ground. In addition to Tsinghua University, Peking University received a high ranking of 23 making China the only country other than the US and UK to place two universities in the top 25. China in fact succeeded in doubling its number of schools in the top 100 from three last year to six this year.

Tsinghua University is China’s top ranked school. The obvious newest of the buildings is an indication of the support education is receiving from the Chinese Government. (Credit: Hotels Combined)

Most of these Chinese Universities are in fact relatively new, babies when compared to Oxford or Cambridge. It’s a sign of China’s growing middle class who want a good education for their children, and are willing to pay for it. It’s also a sign that the Chinese government recognizes that a larger, better educated middle class will actually make China a stronger more powerful nation.

Other Asian nations are also working hard to improve the quality of the education they provide to their people. Sixteen Asian universities placed within the top 100, the most since the Times Higher Education list began.

The University of Tokyo is another important place of learning. (Credit: Britannica)

Of course the improvement in higher education in Asia doesn’t have to mean that education is the west is slipping. In the years to come the world is going to need all of its college and university graduates if we’re going to overcome the tremendous challenges facing our planet.

The Main Building at Drexel University. Drexel has grown so much in the years since I first attended class there! (Credit: The college Post)

By the way, my old Alma Matter Drexel University came in at 351. Not great, but not bad considering that’s 351st in the entire world.

Space News for September 2020.

There are a number of small but nevertheless important items that have happened over the last month which deal with NASA’s Artemis program. So let’s get started.

 If NASA’s Artemis program is going to successfully put Americans back on the Moon by 2024, or indeed ever, it is going to need a big rocket to put all of that hardware into space. The big rocket that NASA has been building now for nine years is called the Space Launch System (SLS) and although it may look superficially like the old Saturn V it is in fact a completely new design based on Space Shuttle hardware.

Artist’s impression of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS). (Credit: NASA)

In fact the SLS employs four shuttle main engines in its first stage and in addition has two shuttle solid fuel boosters attached. Since the SLS is making use of a fair amount of existing components you’d think that the design cost and schedule would be reasonable compared to those for a completely new large launch vehicle, say Space X’s Falcon 9.

The first core stage of the SLS nearing completion. Those four big engines are identical to the engines used on the Space Shuttle. (Credit: NASA Spaceflight.com)

Well you’d be wrong, in fact the original cost of the central core first stage of the SLS was estimated at $6 billion. That amount was already ‘readjusted’ back in 2017 to $7.17 billion and now NASA has quietly increased that amount to $9.1 billion. And as to schedule, the original launch date for an unmanned flight of the SLS was supposed to be back in 2017, a date that was later pushed back to December of 2019 to June of 2020. Needless to say June has come and gone and the current schedule now for the first, unmanned launch of the SLS is November of 2021.

Even that is not certain however, because the SLS still has quite a lot of testing to finish first. In fact one big test, a static firing of one of the big solid fuel boosters, was carried out successfully on 2 September. During the test the 53m long booster burned for the full 126 seconds required for an actual flight. See image below. While the data from the test is still being analyzed the initial results indicated a very successful test.

Test of the SLS solid booster rocket, also based on Space Shuttle technology. Currently all indications are that the test was a complete success. (Credit: Spaceflight101)

The biggest test still remaining before next year’s unmanned flight is called ‘Green Run Hot Fire’ and may possibly occur as early as next month in October. For the Green Run Hot Fire test the entire rocket, except for the solid boosters, is held down to a test stand and the four main engines are fired for eight minutes, the time simulating a normal launch. Although all of the different subsystems of the SLS have been tested separately this will be the first time the entire rocket will be tested together.

Testing status for the core section of the SLS as of 10 July 2020. Test 8 could occur as early as late October. (Credit: NASA)

If any problems occur during the Green Run Hot Test it would almost certainly cause yet another delay in that first unmanned test flight. And if that first test flight gets pushed back any further there’s little hope of Artemis reaching the Moon by 2024. In fact because some members of congress are just getting sick and tired of the delays and cost overruns associated with the SLS it might just mean the end of the Artemis program entirely.

Mission plan for the unmanned Artemis 1 flight to the Moon. (Credit: NASA)

Thankfully there’s a bit of better news for Artemis. One of the aerospace companies that are preparing bids for the contract to build the Lunar lander that will actually take the Artemis astronauts down to the Moon’s surface is Blue Origin, the other two being Space X and Dynetics. In late August Blue Origin delivered to NASA’s Johnson Manned Spaceflight Center in Houston a full-scale model of their planned lander.

Mock up of the Blue Origin’s planned Lunar lander is delivered to NASA. (Credit: Tech Explorist)

The model is 12 meters in height and consists of both a planned descent and ascent stage. Although the mock-up does not in any sense function it will allow NASA astronauts to simulate getting down from the crew cabin in the ascent stage to the ground with all of their equipment, and back again. This sort of ergonomic testing is important at this stage because it will not only allow the astronauts to become familiar with the vehicle but if any design flaws are discovered during these tests they can be corrected before construction of the first lander begins.

Artists’s impression of the Blue Origin Lander on the Moon. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Although Blue Origin will be the prime contractor should they win the contract the lander design will actually be a team effort including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. While Blue Origin concentrates its efforts on the descent stage it is Lockheed Martin who will be primarily responsible for the ascent stage. The team members hope that by splitting up the design efforts it will speed up the design and development of the separate components.

So work is progressing, however slowly on the hardware needed to get Americans back to the Moon, but what about the equipment they’ll be using while on the Moon. For example the old Apollo astronauts had a small Lunar rover vehicle that allowed them to explore more of the Moon’s surface than they could on foot. Are there any plans for an updated Lunar Rover?

The last three Apollo missions, 15-17, took a small Lunar Rover along with them. This is Apollo 15’s. (Credit: The Detroit Bureau)

Well it turns out that it’s the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) who has been given the task of developing the rover as a part of their effort toward the Artemis program. As you might guess JAXA turned to a Japanese company well known for their expertise in motor vehicles, Toyota for help in developing an initial Lunar rover design.

Artist’s impression of Toyota’s concept for a new Lunar Rover. Looks a lot more comfortable! (Credit: Space News)

Named the Lunar Cruiser after Toyota’s famous Land Cruiser the proposed rover would be considerable larger than the Apollo rover. Equipped with a pressurized cabin so that the astronauts can remove their spacesuits while driving across the Moon’s surface the rover will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and is expected to have a range as much as 10,000 kilometers.

Currently all of these design specifications are preliminary; after all we still a lot of work to do just getting back to the Moon. The eventual goal of the Artemis program is to establish a permanent base on the Moon and that’s when the Lunar Cruiser would become an important piece of equipment.

In 15-20 will we have a Moon Base resembling this artist’s impression? (Credit: European Space Agency)

Still it is nice to speculate about what kind of Lunar Base we may have in about another ten years. I do hope that NASA gets the Artemis program on track. It’s been almost 50 years since the last human set foot on the Moon, when Artemis succeeds in getting us back I hope this time its for good. 

Scientists are making strides in developing a direct connection between a human brain and a computer.

For decades now one of the dreams of science fiction has been the development of technology that would allow a direct connection between the human brain and an electronic computer, both a dream and a nightmare. The possibilities that such a technology could open up are beyond imaging. Just consider being able to access all of the stored knowledge on the Internet simply by thinking about it. Or how about being able to see, in your mind the images from cameras anywhere in the world. Such technology might even make the age old dream of telepathy real as two brains could speak to each other through a computer.

Robocop was an extreme example of a Human – Machine Interface. Would such a degree of integration even be possible? (Credit: Den of Geek)

On the other hand, could that same technology be used to access your most private thoughts and opinions without your permission, so that the very idea of privacy no longer existed?  Or what if advertisers could, on a regular schedule implant an ad directly into your brain. No changing channel or going to the bathroom during commercials, they’re inside you!

Such developments are at least decades away. Right now the major goal of Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) technology is to develop methods for people with advanced prosthetics to control them directly from their brains. Like Luke Skywalker’s robotic hand in Star Wars.

Great progress is currently being made in the technology that will allow disabled persons to control their prosthesis directly from their brain. (Business Insider)

Currently one of the major problems facing researchers in HMI is a matter of finding the right materials for the interface. Nearly all electronic circuits use copper as a conductor but when copper is implanted into living flesh, which is mostly a salty liquid, it corrodes very quickly, degrading if not actually blocking the performance of the circuit. And those corroded metals in turn cause scarring of the flesh, which will irritate if not actually harm the person who had the circuit implanted in them. So scientists and engineers have been searching for an organic conductor that will not only give good electrical performance but which will not react in any harmful way when inside the body.

Recently scientists at the University of Delaware have announced that they have found such a material. The team, led by Doctor David Martin has been investigating a class of organic materials known as conjugated polymers that are able to conduct electric current. The material that they identified is known as Pedot and is commercially available as an anti-static coating for electronic displays, I actually think I’m familiar with it.

Professor David Martin and his team of researchers at the University of Delaware. (Credit: University of Delaware)

During testing Pedot showed all of the specifications needed in an interface between electronics and living tissue without any sign of scaring. In other testing Pedot was even able to be infused with dopamine as a possible treatment for addiction making it a possible candidate for other medical procedures as well.

Some of the electrical characteristics of Pedot. To me these plots speak volumes. (Credit: Science Advances)
Disks of Pedot infused with other chemicals. (Credit: Researchgate)

So if scientists have found a material that will allow them to interface electronics directly to the human brain, what kind of electronics will be the first to be implanted? Well Elon Musk of Space X and Tesla fame has funded a small bio-tech company Neuralink that is developing a chip sized device that reads brain impulses and transmits them via bluetooth to a smartphone or other computerized device. Last year Musk showcased a model of Neuralink that was implanted behind the ear of a patient and picked up brain impulses by means of thin wired electrodes laid along the top of the skull. This year’s model has just been announced and consists of a coin-sized disk implanted directly onto the skull.

Last year’s model of Neuralink (left) and this year’s (right). (Credit: Dezeen)

Initial testing of this year’s model consisted of implanting the interface onto the skulls of three pigs, directly over that portion of the brain that dealt with signals from the animal’s snout. Now pig’s snouts are one of their main sensory organs and when the pigs were given food or other objects to smell and rummage through a display screen showed the firing of the neurons in the animal’s brains as they used their snouts.

One of the test subjects for this year’s testing of Neuralink. The disk was implanted onto the pig’s skull and could detect signals sent from the pig’s snout. (Credit: Medium)

Neuralink now hopes to begin testing on human volunteers sometime this year. The plan is to implant the device in patients with severe spinal chord injuries in the hope that a second device implanted below the injury would enable the patient’s brain signals to bypass the injury and therefore allow them to once again control their arms and legs.

We will soon be faced with the question, how far do we want to go? (Credit: Pinterest)

The future possibilities of such technology belong more in science fiction novels, for now. Right now however the biggest problem the engineers at Neuralink have is that their rather delicate thin-wire electrodes don’t last long inside the patient’s body. They degrade over time because of the corrosive chemicals in the body.

What do you want to bet that the people at Neuralink are contacting the team at the University of Delaware right now?

Three new inventions that may help to save our environment.

Everybody knows that our environment is in trouble. The waste and pollution generated by eight billion human beings is choking the planet, producing changes that have already caused the extinction of hundreds of species, and may lead to our own. If we are going to preserve the environment we cannot just return to a simpler, less polluting level of technology, let’s say the 18th century as an example. As I said there are eight billion of us now and horsepower, waterwheels and ox-drawn plows will not sustain such a large population. Instead we must use our technology to develop solutions to the problems that ironically we used technology to cause.

Going back to the days of Currier and Ives may seem attractive to some people but the world could only support about half a billion people back then. What happens to the other seven and a half billion people living today? (Credit: Granger Art on Demand)

Recently there have been three new technological breakthroughs, inventions if you like, that may play an important role in saving our planet. At least I hope so.

In many ways plastic is actually harmless. It’s neither poisonous nor cancer causing. In fact it has many excellent qualities, it has countless uses and it’s so cheap that we use it in countless ways. Ironically it is the fact that plastic is so useful, and cheap that makes it so great a danger. We manufacture so much of it and despite what the plastics manufactures tell us we don’t recycle more than a very few percent of what we make. The truth is that, aside from plastic 2-liter bottles, most single use plastic items, like plastic bags, utensils and straws, are not even made of the right kind of plastic to be recycled. All of those items, and many others just accumulate in our waste dumps which, since plastics don’t decay, are becoming an ever bigger problem on both the land and in the sea.

Every day we produce more plastic than this. Since it doesn’t bio-degrade what do we do with it? (Credit: Rolling Stone)

To solve that problem chemists have for many years been searching for a kind of plastic, technically a polymer, that can easily, and cheaply be broken back down into their constituent parts, chemically known as monomers. These reconstituted monomers could then used to create new polymers, new pieces of plastics over and over again.

Just a few of the kinds of plastics and other polymers chemistry has developed. Notice words like ‘Chain Growth’ or ‘Polyaddition’ or Step Growth’. In many way developing a polymer is like playing with legos! (Credit: Polymer Database)

A team of researchers from the United States, China and Saudi Arabia has recently announced the development of just such a polymer plastic, which they call PBTL. According to the announcement, which appeared in the journal Science Advances, PBTL has all of the desirable qualities of current plastics but in the presence of a catalyst PBTL breaks down readily into its original monomers. After testing through multiple build ups and breakdowns the teams concluded that there was no reason that the cycle could not be carried out over and over again, that they have succeeded in developing a plastic that is designed to be recycled.

PBTL in action, being broken down into its component monomers. (Credit: Innovation Toronto)

Of course there is one caveat, in order to make the optimal use of PBTL’s reusability it must be separated not only from non-plastic waste but from all other kinds of plastic. That means more sorting, more manpower required in the recycling effort and that means more cost. What’s needed therefore is some recognizable way to distinguish PBTL from everything else. It would also be helpful if all plastic items were manufactured from PBTL but that may be difficult to accomplish since there are so many plastic manufacturers.

Sorting plastics into their various types is time consuming and expensive, the reason why so little plastic is actually recycled. (Credit: Living on Earth)

Still it is a step in the right direction. With PBTL we now can recycle all of our plastics, if we have the will to do so.

As bad as the problem of plastics is, and even greater threat to our planet must surely be the enormous amounts of CO2 that we have been releasing into the atmosphere. And to make matters worse at the same time we are cutting down the Earth’s forests that are the best way of removing that CO2 from the air. The resulting buildup of greenhouse gasses is the direct cause of global warming and the attendant changes in climate.

Oh human activity can’t be the cause of environmental change, (cough) (cough)!!!! (Credit: Science Alert)
And even as we pour CO2 into the air we are cutting down all of the trees that could absorb it! (Credit: Medical News Today)

So if forests and other vegetation are one way of getting CO2 out of the atmosphere shouldn’t we be planting more trees and other plants. Of course there are people trying to do just that, however those efforts have so far been unable to even keep pace with deforestation let alone bring down the level of greenhouse gasses.

While planting trees to get CO2 out of the air is a good idea it’s only a drop in the bucket. We need to do a lot more! (Credit: American Forests)

So scientists have been trying to develop an ‘Artificial Leaf’ which, like a real leaf, would use sunlight and water to covert CO2 into a usable fuel. Such a technology would mimic photosynthesis and in large scale operations could provide the energy we use reducing if not eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels.

The goal of artificial photosynthesis is to develop a process that will use sunlight to remove CO2 from the air while producing organic fuels. (Credit: ResearchGate)

Some of the most advanced research toward an artificial leaf has come from the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge University where Professor Erwin Reisner leads a team of chemists who last year succeeded in producing a device that converted CO2 into the fuel syngas, a fuel that is not easy to store for long periods of time. Another problem with the device was that it was constructed from materials similar to those in ordinary solar cells, making the device expensive to scale up into a large scale power plant.

Now the team at Cambridge has developed a new artificial leaf that is manufactured on a photocatalyst sheet, a technology that is capable of being scaled up much more easily, and therefore more cheaply. Also the end fuel produced by the new ‘leaf’ is formic acid which is more storable and can be converted directly into hydrogen, as in a hydrogen fuel cell.

University of Cambridge ‘Artificial Leaf’, powered by sunlight it takes CO2 out of the air and produces usable fuel. (Credit: University of Cambridge)

The Cambridge team still has more work ahead of them; the efficiency of the entire system needs to be improved for one thing. However it is quite possible that in just a few years we may have a new form of solar technology that not only produces energy but actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Of course we already have a both solar and wind technologies that are actually producing a sizable fraction of our electricity. One big problem that has limited the usefulness of both solar and wind power is that the energy they generate varies significantly. When it’s a sunny day or if there’s a good breeze they produce a lot of energy that somehow has to be stored so it can be used at night or an a calm day. Most often that energy is stored in old-fashioned chemical batteries, a technology that has hardly improved in the last 100 years.

Alessandro Volta’s original battery. It’s really not that different from the battery in your car. (Credit: Wikipedia)

As any owner of an electric car will tell you batteries absorb their energy slowly, taking a long time to charge up. Not only that but batteries tend to be heavy, costly and have a limited useful lifespan, a very large number of problems for such a critical component in modern technologies. 

One of the biggest drawbacks to owning an electric car is simply the time it takes to charge the batteries. (Credit: Car Magazine)

There is another energy storing electronic device that is cheap, lightweight, can be charged and discharged thousands of times, not only that but they can absorb or discharge their energy very quickly. They are called capacitors, descendents of the old Leyden jar and even if you’ve never heard of them you own hundreds of them in your cell phones, TVs, computers and other electronics. Capacitors, the very name comes from their capacity to store electricity, are superior to chemical batteries in every way except one, they can’t store nearly as much electrical energy as a battery can.

In the 18th Century a Leyden jar, a capacitor was high-tech. (Credit: Wired)

As you might guess there are engineers working on capacitor technologies in the hope of increasing the amount of energy they can store. One such group is working out of Lawrence Berkeley National Labouratories and is headed by Lane Martin, a Professor of Materials Science at the University of California at Berkeley. Taking a common type of commercially available capacitor known as a ‘Thin Film’ capacitor Martin and his associates introduced defects into the material of the thin film known as a ‘relaxor ferroelectric’.

Lane Martin — professor, materials science and engineering (at left). With Karthik Jambunathan, graduate researcher (center); and Vengadesh Mangalam, postdoctoral resercher (at left). (Credit: Phys.org)

Now ferroelectric materials are non-conductive which allows the capacitor to hold positive charges on one side of the film and negative charges on the other, that’s how the energy is stored. The higher the voltage across the thin film the more energy is stored but if the voltage gets too high the film breaks down, the energy is released and the capacitor is destroyed.

Just a sample of the many varieties of film capacitors. (Credit: Wikipedia)

 The engineers at Lawrence hoped that by adding the defects to the thin films they could increase the voltage the capacitor could withstand without breaking down. Doubling the voltage by the way would actually increase the energy stored by a factor of four. The team used an ion beam to bombard the ferroelectric material creating isolated defects in the film and the first results of testing have shown a 50% increase in the capacitor’s efficiency along with a doubling of the energy storage capacity.

Bombarding the ferroelectric films with an ion beam the researchers produced defects that doubled the energy storing ability of the capacitors. (Credit: Phys.org)

As with the other two new inventions described in this post, capacitors that can store twice as much energy are not going to solve all of our environmental problems, but they’ll help. That’s the takeaway from all of technology developments I’ve discussed; each one is a step towards solving our energy and pollution problems. We have the scientists who can find the solutions, do we have the will to use their work and save our planet before it’s too late?

Paleontological News for August 2020.

Like ever other science paleontology began with big discoveries, the existence of the dinosaurs would be one example. As time passed paleontologists began to fill in a few of the big details, such as the fact that some dinosaurs walked on two legs. As more and better preserved specimens were unearthed more and finer details were uncovered, like the fact that some dinosaurs actually had a covering of fine feathers to help keep them warm. Finding the kind of pristine fossils needed to fill in those gaps in our knowledge however requires a lot of patience, hard work and let’s be honest, luck.

Yes. the evidence is becoming clear that the famous T rex probably had a light coating of feathers to help keep it warm! (Credit: Animals / How Stuff Works)

Some of the best preserved fossils in recent years have come from amber deposits in the country of Myanmar, see my posts of 16 December 2016 and 1 June 2019. Now a new study in the journal ‘Current Biology’ by scientists at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the University of Rennes in France and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology has announced the discovery of a new fossil from Myanmar that answers a lot of questions about a unique group of extinct insects known as ‘Hell-ants’.

Drawing of a Hell Ant. Did those piercing jaws move up and down? (Credit: Live Science)

In the fossil record hell ants are one of the earliest known groups of ants, with 14 different known species from the Cretaceous period they appear to have become totally extinct in the same disaster that killed off the dinosaurs. Recognizing a hell ant is quite easy, they all have two very sharp, dagger like mandibles extending out and curving upwards from their lower jaw. In addition most species have a horn like structure at the top of their heads. The whole configuration strongly suggests that the hell ants attacked their prey by sweeping it up in the dagger like mandibles, trapping it against the horn structure.

The evolutionary ‘clade’ of ants. Hell Ant heads are the top row while living ants occupy the lower two rows. (Credit: NJIT News)

There’s a problem with that idea however, those ants who exist today, like virtually all insects have mouth parts that move, not up and down as ours do but horizontally. That’s one of the reasons why close up movies of insects look so icky,  their mouth parts move side to side. The idea that hell ants somehow moved their jaws upward was quite controversial, many paleontologists refused to believe it until they saw it.

The jaws of all modern ants, like the one in this close up image, move side to side not up and down as did the Hell Ant’s. (Credit: Fine Art America)

Well they believe it now, for a piece of amber from Myanmar has recently been discovered that encases a hell ant caught in the act of attacking its prey. Looking at the image below it is obvious that the Hell Ant, a new species that has been give the name Ceratomyrex ellenbergeri has grabbed its victim, an immature specimen of an ancient relative of cockroaches called Caputoraptor elegans from beneath with those dagger like mandibles. Capturing it in a fashion that could only be accomplished if those mandibles could move up and down.

The actual fossil of the Hell Ant attack is on the left. On the right is an artist’s impression for clarity. (Credit: USA Today)

Fossils like the hell ant from Myanmar, that answer specific questions are of course rare, even the best researchers can spend years of their career looking for one. Just as often scientists can make discoveries by using the newest, latest technology to examine fossils in new ways to answer important questions about the history of life.

One such question deals with the first appearance of the sense of sight in the fossil record, the first animals to have eyes. While paleontologists agree that the compound eye of the ancient arthropods called trilobites were the first eyes to evolve there are still many questions about that eye. How exactly did it function and was it as advanced as the compound eye of modern arthropods like insects or crustaceans? In other words how good was the vision of a trilobite?

The compound eyes of the trilobites were the eyes to evolve. (Credit: Littlefoot’s Anthro Blog)

Now paleontologists at the University of Cologne and the University of Edinburgh have employed a high-tech digital microscope to examine the eye of a particularly well preserved specimen of a 429 million year old trilobite Aulacopleura kionickii from the Czech Republic. What the scientists found was that the trilobite’s eye was constructed from a honeycomb structure of 200 cells with each cell having its own lens and providing the animal with one pixel of information. The vision of a 430 million year old animal was therefore equivalent to a modern digital image with 200 pixels, vague and imprecise but still the best in the world at that time.

The actual trilobite fossil used in the study by Cologne and Edinburgh Universities. (Credit: Phys.Org)

Such an eye is also virtually identical to that of a modern bee or dragonfly, the only difference being the number of cells, a dragonfly’s compound eye for instance can have as many as 30,000 cells. The fact that the arthropod eye has remained so stable for so long is a testament to both the simplicity and versatility of the compound eye but also to the conservatism of evolution. If you have an organ that is doing a job quite well it can exist for many millions of years with only superficial changes.

As a final example of how, if you wait long enough the fossil record will provide amazing evidence of how creatures lived long ago a recent fossil of an ichthyosaur was unearthed in China with the remains of its last meal still recognizable in its stomach. Now ichthyosaurs were aquatic reptiles who lived during the age of the dinosaurs, see my posts of 28 October 2017 and 18 April 2018, and the fossil ichthyosaur found in China was dated to about 200 million years ago.

Ichthyosaurs (top) swimming with one of their usual prey ammonites
The actual fossil ichthyosaur. The bump in the middle of the fossil is its last meal still recognizable. (Credit: Yahoo)

According to the paper published in the journal iScience the skeleton of the ichthyosaur, a member of the genus Guizhouichthyosaurs was nearly complete and measured about 5 meters in length. The big surprise was inside however, the partial skeleton of another marine reptile known as a thalattosaur.

In life the thalattosaur would have been about 4 meters in length making this find the earliest known example of one large predator feeding on another. Although the thalattosaur’s head and tail were missing the rest of the skeleton was intact, the four limbs still connected to the body. Although the researchers cannot be certain they consider the intact condition of the body to be evidence that what they have discovered is a case of predation, not scavenging. In either case it is a remarkable find, two fossils for the price of one telling a story from long ago.

The ichthyosaur shown with the thalattosaur for comparison. Only the middle section of the thalattosaur was consumed by the ichthyosaur. (Credit: Daily Mail)

Bit by bit paleontologists are filling in the gaps in our knowledge of the history of life here on Earth. Using the trilobite’s eye as a metaphor our image of the past started out with only a small number of pixels, vague and imprecise. Each new fossil discovery adds one more pixel to that image and while we may not yet have reached the level of high-definition our view of the past is becoming clearer all the time.

Gelatin and pectin, what are they, how do they work and how are they different?

Many of the foods that we buy in the supermarket are made more appetizing and longer lasting by the addition of a thickening agent to give them more body and volume. Thickeners work by increasing the viscosity of a liquid, normally without altering their taste or colour and one of the most common forms of thickening agents is known as a Gel. In chemistry a gel is defined as a liquid contained within a cross-linked solid network of molecules by surface tension that prevents the liquid from being able to flow. In some respects a gel acts almost like a sponge, a lattice of fibers that holds in a liquid.

Making Jams and Jellies at home is a popular hobby, one that requires the use of pectin! (Credit: Amazon.com)
Gelatins, on the other hand, are thickened by gelatin. (Credit: Dr. Oetker shop)

Commercially the two most common types of gels are pectin and gelatin, from which the word gel is derived. Both pectin and gelatin form their cross linked network from long chains of molecules, technically called a polymer. The primary difference between the two chemicals being that in pectin the chains are made up of sugar molecules while in gelatin they are composed of proteins. Those differences stem from the sources of the two classes of chemicals with pectin being derived from plant tissue while gelatin is produced from animal tissue.

Whether you’re talking about a sugar or a protein, this is a protein, you’re describing an extremely complex molecule formed as a chain of smaller molecules. (Credit: Biochemantics)

In plants pectin consists of a large number of compounds derived from sugars, technically polysaccharides, which serve as structural components in the cell wall. Pectin serves to not only strengthen the cell walls of the non-woody parts of plants but also allows for cell growth while at the same time holding plant cells together. The softening of fruit as it ripens is caused by the breakdown of pectin through the action of enzymes, as is the rotting of the leaves of deciduous trees.

Fruit becomes overripe when the pectin in the cell walls begins to break down. (Credit: Women’s Health)

Historically pectin has been used in food production for many centuries, just how many is not precisely known. However it was in 1825 that chemist Henri Braconnot first succeeded in isolating Pectin. Although pectin can be obtained from numerous fruits and vegetables modern commercial production of pectin is primarily derived from the peels of citrus fruits.

Today pectin is commercially produced from the peels of citrus fruit, (Credit: NDTV Food)

Pectin is perhaps best known in food preparation for the production of jellies and jams, indeed without pectin your favourite jelly would be nothing but a sweet juice. In addition to jellies pectin is also used to provide a bit of substance in low fat baked goods and health drinks. Being both colourless and tasteless Pectin does not interfere with the natural appearance or flavour of the food it is adding body to.

Raw pectin ready to be used. When dissolved in a sweet juice pectin has neither a taste nor colour. (Credit: Wikipedia)

Pectin is also frequently used in non-food products, being added to cosmetics and drugs such as in time-release drug capsules. In fact the increase in viscosity and volume provided by pectin have led to it being prescribed as a medication for constipation and diarrhea.

As mentioned earlier, unlike pectin gelatins are produced from animal parts, specifically protein collagens obtained from the hooves, bones and skins of pigs and cows. Despite being chemically so different from pectin gelatin behaves in much the same fashion and is often used in much the same way.

Raw gelatin can come in crystal form as shown here or as cubes of even sheets to be dissolved in water. (Credit: Alibaba.com)

Everyone is familiar with Jell-O, the brand name for fruit flavoured gelatin desserts. Other food products that obtain their firmness from gelatin include marshmallows, gummy candies, ice cream, cream cheese and even margarine. Like pectin, gelatin has no taste or colour and can be added to almost any food in order to give it some firmness without altering the flavour or appearance.

There’s always room for Jell-O. Sorry I just had to say that once. (Credit: Amazon.com)

Gelatin also has a large number of non-food uses including a variety of glues and other adhesives. In photographic film gelatin is by far the most commonly used material for holding the silver halide crystals onto the photographic paper. Other uses include the capsules of some powdered drugs as well as the binder for matches and sandpaper. Ballistics gelatin is commonly used in measuring the performance of firearms and their projectiles.

The chemicals that react to light are held onto photographic film by gelatin! (Credit: Wiki-Camera)
Ballistics Gel, made from gelatin, is used in the testing of firearms because its density and thickness is very close to that of animal flesh. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The earliest known uses of gelatin come from 15th century England where the hooves of cows were boiled to obtain gelatin. Modern gelatin production comes the hides of both pork and cows (75%) or their bones (25%) although some cooks still produce their own gelatin at home from animal bones and cuts of meat containing a good deal of cartilage.

Because it is made from animals the consumption of gelatin by some people may be taboo for religious or ethical reasons. Jews and Moslems are forbidden from eating gelatin made from pork while Hindus are forbidden from eating gelatin made from cows. A vegan of course would refuse to consume gelatin of any kind. Pectin on the other hand, being produced from plants doesn’t raise any such moral conflicts.

Almost everyone has some kind of food they will not eat but many religions require people to refrain from certain foods. (Credit: Slide Player)

Subjective opinions aside, pectin and gelatin are two very different classes of chemicals that nevertheless are used in very similar ways in the production of food. Providing another reminder that cooking is really just chemistry.

Meteorologists update their estimate for the 2020 Hurricane season. Hold onto your hat, stormy weather’s a headin’ our way.

It was only three months ago, 27May2020, that I published a post discussing how the 2020 hurricane season was shaping up to be a very active one. The official estimates at that time from both Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project and the National Oceanographic and Atmospherics Administration (NOAA) were predicting around 15-20 named storms with 8-10 becoming hurricanes and 3-5 turning into major hurricanes.

Beautiful but deadly. Hurricane Florence in 2018 as seen from Earth orbit. (Credit: Spectrum News)

Those predictions have already been proven to be conservative. We are still not through August and there have already been 12 tropical storms, five of which have developed into hurricanes. As I write these words Tropical Storm Marco, downgraded from a Cat1 hurricane, has battering the state of Louisiana while hurricane Laura, just upgraded to Cat3, is headed for almost the exact same area of the gulf coast. And the next month and a half is usually the busiest part of the Atlantic hurricane season.

Even as Marco (upper left) dumps rain on the Gulf States Laura is headed towards the very same region for a one-two punch that’s unprecedented. (Credit: CNN.com)

It’s not surprising therefore that the same institutes that made those predictions three months ago have reevaluated their estimates and are now publishing the most dire forecast in the history of hurricane studies. The meteorological team at Colorado State University now estimates that the 2020 hurricane season will consist of 24 named tropical storms of which 12 are likely to become hurricanes with 5 developing into major hurricanes.

If that forecast turns out to be accurate it would make the 2020 season the second most active in recorded history, surpassed only by the 2005 season which saw 28 named storms, including hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. And since hurricane forecasters only select 21 names for storms each year, the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used to name storms, if there are 24 named storms meteorologists will be forced to use Greek letters to identify the last three instead of names, again something that has only ever happened once back in 2005.

So why is this year already so active, and what conditions are the meteorologists seeing that made them redo their forecasts. Well one factor that often inhibits the formation of hurricanes is a strong El Niño in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The strong winds developed by El Niño can produce wind shear that disperse low pressure systems in the Atlantic before they can even develop into tropical storms. This year however there is absolutely no trace of El Niño, a condition that will allow storms to grow unchecked.

A strong El Nino in the Pacific sends winds into the Atlantic that can break up hurricane’s before they become dangerous. There is no El Nino this year. (Credit: NOAA)

At the same time low-pressure systems moving westward off of North Africa are stronger than usual because of exceptional rainfall amounts in the Sahel region of Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Congo rainforest. This region generates almost 90% of the low-pressure systems that develop into tropical Atlantic storms and this year the excess rainfall is making them particularly intense.

Pressure waves moving west off of the Sahel region of North Africa often grow into Atlantic hurricanes. Sahel waves are especially strong this year. (Credit: The Weather Channel)
Those pressure waves often become the seeds that turn into deadly hurricanes like Laura! (Credit: The Weather Channel)

But of course the biggest factor in generating tropical storms is simply the temperature of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico both of which are at or even beyond historic levels. Warm tropical waters evaporate more quickly, putting not only more water but more energy into those low-pressure systems coming from Africa, leading to more, and more powerful storms. 

Surface water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is becoming higher every year thanks to Global Warming! This increase in energy is reflected in more and more powerful Gulf hurricanes. (Credit: ResearchGate)

And what is it that’s making the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf warmer than ever observed before? Well if you haven’t already guessed Global Warming where have you been the last 20 years? Seriously the conditions caused by our continued, reckless emissions of carbon dioxide have grown beyond the point of causing ‘Slightly Higher Averages’ so that now nearly every year is noticeably hotter they were just 20 years ago.

This increase is occurring both globally and locally. For example, here in Philadelphia this past winter we had a very warm winter with no snow accumulation at all and right now we are enduring our 34nd day of +32ºC (+90º F) temperatures, our average is 22 days. The entire west coast of the US is currently suffering through a heat wave on a scale never seen before, hundreds of all time high records are expected to be broken while the wild fire season is already turning out to be especially destructive. In fact the National Weather Service has for the first time ever issued a warning for ‘Fire-Nadoes’, tornadoes generated by the extreme winds in a massive. Meanwhile the temperature in Death Valley was recently measured at 54.4ºC (130º F), the highest reliably recorded temperature ever in the entire world.

This summer in Philadelphia has been excessively hot, with stronger than normal storms added in. (Credit: 6ABC)
Meanwhile the western US is suffering under an historic heat wave. (Credit: CBS News)

Globally last year, 2019 was the second hottest ever recorded, coming in only slightly below 2016. In fact according to NOAA 9 out of the ten hottest years ever recorded have come in the last 15 years. A team of climatologists working in Greenland have recently announced that, in their opinion the glaciers there are beyond the point of no return. 

Greenland is melting while we watch, and all of that water is rising sea levels! (Credit: YouTube)

So I guess the question is how much more destruction is the environment going to have to cause before we’ll finally start to pay attention. Personally I’m beginning to fear that even a disaster on the scale of the sinking of Miami might not be enough, after all Katrina and New Orleans in 2005 weren’t. Currently millions of Americans are doing everything they can to ignore the worst epidemic to hit this country in 100 years. I’m almost certain they can find excuses to keep on ignoring climate change even as it’s blowing down their homes!