Around about the year 2200 humanity will once again be doing its level best to destroy itself. The environment is poisoned, civilization is in ruins and ideological wars are everywhere. It’s against this background that the starship, colony ship Arkhangelsk departs Earth on a mission to colonize the star system 974-33, a mission to try to save something of the human race. Arkhangelsk is one of those multi-generational ships whose original crew will never live to complete their 200 year long voyage, it will be up to their descendents to complete the mission by establishing a colony in system 974-33.
Interstellar ‘Arks’ like this one from Arthur C. Clarkes’ ‘Rendezvous with Rama’ are huge spaceships in which human beings will live for generations in order to be able to travel the enormous distances between the stars. Arriving at their destination the crew, all born on the ship during the journey, will colonize the planets circling another sun. (Credit: Medium)
That’s the history behind the novel ‘Arkhangelsk’ by author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. As the story begins the people of the city of Novayarkha are the descendents of the crew of the Arkhangelsk. The city itself was built from the various sections of the starship Arkhangelsk, and with no contact with Earth for over 400 years the citizens of Novayarkha believe themselves to be the last remaining humans anywhere, and they are struggling to survive.
What if we humans established bases or colonies on other planets and then destroyed ourselves back here on Earth? How would those last remaining humans react? (Credit: Lifehacker)
You see the only ‘habitable’ planet in system 974-33 is hardly a paradise. The atmosphere is too thin, and contains traces of poisonous gasses as well, while the planet’s surface is a mixture of rock and ice. Even worse, the planet’s thin atmosphere and weak magnetic field provide little shielding from cosmic radiation. Add to that the fact that the builders of Novayarkha needed the Arkhangelsk’s reactor to provide power for the city and they placed that reactor too close to the city, increasing the background radiation level.
An Ice World orbiting the star 974-33 is the setting of ‘Arkhangelsk’ by author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. (Credit: Amazon)Author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel. (Credit: Facebook)
It’s no wonder therefore that Novayarkha has both a high infant mortality rate and a high incidence of cancer. Another persistent problem is a high suicide rate; a lot of people seem to just walk away from the city to die in the ice. One last problem for the people of Novayarkha are the exiles, descendents of a group that rebelled when the city was being founded and who now occasionally raid Novayarkha to steal supplies. All in all the last remnants of humanity may not last too much longer themselves.
Everybody knows that nuclear reactors produce quite a bit of harmful radiation. So why did the inhabitants of Novayarkha put one in the middle of their city??? (Credit: Wikipedia)
Except the people of Novayarkha are not the last human beings in the Universe. Back on Earth people somehow managed to muddle through their difficulties and although not all of the problems have been solved humanity is once again pushing out, once more exploring the Universe. As the starship Hypatia enters system 974-33 both groups of humans are astonished to find each other, and are wary of how the other side will react.
Sometimes referred to as the ‘Last Pagan’ Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician and philosopher who was murdered by a mob of christians in the name of their god. (Credit: What is Social Studies?)
Hypatia is not a colony ship, rather her mission is to construct a faster than light (FTL) transceiver network in system 974-33 to assist other Earth vessels as they explore this sector of the galaxy. However Hypatia is not in very good shape either. As the starship was coming out of one of its hyperspatial jumps it collided with an asteroid killing most of her crew and destroying a good part of the ship.
Like the people of Novayarkha the crew of the Hypatia are in need of some help. Can these two groups work together for their mutual benefit? (Credit: X)
I’m certain that you can see plot here. Both groups of humans need each other but neither group really trusts the other, after all there’s been no contact between these two branches of humanity for over 400 years. The story is very much an allegory on how much more successful we humans are when we do work together.
Trust is always a key ingredient to working together. (Credit: LinkedIn)
There’s a darker undercurrent in ‘Arkhangelsk’ as well however for the city of Novayarkha holds sinister secrets, secrets that it’s authoritarian rulers would prefer to keep from their people. So another ethical problem illustrated in the novel is the struggle between the individual and society.
Finding the right balance between the rights of the Individual and the needs of Society has been a never-ending problem in Civilization. (Credit: Young Leaders for Legal Literacy Foundation)
I do have one problem with ‘Arkhangelsk’ and that is a problem I have nowadays with a lot of SF novels, too much filler. The modern publishing business seems to feel that novels have to be 400 or more pages in order to convince their customers that it’s worth paying $12-$20 dollars for a book. That means that an author has to add in a lot of stuff that isn’t important to the plot and really isn’t interesting. ‘Arkhangelsk’ suffers a bit from this problem as it could use a good editing to remove some of the less interesting material.
Edit, edit and then edit some more. Even the best novel can still use a little bit more editing! (Credit: BookBaby)
But ‘Arkhangelsk’ is interesting; it is a good take on the old theme of two very different cultures colliding, with all the conflicts and opportunities that entails. If you like those novels that tell stories about humanity traveling to and colonizing the stars you will enjoy, ‘Arkhangelsk’.
The Nobel Prizes for Physiology, Physics and Chemistry were announced over the week of the 7th of October and while the prizes aren’t supposed to have any kind of ‘theme’ to them this year the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) stood out as being of great importance. Not only were the physics and chemistry prizes awarded for work in developing or utilizing AI but several of the recipients warned about the dangers that uncontrolled AI are already having in our society.
Every day Artificial Intelligence is playing a bigger role in our daily lives. We can only guess what the future holds. (Credit: The Motley Fool)
But I’ll begin with the award for physiology or medicine because it was announced first and because AI played no role in the work for which it was honoured. The recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology are Victor Ambros of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and Gary Ruvkun of Harvard Medical School. These two men were honoured for their discovery of microRNA along with how it functions in the cells of living creatures.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work in discovering MicroRNA. (Credit: X)
Let me take just a moment here to discuss the difference between DNA and RNA and how those differences are used in cells before I discuss why microRNA is so important. Both kinds of Nucleic Acids are composed of long chains of sugars; in RNA the sugar is called ribose while in DNA it is deoxyribose, which is just ribose without one oxygen atom. Attached to those long chains of sugars are nucleotide groups, adenine, thiamine, guanine and cytosine, A, T, G, and C for short. All life on this planet uses the sequence of the A, T, G, and Cs as a code for how to build a living creature, the famous genetic code.
Only a single oxygen atom, bottom right, makes a world of difference between the sugar Ribose and Deoxyribose. (Credit: Adobe Stock)
I remember back in the 1960s reading Isaac Asimov’s book ‘The Genetic Code’ in high school and at that time biologists didn’t know why living cells used DNA to store that code in their nucleus rather than RNA. It turned out that DNA is a more stable chemical than RNA, although both are actually very fragile chemicals, so DNA is used to store the genetic code long term.
The famous ‘Double Helix’ of DNA stores the code by which all living things are made. (Credit: Shutterstock)
It was also discovered however that cells used RNA to send information from the nucleus to those parts of the cell that need it in order to build proteins because it is less stable and can therefore be reused more easily. This is the famous messenger RNA or mRNA that is used in our Covid-19 vaccines and for which last year’s Nobel prizes in physiology were awarded.
To build a protein the DNA molecule builds a molecule of messenger RNA which then travels into where the protein is needed and manufactures it. (Credit: Deltec Bank)
So then what is microRNA? Well if messengerRNA is made up of thousands of nuclides in order to build a protein, microRNA has only a few dozen nuclides and it acts as the ON and OFF switches for the building of those proteins. In other words microRNA regulates how much of the various proteins our cells build. Thanks to the work of Drs. Ambros and Ruvkun we have taken one more step, and an important one, in our understanding of how life works!
If Messenger RNA contains the code to build a protein, then it’s the Micro RNA that turns on or turns off the process of building that protein! (Credit: Jacek Krol et al)
As I said above both this year’s Physics and Chemistry prizes deal with Artificial Intelligence (AI), a connection illustrating just how important AI has become to nearly every field of science, along with a growing importance in our daily lives. This year’s Physics Nobel Prizes were awarded to John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto for their work in the development of artificial neural networks that enabled computers to learn how to do things in a fashion very similar to the way we learn how to do things! What is known as machine learning.
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics went to John Hopfield (l) and Geoffrey Hinton (r) for the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). (Credit: Thereporteronline)
As important as those advancements are Doctor Hinton, who has been christened ‘the godfather of AI’ stole something of the spotlight by taking the opportunity to warn about the growing danger of unregulated AI in our society. “It will be comparable with the Industrial Revolution,” he cautioned. “Instead of exceeding people in physical strength, it’s going to exceed people in intellectual ability. we have no experience of what it’s like to have things smarter than us.” At the same time however Dr. Hinton also pointed out the enormous benefits that AI could bring in terms of increased productivity and economic efficiencies, again similar to the developments of the industrial revolution.
The real danger is what we can’t imagine at present. We’re entering a new world and what lies ahead is unknown, and the unknown is always a danger! (Credit: DataFlair)
So if this year’s Nobel in Physics were given to the scientists that led the way in the development of Artificial Intelligence then the Chemistry prize was given for utilizing AI. this year’s chemistry prize was given to David Baker of the University of Washington along with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper both of whom work at the DeepMind project a division of the Google Corporation.
The winners of this year’s Chemistry prize are David Baker (l), Demis Hassabis (m), and John Jumper for their work on developing AI tools to study proteins. (Credit: Chemistry World)Are we certain that we want a tool as powerful as AI to be in the hands of a corporation. We need our governments to start of process for regulating AI so that it’s used in the public, not private interest. (Credit: Reuters)
The awarding of a Nobel to a researcher from a private corporation is not all that unusual. Bell Labs, when it was a division of Bell Telephone Corporation received quite a few Nobels, as have chemical and pharmaceutical companies. I do believe however that this is the first time that a software / internet company has received a Nobel.
Researchers at Bell Labs received several Nobel Prizes, most notably for the invention of the transistor. 2024 is the first time that employees at a that a software company have received a Nobel, but probably not the last. (Credit: Computer History Museum)
All three of the recipient’s work dealt with applying machine learning techniques in order to better understand proteins. Proteins, which are constructed from long chains of about two dozen compounds known as amino acids, are the building blocks from which cells are made and are also involved in virtually all the chemical reactions that make up the cell’s metabolism. There are literally millions of different known proteins and it’s not just their chemical formula that determines how they behave but their shape as well. You see those long chains of amino acids bend and loop around on themselves forming complex three dimensional shapes that are often more important to a protein’s function than the atoms of which they are composed.
With Proteins it’s often the shape, more than the chemical formula, that determines its function. Here are just a few of the infinite number of shapes proteins can make. (Credit: BioRender.com)
Calculating the shapes of proteins used to take years but in 2020 Doctors Hassabis and Jumper released AlphaFold an AI that can calculate the shape of a protein in hours or even minutes. Thanks to this program researchers around the world are developing new medicines as well as proteins that may be able to break down plastics into materials that can be more easily recycled.
As more and more plastic waste gets into the environment the danger of microplastics getting into us grows. The work of Doctors Hassabis and Jumper may help to solve this problem. (Credit: IUCN)
Doctor Baker, who recently began using the AlphaFold Program in his own research, went further in developing a new class of proteins unlike any seen in nature. These new proteins have already been used in the development of new medicines and vaccines but there is also the possibility that they may find usage in the fields of nanomaterials and microscopic sensors.
The idea of using proteins as micro sensors is still just science fiction, but then AI itself was just science fiction 20 years ago. (Credit: Biofisica)
The pioneering work of Doctors Hopfield and Hinton, along with Baker, Hassabis and Jumper illustrate how computers, and especially the new Artificial Intelligences, are playing an ever greater part in the world of science. Together with Doctors Ambros and Ruvkun they are this year’s Nobel laureates in the sciences.
In my previous post I recited a long and frankly depressing tale of weather disasters that have occurred around the world this past year. The cause of this extreme weather is the fact that our planet’s temperature has reached the 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels due to global warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades. I could have gone on, I could have mentioned the droughts that are spreading across northern Africa, or the melting glaciers in the Himalayas. Surely anyone who isn’t convinced of the reality of climate change has simply made up their minds to ignore the evidence.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Our Earth is getting hotter and we’re the cause. (Credit: Berkeley Earth)
So what have the various world governments done to try to eliminate, or at the very least reduce CO2 emissions? In particular in this election year, what has the US government done to mitigate global warming?
The nations of the European Union (EU) have managed to get their CO2 emissions under control. Why are we here in the US doing so little to solve this problem. (Credit: European Parliament)
Well, while he was President Trump did exactly nothing. Indeed, whereas most climate deniers like Ted Cruse or right wing Think Tanks have decided to lower their rhetoric and just oppose climate action more quietly, Trump has continued to claim without evidence that global warming is a “Chinese Hoax”. His numerous other falsehoods include claims that wind turbines and solar arrays cause cancer, again assertions without any evidence. Based upon these fictions throughout his term of office Trump strongly opposed any and all policies to fight global warming.
If Climate Change is just ‘a Chinese Hoax’ then why is China spending more than three times as much on renewable ‘Green Energy’ as we are? Did they fall for their own hoax or is Trump just a liar? (Credit: WeBuildValue)
President Biden on the other hand has boasted about his efforts to combat climate change. Those efforts have come mostly in the form of his signature ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ which was originally, and more accurately named the ‘Build Back Better’ act. In that legislation $663 billion were earmarked toward incentives for the development of wind and solar power farms while at the same time providing $521 million in funding for the installation of 9,200 charging stations for electronic cars. The money spent by the IRA represents the largest effort to combat climate change in US history and has been projected to reduce carbon emissions by the US to 40% below those in the year 2005.
How the IRA invests in green energy. The energy we derive from solar and wind requires an investment but once it’s paid for the energy is all free!! (Credit: Evergreen Action)
Unfortunately, even while working hard to increase the amount of energy the US produces by renewable sources Biden has also helped the petroleum industry increase its production. So much so that currently the US is again the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas, more barrels per day than ever in history. Biden did this primarily to lower gas prices and thereby reduce inflation but those cheap gas prices also make old fashion CO2 emitting cars look more attractive than Electric Vehicles (EVs), increasing emissions and therefore contributing to global warming.
For Biden inflation has been a more immediate problem than Global Warming and since gas prices effect the cost of almost everything, he worked hard to bring the price of gas down by increasing oil production! (Credit: Stanford Report – Stanford University)
So what are the proposed policies that Trump and Harris are offering to implement if they become president. Well, it’s easy to tell what Trump will do; he still insists that climate change is a hoax, despite the mountains of evidence. Because of that he has no plans to do anything to reduce our country’s CO2 emissions. Indeed, Trump promises his supporters he will “Drill baby Drill” in order to lower gas prices even further as a way to spur the economy. However it is worth noting that the oil companies will probably not want to work harder to produce more oil, which will lower gas prices further so that they actually get fewer profits. So Trump’s energy plans may actually be perversely opposed by the oil industry!
If you think about it gas companies don’t really want gas to be too cheap. After all it costs them a certain amount to get the oil from the ground, then it has to be refined before it can be shipped to your local gas station. All that costs money so if gas is too cheap the oil companies can’t make a profit no matter how much we “Drill Baby Drill”. (Credit: NPR)
Kamala Harris’ plans for mitigating climate change are harder to discern. During her time as a senator from California Harris was always in the forefront of the fight against climate change, supporting any and all legislation that would reduce CO2 emissions. As Vice-President Harris cast the tie breaking vote that got the IRA passed. At the same time however she has had to be a team player in the Biden administration so she also supported Biden’s efforts to increase oil and gas production.
In order to get elected Kamala Harris has had to shift her position on fracking. An object lesson on how politics can get in the way of doing what’s actually necessary! (Credit: YouTube)
As a candidate for President Harris has had to trod an even trickier path because she needs votes from oil and gas producing states. So on the campaign trail she has usually talked more about increasing the amount of energy we get from solar and wind rather than talking about reducing the amount of energy we get from oil and natural gas.
The democrats would prefer to talk about growing more ‘green energy’ rather than discuss getting rid of oil and natural gas. That may not be possible. (Credit: EnTech Solutions)
This is particularly true in my home state of Pennsylvania where the process of fracking provides many jobs and a great deal of money to areas that were hard hit by the manufacturing exodus of the 1990s. Pennsylvania is also the biggest of the ‘swing states’ and many pundits are predicting that whoever wins Pennsylvania will become the next President so its understandable that Harris would rather not talk about opposing fracking.
Fracking for natural gas is a big business in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It also causes health problems, pollutes the environment and of course leads to the emission of large amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. (Credit: Maps on the Web)
Fracking is controversial not only because it rejuvenates old used up oil wells but because it produces a lot more environmental damage than normal oil and gas drilling does. In fact fracking has actually been definitely linked with generating earthquakes thanks to the damage it does to rock strata deep underground. See my post of 12 August 2017.
The State of Oklahoma never had earthquakes, it’s one of the most geologically stable places on Earth. Or at least it used to be before we started fracking! (Credit: Washington Post)
One thing that can be said for certain is that Harris will continue Biden’s policies of investing in renewable energy production. Whether that effort will be enough is doubtful, and remember any large climate change action she proposes will have to get through a congress that over the last decade or more has been unable to come to an agreement on much of anything.
Partisanship, postering and just outright distrust have made it impossible for our congress to get anything done. (Credit: Pew Research Center)
So there you have it, the need for action by the US government to reduce our nation’s CO2 emissions is clear. The entire world is tittering on the brink of extreme weather conditions never before seen in human history so every nation must reduce their emissions. What’s not so clear is what our candidates can or will do to prevent such an eventuality. Kamala Harris at least can be counted upon to try to fight climate change while Trump blindly refuses to see the danger coming right at us.
As we here in the US approach our Presidential election I have decided to take several posts to discuss the issues from something of a scientific viewpoint. To that end I spent the last three posts reviewing the state of our economy and the plans of the two major party candidates for dealing with the economy.
In every Election it seems that the State of the Economy is the most important Issue that Voters care about. But ask yourself this, how good can our Economy be if we destroy the Environment we live in? (Credit: Investopedia)
In this and my next post I will be discussing the environment and climate change in particular and again the plans that both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have for dealing with the environment and the growing threat of climate change. In today’s post I will review the current state of environmental issues in the US with an emphasis on climate change and steps that are being taken to contain it.
If this is the price of a strong economy, is it really worth it? (Credit: The Green Page)
Last year, in 2023 the world experienced the hottest year ever recorded. Strengthened by the Pacific weather phenomenon of El Nino the world’s average temperature came so close to the 1.5º Celsius that scientists have been warning us about for decades that we may just as well as reached it. 2024 hasn’t been any better; in fact the first seven months of the year were each the hottest of that month ever recorded. In other words, February of 2024 was the hottest February ever, April the hottest April ever and so on until July, which was the hottest month of any kind, ever. Indeed, it was on July 21st of 2024 that the Earth’s hottest ever temperature was recorded, beating a record set just the day before.
It’s not a joke anymore. The world is getting hotter and we’re the cause. Things are only going to get worse if we don’t fix the problem. (Credit: The Weather Channel)
Locally high temperature records throughout the United States have been shattered. Phoenix, Arizona for example has endured a staggering 113 consecutive days of temperatures above 100ºF (37.8ºC). Las Vegas, Palm Springs and many other southwestern cities also saw record shattering, long duration heat waves. Indeed the record heat pressed as far north as Oregon and Montana. So the last two years have been the hottest years ever measured and in fact the ten hottest years ever recorded have all been in the last ten years, a trend that shows no sign of abating, indeed there is every reason to expect global warming to continue for as long as we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
One Hundred and Thirteen consecutive days of temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. How can anybody live in that? (Credit: The Weather Channel)
As a consequence of this historic heat the death toll due to heat related causes has also risen. Meanwhile that extreme heat has also contributed to the massive wildfires have been raging across the western parts of both the US and Canada.
Wildfires are raging around the world adding even more CO2 to that which we are dumping into the atmosphere. (Credit: Inside Climate News)
The eastern US hasn’t been spared either with massive outbreaks of tornadoes throughout the spring ranging from Texas and Oklahoma to Georgia in the south and up into Ohio and Indiana. Then, even as tornado season was easing the tropics began to stir bringing first hurricane Beryl to devastate Louisiana then a succession of tropic systems including hurricane Helene that spread destruction from Florida’s gulf coast right up into North Carolina and beyond. Florida’s ‘Big Bend’ region has seen three strong hurricanes in just the last two years causing so much devastation that the people living along the coast haven’t had enough time to recover from one storm before the next hits them. Even as I write these words Hurricane Milton is approaching the Florida coast as a Category 5, another major hurricane that will surely cause enormous damage to areas still recovering from Helene.
By the time you read this Hurricane Milton will have slammed into Florida. The full extent of the destruction won’t be known for days but this is the third hurricane to hit Florida this year! (Credit: NBC Chicago)
Additionally, even as the damage caused by Helene is still being assessed it is clear that the western portion of North Carolina suffered some of the worst devastation. That is despite North Carolina’s being more than 700 kilometers from the part of Florida where the storm came ashore. Clearly the stronger hurricanes and tropical storms that are now being generated by global warming are a threat to communities farther inland than ever before.
Half of the roads in an entire state are closed, many suffered severe damage that could take years to completely repair. All told the destruction caused by Helene is estimated at more than 47 billion dollars. It’s the destruction caused by Climate Change that is the real threat to our Economy! (Credit: The Weather Channel)
Despite all their violence the occasional storm to hit coastal communities only highlights the ever increasing threat from sea level rise. Along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida and then around the gulf to Texas land is disappearing and taking homes, often very expensive homes, with it. Cities like Miami, Charleston and Galveston are seeing entire neighborhoods flooded during so-called ‘King Tides’. The state in greatest danger however is Louisiana where it is estimated that one football field’s worth of land is being lost every hour.
Even before hurricane Helene came ashore the town of Cedar Key Florida experienced periodic flooding caused by rising sea levels! (Credit: The weather Channel)Beachfront homes, often very expensive homes are being washed into the sea due to rising sea levels. (Credit: Sky News)
Such tides are also turning the groundwater beneath coastal neighborhoods salty and therefore undrinkable. Meanwhile septic systems in the tidewater region of Virginia and parts of Florida are overflowing as sea water again permeates the ground.
Septic Systems in many coastal communities from Florida to Virginia are failing and overflowing due to rising ground water levels caused by sea level rise! (Credit: Lyttle Company)
All of this damage to property is causing insurance companies to raise their rates for homeowner’s insurance. That’s if you can find an insurance company willing to insure your home, thousands of homes along the US gulf coast are now considered to be uninsurable. The same is also true for many homes in California and Oregon but out west it’s because of wildfires, not flooding.
As the number of billion dollar disasters have increased so has the average cost of homeowners insurance. Doesn’t that hurt our economy? (Credit: Union of Concerned Scientists)
That litany of disaster is only from North America; the rest of the world has seen even more extreme weather. Flooding in Central Europe has been the cause of dozens of deaths and entire towns being submerged when a super moist air stream moved north from the Mediterranean and dumped its water on Austria, Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic. Meanwhile in Asia Typhoon Yagi brought flooding and landslides to Vietnam causing the death of 127 people before moving into Myanmar where it caused an additional 110 deaths. Finally in Africa seven days of non-stop rainfall in northern Nigeria and Chad have resulted in the deaths of hundreds, a dam to burst and the displacement of over a million people. A UN investigation has estimated that in total the countries of Africa are losing about 5% of their economies to flooding every year.
Zoo Elephants escaping from recent flooding in Thailand. Many of the World’s poorer countries are suffering worse from Climate Change that we are here in the US. That can only lead to even more migrations as people try to escape Climate Change like these elephants are. (Credit: CNN)
And this is only the start; a report published by the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in coordination with the University of Reading in the UK has forecast that in twenty years 1.5 billion people, 20% of the world’s population will be subjected to extreme changes in climate even if CO2 emissions are cut drastically enough for global temperature to remain below 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels. That’s the best-case scenario, in the event that carbon emissions continue to rise the number of people who will see drastic changes to their climate rises to over 5 billion, 70% of the world’s population.
Many scientific organizations are predicting future climatic conditions. The future doesn’t look pretty! (Credit: RealClimate)
Faced with such a dire future the world’s governments need to do everything in their power to more than just reduce, virtually eliminate CO2 emissions. In my next post I’ll discuss what the Biden administration has done to help reduce CO2 and what plans both Harris and Trump have for controlling Climate Change.
In the first two installments of this series of posts I have discussed our nation’s economy over the last 7½ years in an effort to determine whether President Trump or President Biden have done a better job of handling our nation’s economic growth. What I think we have discovered is that neither President’s policies were as important as the impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
At its height the Covid pandemic overwhelmed hospitals and caused major disruptions in the lives of every American. The effects of Covid on the economy will last for years! (Credit: Sky News)
In this post I will take a look at the proposed policies of both Trump and Kamala Harris who has succeeded Biden as the Democratic nominee. As can be expected during an election cycle both candidates are promising tax cuts but in almost every other aspect their economic visions for America are very different.
At their only debate Harris and Trump talked a great deal about the economy. The one thing that was obvious was how different their ideas and policies were. (Credit: Investopedia)
Trump’s proposals are centered around the concept of lowering taxes for everyone, but mostly for corporations and the rich while making the rest of the world pay for it through tariffs on goods imported into the US from abroad. As far as taxes are concerned Trump intends to make permanent the tax cuts on corporations he succeeded in getting past congress in (2018).
This is the tax cut that Trump succeeded in getting passed by congress in 2017. The richest 1% of Americans got nearly 2/3rds of the money. These cuts are due to expire in 2025, but Trump intends to make them permanent. (Credit: itep.org)
Those cuts lowered the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, an estimated savings for corporations of $4 trillion dollars that have mainly been spent in stock buybacks that have done nothing more than make stock prices rise. In addition to making his first term tax cuts permanent Trump has also floated ideas about eliminating taxes on tips and overtime although many economists are convinced that the bookkeeping required by such ideas would be complicated and difficult to police properly. In general however, Trump’s tax plans are just ideas with few details about implementation.
When he made this comment at the debate Trump was specifically talking about replacing the Affordable Care Act but really it pretty much sums up all of his plans if he gets re-elected. (Credit: Tenor)
If Trump’s plans for taxes are blurry at least they’re not as crazy as his plan to make the rest of the world pay for them through tariffs, a notion that every economist knows is just flat out wrong. Somewhere back in his days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business he got the idea that the taxes we impose on foreign goods are paid by the manufacturer in that foreign country. In other words he simply doesn’t understand how tariffs work or why countries use them.
The intention of a Tariff is to make foreign goods more expensive so people will buy domestic goods instead. Anyone who still buys the foreign product pays a tax. The domestic consumer pays the tax, not the foreign manufacturer. (Credit: LinkedIn)
Let me describe a classic example of how a tariff works and why they are used, my example is whiskey! Back in the 19th century the US had a large whiskey producing industry that didn’t want to have to compete against whiskeys from other countries, particularly Scottish and Irish whiskeys from the UK. (By the way there is no such a thing as Scotch, it’s Scottish Whiskey!!!)
So let us toast John Barleycorn, each man a glass in hand. And may his great posterity Ne’er fail in old Scotland. (Credit: Robert Burns)
In order to get an advantage over foreign whiskey makers the whiskey industry here in the US got the Federal Government to impose tariffs, that is taxes as high as 50% on whiskey imported into this country. Now the whiskey manufacturers in Scotland didn’t pay that tax, they didn’t care whether their product got bought in the UK or the US, and certainly the US has no way of making a company in the UK pay any kind of tax. It is the importer, the person or company who brings the whiskey into the US that actually pays the tariff.
It’s the American consumer who will pay the actual tax on imported goods, raising inflation. That’s just one of the consequences of tariffs. if they start a trade war they can really damage both nation’s economies. (Credit: SlidePlayer)
However that importer isn’t going to just eat the cost of the tariff, he’s going to raise the price of the whiskey so he can still make a profit. So the price of the tariff finally gets passed along to the consumer here in America. The idea of the tariff is just that, to make foreign products more expensive so as to give manufacturers here in the US an unfair advantage. Because of that tariffs cause a decrease in foreign goods coming into our country by raising their prices, which is what the whiskey producers here in the US wanted. Nevertheless it is still the American consumer who actually pays the tariff.
Depending on just how far Trump is willing to go on tariffs this is quite possible! (Credit: Cagle.com)
And by raising the prices of foreign goods tariffs actually increase inflation, worst still they can lead to trade wars between countries that hurt everybody’s economy. Nevertheless Trump thinks that tariffs are a way of getting other countries to pay us for the right to do business here and he’s gonna do them no matter how bad everybody else thinks they are.
Trump promises a lot but remember the wall, remember how Mexico was going to pay for it! (Credit: YouTube)
One other policy that Trump is advocating may not seem to be directly connected to the economy but will definitely do so and that is his determination to deport millions of the illegal aliens, Democrats prefer the term undocumented, currently living here in the US. Illegal or not those people are contributing to our economy, they are working, many in jobs Americans don’t want, and they are buying things. Depending on exactly how many aliens Trump succeeds in deporting our country’s GDP could decline by anywhere between 2% to 8%.
Mass deportations is a foundation of Trump campaign but remember those people are now a part of our economy, they have jobs and spend money. If we simply throw 20 million people legal or illegal out of our country we will instantly be in a recession! (Credit: AP News)
Additionally Trump intends for the government to jump start the economy by what he refers to as “Drill baby Drill”, that is to open up federal lands for exploitation by the petroleum and mining industries. In this way Trump hopes that cheaper gas prices will induce economic growth. However the US is already the world’s largest oil producer and it’s questionable as to whether the oil companies will actually want to work harder to pump out more oil in order to lower prices and therefore reduce their profits.
A huge amount of oil and gas produced by the petroleum industry already comes from Federal land. Trump intends to greatly increase that amount. (Credit: Reuters)
All in all the U of P Wharton School, that Trump attended remember, has estimated that Trump’s tax plans could add $4.1 Trillion, yes Trillion to our national debt while economists at Goldman Sachs estimate that his plan to remove all illegal / undocumented aliens would reduce GDP by about a half a percent in 2025 alone. Finally the Tax Policy Foundation calculates that Trump’s tariff plan could result in a tax on American consumers of $300 Billion a year. And those are all pretty conservative institutions. Again however, it’s hard to figure out exactly what Trump’s policies will do because he hasn’t really announced any concrete plans for economists to analyze.
Trump is a graduate of the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. His former professors however don’t think he learned much there. (Credit: Business Insider)
Kamala Harris’ economic plans could hardly be much more different, although like Trump’s they are also lacking in detail. The one tax initiative that Harris agrees with Trump on is his idea of eliminating taxes on tips. In general the Vice President intends to raise taxes on Billionaires and multi-Millionaires. Specifically her plan is to increase the corporate taxes from their current rate of 21% to 28% in order to fund tax cuts for the middle class. Those middle class tax cuts will come in the form of higher income tax deductions for children, childcare and small businesses.
For the last 40 years we’ve been concentrating on ‘Supply Side Economics’ where the rich get tax cuts and the money ‘trickles down’ to everybody else. Could that be why the middle class is in such trouble now? Just asking! (Credit: CBS News)
Another way in which Harris’ plans differ from Trump’s is that she fully intends to continue Biden’s policies of both rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure while also providing incentives to both companies and individuals to help promote a ‘Green’ economy, more solar and wind energy production along with more charging stations for electric vehicles. In addition Harris intends to provide the middle class with incentives for first time home purchases. In many ways however Harris’ economic ideas are adjustments to Biden’s policies.
President Biden picked Harris to be his running mate because they shared a vision of how to government this country. It’s only reasonable therefore that Harris’ policies will resemble Biden’s. (Credit: Slate.com)
Well, that’s about all I have to say. I hope these past three posts have given you some clear views about the current state of our economy as well as how much credit, or blame the last two administrations deserve for it. At the same time I have tried to give some idea about the economic plans that the two major party candidates have for how they will handle our economy if they are elected President. Throughout these posts I have tried to be fair to both candidates, whether I have succeeded or not I leave for you to decide.
We’d all like to think that we’re fair and balanced. Sometimes that’s not easy to do! (Credit: Faculty Focus)
The most important thing is for you to get out and vote this November, for you to make your choice based upon all of the information you can gather. After all that’s the way democracy is supposed to work!
In the first installment of my review of the Trump versus Biden economy going into this election I began by discussing just how difficult it is to try to understand all of the claims made about the economy by the various candidates seeking office, especially the two candidates for President. It isn’t just the fact that each party only tells you the facts they want you to hear, and try to hide the facts they don’t want you to know.
Need I say more? (Credit: Imgflip)
There’s also the fact that economics is a pretty difficult subject to study even if economists didn’t measure some factors on a weekly basis, some on a monthly basis, some quarterly and some yearly. So I’m going to try to put it all together in some sort of sensible format for you to make up your own mind. I hope I’m going to be fair, at any rate I’m going to try; you’ll have to judge.
They say in sports if you don’t notice the umpires or referees during a game, then they did a good job! I hope that’s how you’re look at me after this post! (Credit: Baseball wiki)
Last time I described how inflation under Joe Biden hit a level higher than it had since the 1980s; this is the economic problem that the Republicans want you to remember. That high level of inflation however was really caused by the US coming out of the covid-19 pandemic, it lasted less than one year and inflation is now pretty much under control.
And it did! At the time democrats pushed through their Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) inflation was running at about 9% it’s now 2.5% so whatever the democrats did worked! (Credit: Senate Majority PAC)
At the same time I also described how Covid was responsible for Trump’s biggest economic failure, an unemployment rate that topped out at 15%, the highest unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930s. So it is that with respect to both inflation and unemployment the economic record of Trump and Biden are pretty equal, and that both of their records have been overshadowed by the effect of Covid, a disease that came out of nowhere to kill almost one and a quarter million Americans. The lesson to be learned here is that even the President of the United States has only so much influence over our economy, and that forces beyond the control of any President or party, like a pandemic, can wreck even the best laid plans of mice and men.
The Covid pandemic in the US between March of 2020 and February of 2021. This is all of the people who got sick not those who died. Of course this disaster had a major effect on our economy! (Credit: Johns Hopkins)
In this post I’ll continue to describe how both Trump and Biden performed on other economic factors such as job growth, wage growth, and GDP. Once again all of the economic numbers I’ll be using have been adjusted for inflation where appropriate.
Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most commonly used measure of inflation over the last 50 years. Although inflation did spike in 2022 it was nowhere near as bad as during the 1970s and 80s. (Credit: US Treasury Department)
The Democrats love to remind everyone of how President Biden has created more jobs than any President ever in our nation’s history while under Trump the US saw a net job loss. That’s literally true but again those facts are more due to the Covid pandemic than by any actions taken by either Trump or Biden. If you look at the Chart below it’s obvious that job growth was puttering along at about 200,000 per month under Trump until April of 2020, just as the pandemic began to rage. In that month 20 million jobs were lost, which is why the line for job growth drops out of the bottom of the chart.
Number of jobs created each month in thousands for both Trumps and Biden. Notice how the dip and spike caused by COVID pretty much dominates the more normal time periods. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Then, during Biden’s first year in office the pandemic waned and companies started hiring back all of the people they’d laid off. That’s a big reason why job growth under Biden was about twice what it was even during Trump’s good years. So again with respect to job growth we have a strong economy no matter who is President and while it did take a big whack from Covid it has come back quite nicely.
Because of Covid many businesses were forced to close at least temporarily, laying off millions of workers. When the pandemic eased those businesses reopened and people got their jobs back. (Credit: New York Times)
Taking a quick look at the growth in our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) we see much the same story. For the first three years of Trump’s term GDP growth was a stable and reasonable 5%, as measured on a quarterly basis. Then came Covid and the economy took a sharp drop, in fact the country was technically in a recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Or as we now know a pandemic. Technically a recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. (Credit: Worksheets Planet)
When Biden took office things got dramatically better with the second quarter of 2021 actually having a growth of 17%! Thereafter things settled down again but GDP growth for Biden has remained above 5%. Still however we have to ask, were Biden’s good GDP figures due to our recovery from Covid. Taking away the effect of the pandemic both Presidents can claim to have had reasonable economic growth.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for both Trump and Biden. Again the effect of the Pandemic on the Economy dwarfs everything else. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)In standard Economic Theory Inflation almost always leads to a Recession. That hasn’t happened after the Inflation caused by Covid which means somebody is learning how to handle the Economy! (Credit: LinkedIn)
Finally I’d like to take a look at how wages rose, or fell during the Trump and Biden administrations. This is important because, as I said in my last post, if wages rise faster than inflation then people are actually better off but when wages don’t rise at least as fast as inflation that’s when everybody starts to feel the economic pinch.
Wage growth during both the Trump and Biden administrations. It looks like wages grew much faster during Biden’s term but remember inflation was higher as well. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Just looking at the chart by itself it certainly looks like wages increased a lot more under Biden than they did under Trump. Again however it must be remembered that inflation was also higher under Biden so was there really any great difference?
Wage growth versus inflation (CPI) over the last 15 years. Again, the disruption caused by Covid is obvious so that it’s difficult to say that any president’s policy had any effect. (Credit: Axios)
Really the one thing that can be said about the state of the economy under either Trump or Biden is that the performance or policies of any President have only a minor effect while things outside of their control, like a pandemic, can have a much greater effect. Now you may have noticed that I’ve been comparing Trump’s economy to Biden’s, but it’s actually Vice-President Harris who is the democratic nominee in 2024. Of course Trump has been tying Harris to every one of Biden’s problems in his efforts to make her look bad and certainly as Biden’s Vice-President Harris went along with Biden’s policies.
President Biden (r) and his Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s always a fair question to ask how responsible is the vice-president for the decisions of the president? (Credit: Pittsburg Post Gazette)
Still Kamala Harris is her own candidate. For that reason in my next, and last post of this series I’ll be taking a look at the proposed policies of the two candidates Trump and Harris so that you can make up your own mind whose economic vision is more in line with yours.
However you decide, VOTE! (Credit Harvard Gazette)
Before I go however let me just give a brief overview of our economy at just this moment a little more than a month before the election. Inflation in August was 2.5%, a little bit more than we’d like. Unemployment is at 4.2%, again we’d like that to be lower, but it’s really pretty good. GDP in the second quarter, April to June, was a sold 3% indicating strong growth in our economy. At present then the US economy is strong, true it could be better, but it could also be a lot worse!
So, if we want to get ahead as a nation, if we want our children to achieve the ‘American Dream’, then we need to provide a better education for them! (Credit: Pinterest)
Perhaps the best way to gage our economy however is to take a look at how the stocks markets have been performing so far this year. Since the end of September of 2023 the DOW Jones Industrials have climbed 26%, the Standard and Poor’s 500 has climbed 33% while the tech heavy NASDAQ has beaten them both with a 37% gain in just one year. Obviously our economy isn’t too bad!
Postscript: The latest job figures have come out for September. This will be the last data point for jobs before the November election. In September the US added 254,000 jobs, many more than economists had estimated. That’s a quarter of a million people who are now working! Because of that high job growth unemployment dropped to 4.1%, a very low value. All in all, it points to a very strong economy that has fully recovered from the pandemic!
Once again the US is in a critical election year and once again it’s the economy that is the number one issue that voters care about. That means that once again both parties are filling the TV airwaves with ads claiming that they are the ones who can best handle the economy. I know that you’ve seen the Republican ads claiming that under Biden inflation was the worst in 40 years, it was but only for one month.
Economists actually like a bit of inflation because that spurs us to go out and spend our money before it decreases in value. The Federal Reserve’s target value is 2%. (Credit: Stanford Report Stanford University)
The Democrats meanwhile claim that unemployment under Biden has been at its lowest level in 60 years, it was but over the last few months it’s been creeping up. Meanwhile, under the Democrats wages have been steadily rising, but have they been rising enough to offset inflation? It’s all so confusing and with both sides only talking about the statistics that makes them look good it’s hard to know what to think.
In a sense unemployment hurts a small fraction of our population a lot while inflation hurts everyone a little. Finding a reasonable medium is one of the big questions facing economists. (Credit: Live Science)
Well I’m going to try to give it a shot. I have to tell you this is the most difficult post I’ve ever attempted. Economists not only have a large number of different quantities, Inflation, Unemployment, GDP and the like that they keep track of but they have several different ways of reporting those measurements. For example the Consumer Price Index, considered the best gage of inflation, is reported every month but announced as being ‘on an Annual Basis’. How can something that’s measured every month be on an annual basis? And most of the other quantities that economists talk about, like GDP and wages, but not unemployment, have to be adjusted for inflation. It’s no wonder that few people can make heads or tails about the claims being made by the Republicans and Democrats. However at least I will try to bring all the stats together, not just the ones that favour one side, and hopefully I’ll be able to explain it all enough for you to make the decision that’s right to you!
Harris or Trump, that’s the choice we have to make in November. Let’s all try to make an informed one! (Credit: Spotlight Pa)
I have to start with inflation because, as I just said several other quantities have to be adjusted for inflation in order to make a fair comparison between what happened during the Trump administration from 2017-2020 and the Biden administration from 2021-2024. We all have a basic idea of what inflation is, prices keep going up, as time passes the cost of just about everything from food to gas to cars and even homes keeps rising year after year. That means that a dollar in 2024 buys a little bit less than a dollar would back in 2023 and a lot less than a dollar would have back in say the year 2000.
Back in the 1970s and early 80s inflation was much higher than anything we’ve seen in decades. That’s a big reason why the American people switched our economy to a Supply Side, Market Based one. (Credit: EconoFact)
As I said inflation also affects several other economic measures as well, such as wages. Let’s say that last year your boss gave you a raise of 4%, sounds pretty good. Unfortunately inflation over the last year came in at 4.1% so you actually lost 0.1% of your pay. In economic terms your wage increase did not keep pace with inflation. On the other hand if you received a raise of 4% and inflation stayed below the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, then you did indeed get an actual 2% increase in your income, your raise minus inflation.
Two years ago, inflation was at the highest rate since the 1980s, notice the steep climb of the red line between Jan21 and Jan22. However, wages were also high so they kind of canceled each other out! (Credit: Statista)
Inflation also affects our whole nation’s growth in the same way. We’ve all heard of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is the sum total of all goods and services bought and paid for in a year, everything and every time money changes hands it contributes to the GDP. The growth of our country’s economy is measured in the percentage growth of GDP and if GDP actually goes down we are basically in a recession. But even an increase in GDP has to be higher than the rate of inflation or else, as with wages above, the country’s income actually got smaller. On the other hand two quantities that are not effected by inflation are unemployment and job growth. The percentage of people who are unemployed is the same no matter what happens to the value of the dollar. The same is true for the number of jobs created, or lost.
Throughout this post I have taken the various economic quantities effected by inflation and adjusted their values so that everything is given in terms of 2024 dollars. So now let’s take a look at how inflation has increased during the four years of the Trump administration and the first three and a half years of the Biden administration, remember Biden’s term is not yet over. Chart 1 shows how inflation increased for each president.
Inflation during Biden’s first two years in office was much higher than at any point in Trump’s term. We were just coming out of a pandemic however and the economy of the whole world was recovering from Covid. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
On the surface it looks as if inflation has been much higher during Biden’s term as President. Indeed the Republicans have been using this fact as their main attack against Democrats in general claiming that inflation under Biden reached its highest level in 40 years. It is worth noting however that the one bad year that Biden had with inflation also was the year that the US and the rest of the world came out of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Between March of 2020 and February of 2021 millions of American got sick from Covid, and over 100,000 died from the disease. How could that not affect our economy? (Credit: NPR)
You will remember that during the pandemic a considerable portion of the economy shut down and once the threat of Covid had lessened there were a number of issues getting people back to work, fixing supply chain problems and etc. For example, during Covid people cut back a lot on travel, even such ordinary trips as going to a restaurant for dinner. Further evidence that it was Covid that triggered the inflation comes from the fact that the rest of the world saw as high or higher inflation. The European Union, the UK, China and Japan all suffered from a spike in inflation.
Over the last three years inflation in the European Union was even higher than here in the US. Ya can’t blame the democrats for that. (Credit: The New York Times)
Because of this oil companies cut back on their production of gasoline and then, when the pandemic ended people immediately wanted gas again. Unfortunately it took the oil companies some time to bring production back to pre-covid levels. That time lag led to a big increase in gas prices that contributed to inflation. That supply issue was eventually solved however and for the past two years gas prices have dropped slowly but surely helping to stabilize inflation.
Notice the big dip in oil production that occurred in March of 2020, just as the pandemic began. It took more than a year to recover from the pandemic’s drop and that delay added to inflation. (Credit: CNBC)
So now that we’ve considered the Democrat’s biggest economic liability going into this election let’s a look the Republicans’ biggest liability. That’s unemployment and if you’re going to blame Biden for the worst inflation in 40 years then you have to blame Trump for the worst unemployment since the Great Depression of the 1930’s, 80 years ago.
The huge spike in unemployment caused by Covid is obvious, the highest level of unemployment since the 1930s!!! Still, Trump was no more to blame for unemployment than Biden was for inflation. That’s just what happens to economies when a pandemic hits! (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Actually unemployment for Trump’s first three years in office was quite good. The unemployment level his first year was a bit over 4% but dropped below 4% for Trump’s second and third year. Then in 2020, Trump’s fourth and final year in office unemployment skyrocketed to nearly 15%, literally the worst unemployment figure since the Great Depression back in the 1930s. So what happened to cause such a tremendous number of people to lose their jobs, well of course it was Covid.
We all remember seeing signs like this during Covid. So unemployment spiked during the pandemic just as inflation spiked immediately after it. (Credit: Liberty Street Economics)
With the pandemic spreading, with deaths and hospitalizations increasing the hospitality industry, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters etc, virtually closed because people could not gather together for fear of getting infected. Baseball games were played without fans in the seats so there were no concession stands that needed any workers; symphony orchestras stopped performing so there was no need for musicians. The fact that unemployment didn’t go higher than 15% during Covid was remarkable and shows the strength of the American economy. Once Covid became less of a threat unemployment quickly dropped. Indeed for almost two years during Biden’s term of office unemployment dropped to its lowest level since the 1960s. A statistic the Democrats are happy to remind us all about.
Here’s the statistic Biden wants everyone to know about, more jobs created per month than any President ever! But once again that’s also due to people getting their old jobs back once the pandemic eased. (Credit: X)
So, if you’re going to blame Biden and the Democrats for the worst inflation in 40 years then you have to blame Trump for the worst unemployment in 80 years. The plain fact is that no one is to blame, that both unemployment and the inflation that followed were caused by Covid. The lesson to be learned here is that there are factors outside the control of anyone, even the President that shape our economy.
If President’s do have power over the economy then Democrats seem to be better at it than Republicans! (Credit: The New York Times)
In my next post I’ll continue to discuss some other economic factors such as wages, GDP and the Deficit and how both Trump and Biden handled them.
Geology is usually a quiet science, we generally only hear about it when there’s been a big earthquake or volcano eruption and even then all that the news media talks about is the destruction that’s happened to both people and property. There’s very little discussion of what an earthquake or volcano is and how they relate to our planet as a whole. Today I’d like to discuss two stories about our Earth that aren’t directly tied to either quakes or volcanoes and which don’t threaten destruction but which do tell us a great deal about the planet we live on.
Collecting and studying rocks is a large part of the science of Geology and is something that even a child can do as a way to get started in a career in science. (Credit: ThoughtCo)
We all remember from our High School science classes how our planet is built. We learned that at Earth’s very center there is a solid metal inner core composed mostly of iron about the size of the planet Mars. Above this solid core is a liquid outer core of molten metal, again mostly iron, this liquid outer core being about a thousand kilometers thick. On top of the outer core rides the 2,900 kilometer thick Mantel which is composed of a mixture of metals and silicates and which is often described as being plastic because it’s too warm to be solid but not hot enough to be completely liquid. Finally at the top is the 10-20 kilometer thick crust of solid rock that all life exists upon. That’s the basic model we all learned in school.
Just like we remember from High School our earth is like a Russian doll with layers of material one upon the other. (Credit: Handy Geography)
The way that scientists know that’s what the inside of Earth is like is by studying the different kinds of waves that are generated by large earthquakes or volcanic eruptions and which propagate around the entire planet. For example what geologists call a secondary or s wave is what physicists like me call a transverse wave, the kind of wave you can make with a piece of rope. Now transverse waves, s waves cannot go through either a liquid or a gas, they need a solid media to transmit them. So, if a large earthquake occurs in let’s say the island of Java in Indonesia then geologists at the exact opposite spot on Earth in Ecuador would not observe any s waves from that event because the s waves cannot pass through the liquid inner core.
Earthquakes generate both ‘S’ and ‘P’ waves which propagate around the world but only the ‘P’ waves can go through the Earth’s liquid core! (Geology Science)
On the other hand earthquakes also generate primary or p waves that are like sound waves and which can go through a liquid so the scientists in Ecuador will see p waves from the quake on Java. It’s by studying the various ways that the waves generated by Earthquakes propagate that geologists have learned so much about the interior of our planet.
A typical seismic wave as recorded by a seismograph. The ‘S’ and ‘P’ waves are notes along with surface waves. (Credit: Michigan Technological University)
Now a new study is linking a mysterious kind of seismic wave called a PKP precursors with another mystery, volcanic ‘hot spots’ which are volcanoes that seem to last for hundreds of millions of years at the same spot on Earth even as the continental plates move across the top of them. The Hawaiian Island chain is the best know example of this, a fixed volcano ‘hot spot’ that has created a series of islands as the Pacific plate moved across it. The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone Park is another such long lasting ‘Hot Spot’.
‘PKP’ waves are generated when ‘P’ waves are reflected off of the boundaries between the Earth’s layers. As you can see in the image PKP waves can be pretty complicated. (Credit: USGS.gov)
Geologists studying the PKP precursor waves at the University of Utah recognized that they were not being directly generated by earthquakes, instead PKP waves appeared to be echoes, that is waves that were bouncing off of something deep underground and are then scattered in many different direction. Now the Utah geologists have succeeded in zeroing in on the locations where PKP waves originate and have discovered that they are clustered around the volcanic hot spots in the Pacific, North America and Iceland.
The Earth’s known volcanic ‘Hot Spots’. These areas of intense volcanic activity do not seem to move with the Earth’s tectonic plates but rather pierce through those plates. (Credit: www.geo.cornell.edu)
Based upon what the researchers can learn about these deep regions in the Earth’s mantel they have been christened ‘Ultra Low Velocity Zones’ (ULVZs) and appear to lay at the boundary between Earth’s mantel and liquid core. Exactly what connection these ULVZs have with the volcanic hot spots is unknown at present, do they cause the hot spots or do the hot spots attract the ULVZs? You can be certain however that geologists will concentrate their efforts to further understand the origins of PKP waves at the ULVZs.
Ultra Low Velocity Zones or ULVZs lay the boundary between the outer core and the mantel. They appear to have some relation to the Volcanic Hot Spots but exactly what is presently unclear. (Credit: Research Gate)
As I was writing about the paper describing the discovery of the Ultra Low Velocity Zones (ULVZs) by the geologists at the University of Utah a second paper was being prepared by a second group of geologists at the Australian National University that provides further details about the ULVZs. According to the Australians the ULVZs form a doughnut shaped structure roughly beneath the equator at the boundary between the inner core and the mantel. Now the precise details about the ULVZs differ slightly between the two papers but it’s exciting to watch as a new part of our planet is being discovered and explored.
Do the ULVZs form a doughnut shaped structure around our planet’s equator? That’s what the team in Australia assert. We’ll find out in time! (Credit: Daily Mail)
Even while they study our planet’s interior geologists also continue to learn more and more about Earth’s past. Throughout it’s history Earth has seen periods of large temperature swings that resulted in geological periods where the planet became so hot that it completely lost its polar ice caps as well as periods where the planet was so cold that they have been christened ‘ice ages’.
Our planet has had many ice ages over the past 4 billion years but one that occurred about 700 million years ago covered nearly the Earth’s entire surface. Geologists call that period ‘Snowball Earth’. (Credit: wikipedia)
One of the most extreme cold periods occurred between 720 and 660 million years ago and is known as ‘Snowball Earth’ because virtually the entire planet’s surface was covered in ice. This particular ice age is of considerable importance not only because it was so extreme but because the first evidence for multi-cellular life occurs in the fossil record immediately after Snowball Earth. In fact evolutionary biologists have developed the theory that multi-cellular life evolved in order to survive the extremely harsh conditions of Snowball Earth and then exploded around the world as the glaciers retreated.
It was shortly after Snowball Earth that the very first multi-cellular creatures appear in the fossil record. Nobody thinks that’s just a coincidence. (Credit: Everything Dinosaur Blog)
The problem for both geologists and biologists is that ice ages have a tendency to destroy the geologic evidence of their own existence by the grinding and scouring of glaciers across the planet’s surface. For over a hundred years geologists have been searching for an unbroken stretch of sedimentary rock that records the entire history of Snowball Earth.
Did these rocks in Scotland escape Snowball Earth? That’s what geologists at the University College of London are claiming. If so they can tell us a lot about that period in Earth’s history. (Credit: The Independent)
They may now have finally found it. A new study in the Journal of the Geological Society of London by geologists at the University College of London has found that the Port Askaig formation on the Hebrides Islands of Scotland along with portions of Northern Ireland is just that rock sequence. The Port Askaig formation is a 1.1 kilometer thick series of strata that were laid down as sedimentary rock during the Sturtian glaciation period, to give Snowball Earth is technical name and which are underlain by 70 meters of carbonate rock that formed in tropical waters. Which shows that the period right before the snowball was considerably warmer. Those carbonate rocks are teeming with cyanobacteria, the most common form of life on the early Earth.
Spread out over portions of Scotland and Northern Ireland parts of the Askaig Formation lie in areas with little human habitation making the geologists work that much easier. (Credit: Stockholm University www.su.se)
The islands of the Inner Hebrides are generally uninhabited, making the Port Askaig formation a perfect labouratory for geologists to study this critical period in Earth’s history. Perhaps somewhere in these Scottish rocks lies the secret to the environmental conditions that caused the single celled life of Earth to unite into the communities of cells that today we call plants and animals.
The Cambrian period, dating to some 560 to 500 million years ago, is well known as being that time when all of the basic types of animals that inhabit our world today first appear in the fossil record. From the jointed-legged arthropods or the crawling molluscs to the many different kinds of worms they all appear to have become identifiable groups during the Cambrian.
The creatures of the Cambrian Period may look very strange to us but paleontologists can identify many of them as the ancestors of our modern animals. (Credit: Natural History Museum)
The reasons for this sudden explosion of life are still a matter of intense study, the best scenario at present is that it was during the Cambrian that the first ‘hard parts’ of animals evolved, shells and spines for defense, claws and teeth for offense. These new structures initiated an ‘arms race’ amongst early life forms, which led to a great diversification in the kinds of animals there were.
A complete shell of a Trilobite, perhaps the best known of the creatures of the Cambrian. One of the first groups of animals to possess a hard shell they raise the question as to whether it was the evolution of hard parts that led to the Cambrian explosion of life. (Credit: Live Science)
So if the Cambrian period is the time when the major types of animals evolved it is also the time to look for the earliest development of the characteristic features of those animals, the jointed legs of arthropods, the shells of mollusks and etc. In today’s post I will be discussing three newly discovered fossils highlighting the way paleontologists are studying the Cambrian Period but I will not be following my usual technique of discussing the earliest animal first and then moving forward in time because these three creatures may have all lived at the same time.
The world famous Walcott Quarry that exposes the Burgess Shale. This outcrop of rocks has revealed so much of the history of early life that it has been given ‘World Heritage’ status. (Credit: University of California Museum of Paleontology)
The first creature I’ll discuss is a member of the ‘weird wonders’ from the famous Burgess Shale in British Columbia; see my post of 29 September 2021. The animal is called Odaraia alata although it’s also known as the taco animal because of the distinctive taco-shaped shell that covers the front half of its body. Odaraia was first described over 100 years ago as an arthropod, and at 20cm in length one of the largest. However because only a few specimens were found and because that taco shaped shell covered some of the animal’s most important anatomy, where exactly within the arthropods it belonged remained controversial.
An artist’s illustration of Odaraia alata. The taco like shell contains over 30 pairs of legs that are not used for walking but rather for grabbing particles of food that pass through the shell. (Credit: CBC)
Most paleontologists thought that Odaraia swam through the upper water column capturing food particles in the opening of its shell as it swam but how it caught that food and whether it had mandibles like modern insects and crustaceans or lacked them like the trilobites did was unknown. (By the way did you know that arthropod mandibles, their jaws that is, are actually modified legs? That’s right, insects, crabs, spiders and shrimp all chew with their feet, or rather feet that have evolved in shape to crush and tear rather than walk.)
The jaws or mandibles of insects are actually modified legs! How far back in the history of arthropods this evolved has been a question for a long time. (Credit: Adobe Stock)
Now a new study from researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has succeeded in answering those questions. Using some new specimens and the latest technology the paleontologists have found that Odaraia did have a small set of mandibles near its mouth, making it one of the earliest arthropods to possess them. Also the team discovered that inside of its shell Odaraia possessed 30 pairs of legs that had been modified with numerous spines to capture food passing through the shell. With 30 legs covered in spines Odaraia had a very effective net inside its shell for capturing food.
One of the specimens of Odaraia alata that enabled paleontologists at the Royal Ontario Museum to confirm that O alata did possess mandibles. (Credit: Phys.Org)
One interesting fact about arthropods in general is the way that they often change their shape as they grow and mature, I’m talking about the process of metamorphosis where for example a caterpillar changes into a butterfly. The butterfly is the mature, sexual stage while the caterpillar is the immature or larval stage, very different in shape even though they are the same species. As you might guess paleontologists often have enormous difficulty in connecting fossils of larva to the adult species they mature into. Despite this however paleontologists are always on the lookout for fossils of larva because those immature specimens can tell them a great deal about how the species grows and matures.
You only live twice, at least you do if you’re a Butterfly who begins life as a caterpillar then metamorphizes into a butterfly. (Credit: BBC Wildlife Magazine)
A good example of this comes from a recent paper by Doctor Martin Smith of the Oxford University based upon a larva fossil no bigger than a poppy seed that was discovered in half billion year old rocks from Northern China by colleagues at Yunnan University. The study of microfossils, complete fossils so small you need a microscope to examine them at all, is a science to itself where specimens of fossil bearing rock such as limestone are dissolved in acidic solutions. The tiny bits left over then have to be examined to see if any are interesting fossils, a job that requires a great deal of work and patience.
No bigger than a poppy seed this fossil larva from 520 million years ago is teaching us a great deal about the life cycle of ancient arthropods. (Credit: Live Science)
As soon as they saw the specimen the researchers at Yunnan knew they had found something special. First of all they could see that it was an arthropod larva of some type, and in addition the specimen was so well preserved that, even though it was only the size of a poppy seed, it might still have evidence of the internal structure of the animal. The problem was that Yunnan University did not possess the necessary equipment to examine the inside of the fossil.
A colourized X-Ray image of the larva reveals a lot of the details of the animal’s internal structure. (Credit: BBC)
Enter Dr. Smith, who was well acquainted with Oxford’s Diamond Light X-ray Source. The paleontologists at Yunnan allowed Dr. Smith to take the larva specimen back to England where much of its internal structure were revealed in Smith’s lab. Despite its small size the fossil’s X-rays revealed a developing brain cavity, traces of the digestive system along with the circulatory system and even nerve endings to the legs and eyes. The 500 million year old larva has given paleontologists new insights into how the ancestors of today’s insects, crustaceans and other arthropods grew and matured.
An X-Ray machine so large and complex it needs a building this big to hold it. That’s Oxford University’s Diamond Light X-Ray Source. (Diamond Light Source)
Finally today I’ll discuss a recent paper about a 510 million year old fossil animal from a completely different group of animals, the mollusks, but by a coincidence from the same two Universities, Yunnan in China and Oxford in the UK.
We’re all familiar with mollusks, particularly the shelled variety of bivalved clams and oysters along with single shelled snails. Just how the earliest mollusks first developed their shells is a subject of considerable study.
Just a few of the many different kind of bi-valve Mollusks that we love to eat. (Credit: Clovegarden)
That’s what makes the specimens discovered at a road building site outside of Kunming China by Yunnan University Paleontologist Guangxu Zhang so interesting. Looking like a slug covered by hollow spines the animal, which has been given the name Shishania aculeata, gives paleontologists clues about how the earliest molluscs evolved their shells.
514 million year old Mollusk shell Shishania aculeata (l) and a closeup of its spines (r) (Credit: SciTechDaily)
“The spines, which might also have been sense organs, probably helped Shishania and other molluscs to avoid predators as they crept along the Cambrian sea floor,” according to Luke Parry, a paleontologist at Oxford University who also contributed to the paper. “The fact that we have any of these fossils is pretty amazing.”
Artists impression of Shishania aculeata, something like a snail with a very simple shell or a clam with only one shell it reveals some of the details of how Mollusk’s evolved their shells. (Credit: BBC)
If you think about it, it’s pretty amazing that we have any of these wonderful fossils of animals that lived, and died a half a billion years ago.
One of the best known tales in the history of science relates how the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes discovered his principal of buoyancy when he stepped into his bath. Noticing the water that had overflowed onto the floor Archimedes realized that the volume of water that was displaced was equal to the volume of his body that had been submerged and the scientist had the solution to his problem. Overjoyed Archimedes got out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse crying “Eureka” which is Greek for “I found it!”
As he stepped into his bath Archimedes realized that he could measure the volume of any solid object by the volume of water it displaced! (Credit: Dreamstime)
Recently a physicist with the California Institute of Technology named Amnon Yariv had an experience somewhat like that of Archimedes while taking his shower at his home in Pasadena, California. Having one of those shower heads that are at the end of a long flexible hose Yariv noticed that when he let the head hang free the force of the flowing water caused it to not only swing back and forth like a pendulum but also twist clockwise and anti-clockwise. Doctor Yariv, who is an expert in Oscillations and periodic motions quickly recognized this behaviour as bimodal, that is two distinct oscillations were moving in synch with each other. Doing a little experimenting Yariv soon discovered a few other interesting characteristics of his phenomenon, one was that the two oscillations were also coupled, any dampening of one would cause a dampening of the other. Also, if he increased the water flow of the shower beyond a certain point the two oscillations began to grow wildly, uncontrollably. Doctor Yariv likens his discovery to two tango dancers, who have to coordinate their dancing with their partner in order to avoid tripping over each other.
Physicist Amon Yariv of Caltech. (Credit: Caltech)Dr. Yariv in his shower experimenting just like Archimedes did! (Credit: Caltech)
Having discovered his new phenomenon Doctor Yariv spent the next several years modeling it mathematically while also performing some experiments to confirm his model. According to Yariv his oscillation is an bimodal extension of a class of oscillations that were studied by Lord Rayleigh and Michael Faraday a century and a half ago in which a system is excited by a modulation at twice the resonate frequency of the system.
Lord Rayleigh is also the physicist who first worked out the reason why the sky is Blue. Today we call that Rayleigh scattering. (Credit: Science Facts)
Doctor Yariv was also able to obtain useful work from his oscillations by coupling it to a rotary gear. He hopes that his research may lead to more efficient energy conversion from wind turbines and other green energy systems. Not bad for something discovered in the shower!
The rotation of the blades on a wind turbine are a form of oscillation. Dr. Yariv hopes that by better understanding his double oscillation it may be possible to improve the efficiency of wind turbines! (Credit: Just Energy)
Most of the discoveries made by physicists today however require a bit more equipment than a showerhead, often very expensive equipment, even equipment on satellites in outer space. The mystery of Earth’s magnetic field for example has been studied by hundreds of physicists over the last several hundred years with some of the most precise instruments available yet we still known only a little about it. We do know that the core of our planet is composed mainly of liquid iron and nickel, both magnetic materials, and that as our planet spins on its axis currents in that molten core can generate a magnetic field.
A simplified view of Earth’s magnetic field. Once again, since the north pole of your compass points north that means that there is a south magnetic pole up there!!! (Credit: BC Open Textbooks)
Another thing that we’ve discovered is that every couple of hundred thousand years or so our planet’s magnetic poles swap their positions, the one up north going south and the one down south going north. (By the way, since opposite poles of a magnetic attract each other while similar poles repel, and since the north pole of a compass points north that means that currently there is a south magnetic pole up north and a north magnetic pole down south.)
For reasons unknown every couple of hundred thousand years or so the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse their positions. Right now our planet’s magnetic field is starting to look like the figure on the right. (Credit: NASA Science)
Over the past several decades measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field have shown a steady decline in the strength of that field leading many researchers to think that Earth may be in the initial stages of one of those magnetic pole swaps. In order to get a more precise idea of just how rapidly the Earth’s magnetic field is changing in 2014 the European Space Agency (ESA) launched three satellites that they called the Swarm Constellation that were designed to make the most accurate measurements of our planet’s magnetic field. Over the next six years the satellites made detailed and comprehensive maps of the Earth’s magnetic field from Low Earth Orbit (LOE) and just as importantly monitored how the magnetic field was changing!
The three satellites of the European Space Agency’s ‘Swarm Constellation’. Together these satellites are monitoring the changes in Earth’s magnetic field. (Credit: European Space Agency)
That data has now been analyzed by researchers at the University of Michigan’s department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering and compared to the latest model for how we think the Earth’s magnetic field works. That model is known as the International Geomagnetic Reference Field or IGRF-13, the 13 meaning that this is the 13th model in a series. A report on that analysis has recently been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.
Image depicting the data collected by the Swarm Constellation satellites. It obvious that Earth’s field is no longer a nice simple one pole up the other down! (Credit: eoPortal)
Through their examination of the data from the Swarm Constellation satellites the researchers discovered a number of discrepancies between the data and the model many of which were caused by a surprising error in the model. You see, although the physical North and South Poles, as defined by the Earth’s axis of rotation, are exactly on opposite sides of our globe, the same is not quite true of the North and South magnetic poles. Currently the north magnetic pole is situated at 84º of latitude and 169º of longitude, for the south magnetic pole to be exactly opposite it on our globe it would have to be at -84º and 11º of longitude but it is in fact at -74º latitude and 19º longitude. At least some of the reason for this asymmetry in Earth’s magnetic field comes from the observed fact the both magnetic poles move, currently the north magnetic pole is moving at a speed of about 45km per year.
We’ve known for over a century that the North Magnetic Pole was moving but for decades it moved very slowly. Recently that motion has accelerated and the pole is racing across the polar region. (Credit: Newsweek)
The discovery of this error in the model will certainly help with further improvements in the model but another find by the scientists may be even more important and that is the speed with which the Earth’s magnetic field is changed. As outlined in the report noticeable shifts in both the strength and polarity of the magnetic field can be observed even over as short a period as six months. In fact the rapid changes in the magnetic field are already causing problems in navigation for both ships and aircraft, especially for those whose paths take them close to the Polar Regions.
Compass, Sextant and Telescope, the instruments seafarers used for centuries to navigate their way around the world. What happens when the Compass is no longer so accurate? (Credit: Adobe Stock)
Earth’s magnetic field is a dynamic phenomenon whose pace of change is increasing. In the years to come those changes could impact our daily lives in other ways than just making navigation more difficult. Only by learning more about our planet’s magnetic field physicists can we prepare ourselves for the changes to come.
