Scanning the Heavens

The recent exercise in December 2008 by the US Air Force to assess the ability to cope with a collision with a Near Earth Object again highlighted how limited is the Earth's capability to detect or prevent such an event taking place. Recently however a Near Earth Object did indeed come into contact with the Earth in October 2008. Designated 2008 TC3 this car sized object exploded over the Sudan but was only spotted by a telescope (the Catalina Sky Survey) with 20 hours notice and at a distance of 500,000 kilometres from our planet. Although the likelihood of a catastrophic asteroid collision is extremely rare, the potential for a strike from a smaller but still destructive near earth body has much greater plausibility.

This situation again raises the need for a greater overall surveillance of the space around Earth and in relation to the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The proposal to increase surveillance through the Panoramic Survey telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) as well as the proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile (providing the project is completed by 2015) will complement the existing monitoring programs. The next question is what action to take if a large body is located on a trajectory to Earth.

Geothermal energy - a price too high to pay?

From the New York Times, 10 September 2009

The question of harnessing the earth's own capacity for energy generation should be measured against possible other effects and risks as the article below outlines.

LANDAU IN DER PFALZ, Germany — Government officials here are reviewing the safety of a geothermal energy project that scientists say set off an earthquake in mid-August, shaking buildings and frightening many residents of this small city. The geothermal plant, built by Geox, a German energy company, extracts heat by drilling deep into the earth. Advocates of the method say that it could greatly reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels by providing a vast supply of renewable energy.


But in recent months, two similar projects have stirred concerns about their safety and their propensity to cause earthquakes. In the United States, the Energy Department is scrutinizing a project in Northern California run by AltaRock Energy to determine if it is safe. (The project was shut down by the company last month because of crippling technical problems.) Another project, in Basel, Switzerland was shut down after it generated earthquakes in 2006 and 2007 and is awaiting the decision of a panel of experts about whether it can resume.

The Landau project will be allowed to continue operating while the review panel, which held its first meeting last Friday, deliberates. Geox officials initially denied any responsibility for the temblor and continue to dispute the government’s data linking the project to the quake. The panel will, among other things, have to sort through the conflicting data presented by the company and government scientists.

Like other earthquakes that have been attributed to geothermal plants, the Landau temblor was sudden and brief and was accompanied by a sound that in some cases has been likened to a sonic boom. There were no injuries and there was no known structural damage to buildings in the city. But the 2.7 magnitude quake has stoked fears and set off debate in the state Parliament, which subsidized the construction of the plant, about the method’s safety.

In interviews last week, Geox officials conceded that the plant had set off tiny earthquakes and said that they were not certain what set off the Aug. 15 temblor. But consultants for the company dispute the data cited by government scientists to back up their conclusion that the project caused the earthquake: their own data, they said, proves that the quake originated more than two miles from the site of the plant and six miles below the earth’s surface. Those figures would essentially rule out a connection with the plant.

The Landau plant, which cost $30 million, went into operation in 2007 and produces electricity for 6,000 homes by drawing heat from beneath the bedrock, nearly two miles beneath the earth’s surface. Geox said a coal-burning plant producing the same electricity would emit 30,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.
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What price for justice? Scotland plumbs the dustbin over Lockerbie

From the Stratfor Intelligence newsletter: On Aug. 24, 2009 Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill addressed a special session of the Scottish Parliament. The session was called so that MacAskill could explain why he had decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of terrorism charges in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and who had been expected to spend the rest of his life in prison. MacAskill said he granted al-Megrahi a compassionate release because al-Megrahi suffers from terminal prostate cancer and is expected to live only a few months. The Aug. 20 release of al-Megrahi ignited outrage in both the United Kingdom and the United States and FBI Director Robert Mueller released to the press contents of an uncharacteristically blunt and critical letter he had written to MacAskill in which Mueller characterized al-Megrahi’s release as inexplicable and “detrimental to the cause of justice.” Mueller told MacAskill in the letter that the release “makes a mockery of the rule of law.”

Al-Megrahi received a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in Tripoli, Libya with global broadcast footage of him being welcomed and embraced by Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi (pictured left above ).

The Scottish Government should never have released this intelligence agent regardless of the compassionate grounds stated relating to a terminal health diagnosis or the concern about martydom. The total loss of life involved from the terrorism act was 243 passengers, 16 flight crew from the aircraft and 11 people on the ground in the small town of Lockerbie, Scotland (who were killed by parts of the falling aircraft). From the forensic investigation it was found that a number of people had survived the initial breakup of the aircraft in flight until impact on the ground below. Libya continues to deny responsibility for the action although its agent was convicted and the country itself paid compensation to the families of those affected.

Chocolate's magic properties...

According to news reports from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm
" Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate two or more times per week cut their risk of dying from heart disease about three fold compared to those who never touch the stuff, scientists have reported. Smaller quantities confer less protection, but are still better than none, according to the study, which appears in the September issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine. Earlier research had established a strong link between cocoa-based confections and lowered blood pressure or improvement in blood flow. It had also shown that chocolate cuts the rate of heart-related mortality in healthy older men, along with post-menopausal women".

Apparently this new study, led by Imre Janszky (Karolinska Institute) is the first to demonstrate that consuming chocolate can help ward off mortality if one has suffered a heart attack.

Really?

Who's Your Momma? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues on in Iran

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pictured at left, the short man) was sworn-in as Iranian president this week with the continuing cloud of the disputed elections still overshadowing his alleged election. Against the backdrop of a divided clerical establishment in Iran, widespread dissatisfaction in the Iranian population and powerful figures in Iran's political elite challenging his position (particularly former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammad Khatami and former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi), Ahmadinejad continues on.The question which arises is how long can Iran continue with the policies of the current president which are more provocative than constructive.

With a poor economic outlook, a suspect nuclear weapons policy and a repressive regime which discourages debate, Iran remains a disadvantaged nation and almost a pariah internationally. Iranian politics is tough and full of complexity with a myriad of interlocking bodies, interests (both religious and secular) and key figures yet increasingly most of these groups are finding common ground in their mutual concern with and distrust of, the Iranian president.

Online community supported data sources - How reliable is Wikipedia?

Recent research reported by New Scientist (25 July 2009) has commented on the wide variability of health information on the internet and the influence of the all pervasive Wikipedia. This is no surprise as a significant volume of websites providing health information are either commercial interests, copied articles from other unchecked sources, heresay or outright quackery. Of interest is the high ranking of Wikipedia in search engine queries whereby the website appears in the top 10 results for more than 70% of medical qeries in four different search engines.

How reliable is Wikipedia? Universities have regularly warned tertiary-level students not to rely on Wikipedia as a source for their assignments. However US healthcare consultancy, Manhattan Research, has reported that 50% of doctors in its research had turned to Wikipedia for information. Of note, New Scientist quotes several studies which have examined information on surgery, drugs and other health information and found the online resource to be entirely free of factual and free of error. The US National Institutes of Health hosted an event on 16 July 2009 with the aim of training health professionals how to edit Wikipedia's health pages.

Wikipedia has considerable value as a layman's tool and for providing an overview of health information. For the health professional the key data sources though will remain ones such as Medline, PubMed, BMJ, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Cochrane Collaboration and other peer reviewed journals.

Update on H1N1

The recent information on the spread of swine flu indicates that the new virus is dominating over the existing main flu virus H3N2. More than 98% of the flu cases genotyped in the US during June 2009 were swine flu and a similar statistic exists for the state of Victoria in Australia where 99% of all flu cases which were genotyped were H1N1. A similar results exists for Argentina and Chile where over 90% of cases of flu were found to be swine flu. There are also indications that Tamiflu resistant swine flu has already evolved although at this stage, the number of cases is very small.

Forty years on... the Earth from afar

July 21, 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing of Apollo 11 with the first human beings to walk on Earth's nearest natural satellite. Neil Alden Armstrong (Commander), Edward Eugene Aldrin, Jr (lunar module pilot) landed in the lunar module while Michael Collins (command module pilot) remained in orbit in the Command Module. Many of the photographic images from that first landing have now become historical and iconic in their own right, none less than "Earthrise" (above) which shows the distant little blue planet which is home as seen from the moon.

As the planet now confronts the challenges of the environment, climate change and declining ecosystems, the image taken from Apollo 11 and the realisation of the fragility and smallness of the Planet Earth which the astronauts felt at the time, appears all the more prescient.

Climate Change and Sea levels - rising how far?

New Scientist (July 2009) has outlined various new estimates concerning sea levels rising at a rate and speed greater than the forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 2007 report. The IPCC had forecast a sea level rise of between 19 and 59 centimetres by 2100 but the report did exclude any rapid dynamic changes in ice flow in future years. The consensus now is that the IPCC estimates were far too optimistic. By far the most immediate contributor to sea level changes is the melting of glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica, Alaska to the Himalayas. Of particular note, is the number of sources for rising sea levels which demonstrate that warmer temperatures have different impacts not just the melting of ice caps and glaciers. The second observation is the degree to which ocean levels have already been rising for several decades.

New modelling indicates that the sea will in fact rise by 80 centimetres by 2100 and will continue rising beyond that date. For many parts of the world at zero elevation from sea level such as most Pacific Island groups, Bangladesh, Holland and many coastal strips in larger continents, the impact will be felt within this century. Sea levels will render heavily populated coastal land strips as unmanageable and unliveable. That sea levels will rise is an inescapable fact even with a reduction in greehouse gas emissions although the rate and degree can be influenced by CO2 reduction.

Planning for mass population relocation may be an unpalatable but essential reality of existence on planet Earth. Are Governments up to this challenge?

Bubble and Squeak - Methane a new energy source?

With the constant pressure to find alternative energy sources to reduce reliance on environmentally damaging coal fired generators and other fossil fuels, attention has turned to the high concentrations of methane which are found in various countries. In particular methane clathrate has become a favoured possible alternative energy source. Methane clathrate consists of molecules of methane trapped within ice crystals. With an appearance similar to dirty ice and a sorbet-like consistency, the application of heat rapidly ignites methane clathrates which omit about half as much carbon dioxide as burning coal.

Large deposits of methane clathrates can be found throughout the world in Central America, Japan, India, Alaska and Siberia both in permafrost and under the Ocean. The technology for extracting this energy source is still experimental and with methane clathrates lodged in fragile ice crystals, the safety and economic viability is in question. Also the methane molecule is twenty times as powerful as CO2 in warming the air. With rising sea temperatures, it would take little to release ocean clathrate reserves into the atmosphere.