Good read on fracking's use of water supplies

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/06/15/2163531/fracking-is-already-straining-us-water-supplies/

Choice quoate: "That’s about equal, EPA says, to the water use in 40 to 80 cities with populations of 50,000 people, or one to two cities with a population of 2.5 million each."

Update on elephants' hearing and tsunami

June 11, 2013 Add in. Stanford University seismologists have suggested a tsunami warning system that uses sound cues from an earthquake.

"We've found that there's a strong correlation between the amplitude of the sound waves and the tsunami wave heights," co-author Eric Dunham, a Stanford geophysicist, said in a statement. "Sound waves propagate through water 10 times faster than the tsunami waves, so we can have knowledge of what's happening a hundred miles offshore within minutes of an earthquake occurring. We could know whether a tsunami is coming, how large it will be and when it will arrive."

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Oh science is satisfying.

But that means there's more. Sound speed in water varies with depth, temperature and salinity.
So the Stanford statement is probably over-simplified, as observers would have to know other factors to make reliable predictions about the tsunami.
Yet, if we take a factoid about sound in seawater moving at about 1560 m/s, that's 1.56 km/s or 5,616 km/hour. That's about seven times a high-end tsunami velocity figure of 800 kmh in open water, another factoid. 
 So the "10  times faster" works if we accept that he's making a generalization, and I'm comparing it to factoids for  approximation.

However, this also suggests a prediction would benefit from knowing the shape of the seafloor, so as to calibrate for the acoustical shift when an open ocean tsunami hits an underwater constriction.

And then - to interpret it as wisely as an elephant.

 Here's the earlier post, published January 24, 2013.
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Off topic, but I love puzzles.

This one is related to a story about elephants that came out of the 2004 Indonesian earthquake and tsunami.

In the story, a group of Indonesian work elephants became agitated and pulled up the stakes that supposedly held them tethered. They ran away from the sea, uphill, followed by their also very agitated human handlers. Shortly thereafter, the tsunami arrived ashore and the flood swept inland, but at lower elevation than the vantage point of the elephants and their attendants.

The social life and work attitudes of the elephants would be a delightful topic in itself, given their tolerance for being staked out as long as other things like food and safety were satisfactory.

But I also wanted to know more about when the elephants sensed there was danger.

Here's what might be a nice word problem for a promising freshman physics student.

Elephants can hear sounds as low as 14-18 Hertz frequency.
Tsunamis in the open ocean have far lower frequency than the range of elephant hearing (big hint),  a wavelength  can be 200 km, with a velocity of 800 kmh, and an amplitude that might be a few cm to a meter at most, not really noticeable to ships at sea.

When a tsunami approaches shallower water, it is compressed, so it slows down, reportedly to around 50 kmh, its wavelength shortens, and its frequency increases.    In terms of wave compression, like audible sound, the tsunami's pitch rises. With the compression at shallower water, the tsunami's wave amplitude also rises, sometimes to an astounding height.

Figure out the tsunami wavelength condition necessary for an elephant to be able to hear a tsunami coming.

If I knew the decibel sensitivity of an elephant at 14-18 Hz that would add to the fun.  There's a relatively old reference (Heffner and Heffner, 1982) that found a seven-year old female Indian elephant had a threshold of about 64 dB at 16 Hz.  Maybe there's more recent research.   In human terms 64 dB -  at an accessible frequency - could be an air conditioner or dishwasher, hardly as painful as an alarm. 

Then we'd want to know how far the tsunami was from the elephant, so we could guess what would be necessary in intensity for the elephants to react as if they'd heard an air-raid siren.  Did it even need to be loud, or just dangerously different?

It would also be credible to examine if the elephants had other modalities to sense danger. Did they feel something  unusual through their feet? Or even smell something strange as the sea pulled away from the shore..

teeter-totters - as a business model

According to a finance expert, prudent businesses keep one foot in the depreciating assets that pay high income while they put the other foot into a new market, where the cost of access may be high, but where they want to have a forefront position relative to competition.

Cash-rich companies, such as fossil-fuel providers, often do some version of this. The PR around taking a progressive step may be greenwashing, but deep down it's just business to get a toe-hold in a next-generation market.  The coal, oil and gas companies have the capital to move into solar and wind more aggressively, but they are on a teeter-totter between income and long-term investment.

Give energy companies more and bigger incentives (carrots or sticks) to shift their assets and we'd be over one of humps on the way to success.

If Coal India changes its name to Energy India, we'll know the weight is shifting from one foot to the other.

I cross posted at Climate Progress.

proper motivation

I question climate activists' versions of saber-rattling, such as threatening bigger-badder-weather or the metaphorical hotter pot of water.  I'm beyond tired of reading their malicious hopes for a catastrophe, such as hoping for an El Niño.  That approach is based on the assumptions that a future fear or pain is either adequate motivation for change now, that a catastrophe would lead to a progressive policy outcome (how often does that happen..) and that incremental problems might be enough to prompt a major revision. Even an ordinary insurance policy is for coverage that takes effect immediately, it is not a protection that is postponed until next year.  Who hasn't said, I can't make plans on that, it's too vague? Or, I'll just fix what I have, until it's really broken?

I suggest that what makes juices flow and feet go is an immediate priority for something specific that we hold dear. The energy is strong for a positive and personal outcome, as compared to merely negating a generic negative.
When I am thrifty I have an immediate benefit as well as future benefit. When I fed my children nutritious food, same thing, both an immediate and future benefit. When I eat locally grown food, I have both.

With climate change, consider measures to either mitigate and/or adapt to the changes already in motion. Which of these have a clear positive outcome, part of a vision for the future?  A benign fuel like solar energy is an easy example of a sunny outcome, pun intended.

In the battle to cut down on tobacco-related illness, a Madison Avenue advertising executive explained that ads about dire threats of illness from smoking did not motivate. He said instead you have to make tobacco-free activity far more sexy than acts of smoking. Show healthy attractive people enjoying clear air and each others' company.  The tobacco industry had done its darnedest to try to make smoking seem sexy, but it is straightforward to show that tobacco-free is REALLY really sexy!

Same thing with prepping for climate change. The oil and gas industry have tried to make fossil fuel vehicles and  houses and things made with fossil fuel all seem sexy and upscale. Fortunately we have some counterpoints like the electric cars with elegant lines or the zero-energy houses that are definitely upscale.

We need a positive vision for the future, not one that is whupped by fear.

Solid-state batteries and a China-Japan dispute

Remember news of the dispute between China and Japan over what are known as Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China?  I'd forgotten about it.

This morning my interest had turned to what might be the next breakthrough after lithium-ion batteries, and the internet bits are about solid-state batteries. 

Wikipedia gives a list of candidates for solid-state batteries, including "Ag₄RbI₅ for Ag⁺ conduction, LiI/Al₂O₃ mixtures for Li⁺ conduction, and the clay and β-alumina group of compounds (NaAl₁₁O₁₇) for Na⁺ and other mono- and divalent ions."

Clearly the cheapest is not going to be the one with Ag (silver) or the one with Li (lithium) so let's look at the sodium-aluminum-oxide.

NaAl₁₁O₁₇ turns out to be the mineral  diaoyudinite.  

Uhoh. Yes, it was first identified on Diaoyudao Island, part of the Diaoyu Islands.

The island isn't necessarily a mother lode, exactly, but that term may have to do. 

 "There is strong suspicion that diaoyudaoite, from all its known localities, is an INDUSTRIAL WASTE product (from chromium refining, corundum synthesis, etc.) and not a natural mineral." per Mindat.

What should we call an illegal industrial dump site that is now so attractive that countries may risk war over access to the seafloor sediments?

Meanwhile the US has some diaoyudinite in Newark Bay (New Jersey) and the Chester Emery Mines slag (Massachusetts). (Thanks again to Mindat.)

So this only confirms my usual suspicion that nearly any political, even military, position is driven by economics. Why fight over uninhabited islands unless they are key to a technological advantage and possible future market dominance?

This also may indicate that some people are taking solid-state batteries mighty seriously.

Sept 3, 2013 Update on Greenland Ice melt

by Joan Savage

Breaking News Update: September 3, 2013

A major canyon beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet leads from mid island northward to near the outfall of the Peterman Glacier. 
Now scientists think that feature may be contributing to meltwater reaching the Arctic Ocean.
I'm delighted about confirmation of my suspicion of mid-island under-ice melting, and the shape of the canyon fits with why the ice cores that reached bedrock didn't reveal the canyon, located to the north.  I'm not delighted that stealth melting could be occurring on a massive scale.

Earlier posts:
Greenland ice melt turns out to be more complicated, and better studied, so this is a revision of what I posted on September 18, 2012, and again in May 2013.

The top surface melt may either move slowly downwards, re-freezing and consolidating in firn, the form of old snow that is compressing into ice, or it may move as meltwater (more on this), or perhaps some other fate, for which I have yet to find a study. Sublimation?

The massive surface melt in the summer of 2012 was remarkable because nearly every surface experienced some melting, at least in place.  The scientists monitoring Greenland melt had earlier classified Greenland ice as dry-snow facies, the combined percolation and wet-snow facies, ice facies, transient melt areas and moraine.  Dry snow facies are surfaces where if snow falls, it accumulates, never melting. Percolation facies are surfaces that melt and refreeze, forming pipes and lenses.  The

As a recent abstract by McGrath et al (2013) clarifies, "Extrapolation of this observed trend now suggests, with 95% confidence intervals, that the dry snow facies of the Greenland Ice Sheet will inevitably transition to percolation facies. There is a 50% probability of this transition occurring by 2025."

In the percolation facies is were the lakes and moulins form.
As the Greenland ice sheet melts around the edges and off its top surface, transient meltwater lakes form on the top of the ice at some locations. Sometimes the transient lakes discharge in transient mighty rivers that cut across the ice sheet surface and may join with more permanent rivers or perhaps better-termed seasonally recurrent rivers.  In the summer of 2012 an engorged ice melt river destroyed a bridge in Kangerlussuaq.  How many months of the year do the  ice melt rivers flow? I don't know. How much melt water stays on the ice sheet surface all the way to ground surface and from there to the ocean,  and how much melt water diverts through the moulins to under-ice channels before it reaches the ocean? I don't know those answers, either, and it would be great if someone was gathering real data on those questions.



In other instances, the meltwater lakes accumulate for only a few days or weeks in summer,  then flush themselves down the inverse-chimneys, the moulins, that develop under the lakes and deep into the ice, as the melt water opens up cracks in the ice.  In a moulin, the melt water creates a deep vertical shaft that extends to the base of the ice sheet. The moulin water is thought to travel through under-ice channels to the ocean. How well established is that fate? Does all the water go to the ocean?

Tracking ice melt comes with some tools, as ice melt is fresh water, low in salts and conductivity, and as it is from snow fall, it has a lighter oxygen isotope signature than does seawater.

Is it part of the freshwater runoff accumulation found in the seas near shore? Apparently yes.
The East Greenland Current  and in consequence, the West Greenland Current, are affected by plumes of glacial melt water that can be detected far into the current by oxygen isotope studies.

Is the meltwater also pooling in the great central lowland of Greenland that is hidden under the ice? The data from the 1990s did not suggest that it was. The  Greenland  ice core samples from GISP, GSIP2, GRIP, NGRIP, and NEEM did not hit a lake of any sort before approaching bedrock. 

However the times are a-changing. In the summer of 2012, the entire top ice surface of Greenland had a melt layer, unlike previous years' observations in which center of the continental sheet did not lose a layer. This years' loss of annual ice record is as startling as if a geologist could watch the loss of a geologic stratum.

Also in this past year, researchers at the other pole were able to drill down in Antarctica, to the ancient Lake Vostock, deep under the ice sheet.  Is there another lake like Vostock forming under Greenland's melting ice sheet?
Like Antarctica, Greenland has a low bedrock area in mid-sub-continent as much as 500 meters below current sea level.

Researchers suggest that the Greenland meltwater from surface lakes may be lubricating the icesheet's bottom surface. With the slopes of that mid-continent depression, not all the ice sheet would slide towards the sea.
Two to five areas of Greenland bedrock have channel patterns linking the mid-continent depression to the sea.
These channels could unplug at some point in the mix of sea level rise and ice melt.

For now, the Greenland ice cores suggest, but don't prove, an absence of a preexisting mid-continental lake.

Perhaps it's one of those answers that is all of the above or some of the above.

In breaking news on November 30, 2012, a report published in Science, A reconciled estimate of Ice-Sheet mass balance,  shows that Greenland's ice sheet is melting five times faster than the models had predicted.

Most recent update May 22, 2013. Joan Savage

You may enjoy a  cartoon published by Funny Times in 2009.

Insurance industry and catastrophes

The business section of the New York Times has a good article by Roberto Porter on how insurance companies are looking at climate change, " For Insurers, No Doubts on Climate Change."

The usual reaction is are they just going to raise premiums? Porter found that insurance companies did well financially in 2012, so we can assume there were some price rises.

However, raising insurance rates has several kinds of limits.
In the NYT article Porter reports,”Mr. Muir-Wood notes that the insurance industry faces a different sort of risk: political action. “That is the biggest threat,” he said. When insurers canceled policies and raised premiums in Florida in 2006, politicians jumped on them.”

A more prudent defense against an insurance company wipe-out is to merge into a larger customer pool that extends beyond the high-risk locales. This measure helps with cash flow, as well as with rate rise rebellion. In 2011, over twenty percent of insurance in the US was carried by five insurance groups (NAIC report, page 3).
http://www.naic.org/state_report_cards/report_card_wa.pdf

Aggregation is also the basic financial mechanism behind federal flood relief, relying on the pool of taxpayers across the country to pick up the tab for regional events.  We've seen interesting dynamics among 'red' states and 'blue' states in consequence of this politically-shaky assumption of mutual support in time of trouble, even though individuals around the country are typically sympathetic to catastrophe victims.

Accelerated climate change kicks this combine-and-survive strategy to its limits, as regional catastrophic events grow geographically larger and thus more expensive, testing the federal government’s preparedness to pay off, as we saw a few months back with Superstorm Sandy.

Private insurers aren’t ready to throw in the towel, but I expect they are going to lobby for expanded federal instruments for flood insurance and crop insurance and possibly other contingencies to cover catastrophes, even while the private insurers remain largely silent on preventive measures.

h/t Climate Progress pick up on the NYT article.