Year: 2008

SEAWATER pH AND ANTHROPOGENIC CARBON DIOXIDE

Seawater pH and anthropogenic carbon dioxide is the first chapter in Climate Change, Ed: Siddhartha P. Saikia (International Book Distributors 2010).

In 2005, the Royal Society published a report titled Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The report’s principal conclusion “that average ocean pH could decrease by 0.5 units by 2100” is demonstrated here to be consistent with a linear extrapolation of very limited data.  It is also shown that current understanding of ocean mixing, and of the relationship between pH and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, cannot justify such an extrapolation.

(Typos in Eqs. (1) and (A10) have been corrected)

SEAWATERpH& CO2

Charge, geometry, and effective mass in the Kerr-Newman solution to the Einstein field equations

Foundations of Physics Vol. 38, pp. 959-968 (2008)

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10701-008-9245-x

It has been shown that for the Reissner-Nordstrom solution to the vacuum Einstein field equations charge, like mass, has a unique space-time signature [Found. Phys. 38, 293-300 (2008)]. The presence of charge results in a negative curvature. This work, which includes a discussion of effective mass, is extended here to the Kerr-Newman solution.

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Negative Energies and Field Theory

The assumption that the vacuum is the minimum energy state, invariant under unitary transformations, is fundamental to quantum field theory. However, the assertion that the conservation of charge implies that the equal time commutator of the charge density and its time derivative vanish for two spatially separated points is inconsistent with the requirement that the vacuum be the lowest energy state. Yet, for quantum field theory to be gauge invariant, this commutator must vanish. This essay explores how this conundrum is resolved in quantum electrodynamics.
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Truth, Faith and Reason: Pope Benedict XVI’s Lecture at the University of Regensburg

Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism Volume 16(1) Spring-Summer 2008.

Pope Benedict XVI interleaved two themes in his talk at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. These are discussed here in two separate parts: Truth, Faith, and Reason and The Dialogue of Cultures. The first addresses the Pope’s proposal to expand scientific reasoning to include the “rationality of faith”; and the second with the threat of radical Islam, and whether a “dialogue of cultures” is possible if the West persists in its belief in what the Pope calls a “reason which is deaf to the divine”.

Truth, Faith & Reason

The Vacuum and the Cosmological Constant Problem

It will be argued here that the cosmological constant problem exists because of the way the vacuum is defined in quantum field theory. It has been known for some time that for QFT to be gauge invariant certain terms—such as part of the vacuum polarization tensor must be eliminated either explicitly or by some form of regularization followed by renormalization. It has recently been shown that lack of gauge invariance is a result of the way the vacuum is defined, and redefining the vacuum so that the theory is gauge invariant may also offer a solution to the cosmological constant problem.

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Climate Stability and Policy: A Synthesis

During most of the Phanerozoic eon, which began about a half-billion years ago, there were few glacial intervals until the late Pliocene 2.75 million years ago. Beginning at that time, the Earth’s climate entered a period of instability with the onset of cyclical ice ages. At first these had a 41,000 year cycle, and about 1 million years ago the period lengthened to 100,000 years, which has continued to the present. Over this period of instability the climate has been extraordinarily sensitive to small forcings, whether due to Milankovitch cycles, solar variations, aerosols, or albedo variations driven by cosmic rays. The current interglacial has lasted for some ten thousand years, about the duration of past interglacials, and serious policy considerations arise as it nears its likely end. It is extremely unlikely that the current rise in carbon dioxide concentration–some 30% since 1750, and projected further increase over the next few decades–will significantly postpone the next glaciation.

Climate Stability and Policy: A Synthesis (PDF)

A shorter version appeared in Energy &Environment VOLUME 22 No. 8 2011 (PDF)

A related Op-Ed: THE COMING OF A NEW ICE AGE (PDF)

Goracle Gushings on Faith-Based Science

USA Today Magazine (January 2008) Goracle PDF

We are about to waste an enormous amount of money and effort on carbon mitigation without lowering CO2 emissions one whit. The Goracle and his fellow travelers will carry the day.”

AL GORE won an Academy Award for his skillfully done film, An Inconvenient Truth. It was well-deserved. Had he given as good a performance during his campaign for president, he would have won in a landslide. As environmental drama, it only can be compared with Michael Crichton’s novel, State of Fear. Both have elements of scientific and political fact, and both are excellent fiction.

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