On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 6

Fig. 1

In this series, among other things I wanted to discuss, one was the effect of the loss of salinity on the expansion and contraction of water.

Specifically ocean water.

And especially on most ocean water, which is located under the surface deep down all the way to the bottom.

There are exceptions as the World Ocean Database (WOD) data have shown.

That is, the surface can be colder than the deep water at times at various locations.

Yes, to add to the non-intuitive nature of some of the data, the surface can be the coldest part of the water column, depending on the WOD zone in question.

Not only that, like politicians, the ocean layers can flip-flop at times, changing from the warmer layer to the colder layer, and vice versa (NASA JPL).

Fig. 2 Salinity matters

Of course, that means that the ocean thermal expansion and contraction is an ever changing phenomenon.

Clearly, it is not limited to thermal expansion in the form of the hypothesis "thermal expansion is the MAJOR cause of sea level rise" would have it, because there is thermal contraction too.

Anyway, in terms of temperature, the norm is for the water to become colder as the depth increases.

The factor of salinity also comes into play in ocean water, in terms of what effect a change in temperature has on that ocean water.

The graphic at Fig. 1 shows the effect of temperature on pure ("fresh") water, and the graphic at Fig. 2 shows the difference when that fresh or pure water becomes saline.

But more than that, Fig. 2 is a case where "freshening" has taken place to the point that the maximum density of that ocean water takes place at -2 degrees Celsius.

In the case depicted in Fig. 2, if heat is added to ocean water that is below the temperature of -2 C, it will contract or shrink until it reaches the temperature of -2 C,  at which point if more heat is added it will then expand (it will also expand from that point if heat is removed).

In other words, when an area of either ocean water or fresh water is at its temperature of maximum density, changing that temperature to either a warmer temperature or a colder temperature will cause expansion.

In the context of this series, that factoid is significant and important to remember.

As more freshening takes place in an ocean area, the maximum density point rises toward 4 deg. C, and finally, if enough freshing takes place to make the ocean water virtually pure, the temperature of maximum density will also go up to or near 4 deg. C.

This is also relevant because freshening is a growing phenomenon:

Recent salinity changes in the Southern Ocean are among the most prominent signals of climate change in the global ocean, yet their underlying causes have not been firmly established. Here we propose that trends in the northward transport of Antarctic sea ice are a major contributor to these changes. Using satellite observations supplemented by sea-ice reconstructions, we estimate that wind-driven northward freshwater transport by sea ice increased by 20 ± 10 per cent between 1982 and 2008. The strongest and most robust increase occurred in the Pacific sector, coinciding with the largest observed salinity changes. We estimate that the additional freshwater for the entire northern sea-ice edge entails a freshening rate of −0.02 ± 0.01 grams per kilogram per decade in the surface and intermediate waters of the open ocean, similar to the observed freshening. The enhanced rejection of salt near the coast of Antarctica associated with stronger sea-ice export counteracts the freshening of both continental shelf and newly formed bottom waters due to increases in glacial meltwater. (Southern Ocean Salinity, emphasis added.

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The cold meltwater that enters the sea water cools and freshens the ocean surface. Driven by the winds and other factors, this modified water mass then sinks below the warmer surface waters to form what is known as the Antarctic Intermediate Water, which has a comparatively low salinity. At depths of about 600 to 1,500 metres, this water spreads as a tongue to the north with its tip stretching as far as the Equator, and in the eastern Atlantic even as far as the coast of the Iberian peninsula. (Freshening of the Southern Ocean, emphasis added).

(cf. Washington Post). Increasingly, as time goes on the calculation of whether adding warmth to ocean water will cause expansion or contraction of that water is something that takes a closer look in order to figure it out properly.

At any rate and at any temperature above the maximum density level temperature, when heat is removed there is a resulting contraction equal to the expansion which took place when that heat was added.

And, as regular readers know, I have recently provided a long list of graphs that are generated with WOD data.

They show that the surface layer, as well as deep layers gain and lose heat over time, thus, they expand and contract accordingly (it is not a one-way street).

Analysis of the degrees of that change, on balance, show that certainly thermal expansion is not a major cause of sea level rise.

Melting and decomposing ice sheets and non-ice sheet land glaciers have always been the major cause of sea level rise and fall. 

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Unprecedented In A Thousand Years

Fig. 1 What goes up NASA / Guardian

Some quotes from "Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies" and the Guardian:

The planet is warming at a pace not experienced within the past 1,000 years, at least, making it “very unlikely” that the world will stay within a crucial temperature limit agreed by nations just last year, according to Nasa’s top climate scientist.
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“In the last 30 years we’ve really moved into exceptional territory,” Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said. “It’s unprecedented in 1,000 years. There’s no period that has the trend seen in the 20th century in terms of the inclination (of temperatures).”

“Maintaining temperatures below the 1.5C guardrail requires significant and very rapid cuts in carbon dioxide emissions or co-ordinated geo-engineering. That is very unlikely. We are not even yet making emissions cuts commensurate with keeping warming below 2C.”

Schmidt repeated his previous prediction that there is a 99% chance that 2016 will be the warmest year on record, with around 20% of the heat attributed to a strong El Niño climatic event. Last year is currently the warmest year on record, itself beating a landmark set in 2014.

“It’s the long-term trend we have to worry about though and there’s no evidence it’s going away and lots of reasons to think it’s here to stay,” Schmidt said. “There’s no pause or hiatus in temperature increase. People who think this is over are viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles. This is a chronic problem for society for the next 100 years.”

(Earth is warming at a pace 'unprecedented in 1,000 years', emphasis added). Some 93% (estimates vary a bit) of the heat increase, like the plastic garbage, finds its way into the oceans.

The heat and garbage have an impact on the five garbage gyres in the oceans of the world.

Fig. 2 Five Zeros For Civilization

In a recent post I focused on one of those five gyres (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 5, cf. New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II - 9).

I did so because, among other things, various oceanographers were perplexed by what they call "the blob," which is an unusually warm spot in the eastern portion of the pacific ocean gyre area (could the garbage cause a darker albedo?).

Today, let's look at the other four garbage gyres, and specifically let's look under the covers with the World Ocean Database (WOD).

Compare Fig. 2 with Fig. 7 to locate the garbage gyres and the WOD zones.

Then view Fig. 3 - Fig. 6 to see what is happening with the temperatures from the ocean surface down into the depths.

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7 Sampled WOD Zones

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On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 5

Fig. 1 Temperatures @ The Garbage Patch

After the temperature and salinity phases of the WOD data based subsurface analysis, there is the chemical and microbe analysis.

Perhaps the most interesting places for a lot of that is the World Ocean Garbage Gyres (The AnthropoScenic Garbage-Gyre Level Rises).

Imagine all those chemicals emanating from decomposing plastics bastardized from oil and now degenerating into who knows what (New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II - 10).

(You are "doin' a heckuva job Brownie Oil-Qaeda" seems like an appropriate saying these days daze.)

So, in that vein I though we could look at some of the temperatures down under the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" written about in some of those links.

Fig. 2

As I write the software module is smokin' on 16 files I just downloaded from WOD land.

The 16 files are from WOD Zones 7415, 7416, 7315, and 7316 (4 files CTDOnnnn, CTDSnnnn, PFLOnnnn and PFLSnnnn for each zone).

The red square in Fig. 1 shows a portion of that "great" garbage patch, and the location of the subsurface measurements from which I will make a graph.

Ok, the processing just finished, so let me take a minute and go analyze the results and make us a graph ... (Fig. 2).

The data seems good, but the graph tells an up and down story ... more troubles for the TEM crowd ("Thermal Expansion Myth").

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Recognize A Brain Wreck When You See One?

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
- James Madison

Not all folks will, but some of the notable foreign policy officials of long standing do:

"The fact is that there has never been a truly “dominant” global power until the emergence of America on the world scene. Imperial Great Britain came close to becoming one, but World War I and later World War II not only bankrupted it but also prompted the emergence of rival regional powers. The decisive new global reality was the appearance on the world scene of America as simultaneously the richest and militarily the most powerful player. During the latter part of the 20th century no other power even came close.

That era is now ending. While no state is likely in the near future to match America’s economic-financial superiority, new weapons systems could suddenly endow some countries with the means to commit suicide in a joint tit-for-tat embrace with the United States, or even to prevail."

(Toward a Global Realignment, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, emphasis added; cf The Broken Chessboard). The typical conflict: "that can't happen here vs. it could happen" comes to mind.

Yep, it is a brain wreck.

And on top of that it is the typical, historical brain wreck:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). Two historians using similar metaphors ("the means to commit suicide ... or even to prevail") present a repeating historical conundrum.

A historical conundrum emanating from the same, repetitious brain wreck:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(James Madison, emphasis added). The visionary who made that statement was the 4th President of the United States, Bill of Rights author, Congressman, Cabinet Member, and who was also called the "Father of the U.S. Constitution".

The above quote is from his "Political Observations," April 20, 1795, in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491-492.

Notice, in the quote above, how Madison equated or associated the toxins of power with disease epidemic concepts, saying that the war toxin "develops the germ of every other" anti-freedom toxin.

War enhances the spread of corrupting toxins.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?). Dr. Brzezinski has been an advocate of domination by military power, which I call the bully religion (On The Origin of The Bully Religion, 2, 3, 4; Bully Worship: The Universal Religion, 2, 3, 4, 5; Origin of the Classic Nuclear Bully, 2).

Dr. Brzezinski once advocated the American empire through the lens of military power.

Now rejecting that as a viable, ongoing foreign policy, he still speaks nothing of mutual destruction by way of nuclear winter, nuclear heat, or radiation as a means of human extinction.

Nor does he speak of the other means of "suicide," as do many who have not become myopic to the point of perpetuating the brain wreck that advocates such notions (How Many Minutes to Midnight?).

Another well known observer, however, does mention both available methods of "suicide":

Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to allow the unification of Germany and its membership in NATO, a hostile military alliance. In the light of recent history, this was a most astonishing concession. There was a quid pro quo. President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker agreed that NATO would not expand “one inch to the East,” meaning into East Germany. Instantly, they expanded NATO to East Germany.

Gorbachev was naturally outraged, but when he complained, he was instructed by Washington that this had only been a verbal promise, a gentleman’s agreement, hence without force. If he was naïve enough to accept the word of American leaders, it was his problem.

All of this, too, was routine, as was the silent acceptance and approval of the expansion of NATO in the U.S. and the West generally. President Bill Clinton then expanded NATO further, right up to Russia’s borders. Today, the world faces a serious crisis that is in no small measure a result of these policies.
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On the issue of nuclear weapons, the record is similarly interesting -- and frightening. It reveals very clearly that, from the earliest days, the security of the population was a non-issue, and remains so. There is no time here to run through the shocking record, but there is little doubt that it strongly supports the lament of General Lee Butler, the last commander of the Strategic Air Command, which was armed with nuclear weapons. In his words, we have so far survived the nuclear age “by some combination of skill, luck, and divine intervention, and I suspect the latter in greatest proportion.” And we can hardly count on continued divine intervention as policymakers play roulette with the fate of the species in pursuit of the driving factors in policy formation.

As we are all surely aware, we now face the most ominous decisions in human history. There are many problems that must be addressed, but two are overwhelming in their significance: environmental destruction and nuclear war. For the first time in history, we face the possibility of destroying the prospects for decent existence -- and not in the distant future. For this reason alone, it is imperative to sweep away the ideological clouds and face honestly and realistically the question of how policy decisions are made, and what we can do to alter them before it is too late.

(Whose Security?, Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). More likely than not, "before it is too late" is something that has by now become very hazy in the rear view mirror of time.

In fact, it is so hazy and out of reach that it cannot be returned to (except by daydream believers).

I have been troubled by the ongoing election in a nation that sits on enough weaponry to destroy life on the planet 50 or more times over with just one of the two options: the nuclear war brain wreck.

To me, the election seems to be scripted and choreographed by the Epigovernment (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

But, that is the case not only to me, but even to Dr. Brzezinski's daughter too (she recently remarked on Morning Joe that elections are "not supposed to be this way").

These kinds of plans can't be done in the light of day, they must be hidden from us, according to "the father of spin", a proud American propagandist:

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Edward L. Bernays

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
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It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

(Propaganda, by Edward L. Bernays, emphasis added). His first client as a professional propagandist was the U.S. War Department (Encyclopedia Britannica).

One has to wonder if he encouraged them to "pivot" and change their name to "Department of Defense?"

But nevermind, it is ok MOMCOM, we the sheeple are only bleeting bleating.

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The sarcasm of protest music has become the bumper sticker for McTell News ("nothing to see here folks, move along now ...").

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New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II - 10

Go Figure

I am writing this post while watching a "window" on my computer's screen that is displaying another program that is updating the WOD database (my local version of it that is).

After releasing the WOD13 in 2013 it has been updated several times.

Now that I have a handle on the WOD file structure, which comes from the experience of using the data in the 2013 release, I am incorporating the updates (~9.2 Gigabytes of data) into the mix (WOD Updates).

That should bring us up to 2016, and make changes in the graphs that will be produced.

But, it won't change what happened before that time will it?

I mean the stuff this Dredd Blog Series focuses on, for example the GGG (Garbage, Garbage, Garbage) continent which too many casual observers are waiting for Columbus to discover (New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, [note especially the first episode]).

What happens when the GGG becomes microscopic plastic is beginning to be studied even as we speak:

They're everywhere, even in the deep, open ocean. They are microplastics, and researchers want to know how they might be affecting biodiversity in the middle of the Atlantic.

Though their research is just beginning, a team of scientists from the U.K. National Oceanography Centre have found microplastics throughout the first 1,000 meters -- or half-mile -- of the North Atlantic's water column.

(Microplastics found deep in oceans). The odd thing about The Garbage Continent, now, is that it is a normal continent in a normal civilization (I use the word "normal" in the sense of "the new normal" bandied about these days daze).

Yes, the new normal civilization is essentially like the old normal civilizations:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee).

And just in case you did not yet hear, this is what plastic, a part of the soul of civilization, and other stuff like it is made of (Oil-Qaeda juice):

Solvents, Diesel fuel, Motor Oil, Bearing Grease, Ink, Floor Wax, Ballpoint Pens, Football Cleats, Upholstery, Sweaters, Boats, Insecticides, Bicycle Tires, Sports Car Bodies, Nail Polish, Fishing lures, Dresses, Tires, Golf Bags, Perfumes, Cassettes, Dishwasher parts, Tool Boxes, Shoe Polish, Motorcycle Helmet, Caulking, Petroleum Jelly, Transparent Tape, CD Player, Faucet Washers, Antiseptics, Clothesline, Curtains, Food Preservatives, Basketballs, Soap, Vitamin Capsules, Antihistamines, Purses, Shoes, Dashboards, Cortisone, Deodorant,

MOMCOM 1% Feeds The 99%

Footballs, Putty, Dyes, Panty Hose, Refrigerant, Percolators, Life Jackets, Rubbing Alcohol, Linings, Skis, TV Cabinets, Shag Rugs, Electrician's Tape, Tool Racks, Car Battery Cases, Epoxy, Paint, Mops, Slacks, Insect Repellent, Oil Filters, Umbrellas, Yarn, Fertilizers, Hair Coloring, Roofing, Toilet Seats, Fishing Rods, Lipstick, Denture Adhesive, Linoleum, Ice Cube Trays, Synthetic Rubber, Speakers, Plastic Wood, Electric Blankets, Glycerin, Tennis Rackets, Rubber Cement, Fishing Boots, Dice, Nylon Rope, Candles, Trash Bags, House Paint, Water Pipes, Hand Lotion, Roller Skates, Surf Boards, Shampoo, Wheels, Paint Rollers, Shower Curtains, Guitar Strings, Luggage, Aspirin, Safety Glasses, Antifreeze, Football Helmets, Awnings, Eyeglasses, Clothes, Toothbrushes, Ice Chests, Footballs, Combs, CD's & DVD's, Paint Brushes, Detergents, Vaporizers, Balloons, Sun Glasses, Tents, Heart Valves, Crayons, Parachutes, Telephones, Enamel, Pillows, Dishes, Cameras, Anesthetics, Artificial Turf, Artificial limbs, Bandages, Dentures, Model Cars, Folding Doors, Hair Curlers, Cold cream, Movie film, Soft Contact lenses, Drinking Cups, Fan Belts, Car Enamel, Shaving Cream, Ammonia, Refrigerators, Golf Balls, Toothpaste, Gasoline

(A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 2, "stuff made from oil").

Suck it up.

The previous post in this series is here.

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"One was Texas medicine, the other was railroad gin ..."

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