Month: June 2021

Guest contribution by Larry Hamlin

The climate alarmist cabal is all tweeting about a made-up “study” that propagandistically claims that “climate change” has been responsible for 37% of the world’s heat deaths since 1991, as reported in numerous “climate alarmism-hyped” newspapers “like the LA Times released.

WUWT has an excellent article debunking this fabricated study claim by Pasi Autoo and documenting the gruesome modeling schemes used to create these false death rate claims.

In summary, the WUWT article reveals in detail the following modeling absurdities regarding how this false heat-related death outcome was invented.

“According to studies, heat-related deaths at 732 locations in 43 countries covered have increased by an average of 37.0%. 37.0% increase between 1991 and 2018.

To make such a claim, you need to determine the following:

1. Extreme temperatures have actually increased at study locations
2. The temperature rise during the study period is not due to other factors such as the urban heat island effect
3. The number of deaths has really increased during heat waves
4. The increase in deaths is not due to the increase in population
5. The increase in deaths is not due to a higher average age of the population
6. No other factors have an impact on deaths like natural disasters. “

“Date, deaths and temperature. The basic assumption seems to be that high temperatures directly affect the death rate. Please wait! Where are the population data or age distribution data? Such details seem to be considered trivial information that is not needed for an actual analysis. “

“It’s very simple: Just evaluate the relationship between temperature and mortality and then think about how much the temperature has risen with the help of climate models. The bottom line is the percentage of deaths caused by climate change. “

“The methods used in AM Vicedo-Cabrera et all 2021 are seriously flawed, causing the results and conclusions to be invalid.

This rebuttal concerned only two countries (Finland and Spain), but this already proves that:

• There is no increased heat-related mortality from any cause, and if overall mortality does not increase, climate change cannot have an impact
• All increases are due to flawed methods that rely on climate models rather than real mortality data
• Even then, the study makes no mention of other factors that affect mortality, such as population aging and population growth
• The adjustment to the excess heat takes place automatically everywhere, if the increasing income allows it. “

The fact that this heavily flawed heat-related “study” is based on “climate models rather than real mortality data” makes the alleged results unambiguous as mere guesswork and speculation.

The UN IPCC stated 20 years ago in its AR3 Climate Review report that climate models cannot be used to determine future climate states, which means running a hypothetical climate model from 1991 to 2018 and claiming that such a scheme can accurately distinguish the difference between actual measured temperatures with and without putative human-made climate change variables is scientifically unsupported, as highlighted below.

The AR3 report in Section 14.2.2.2 stated:

“All in all, a strategy has to recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system and therefore a long-term prediction of future climate conditions is not possible. The highest that we can expect is the prediction of the probability distribution of the future possible states of the system by generating ensemble model solutions. ”

In addition, the UN IPCC AR5 Climate Report found that its climate model scenarios, which are used to assess alleged man-made influences on climate outcomes, are not based on established probabilities related to alleged climate change variables, but only characterized as “plausible” and “illustrative” means more guesswork and speculation, as noted in the technical summary section of the AR5 report below.

“The scenarios should be viewed as plausible and descriptive and are not linked to probabilities.” (12.3.1; Box 1.1)

The following provides data on the average number of global deaths per decade related to all types of global natural disasters, including extreme temperatures, along with an explanation for the significant decrease in these deaths from 1900 to 2015.

“In the graph we show the global deaths from natural disasters since 1900, but instead of reporting annual deaths, we show the annual average by decades. The data for this diagram can be found in the table presented here.

As we can see, there has been a significant decrease in global deaths from natural disasters over the course of the 20th century. In the early 1900s, the annual average was often in the range of 400,000 to 500,000 deaths. Through the second half of the century and into the early 2000s, we saw a sharp drop to less than 100,000 – at least five times lower than those highs.

This decline is even more impressive when we look at population growth over that period. If we correct the population – we show this data in the form of death rates (measured per 100,000 inhabitants) – then we see a more than 10-fold decrease in the last century. This diagram can be viewed Here, with the data in tabular form Here. “

The global temperature-related deaths are listed below for the period 1991 to 2019.

The extreme highs of 2003 and 2010 reflect the record hot spell in Europe in summer 2003 with 66,000 deaths and Russia in summer 2010 with 55,000 deaths.

This data is also shown in a bubble chart, where the size of the bubble represents the total number of deaths per year for each type of disaster, as shown below.

The total death bubbles at extreme temperatures are given as 74,698 and 57,188 for the peak years 2003 and 2010, respectively.

These graphs of total deaths from natural disasters do not reflect the tremendous world population growth that occurred between 1900 and 2019 as shown below.

The graph below shows the death rates from natural disasters, which explains the significant impact of the huge population growth over this period.

As shown in this graph, the global death rate in extreme temperatures, which correctly reflects population growth, is decreasing from 1.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2003 to 0.825 deaths per 100,000 in 2010 to 0.007 deaths per 100,000 in 2016 and remains until 2018 at this level.

Actual recorded global death rates from extreme temperatures have declined significantly since 2003 and do not support claims, driven by a scientifically flawed climate model, that global climate change is contributing to increased global death rates from extreme temperatures. The hyped “heat death study” is a product of the scare-mongering driven incompetent climate science.

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The core of the Milky Way (also known as the Galactic Center), the region around which the rest of the galaxy revolves, is a strange and mysterious place. This is where the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) is located, which powers the compact radio source called Sagittarius A *. It is also the most compact region in the galaxy, with an estimated 10 million stars within 3.26 light years of the Galactic Center.

Using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the MeerKAT radio telescope, NASA and the National Research Foundation (NSF) of South Africa created a mosaic of the center of the Milky Way. By combining images captured in the X-ray and radio wavelength ranges, the resulting panoramic image succeeds in capturing the filaments of overheated gas and magnetic fields that (when visualized) show the complex energy network in the center of our galaxy.

This new panorama builds on previous surveys made by Chandra and other telescopes of the center of our galaxy. Because of the intense brightness caused by so many star clusters, scientists can only study the region at depth by observing it at different wavelengths. This latest version includes views of the area above and below the plane of the galaxy, the central disk of the Milky Way, showing the large clouds of gas protruding outward.

Image of the Galactic Center, visualized in X-ray (left), radio (middle) and composite with annotations (right). Photo credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / UMass / QD Wang; Radio: NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT)

This makes it possible to fully recognize special features emanating from the Galactic Center, such as radio wave filaments running vertically and horizontally. As you can see on the above slides (broken down by wavelength), different types of radiation are shown in different colors. The X-ray sources observed by Chandra (left) are shown in orange, green, blue and purple (for different X-ray energies), while the radio sources observed by MeerKAT (center) are shown in purple and gray.

The main features of the image are shown in an annotated mosaic (right), including the radio source Sagittarius A *. This feature is close to the center in both X-ray and radio visualization and is the strongest source of the energies observed. Another interesting feature is the slender thread-like features shown in red boxes (labeled G0.17-0.41 and G359.55 + 0.16).

These threads consist of intertwined X-ray and radio waves that extend for several light years perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. Both have been the subject of research, the most recent of which is from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After observing G0.17-0.41, Professor Daniel Wang and his colleagues conclude that threads like these are connected to one another by thin magnetic field strips.

These streaks could have formed through magnetic reconnection, a phenomenon similar to what drives energetic particles from the sun into the solar system (also known as solar wind or “space weather”). In this case, the weather is determined by volatile phenomena near the Galactic Center, such as supernovae, densely packed stars ejecting plasma clouds, and eruptions of matter from regions near Sagittarius A *.

Mosaic image of the Galactic Center with annotations. Photo credit: X-ray: NASA / CXC / UMass / QD Wang; Radio: NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT)

As a result, magnetic fields that are oriented in different directions collide and twist around each other, resulting in the unusual structures we see here. Based on the picture, these magnetic threads appear to be appearing at the outer boundaries of the large hot gas plumes, suggesting that it could be the gas in these clouds that is driving the magnetic field to collide and creating the threads.

These hot gas clouds, which extend about 700 light years above and below the galaxy level, are also examined by Wang and his colleagues in their study. In theory, these clouds of plasma and energetic particles could represent outflows on a galactic scale, much like particles drifting away from the sun. It is also possible that they are being heated by supernovae and the many recent magnetic reconnections near the center of the galaxy.

A detailed study of these threads will teach us much more about the type of space weather astronomers have observed in the central region of our galaxy. For example, you might discover that magnetic reconnection events play an important role in warming the interstellar medium (the gas and dust that exists between stars). It is also possible that they are responsible for accelerating particles to create cosmic rays and form new stars.

The panorama also reveals other wonders in the Galactic Center, such as the arcs, the quintuplet, and other star clusters (DB00-58, DB00-6, and 1E 1743.1-28.43), the Sagittarius C Molecular Cloud, and the Cold Gas Cloud, all shown in purple circles and ellipses . Watch the video below (courtesy of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center) for more details on this panorama and its insights into the core region of our galaxy:

Further reading: NASA, Chandra X-ray Observatory

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Researchers are using supercomputers to develop new software for improved space weather forecasting

TEXAS UNIVERSITY IN AUSTIN, TEXAS ADVANCED COMPUTING CENTER

Research news

PICTURE: (UPPER PANEL, LEFT TO RIGHT) JULY 12, 2012 CORONAL BULK ELEVATION SEEN IN STEREO B COR2, SOHO C2 AND STEREO A COR2 CORONAGRAPHS. (LOWER PANEL) THE SAME PICTURES… View More CREDIT: TALWINDER SINGH, MEHMET S. YALIM, NIKOLAI V. POGORELOV AND NAT GOPALSWAMY

The sun’s surface swirls with energy and often hurls masses of highly magnetized plasma towards the earth. Sometimes these ejections are strong enough to crash through the magnetosphere – the natural magnetic shield that protects the earth – and damage satellites or power grids. Such space weather events can be catastrophic.

Astronomers have studied the sun’s activity with increasing understanding for centuries. Today computers are central to understanding the behavior of the sun and its role in space weather events.

The bipartisan PROSWIFT Act (Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow) [https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-116s881enr/pdf/BILLS-116s881enr.pdf], which went into effect in October 2020, formalizes the need to develop better space weather forecasting tools.

“Space weather requires a real-time product so that we can predict effects before an event, not after,” said Nikolai Pogorelov, a distinguished professor of space science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville who used computers to predict space weather for decades. “This issue – related to national space programs, environmental and other issues – has recently been escalated to a higher level.”

To many, space weather may seem like a distant concern, but like a pandemic – something we knew was possible and catastrophic – we may not realize its dangers until it’s too late.

“We don’t think about it, but electrical communications, GPS and everyday devices can be affected by extreme space weather effects,” Pogorelov said.

The US is also planning missions to other planets and the moon. All of this requires very accurate predictions of space weather – for spacecraft design and to alert astronauts to extreme events.

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, Pogorelov leads a team working to improve the state of the art in space weather forecasting.

“This research, which brings together complex science, advanced computing and exciting observations, will improve our understanding of how the sun affects space weather and its effects on Earth,” said Mangala Sharma, space weather program director in the Atmospheric and Geo Department – and space science at NSF. “The work will help scientists predict space weather events and strengthen our nation’s resilience to these potential natural hazards.”

The multi-agency effort includes the Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and two privately held companies, Predictive Science Inc. and Space Systems Research Corporation.

Pogorelov uses the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) – the world’s ninth fastest – and high-performance systems from NASA and the San Diego Supercomputing Center to improve the models and methods that are at the heart of space weather forecasting.

Turbulence plays a key role in the dynamics of solar wind and coronal mass ejections. This complex phenomenon has many facets, including the role of the impact-turbulence interaction and ion acceleration.

“Solar plasma is not in thermal equilibrium. This creates interesting functions, ”said Pogorelov.

Writing in the Astrophysical Journal [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/abe62c/meta] In April 2021, Pogorelov, together with Michael Gedalin (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) and Vadim Roytershteyn (Space Science Institute), described the role of backflowing pickup ions in the acceleration of charged particles in the universe. Back-flowing ions, either of interstellar or local origin, are absorbed by the magnetized solar wind plasma and move radially outward from the sun.

“Some non-thermal particles can be accelerated further to create solar-energy particles that are particularly important for space weather conditions on Earth and for people in space,” he said.

Pogorelov ran simulations on Frontera to better understand this phenomenon and compare it to observations from Voyager 1 and 2, the space probes that explored the outer reaches of the heliosphere and are now providing unique data from the local interstellar medium.

One of the main focuses of space weather forecasting is correctly predicting the arrival of coronal mass ejections – the release of plasma and the accompanying magnetic field from the solar corona – and determining the direction of the magnetic field it carries with it. Pogorelov’s team’s study of backstreaming ions helps, as does the work published in the Astrophysical Journal in 2020, which uses a river-rope magnetohydrodynamic model to predict the time of arrival on Earth and the magnetic field configuration of the coronal mass ejection dated July 12, 2012 . (Magnetohydrodynamics refers to the magnetic properties and behavior of electrically conductive fluids such as plasma, which play a key role in the dynamics of space weather).

“Fifteen years ago we didn’t know much about the interstellar medium or the properties of the solar wind,” said Pogorelov. “We have so many observations available today that allow us to validate our codes and make them much more reliable.”

Pogorelov is co-investigating an on-board component of the Parker Solar Probe called SWEAP (Solar Wind Electrons, Protons, and Alphas Instrument). [http://sweap.cfa.harvard.edu/]. With each orbit, the probe approaches the sun and provides new information about the properties of the solar wind.

“Soon it will advance beyond the critical sphere where the solar wind becomes superfast magnetosonic, and we will have information about the physics of acceleration and transport of solar wind that we have never had before,” he said.

As the probe and other new observation tools become available, Pogorelov expects a wealth of new data that can support and advance the development of new models relevant to space weather forecasting. For this reason, in addition to his basic research, Pogorelov is developing a software framework that is flexible, can be used by various research groups around the world and can integrate new observational data.

“There is no doubt that the quality of the photosphere and solar corona data will improve dramatically in the years to come, both because of new data available and new, more sophisticated ways to work with data,” he said. “We try to build software in such a way that it is easier for users to integrate this information when they find better conditions from new scientific missions.”

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References:

Singh, T., Kim, TK, Pogorelov, NV, & Arge, CN (2020). Application of a modified Spheromak model to simulations of coronal mass ejection in the inner heliosphere. Space weather, 18, e2019SW002405. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019SW002405

Singh, T., Yalim, MS, Pogorelov, NV, and Gopalswamy, N., A Modified Spheromak Model Suitable for Coronal Mass Ejection Simulations, The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 894, No. 1, 2020. doi: 10.3847 / 1538-4357 / ab845f.

From EurekAlert!

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In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) provided us with the first direct image of a black hole. On the one hand, the resulting picture was rather inconspicuous. Just a circular blur of light that surrounds a dark central area. On the other hand, subtle properties of the image contain enormous information about the size and rotation of the black hole. Most of the details of the black hole image are blurred by the boundaries of the EHT. But the next generation EHT should provide a sharper view and could reveal the dark edge of a black hole’s event horizon.

How strongly bundled light creates a ring of photons. Source: Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian

A black hole itself does not emit light. Any light that crosses its event horizon is forever trapped. The glowing ring we see in the EHT image of M87 * is caused by the background radio glow from gas and dust surrounding the black hole. Some of this light happens very close to the black hole and is directed gravitationally in our direction. The next limit at which light can graze the black hole and reach us is known as the photon ring.

If we could observe the black hole perfectly, the photon ring would be a thin bright line. Some of the light from the photon ring is scattered before it reaches us, and when combined with the resolution limits of the EHT, this creates the blurry image we see. However, the next generation EHT will have higher resolution and be able to capture images in less time. This enables detailed images not only of M87 *, but also of the supermassive black hole in our galaxy.

Different photon paths create layers of light. Photo credit: George Wong (UIUC) and Michael Johnson (CfA)

One of the things the ngEHT could reveal is multiple layers of lens light. Most of the light we see around the black hole is that of the photon ring. That is, the light with a strong lens that grazed the black hole. But some light will make a full loop around the black hole before it sets off on our way, and a small amount will make multiple loops. Each type of photon path creates a different ring of light around the black hole. If we can pull these layers apart, we will better understand the nature of gravity near a black hole.

And as a recent paper on the arXiv shows, the ngEHT could also help us to examine the event horizon of a black hole itself. The dark central area of ​​the M87 * image is not that of the event horizon. It’s just a shadow of the black hole caused by the photon ring. But within the central region there should be an inner shadow. A shadow of the event horizon. As this current work shows, this inner shadow would not be a simple circle. Its shape depends on the size and rotation of the black hole.

The gravitational field near a black hole is so strong that it distorts not only the glow of the photon ring, but also the shadow of the event horizon. So while the event horizon is truly spherical, our view of the event horizon can be skewed by the gravity of the black hole. In this latest work, the team shows how we can observe both the photon ring and the inner shadow. By comparing the two, we would gain a deep understanding of black hole dynamics, including information on how light and matter are captured by a black hole.

In time, we may finally be able to see the dark shadow of gravity for ourselves.

Reference: Andrew Chael et al. “Observing the Inner Shadow of a Black Hole: A Direct View of the Event Horizon.” ArXiv-Preprint arXiv: 2106.00683 (2021).

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