The Science of Climate Change

The Science of Climate Change: 5 Questions for Climatologist Michael E. Mann

Michael E. Mann is the director of the Earth System Science Center and a professor in the Department of Meteorology at Penn State University. He best known for his work in climate modeling, the reconstruction of ancient climates, and the development of the oft-cited “hockey-stick” graph, which depicts the average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere over the past 1,000 years.

Accused of scientific misconduct in connection with the unauthorized release of private e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, U.K., in late 2009, Mann was investigated by Penn State officials. He was subsequently cleared of all charges in early July 2010. With this in mind, Britannica science editor John P. Rafferty asked Mann about his recent experiences at the center of the global warming issue and the current state of global warming research following the hack of the CRU e-mail system.

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Britannica: Global warming research is an inexact science that sometimes relies on incomplete data to make predictions. In which areas are climatologists most confident? In which is there the most uncertainty?

Mann: Well, global warming is no more or less inexact a science than any modern field of science that involves the behavior of complex systems and that requires multidisciplinary expertise and teams of scientists with complementary expertise to advance our understanding. It is no different from, say, the field of physics in that regard. As with physics, there are basic findings that are centuries old and which remain indisputable. With physics that includes, say, Newton’s laws of classical mechanics. In climate science, that includes the atmospheric greenhouse effect something that early 19th-century scientists like Fourier already knew about. In the absence of any additional knowledge, we know from the atmospheric greenhouse effect alone that increasing CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere will lead to a warming of Earth’s surface. No credible scientist would challenge that conclusion. And like physics, the science is less certain at its frontiers. In physics, we still don’t have a theory that unifies all of the fundamental forces, though many of them have been unified (e.g., electricity, magnetism, and the ‘weak’ nuclear force). In climate science, we still cannot predict with certainty how the El Niño phenomenon will change as we continue to increase greenhouse concentrations, but theoretical climate models nonetheless do a far better job of producing realistic looking El Niño events like those we see in the real world. Because of uncertainties (e.g., how El Niño will change), it is more challenging to make detailed regional projections of how future climates will change. But if we continue with our current trajectory of fossil fuel burning, we know with reasonable confidence that Earth will continue to warm, probably close to 5 °F warming by 2100. We know that the Arctic ice cap will disappear at least seasonally, glaciers and ice sheets will continue to retreat, sea level will continue to rise, probably between 0.5 and 1 meter, that hurricanes will become stronger, drought more widespread, and extreme weather, including flooding events and record-breaking heat waves, increasingly more common.

Britannica: Public opinion polls in the United States reveal growing skepticism as to whether global warming is real and traced to human causes. Is there a consensus among scientists on this issue?

Mann: The scientific consensus regarding the reality of human-caused climate change, and its potential threat, has never been stronger. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences earlier this spring issued a press briefing entitled “Strong Evidence on Climate Change Underscores Need for Actions to Reduce Emissions and Begin Adapting to Impacts” following its most comprehensive review yet of climate science (see here).

Britannica: In 1998 you first presented the famous “hockey stick” graph, which shows the change in average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere across the last 1,000 years and depicts a dramatic increase in average temperatures throughout the 20th century. How valuable is this graph some 12 years on from its creation? Should it be improved with the additional knowledge gained since 1998, or is it still a useful tool in its current form?

Mann: Given that the study was the first of its kind, and is now well over a decade old, it would be remarkable if paleoclimate scientists, including my collaborators and me, didn’t continue to refine and improve on these seminal early efforts. It is worth considering, in that context, how our key original conclusions have held up.
Our original decade-old findings have in fact been reaffirmed by more than a dozen independent teams of scientists. Our findings were reviewed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2006, which concluded:

“The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes the additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and documentation of the spatial coherence of recent warming and also the pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators.”

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in its most recent (2007) assessment concluded that recent Northern Hemisphere warmth is not only likely unprecedented over the past 1,000 years, as we concluded in our original work, but that in fact this conclusion likely holds farther back (at least 1,300 years, and possibly further, although evidence is more scarce).

Meanwhile, we have continued to seek to advance the frontiers of the science. Over the past two years, my co-authors and I have published a number of papers in the leading scientific journals (Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), refining estimates of past temperature trends using more-sophisticated statistical methods that we have rigorously tested using synthetic data sets, and making use of considerably updated and expanded networks of climate ‘proxy’ data. We have compared the spatial patterns of past temperature changes to results from climate model simulations to demonstrate the role of natural phenomena such as El Niño in understanding past climate changes. We have also examined the relationship between past climate changes and changes in phenomena such as Atlantic hurricanes as recovered from coastal sedimentary deposits. These studies use relationships in the past to better understand how future human-caused climate change may impact such phenomena.

Britannica: In November 2009, thousands of private e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of Britain’s East Anglia University were made public. Their unauthorized release emboldened skeptics of climate change science, who claimed that it proved that researchers had misrepresented and falsified data, though a subsequent inquiry largely cleared the scientists of wrongdoing, saying that they had acted with integrity and not manipulated the data. Do you think that this will reduce the public’s willingness to trust current and future scientific explanations of global warming and climate change?

Mann: While the attacks against climate science may have energized climate change deniers, and those who derive their information from talk radio and other outlets of climate change disinformation, polling by Jon Krosnik of Stanford suggests that the public has grown more convinced and more concerned about the reality of human-caused climate change in recent months. Undoubtedly, the dramatic heat and extreme weather events of this past summer has probably recaptured the public’s awareness of the changes that are taking place, and has served as a stark reminder of the what looms in our future if we refuse to take action to mitigate climate change. The ordeal has nonetheless emboldened the climate change denial industry, including some members of the U.S. Congress, who are disingenuously exploiting the manufactured e-mail scandal to thwart efforts to pass meaningful climate change legislation.

Britannica: You personally faced charges of data tampering and deviating from the accepted practices of your field as a result of the release of the e-mails from CRU. Although you were fully exonerated, what effect did the investigation have on how you think climate science should be conducted?

Mann: I’ve been the subject of attacks by climate change deniers for more than a decade now, because of the prominent role that the “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction has played in the public discourse on climate change. This doesn’t mean that I’m numb to the outrageous attacks against me and other climate scientists. But I’m not surprised by anything anymore. There is nothing, it would seem, that the climate change denial industry isn’t willing to do in their attempts to thwart policy action to combat human-caused climate change. While the attacks have been tough to deal with at times, I’ve had a huge amount of support from my colleagues, other scientists, and ordinary citizens who have come out of the woodwork just to thank me for my contributions. And in large part because of a great group of students, post-docs, and collaborators, I’ve been able to keep my research program moving forward, even as I spend significants amounts of time engaged in public outreach to both combat climate change disinformation and help educate the public about the reality and potential risks of human-caused climate change. If there is a single most important lesson to be taken from the CRU e-mail hack incident, I think it is the one that was offered in an editorial in the premier science journal Nature back in March (”Climate of Fear,” Nature, 464, p. 141, 11 March 2010), “Scientists must now emphasize the science, while acknowledging that they are in a street fight.”

 

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True Story!!!

Serving a Nation's Health

When the swine flu pandemic began in April 2009, Joanna Ellis, 49, faced the biggest challenge of her 17-year career at the Health Protection Agency's (HPA's) National Influenza Centre (NIC). She and two colleagues had to develop and validate the United Kingdom's laboratory test for the H1N1 virus in just 10 days, a process that normally takes several months.

"I can't describe the pressure we were under," she says. "But we're used to dealing with outbreaks and working as a team under pressure. We've had the SARS outbreak and suspected avian influenza. We've had to deal with a large number of samples over a short period, working long hours and sometimes weekends to get results."

The swine flu test and protocols Ellis developed were distributed to 22 U.K. laboratories. Since being introduced in May 2009, the tests have detected approximately 20,000 cases of pandemic H1N1 flu in England. The swine flu test protocols have been sent to laboratories in Canada, Japan, Dubai, Italy, Denmark, and other countries. "It's satisfying [that] other people can use the assay and get the same results," she says.
Ellis is a clinical scientist, a designation reserved for specific scientific positions within the National Health Service (NHS) and in satellite agencies like HPA. Clinical scientists do everything from applied research and hospital laboratory diagnostics to helping doctors diagnose a patient’s disease. Scientists in these positions have the opportunity to see their work have a direct impact on public health.

Biological detective work

Ellis first became interested in viruses and bacteria in her late teens. "There was a TV program about food poisoning where they traced the outbreak back to some iced buns in a bakery. I liked biological science and the detective work and thought this was something I'd be interested in doing." She decided to study microbiology at the University of Leeds.

After finishing her degree, she took a 1-year post doing virology research in a diagnostics laboratory at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. Along the way, she decided she wanted to pursue research and so started looking for Ph.D. programs that seemed interesting.

"In the early 1980s, there was not much to choose from, but I managed to find a Ph.D. program in plant biology" at the University of Hull, she says. She went on to do a 1-year postdoc at Royal Holloway, University of London, studying how plants respond to potato blight. "But I lost my motivation a bit. I couldn't see it as a long-term career. There isn't much investment in the plant world."

She switched to human diseases for a second postdoc at University College London (UCL) and, for 4 years, researched the immune response to arthritis. "At the time, molecular diagnostics was taking off. They started applying those techniques at UCL, and I learned them there," she says. NIC hired her in 1992, in part so that she could bring these techniques to its laboratories.
Today, Ellis is a joint scientific lead at NIC, which employs 27 people. She works with clinical samples to develop laboratory influenza tests, and she supervises the team's work on flu monitoring and diagnosis. The time she spends on each activity varies depending on laboratory priorities. "More research can be achieved when flu activity is low, such as in the summer," she says.


In contrast to academic research, for which scientists often pursue open-ended research questions, Ellis’s research within NIC must have public health applications. For example, she has spent 2.5 years working on a European Union–funded project to design a flu test that works in less than 30 minutes and can be administered in a port, an airport, or a doctor's office. "You wouldn't have to wait to send samples to the lab," she says. "Should someone have an unusual influenza, like avian influenza, you could quickly isolate that person."

Clinical scientist training

Routes into clinical science are more formal today than they were when Ellis entered the field. Now, scientists who want to work for NHS and related organizations must complete the 4-year Clinical Scientist Training Program (CSTP) before they can register with the Health Professions Council (HPC). Only health care scientists registered with and regulated by HPC can call themselves clinical scientists.

The training enables clinical scientists to help doctors diagnose a patient’s disease and suggest treatment. They give doctors advice about interpreting test results from individual, named patients' clinical samples. Their clinical certification allows them to access patients' confidential medical records. Trainee clinical scientists work at NHS facilities such as hospitals while studying for a M.Sc. or other relevant qualification in their specialty.

A new program, the Scientist Training Program (STP), will soon replace CSTP, most likely next year. STP aims to make it easier for trainees to switch specialties by allowing them to try several their first year. For example, an STP in blood sciences might include 3-month rotations through clinical biochemistry, immunology, hematology/transfusion science, and genetics. NHS Careers, the information service for careers in NHS in England, is expected to publish further details about STP soon.

Tom Ford, a 34-year-old NHS clinical scientist at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, completed his CSTP after earning a Ph.D. in molecular evolution. He divides his time between researching immunology, testing clinical samples from the hospital, and interpreting the results for clinicians. "I've got the best of both worlds," he says. "I see the day-to-day impact the immunology laboratory has, but, on top of that, I'm getting to do fairly cutting-edge research."

For his research, Ford is looking into ways to improve the diagnosis of people with immune deficiencies. The research is funded by one of the first National Institute for Health Research fellowships available to NHS health care scientists. He's also been involved in a project to improve monitoring of HIV infections in Third World countries. "I'm effectively 'postdocing' while doing a clinical scientist's job. I think it's a fairly privileged position, and I'm lucky to have it," he says.
Ford says that working in both a clinical laboratory and a research department requires flexibility. "I have to drop my research if something comes up in the routine lab because the patient comes first," he says. Ellis makes the same point: core work takes priority. "As a clinical scientist, I have to split my time between core work and research, whereas, in academia, a scientist can focus more on research," she says.
Prospective Ph.D. or postdoctoral students can work on projects allied with clinical science without leaving academia by joining a university medical school closely linked to an NHS teaching hospital. However, they wouldn't be qualified to access patients' medical records or send reports to doctors, which clinical scientists can do.

"You're more detached from the diagnosis of patient illness than health care scientists," says Michael Kidd, a consultant clinical scientist in virology who works mainly at University College London Hospitals. "It's more forward-looking but nevertheless could be translated back into patient care."

Pros and cons

NHS employs more than 50,000 health care scientists, pharmacists, clinical engineers, and medical physicists. Their work is directly or indirectly involved in more than 80% of clinical decisions, which "signifies what a vital role they play," says Julie Wardle of NHS Careers.NHS health care scientist salaries vary, but Wardle says trainee clinical scientists earn about £25,500. This rises once they've completed their training. Clinical scientists can progress to consultant level and be paid as much as £80,000 to £90,000 per year.

Unfortunately, positions tied to the government are at the mercy of national politics and budgets. For example, just last week a government white paper announced the transfer of HPA's functions to a new public health service, Public Health England. HPA's staff members had faced an uncertain future since the agency appeared on a leaked list of government agencies facing abolition earlier in the year.

Another downside of working in these organizations, some say, is the high public profile. "We're always under scrutiny from the public," Ellis says. "We've also received scrutiny from the Cabinet Office and from government. Anyone entering clinical science from academia has to be aware of this."

Despite the challenges, working to support the country's health presents interesting opportunities for scientists. For Ellis, that may mean planning experiments, reviewing papers, or writing reports. "With flu, every year is different," she says. "That's what I enjoy most. You don't know what's around the corner."

Building Blocks for Quantum Computer

 Better Control of Building Blocks for Quantum Computer
Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology and Eindhoven University of Technology have succeeded in controlling the building blocks of a future super-fast quantum computer. They are now able to manipulate these building blocks (qubits) with electrical rather than magnetic fields, as has been the common practice up till now. They have also been able to embed these qubits into semiconductor nanowires.

The scientists' findings have been published in the current issue of the journal Nature (Dec. 23).
A qubit is the building block of a possible, future quantum computer, which would far outstrip current computers in terms of speed. One way to make a qubit is to trap a single electron in semiconductor material. A qubit can, just like a normal computer bit, adopt the states '0' and '1'. This is achieved by using the spin of an electron, which is generated by spinning the electron on its axis. The electron can spin in two directions (representing the '0' state and the '1' state).

Until now, the spin of an electron has been controlled by magnetic fields. However, these field are extremely difficult to generate on a chip. The electron spin in the qubits that are currently being generated by the Dutch scientists can be controlled by a charge or an electric field, rather than by magnetic fields. This form of control has major advantages, as Leo Kouwenhoven, scientist at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at TU Delft, points out. "These spin-orbit qubits combine the best of both worlds. They employ the advantages of both electronic control and information storage in the electron spin," he says.

There is another important new development in the Dutch research: the scientists have been able to embed the qubits (two) into nanowires made of a semiconductor material (indium arsenide). These wires are of the order of nanometres in diameter and micrometres in length. "These nanowires are being increasingly used as convenient building blocks in nanoelectronics. Nanowires are an excellent platform for quantum information processing, among other applications," says Kouwenhoven.

Theories of Human Thought

New Cognitive Robotics Lab Tests Theories of Human Thought

In a new Cognitive Robotics Lab, students at Rensselaer are exploring how human thought outwits brute force computing in the real world. The lab's 20 programmable robots allow students to test the real-world performance of computer models that mimic human thought.

"The real world has a lot of inconsistency that humans handle almost without noticing  for example, we walk on uneven terrain, we see in shifting light," said Professor Vladislav Daniel Veksler, who is currently teaching Cognitive Robotics. "With robots, we can see the problems humans face when navigating their environment."
Cognitive Robotics marries the study of cognitive science  how the brain represents and transforms information  with the challenges of a physical environment. Advances in cognitive robotics transfer to artificial intelligence, which seeks to develop more efficient computer systems patterned on the versatility of human thought.

Professor Bram Van Heuveln, who organized the lab, said cognitive scientists have developed a suite of elements perception/action, planning, reasoning, memory, decision-making that are believed to constitute human thought. When properly modeled and connected, those elements are capable of solving complex problems without the raw power required by precise mathematical computations.
"Suppose we wanted to build a robot to catch fly balls in an outfield. There are two approaches: one uses a lot of calculations Newton's law, mechanics, trigonometry, calculus to get the robot to be in the right spot at the right time," said Van Heuveln. "But that's not the way humans do it. We just keep moving toward the ball. It's a very simple solution that doesn't involve a lot of computation but it gets the job done."
Robotics are an ideal testing ground for that principle because robots act in the real world, and a correct cognitive solution will withstand the unexpected variables presented by the real world.

"The physical world can help us to drive science because it's different from any simulated world we could come up with the camera shakes, the motors slip, there's friction, the light changes," Veksler said. "This platform robotics allows us to see that you can't rely on calculations. You have to be adaptive."
The lab is open to all students at Rensselaer. In its first semester, the lab has largely attracted computer science and cognitive science students enrolled in a Cognitive Robotics course taught by Veksler, but Veksler and Van Heuveln hope it will attract more engineering and art students as word of the facility spreads.
"We want different students together in one space a place where we can bring the different disciplines and perspectives together," said Van Heuveln. "I would like students to use this space for independent research: they come up with the research project, they say 'let's look at this.'"

The lab is equipped with five "Create" robots essentially a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner paired with a laptop; three hand-eye systems; one Chiara (which looks like a large metal crab); and 10 LEGO robots paired with the Sony Handy Board robotic controller.On a recent day, Jacqui Brunelli and Benno Lee were working on their robot "cat" and "mouse" pair, which try to chase and evade each other respectively; Shane Reilly was improving the computer "vision" of his robotic arm; and Ben Ball was programming his robot to maintain a fixed distance from a pink object waved in front of its "eye."

"The thing that I've learned is that the sensor data isn't exact  what it 'sees' constantly changes by a few pixels and to try to go by that isn't going to work," said Ball, a junior and student of computer science and physics.

Ball said he is trying to pattern his robot on a more human approach.
"We don't just look at an object and walk toward it. We check our position, adjusting our course," Ball said. "I need to devise an iterative approach where the robot looks at something, then moves, then looks again to check its results."
The work of the students, who program their robots with the Tekkotsu open-source software, could be applied in future projects, said Van Heuveln.

"As a cognitive scientist, I want this to be built on elements that are cognitively plausible and that are recyclable parts of cognition that I can apply to other solutions as well," said Van Heuveln. "To me, that's a heck of a lot more interesting than the computational solution."

In a generic domain, their early investigations clearly show how a more cognitive approach employing limited resources can easily outpace more powerful computers using a brute force approach, said Veksler.
"We look to humans not just because we want to simulate what we do, which is an interesting problem in itself, but also because we're smart," said Veksler. "Some of the things we have, like limited working memory which may seem like a bad thing  are actually optimal for solving problems in our environment. If you remembered everything, how would you know what's important?"

YAMAHA FZ S Bike Review

The unique designed Yamaha FZ S is a lovely Rider which gives great speed and comfort while riding. The product is manufactured by Yamaha motor company with a Liquid-cooled, 4-stroke, SOHC, 4-valve Engine which has a 149.8cc displacement volume.


The front suspension is Telescopic and rear suspension is Linked type mono-cross suspension. When we look into the brake aspect, the front is Hydraulic and rear brake is Single Disc type.

The max power of Yamaha FZ S is 17PS / 8500 rpm and Max torque is 15 Nm /7500 rpm. The overall length of the bike is 1995mm and wheelbase is 1290mm.The kerb weight happens to be 131 kg and ground clearance is 160mm.

The tyre in front is 80/90-17 and rear tyre is 100/80-17.The headlamp is set with 12V 35/35W Halogen bulb and the fuel tank fills 12 L of fuel. Along with these many features, the bike costs Rs.67000/- approximately.

S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan

S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan,  (b. Jan. 2, 1940, Madras [now Chennai], India), Indian mathematician awarded the 2007 Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters “for his fundamental contributions to probability theory and in particular for creating a unified theory of large deviations.”

Varadhan received a bachelor’s degree (1959) and master’s degree (1960) from the University of Madras before earning a doctorate (1963) from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta. He spent the next three years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, in New York City. He stayed on at Courant after his fellowship, rising through the academic ranks to become a full professor in 1972.

Probability theory is excellent at describing the most likely events a system will produce, such as the number of heads in a long string of coin tosses. It was shown in the 1930s, however, that the theory is less useful when it comes to predicting rare events, such as a long sequence of heads or, more important, a long run of claims on an insurance company (which might bankrupt the company). The great achievement of Varadhan was the development of a powerful analytic and predictive probability theory capable of describing rare events. His work produced a new probabilistic model that provides both qualitative and quantitative insights, and his model has become a cornerstone of modern probability theory. The implications of his work cover diverse areas that range from quantum field theory and statistical mechanics to population dynamics and traffic control, and his work also has considerably enhanced computer simulations of rare events. In related work, Varadhan and American mathematician Daniel Stroock studied diffusion processes and obtained important results in population genetics. In work with the Greek-born American mathematician George Papanicolaou and Chinese mathematician Maozheng Guo, Varadhan obtained important new results in hydrodynamics, which he later extended to give new methods for the theory of random walks, the basic approach to diffusion theory, and many other processes that can be modelled probabilistically.

Varadhan was the corecipient (with Stroock) of the Leroy P. Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research of the American Mathematical Society in 1996. His eldest son, Gopal Varadhan, perished in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001.