Rural escape

I saw it! And it's beautiful. Not bad for a temporary solution. What this is about? Roland's house! After moving they had settled in to such a degree they could start to show off. And show off they did.

I took the not-so-scenic approach, as the scenic route requires a foot (and bike) ferry and my timing was crap. So I went the long way, over the bridge. As soon as you leave town behind and farmland begins you know you're close.

Roland found me spying for the right house number, opened the gate, and showed me around. What a place! A recent barn conversion (which sounds a bit odd to norwegiophones) but nothing overly modern about it. And with a sunny terrace just beside a meadow with sheep! Brilliant.

Roland looking a bit more jaded than he really is in his brand new back garden

Nobody would be surprised that it was night by the time I left, which gave the way back extra cachet. I took the scenic route back, which mean country roads lit by nothing other than my two little LEDs and the full moon. Beautiful! Except for the steep parts down, where my eyes watered so much the view was somewhat lost on me.

Roland and Maria are very happy with this new house, and it's easy to see why! I hope I'll be there many times more. I have cumin seed cheese, that should be enough to bribe my way in at least once!

Hunting the English

The English. If you’re Dutch you grow up with them . Or rather, with an image of them. Or even better, with several images of them. There’s the bowler-hat wearing, cane-wielding, moustached gentleman that strolls through country towns and engages in friendly and civilised conversation with miss Marple-like ladies. And there’s the binge-drinking, violent, union jack-boxershorts-clad, bald and tattood, vomiting hooligan.


And if you then actually move to England, what happens then? Am I, tulip-toting and clog-clattering, chaperoned on the streets by the sophisticated gentlemen that help me manoeuvre past the half-conscious hooligans? And how does society work if females do not exist? One realises of course the miss Marple-like lady is only scenery.

Cartoons are fun, but I wanted to know more about the real English. And you can only know so much, but I saw room for improvement. I already noticed all sorts of things in daily life. Brits don’t think it’s strange to not own a bicycle, they think crisps are a lunch dish, they call dinner tea, they surrender their towns on weekend nights to hoards of scantily clad, noisy women, they only dance when they are (or are with) scantily clad, noisy, under age women, they can’t let go of their imperial units, and so on. But I wanted to read more. I tried a historic book, and the memoirs of a confused British citizen from the outer regions of the Empire, but it was not satisfactory.

Neil heard of this and said he had another book about the English. My expectations had been lowered by earlier experiences, but I gave it a try. And from the first page it was a hit! “The angry island - hunting the English”, written by an A.A. Gill, an angry, eloquent Scot, who sees things crystal clear, but who at times cannot resist indulging in spacious arrays of disparaging, contemptuous, condescending adjectives. His hypothesis is that the English’ defining characteristic is suppressed anger, and he sells this concept well.

He covers more topics. The hysterical love for animals, the impeccable talent for creating good war memorials, the inevitable queue, the strangling nostalgia, drinking habits and all other kinds of things, but the central theme is anger. And as a matter of fact, it is all indeed recognisable. Neil even agreed; “it’s all true, and it makes me angry!”

Having read this, and recognising it in society, by the way does not make me dislike the English. At all. I do think they tend to stick to a fairly monotonous life of work and family and pub, and are difficult to persuade to do something outside that small circle. Beside that, they can be a tad evasive, but that holds for most people, in the eyes of the Dutch. And they live in the 19th century when it comes to gay emancipation. But above all that my overpowering impression is that they are friendly and polite. That is, when 20-ish or older; teenagers here can be as mind-bogglingly rude as everywhere else. But just bike through town here. If you’re used to Amsterdam you’re used to abuse. And here people smile at you! Make way for you! And outside traffic as well; so often I meet kindness where I expect rudeness. And I love the downright romantic way strangers treat you here. If I buy my lunch I tend to be greeted by “how are you, darling?” from the lady at the counter, followed by a “thank you, my love” if I hand her the money. If you come to the English and don’t expect them to follow you where you go, this place is a warm bath!

Atavistic or posh?

Both! I guess.
Getting out of your quite 20th century car and getting onto a horse that, logistically speaking, is more of a medieval thing, might not only mean moving back in time, but perhaps also moving up on the social ladder. This is England, you know. Anyway. Fairly out of the blue one of the PhD students, Sally, asked me if I felt like coming along for a ride on the Moors. And yes I did! So today was going to be the day. Which started early; first I had to deliver my last century vehicle at the garage for MOT. Scary. I didn't think it would pass just like that. I hope it will pass without the necessary repairs and replacements costing more than 1.5 times the entire car. But I'll find out about that later.

The view while biking back from te garage was not bad!

So in the crisp afternoon I got out of Sally's 21st century automobile, changed into riding trousers and -boots, filled in a detailed form (this is England, you know!), tried to borrow a helmet that was big enough, and eagerly awaited the horse they had picked for me. They showed up with a goodlooking, but lazy, 8 year old chap by the name of Burnfoot. They first wanted to see how skilled I was on horseback, so they let me ride around a bit. Burnfoot, a Higlander, has a nice gait, which is expected from that kind of big-bottomed stocky hairy-hoofed horse, but won't run a meter more than strictly necessary. Ah well. I somehow managed to remember how it was approximately done, and got approval!

Left Sally and Callum, and to the right Burnfoot and me! Me on horseback,  sight that had not been seen in a while....

So off we went! Onto the amazing moors. Fairly calmly; I was used to racing away. Horses that are for rent tend to be quite eager to get out of the dusty indoor hall and out onto the fields. And on the Dutch sandy beaches, for instance, they can race away. Here the canters would not last longer than a few 100m at best, but I still had a blast. Lovely people, endearing horse, good weather (even though we got blown out of our riding clothes on the hilltops and crests), beautiful surroundings... not bad. Wanna go again! And I think they'll trust me with a slightly less sluggish horse next time. The only problem is that it would be nicest to go with Sally, but she always goes during the week, and Roland is not amused a the thought of me trotting off in the middle of a working day... we'll see!

Slave in a cave

I was half the country away. The roads were icy! Richard had not gotten my text message. Everything worked together to keep me above ground for weeks and weeks on end. But not anymore! This time Richard got my message that I wanted to come caving, and unhesitantly hastened to Buckfast to rescue me from nonsubterraneousness. It was just us! But that is enough for some testing of my hardly tried new slave flash. We tried Dog Hole first, but we turned out not to have the key with us to the part where we intended to go. So after some flashed pictures we went to Prid instead, and flashed away there too. I need more practice! But some pics were not bad at all.

FAQ

What I'm doing here on the blog, with "popular science", is almost redundant. It's all been done before, and done better! The problem is, it's just like everything else on the internet: there's so much, it can be a pain to try to find exactly what you're looking for. But Roelof came up with a brilliant link! To some sort of blog where they address the most common questions asked by climate skeptics. Amazing! I haven't had time yet to go through it all, but what I saw looked robust. Try it! Here.

Escape from science

I'm spending a lot of time in the lab these days. And I'm pondering a lot of science in my spare time. But I need some fresh air too, sometimes. So I managed to escape to Dartmoor again! This time I accidentally chose a fairly boring part, but still, it freshens up your head, and you always find nice photo opportunities anyway. So here a small gallery of Margot Plays Outside!

Of course I couldn't resist water!

One could call it natural art

Dartmoor is a grim place, where Death rules!

A Norwegian-like picture is essential

Fun with the timer

Dignified locals

I found an old mining railroad!

The other CO2 problem

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. But not only that! It's the fizz in your soda as well. Leave a bottle of coke behind the window on a summer day and you may just find yourself in the position to be confronted with the fact that the coke degasses. Messily, sometimes.

The ocean is one big fizzy drink as well. There's an equilibrium with how much CO2 you have in the atmosphere, and how much in ocean water. Good riddance, perhaps? The oceans as massive carbon sink? Some people say that if you could just stir the oceans a bit faster you'd have dealt with so much of the CO2 problem. Just toss it in the deep sea. And you need the stirring, as it now takes about 1000 years to mix the whole lot, and we're exhausting so much on so much smaller time scales.

But is it gone when it's under water? Of course not. And not only because the greenhouse effect warms up the oceans, which diminishes their uptake capacity of CO2. Also because it does not stop affecting us when it’s out of sight.

If you dissolve more CO2 in water it becomes more acidic. Acids dissolve calcium carbonate, and there's lots of that in the oceans. Think plankton. Think corals. The situation would be that at the surface, the oceans were supersaturated with respect to calcite, which means that if you were a little planktic creature you could just make a calcite skeleton. No probs . If you would go deeper and deeper the pressure would at some point get so high that this was no longer the case, and calcium carbonate dissolves. In the deep sea, the sediments at the sea bottom tend to be white; just dead plankton. But not where the sea is too deep: there it would be red or brown or black; just clay and dust and other non-organic crap. How deep would be depending on things like the age of prevailing water, and the temperature of it.

Lots of califying plankton. A part of this will end up on the sea floor. Picture taken from: http://www.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/what_we_do/marine/barents/biodiversity/plankton/3D1I7SKPB_en%26um%3D1

Drill a core at a strategic place in the deep sea, and you'll see white sediment for meters and meters. And then, suddenly: bam! Red. Which after a few decimeter fades back to white. What happened? For some reason we're not yet entirely sure of, climate went kabloing 55 million years ago. Probably gas hydrates played a role in it. It got hot! High CO2 levels! Much higher than now! And, of course, a mass extinction. Climate skeptics sometimes say that climate has behaved wilder than it does now. And they are right. 55 million years ago is a good example. And true, life recovered from it. Still I don’t see that as a reason to invoke a mass extinction event ourselves.

Ocean acidification in the fossil record. Notice the picture is taken from the top of the core sections. Picture taken from: www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/projects.html

Anyways. The sediments abruptly turning red was caused by ocean acidification. About 50% of benthic foraminifera (these critters I study, and then specifically those living on the sea floor) got extinct. And that event took at least 10.000 years to kick in. Countless many generations of any life form. Plenty of time to adapt, you'd think. Evidently not.

I already spoke of atmospheric CO2 levels being much higher now than in the previous millions of years. For about 1 million we just know because of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. For going back you need indirect measures. And for this specific topic, ocean acidification, we have, amongst other things, boron isotopes. The data is not rock hard, but so far it looks like for the last 25 million years the oceanic pH levels have not been beyond what they have been since we've had the glacial cycle. So what we're doing now is way beyond anything most marine life forms have ever seen before.

The depth at which calcium carbonate dissolves is creeping up; in the North Pacific, for example, a 150 m rise had already been found in 1981. I have to mention as well that this is much; in most areas it is not as bad as that. And at the surface any organism that so desires can still calcify away, but with pH levels dropping it's not as easy as it was. Plankton skeletons are increasingly light, and increasingly often deformed.

I found a great picture of affected algae, but I think they're copyrighted. Look for yourself:
http://www.ozcoasts.org.au/indicators/images/oze_fs_004_04.jpg

And this is my cue to stop talking about plankton. If you want people to care you have to come up with something sexy! And here it comes. Corals are extra sensitive to ocean acidity. There’s two common types of calcium carbonate: calcite and aragonite, and the latter is 50% more soluble than the first. Corals are aragonitic. They are in trouble as it is, but it could be worse. Acidify the oceans simply by pumping the atmosphere full of CO2, or even on purpose to undo just that, and the corals are the first to go. And corals are not fluffy and don't have large moist eyes, but they are generally considered beautiful. And we in the rich west love to go diving. And preferably in areas where there's more to see under the water than sand. What is most popular? Of course. Coral reefs.

Another sexy thing is money. With higher acidity species like mussels and oysters have difficulty growing. At fairly reasonable CO2 levels you already get a 25% or 10%, respectively, growth reduction. And there are acid resistant species that will take over where the original species disappear, but that process tends not to lead to interesting ecosystems. We all know the stinging nettle forests that often pop up where man has been rooting around.

From: www.coralreefinfo.com/

And not only that. get rid of calcifying plankton, and you've ripped a large part of the base out from underneath the marine food chain. No more fish! No more whales and cute playful dolphins. Nobody wants that.

Since the glacial cycle, CO2 levels have roughly varied between 180 ppm in ice ages to 280 in interglacials. A transition between the two takes about 10.000 years. Now we've kicked it up to 385 in 100 years. And don’t assume that means we’ll need another 100 years to reach 490; the rise accelerates. In the last 10 years we’ve seen a ~20 ppm increase. And we don’t know how fast this will go… everybody knows inhabitants of countries like India and China can’t wait to go exhaust as much as we do.

And we’re still talking timescales of decades; many life cycles of dumb algae and rigid corals, but would it be enough? Modelling indicates that with any reasonable scenario, you’ll lose all aragonite in the Southern Ocean by 2100. Losing all calcification on that timescale is not very plausible. But if we keep on accelerating pollution, and not even unrealistically fast, we’ll have managed even that in only 200 years more. We will be forgotten by that time if it would come to that.

But as I said, corals are more vulnerable. In the last 16 years, a 20% growth drop has already taken place. If you just count acidity, you’d have a 40% reduction with atmospheric CO2 levels of 560ppm. But this won’t come alone; if you take the concomitant temperature rise in consideration, and such factors, you probably lose them already at 450-500 ppm. And I think I’ll live to see that! Ocean acidification, coming to a sea near YOU!