The tide predicter of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey

Robert Merkin of Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, recently sent me a photo of the tide predictor that was in use at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1912 to 1965. It was built by Rollin A. Harris and E. G. Fisher, who modeled it on Lord Kelvin's Tide Predicter, and can handle 37 tidal constituents. It is also known as "Old Brass Brains". Here is Bob Merkin's photo.

Bob also pointed me to a site that offers an animation of Kelvin's Tide Predicter. It shows the workings of the Predicter much clearer than my own description and offers a choice of seven port locations to try it out. Unfortunately it comes under the heading "Fourier Analysis of Ocean Tides".

Fourier Analysis uses multiples of a base period; but the tidal constituents are not multiples of a base period, they are set by the movement of the earth and the moon. Tides are therefore predicted by adding the effect of the various tidal constituents with their known periods. This method is called Harmonic Analysis in oceanography.

In mathematics the term Harmonic Analysis describes an extension of classical Fourier Analysis. When the term Harmonic Analysis is used in the context of tide prediction it does not carry that meaning; it refers to a method that is based on the known periods of the tidal constituents. This has lead to confusion on occasions. Kelvin's Tide Predicter is a very helpful tool to clarify the situation.

Science and the aristocracy

In a study of the history of science it is important to realize that progress in science is not determined by the genius of a few individuals but by the conditions of society. In the age of feudalism only a wealthy aristocrat could afford to pursue scientific interests and go down in history as genius. Ordinary people had little chance to show their potential.

In a footnote to lecture 8 I used the example of Tycho Brahe, the Danish aristocrat turned astronomer. A study of the history of astronomy described his birth in 1546 as "fortunate" for the development of science. I queried that and said: "What honours him and secures his place in the history of science is not his fortunate birth but his decision to turn his back on the idle life of the ordinary nobleman and apply his gifted mind to science." Brahe did not care much about the aristocracy; he married a peasant's daughter and embarked on a career as imperial mathematician and astronomer.

It is instructive to compare Brahe's attitude to science with that of the English nobleman Joseph Banks, the resident naturalist during James Cook's fist expedition into the South Pacific. Banks brought along a second naturalist, a secretary, two artists and four servants, all paid for from his own wealth.

The large amount of work done by Banks and his party in the field of botany and taxonomy was an immense contribution to science. But Banks clearly did not see science as an important part of his life; he saw it more as what Galiliei called the "regal sport" of the ruling class. This became obvious when Cook invited Banks to join his second voyage into the South Pacific on the Resolution. Banks agreed, on the condition that he could increase his party to fifteen, including two musicians to while away the time. He even managed to talk the Navy into adding an extra deck to the ship to accommodate his party.

When the time came to sail the Resolution out of the shipyard one of Cook's lieutenants called her "by far the most unsafe ship I ever saw or heard of." The pilot declared her top-heavy and prone to capsize and refused to even move her off the dock. The ship was restored to her original state and Banks, swearing and sulking, withdrew from the expedition.

The story demonstrates that when it comes to evaluating the role of individuals to science, looking at their contribution to science alone does not produce a balanced assessment. Banks clearly had the capacity and gift to play a much larger role in the history of botany, but he chose the idle life of the aristocracy.

Reference:

Allen, O. E. (1980): The Seafarers, the Pacific Navigators. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 176 pp.

The Catholic Church and the destruction of America's civilizations

Wherever the Spanish conquerors went they were accompanied by friars, whose role was to bring Christianity to the heathens. The Dominican order made missionary activity during the conquest one of its primary undertakings.

There is no doubt that some Dominican friars tried to soften the treatment of the indigenous people by the conquerors and prevented the worst excesses. But there is also no denying that even such intellectual interest as the study of indigenous languages (mainly to enable the Christian gospel to be preached in the local vernacular) was aimed at the final destruction of a "pagan" civilization. Any historical assessment of the role of Christianity has to admit that the muskets and guns of the conquistadors were not the only instruments that brought great civilizations to an end but also the book burnings and destruction of places of worship by the representatives of the Church.

The Convent of San Esteban in Salamanca, Spain, was and remains the centre of the Dominican mission. It features a display of the Dominican role in the conquest of South America. There are exhibits of souvenirs brought back by Dominican missionaries, but one searches in vain for any indication of regret for what happened under their spiritual supervision. Instead, vague and obfuscating texts attempt to conceal their contribution to the destruction of great civilizations.

A book exhibit "San Esteban, Search and Encounter; America, the universalist Dominican vocation" declares: "The world expanded itself, and it became necessary to invent new norms. What was known and understood was no longer sufficient. The search for the truth extended itself to the other side of the ocean." The main inscription on the wall of the Convent is more direct; it concedes that it was not the world that drove the action by expanding itself, admits that actions involved people, and identifies the actors: "The thoughts and the action of the Dominicans of San Esteban in America demonstrate that the battle for the freedom and the dignity of all people is the way to the TRUTH – And the only medium: the WORD." The South American Indians should be thankful for the freedom and dignity they received!

The role of profit in scientific exploration during the "Age of Discovery"

The early European ocean voyages of the Age of Discovery did not always lead to the discovery of unknown lands. Their main objective was to obtain as much profit as could be made. Exploration of new coasts, with the associated benefits for science, was a secondary consideration, performed only to the degree necessary to bring success to the economic purpose of the voyage.

The early Portuguese and Spanish sea captains were true explorers, in the sense that their contract with the crown (four fifth of the profit to the explorer, one fifth to the crown) was based on voyages to unknown destinations and therefore carried great risk. The British crown found it more profitable to raid the Spanish outposts in regions already discovered. It financed Francis Drake, Thomas Cavendish and other "privateers" to sack Spanish settlements and capture Spain's ships.

The profitability of marauding voyages was beyond doubt. When Drake captured a Spanish galleon in 1579 he obtained 13 chests of silver coin, 26 tons of silver bullion, 80 pounds of gold, and uncounted jewellery. Cavendish sacked Puna Island off Peru, slaughtering its Indian inhabitants, in 1587; he returned from his two year marauding voyage with a booty worth 125,000 pounds, nearly half of the Crown's annual revenue. Such adventurism did not contribute much to science.

Carbon targets to manage climate change

This is a follow-up to an earlier posting (see "Prevention of climate change without binding targets?" posted on 12 December 2007) where I said that the only way forward is a strategy based on uniform carbon emission allowances per person. In some countries the principle is making its way into government policy. Here are two figures from the Interim Report to the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments of Australia (the first draft of the so-called Garnaut Climate Change Review).

The first figure shows the total CO₂ emissions, including those from land-use, for 2004; units are gigatons, the scale is on the left. Squares show per capita emissions, in tons on the right-hand scale. I added the yellow line to the figure; it shows the acceptable per capita emission if we assume that the world has to return to the total emissions it produced in 1990.

The second figure is a sketch (the Garnaut report calls it "a stylised, illustrative scenario") of what has to happen if we want to stabilize the climate. The y-axis gives per capita emissions, the x-axis time, both without units. The figure demonstrates the huge change in lifestyle the USA and Australia have to undergo if they are to reach their per capita targets. The European Union and Japan are under far less pressure but have to reduce their per capital consumption, too. With the numbers adopted by the Garnaut report China has not quite reached the maximum acceptable per capita consumption (which means that my yellow line in the first figure was drawn somewhat too far down on the scale) but will reach it soon, while India is not in such a tight situation.

The Garnaut report was commissioned to form the basis for Australia's climate change policy. Hopefully the Australian government will adopt it in full. Any delay in adoption of the percapita emission principle will cause more damage to the environment.

DDT and "scientific fraud"

In 2004 an article by J. G. Edwards entitled DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud", published shortly after his death, reviewed the history of the ban on DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the USA. Edwards shows convincingly that most if not all arguments brought forward in support of the ban – negative effects on human health, on birds, on egg shells and others – were not supported by science. He credits Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as the trigger for the eventual ban on DDT in 1972 and calls the procedures that led to the ban "scientific fraud".

It is certainly correct that many of Carson's claims about the environmental effects of DDT cannot be substantiated. Carson, who had trained as a biologist but made a career as a nature journalist, was interested in raising public awareness of the deterioration of the environment through industrial products, at a time when such ideas were novel and went against the general belief in scientific progress at all cost. She was successful to such a degree that her book is now widely considered to mark the beginning of the environmental movement. That she argued her case with wild exaggerations and several wrong claims may be understandable for someone who can see the future of a world with an unrestrained chemical industry but is met with hostility wherever she goes, but that does not exonerate her from having employed dishonest means.

Edwards' claim of scientific fraud is another matter. As Edwards reports himself, the DDT hearing of the EPA, which lasted seven months, came to the conclusion that DDT does not pose a threat to human or animal health and recommended to allow its use as a pesticide; but the recommendation was overruled by the EPA Administrator, who had links with an environmental group. There was thus no scientific fraud: Science came to the correct conclusion. The fault lay with the administration, i.e. in the political domain.

Edwards' paper is not completely free from misleading claims. It focuses on DDT use for mosquito control in malaria eradication, describes the early successes with DDT spraying between 1945 and 1960 and says: "After the U.S. ban on DDT, there is a global malaria burden of 300 to 500 million cases and 1 to 2.5 million deaths annually, mostly among young children. Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds." As Edwards describes it, the ban on DDT can only be seen as a crime against humanity.

This picture is far from the truth for several reasons:

• The use of DDT for malaria control represented a very small proportion of general DDT use of the 1950s and 1960s. Widespread use of DDT in agriculture, while possibly of no harm to humans, can only increase resistance to it and is therefore only a temporary gain, while the quantity of DDT in the environment accumulates. DDT is very persistent in the environment, and the low doses recommended by the EPA science assessment may eventually be exceeded by large amounts.


• The ban on DDT refers only to agricultural use; its use in malaria control has always been permitted. The World Health Organization recommends DDT for indoor spraying, a use that was formally included in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in May 2004, 6 months before Edwards' paper was published. (Indoor spraying – the coverage of walls and ceilings with a thin DDT layer - prevents mosquitoes entering buildings but does not kill them; it acts as a barrier between mosquitoes and humans.)


• The claim that continued use of DDT would have saved millions of lives cannot be verified. Many mosquito populations have developed resistance to DDT (in Sri Lanka, India and many other countries as early as 10 years before DDT was banned). Effective malaria control now requires the use of alternatives such as pyrethroids (synthetic chemical compounds that emulate the natural chemical pyrethrins produced by certain Chrysanthemum flowers and are used in many insect repellents). Ironically, the rapid loss of effectiveness in the 1960s was mainly the result of agricultural DDT spraying, which used much larger quantities than malaria control. This suggests that DDT effectiveness for malaria control could have been maintained much longer if agricultural use of DDT would have been banned 20 years earlier.

References:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Carson R. (1962): Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass.

Edwards, J. G. (2004): DDT: a case study in scientific fraud. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 9 (3), 83-88; available as PDF file.

World Health Organization (2004): WHO position on DDT use in disease vector control under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. WHO/HTM/RBM/2004.53 rev.1, available as PDF file

More information and debate at http://timlambert.org/category/science/ddt

Prevention of climate change without binding targets?

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change is underway; Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol at last but refuses to accept binding carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction targets unless China and other developing countries accept them, too. Can such a stand be justified, and on what grounds? Let us look at some basic premises and evaluate the consequences.

Premise 1: Every human being, whether in a developed or a developing country, has the same right to a decent standard of living.

Premise 2: To stabilize the climate the world has to return to a sustainable level of CO₂ output. I don't know what this level is - I assume Bali will be able to tell us that – but for the sake of the argument let us assume that the CO₂ output of 1990 is sustainable. (The actual year does not matter to the argument, as we shall see.)

According to United Nations statistics, the global CO₂ output of 1990 amounted to 21,563 million tons. The current world population is something like 6,602 million people. If we accept premise 1 we have to accept that every person is entitled to emit the same amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere. To maintain the output of 6,602 million people at the level of 1990 means that every person should not exceed an annual output of 3.25 tons of CO₂.

What does that mean for different countries? Again according to United Nations statistics, in 2004 India's per capita CO₂ output was 1.2 tons; China's output was 3.8 tons, Australia's output was 16.3 and the output of the USA 20.4 tons.

It is obvious that the developed world will have to change very, very dramatically. It is also obvious that nothing but sheer selfishness can support the argument that the developing countries should reduce their CO₂ output. On moral grounds we have to say that it would be nice and very generous of India if it tries to minimize its increase in CO₂ output; but even if it doubled its output it would still not have reached its allowable limit. China has obviously reached its allowable limit and should not increase its output further.

This is not the first time this simple calculation has been done. The German chancellor Angela Merkel mentioned the same idea once and was promptly declared off the planet. Nevertheless, Germany's electricity rates are the highest in Europe, and the country is moving ahead with the development of carbon-neutral technologies at a surprising pace, while Australia increases its coal export to secure its standard of living and the USA use its military force to secure the world's oil fields for its exclusive use.

I am sure that the actual numbers differ somewhat from my example – the world population has grown since 2004, and 1990 is probably not a good basis for sustainability. But the principle remains the same: The developed world has no moral or other right whatsoever to insist on CO₂ output cuts from the developing world.

The idea of buying carbon credits from poor countries to allow oneself the continuation of one's reckless lifestyle is a fallacy. Besides being on very shaky moral ground it will not work, because the money paid to the poor countries will inevitably lead to rapid increases in their CO₂ output as people use it to improve their living standard.

The only way forward for developed countries is to accept very high binding reduction targets and to begin with a profound restructuring of their lifestyles.

Reference: United Nations Statisitcs can be found at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm.

The statistics on per capita CO₂ output are at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_topic_xrxx.asp?topic_code=32

Saint Augustine and Evolution

In Lecture 25 (Evolution, the answer to the biological explosion) I already mentioned Augustine of Hippo as a man of the Church who did not see a contradiction between the Biblical account of the origin of the world and scientific insight.

I now came across a quote from his work The Literal Interpretation of Genesis that should give the defenders of creationism something to think about: One of the most venerated "Fathers of the Church" defends science against blind interpretation of the Bible. Here is what Saint Augustine had to say in 408 AD:

"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation."

(The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]; found in the Wikipedia entry for Augustine.)

The discovery of Caral and the Supe civilization

When I said in Lecture 2 that Caral was only discovered "in the last decade of the last century" (i.e. after 1990) I fell victim to a phenomenon described by Katherine Reece in the book Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public as "mass media reports of shocking new, history-altering discoveries." Broadcasters like the British Broadcasting Service should certainly be commended for their many outstanding productions on history and archeology; but the style of these television series, which always present some interesting archaeological work as groundbreaking and counter to all previous knowledge, is not only sensationalizing but can also be quite misleading - it certainly was in my case.

Caral, a city of the Norte Chico or Supe civilization, came into the limelight through a television program (I cannot remember whether from the BBC or not) in the late 1990s. This was followed by papers in Science in 2001 and Nature in 2005. These reports overshadowed the fact that the ruins of Caral had been known since at least 1945, and that ruins of several other settlements of the Supe civilization (Aspero, Huaca Prieta, Kotosh and others) had been studied before, some as early as 1905. I only became aware of this when I researched early American civilizations for my "Civilizations of the World" Time Atlas project.

Still, it is no exaggeration to say that America's place in the history of early civilizations has only been recognized about 100 years ago. It is also true that much still remains to be learned about civilizations in the tropical parts of South America.

References:

Katherine Reece: Memoirs of a true believer. In Garrett F. Fagan (editor): Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public pp. 96 – 106. RoutledgeFalmer (2006)

Wikipedia: Caral. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral)

Should the IPCC receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

Two days ago the Nobel Peace Prize Committee allocated the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in equal parts to Al Gore and to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".

Al Gore has spent a considerable part of his life to make people aware of the consequences of our use of fossil fuels. He did this at a time when general opinion was still against him and he had to suffer taunts and recrimination from many sides. His conviction, courage and determination make him a most suitable candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, which after all should honour those who are prepared to go beyond the normal call of duty in the quest for peace.

But why the IPCC, a scientific panel organized to garner the knowledge of the global scientific community about climate change? International science has many panels and working groups on various unresolved questions of science; the IPCC is just one of them, although admittedly probably the largest. Scientists who work in them or with them are doing their job just as many others. They contribute their knowledge without expecting personal return, but they do that as part of their everyday work. Honouring them with the Nobel Peace Prize should be an acknowledgment of service beyond normal duties, as it undoubtedly is in the case of Al Gore but not in the case of the scientists who contribute to the work of the IPCC. Allocating part of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC cannot be justified through its work; it is a political decision designed to highlight the urgency of tackling global warming.

That global warming has to be tackled urgently is beyond doubt. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has to be applauded for its decision to bring the issue to everyone's attention again. It could have achieved that by giving the entire prize to Al Gore.

The somewhat skewed decision is not necessarily out of step with the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. Unlike the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine, which are given to indisputably outstanding achievements in science, and the Nobel Prize for Literature, which does contain a subjective element of literary taste but always honours outstanding writers, the Nobel Peace Prize has made some serious mistakes. The allocation of the prize in 1994 to Yasser Arafat, who used violent means to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, and Yitzhak Rabin, a member of the Zionist terrorist organization Haganah that in the 1920s and 1930s assisted the British to suppress Arab uprisings against the occupying forces, could be justified by arguing that the two nominees had repented. But the reason for the allocation of the prize was the signing of the Oslo Accords. These accords led to a Palestinian "Authority" that has become an assistance force for the Jewish occupation and has lost all credibility with the Palestinian population; it can even be argued that the Oslo Accord laid the grounds for the rising importance of the religious-based Hamas. It is questionable whether the Oslo Accord was an instrument of peace or just another step in a continuing violent conflict. Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, foreshadowed this in his presentation speech of 1994 already when he noted: "It has been said that the Nobel Committee ought to have waited." It should have done so, indeed.

A real travesty of the idea of a peace prize was its allocation to Henry Kissinger (shared with Le Duc Tho) in 1973 for "arranging the ceasefire" [of the Vietnam conflict] "after negotiating for nearly four years." Kissinger was not only responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths during the bombing campaign that began in 1969 but torpedoed attempts of South and North Vietnam at a peace treaty after the ceasefire was signed and prolonged the war by two years for the sole purpose of strengthening his and Nixon's position in internal American politics. He has been labeled a war criminal in many publications including two books; the fact that he does not dare to take libel action against them proves the accuracy of the accusations. Understandably Le Duc Tho avoided to be on the podium with Kissinger; he refused to accept the prize.

Compared with such aberrations the allocation of the prize to the IPCC is a minor matter. But I still think that it is not the role of a peace prize to honour scientists for work done in the normal course of their duties.

Sources:

The Nobel Prize decision
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/index.html

On Henry Kissinger
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political3.htm
http://www.versobooks.com/books/ghij/h-titles/hitchens_kissinger.shtml

On the role of the Palestinian "Authority"
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n15/mend01_.html

More information:
Wikipedia entries on Kissinger, the Paris Peace Accords, Yitzhak Rabin, Haganah and others