helenczerski

@helenczerski@fediscience.org

Physics, bubbles, oceans, hot chocolate and curiosity. Associate Professor at UCL, writer, broadcaster. Author of Storm in a Teacup: http://helenczerski.net/books-writing/ and Blue Machine (out June 1st, 2023) https://www.waterstones.com/book/blue-machine/helen-czerski/9781911709107 #fedi22 #physics #ocean #climate #bikes

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helenczerski, to random

[UK cultural reference warning]

Sometimes, I do just wish the mice from Bagpuss would turn up and take a twirl around current politics and public discourse with a tiny mop and some scrubbers… “We will fix it, we will fix it…”

helenczerski, to climate

There should just be a rule that all profits from any fossil fuel extraction must either be invested in renewables or must go towards paying for adaptation for the poorest. Profits from renewables can be kept, so the shareholders get returns IF they vote for the company to do the right thing.

Because this is obscene:

“The energy company said its underlying profits reached $5bn (£4bn) in the first three months of the year, outstripping analysts’ forecasts of $4.3bn.”

helenczerski, (edited ) to science

Today's the day! Blue Machine is out in the world.

When we think we're talking about the ocean, it's usually fish, the whales or the pollution - anything except the water itself. It's time for that to change. Blue Machine tells the biggest story on Earth. And reviewers are being very nice about it:

‘An untold story that is vital to everyone on the planet.’

‘What a wonderful book . . . a history, ecology and conservation exploration. I loved it!’

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/441190/blue-machine-by-czerski-helen/9781911709107

helenczerski, to random

I will never get tired of owls doing this.

Owl keeping its head in the same place while it’s body moves

helenczerski, to science

Researching the physics of sandcastles and I have just found a paper (https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00549) that says you can use hydrophobic sand to make sandcastles underwater, because the roles of water and air are reversed and the air makes bridges that hold the whole thing together. The picture is from that paper. Has anyone tried this? I’m pretty sure I’ve got some hydrophobic sand which I’ll dig out later, but I’m trying not to be too distracted now.

helenczerski, to science

I am HORRIFIED by the current UK attitude to the problem of net zero oceanography - it’s basically to remove humans from the ocean as much as possible and automate everything. Of course ships are currently carbon-intensive, but we cannot afford to separate ourselves from the ocean, to deprive our scientists of experiencing the sea. We need more accessible electric/sail coastal vehicles & to take seriously that ocean scientists need a relationship with the ocean.

helenczerski, to climate

Proposal: We measure how good we are at being citizens of Earth by how we deal with our "rubbish". Do we consider it a valuable resource to be reused (mature approach, based on understanding planetary cycles), or do we just push it off to Away (childish denial). Current score: Could Do Better...

#climate #environment #waste #Earth

helenczerski, to Law

Reading about the history of river regulation for this week's Rare Earth, and you've got to love the practicality of early English laws:

"A statute... from the 12th century declared that English rivers be kept free of obstructions so that a well-fed three year old pig could stand sideways in the stream"

helenczerski, to random

That sad hungry plod around an Amerian airport, refusing to believe that not a single one of the food "outlets" serves any actual food (something that was once actually a vegetable or grain), with hope slowly draining away as the brightly coloured menus come and go.

"Industrially produced edible substance" was what Chris vT's Ultra-Processed People called it. It's not food. But what's depressing is that actual food isn't even an option here.

helenczerski, to Trains

Well, that's a new one. I'm on a train to Carlisle which has been stuck at Preston for a while (after a load of people got on here), and was already overcrowded because the train before it was cancelled. They’ve just announced that the train is overcrowded and they will not let the train move until some people leave the train. So now everyone is looking at everyone else, wondering who is going to move.

WHY are we underfunding railways to the point where this is even an option?

helenczerski, to climate

So he spent £6000 instead of £30 by taking a helicopter instead of the train, but he also generated ~1100 kg of CO2 instead of ~10kg per person for the train. (No idea how many people were in the helicopter)

“Sunak uses helicopter for trip that would have taken just over an hour by train”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/09/sunak-helicopter-train-southampton-prime-minister-rail

Helicopter use cannot be casual - it must be a last resort, when there are no other options.

(Back-of-the-envelope calculation based on fuel consumption)

helenczerski, to ai

What if AI really is taking over, but instead of grand wars or job losses, it’s just control via weird spellcheck corrections, re-directions of non-junk-mail into the junk folder so it’s unseen, failure to let us into rooms we have access to and other similar interventions? What if it’s just sneaking round the back, cunningly disguised as the basic incompetence that we’re all entirely resigned to? There’s so much of that about that surely it’s the perfect camouflage.

helenczerski, (edited ) to ocean

The ocean engine has one "big beast" component, on top of all the smaller components: a sinking of surface water in some places that is very slowly shunted around the deep until it eventually returns to the surface. There is a lot of debate about how much climate change might make it slow down or stop, but the idea that it's even a remote possibilty in the next few decades is very scary. We must decarbonise ASAP.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests

helenczerski, to ocean

In Blue Machine, I wrote about the barnacles that cling to sea turtles and the stories those barnacles can tell. Hakai magazine have just published a lovely story about whale barnacles (the size of teacups!) and the secrets they hold about both modern whales and their long-dead ancestors:

https://hakaimagazine.com/features/what-whale-barnacles-know

helenczerski, to ocean

Interesting idea here: When there's a coral bleaching event, seaweeds can come in to take over the space, stopping coral recovery. So perhaps "sea-weeding" by local volunteers could be a stop-gap measure to clear the intruder, giving the coral a much better chance of recovery:

https://theconversation.com/seaweed-is-taking-over-coral-reefs-but-theres-a-gardening-solution-sea-weeding-212460?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

helenczerski, (edited ) to science

In this week's WSJ column, I wrote about how the engineered weaknesses in chocolate bars (the grooves) help break it, & now I have an inbox of cross people telling me they break chocolate by bending towards the groove (pushing down directly on the groove), rather than pushing on the side that doesn’t have a groove. I spent a lot of time drawing diagrams of cracks & fracture zones & it's never occurred to me to push on the groove. How do you do this?

https://t.co/x1whkiG9X6

helenczerski, to ocean

I’m (almost) always happy to talk ocean, but the flood of media requests I’m getting to talk about the ocean near this lost sub is icky. It was probably avoidable, & there are almost certainly 5 dead people in a sub that won’t be retrieved for weeks. This is not a bandwagon that should be jumped on.

helenczerski, to climate

In the same way that you wouldn’t want someone to operate on your kidneys without a good general medical education covering blood, bones & the rest of the human system, I don’t think we want climate interventions trialed by people who don’t understand how Earth works & only consider the local problem and not the whole system it is an integral part of.

#Earth #climate

helenczerski, to ocean

It appears that Science magazine has just been very nice about Blue Machine (The Blue Machine in the USA): https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/science.adj7198

Do spread the word if you know anyone who needs to know what the ocean really is and why it's important.

helenczerski, to random

Today is the 93rd anniversary of the 1st test of the Bathysphere (May 27th 1930), the first capsule to take humans down into the ocean depths. It was William Beebe’s idea & Otis Barton did the engineering. They were the first people to see deep ocean creatures in their natural habitat, setting a record dive depth of 670 metres in 1932. Beebe described it as “dangling in a hollow pea on a swaying cobweb, a quarter of a mile below the deck of a ship rolling in mid-ocean”.

helenczerski, to Energy

I visited this lovely windmill today (near Rotterdam). Its power output is around 8.5 kW. It was built in 1740, so impressive for the time, but not quite even enough to boil 3 kettles at the same time today.

Last year for Fully Charged, I visited the Haliade X turbine, ~50km away, & currently one of the largest wind turbines in the world. It's rated at 14 MW or x1600 more. I wonder where we'll have got to in another 285 years time.

Fully Charged ep here: https://fullycharged.show/episodes/this-giant-turbine-powers-two-homes-with-every-spin/

helenczerski, to random

Whoever sorts out UK train pricing needs a stern talking to. Trains should be THE default option for any intercity journey and look at the mess of the pricing: London-Newcastle, 3h journey, £190-ish. Newcastle-Edinburgh, 1.5h journey, £25-ish (advance singles). And the really stupid thing is that for the return journey going from Edinburgh-Newcastle-London, I'll just stay on the same train.

helenczerski, to ocean

I don’t know anything much about this missing submersible, but from the outside it certainly looks as though it was missing a lot of very basic safety features: multiple acoustic beacons unconnected to the main power supply, an automatic satellite beacon that pings when it surfaces, surface lights, spare communication methods, the ability to open it from the inside… no wonder it wasn’t certified. They appear to have been convinced it couldn’t fail. Just like the Titanic engineers.

helenczerski, to ocean

One of the things I found very frustrating about professional physics magazines 15-20 years ago (all my degrees are in physics) was that they were so po-faced about “proper” physics (only quantum mechanics and cosmology counted) and really looked down on anything messy in the real world. I made a physics career out of studying the mess. And then look at this, seaweed on the cover of Physics Today, because they’ve finally discovered how interesting messy things are.

helenczerski, to climate

Carbon dioxide removal (sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere to store somewhere) is now a huge topic of discussion in tech/carbon circles but the public hears almost nothing. We need to fix that - the timescales, costs, scaling and downsides all need to be debated publicly, and not just with a commercial slant. We (me, Rob Bellamy & Juerg Matter) were doing our bit at the Cheltenham Science Festival today, during a discussion brilliantly titled “Catch C if you Can”.

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