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| Morris Dancers in front of Shakespeare's House |
Having been in a positive internet and mobile blackhole for the past (yes, they do still exist in this country), I'll try to catch-up now that I'm back online
Wed 8th March: A rather short night of 3h sleep and an early start, setting off at 7 am for a 9 am visit to Bedford Free School to give a STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Maths) presentation at the invitation of their WISE (Women In Science and Engineering) group. The talk was on my science career and included 4 interactive sessions. They involved the students and illustrated different scientific problems and solutions that I was personally involved in from being a lowly researcher to project leader with collaborative links to other univeristies and companies:
- Determinism or cell signalling in chick limb development
- Plant receptor protein purification
- PCR amplification in cloning viral sequences
- Root growth, root knot nematode infection and targeting feeding cells
The young women actively took part and I hope that they took something away with them.
Out of the door shortly after 10 am and stopped off parched for first welcome cup of tea of the day in with S. in St Neots. Back home in Milton after a 5h round trip.
An urgent family situation that arose yesterday had developed further. It meant that we had to set off for a trip cross country, after urgent messages had been sent to contacts and clients whose work would be on hold for the rest of the week.
Thu 9th, Friday 10th, Sat 11th March: Found out on arrival that, with the urgency of travelling, I had left my laptop and, more importantly, phone charger at home when we packed the car. Days spent buying charger and newspapers, being involved in getting social support in place, doing cryptic crosswords, watching news and other programs on TV and sleeping.
Two frustrating elements in trying to get social support are, the difficulty in getting NHS and social care in place, and the mis-communication between different agencies supposedly coordinating with each other.
Sun 12th March: Felt able to return home. The long journey was broken by a welcome stop in Stratford upon Avon. More than 30 years ago it was the nearest town when I worked nearby at the then National Vegetable Research Station. The main tourist attractions are the pedestrian area passing Shakespeare's house and the river area close to the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre. These were very busy on a Sunday, but go slightly off from the centre, and the streets were more muted.
From a Brexit perspective, the main news was actually the Budget given by the Chancellor Philip Hammond on Wednesday. It created a growing outcry within the Conservative party for apparently breaking a manifesto pledge NOT to increase National Insurance Contributions by increasing them for the self employed.
Much heat has been generated between the Remainers and Brexiteers, in advance of the Brexit bill returning to the Commons on Monday with the two suggested amendments by the Lords (guarantee of right of residence for EU citizens in the UK, right of parliament to have final vote on on Brexit deal struck in negotiation). Concern is also rising about the apparent lack of a plan so far to deal with a hard, cliff-edge jump Brexit. There is also talk of a GBP50bn 'divorce settlement' demand from the EU even before actual negotiations begin. Boris Johnson wheeled out to comment that hard Brexit will not be a problem and UK will simply not pay anymore the EU.
Perhaps the scariest news for me this week was Scott Pruit, Head of the US EPA, saying on CNBC "...I would not agree that it’s (CO2) a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." According to Vox, it is not about Pruitt but symptomatic of a party that wants to free itself from environmental legislation for short term commercial benefits for its primary donors from fossil fuel industries (http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/10/14871696/scott-pruitt-climate-denial).
The two main contributors to the greenhouse effect that keeps our Earth significantly warmer than the -18 degC it would otherwise be, are water vapour and carbon dioxide. This is because they absorb infra-red radiation or heat. However, water vapour cannot sustain the greenhouse effect on its own. Carbon dioxide is the main controlling factor.
The reason is that water vapour has a short lifetime in the atmosphere, condensing and falling back to earth as rain within a couple of days. If there was no carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, climate models show the water ultimately condensing out of the atmosphere and the earth becoming an ice-ball. Indeed, there is strong evidence that we nearly became an ice-ball several times in the past (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth).
In contrast, carbon dioxide persists for 30 to 95 years in the atmosphere. It is absorbed by plants, the oceans, and precipitated carbon is then subsumed by plate tectonic activity.
Increasing carbon dioxide leads to increases in temperature, which in turn increases the level of water vapour that can be held in the atmosphere. This amplifies the greenhouse effect, giving even more warming (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas).
The planet Venus is a good example of what happens when you get a runaway greenhouse effect. It totally dried up and ended up with an atmosphere of 95% carbon dioxide and a temperature of 462 degC, higher than the melting point of lead (327.5 °C).
Both Earth and Venus were thought to be in a similar situation up to 4 billion years ago, having water vapour, carbon dioxide and a temperature of about 230 degC. It is suggested that on Earth, plate tectonics and the later formation of oceans removed enough of the carbon dioxide to bring the Earth to its present temperature, whilst on Venus, the balance ran the other way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus).
All in all, it is political ignorance or plain avoidance of inconvenient facts that makes supporting STEM events in schools so important. Mores STEM might ultimately lead to more SENSE.
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