Atlantis Located

    I don't often think about the Atlantis story, but it came to mind recently as a part of a story that I started writing. I needed something like that as a plot device. Well, to make a longish story brief, I didn't find Atlantis, but I am 99% certain that I have figured out where Tartessos is, and one theory is that Atlantis was based on Tartessos. But it turns out that the location of Tartessos is uncertain, or was until earlier today, when I found it.

    I was looking for a good Bronze Age, or so, setting for a story that I am writing. One of the characters was going to make fake ancient metal things for resale, and Tartessian styles became the models. I was aware that there is a large region in the Iberian Peninsula that has very high grade metal ores, especially copper, tin, silver, and gold; that region is called the Iberian Pyrite Belt, and it is the reason why the Rio Tinto has been polluted pretty much for ever. The Rio Tinto itself, its gravel and bed, also has been mined for thousands of years for tin and other metals in its gravel.

    Sierra Moreno is one place where the Pyrite Belt is above ground, and on the Northwesterly side of it there has been active mining since before 2000 BCE. The mine was only closed in the twentieth century; the copper mass was depleted by about 1890, but taking pyrites for sulfur continued after that. The name of this mine, and the associated town, is Tharsis, and they have been called that for a long time. The name is unusual for Spanish, and it certainly appears to be a shortened version of Tartessos. I just found out that gold is still being mined at Tharsis; a gold mine, Filon Sur, produces 1000 kg per year.

    The Tharsis mine is about thirty miles North of Huelva, the regional capital, and about twenty miles West of the Rio Tinto, where there also still is some mining; although Rio Tinto Mining now does its mining in other places around the world, but it started out by reopening ancient mines on the Rio Tinto.

    While archeologists haven't said pinned down the location of Tartessos; it is well accepted that Huelva was the port of Tartessos. There have been enough archeological finds, including ship wrecks in the river, that there is no doubt, and there are two rivers that empty into the ocean there, the Rio Tinto to the East and the Rio Odiel to the West. Rio Odiel is rather small, but it probably would have been useful for hauling metal from Tartessos to the port. It appears that there has been a town adjacent to the ore body at Tharsis since very early times, but it appears that there is little or nothing remaining from thousands of years ago, because buildings were torn down and replaced when they had deteriorated. There are mentions of some pieces of mining equipment from Roman times having been found in abandoned pits, but it appears that all of the earliest sections of the mine were completely dug away when it was turned into an open pit mine during the Roman era. The same is true of the Rio Tinto mine, which is even bigger, but soil was moved from one section to another when it was expanded.

    Within the last decade, or so, someone theorized that Atlantis ended up under the marshes of the Park National of Donana about thirty miles southeast of Huelva. As I recall it, the theory is that there was a rise in sea level that flooded the city, and Plato wrote that the city subsided beneath the ocean. Someone else guessed that Atlantis was somewhere else in that area. I'm not certain about Atlantis, but I think that it was dreamed up in Plato's mind based on data that could not be readily checked; it was 9000 years before Plato's time. In Plato’s time Tartessos was a place that was almost unreachable, and it was beyond the Pillars of Heracles, so Plato put his fictional city beyond the Pillars of Heracles.

    I would love to go to that area and look around; it's the oldest industrial region on the planet. There was mining and smelting on a substantial scale before 2000 BCE, and it's the closest that I could ever get to Atlantis. There is a lot more to the Iberian Pyrite Belt, so maybe someone will decide to mine even deeper.

    References:
    MBendi's listing for Filon Sur, Gold Mine (1000 kg/year), located in Tharsis, Huelva, Spain
    http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharsis_%28Alosno%29

    A blog about Tharsis
    http://amigosdetharsis.blogspot.com/

    Google view of Tharsis showing mining pits now filled with water.
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/21...b7cd4b6b788f70

    About archeology at the Rio Tinto mine
    http://barryyeoman.com/2010/09/the-m...built-empires/
    http://www.spainthenandnow.com/spani...efault_37.aspx
    A site on Huelva including history, museums, etc.
    http://www.andalucia.com/cities/huelva/history.htm

    The websites of the archaeological museum seville and Huelva, If your Spanish is good, then they will be useful.
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...te/museos/MHU/
    http://www.museosdeandalucia.es/cult...ect=S2_3_1.jsp

Self- Delusion for Your Own Good

Remain calm. All actions are futile.

We all know in our subconscious minds that there is no hope, and that everything is predetermined, so our actions and decisions are predetermined, so we might as well not do anything. Yes, life is completely pointless, except as a tool for DNA to develop more complicated organisms. We are all in the same position as the character on The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut who produced a replacement part for the Tralfamadorians by a series of acts that appeared to be random or accidental. While our innermost thoughts accept the facts, our DNA demands that it be given the opportunity to reproduce, so even the ugliest misbegotten person tries its best to do the best in its life.

To further that end, our subconscious minds create the personality complete with the delusion that each of us is the most wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, sexy, strong, etc. person in the world, or something close to that. Alas, the delusional thinking isn't confined top personal attributes, and many people think that they are less than completely successful in all things only because there are forces acting against them. Thoughts of this sort sometimes lead to conspiracy theories by the subconscious mind creating or borrowing something that could prevent the individual from being happy and successful.

It is possible that people of low intelligence have minds that are superior in creating delusions. As an example, people who are more intelligent usually have a more realistic view of their abilities, while people of lower intelligence frequently can't imagine that anyone is more intelligent than they are. The result is that the people with lower intelligences rush in where angels fear to tread. Alexander Pope recognised that fact three hundred years ago, and the fools still don't have the sense to be cautious, and wiser heads may be overcautious.

But the most important sort of delusion that I know of are those things that people believe that keep them from abandoning all hope, even though they all know that there is no hope. I have mentioned the matter of “free will” before, and all humans know that there is none (at least they know that when they pull aside the curtain of self-delusion), but language, common activities, and even religion are set up as if there were free will; this is true even in areas where the culture is nominally deterministic.

The linked article is quite good. It amplifies what I have written, and even someone who has deluded himself into thinking that he is worthy of continued life finds agreement gratifying. I advise that you read the article for your own good. It is well written, and explains the matter more thoroughly than I was willing to.

Both that author of that article and I think that you are doing the wise thing by thinking that you are the most beautiful, wonderful, intelligent, etc. person in the universe, because you are, and anyone who disagrees is simply deluded. Just keep that in mind, and you probably will be able to continue.

How Our Delusions Keep Us Sane: The Psychology of Our Essential Self-Enhancement Bias
by Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06...ancement-bias/
http://www.rantlifestyle.com/2014/04...blade#slide_84

Obama Created ISIS

That is not an exaggeration. ISIS would not exist, if Obama weren’t an ignorant clown who has no idea how the rest of the world runs, and who badly messed up with regard to Syria. He should have supported Assad against the rebels. Apparently he thinks that everyone is supposed to crawl to his side of the issues, especially if he’s wrong. For someone who is supposed to be well educated he seems to have a very poor grasp of the situation in the Middle East. I wonder if he even knew that Assad, both father and son, have ruled a diverse population in Syria since Hafez became President in 1971 and made Syria the most open society in that region. 

The Assads are members of the tiny Islamic Alawite sect, so it was to their advantage to protect smaller religious and ethnic groups. Syria is the home for many ethnic groups who had been run out of their homes or who had survived since ancient times. By holding them together the Assads developed a fairly good power base, even though the Sunnis were the majority.

We can also blame every country and organization that has backed the rebels in Syria for contributing to the development of ISIS, but Obama did more than the rest to assist ISIS. Failing to support the Syrian government was a bad mistake. 

It wasn’t long ago when the U.S.A. had competent leaders who had the intelligence and education to understand the international situation, but in the last few decades we have had ignorant and sometimes stupid leaders who ran foreign policy based on what they thought they wanted, while they ignored facts. Putting the Palestinian situation aside, the present problems in the Mideast were caused primarily by the actions of G. W. Bush, who destabilized the region with his foolish invasions that didn’t accomplish anything except infuriate most of the people in that region and kill off people who were foolish enough to stay in the U.S. military. The stupidity of Bush was followed by the stubbornness of Obama, who continued the failed and wrong policies of Bush. Both of them, and to a lesser extent, prior U.S. leaders had been opposed to the Syrian government, even though it remains the only secular regime in the region. The Syrian government has been non-religious because the people of Syrian are so divided by religious and ethnic differences. Even with a Sunni majority Syria has continued to be open and permissive to all religions. The present rebellion is a campaign to impose Wahhabi Sunni doctrines on all of the people of Syria, and that is what ISIS exists to do. Even though majority rule may be desirable sometimes, imposing majority held beliefs on everyone is not desirable, and the Assads have prevented any religious group from imposing its standards on the rest of the people of Syria. What the Assads did was good, and we Americans and freedom loving people everywhere should encourage Syria to remain open to all opinions. And we should assist the Syrian government to retain religious freedom. 

It isn't too late. We can still save the people of Syria from a religious dictatorship. The U.S. should support the Syrian army in its attempts to defeat the rebels, all of the rebels. We should send weapons and ammunition to the Syrian army, and we should assist in attempts to cut off supplies from ISIS.

Syria is not an ally, but it is on the same side in this war, and it is a friend of the third sort; the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

Solar Cycles, part fou

 

This is part four of a series of posts about climate change. This post also tells how we really should correct for climate change.

I was told that I should write on Climate Change again. I complained that I already had done so enough, but I couldn’t think of anything better to write about, so I looked into the periodicity of climate change. It is a very interesting subject, and there is more to be done with it, but there isn’t enough data for everything to be put together in a neat, compact essay, and the scientists have the same problem. There are several types of variation in solar heating of the Earth; some are effects of the Earth’s orbit, while others are matters of the Sun.  These three cycles are called Milankovitch cycles.

Over time the Earth’s orbit becomes at time rounder and at other times more eccentric (more elongated). The elongation results in greater differences in temperatures from season to season; right now the orbit is relatively round.

Then there is axial tilt (obliquity). Now the Earth’s axis tilts about 23.5 degrees from vertical. Over time the tilt has been as little as 22.1 degree. The difference isn’t huge, but less axial tilt leads to colder temperatures near the poles, because lees sunlight reaches that region during Summer.

Then we have precession, the angle of the tilt with respect to the place in orbit. At present the tilts most away from the Sun near the Winter Solstice, when the Earth is closer to the Sun. This leads to less heating of the major landmasses.

We all know about the sunspot cycle. Sunspots go from maximum to minimum in an eleven year cycle. Temperatures tend to be higher during sunspot maxima.

There are several other cycles of varying length but of less well-known origins. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation . .

Cycle length	Cycle name	Last positive carbon-14 anomaly	Next "warming"
232	--?--	AD 1922 (cool)	AD 2038
208	Suess	AD 1898 (cool)	AD 2210
88	Gleisberg	AD 1986 (cool)	AD 2030

Plus the 2,300 years: Hallstatt cycle, the 6000 years (Xapsos and Burke, 2009), and a few others. And some work has been done that indicated that there were harmonic combination of different cycles. There isn’t any sign that anyone has looked into how one cycle affects another, but that is something that probably would happen based on the nature of the different cycles. I couldn’t find anything that indicated a larger cycle in sunspots, something that would account for the various minima and maxima, but there probably is a super cycle, or something else is causing the variations.

I think the total is at least seven cycles. I was going to chart some together, but seven would be too messy to be useful. In addition,

 ‘The sensitivity of climate to cyclical variations in solar forcing will be higher for longer cycles due to the thermal inertia of the oceans, which acts to damp high frequencies. Using a phenomenological approach, Scafetta and West (2005) found that the climate is 1.5 times as sensitive to 22-year cyclical forcing relative to 11-year cyclical forcing, and that the thermal inertia of the oceans induces a lag of approximately 2.2 (± 2) years in cyclic climate response in the temperature data.[35]” from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

It is quite clear that none of the mechanism that have been proposed for causing climate change are adequate explanations, but the observations cover only a rather short time with any reliability; although we have descriptions of climatic conditions tell a good story for a long time, and we can infer climatic conditions from agricultural outputs for a considerably longer period. Unfortunately, none of the observations match the known cycles; although there is some correspondence with harmonics.

    “Perry and Hsu (2000) proposed a simple model based on emulating harmonics by multiplying the basic 11-year cycle by powers of 2, which produced results similar to Holocene behavior. Extrapolation suggests a gradual cooling during the next few centuries with intermittent minor warm-ups and a return to near Little Ice Age conditions within the next 500 years. This cool period then may be followed approximately 1,500 years from now by a return to altithermal conditions similar to the previous Holocene Maximum. [36]”

Even if they did an excellent job we will have to wait to see.

I was hoping that there would be some relationship between sunspots and longer range patterns, but there isn’t. Apparently the relationship is coincidental.

Solar activity events and approximate dates
Event	Start	End
Homeric minimum[29]	950BC	800BC
Oort minimum (see Medieval Warm Period)	1040	1080
Medieval maximum (see Medieval Warm Period)	1100	1250
Wolf minimum	1280	1350
Spörer Minimum	1450	1550
Maunder Minimum	1645	1715
Dalton Minimum	1790	1820
Modern Maximum	1900	present

Looking at the various cycles, it becomes clear that there probably will not be an especially warm period or an ice age in the immediate future, even though several cycles are pointed toward the ice age. Combining that with the fact that the present level of temperatures in significantly lower than the Medieval Warm Period, it appears that we will continue to have rather normal climate with reason for bitching about the cold of Winter and grousing at the heat of Summer. If you are interested in doing something about that, then you will be interested in my preceding posts, which will discuss triggering a new ice age (it isn’t difficult).

Further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

Sunspots

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/06_3.shtml

Unstoppable solar cycles

http://heartland.org/policy-documents/unstoppable-solar-cycles-rethinking-global-warming

Variation in eccentricity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Jupiter and Venus Effect on Earth's Climate

http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?137011-Jupiter-and-Venus-Effect-on-Earth-s-Climate

http://www.indiana.edu/~geol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot_cycle

Reversing Global Warming, part three

This is part three of a series of blog posts on reversing global warming. In the first part I proposed trying iron dust on the oceans to cause phytoplankton blooms that would eliminate atmospheric CO2, which would (in theory) reduce global warming. The second method would be to cut down on heating from the Sun. And this third part is about cheaper ways to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth.

In addition to the methods for shielding the Earth from the radiation from the Sun already mentioned, there are some other methods that are rather time honored. You are probably aware that the Year Without Summer was caused by an eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia. And more recently Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines caused a slight worldwide cooling when it erupted. I realize that humans don’t have much control over the eruptions of volcanos, but neither have humans tried to set off a volcano, yet.

Volcanos put huge amounts of dust and chemicals into the atmosphere and those can, and do, reflect sunlight. With some careful calculation and playing with fire it should be possible modulate the eruptions of some volcanos. Efforts have already been made to control volcanos, and further research is being conducted, see links below.

If eruptions can be controlled or stopped, then they can be started in a limited way, so that only gases and dust that would decrease the amount of sunlight getting to Earth.  We certainly don’t want another Year Without a Summer, but it might be nice to use something that would otherwise be damaging to improve the world.

Research would also have to be done into the amount of material that would have to be teased out of the volcanos. It certainly would depend, in part, on the locations, and each volcano has its particular blend of effluvia. The altitude to which the material would rise would also be an issue.  Material that rises to greater heights would tend to stay in the atmosphere longer. Sulfur dioxide is a common component of volcanic gas and it is well known for reflecting sunlight, but some volcanos eject vast amounts of carbon dioxide. It might be necessary to pick and choose and to balance the outputs of different volcanos.

As yet little research has been done into this system for controlling global warming, but there is great potential for research grants. As part of the research it would be a good idea to consider other sources for gases that would reflect sunlight. In recent times industrial gases ejected into the atmosphere included sulfur dioxide in considerable quantity. Industrial operations also produced nitrous oxides, which tend to trap heat, so there was some balancing done; although it was unplanned. Many of the industrial processes that produced relevant gases are still being done, and the waste gas that was formerly released into the atmosphere is now treated and discarded in controlled ways. The controls could simply be removed and the gas allowed to go into the atmosphere.

While that would amount to allowing air pollution, it would be for a good purpose, and it could be regulated. In fact, careful regulation would be necessary to ensure that additional greenhouse gases would not be released into the atmosphere. Laws would have to be changed in most of the world, but it seems that China is already doing its part to reverse global warming by using air pollution. I don’t know if they have improved upon what Western countries did, but it would be worthwhile to ask.

Anyone who lived in a developed country before 1970 surely remembers the clouds of particulates that floated above the cities. Those clouds were composed of a mixture of gases that had little effect on temperature, because some of the particulates and gases were absorbing heat, while others were reflecting the sunlight back into space. We need to specialize and have clouds that only reflect the heat back into space. Water vapor would be ideal, if only it weren’t such a good greenhouse gas. It might be safer to use dust. We might even use some of the iron dust that we would be spreading on the oceans. It the particles were small enough, then they would stay in the stratosphere for years, so did the dust from Tambora.

The choice isn’t obvious. There are downsides for every alternative, but something has to be done. And in our hearts we know what it needed.

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~hnlechne/controling_eruptions.htm

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~hnlechne/volcano_engineering.htm

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/50833-preventing-volcanic-eruptions/