How past scientists understood water vapor’s role in atmospheric circulation, whether those insights were lost, and what connects the drinking bird to the biotic pump concept
What a great teacher you are to accommodate your audience's wide need to understand the biotic pump phenomenon coming from different directions of thought. This essay makes it very clear. And the short video at the end is very beautiful and a call to save and restore forests everywhere. Bravo! (The historical references to Hertz and others are fascinating!)
Thank you very much for your kind words. I am finding those earlier scientific writings somehow more human than modern ones. Apparently at those times writings were not aimed to increase one's Hirsch's index but served some other purpose.
Anastassia, Dichlorometane ( Methilene Cloride, CH₂Cl₂) , the liquid originally used for the drinkining bird toy, was a very dangerous and toxic fluids to be enveloped within a fragile glass tube. Its inhalation may provoke serious health issues to your lungs if the toys breaks. I hope that Amazon/temu/aliexpress are using an alternative-safer liquid. Just in case, plse double check. We want you healthy and in good condition...!! Thanks for the interesting explanation.
Thank you, Miquel, for your careful note. It seems that they do use methylene chloride, though it is indeed toxic. E..g., in this scientific publication from 2006 https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2190688 , they investigate a toy like mine and say it contains it.
However, the glass seems to be quite robust. My bird has already fallen four times from a table ~1.2 m high, a usual thing for me, but it did not break.
Easy fix: glue a bigger-wider-heavier base under the existing base. By the way, I am promoting a regenerative proposal www.balearsverd.org, hope it may be of your interest, since it relies on both the Biotic Pump/MIllan Millan theories.
Thank you for the link! I will forward it to our colleagues Dayana Andrade and Felipe Pasini who have been running several syntropic restoration projects in Brazil, Italy and Portugal.
This is lucid and brilliant Anastassia. Can I have your permission to reprint it in the Climate Action Tai Tokerau website. https://northlandclimatechange.org/ I will acknowledge it as your work and link it to this page.
Dear Anastassia, Thanks very much for another insightful article. I went straight to the Chikoori and Jury (2010) paper - as it researched Southern Africa (where I come from). I didn't really understand half of it! :-( I actually got Chat GTP to summarize it for me, and it seems I did at least partially understand it - that, within a rainy season, there are other local drivers of rainfall that operate on 20 or 40 day (I assume that is approximate?) cycles. In addition, there appears to be evidence that better vegetation growth, initiated by earlier rain, can trigger better rain during a subsequent wet cycle. This is somewhat similar to a theory that my late mother once proposed, that those people who got the best early rains, got a better rainy season afterwards. I discussed with my mother that this effect MUST be small, otherwise whoever got the first rains would corner all the subsequent rain and we would have these random oases of lush vegetation, surrounded by swathes of semi desert. I have also been reading a paper by PTS Oliveira et al about the Water Balance components across the Brazilian Cerrado. In it he mentions using TRMM version 7 for satellite rainfall data. I would dearly like to get hold of that data for southern Africa to see whether I can see any correlation between the tree cover in different parts of Southern Province of Zambia, and the rainfall. There are areas of Malawi that have a high contrast between high tree density (in national parks) and low tree density (in communally farmed areas). If these high tree density areas can show up in areas of higher rainfall in the satellite data we would have a very strong argument (with evidence) for restoring tree cover throughout the region.
What a great teacher you are to accommodate your audience's wide need to understand the biotic pump phenomenon coming from different directions of thought. This essay makes it very clear. And the short video at the end is very beautiful and a call to save and restore forests everywhere. Bravo! (The historical references to Hertz and others are fascinating!)
Thank you very much for your kind words. I am finding those earlier scientific writings somehow more human than modern ones. Apparently at those times writings were not aimed to increase one's Hirsch's index but served some other purpose.
I have noticed the same thing. Science seems to have become increasingly inhuman and denatured. You might find this review interesting: https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/6559b9fb/how-journals-like-nature-cell-and-science-are-damaging-science-the-guardian
Many thanks for your works and especially for the thoughtful and multifaceted explanations… blessings
Anastassia, Dichlorometane ( Methilene Cloride, CH₂Cl₂) , the liquid originally used for the drinkining bird toy, was a very dangerous and toxic fluids to be enveloped within a fragile glass tube. Its inhalation may provoke serious health issues to your lungs if the toys breaks. I hope that Amazon/temu/aliexpress are using an alternative-safer liquid. Just in case, plse double check. We want you healthy and in good condition...!! Thanks for the interesting explanation.
Thank you, Miquel, for your careful note. It seems that they do use methylene chloride, though it is indeed toxic. E..g., in this scientific publication from 2006 https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2190688 , they investigate a toy like mine and say it contains it.
However, the glass seems to be quite robust. My bird has already fallen four times from a table ~1.2 m high, a usual thing for me, but it did not break.
Easy fix: glue a bigger-wider-heavier base under the existing base. By the way, I am promoting a regenerative proposal www.balearsverd.org, hope it may be of your interest, since it relies on both the Biotic Pump/MIllan Millan theories.
Thank you for the link! I will forward it to our colleagues Dayana Andrade and Felipe Pasini who have been running several syntropic restoration projects in Brazil, Italy and Portugal.
You are SO amazing!! This is so clear and so easy to share. what a gift you are!
This is lucid and brilliant Anastassia. Can I have your permission to reprint it in the Climate Action Tai Tokerau website. https://northlandclimatechange.org/ I will acknowledge it as your work and link it to this page.
Thank you, Peter. You are very welcome to reprint this post.
What's the video's hyper-link... It's a great teaser to sent to my many
friends who have limited interest spans ?
I have added links to the post:
drinking bird https://youtu.be/OHAsOF2zG6c
biotic pump video in English https://youtu.be/3JyaSL2Mioc
biotic pump video in French https://youtu.be/Es8pHFUuqdI
Thanks !
Dear Anastassia, Thanks very much for another insightful article. I went straight to the Chikoori and Jury (2010) paper - as it researched Southern Africa (where I come from). I didn't really understand half of it! :-( I actually got Chat GTP to summarize it for me, and it seems I did at least partially understand it - that, within a rainy season, there are other local drivers of rainfall that operate on 20 or 40 day (I assume that is approximate?) cycles. In addition, there appears to be evidence that better vegetation growth, initiated by earlier rain, can trigger better rain during a subsequent wet cycle. This is somewhat similar to a theory that my late mother once proposed, that those people who got the best early rains, got a better rainy season afterwards. I discussed with my mother that this effect MUST be small, otherwise whoever got the first rains would corner all the subsequent rain and we would have these random oases of lush vegetation, surrounded by swathes of semi desert. I have also been reading a paper by PTS Oliveira et al about the Water Balance components across the Brazilian Cerrado. In it he mentions using TRMM version 7 for satellite rainfall data. I would dearly like to get hold of that data for southern Africa to see whether I can see any correlation between the tree cover in different parts of Southern Province of Zambia, and the rainfall. There are areas of Malawi that have a high contrast between high tree density (in national parks) and low tree density (in communally farmed areas). If these high tree density areas can show up in areas of higher rainfall in the satellite data we would have a very strong argument (with evidence) for restoring tree cover throughout the region.
Lovely short video.
Heinrich Hertz nailed it.
Cute and curiously-instructive dichloromethane toy.
;-)
I'm excerpting and linking to this in the post I'm composing, too.
;-)