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During the 1970s, I conducted an (unpublished) meta-analysis of data Charles Greeley Abbot collected from various sources in the early 20th Century to look for cross correlations between his solar irradiance measurements, sunspot index measurements, and weather patterns in various cities. The meta-analysis showed a significant positive correlation between solar irradiance and sunspot data, and a partial correlation between them and the temperature data.

Abbot, like nearly all astronomers and astrophysicists of his time, firmly believed in a negative correlation between sunspot index and solar irradiance, rather than the positive one his data showed. He noted the partial correlation between sunspot index and temperatures, but his prejudice about the correlation between index and irradiance led him to reject the effect as spurious.

By the end of the 1980s, the positive correlation between solar irradiance variations and sunspot index variations had been confirmed by satellite measurements, overturning astrophysicists' previous view. This allowed partial explanation of historically observed climatic variations, specifically the so-called "Little Ice Age" in the latter half of the second millennium, by reduction of solar activity observed through anomalies in the sunspot index, specifically the Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton minima. This research strongly indicates that solar variability is also an important input to the climate system that is certainly not under human control.

Now, it is becoming clear that the climate system is highly complex, with multiple positive and negative feedback loops, as well as a large number of independent forcing inputs, only a few of which are under human control (see "Aerosols Cloud Climate Picture," Science News, v. 176, n. 11., pp. 5-6 for a brief synopsis). These are characteristics of a chaotic system

Paleontologists and geologists have pieced together a fairly complete, though not necessarily detailed, picture of Earth's climate over the 4.5 billion years of the planet's existence. This picture shows a chaotic climate capable of varying over a wide temperature range. On short time scales, weather patterns are now acknowledged to be chaotic, with a horizon of predictability on the order of a week.

Taken together, these bits of information lead one to the conclusion that Earth's climate exhibits chaotic behavior on all time scales. It is, basically, a chaotic system.

Now, let's look at efforts to control climate change. We are attempting to use a chaotic system (global politics) to harness a second chaotic system (social, economic, and technical institutions) to control a third chaotic system (Earth's climate), when not all the forcing variables (e.g., solar irradiance, geology) are in our hands, anyway.

This sounds like a fool's errand.

I suggest that we could much more effectively apply our energies to developing means to react to climate change that is inevitable, than to the fool's errand of trying to direct it. Climate change, in any direction, has both positive and negative affects. It would be far better to direct our efforts toward engineering social systems, laws, and technologies to take advantage of the positive effects, and ameliorate the negative effects.

Truly successful technologies - those that achieve widespread commercial application - generally exhibit a number of characteristics. Chiefest among them is probably the ability to help humans do a lot of things that they would be doing anyway, but do them faster, cheaper, and more easily.

Automobiles, for example, did not make people peripatetic. People have been wandering around Earth's surface for hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of years. They've been doing it since long before the modern species homo sapiens developed. All the automobile did was up the cruising speed from around 2 mph to several tens of mph. Human behavior didn't change, they still like to go from A to B whenever they can come up with an excuse, the automobile achieved enormous commercial success by making it possible to do it faster, cheaper, and more easily. What pushed the automobile's success to the enormous dimensions it achieved was the fact that its advantages applied to almost everything people do, from enjoying an afternoon tryst to seeking out new worlds to conquer.

Ultrathin, flexible, disposable battery technology should have similar success. It seems like such a simple thing: use thick-film technology to manufacture carbon-zinc batteries on a flexible substrate. How hard can it be to manufacture a battery consisting of a handful of non-moving parts compared to the typical automobile's 3.7 kazillion moving parts? You make the things with a glorified ink-jet printer. What could be easier?

Well, it isn't all that easy to make the things thin enough, reliable enough, and consistent enough for commercial success. It's simple to imagine doing it. The Devil's in the details of doing it right. Only a few companies have managed it.

Blue Spark Technologies is one of them. In an article published in yesterday's Designfax online newsletter, Matt Ream, Blue Spark's marketing manager and an electronics engineer with 20 years of experience in high-tech electronics and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, reviews ultrathin battery technology and presents a cross section of applications.

He says that products using the company's technology rely on convergence of printed electronics and thin, flexible printed battery technologies. Printed electronics is the printing of electronic devices on common media, such as paper, plastic, or textiles, using traditional printing processes. Examples include programmable chips (ICs), RFID antennas and tags, printed displays, and thin, flexible batteries that provide a low-voltage power source. Ream goes on to report that industry analyst IDTechEx predicts that the market potential for printed electronics will grow to over $35 billion by 2018, while NanoMarkets predicts sales of thin film and printed batteries will grow to over $5 billion by 2015.

For product designers of low-voltage electronic products and systems, Ream says his company's 1.5-V printed carbon-zinc batteries offer multiple advantages over traditional button and coin cells, such as:

• Eco-friendly, safe disposability, since they contain no lithium, mercury, or other toxic materials.

• Small form factor, thin profile, and customizable shapes with a thickness range from about 430 to 700 microns (0.017 to 0.027 in.), and peak drain currents of at least 1 mA.

• Lower production and integration costs because they are made using conventional printing processes, and can often be printed or mounted on the same substrate as other printed electronics.

Such batteries can be used in applications where integration of a conventional battery would be too complex and costly. Within limits, users can typically specify size and shape (linear and non-linear), overall voltage, storage capacity, and thickness -- all tailored to the application requirements.

In a CNBC interview, Gary Johnson, the company's CEO, and Michael Liard, RFID Practice Director for ABI Research, described the market potential for ultrathin disposable batteries. Basically, you can look forward to seeing the technology attached to, pasted on, or incorporated into all kinds of disposable items that you use every day. Actually, you won't know that you're seeing them. They'll sit there in the background making it possible to do faster, cheaper, and easier what you were going to do, anyway.

The old saying is that "A picture is worth 1,000 words," but a picture plus quantitative measurements can be worth far more. A case in point: thermographic surveys of residential and commercial buildings.

Thermography is the science of remotely sensing the temperatures of objects by mapping their infrared emissions to provide a qualitative image showing hot- and cool-spots on surfaces visible in the image along with highly accurate quantitative temperature readings of selected spots.

Contractors can use this information to quickly find energy leaks in existing buildings and then determine the amount and type of insulation best suited to close them up. For example, it makes no sense to pack extra insulation into a home's attic, if most of the heating and cooling losses go through the walls. Similarly, adding more and more insulation in the walls would reach a point of diminishing returns if the windows became the dominant loss. Better to put just enough insulation into the walls and then concentrate on upgrading the windows.

Such surveys are appropriate to help planning remodeling projects and to verify energy efficiency of new construction projects. Just having thermal imaging equipment, however, does no good unless contractors know how to use and interpret it. Teaching those skills is the job of engineering technology programs at two- and four-year colleges.

Through the Fluke Weatherization Grant Program, instructors in accredited programs in building science, weatherization, energy conservation, home inspection and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) can apply for grants of Fluke IR-InSIGHT thermal imagers to use in teaching. Fluke Corporation is donating the equipment to schools and training programs for use in teaching students to perform weatherization work and home inspections.

Instructors have just weeks to apply for $100,000 worth of infrared thermal imagers from Fluke Corporation. Twenty programs will be selected to receive one thermal imager kit including software, two rechargeable batteries, charger, operation manual and USB adapter. Complete guidelines and an application form are available at the Fluke Weatherization Solution Center. Deadline for applications is September 14, 2009. Fluke will announce the winners in September 2009.

For more information on the Fluke Weatherization Program, visit the Fluke Weatherization Solution Center, or contact Fluke Corporation, P.O. Box 9090, Everett, WA USA 98206, call (800) 44-FLUKE (800-443-5853), fax (425) 446-5116, or e-mail fluke-info@fluke.com.