This is a past event.

Materials Science and Engineering Seminar

Prof. Gerard T. Caneba

Department of Chemical Engineering
Michigan Technological University

Abstract: This work separates the anthropogenic global warming mechanism through the greenhouse effect from natural climate change, which establishes a direct observable relationship between cause and effect for relatively large climate variabilities in the Earth system. It should be noted the 2013 IPCC report precisely stated that the oceans absorb 93% of the sun’s energy that impact the Earth system, and deep ocean rates of movement match 1-7-yr random time scales of climate variability data for global mean carbon dioxide atmospheric absorption, sea surface temperature, sea level rises, cryosphere masses, etc. It was just a matter of finding a viable mechanism to account for randomness of these variability cycles within the 1-7-yr range, whatever the cause(s) might be. This work shows that the venting of submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents deep in the ocean tectonic rifts are adequately capable of producing observed large underwater soliton waves that can temporarily alter the course of the thermohaline global ocean current that affect the weather and climate systems. This presentation will unveil the thermoenergetic chemical concept used to account for randomness of variabilities in climatic measures within the current 1-7-yr timescales. It includes consideration of condensed phase transition behavior of deep ocean (high pressure, low temperature) carbon dioxide-water system, which thermodynamically predicts the formation of Type I carbon dioxide clathrate hydrate crystals. In conjunction with the simulated hydrodynamic pattern from the Rayleigh-Benard convection model around submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal vents, kinetics of phase transition via nucleation and growth and spinodal decomposition are also predicted to occur in a supersaturated manner.

Bio: Dr. Caneba started his work pertaining to the above-mentioned presentation from the time he was a graduate student in the 1980s at the University of California-Berkeley, CA. His PhD qualifying exam effort resulted in his application of the topological criterion for the occurrence of chaotic behavior in nonisothermal dynamic chemical reactor systems. As a new faculty member in chemical engineering at Michigan Tech, he later combined this work with his PhD dissertation efforts in phase transition thermodynamics and kinetics of phase separating polymer systems. Along the way, he discovered and pioneered here at Michigan Tech the free-radical retrograde-precipitation (FRRPP) process, which he authored in two monographs that were published by Springer-Verlag in 2009 and 2010. Building on his successes with the FRRPP process, he applied his expertise in nonlinear dynamics, phase transition behavior, and use of chemical engineering concepts to formulate the new 12-step natural climate change mechanism, and published it in a new monograph in 2018 (ebook version) and 2019 (printed version). Such work is a middle-ground approach to global warming/climate change, which is introduced as an alternate concept to those of the two prevailing extreme positions on the issue.