Michael Moller
An OU graduate (B.A. hons) living on the beautiful Isle of Wight. I have completed many FutureLearn courses and am interested in Science, Ecology and History.
Location Shanklin, Isle of Wight
Activity
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Michael Moller made a comment
Bit confused. Volcanic eruptions during a snowball earth period increase the abundance of C02 in the atmosphere and thereby warm the planet and eventually the snowball retreats. Got this. However, my previous learning has indicated the opposite, i.e. that volcanic eruptions block out the sunlight and thereby cool the earth. So, one event and two possible...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Very interesting week. All the information regarding positive feedbacks got me thinking. They are, amongst others, the ice/albedo effect, methane release effect etc.
So, to postulate into the future. The planet continues to warm at an unsustainable rate (for humans at least). Eventually another feedback loop is reached. Humans die out so the combined damage... -
Thanks for posting this Allan, I found it very interesting, if somewhat disconcerting, reading,
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Yes David, I wondered this too. The ice has been around for thousands of years and the sun has been warming the oceans over geologic time. So how has life survived without some sort of counter feedback to nullify these derogatory cycles?
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Thanks so much for responding Thu. Could you give us all a rough idea of the weather you can expect over a 12 month period. Thank you.
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Michael Moller replied to Alice L
@AliceL You raise an interesting point Alice. It seems to me that the 1912 newpaper article regarding the increase of atmospheric gases was not typical of printed articles at that time. My guess is that it would have created very little interest amongst the scientists of the day and even less amongst the general population. Even today, when the climate is...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Hmm, it seems that greenhouses are not particularly green!
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Michael Moller made a comment
Hi everyone and I'm Mike. Slightly surprised to find the course is primarily for 16-18 year olds as I am slightly over that age group, (73 years old actually). However, I think it is important for older people to gain a good understanding of what is happening to our planet as, sadly, many in my generation choose simply to ignore the crisis on the basis that...
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Michael Moller made a comment
A very striking way of showing climate change over the years. In any representation such as this there will always be anomalous years. Indeed, I would be very suspicious of a graph that showed an even smooth rise in temperature with each year increasing bit by bit. The graphs for the individual countries are interesting but the global chart has the most...
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Michael Moller made a comment
I am interested to find out what the course has to say about public transport. It seems to me the amount of money being spent developing such things as self-driving cars would be far better spent on improving and extending the public transport network utilising trains and buses adapted to run using low carbon technologies.
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Michael Moller replied to keith muir
Keith, you're not the only layman as I am on the course too!
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Michael Moller made a comment
Yes, the comment "being good without god" summarises humanistic thought succinctly.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Thanks so much for presenting this course. I have completed many FutureLearn courses but this one has had the greatest impact on my life. A really great course, thanks to the educators and a special thanks to the folks who have left comments and advice, really made the course something special and nice to make some (virtual) friends.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I've recently taken an interest in Tai Chi and there were classes open before the lockdown. Hopefully these will restart some time soon and then I will be taking a course. Research into these more relaxing forms of exercise, tai chi, yoga etc. would be interesting.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I think my diet is OK but I plan to incorporate some more exercise into my life. Have mapped out a pleasant varied walk I can do from my home and this will take me about 30 minutes to complete if I walk briskly. My plan is to do this at least 5 times a week and hopefully this will result in an increase in my overall fitness.
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Michael Moller made a comment
My wife and I have been vegetarians for over 40 years and we are both reasonably fit and healthy. I cannot tell if our vegetarianism is responsible for this but we like to think so. The main thing we do apart from being vegetarians is avoid sugar. I believe sugar is very harmful to us and I read a book some years ago by a Professor John Yudkin entitled "Pure,...
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Interesting Pat that the US chooses to fortify it's milk and the UK does not. I wonder why we in the UK do not choose to fortify our milk when earlier we were told that a significant proportion of the county were deficient in vit. D.
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Surprising to find that, here in the relatively affluent UK, there is still a significant proportion of people, and most worryingly teenagers, who have diets lacking some essential ingredients.
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Fascinating video. Very interesting to see the process by which government nutritional recommendations come about.
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Yes, I've also seen bottled water with the claim "filtered through volcanic rocks for 10,000 years". Followed by "use by next Tuesday"!@PollyRewt
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Michael Moller made a comment
I discovered two packets of breakfast fibre cereals in our cupboard. One is All-Bran by a major breakfast cereal provider (starting with a K) and the other is a high-fibre supermarket own brand alternative (and cheaper). The first claims to contain a superior fibre and goes on to explain that the fibre is wheat bran and that All-Bran contains 87% of this. The...
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So, we learn that in 2016 manufacturers were limited in the claims they made for their products by European Union regulation. I can only hope, now we (GB) are leaving, that these regulations do not fall by the wayside and we lose that protection.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Looking at these figures can be confusing. It says that 10 micrograms of vitamin D per day is recommended. Looking at my bottle of cod liver oil tablets it says that 5 micrograms is 100 per cent of the daily requirement. A bit of a puzzle.
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Well, despite all this scientific evidence I must confess that I just eat what I like. I have been vegetarian for over 40 years and, at age 72, I have no outstanding health issues and am relatively fit. I lead groups of walkers on the Isle of Wight every week (not through the lockdown though) and have always been active although not a gym member.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I can't think of anything better to do during lockdown than this course. It has motivated me to get some exercise into my life and I have already started, walking briskly for 30 minutes every day.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I made a step platform in the shed (very simple) and now, when the adverts come on we jump up (well get up slowly) and do about 30 steps. Allieviates the boredom of the adverts and we actually enjoy it. We found it an easy way to bring a little exercise into our daily lives.
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Yes Jack, they are chewable and she takes one a day. The blood tests she has had since she was prescribed these tablets have shown a very positive result.@jackcurtis
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Michael Moller made a comment
As a reasonably fit 60 year old, leading walking groups on the Isle of Wight, I was happy with my fitness. However, I managed to fall out of a tree some time ago and was hospitalised for 10 weeks. After this I could hardly manage a walk around our bungalow. The loss of fitness in this relatively short period was frightening. Glad to say I have regained my...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Well, if I don't get out and exercise more after finishing this course I never will. Reading all this material it gives a clear sign that as we age we must try to keep the negative effects at bay by looking after our bodies.
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Hi Pat, I use a Garmin Forerunner 30 but I think there is a newer version out now. Very pleased with it, tells you all sorts of info regarding your exercise pattern and health. There are also a host of these trackers out there, I suggest you google and find one that suits you. I can only say I am very pleased with mine. Good luck!@PatCarlson
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Michael Moller made a comment
What is the impact of diet on bone strength? My wife broke her ankle some years ago and was given a routine bone scan. This revealed the beginnings of osteoporosis but with tablets and yearly transfusions the osteoporosis has completely disappeared. This in the absence of any appropriate exercise.
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I follow this exercise regime rigorously, but I use beer rather than tea!
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Pat, you can buy fitness trackers that you wear like a watch. These measure various things like calorie use, distance walked and other variables. My tracker enables you to download your activities to the computer and then it will give you a VO2 max reading. I don't know how accurate this reading is but it is some sort of guide to your health.
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I guess the increase in body weight puts more stress on the bones during normal activities and this helps to gain some bone strength.@SimonBowles
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Michael Moller replied to Diane Grafton
Diane, I'm with you on this. I am the grand old age of 72 and am worrying that I may not make it to the end of the course!
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Michael Moller made a comment
Thoroughly enjoyed this course. An absolute "Tsunami" of new information for me.
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Michael Moller made a comment
It's good to see warning systems put in place in an effort to save lives in the event of an earthquake. However, it seems that the closer you are to the quake (and greater risk of damage) the less time you get to take action.
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Michael Moller replied to John A Garrison Jr
Great video John and it explains why the ocean retreats from the shore line before rapidly advancing as a Tsunami. Thanks.
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Michael Moller replied to Jerry Herlihy
John, you are correct to say the effect on people's religious convictions were shaken by this quake. It occurred during the Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time, thereby causing maximum deaths in the packed churches that collapsed. Additionally, many homes were destroyed by fire from the candles that had been lit for the holy day.
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Michael Moller replied to Peter Thomson
Kuhn also said that new scientific truths often win the day not so much because opponents change their minds, but because they die off.
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Michael Moller made a comment
We can view the controversy stirred up by Bretz's findings with hindsight and it is then easy to condemn the geologists of the day for being so short sighted. But of course, Bretz was presenting an entirely new hypothesis which would overturn conventional thought. Imagine today if someone were to come up with evidence that in fact Bretz was completely wrong or...
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Interesting post John. Wegener was lambasted as you say for being a German at a time following the Great War. Additionally he was not a geologist so he was accused of interfering in other's fields. Most damming though was that although his proposal of drifting continents seemed to have some logic the fact he could not propose any mechanism for this to happen...
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Michael Moller made a comment
So much packed into this week's study. Following the links, and then following links to the links slowed me down considerably. But, I'm not complaining, it's been fascinating.
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Michael Moller replied to Joan R
Imagine a megaDonald Trump!
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Michael Moller replied to LJ Hutchins
The Solent was formed some 7-8 thousand years ago at the end of the last ice age. Technically it is defined as a drowned river bed. The River Solent's source was the River Frome, and the River Solent's tributaries, the River Test, River Itchen, the River Avon and the River Medina. I live on the south side of the island Christine and we regularly experience...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Confused here. Previously I have read, in several different accounts, that Britain became an island separated from mainland Europe about 8 to 10 thousand years ago. This was probably caused by the Storegga landslide tsunami. Now we are told that Britain was separated from Europe by sea level changes around 450,000 years ago. Which is correct?
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Yes, I read somewhere that if you dumped St. Paul's cathedral into the North sea (unlikely, I know) then the dome would still be above sea level.@OliviaWalker
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2 theories Christine. Firstly an earthquake. I know there are no plate boundaries here but earthquakes can occur away from them. Secondly, large deposits of glacial material were deposited in the sea off the Norwegian coast at that time and could have caused instability in the sea floor which set off the slide. Take your pick!
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Michael Moller replied to David Rees
How did Noah know the asteroid strike and tsunami were coming?@DavidRees
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Michael Moller replied to Joan R
Good question Joan. I believe the Deccan Trap's event began on a limited scale before the Chixqulub impact event. The shock of this asteroid hitting the earth on exactly the opposite side of the planet may have been contributory to the increase in activity around the Deccan Traps. So maybe both are responsible.
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Michael Moller made a comment
We tend to be more aware of natural disasters such as Tsunamis through increased media coverage. Additionally, a major tsunami occurring in a holiday resort would nowadays be captured on hundreds of mobile phones and broadcast around the world. In, for example, Victorian times in the Western world people would probably be completely unaware of events such as...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Volcanism is obviously of great importance, having been mainly responsible for freeing us from snowball earth. Additionally laying down deposits of fertile soil for agriculture. Earthquakes can allow us to track the seismic waves produced and that helps us to locate water, oil and gas deposits.
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Most of the eruptions that resulted in the formation of the Deccan Traps occurred from about 65 million years ago until about 60 million years ago although there is some debate as to the precise timing.
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I'm with you John, we are seeing species disappearing at an alarming rate, faster I believe than at many of the historic mass extinctions that have occurred.@JohnAGarrisonJr
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30 cubic miles of ash and debris, wow!
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Joseph Wright was an amazing talent and many people have never heard of him. My personal favourite picture by him is entitled: "An experiment on a bird in an air pump". Absolutely awesome.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Nice video of the movement of tectonic plates through time. Almost a ballet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwWWuttntio -
Michael Moller replied to Peter Jenner
Yes John, that is true. The term is isostatic rebound and is the result of releasing (through melting) of tonnes of ice from glaciations.@JohnC
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Michael Moller replied to Nick Hampton
Nicky, from what I can remember of my earlier studies I think the movement of crustal plates is caused by thermal currents in the mantle "carrying" the rigid surface crust. The whole process is very slow in human terms. The Atlantic ocean is widening at about the same rate as our fingernails grow!@NickyHewitt
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Michael Moller made a comment
Additional proof of sea floor spreading (specifically the Atlantic Ocean widening due to the mid-Atlantic ridge) was provided by scrutiny of our atomic clocks. These clocks are incredibly accurate and are scattered around our planet. We periodically check the our clocks against the other clocks to ensure all are in sync. Well, when checking our clock (England)...
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Our present understanding is that no other planet in the solar system nor our Moon has ever experienced plate tectonics.
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No, it was San Andreas's fault!@PeterGrover
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Michael Moller made a comment
Living on the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England I have never experienced any earthquake activity. The stand out feature of the location of earthquakes on the planet is the good correlation between them and subduction zones around the planet.
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Michael Moller made a comment
One of the more significant earthquakes that have occurred in the British Isles is the 1984 Llŷn Peninsula earthquake with a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale. This was the largest onshore earthquake to occur in the UK since instrumental measurements began. So, for the UK this would probably be classified an extreme event. However, for other areas of the...
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Michael Moller made a comment
The Drake equation is an interesting attempt to quantify the chances of finding intelligent life in the universe. However, any equation that gives a result of somewhere between 1 and 87,500 would seem to have little practical use.
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Michael Moller replied to Paul Kettle
Bruce the Mososaur?
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Michael Moller made a comment
I don't think we should be talking about the possible coming of an extreme event, we are already in one. If you consider the mass extinction events that have occurred periodically during geologic time as extreme events then the present time must fall into that category. We are losing species at the present time at an unprecedented rate, far more rapidly than...
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Michael Moller made a comment
We have to consider not that are there planets that could support life in the galaxy, but at what time is that life happening. We as sentient beings have existed for only a few millions of years. Not to be too pessimistic but it is unlikely that we will continue to exist for many millions of years in the future. The damage we do to our planet would seem to...
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Michael Moller made a comment
I believe I have read somewhere that the temperature on the surface of Venus is due to a runaway greenhouse gas effect.
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OK Maria, I'm no scientist myself but I will have a stab at answering your question. Studying the light reaching us from distant stars using spectroscopic analysis reveals the elemental makeup of those stars. To date, every single star we have studied (and we have studied a great number of them) have been made up of elements that exist in our periodic table....
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Of course Chi. Remember water is H2O.
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Very good point Peter. We tend to think in terms of our own existence but of course in astronomical terms we have only existed, and are only likely to exist, in a blink of an eye.
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Yes, I was puzzled by this. However, fusion is the process of combining hydrogen atoms into helium and giving off large amounts of energy. This is not a process as I understand it that forms heavy elements.@HughSussens
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Astrid, the convention now is to define one billion as one thousand million.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I am puzzled by the big bang theory. If all the matter in the known universe was compacted into a very small body it would have inevitably been a black hole. This is physics as we understand it. So, as it seems to have been established that nothing can escape from a black hole, then how did all the material that forms our universe escape?
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Yes, the moon does attract the earth to a small degree but, of course, the earth being much more massive attracts the moon to a greater degree. It would be correct to say the two attract each other.@AlisaFinch
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Michael Moller replied to Michael Moller
Thanks Siobhan!@SiobhanO'Brien
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Michael Moller made a comment
Possibly the most extreme event ever to have occurred on planet earth is the appearance of humans. We have had a colossal impact on the earth and the environment, possibly to its future extinction, so must rank highly.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Hi. I took some Open University geology courses back in the late seventies so would like a chance to refresh my knowledge and get up to date with new discoveries.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Thanks for a brilliant course. It seemed to get better and better as we went along. Great stuff!
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Michael Moller made a comment
Just entered "Enginorum" into Google and found some really interesting articles. A cartoon strip illustrating a very boozy trip to Marlow is excellent.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Help, anyone know the meaning of D.D. I looked it up on Google and got some very weird results. Unless someone lets me know I will not sleep at night!
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Michael Moller replied to Catherine Guiot
Mussolini would have been prime minister of Italy for 8 years in 1930. However, I agree with you, a strange question for a prospective railway employee!
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Michael Moller made a comment
£11.25 simple and £11.59 compound. Easy to work out . . . . but I was using a calculator!
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Michael Moller made a comment
Would a clerk as a middle class employee look down on an engine driver or a signalman as working class employees? In my opinion this would be misplaced. If the clerk misses labelling a parcel it causes frustration, anger and delay. If a signalman makes a mistake it could potentially mean great loss of life. Who should be looking down on who?
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Michael Moller made a comment
I guess our definition of Clerk would be of someone who undertakes routine administrative duties. The Victorian use is somewhat different.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I can imagine the navvies gathered together, pints of beer in hands, lustily singing these songs. Must have been quite a site.
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Michael Moller made a comment
This course is so interesting. I have read widely about the accomplishments of the Victorian era, with splendid buildings and great industrial advances. But rarely mentioned are these underprivileged souls who stood at the bottom of the pile and were largely responsible for driving forward the achievements of the time.
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Michael Moller made a comment
Interesting quote I found:- "These banditti are possessed of all the daring recklessness of the Smuggler without any of his redeeming qualities. Their ferocious behaviour can only be equalled by the brutality of their language. They put at defiance any local constabulary force; consequently crimes of the most atrocious character are common, and robbery without...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Of course, the arrival of an itinerant and rowdy mass of men would have been the cause of some consternation amongst any population. However, the hotels, guest houses and pubs must have welcomed them with open arms. Their profits must have soared.
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Michael Moller made a comment
We holidayed in Cyprus some years ago and on one occasion we were driving up into the Troodos mountains when we came upon some roadworks. We were surprised to see about a dozen women digging out the rubble from an excavation while the sole man on site was casually leaning against a lorry and waving the (very) occasional car through. It seems in some societies...
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Michael Moller replied to John Prevett
Your thought Lee that the railway system was made up of discrete enterprises is born out by the example of the Great Western Railway track which were constructed on a completely different gauge from the other networks. Eventually GWR had to change to standard gauge to match the rest of the network.@LeeScott
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Michael Moller replied to Stuart Hendry
See my reply Patricia to Mary Order above.
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Michael Moller replied to mary order
There was a suggestion Mary that James Tinsley and George Meakin were handed a deal in which they accepted blame in order to get a much reduced sentence and thereby exonerate the railway company. The fact that they were re-employed in the railway industry very shortly afterwards adds credence to that theory.
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Michael Moller made a comment
I find it incredible that the signalmen, who we have discovered were highly skilled and responsible people, could have simply "forgot" that there was a train sitting stationary on the tracks. Baffling.
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It seems to me that blame lies firstly with the station master. He, once James Holmes had asked to be relieved, merely requested a replacement without explaining to his superiors the reason for the request. Namely that Holmes child had died and he had been awake for 36 hours and was exhausted. Had he bothered to relay this information to his superiors then I...
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Michael Moller made a comment
Holmes had been awake for 36 hours and was extremely distressed, having ministered to his child, walked miles trying to find the local doctor (who was away from home attending to another patient) and comforted his distraught wife. When he asked to be relieved the station master merely requested a replacement without saying anything about the situation that...
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Here is the short story Jane, I thoroughly enjoyed it. https://commapress.co.uk/resources/online-short-stories/the-signalman-charles-dickens
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Michael Moller made a comment
Charles Dickens wrote a short story about a signalman. Quite a nice read but not, I think, informative regarding the signalman's job. Give it a try.
https://commapress.co.uk/resources/online-short-stories/the-signalman-charles-dickens -
Michael Moller made a comment
Did the signalman work alone or were there two of them? If alone then, surely, there would always be a danger of the man becoming unwell and unable to carry out his job safely. Similar in a way to having a pilot and co pilot on today's aeroplanes.
