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This sort of thing isn't exactly new and isn't a Scandinavian innovation. Cornell University in very liberal Ithaca, NY, has been using water from Lake Cayuga for cooling for about ten years. It's estimated the effect of the project is equivalent to the lake being exposed to 4 to 5 hours of additional sunlight per year.

The way I understand it, we privatized the US supply of helium back in 1996. We targeted selling 850 million scm by 2015, reserving 17 million scm for the federal government's reserve. The price has been set artificially low in order to get that 850 million scm sold off in time.

In other words, we're not approaching peak helium, we're stupidly, deliberately, actively rushing toward it.

http://www.agiweb.org/gap/legis106/helium.html
http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/energy/helium/federal_helium_program.html
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=9860
https://twitter.com/timoreilly/statuses/17831735662

Just how many bad numbers do you need to see?????? Home values take the largest dump in 20 years. Oil hits all time highes [sic] everyother [sic] day. The dollar is weaker than ever in my life time (over 40). Food prices are on a huge increase.

All but one of those are really just symptoms of one number: the money supply. Look at the price of oil in terms of ounces of gold. Note that the bottom line of this graph is virtually dead flat.

Of those numbers, the only one that isn't an effect of money supply increases is the price of housing in the US -- it's the cause rather than the effect.

He and his Tokyo Institute of Technology colleagues say that in a billion years the Earth could be dry as Mars. Basically, we've been losing water since 750mya because the mantle cooled enough to trap water. First read about it in Discover Magazine, but the second link has the best summary I've found.

http://www.discover.com/issues/dec-99/rd/newsofsci encemed1735/
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/dec99/newsnotes.htm l#note6

Good question. According to the American Geological Institute, there isn't enough data to even have a range of errors once you go back more than 1100 years.

But "you can't prove a negative" according to some.

Seriously, though, you are in fact wrong. Plants are limited in their ability to uptake CO2 by soil conditions. Numerous studies have been done on the estimated capacity of plants to sequester both CO2 and methane (actually it's microorganisms in the soil that do that, but they need plant waste to survive.)

"Results of the seven-year study, to be published in the May 24 issue of Nature, show that some forests will not increase the amount of carbon they sequester--at least not enough to compensate for increasing atmospheric CO2. Soil fertility is a key factor in determining the long-term growth response to elevated CO2, according to co-principal investigator David S. Ellsworth, assistant professor of plant physiological ecology in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/01052 4061936.htm

"Climate affects soil carbon sequestration in two ways. First is the production of organic material entering the soil. Warm, moist climates generally have greater plant productivity. Cooler climates limit plant production. Hot climates may limit production because of reduced water availability, making water the limiting factor. Climate also affects the rate of microbial decomposition of plant material and soil organic matter. As temperature increases, microbial activity generally increases."

http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/jan02/feature_carbo n.html

"Although rising atmospheric carbon dioxide boosts photosynthesis and growth in many species, the increases in response to long-term exposure are often much less than predicted from short-term exposure. ARS researchers at Beltsville, Maryland, have noted large differences in the magnitude of yield enhancement in different lines of soybean when the plants are grown in open-top chambers at elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide. The highest yielding varieties at ambient carbon dioxide were not always the ones with the largest response to carbon dioxide. Recent experiments identified the extent of branching at elevated carbon dioxide as a major source of this variation. These results suggest that genetic selection for specific traits may improve crop responses to carbon dioxide in the future."

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/programs/programs .htm?np_code=204&docid=242 ...those are just a few. This is an extremely well studied area, in that it has ramifications for agri-business.

IANAGP and I don't pretend to know squat about Volcanoes, save they can release a hell of a lot of energy; I'm curious to whether having the Yellowstone Volcano blow would produce enough of the green house gases to knock the planet out of snowball state. As I said, I don't know squat about squat just posing hypotheticals because well this is slashdot and if you don't got an opinion here, you don't got an opinion!

The fossil record.

Commercial quantities of helium come out of the ground in Texas. People think the Strategic Helium Reserve was such a big joke. Except for the fact that without helium, we can't make computer chips, can't do inert gas welding, can't do a lot of science and (most important) can't make squeaky voices at kid's parties. So, the government has decided it's in the best interests of all to privatize the collection, storage, and the distribution network for what is a non-renewable, economically critical element.

Even Wired magazine has mentioned the potential helium shortage. We'll run out eventually. The American Chemical Society puts it at around 2015. That's not good. The spring of 2002, there was enough of a shortage that the distributors of air products had to clamp down on helium- there was rationing for a few months. And the government's concept is to *privatize* it. Wonderful.

If you want a supporting argument for Genesis, it is easy enough to asser that the events in the time preceeding Adam were described to him by the almighty, recorded either orally or in writing, and finally made their way into the current text.

So you expect me to take on faith that Adam existed, spoke to god, and wrote it down and that this is the truth, but you won't except evolution because you can't see it happening. Sorry, doesn't fly. Claims are not evidence. Claiming to speak to god is not evidence that he did. And you can't hold my argument to a higher standard than you hold your own.

But the discussion is not one about creationism, rather it is one about what ideas should journalists present.

It was until you claimed creationism had valid scientific evidence to support it and failed to present any. But, you want to present both sides in a scientific discussion? Fine. Have some evidence. Mistating evolutionary theory is not evidence. Claims that it is possible is not evidence. "Ancient documents" whose very origin is dubious is not evidence. You've got no evidence, so that's what we'll present.

If you want a rational discussion, put some facts on the table.

I see little point since you can't even decide what constitutes valid scientific evidence. Anything that's possible is not probable. Just being possible is not evidence of it acutally happening. But, here's some light reading:

"Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin - the father of modern evolutionary theory. Explains in detail the concept of natural selection among others.

Strength and tempo of directional selection in the wild - a scientific study on the effects of natural selction in the wild.

Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry - in fact, quite a bit at this site is useful.

And I highly recommend:
Evolution and the Fossil Record - published by the American Geology Institute. Not only is it informative but highly accessible to non-scientists.

Every model of the world devised to date has eventually been discredited,

This is a flat out lie. The earth is still round and still orbits the sun, for starters. Both ideas are older than Christ. Again, misrepresenting the facts to support your argument.

I never said I was a creationist.

Yet you are so willing to take "ancient documents" on faith but discredit evolution because you can't see it happening.

And my arguments are quite rational if one looks only at the facts.

Calling the most wild-ass ideas with no evidence to support them reasonable is not rational. Requiring faith to support your argument and having none to discredit mine is not rational. Believing that anything that is possible is just as likely to be true is not rational. And even if they were, rational is not evidence. I'd love to look at the facts, but you haven't supplied any.

Perhaps we should have a neutral party review the discussion.

First, good luck finding one. Second, I don't care anymore. The main problem here, which oddly enough goes back to the original discussion, is you have no idea what constitutes valid scientific evidence. Until you can resolve that, there is no point in discussing this any further. Feel free to write the whole episode off as my unwillingness to consider what goes against the status quo. You're going to anyway, regardless of what arguments I make because it's what you want to believe, so I don't see why I should bother.

Not only were both rigid-body airships and blimps everywhere, helium was declared a strategic war material. A National Helium Reserve was established in 1925, and we've been sitting on stockpiles of the stuff ever since. Finally, it will get used for its intended purpose (hopefully...)

Actually this caused a big controversy at my school, as they decided to air condition the campus using the cool water from the bottom of the very deep Cayuga Lake. But people were upset that the lake would rise a degree or so in temperature, thus disrupting many micro-ecologies. Read about it here: http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/july02/tech.html
And the opposition here: http://www.cldf.org/news/nyt_990327.html

the half-life of radio-active Carbon is approximately 5,700 YEARS. After about 10 half-lives the aggragate properties of radioactive decay no long hold

There is a growing realization that the source of petroleum is not 'dead dinosaurs' or even dead plants and/or bacteria as had been believed for so long. It seems that what we consider 'organic' chemistry (in chemistry btw, 'organic' just means carbon containing compounds)) might be quite common in the natural world even without what we would recognize as life to create it. Some Google searches on terms like 'non-organic', 'inorganic' and 'petroleum' will turn up lots of articles about the new theories. This one, for example. Or This one in a respected journal of geology. It's looking more and more like the term 'fossil fuels' is a misnomer. That's not to say that the supply isn't limited, however...

Warning: If you visit Centralia, it's probably best to do so with a buddy. The ground can sink, and the gases leaking from the ground (CO, SO2, and others) are none too healthy. If you visit and you start to feel lightheaded or nauseous, move upwind or downwind until the feeling goes away.

Interesting fact for the day: Centralia is a drop in the proverbial bucket. There's a coal fire in China that releases 360 million tons of CO2 per year, an amount "equivalent to that emitted per year from all automobiles and light trucks in the United States".

(Rant: With that in mind, can someone explain to me why those Canadians think the Kyoto Protocol, which won't apply to China, is worth ratifying, and environmentalists in America think SUVs are the real cause of global warming?)

• Putting a finger in the solar wind with ACE.
  
• Testing suborbital plasma jets with APEX.
  
• Probing a comet nucleus with CONTOUR.
  
• Mapping Mercury with MESSENGER.
  
• Dual spacecraft imaging solar eruptions in 3D with STEREO.
  
• ... and many more, some missions still active 27 years after launch.

As far as other unsubstatiated posts, well, this is slashdot after all. Had your post been more politely written, and not focused on casting my opinion as based on "childish rivalry" instead of the well-researched, informed standpoint that I, of course, hold it to be, I wouldn't have expected you to substantiate your opinion.

It boils down to this: Big Science means Big Money - taxpayers' money, at that. You appear to believe that manned space research gives approximately equal science-bang for tax-buck as an SSC or LHC project. You are welcome to your opinion; many other scientists have other opinions. Don't assume that, because they disagree with you, they're playing some silly Army-Navy rivalry game, especially when they may have already presented evidence to back up their opinion.

And, just FYI, I have had no stake in high energy physics since '94. It's all software these days, y'know... ;)