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Oops! My source: here!

My personal belief is that YES, global warming is a reality. But I also believe that it is more to do with the Sun, than with our burning fossil fuel. I also believe the consequences are/will be less severe than predicted.

Also, I do not believe that science is yet at the stage where a prediction about efforts to stop global warming are anywhere near accurate.

Now, you want us to accept that THIS time the scientists are right,

and that we should expend a significant proportion of the world's income on reducing emmissions

- when we have no idea if it will do what we hope it will?

Far better to invest that money in protecting humanity from global warming, and to continue to develop strategies and techniques to live on a changeable and changeing world - just as we have always done.

If the writeup is correct, however, we could get some awesome Northern Lights. The negative repercussions would most likely be limited to fleeting disruptions in some radio traffic. Some phone calls and television feeds may have momentary issues, but even at its worst I doubt all of the doomsday predictions that claim we will arrive back at the stone age from having everything in orbit nuked.

I fail to understand your argument. You are essentially arguing that there is one big pot of money set aside for "space research" and the DoD gets most of that pot. That isn't how it works. NASA is given a certain budget each year from which they divide it up amongst the various Enterprises (space science, Earth science, etc.). The DoD is given a certain budget and they decide what problems to attack depending on the perceived threat (and Congressional mandates, etc.). If the President thinks nukes launched on missiles is a major threat, they dump a lot of money into missile defense, the airborne laser, etc. If they think space-based weapons are a major threat, or a major advantage to us, they'll dump money into defending or promoting technologies to answer those issues. They are entirely separate.

I also don't understand your numbers. That $10B quoted in the article you mentioned is apparently either taken out of context, or pulled out of the air (or some one's rear). The best number I can find is $1B, and that seems to include everything, including supporting ground-based experiments, modeling, etc.

I still argue that the biggest threat to space science is an increased emphasis on the manned component. That is what is killing it.

If you lament the use of space for military uses, that is fine. If you want to argue that putting offensive or defensive weapons into space violates international treaties, that is fine. But to argue that money is being taken away from NASA, NSF, or NOAA and earmarked to go to militarizing space shows, I think, a misunderstanding of how the government budget process and prioritization operates.

Let me make this easier. Remember we all live in the same world and science is a tool set we can all use openly.

I'll pull out a few of the links you didn't find at the page I refered you to. Go back and click links for many more citations in the complete discussion:

The links from the discussion of water vapor start with the new abstract:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2005GL023 624.shtml

There's a long discussion with links to press reports discussing exactly the sort of error you complain about and demonstrate. With charts and graphics.

There's a summary below that with links to references (in the original each citation is a HTML link to the original)

".... It is impossible to understand the greenhouse effect without thoroughly understanding this point. Even the authors of Phillipona et al. seem to be a little fuzzy on this matter. They seem to think they are looking at the same water vapor feedback discussed in various review articles on the subject (e.g. Held and Soden (Annu. Rev. Energy Environ., 25, 441- 475. (2000)), Pierrehumbert et al. ("On the Relative Humidity of the Earth's Atmosphere" in The General Circulation, T. Schneider and A. Sobel, eds. Princeton U. Press 2005,) Pierrehumbert (Subtropical water vapor as a mediator of rapid global climate change. . in Clark PU, Webb RS and Keigwin LD eds. Mechanisms of global change at millennial time scales. American Geophysical Union:Washington, D.C. Geophysical Monograph Series 112, 394 pp1999), and the RealClimate article on the subject). but they are not. I shall try to explain...."

On your other points, the models are testable, and tested, and the statisticians do this in public. I'm not going to try to explain it on slashdot. You can look it up. Look at the places you read that models are not reliable -- do they give you references? Who tells you these things and can you check what they say?

On your final point, this is a common confusion. Weather and climate are not the same thing; there's a deep literature on the difference in how these are studied.

If you'd prefer a shorter and less academic summary on water vapor, this page is kept up to date:

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/01/water-va por-is-almost-all-of.html

Climatology has been so thoroughly politicised that scientists and activists are not easily distinguished.

The reason is that fear and hysteria generate press, political pressure, and therefore funding urgency. Also green activists readily identify with the subject matter and hysteria, much moreso than with more esoteric fields.

Now there is a runaway feedback cycle!

n. pl. constituencies

1. The body of voters or the residents of a district represented by an elected legislator or official.
2. The district so represented.
3. A group of supporters or patrons.
4. A group served by an organization or institution; a clientele: The magazine changed its format to appeal to a broader constituency.

ie. the voters and/or lobbyists. Add 'scientific' in there, and he's most likely talking about groups like the American Geophysical Union and the American Astronomical Society

ps. There's a thing called a dictionary for when you find words that you don't understand.

Found another article - sorta.

It appears to be more of a presentation at a Meeting

Found another article - sorta.

It appears to be more of a presentation at a Meeting

Hmmm - looks like he is the MIT Alexander Mayer: someone with that alumni email was at Affymetrix,(A biotech firm), per http://personalwebs.oakland.edu/~garfinkl/particip ants.txt
(A physics conference in 2000)
and
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm05/fm05-sessions/fm0 5_G41B.html
(A 12/05 physics conference, with a clearly related presentation: "On the Cause of Geodetic Satellite Accelerations and Other Correlated Unmodeled Phenomena")

And may to be the person posting this:
http://www.sunmanagers.org/pipermail/sunmanagers/2 001-March/002577.html,
unless there were two people at Affymetrix with that name.

Wow, I actually more or less agree with something Michael Crichton has to say (not a frequent occurrence). But I think he's describing only a segment of people who fall in the enviro camp. He's conveniently overlooking the rational environmentalists.

Also, I call you on "It might actually do something about the problem," unless you really understand the meaning of "might". Read this piece by Sally Chisholm, a professor at MIT who kind of knows a thing or two about iron seeding.

You have to give the global warming people some credit for somehow advancing their theory as fact and proclaiming such horrendous future consequences to it to get so much attention and funding. However, just as it was a consensus once that Earth was the center of the universe this may be just as wrong and the establishment has just as much a backlash to those who are skeptical of their assertion.

I think that there is consensus that there has been a slight warming (0.6 +/- 0.2 C in the past century; 0.1 C/decade over the last 30 years) but there is not a consensus of the cause, there is not a consensus that it will continue and there is not a consensus that it is serious enough for humanity ecologically and economically to put the kind of resouces that some are calling for in the order of Trillions of dollars. There certainly are many things that we are more sure of and affect us more that we can and should be focusing on instead of this.

There is a theory that the warming trend is about to reverse itself and is more tied to Pacific Decadal Oscillation than to C02 emissions. (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2002GL01519 1.shtml). There are also a theory that the warming is caused more from water vapor than CO2 and that reducing CO2 emissions will have a negligable effect on it. (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Iris/iris. html).

There is not enough certainty here for humanity to do the things that are being called for and I believe that reducing CO2 emissions to the levels and extent called for will have a disasterous effect on many of the world's economies. For example, this was a report prepared on the costs for Denmark to meet Kyoto standard(http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Defaul t.aspx?ID=101). When you are talking those kind of consequences and costs there better be a more definite understanding and more dire consequences than less than a degree temperature change in 100 years and a theory that points to only one main cause seems a bit simplistic anyway in an ecosystem as complicated as ours. I think our energy and money is better spent on cleaning up other kinds of pollution and fixing helping with some of humanities social problems and human suffering - many things will have a much more real and substantial impact in our lives and well-being.

The IPCC relied on Mann's 'hockey stick' papers and associated work to produce their findings.

Mann's work has been shown to be a lie.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021750 .shtml refers

Anthropogenic Climate Change is 'not proved' and anyone who suggests that it is 'an accepted truth' is supporting intellectual dishonesty. This may be good for the media, the politicians and those intellectuals who have jumped on the bandwagon too soon and now find themselves compelled to fabricate their base data in order to maintain their grants (see University of East Anglia - Climate Research Unit), but it will be the ruin of science.

The world may indeed be warming - indeed, it probably is, as we are still coming out of the last ice age. But to pretend that we know why, what temperature it 'should' be and what we must do to 'correct' it, at this stage is simply to lie to ourselves.

Scientific Journals, like the various AGU publications, typically prefer photographs in .jpg, false-color data in .tiff, and charts, graphs, and other line-art suitable images as .eps. .Png is acceptable for electronic versions. Photoshop .psd's are not acceptable, and .ai files are acceptable for review / draft stages only. In fact, the IEEE won't accept .jpg files at all. This may differ from what Redbook, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone want; I've never been published in one of those. But considering that the images under discussion are scientific images, I'd say that .eps files are most definitely on the preferred format list.

Scientific Journals, like the various AGU publications, typically prefer photographs in .jpg, false-color data in .tiff, and charts, graphs, and other line-art suitable images as .eps. .Png is acceptable for electronic versions. Photoshop .psd's are not acceptable, and .ai files are acceptable for review / draft stages only. In fact, the IEEE won't accept .jpg files at all. This may differ from what Redbook, Car and Driver, and Rolling Stone want; I've never been published in one of those. But considering that the images under discussion are scientific images, I'd say that .eps files are most definitely on the preferred format list.

"The failure of Genesis was tied to a badly designed placement of deceleration sensors, a design flaw which Stardust is apparently free from"

While it's premature to call Genesis a "failure" it certainly did not meet specs. There was a very interesting session at the AGU in SF from the Genesis team

http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/sessions5?meeting=fm05& part=SH32A&maxhits=400/

on what science they are doing and where they are going with their future research. No doubt everyone would have enjoyed a successful capture but even with the Utah desert impact there seems to be significant samples available for scientific study.

Okay, point taken ;-) I was trying to correct a minor inaccuracy in TFA and ended up flubbing it in a couple of ways. :-|

Generally the AGU meets as early as possible in December ... as in right after classes end at most universities. If you're really concerned about meeting dates, you can always check out the AGU website.

Mars.. Is... Leaving... Winter...

That's pretty amazing. Here all this time I thought that only half of a planet could be doing something like leaving winter, while the other half would have to be leaving summer. I bow in awe before your superior wisdom. It was the ellipses that convinced me - someone who isn't right couldn't use so many.

I had mistakenly believed that this trend had been supported by continued observation since first reported in the December 7, 2001 issue of the journal Science. However, Mars is leaving winter, so that doesn't matter. I'm glad that your punctuation set me straight.

And... Solar... Irradiance... Is... In... DECLINE

Or increasing, but nevermind that. Still, Pluto continues warming despite moving away from the sun for over 10 years now, and is anticipated to continue warming for at least the next decade as it moves yet farther away. It's almost as if, even on a planet with such thin atmosphere, the climatic effects of irradiance don't - and aren't expected to - turn on a dime. Crazy. Happily for you, I guess the Earth's can. I feel so foolish now.

The name Greenland was an exercise in marketing. Erik the Red had been banished from Iceland (for murder) and wanted to attract settlers to an otherwise inhospitable land.

Certainly, all the Norse trading vessels that visited Greenland wouldn't bring back any news to contradict such a claim if it were false. It's not as if news travelled by sail in those days, right?

The norse settlements subsisted mainly on sheep in the early years. We know they hunted cold-weather animals by goods they traded (like walrus tusks), and even that they had to hunt different areas by season, so Greenland clearly wasn't another African veldt. It must have been temperate enough then for a settlement to graze a sizable herd though, and yet today archaeologists have to chip their artifacts out of permafrost.

They lived mainly on fish later, before they disappeared - this suggests to me that, for whatever reason, the sheep thing wasn't working out very well by then. If memory serves, they weren't doing so hot with the farming then either. It's speculation, but not exactly wild, that climate shift had made herding and farming unsustainable.

Read just an article or two on archeology in Greenland. Hit up Google, and pick something from a source that looks reputable to you. There's plenty of support for climate change during the span of Norse settlement.

The scientists who study this stuff, who know this stuff, and who are highly educated about this stuff,

Uh-oh... an appeal to "the experts", and such an effort to establish their authority too. That never smacks of an independant conclusion.

have pretty much unanimously concluded that the current spate of climate change is primarily due to human activity.

Wow, such a consensus? Well, unanimous except for these 17,000 quacks and hacks, I suppose you mean. But gee, if all of the experts say that I'm wrong... hey, wait a minute! Didn't the experts also all agree that the earth was flat, the universe orbited the earth, and the sun was a fiery chariot? And that the 1970's marked the dawn of a new ice age, the barbary lion was extinct and giant squid didn't really exist. Medical science 'pretty much unanimously concluded' that there was no such thing as female orgasm until the last half of the 20th century - and a female is a lot easier to collect data on than a planet. How could it all have been wrong? I don't understand - they all agreed! Isn't reality imposed by a democratic body of scientists?

Incidentally, being that you seem fond of mythology, this huckleberry might hol

Freymueller presented his findings at this week's American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco

That's funny ... I thought it was two weeks ago.

There's a long period around the reversal when the earth's magnetic field is dowm. No protection from cosmic rays & other miscellaneous high energy particals. Hundreds of years. One resource on the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal about 780K years ago is: here. Here's another more general one on reversals from NASA.

* San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth research and "nonvolcanic" tremors.
* Earth is potentially out of new farm land.
* New insights into the rate of ozone recovery.
* Southeast Asia faces another danger of a large tsunami in the next few decades
* Cassino spots icy plumes on Saturn

There is NO consensus on whether or not man-made global warming is happening- anyone who claims to have "climatologist" friends who say it most definitely is or isn't real and that all the real scientists agree are just pulling stuff out of their ass (and it's pretty obvious, too, so don't even try to do it).

Well, here I go pulling stuff out of my ass (and by "my ass" I mean "the positions of the most influential bodies in the field") [my bold].

From the Position Statement of the American Geophysical Union:

Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.

From the Position Statement of the American Meteorological Society:

...Because human activities are contributing to climate change, we have a collective responsibility to develop and undertake carefully considered response actions...

...Human activities have become a major source of environmental change. Of great urgency are the climate consequences of the increasing atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and other trace constituents resulting primarily from energy use, agriculture, and land clearing. These radiatively active gases and trace constituents interact strongly with the Earth's energy balance, resulting in the prospect of significant global warming...

...An overwhelming majority of scientists agree on the following facts relating to the global warming issue.

* The theory of how greenhouse gases directly interact with atmospheric radiation is not controversial. If no other factors counter their influence, increases in their concentration will lead to global warming.

* A steady rise in the concentration of greenhouse gases began over 200 years ago and is continuing. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, has increased from pre-industrial concentrations of 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) to over 367 ppmv in 2000, an increase of more than 30%; methane has increased from 0.7 to about 1.8 ppmv, an increase of more than 150%; nitrous oxide has increased from 0.27 to over 0.31 ppmv, an increase of 16%. Tropospheric ozone is estimated to have increased by 35% since the industrial revolution...

The first line of the National Academy of Sciences 2001 report titled "Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions", performed at the request of President Bush:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.

In short... there is no controversy. Yes, there are a handful of very loud people who are attempting to create one, who are assisted by the media's dedication to "balance," which consists of giving equal weight to totally unequal positions. Really, though, in the scientific community, anthropogenic warming is considered to be a fact.

Now, to be clear, this doesn't mean that we should necessarily do anything about it. The existence of a phenomenon is not de facto support for any particular policy position. But let's not screw around-- the "controversy" over whether global warming is at least partially anthropogenic is manufactured and does not reflect the views of the scientific community.

The 1 in 10 was actually from a preparing future faculty talk. Again, this is only one field. I think the best rates for positions to applicants is 1:2. Which is still pretty low. It's worse in the humanities than in the sciences though. The 1/2 pay is somewhat common. It varies from university to university, but graduate stipends/post doc positions are usually capped. The attrition rate, there are a bunch of links out there. Some universities will actually advertise their attrition rates. Here's one article on it, but you can google for it and find many. This one states more of a 50% attrition rate, but it combines science and humanities. Science is around 1 in 3. http://www.gs.howard.edu/announcements/pr_feb14a_2 005.htm Here's an interesting link covering a lot of what I was talking about. Came across it while trying to find your attrition stat. http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/97117e.html It talks a lot about the perceptions of graduate students, future positions, etc. Also be sure to check out the perceived opionions of graduating Ph.D's on the job market. It also talks about how 36% had thought about droping out at some time(these are of the ones that made it through). How the number one reason for droping out was a poor job market. And how many of the students don't consider the job market when going to graduate school.

Statistical trend analyses have been performed for monthly zonal average total ozone data from both TOMS and SBUV satellite sources and ground-based instruments over the period 1978-2002 for detection of a "turnaround" in the previous downward trend behavior and hence evidence for the beginning of an ozone recovery. Since other climatic and geophysical changes can impact ozone behavior and can influence the detection of turnaround and recovery, we also focus on accounting for ozone variations that may be ascribed to various physical and chemical influences. Thus we include in the statistical trend modeling and analysis the effects of various dynamical and circulation variations in the atmosphere, including those associated with the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), Arctic Oscillation (AO) and Antarctic Oscillation (AAO), and Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux influences, as well as influences of solar cycle. A notable result of the analysis is that for latitude zones of 40 and above in both hemispheres, large positive and significant estimates of a change in trend (since 1996) are obtained (on the order of 1.5 to 3 DU per year). The dynamic index series, AO/AAO and EP flux, are found to have a substantial influence on total ozone for these higher latitudes, and significant influences of lesser magnitude are also found for lower latitudes. The feature of positive significant change in trend in total ozone over recent years, however, is obtained both without and with the dynamical index terms included in the statistical models.

Statistical trend analyses have been performed for monthly zonal average total ozone data from both TOMS and SBUV satellite sources and ground-based instruments over the period 1978-2002 for detection of a "turnaround" in the previous downward trend behavior and hence evidence for the beginning of an ozone recovery. Since other climatic and geophysical changes can impact ozone behavior and can influence the detection of turnaround and recovery, we also focus on accounting for ozone variations that may be ascribed to various physical and chemical influences. Thus we include in the statistical trend modeling and analysis the effects of various dynamical and circulation variations in the atmosphere, including those associated with the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), Arctic Oscillation (AO) and Antarctic Oscillation (AAO), and Eliassen-Palm (EP) flux influences, as well as influences of solar cycle. A notable result of the analysis is that for latitude zones of 40 and above in both hemispheres, large positive and significant estimates of a change in trend (since 1996) are obtained (on the order of 1.5 to 3 DU per year). The dynamic index series, AO/AAO and EP flux, are found to have a substantial influence on total ozone for these higher latitudes, and significant influences of lesser magnitude are also found for lower latitudes. The feature of positive significant change in trend in total ozone over recent years, however, is obtained both without and with the dynamical index terms included in the statistical models.

Is the vulcanism an effect of a receding Ice Age, or is it the cause? I find more references to it being the cause than the effect, but it may simply be a convenient assumption that is just carried along without being questioned. Wikipedia claims that the causes of ice ages is still controversial.

Of course there is also the possibility that vulcanism is triggered by both edges. Simply interfering with the existing contact points of tectonic plates and disrupting an equilibrium that had been largely "set in stone" might be enough to create new volcanoes at new locations while turning "off" active volcanoes for a while.

I tried looking for evidence of this, but there are so many glaciation cycles ("little ice ages") within the Pleistocene itself that it would require substantial reams of data to link vulcanism with "ice-weighted continental subduction," (no hits), the best I could find was this, a paper on how the mantle could melt due to decompression (but with no mention of ice caps).

Good to see that the American Geophysical Union and the National Science Teachers Association have criticized Bush's statements on ID. I wish more scientific and professional organisations would do the same.

The American Geophysical Union also weighs in on this recent news.

Quote:

"Scientific theories, like evolution, relativity and plate tectonics, are based on hypotheses that have survived extensive testing and repeated verification," Spilhaus says. "The President has unfortunately confused the difference between science and belief. It is essential that students understand that a scientific theory is not a belief, hunch, or untested hypothesis."

There is currently a controversy as to whether Voyager 1 has already crossed the Termination Shock, the first boundary of the Heliosphere (Krimigis et al. 2003; McDonald et al. 2003, Burlaga et al. 2003). An important aspect of this controversy is our poor understanding of this region.

The first link doesn't go anywhere useful. This link brings up the correct results for the session. You can also view the session details.

The first link doesn't go anywhere useful. This link brings up the correct results for the session. You can also view the session details.

The one I'm thinking of is affiliated with the American Geophysical Union. I highly recommend it. Four pages an issue, and usually only one big article, but always a pleasure to read.

I accidentally linked to where the article should have been found (given its February publication date); its original version published 11/2004 by the AGU is still available.

I guess we're not going to get to any agreement on my contention that this research is irresponsible - I don't expect that kind of change in attitude on anyone's part on Slashdot. I don't even expect the level of respect we've maintained in our disagreement - it hasn't remained very high in other subthreads with other disagreers :). But I want to be clear that I don't even disagree with your assessment of my position - just your devaluing it on that basis. I consider my understanding of science, and its community, and pollution, and its community, and politics, and its community. I find a compelling degree of agreement among scientists that we're accelerating the Greenhouse, and the degree of denial of even its possibility by polluters, and the alliance of politicians with the generous polluters against the not-so-generous scientists. I look at the warming trends so obvious everywhere, the compelling evidence of controlling human influence in even immediate weather patterns, the surprising melting of North Pole ice, the impending melt of the Western Antarctic iceshelf. I'm emotional, because this is a matter of my civilization's survival, and we're getting past the point when it will be too late to stop causing the damage, and maybe too late to survive. Ultimately, our discussion might end inconclusively, though respectful. But the subject will be resolved with stakes much higer than that. As a person, I'd rather be wrong anticipating catastrophe, than wrong ignoring it. I hope I'm wrong, and I can congratulate you on your skepticism.

That is the closest that scientists get to making recommendations, or proposals, until they become politicians or managers, which these authors are not.

You mean, closer to a recommendation than something like a grant proposal for to fund an experiment or study? I disagree. This is exactly the kind of pie-in-the-sky what-if stuff that NASA does all the time. Also, I didn't find the study where you linked it. The only studies I could find were "Atmosphere of Callisto", "Nucleation studies in the Martian atmosphere", and "Three decades of Martian surface changes". Also, I'm not a subscriber, and can't get past the abstracts. You subscribe to lots of scientific journals, or are close enough to a school to have access to them? This one is pretty obscure too...hard to find, or would any university have it on-hand?

Not to address, even by mere mention, the risks of doing it again on Mars is irresponsible. Not just with Mars at stake, but our own planet.

You have yet to address what's at stake (maybe it's the author's job) -- and "doing it again" is an unscientific nod to an assertion that, as much as you want to believe it, it's simply not conclusively proven. I also didn't say untrue, just unproven. For the sake of respect for scientific process (as much as you want to believe it as true), it's important to recgonize this. Again, should science that does not jibe well with popular ideals be banned? Further, I still disagree that this was "proposed" -- but we can leave this one alone for now.

...It relies on the creation of a "runaway Greenhouse effect", which is still "controversial" among polluters and their clients...we'll get the same petrocorps denying the Greenhouse we're creating on Earth...Any climatologist knows their research is interpreted in the current volatile political context of human contributions to the Greenhouse...

You've made your opinion clear on global warming (again), and it's also clear to me that you are using this thread/topic to push your agenda. First you say that it's a bad thing, because a (non Phd) NASA-funded scientist thought it was a good idea (I think you called it "totally irresponsible")...but then it's a good thing, which you would "prioritize it beyond any other national or international program", but just as long as it will support your personal beliefs (just as long it proves your almost dogmatic ideal right). From all of this, I think you're emotional enough about this that it's unlikely we'll able to have a rational discussion. It's like trying to have a rational discussion with a religious zealot -- and the response will likely be the same "you just can't handle the truth, so you're calling me a zealot". Maybe that's right -- maybe I can't handle the truth. OTOH, maybe I'm open to much more than what I want to believe. I have seen evidence on both sides of this issue, and I am not declaring a winner. This issue is so emotional that even by my unwillingness to take a side has labelled me a pawn of the corporations and/or the great conservative (and/or Republican) conspiracy. I have nothing to prove -- but let's not bullshit ourselves; our discussion will ultimately come down to your assertion that global warming is the fault of humans and you're pissed off about it. I'm neither angry nor convinced that you're right...so I think it's best that we agree to disagree on the root basis of your comment and walk away amicably. Cool?

Since our .sigs are so similar, we should be able to agree more closely than we have. Lots of science "goes nowhere" - often my favorite kind of societal endeavor, natural philosophy for its own sake. This particular study will surely be used in the growing American (and global) industries surrounding our nascent colonization of Mars. That it's an undergrad's research is already completely ignored by the many media quoting it - burying the references to the actual original research publication. Even I, an (Earth) Greenhouse opponent for some time, find much practical value in her paper, like her expanding understanding of the "runaway Greenhouse" model in the less-threatening venue of Mars. But I still say that it's irresponsible, because it's only a partial model of the theoretical scenario. Not just necessarily imprecise, at this embryonic stage of development of the science itself. Nor just its necessary inaccuracy, due to its vast complexity and unprecedented scope. But because it ignores the immediate, second order considerations of unintended consequences. Nowhere in the study (which I read in the original) does it mention the low confidence in predictability of the actual consequences of the physics and chemistry postulated. To go on at length to postulating that the work would create "life supporting conditions" on Mars, without discussing the possiblities of creating a different, but also unliveable environment, is bad science, or at least bad communication of science. It's still a very impressive project, and achieved by an undergrad offers much promise that future research will be even more impressive. Especially if she learns along the way that such research has effects in our charged mediasphere, even just by asking the questions. They need to include the right questions, or the results go wrong immediately.

Unlike practically everyone discussing this story on Slashdot, I read the actual, original research paper. It does not, in fact, say "we should do this". It also does not say "we should not". It does, however, make the case that doing this (getting started) is possible for humans in the immediate future, and that the results would not only create a habitat for "life", including possibly dormant Martian life, but also generate valuable insights into our own evolution. It does not say "this will probably get out of hand, producing an results more costly than their benefit" - or address any downsides at all, only upsides. That is the closest that scientists get to making recommendations, or proposals, until they become politicians or managers, which these authors are not.

I am actually encouraged by the research itself, and find it valuable. It demonstrates scientifically how humans can create tremendous changes in an entire planet's atmosphere, its ecology, in a relatively short time to which humans can relate. It relies on the creation of a "runaway Greenhouse effect", which is still "controversial" among polluters and their clients. If I thought we could demonstrate our damage to Earth by destroying Mars this way, quickly enough to shut down our own suicide, I'd prioritize it beyond any other national or international program. But instead I know that we'll get the same petrocorps denying the Greenhouse we're creating on Earth, while clamoring for grants to create one on Mars. Any climatologist knows their research is interpreted in the current volatile political context of human contributions to the Greenhouse. Not to address, even by mere mention, the risks of doing it again on Mars is irresponsible. Not just with Mars at stake, but our own planet.

>Fine but quit whining that stupid hysterical laws like Kyoto keep getting shot down.

Kyoto wasn't shot down. Every country with any leadership whatsoever ratified it. I'm sure it's pure coincidence that a president who is completely in bed with the oil industry would shoot down a treaty that calls for reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

>The idea that man is causing global warming is laughable.

Only by those who refuse to pull their heads out of their asses.

>As is the pathetic insistence that it is real in spite of whatever logic and REAL science is applied to your histrionics.

Pull your head out of there and have a look around sometime.

Okay, suppose you have 0.28 N of average drag. At a speed of 7050 m/sec (about 16,000 MPH) the required reboost power is... less than 2 KW. (In actuality it's much less. The draggy parts are at low altitude and moving at low speed, so the F dot v is considerably smaller than the center-of-mass velocity would suggest.)

The solar array on Deep Space One was capable of about 2300 watts. If you have a significant excess of up-traffic over down-traffic, you'll need tends or hundreds of KW to replace the lost energy and angular momentum. I can't see a couple KW of power demands for drag makeup being an issue. (Of course, if you're trans-shipping stuff to the Moon and back, you could always launch chunks of iron on the down path and play catch-and-drop with the skyhook to replace the losses to the upward traffic, with a little extra mass thrown in for lagniappe.)

The point about a braided tether being bigger than a solid one is well taken, but you probably don't need to spread it out in two dimensions; one will do, and that one can be aligned in the direction of motion. Nor do you need huge coatings; a sputtered layer of gold will do for UV and conductivity, and heating would be insignificant. (How much heat would you generate with 2 KW of drag?) There are a lot of icky technical issues that you'd have to deal with, but do you really thinkk there are any showstoppers in the basic physics? I don't.

No-one ever suggested any of this would happen. The ozone hole has stabilised and perhaps started to shrink because the world took notice of warnings from atmospheric physicists and chemists and agreed to phase out the use of CFCs. It was called the Montreal Protocol and is an excellent examlpe of worldwide action to counter an imminent threat to the whole planet.

I defy you to find any evidence that the Montreal Protocol or any other political action has directly led to the reversal of ozone layer depletion.

Furthermore, you dismiss the comment on volcanic eruptions and provide no basis in fact supporting your insulting statement:

This is just not true, and if you're so stupid as to regurgitate such outright crap it indicates you haven't bothered doing the most cursory attempt to research any, like,... 'facts'. You have humiliated yourself in public, well done.

I think you might have humiliated yourself. Volcanic eruptions DO have an IMMEDIATE, VISIBLE and GLOBAL effect on the environment. This is 100% scientific FACT. A rare but large single volcanic eruption CAN have the same effect on the environment in some ways as years of human activity. These efects were measured with the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo which caused a dramatic depletion in the ozone layer over the arctic. Scientists believe that the effects of non-CFC volcanic aerosols were magnified by CFCs, but no political accord can remove CFCs that are already there, and it'll take decades for them to break down. Horse it out, closing the barn door ain't gonna help much.

Incidentally, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused global COOLING at the same time due to "haze effect". It also emmitted an unusually high level of sulphur and nitrogen compounds which also cause climate disruption and acid rain. The overall effects of natural and man-made activity are really too complex to fully understand.

Here is what has been observed about volcanoes and weather:

* Global temperatures after Pinatubo
* Single eruption overpowered El-nino AND human-related greenhouse effect for TWO YEARS

So to say natural a phenomenon cannot dwarf the impact of human activity is total crap. At least in this case it probably slowed global warming by five years and helped climatoligists improve their models, even at the expense of the ozone layer.

The other thing to note is that the ozone hole has not been shown to affect climate in and of itself--it is more of a threat because of increased radiation exposure. I think a better reason to limit CFC emissions is the effect they have at lower altitudes (they contrubute to the greenhouse effect). To me it seems that LOW-altitude CFCs should be the biggest concern, being they are heavier than air and are probably more likely to sit on the ground for awhile before they'd ever reach the stratosphere. Their HFC replacements also contribute to the greenhouse effect but to a lesser degree.

It's sad, but I think global warming and the ozone layer are politically overhyped at the expense of some other more immediate environmental issues. Pesticide use, acid-rain causing emissions and other industrial pollutants are well known for their impacts on the environment and are largely cleaned up in the western world, but in China, Russia, other developing nations the amount of pollution is still atrocious. Oddly enough, these nations either refuse to participate in cleaning up, or are granted exceptions (Kyoto accord for example).

Disregarding the odds for a particularly severe thunderstorm actually reaching the altitude of the blimp (it happens), I'm curious about what happens when the blimp gets in the line of fire of one of these, or some of the other stuff that occasionally occurs way up yonder.

One example: scientists discovered that forest fires that burn hotter now due to fire prevention efforts over the last 100 years are able to burn permafrost and release HUGE amounts of carbon dioxide and water vapor (greenhouse gasses).

Heat transfer by conduction to the permafrost was not significant during fire. Immediately following fire, ground thermal conductivity may increase 10-fold and the surface albedo can decrease by 50% depending on the extent of burning of the surficial organic soil. The thickness of the remaining organic layer strongly affects permafrost degradation and aggradation. If the organic layer thickness was not reduced during the burn, then the active layer (the layer of soil above permafrost that annually freezes and thaws) did not change after the burn in spite of the surface albedo decrease.

Now, I'd like you to tell me why it fell to me to take a look and correct what appear to be your misconceptions? Are you happy being ignorant and repeating inaccurate and misleading things?

These "spots" of super heated water occur around what are called black smokers. The magma, or more accurately, mantle, is drawn up at mid ocean ridges due to the top-cooled convection of which plate tectonics is a direct result.

Mid Ocean Ridges rarely heat water beyond 400 degress C, but even so there could be potential there, since it's already heated to a great degree, requiring less energy investment. Plus, there's tens of thousands of kms worth of MORs on Earth.

As an electrical Engineer with my primary background being power systems, ie generation, protection, transmission and conversion, I think I should correct you a bit.


For an electric power transmission line, this "loop" is the wires on the left and right sides of the power-line crossbar (OK, not all lines look like that, but the principle is the same). You can trace an imaginary line down one side of the power line and back on the other, enclosing a loop 12 feet wide and many miles long, with enormous area. This is one reason power lines are a bad idea for carrying RF signals; they make a GREAT antenna.

Not really true, most power transmission is done in 3 phases, with all 3 phases summing to a return path on the Neutral wire (which you don't need if everything is balanced, which transmission lines are close to so they omit it, using the ground for a neutral). Which you could really look at it as three return paths in the ground and three primary all at once, I suppose, but not technically correct. Now residential distribution might be single phase, but this is nothing compared to the amount of 3 phase out their right now.

Interesting note: Cross-country power lines ARE in fact twisted pairs, to prevent another interference type. At every Nth tower, you'll see the lines cross over so the left-hand line goes to the right. This results in loops of a half-mile length or so; useless for shielding from RF, but VERY important for protecting the grid from geomagnetic storms, where the Earth's magnetic field is pushed around by solar wind. Making the net loop area zero prevents the transmission line from acting as a giant DC generator and blowing out the switchgear, causing major blackouts (this happened in Canada in the 1970s, IIRC).

What you a describing is called transposition, and it has nothing to do with interference from magnetic storms. A single power line can be seen as a long resistor and inductor in series with a shunt capacitor to ground. Three lines can be seen as the same thing, however with a very small magnetic coupling between lines, often model as a transformer, and a capacitor between lines. Now there are a number of ways to calculate these values, and they are all based on the physical geometry of the line. So if A phase is next to B phase is next to C phase for 300 miles, then your get an unbalance because more A phase is couple into B than into C. When all of these calculations were made by hand, this made for some seriously heinous matrices, which are critical for stability calculations. To solve this problem you twist the wires, sort of. There are a number of different techniques to do this, IE just twisting 2 wires, and leaving one alone, doing all three. These towers are called crossover towers, and their use has been decreasing, due to the fact that at these locations there a higher percentage of transient faults occur (lightning strikes, squirrels getting zapped), which is a pretty big deal to people who make their money 'wheeling' power (transporting power through their systems). As well computers are used pretty extensively for modeling power lines (EMTDC or ATP) and they can deal with 1000x1000 matrix reduction way better than I can.

BTW solar storms did affect the Canadian outage, this is referred to as Geomagnetically Induced Currents (GIC). But it's not DC, it can't be it has to be AC to be seen by the relays that this effects. Basically it causes large ground currents to flow in and out of the system at unpredictable locations and magnitudes. When this happens, a lot of protective devices see a large ground current and assume they have a single line to ground fault and open up the breaker. This is really no big problem, open a breaker at full load is nothing compared to opening with a bolted 3 phase to ground fault right at the terminals of the breaker. If you go here he comments on "When power is restored, all thermostatically controlled electric loads com

The Naval Research Laboratory (and American Geophysical Union) say: "This decrease in density had been predicted by theoretical simulations of the upper atmosphere's response to increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases." The decreased density leads to LOWER temperatures in the upper atmosphere. The full article is here

As everyone knows, spacetime is like a great black ocean criss-crossed with a bright blue grid, save only that this representation is in two dimensions (plus time), while the actual process happens in three(plus time). Significant masses float and bob on this ocean's surface, sending out ripples which distort the blue grid. These masses also happen to vibrate at the frequency of their mass, the accumulated harmonics of thier myriad energetic constituents and inertial qualities.

Just like a ripple on the surface of a liquid, by the effect we call gravity there is a trough-and-ridge structure surrounding the object in space time. These structural feature effects on spacetime are governed by such factors as the surface tension (E=mc^2), viscosity (planck constant) and temperature (CMB limit of ~3 Kelvin) of the continuum, the bouyancy(mass), size(volume) and speed (velocity) of the object thus placed.

The trough represents gravitational attraction, but the ridge describes a net negative effect (in other words, "anti-gravity").

Both the trough and the ridge have an average 'height' equal to the actual surface level of the surrounding medium, but the trough seems much deeper than the ripple seems tall- that is to say, the apparent gravitational attraction is far greater than the anti-gravital effect of the ridge. This is a very simple function to describe, it is commonly understood as the inverse square law of proportions (Newton). The main trough has much less area to find expression, being confined to the immediate area surrounding the object, while the ridge has the greater area to affect distortion, thus the appearing much weaker.

This effect seems almost invisible at our local scale (though numerous experiments have confirmed it), namely because of significant local interference (turbulence), which appears mainly as slight variations of gravitic potential, though which also lay in the trough of our host star, thus loosing again a significant proportion of inherent amplitude. It is curious to note that these ripples have heretofor been attributed to such things as 'groundwater storage' and 'ice coverage' on the surface of the planet Earth, a reasonable supposition about the variance in planetary mass, but a ridiculous consideration regarding system-wide gravity effects).

As these probes wend their way starward, they must cross over the features created and accumulated by the disturbance of our solar system. Just like watching a piece of driftwood tossed around by the tide, the probes must express curious responses to these forces.

By way of a final note, let me just say that there is much yet to be said on the secondary effects of this phenomenon, namely the interference patterns created by a large system in motion, the cumulative effects at scale, the 'apparent' expansion of our universe and the ramifications of the structure known as a 'black hole'

Signed,
Professor MOMOCROME

According to this website, seismic detection of nuclear explosions isn't always possible, and detection father than 1500 kilometers from the test site....
is strongly dependent on ray path; and at distances several thousand kilometers from the NTS test site, the ability of stations and networks to detect small tests varies significantly.

In other words it's just not as simple as looking at a couple USGS websites and noticing no earthquakes.

The actual paper is:
Toole, D. A., and D. A. Siegel (2004), Light-driven cycling of dimethylsulfide (DMS) in the Sargasso Sea: Closing the loop, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31, L09308, doi:10.1029/2004GL019581.
Unfortunately, you must subscribe to get more than just the abstract.

DMSP and DMS cycles are more complex than this brief article reports. DMSP is produced by algae, and some DMSP is broken down to DMS by algae as well. However, bacteria seem to have a major role in breaking down DMSP to DMS, as well as to another compound, methanethiol, that is not released into the atmosphere in large amounts.

Interestingly, the genome of a bacterium that carries out both pathways of DMSP degradation is being sequenced. Hopefully this will soon allow us to find more about these two competing fates of DMSP. If you really want more information on this bacteria, you could read a discription paper.

'Tritium-rich' is relative. The estimated total amount of tritium in the North Pacific is on the order of 25 kilograms--less than sixty pounds. As far as extracting and purifying it for use is concerned, it might as well not be there. By comparison, gold is dissolved in seawater at a concentration of about fifty parts per trillion--there's a full fifty kilograms of gold in every cubic kilometer of seawater.

Tritium has a relatively short half-life (about twelve years) on a geological time scale, and it is replenished very slowly by natural processes. Consequently, its concentration in nature is very low.

Practically speaking, the only useful supplies of tritium are manmade. It's a pain to produce, requiring a linear accelerator or a nuclear reactor; global production is on the order of ten kilograms per year. Civilian use accounts for about half a kilogram of that; the rest goes mostly into maintaining nuclear weapons stocks (about a gram per hydrogen bomb per year to replace decayed tritium, plus five or ten grams for each new warhead).

Saying that there is only twenty-five pounds of the stuff in the world is a slightly low estimate, but the real number probably isn't above two hundred or so pounds. It sells for something like twenty or thirty thousand dollars per gram--in the neighbourhood of two thousand times the price of gold. (And it's a lousy investment, because unlike gold, it decays.)

Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

Since there is no explanation for the past trend nor the fact that looking even further back the entire planet had a higher median temperature. as is evident by the many hypothosis that the thunder lizards may have died due to an ice age... I don't really have to point out there weren't humans then to contribute to that natural disaster that caused a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.

I'd be in favor of a pay-to-play system which might have a seperate system for free research posting. It could be set up such that people could "sponsor" a work to be placed in the main system. I think you'll find that such a system would promote high-quality research while not leaving poorly funded research completely by the wayside.