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Plus or minus 5 degrees

That would have us swinging in and out of an ice age.

What's the "ideal", "average"

The ideal temperature is approximately what it's been since the dawn of civilization. Only for the reason that we built this civilization, (the farms, the coastal properties, the dykes, the infrastructure, etc), with that climate in mind. Transport all that to a different climate and it no longer fits. It's expensive to have to redo it all.

and how you calculate and control it?

Best way to calculate it: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs... (IMHO, YMMV, but all methods produce roughly the same results.

Best way to control it: https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Well, we do need a good OTV (Orbital Transfer Vehicle). You could use it to move stuff from orbit to orbit as needed.

So, how much fuel is this robot going to have on board? How or why would you refuel it?

The reason you put tiny fuel tanks on satellites is that it cost a lot to launch anything on a rocket. If it didn't then the engineers would put huge tanks on things sitting in orbit. Tanks designed to last as long as the next part expected to fail.

At there aren't that many kinds of propellant in use but you'd still be out of luck if you had something using hydrazine while the only thing left on the repair 'bot is nitrogen.

Orbital transfers aren't free or cheap (ask any Kerbel Space fan.) It will be interesting to see what propulsion system is proposed. There's interest in tethers for 'propelentless station keeping or orbital transfers.

Would you send up refuel cans for the robot? Would you de-orbit the robot once it ran out of fuel? Could you recover the robot to save costs, then?

Except for the Hubble Space Telescope most satellites are not designed to be serviced. What can a hypothetical servicing robot do about dead batteries or shorted out control systems or hole solar arrays on the existing fleet in orbit?

Finally, while space is pretty big, sending something on a 'soft' collision course with a dead satellite in the prime geosync orbit sounds like a great way to create more debris just where you don't want it. But it's Loral. They will have the best people Congressional pork spending can buy on staff to ask and answer these questions.

If the speed of light is dependent on the strength of the gravity field

It's not. Speed of light is a constant. Gravity affects its trajectory but not its speed.

should have had such a deep gravity well that the speed of light should have been about 0 for the first few milliseconds of the universe' existence

All that matter would affect its path but (so far) there is no evidence that gravity affects the speed of light at all or that it ever did. The reason light cannot escape a black hole isn't that gravity is pulling on the photon so hard but rather because gravity warps spacetime so much that there is literally no path for light to take which can get beyond the event horizon. It's kind of like being in a maze with no exit.

So, the studies you refer to NASA performing regarding extraction of H2O from Martian soil somehow were able to take into account the large deposits of relatively pure (compared to plain Martian soil) water-ice deposits that were *just discovered*? Was not aware NASA had broken the time-barrier.

Contrary to how the media is spinning this, shallow permafrost deposits on Mars are not a new discovery. Phoenix landed on one. Want to see Martian ice? Here you go

Pop quiz: Are the temperatures and vapor-pressures the same or far different between water and those contaminants?

Hydrogen chloride is highly hygroscopic; it is difficult to separate by simple distillation. It forms an azeotrope at 20.2%. You're not going to get it down (or up) enough just by pressure shifting.

Will a very high relative concentration of water-ice make it easier or more difficult to extract and purify?

There is no "very high relative concentration of water-ice".

How in the world do we manage to extract relatively-pure water locked away in rocky layers from wells in many homeowners' back yards?

If it's saline, or contaminated with toxic compounds? We don't.

Even for non-drinking water, we don't. Here in Iceland we use geothermal water to heat our homes. But if it turns out that the geothermal reservoir that they hit is saline, they just close off the well; the corrosion problems of hot saline water just aren't worth the effort to even set up a short heat exchanger loop.

How are you certain enough of the relative amount and types of contamination of water-ice on Mars to be able to all but dismiss the idea that we have the technology to extract usable, potable water from ice on Mars?

Mars is well enough studied to have a good idea. We still, however, need core samples before we can design a proper system to work with it.

C'mon! This is elementary chemistry and physics!

Now, welcome to elementary astronautical engineering, where you have literally zero tolerance for failure, yet something you didn't think of almost invariably crops up and ruins things for you.

Look at the ISS oxygen generators, for crying out loud. Simple electrolysis. Straightforward, highly controlled feedstocks (the precise opposite of IRSU). And they've still had problem after problem. On ISS, that's fine; you have Earth right next to you to resupply you. If you're on Mars in opposition, yeah, good luck with that.

the only time they explode is when a charger is connected in reverse.

That's completely baseless. A lead-acid battery, operating normally, can explode at any time. Just ask NASA:

On May 17th, 2010 at approximately 10:00 am, the start-up battery on Generator #1 (not due to start-up) exploded for no apparent reason. [...] when one or more cells have a high concentration of hydrogen gas because the vent cap was plugged or defective and did not release the gas effectively an unsafe condition is created. In addition, when electrolyte levels fall below the top of the plates, a low resistive bridge can form at the top of the plates and when current starts to flow, it can cause an arc or spark in one of the cells to intensify that condition. This combination of events ignites the gas, blows the battery case cover off and spatters electrolyte with potentially injuring unaware personnel and to further damage associated equipment.
http://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/28...

There's untold tomes of more info on the problem, if you'll set aside your ignorance and do some actual research for yourself.

So let me get this straight, she licenses the photos for free public use, then a company (rightly) uses those images but (wrongly) "sells" them to people despite not having the right to do so and its OK?

That part is actually OK. It's legal to take something in the public domain and sell it, if you can find someone willing to buy it. I could put NASA's Astronomy Pictures of the Day up at AstronomyPorn.com and charge people $20/month to access it. I probably wouldn't get many takers, but it's legal. Since they're created by the federal government, (most of) those images are public domain, and I can do whatever the heck I want with them, including selling them.

What isn't legal is to demand payment from someone for something in the public domain. I can't send threatening letters to every other website that posts the Astronomy Pictures of the Day, because they aren't doing anything wrong, I don't hold copyright to the images, and they aren't required to license anything from me. That's where Getty was in the wrong; they have no more rights to the images than anyone else, they definitely have no right to make licensing demands, and they misrepresented themselves in both ways.

It's a shame they got away with it without even a slap on the wrist, but I can't say I'm surprised. Corporatocracy is only going to get worse for the next 4 years.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/1968m... [nasa.gov]

Mission I: To Understand and Protect Our Home Planet

Mission II: To Explore the Universe and Search for Life

Mission III: To Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers

No, that is due to decades old design mistakes being corrected after 2 of the 3 worst US space tragedies (both due to shuttle design defects). The lack of a replacement is the consequence of a changed objective and the moderate success in intentional development of commercial orbit jockeys like SpaceX for whom NASA acted as angel investor and primary customer.

Read.

https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/1968m...

Mission I: To Understand and Protect Our Home Planet

Mission II: To Explore the Universe and Search for Life

Mission III: To Inspire the Next Generation of Explorers

That was interesting.

So no history, or involvement in guidance , and no external applications justifying NASA involvement eh?

So no history, or involvement in guidance , and no external applications justifying NASA involvement eh?

Not really, there's nothing special about frail humans and they are bad sensors.

At the start of the Apollo program, the onboard flight software needed to land on the moon didn't exist. Computer science wasn't in any college curriculum. NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort.

You see, this is exactly the kind of fact-free BS that irritates me. Here's a little reality check:

1) The AGC contract was indeed the first to be awarded during the Apollo program as a part of such, in mid-1961.

2) It was awarded to the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory.

3) The major reason why it was awarded to the MIT IL was the accomplishments of Charles Stark Draper with inertial guidance, given the fact that accurate, fully autonomous guidance for a two-week period was considered a necessity for the project (at least at that point in time - the view slightly changed later due to success with radio-based navigation).

4) Some people at MIT IL, such as Eldon Hall, already had the expertise with similar guidance (albeit for shorter time periods) from the Polaris project. They made important hardware decisions very early on, such as the use of digital integrated circuits for the computer core.

5) Others, like Hal Laning, had already had expertise with more complicated software systems, such as compilers (Laning, Zierler, 1954: the first real algebraic compiler known) and real-time executives (which Laning adapted for Apollo with a priority-driven system).

6) Between 1961 and 1963, when many of these fundamental decisions were being made, Hamilton was working on the (military) SAGE project at Lincoln Labs, not at the Intrumentation Laboratory.

7) She only joined IL (and the AGC effort) apparently post-1963, initially in "junior" positions (in her own words), until she'd risen to management sometime in 1965.

In light of these fact, would you care to explain how exactly I'm supposed to see a quote that "At the start of the Apollo program ... NASA turned to mathematician Margaret Hamilton, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to pioneer and direct the effort" as not blatantly misinformed? She was very definitely not the person they "turned to".

But how do you arrive at the "lowest feasible number" ? Why is 30 feasible? What if only 300 is feasible?

Good question. Let's do some math.
From a year by year temperature graph http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... we see random temperation variation is somewhere about 0.3C. Temperature rise is on the order of 0.15 degrees per decade. Averaging reduces the noise by the square root of the number of points (Poisson statistics*). So, the temperature rise (signal) is larger then the noise (year to year variations) when 0.015*N> 0.3/SQRT(N). Thus, N^(3/2) = 0.3/0.015, and we calculate N = 7.3 years.

So, in 7.3 years the signal (temperature rise) is roughly equal to the statistical noise (year to year variation). Science typically likes to not draw conclusions until you get at least 3 standard deviations, so that would be about 20 years.

---
*footnote: correctly, Poisson statistics are dependent on the number of independent points. Year to year temperatures, however, are not completely independent-- they show some amount of correlation ("autocorrelation"). So the number of points should actually be reduced by the aurocorrelation coefficient. That will bump the number of points N up slightly. So, actually, 30 years is probably a pretty good number to guess.

Not sure what happened to preview for anon posts, but hey... if you are interested in Antarctic ice in 2014 as opposed to hummus...

...A sonic boom is the thunder-like noise a person on the ground hears when an aircraft or other type of aerospace vehicle flies overhead faster than the speed of sound or supersonic...

...An aircraft, for example, flying supersonic at 50,000 feet can produce a sonic boom cone about 50 miles wide...

...increasing speeds above Mach 1.3 results in only small changes in shock wave strength...

>> There's no evidence that humans are causing global warming or that the warming is due to anything other than poorly sited instruments. Grow up.

How about you get a clue instead of just brainlessy insulting people as AC because you're too gutless to post as yourself and stand by your own words.

http://climate.nasa.gov/eviden...
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...
https://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/T...
https://www.epa.gov/climate-ch...

I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.

Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...

It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....

Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.

It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.

So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...

Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.

Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.

I think that the radiation problem, that is, how to lift how much shielding is going to be a big one.

Radiation will be a big problem, especially if there is a solar storm during transit. Mass helps, but not as much as most of us think. Water would be helpful, since we obviously need a good bit, but then there is a plastic named RXF1. It shows a lot of promise. This is a link from 2005. https://science.nasa.gov/scien...

It has 3X the tensile strength of Aluminum, yet around a third of the weight. Bring polyethylene based, it is good protection against radiation - I don't know if NASA's product is borated or not, but the nuc industry is already using borated polyethylene. http://www.radiationproducts.c....

Regardless, most people like AC think that you need something like lead as shielding. Problem is, lead makes for a lot of secondary radiation when it is hit, so it isn't as good as people think.

It's amusing, but a bigger concern is making the poly based shielding fireproof. And a bonus is it is a ballistic shield - always a really good thing in space.

So while people like AC are busy calling this stuff a pipe dream or fantasy, We have a lot of stuff happening. Things like Orion and the Ares Rocket are parts that are pretty well known. the BEAM expandable modules are another. Wonder what that's made of, eh? https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def...

Looking at the mass of the thing, it's almost ridiculously doable. Don't even need a big expensive Ares rocket to boost it to orbit.

Shit got real everyone, not a bit of wishful thinking needed. We got the tools, and we have the talent.

Interesting article and one mention, “Market research later in Concorde’s life revealed that customers thought Concorde was more expensive than it actually was. Ticket prices were progressively raised to match these perceptions.” The other aspect "it was killed mostly because it was more profitable to operate a more conventional plane" is something I have to think about (that doesn't make sense but then most of us making money decisions do it for very strange reasons).

Back in those days, SST was the big thing. In 1960s there were people living who remembered reading in newspapers about first airplane flight. With extremely fast development of airplanes, it seemed only natural SST will be primary way of getting around the planet. Cargo will fly on the 747s.

However, I think overall SSTs simply don't scale up especially these days as it may be faster (and reducing 18 hours in coach to 9 hours would be very nice) but overall looking at cost, travel time to airport, time getting through security, etc. Maybe costs can be reduced, sonic boom more quiet (NASA is working on that, http://www.nasa.gov/press-rele... ). However, we also have the Internet so people on long flights are not incognito for hours on end. For executives and the 1%, subsonic private jets are more preferred (there are some proposals for SST "Learjets"*) as simply drive to airport, grab stuff and hop on the plane (don't have to unload carryons, take off shoes and belt, have TSA get all in a hissy fit when they find a partially filled water bottle). So for most people will SSTs save that much time? Regarding speed, even the military doesn't go that fast (if need to, that's what a missile is for).

Back in 1990s when NASA was investigating HSCT I talked with a NASA aero engineer old enough to have worked on SST development work. He said for HSCT (they changed the acronym because SST had bad connotations) to be successful the overall aircraft has to have seats same price as subsonic coach (otherwise companies and vacation travelers are not going to pay even a little more). To achieve this the aircraft has to be much more fuel efficient than Concorde (which flew on afterburners) and has to have about 250 seats (if less, then price per seat will not be like subsonic coach).

* "Learjet" is a generic term like Kleenex, Band-Aid, Xerox people use to call privately owned small jet transports. You all airplane buffs at airports watching a Cessna Citation or a Grumman Gulfstream take off usually hear someone say "oh look, there goes a Learjet!"

> The coldest year on record was also evidence of 'climate change'

What, 1910?

Buuuut, seriously folks...Yes. It is part of the evidence. The other part is the 106 years that followed 1910.

Looking at the temperatures (data, linking page), the annual average global temperature (as defined and measured by NASA) is indeed going up (I plotted the values from 2000 through 2015, and got a slope of around 0.015 C/year for a linear least-squares fit).

Regarding hurricanes, etc., I think -- and I could be wrong, I'm no climatologist -- the relevant thing is the higher moments (e.g., variance), not the mean. That is to say, given that we have such a poor understanding of climate, a prediction such as, "there will absolutely be more hurricanes going forward" is a tricky statement, but something like, "there will be a greater variance in XYZ" is (perhaps...) a safer statement. Whether (weather?) or not this is the case, I'm not sure...

Looking at the temperatures (data, linking page), the annual average global temperature (as defined and measured by NASA) is indeed going up (I plotted the values from 2000 through 2015, and got a slope of around 0.015 C/year for a linear least-squares fit).

Regarding hurricanes, etc., I think -- and I could be wrong, I'm no climatologist -- the relevant thing is the higher moments (e.g., variance), not the mean. That is to say, given that we have such a poor understanding of climate, a prediction such as, "there will absolutely be more hurricanes going forward" is a tricky statement, but something like, "there will be a greater variance in XYZ" is (perhaps...) a safer statement. Whether (weather?) or not this is the case, I'm not sure...

http://plasmasphere.nasa.gov/H...

You doubt nasa.gov?

They are directly related. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.j...

As the NASA document you cite (HTML FTW!) says, it's "an advanced propulsion physics laboratory, informally known as "Eagleworks"" being implemented by NASA Johnson Space Center (NASA/JSC), so it is part of NASA.

They are directly related. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.j...

As the NASA document you cite (HTML FTW!) says, it's "an advanced propulsion physics laboratory, informally known as "Eagleworks"" being implemented by NASA Johnson Space Center (NASA/JSC), so it is part of NASA.

The crackers thing is BS. Delhi has the pollution that it does due to both the number of cars/buses/trucks/... as well as the factories. The crackers are 1, maybe 2 days in a year, which would do squat in terms of pollution. Not to mention that in India, a lot of people have been moving away from fireworks under the pretext of being more eco-friendly.

And, in fact, the actual story says that the problem is not Diwali fireworks:
"images published by NASA suggest that burning of crops in the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana could be the biggest reason why the air quality in the world’s most polluted city refuses to clear."
With a link to a NYT article discussing it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11...
and to interesting satellite images on the NASA website

If there were less people like you, the goal would be realistic.

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

"the exposure—response between CO2 and cognitive function is approximately linear across the concentrations used,” [500 ppm - 1500 ppm]"

This!

We're already past 400 ppm ... and that's measured in open spaces. The concentrations in classrooms tend to be much higher.

Presumably the same is true for boardrooms.

So, as the CO2 issue becomes worse, we're going to become less capable of dealing with it. Climate deniers really shouldn't keep kicking the can down the road.

I'm not sure that one data point is a great way to understand the trend over time. This animation shows sea ice evolution since the 1980s. It's quite dramatic: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4510

JWST will launch on an Arianne V rocket. That is one of ESA's contributions to the program.

And even if it were to be launched on a "domestic" rocket, it is far, far too late in the program to launch on SpaceX. The choice of launcher gets decided very early on in a program, because the size of the rocket (payload capacity, payload fairing size, flight characteristics, etc.) has to be accounted for during the design of the telescope. By the time they are assembling the telescope, it would be very, very difficult and expensive to switch to a different launcher.

and that this will occur before a sufficiently large asteroid hits Earth

So, these countries are wasting their money planning to destroy or deflect it then?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/n...
http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/b...

OOOPS - modem crashed - installed new one - forgot to log in again - - - Sh!t Happens - Murphy's Law in action

Take a look here for more REAL info

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ne...
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feat...

OK, so it isn't the fartherest - but the Voyagers couldn't get a 'peek' at Pluto due to the planetary alignment as they did their 'grand dance' of the outer planets.

Here's a point for you - the middle ages viewed an eclipse as a portent of evil tidings / a demon eating the sun - ALL because the DATA hadn't been evaluated.

Another issue I have with you is that your comparison is like delegating this mission to the equivalent of the rocket exhaust shutoff puff as a 'fart' in the lunar missions. MASSIVE amounts of data have been acquired about Pluto / Charon, and even more will be received as the mission continues through New Year’s Day 2019 as it passes another Kuiper belt object.

OOOPS - modem crashed - installed new one - forgot to log in again - - - Sh!t Happens - Murphy's Law in action

Take a look here for more REAL info

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ne...
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feat...

OK, so it isn't the fartherest - but the Voyagers couldn't get a 'peek' at Pluto due to the planetary alignment as they did their 'grand dance' of the outer planets.

Here's a point for you - the middle ages viewed an eclipse as a portent of evil tidings / a demon eating the sun - ALL because the DATA hadn't been evaluated.

Another issue I have with you is that your comparison is like delegating this mission to the equivalent of the rocket exhaust shutoff puff as a 'fart' in the lunar missions. MASSIVE amounts of data have been acquired about Pluto / Charon, and even more will be received as the mission continues through New Year’s Day 2019 as it passes another Kuiper belt object.

OOOPS - modem crashed - installed new one - forgot to log in again - - - Sh!t Happens - Murphy's Law in action

Take a look here for more REAL info

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pa...
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ne...
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feat...

OK, so it isn't the fartherest - but the Voyagers couldn't get a 'peek' at Pluto due to the planetary alignment as they did their 'grand dance' of the outer planets.

Here's a point for you - the middle ages viewed an eclipse as a portent of evil tidings / a demon eating the sun - ALL because the DATA hadn't been evaluated.

Another issue I have with you is that your comparison is like delegating this mission to the equivalent of the rocket exhaust shutoff puff as a 'fart' in the lunar missions. MASSIVE amounts of data have been acquired about Pluto / Charon, and even more will be received as the mission continues through New Year’s Day 2019 as it passes another Kuiper belt object.

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/go...

“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

The answer to that question is: That's not the official site.

This is the official site: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia...

Overview: http://web.stanford.edu/dept/n...

The conclusion - men are pigs. From the article, the first and foremost reason : Overt sexism, unwanted attention and sexual harassment create hostile working conditions.

The biggest problem in our workplace between men and women was the men were concerned that by saying the wrong thing, they were going to be fired. So communications with women were very guarded. That certainly isn't a friendly situation, but completely understandable. If you don't have a reason to talk to someone who can have you fired, you probably won't.

A lack of role models for women in technical fields is discouraging. "When faculty members are looking for the next person to win a Turing Award, which is computer science's Nobel Prize, they tend to look for people like the last ones who won such awards. This usually involves looking in the mirror,” Roberts said.

Seriously? a lack of women in technical role models? Here's 90 of them http://womenshistory.about.com... Here's 90 of them http://discovermagazine.com/20...

http://www.mnn.com/leaderboard... Some random ted talks, all by female scientists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And if you want yound ladies to have especially physically attractive role models there's always : https://science.jpl.nasa.gov/p... a physicist/Astronomer who manages to not look like the stereotype egghead.

So all I have to say, if Herr Professor hasn't found female role models to present to his students, well - that is his fault not menarepigs

His study is the typical "women are weak" model, where any negativity causes tehm to seek other careers, which presumably have no sexism and all men are perfect gentlemen. He can rail on about his women's school model for a million years, but it won't cure the problem.

Study on one aspect: https://depts.washington.edu/s...

So the problem appears that if a female encounters any stereotype that she disagrees with, it completely destroys her interest.

Movie: http://www.bigdreammovement.co...

I should come up with a list of links to copy/paste, that lot was just a quick Google search.

So - does this mean that there was something wrong with any woman who did not allow herself to be intimidated out of a science career that she was passionate about, but the passion was killed by anyone that didn't give her positivity?

I don't know specifically

As 1998 is only the sixth hottest year, drawing a line to any of the hotter ones (all more recent) will not be horizontal. 2016 isn't over yet, but as every month so far has also been record-breakers, it'll probably be the new hottest.

As the models have predicted, temperatures clearly are still going up, just like they have been for many decades. Cyclic random noise from periodic oscillations like ENSO, PDO, and NAO, are not factored into the models (as they're random), but have no long-term effect on the trend (as they're oscillations).

CO2 going up one year doesn't automatically mean land temperatures also go up that year, not when there's other cyclic factors at play - but at smoothing windows longer than the oscillation periods, the observational record fits within the models' predictions - particularly when you add in the other observed external factors like volcanic & man-made aerosols, and solar & ENSO cycles.

Well, neither one is perfectly round; both are oblate spheroids, though this is trickier to measure in the case of the Sun.

NASA researchers agreed with the hiatus ... no fear though, they found a way to make the model fit the data.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...

"We conclude that use of the latest
information on external influences on the
climate system and adjusting for internal
variability associated with ENSO can almost
completely reconcile the trends in global
mean surface temperature in CMIP5 models
and observations."

There is not "hiatus." Get your head out of your ass. http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-...

...in 2006 by Al Gore? "...unless drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gases are taken within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return", Gore said.

...in 1999, by James Hansen, telling us that the 2000's would rival the 1930's for the highest ever... of course, then we went into a "hiatus" of global warming. Original article.

...in 2006, by this group, saying, Extinction is OUR choice, unless... .... within the next 8 years we have STOPPED using fossil fuels, PLANTED millions of trees, ended logging, and PREPARED our cities and agriculture for the inevitable sea rise. OTHERWISE OUR CHILDREN MAY NOT SURVIVE!

...in 2006, by the Independent?

...in late 2006, by Mother Jones?

..in 2004, by James Hansen? Article

Or maybe just google all this from 10+ years ago, telling us we'd all be dead in 10 years. google.com

Let's stop with the hysteria and stick to facts. I'm not against cutting CO2 emissions, I am against needless panic mongering.

Would it block government science sites? I was following attempts to contact and revive one of the STEREO spacecraft which went into a spin and lost contact during setup as it went behind the sun over a year ago. The images from the still functional twin spacecraft are on the same site.
PINGs show 100% packet loss Unable to get through for about a week... Other NASA sites are working altough some had nasty stalking iPerceptions stalking code which gives a black page when JS is disabled.

https://stereodata.nascom.nasa...

It's not easy to have a successful mission to Mars. Of the 44 missions to Mars 18 have been successful, 23 failures and 3 made Mars orbit but the landers were not successful. Currently India is the only country to have a successful mission to Mars on the first try. This is the second time the ESA successfully got into orbit but lost the lander.

While deniers continue to say that solar simply doesn't work, stores doing this seem to still be making profit.

Stock prices are lower now - have a peek. The company also receives large gov't tax breaks for it. Solar WORKS, there's no questioning that. It's larger-scale thought that comes to play when determining success or failure.

Panels gather heat during the day and emit infrared at night as a result. If you had an area (let's say a city) with 20% of the homes and 80% of the businesses with rooftops completely covered in solar panels, you're going to have a very bad climate situation if the day is sunny and clouds roll in before sunset. Now take that city and expand the area to the entire country of the United States... Then, take that and expand it to the world's countries capable of affording the switch and maintaining it. There is a byproduct of solar - heat. More sub would be absorbed and emitted as heat on sunny days and that energy is emitted back into space at night (with a percentage retained by the ionosphere - how we survive now). On cloudy evenings, most of the already present infrared is trapped and heats the air molecules (especially water). Guess what? You just contributed to global warming. The more solar is used to prevent global warming, the more global warming takes place.

It's clear, given that knowledge and meteorological / physics fact, that the use of solar is for profit, given the fact that it does the opposite of what it's supposed to. For naysayers, use your brain for a second and think - you're covering surfaces that are either black, semi-black, not black (more white and grey), or ground (shades of tan, to orange, to brown, given locale). Light emission is a result of trapping of light and conversion to energy, speedin' up those electrons. The light that isn't transformed is bounced back up, sometimes refracted, mostly reflected. That's why everything HAS A COLOR. When you cover an area, you're preventing plants from growing with full solar exposure, and you're also keeping the ground cooler. The buildings that are NOT completely black on the roof are now driven to indirectly emit more heat because it's not the roof - it's what's covering it that's trapping the converted broadband light, reflecting some and heating up with lower wavelengths. Black rooftops do what solar panels do now - emit IR at night. So now we've made more non-black rooftops the equivalent of black rooftops (in concept - energy absorption and emission mediums). You're getting electricity during the day, but contributing to global warming at night.

Now, given the facts, increased solar panel coverage either changes little (black roofs), or adds to (non-black roofs) contribution to global warming AND less plant absorption of light. I don't understand why people don't think about the big picture when talking about solutions. You're not an idiot if you realize fact, you're just educated. Best I can figure based on psychology and Human behavior in general (selfishness and control desire), is that people don't want to change their opinion, position, or declaration of knowledge based on those factors.

Simple article to state fact, unless you believe NASA "doesn't know their science".

We need to do more than come up with a solution and think it fixes things. Some of it reverses what we fix, not to mention what's emitted into the atmosphere in the manufacturing of these things (solar panels and all associated equipment, in this case; no, there aren't places where they use solar energy to mine, pulverize, separate, etc, ore into metals). I'm not big on the "OMG industry is multiplying global warming" crud, but throw that in if you want to. Don't read this if you think NASA is full of crap, either.

While deniers continue to say that solar simply doesn't work, stores doing this seem to still be making profit.

Stock prices are lower now - have a peek. The company also receives large gov't tax breaks for it. Solar WORKS, there's no questioning that. It's larger-scale thought that comes to play when determining success or failure.

Panels gather heat during the day and emit infrared at night as a result. If you had an area (let's say a city) with 20% of the homes and 80% of the businesses with rooftops completely covered in solar panels, you're going to have a very bad climate situation if the day is sunny and clouds roll in before sunset. Now take that city and expand the area to the entire country of the United States... Then, take that and expand it to the world's countries capable of affording the switch and maintaining it. There is a byproduct of solar - heat. More sub would be absorbed and emitted as heat on sunny days and that energy is emitted back into space at night (with a percentage retained by the ionosphere - how we survive now). On cloudy evenings, most of the already present infrared is trapped and heats the air molecules (especially water). Guess what? You just contributed to global warming. The more solar is used to prevent global warming, the more global warming takes place.

It's clear, given that knowledge and meteorological / physics fact, that the use of solar is for profit, given the fact that it does the opposite of what it's supposed to. For naysayers, use your brain for a second and think - you're covering surfaces that are either black, semi-black, not black (more white and grey), or ground (shades of tan, to orange, to brown, given locale). Light emission is a result of trapping of light and conversion to energy, speedin' up those electrons. The light that isn't transformed is bounced back up, sometimes refracted, mostly reflected. That's why everything HAS A COLOR. When you cover an area, you're preventing plants from growing with full solar exposure, and you're also keeping the ground cooler. The buildings that are NOT completely black on the roof are now driven to indirectly emit more heat because it's not the roof - it's what's covering it that's trapping the converted broadband light, reflecting some and heating up with lower wavelengths. Black rooftops do what solar panels do now - emit IR at night. So now we've made more non-black rooftops the equivalent of black rooftops (in concept - energy absorption and emission mediums). You're getting electricity during the day, but contributing to global warming at night.

Now, given the facts, increased solar panel coverage either changes little (black roofs), or adds to (non-black roofs) contribution to global warming AND less plant absorption of light. I don't understand why people don't think about the big picture when talking about solutions. You're not an idiot if you realize fact, you're just educated. Best I can figure based on psychology and Human behavior in general (selfishness and control desire), is that people don't want to change their opinion, position, or declaration of knowledge based on those factors.

Simple article to state fact, unless you believe NASA "doesn't know their science".

We need to do more than come up with a solution and think it fixes things. Some of it reverses what we fix, not to mention what's emitted into the atmosphere in the manufacturing of these things (solar panels and all associated equipment, in this case; no, there aren't places where they use solar energy to mine, pulverize, separate, etc, ore into metals). I'm not big on the "OMG industry is multiplying global warming" crud, but throw that in if you want to. Don't read this if you think NASA is full of crap, either.

Gosh darn those pesky plants taking in billions of tons of CO2!! They are not toe'ing the "We are Dooooomed" narrative. Stop growing! http://www.nasa.gov/feature/go...

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system today, thanks to its proximity to the sun and its impenetrable carbon dioxide atmosphere, 90 times denser than Earth's.

Hang on though, we're working very hard to catch up and maybe we'll be #1 soon.

A lot of the raw data to monitor climate change is space-based data. We now know where the energy goes into weather and seas, and we can see forest and agricultural usage only from space. This will give us the tools we need to enforce climate change.
Beautiful photos and videos from the cameras on the Space Station, and human damage seen from there will have a massive impact on people's passion to see this earth fixed and cared for.
go and spend a while looking at https://www.nasa.gov/topics/ea...
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/1238...
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/go...
https://weather.com/tv/shows/t...
Space Science is going to help us understand how El Nino and El Nina work - and that is critical for the lives of millions of Americans.
Yes, porkbarreling by Senators for useless space projects needs to stop. That is why NASA is supporting SpaceX, etc and focusing themselves on deep space missions like Pluto and Juno.
Anyone living on the Moon or Mars will be living underground. Humanity will move to the stars - we will solve these problems.
Look at the Space Budget, and the War Budget and see where money is really being wasted. Fix the health bureaucracy in America if you want to see money not being wasted.