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There's a lot more research than that. Those are just two off the top of my head.

That is a list of all of NASA publications, not just ones that necessitated putting humans in microgravity for long durations, which is the only mission that can only be performed on something like the ISS.

And you'll never be aware of any such thing, because that's not how medical research works.

Having a degree that qualifies me to perform medical research and being employed by a company that performs medical research, I do understand the nature of basic research.

That's why I'm skeptical of such claims. Rarely are advances like this made by ad-hoc experiments on a few subjects in a space station.

I don't think this was really the reason for building the ISS. It was more about giving scientists in the former USSR something to do besides building ICBMs for countries like North Korea. The science was more of an after-the-fact whitewash.

False dichotomy. There's no reason they couldn't be building missiles now, too, and no real evidence they would be without the ISS. Nice conspiracy theory, though.

I'm not saying that it worked. I'm saying that this was the main reason for it. That and just promoting US-Russian cooperation at a time when this was politically important. The US has never launched a manned mission primarily to accomplish science. It was about international acclaim and such back in the 60s, and other political concerns more recently. That's why the manned space program is slowly falling apart today - no political will to keep it going. The science needs haven't changed a bit, but they were never the driver.

...but none of that matters once you get into hard vacuum and high radiation. Sure, your rockets and life-support might work fine here, but once you're in microgravity for, say, the several-month-long trip to Mars, you're going to have to deal with debris, dust, and all those long-term biological effects currently being studied on the ISS. Your plan still requires a $150B expense, but you just push it off a few decades, delaying our ultimate interplanetary voyage.

An expense pushed off a few decades is a MUCH LOWER expense. Put $10B in the bank today and you have $150B in a few decades. It doesn't delay the ultimate voyage unless it is on the critical path. I've yet to see any evidence that human living in microgravity is the main factor delaying an interplanetary voyage. High radiation and space debris certainly is a factor, but I don't see how we're learning anything about dealing with those by sticking people in a can in LEO which is completely unlike interplanetary space in both regards. Besides, if you want to experiment on radiation and micrometeoroids, surely there are better ways to do the initial experiments than sticking humans in those conditions.

Yeah, we did that. Turns out it's also expensive, error-prone, and doesn't yield nearly as much scientific results. Then there's still the whole gravity thing to deal with, and a self-contained habitat with our current technology is really big.

So, why not figure out how to actually make it work on the ground before trying to put it in space? If you think it is hard to do here, it is going to be REALLY hard to do up there.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't research technologies that will get us to other planets. I'm saying that we should put the money into solving the inexpensive problems before we try to put money into the expensive ones. The expensive ones will then become less expensive to study by the time we get to them. Most interplanetary travel research should be done on the ground, not in space. We don't put engineers on planes to design aircraft, and we don't need to put engineers in space to make a lot of progress on building spacecraft.

Citations? This is a LOT of spending to justify it primarily based on its impact to some gains in osteoporosis and atrophy.

There's a lot more research than that. Those are just two off the top of my head.

...a $150B investment, plus the ongoing costs to maintain it.

Check your numbers. The $150B figure is the high estimate for the total cost so far, including the initial investment, maintenance, and operations, a significant portion of which was paid by private companies and other countries. NASA's actual budget is under $3 billion annually.

I'm not an expert on those conditions, but I'm not aware of any big breakthroughs that have really had an impact on the treatment of these conditions.

And you'll never be aware of any such thing, because that's not how medical research works. We don't just venture forth on a grand adventure and return from parts unknown with a cure for disease. Instead, we'll find, for example, that increasing a particular enzyme will slow the otherwise-quickened progression of osteoporosis in microgravity. That narrows further research in mechanisms that remove calcium, hastening the development of treatments. No, you're not going to see the headline "ISS cures osteoporosis", but somewhere in a research paper, you might see a reference to an experiment mentioning an osteoporosis-promoting environment.

I don't think this was really the reason for building the ISS. It was more about giving scientists in the former USSR something to do besides building ICBMs for countries like North Korea. The science was more of an after-the-fact whitewash.

False dichotomy. There's no reason they couldn't be building missiles now, too, and no real evidence they would be without the ISS. Nice conspiracy theory, though.

Everything short of microgravity can be studied more effectively on Earth. Let's get better rockets, self-contained life-support systems, terraforming, etc all worked out in lab environments.

...but none of that matters once you get into hard vacuum and high radiation. Sure, your rockets and life-support might work fine here, but once you're in microgravity for, say, the several-month-long trip to Mars, you're going to have to deal with debris, dust, and all those long-term biological effects currently being studied on the ISS. Your plan still requires a $150B expense, but you just push it off a few decades, delaying our ultimate interplanetary voyage.

If you can build self-contained settlements that require nothing but solar power to operate and maybe the very rare resupply (ie it grows its own food and creates its own O2), that would go a long way towards making life better on Earth, and it will make maintaining a space station much cheaper.

Yeah, we did that. Turns out it's also expensive, error-prone, and doesn't yield nearly as much scientific results. Then there's still the whole gravity thing to deal with, and a self-contained habitat with our current technology is really big.

"So how are you supposed to see [black holes]?" - Holly

You don't "see" a black hole with your eyes. Use your detectamotron to look for energy with a wavelength of 10^12 mHz and they'll show up quite clearly.

Or you can look for starlight that is being bent around the hole, because gravity bends starlight.

Actually, what he said was more along these lines:

"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, "Because it is there."

"Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."

Just for fun, count how many times Kennedy used the word "we" in that speech.

If he had made that speech today, half of the Internet would be claiming that JFK was a nut who was taking credit for the entire space program:

"But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

"I'm the one who is doing all the work, so we just want you to stay cool for a minute."

"Citizens in Space"? What a shitty blog. The bottom half of the article is all self-important bullshit. The centennial challenge pot isn't empty. In fact, it was specifically appropriated in a way that doesn't follow the standard "fiscal year" money so that it doesn't expire. None of the centennial challenges have been awarded to a pre-determined winner, much less a politically chosen one, and NASA doesn't want to do it because they don't get to "tax" the pot, so it's merely a cost to NASA; the personnel have to be paid for out of hide, instead of taking a portion off the project like most allocated funds. What a crock of bullshit.

NASA has several Centennial Challenges, including their UAS Challenge, so see if you really are smarter than Northrop; you probably are.

"Citizens in Space"? What a shitty blog. The bottom half of the article is all self-important bullshit. The centennial challenge pot isn't empty. In fact, it was specifically appropriated in a way that doesn't follow the standard "fiscal year" money so that it doesn't expire. None of the centennial challenges have been awarded to a pre-determined winner, much less a politically chosen one, and NASA doesn't want to do it because they don't get to "tax" the pot, so it's merely a cost to NASA; the personnel have to be paid for out of hide, instead of taking a portion off the project like most allocated funds. What a crock of bullshit.

NASA has several Centennial Challenges, including their UAS Challenge, so see if you really are smarter than Northrop; you probably are.

falsified ? it looks like the average temperature has raised : http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-temps.html
and the global sealevel has raised : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trends_in_global_average_absolute_sea_level,_1870-2008_(US_EPA).png
(i am posting links to REAL Data here btw)

The IPCC creates reports based on the scientific studies of Climatologists.
These reports include both natural and human contributions to climate change.
The IPCC could not have come to the conclusion that human activity is partly responsible for the current period of warming if they hadn't looked at natural contributions.

NASA's Earth Observatory has a great article on the topic:
"Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750—omitting observed increases in greenhouse gases—are able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend in global surface warming cannot be explained without including the contribution of the greenhouse gases added by humans."
Source (emphasis mine).

The code for one of the major models, the GISS Model E is here.

Links to other models and both raw and cooked data can be found on this page.

All of what you ask for is out there, you just have to be willing to put in the time to look for it.

The climate models don't get fed much raw data, just starting conditions and whatever scenario they're evaluating for a particular run.

"It's not, and it would be nice if people tried to understand the processes involved instead of spouting nonsense."

Yes, it is (pdf), and it would be nice if you stopped saying that provable, well-recorded history is bullshit. Quote:

"In the past, the United States had an adequate supply of 238Pu, which was produced in facilities that existed to support the U.S. nuclear weapons program." [emphasis mine]

The reason is that the Pu-238 is a byproduct of the production of Pu-239 for weapons, but which has no practical use for those weapons. So it was extracted from the spent fuel used in weapons-grade plutonium production and used elsewhere. Primarily by NASA.

Since weapons-grade plutonium has not been manufactured in the United States in recent years, our supply has been dwindling.

So you can spout all you want about the process of its creation, but the FACT is that it in the United States, it was created and stockpiled entirely as a byproduct of weapons-grade plutonium manufacture. Regardless of whether your science is accurate, that's accurate history.

That was posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day long ago.

You mean this completely different video of the same event?

That was posted on Astronomy Picture of the Day long ago.
This is another side-effect of the shutdown: online media theft.

The entire concept of storing data for a billion years is nothing but ego. It would be akin to our finding a cave with forty-five thousand little paintings of dots, squares and circles - all perfectly preserved. What the ___ does it mean? Curious and interesting to speculate on perhaps, but data? Not so much.

Haven't you heard? When aliens finally stumble upon the Voyager Golden Record, it will point them here and act as a Rosetta Stone which they can use to decode the stored data of the Humanity, long after it extinguished itself via thermonuclear war, greenhouse gasses, budget stalemates, or some yet-to-be-invented Man-made calamity.

The aliens will, of course, find the Voyager LP to be quaintly archaic, having long since moved on to CDs themselves. But they will be delighted to be able to decode from silicon nitride those fascinating Facebook status updates about what each Human had for breakfast on Monday, October 14, 2013. (BTW, what exactly do those Humans mean by "Grape Nuts"?)

Scott Carpenter, a dynamic pioneer of modern exploration, has the unique distinction of being the first human ever to penetrate both inner and outer space, thereby acquiring the dual title, Astronaut/Aquanaut.

Before I did a quick Wiki lookup on the word aquanaut, I thought he was the first astronaut who knew how to swim. Apparently you need to dive deeper and longer to qualify for the distinction of being an aquanaut, just as you need to fly up a certain number of km's to be considered an astronaut.

On a side note, it appears that certain NASA web sites are still operational despite the US government shutdown of non-essential facilities.

This image, from the JPL Juno site, gives 30min big ticks and 5min small ticks. Otherwise, the list of major cities, with times, azimuth and headings, may help you interpolate.

This image, from the JPL Juno site, gives 30min big ticks and 5min small ticks. Otherwise, the list of major cities, with times, azimuth and headings, may help you interpolate.

http://www.nasa.gov/

Then why didn't they do the same thing to NASA.gov as robotics.NASA.gov? (I'll give you a second. The guys at robotics.nasa.gov literally just shutdown the server.) The only reason to pay to keep a "this site is down" page up is for political gain.

Since it's made out of carbon nanotubes, there's also none blacker.

You seem to have had trouble separating the "comedy" part of my post from the "real evidence" part of my post. The "comedy" part is a link to a funny sketch from a funny British sketch comedy that pokes fun at moon conspiracies by pointing out a circumstantial fallacy in their argument. While it is kind of a good point, you are correct that it is not definitive proof.

The "real evidence" part of my post, which you conveniently ignored, was the reference to the mirrors that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong left on the moon right before hopping back in their mocked-up lunar module for their historic special-effects flight from the Lunar surface. (Also, have you seen special effects from 1969? If these are are special effects, it's a bigger accomplishment than a moon landing would have been.)

Those mirrors are used by astronomers (not just NASA ones) to gauge the distance to the moon with extreme accuracy. If the moon landing was a hoax, I'm curious how you think they got there.

That's easy - the vehicle launched from the lunar surface was of significantly lower mass (4819kg for the lunar module plus fuel versus 15065kg for the Saturn V rocket), and it had to work against significantly less gravity (1/6) and zero air resistance.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2003/jun/HQ_03182_green_garden.html

Warmer and more CO2 is great ground for plants to take over. More than likely, scientists are missing the key piece of the puzzle that basic biologists have known for years, in that the life on this planet waxes and wanes based on what the planet gives life (possibly vice versa). Plants are known to use less water, and grow faster with more CO2, which is why NASA found what they did in that study.

We shouldn't be afraid of climate change, we should be afraid that plants will take it all over and control us someday in the future. I don't know about you, but I for one bow to our new green overlords.

"Well no, they likely won't say something absurd and false."

OHRLY?

Check out their list of predictions. Not one came true. Ever. Show me the one that did.

Did you miss this?

"James Lovelock, the scientist that came up with the 'Gaia Theory' and a prominent herald of climate change, once predicted utter disaster for the planet from climate change, writing 'before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.' Now Lovelock is walking back his rhetoric, admitting that he and other prominent global warming advocates were being alarmists. In a new interview with MSNBC he says: '"The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books — mine included — because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened," Lovelock said. "The climate is doing its usual tricks. There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now," he said. "The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that," he added.' Lovelock still believes the climate is changing, but at a much, much slower pace."

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/james-lovelock-the-earth-is-about-to-catch-a-morbid-fever-that-may-last-as-long-as-100000-years-523161.html
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

And wtf do you suppose this means?

http://news.yahoo.com/best-ipcc-climate-report-leaks-122437372.html

"The draft report said, "There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the small observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent."

"The IPCC projects warming will likely be above 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) and very likely below 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius.) This is a rollback from 2007, when the likely low end of the warming range was pinned at 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius)"

"The IPCC also acknowledges a slowdown in warming in the past 15 years, which climate change skeptics say is evidence of a global cooling trend. There's no global cooling, according to the report."

"But even with this variability, the past 30 years were the warmest in several centuries, the report said. (A study published April 21, 2013, in the journal Nature Geoscience confirms this trend — the last three decades were the warmest in 1,400 years.)" - ok work with me here. So, it was warmer 1401 years ago? The Danish tree ring data (http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1589.html) shows it was much hotter in Roman times than even way off the end of the hockey stick graph, so the "unprecedented" claim has been falsified.

"The pace of melting glaciers is rising, the report concludes. The Arctic ice pack is shrinking. As mentioned above, the massive Antarctic ice cap is also starting to show signs of responding to global warming by increasing its melting. The Greenland Ice Sheet lost about six times more ice from 2002 to 2011 than from 1992 to 2001 — an average of 177 billion tons a year versus 7 billion tons a year, respectively. "

Oh crap, that sounds serious. What does NASA say?
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/greenland-melt.html

"Ice cores from

I've never seen a representation of a satellite with anything but unconcentrated cells.

What about Deep Space 1?

Why is slashdot linking a paywalled Greedster site for news you could get at NASA? What nerd subscribes to the 1%er Journal?? If I'd seen it in the firehose it would have gotten a -1 from me just for linking the WSJ. I'm a nerd, not a stockbroker.

Martian methane plumes have been observed remotely, they appear to be a localised seasonal phenomena. It's not known if biology or geology is the source, I believe the rover was supposed to do isotopic analysis of the methane to determine if it was biological in origin. The fact they can't find any methane at all is odd, and we all know that the phrase "that's odd" has lead to some amazing discoveries.

I've followed climate science for a long time and it's interesting to note that the methane cycle on Earth is also poorly understood and notoriously difficult to model with confidence. It's a genuine problem in climate modelling that is fiercely debated in the community, but for some reason climate "skeptics" rarely (if ever) mention it.

Heh, read this.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-20080213.html

Well, "stolen" is a bit harsh, considering SOLEIL themselves simply appropriated it and have no ownership to the public domain work produced by NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/first_light_prt.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/165490main_fl_blue.jpg

To be fair, you could Google a lot of other "Blue Glowing Sphere" images and get closer matches.

Well, "stolen" is a bit harsh, considering SOLEIL themselves simply appropriated it and have no ownership to the public domain work produced by NASA.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/first_light_prt.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/165490main_fl_blue.jpg

To be fair, you could Google a lot of other "Blue Glowing Sphere" images and get closer matches.

Dealing with your 'blockquote' style is way too hard. I suspect this is a rathole, and nobody else is reading it, and that you know what you said, so I'll omit the quotes.

So, your assertion is that changes in CO2 levels is NOT caused by human activity, or that the contribution by humans is negligible. Sadly, most authorities disagree with you. I have no way of measuring the effect, so I can't weigh in, other than to mention that I trust folks who do this for a living far more than I trust you. Here are a few links:

EPA
IPCC
NOAA
More IPCC
RealClimate

According to folks that study this, the sea level is rising. Here are some links:

Union of Concerned Scientists
National Geographic
EPA
NASA, scroll down.

The ice core mystery has been explained in such a way that the time differences are in the noise. Here is a link that attempts to explain it: arstechnica. However, one obvious reason why CO2 might follow temperature rises is that lots of CO2 is released in the arctic tundra when the permafrost melts. As solar cycles cause warming CO2 is released. However, it could easily be a situation where small changes in temperature cause CO2 spikes, which then contribute to a feedback loop. Since nobody was there, nobody really knows for sure. However, this article describes a paper in Nature 2012 that describes the feedback loop. Note the paper assumes that excess CO2 causes temperature rises. That is pretty much not contested at this point, I believe, due to a strong theoretical understanding of the interactions. Since there were no excess sources of CO2 in the Pleistocene, the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise. Since we are artificially increasing CO2, we trigger the warming effect without a requirement for excess solar radiation.

I have read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Taubes. The book is very convincing. The view of nutrition as a power game, with no real science behind it is quite interesting. Sadly for your case, there is LOTS of science to back up the assertions of Global Warming caused by human activity. Too many to simply dismiss.

If there is no problem with CO2 causing global warming, and we are going to be ok despite these emissions, well, that would be wonderful. Due to lobbying by Koch and friends, that is probably what we are going to end up with anyway. However, if there is only a 1% possibility that the worst will happen, and hundreds of millions of people will die because of it, I will still support doing whatever we can to prevent it. Can you really be so sure of your facts, many of which are supported by papers paid for by Koch subsidiaries who have a real financial interest in stopping any action on climate change?

Can you name *any* set of observations of average global CO2 and average global temperature that would cause you to give up your belief?

Sure. If carbon levels go up precipitously for, say, 50 years, and the climate does NOT warm, after having corrected for things like solar radiation output, distance from the sun, etc, I would be convinced that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with warming. Since human activity is, in fact, increasing CO2 levels, and has been for the last 100 years, and global warming has, in fact been occurring, and temperature spikes in the historical record have in fact been correlated with CO2 rises, then I would say that the null hypothesis that there is no correlation between CO2 rises and global warming has been pretty much disproved. Since observations have supported the claim that human activity increases CO2 in the atmosphere (these are facts, as much as anything can be a fact), the further claim that human activity is causing global warming can be judged to be fairly certain.

In addition to our current long running and dangerous experiment, there is other experimental evidence that human activity is causing global warming. Computer models have been built that, in effect, create a 'new world', that can be used to test these sorts of hypotheses. These sorts of studies are confirming and predicting global warming due to CO2 rises. They predict the sorts of temperature rises, on average, that will occur. They have been going on for 30 years, and predicting the sorts of temperature rises we are seeing. So, they are pretty good evidence that CO2 is causative of global warming. Again, that CO2 rise is caused by human activity is not disputed.

Now, you can call me a believer in the 'religion of science' again, but you need to start someplace. You can't be like Descarte, and deny everything, or you get nowhere, or worse, think you've proved the existence of God. My religion, if it is a religion, is that science gets it right much more often than it gets it wrong. It often will get stuck on issues, mainly due to incorrect theoretical explanations, but those incorrect explanations are mostly due to missing facts. As new facts come in, they figure things out, and create a better theory, and the scientific community comes to accept it (perhaps a funeral at a time, as Max Planck quipped). As more observations come in, the theories get better and better. So, yes, I believe what scientists tell me. I have no way to disprove them, and less inclination to try. Their work has made me very comfortable.

The only real puzzle here is how the Koch brothers have managed to convince so much of the population to disbelieve the science, which is in fact as certain as these sorts of things get. They have connected denial of human caused global warming to political belief in a way that makes people who vote republican disbelieve it on an unprecedented scale. This is similar to the belief, after even Bush had disavowed it, that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. It becomes part of the lore of the tribe, and must be protected as a sort of badge of membership. Very clever, but ultimately the millions of deaths projected in this century (estimates are 150,000 people a year being killed by climate change right NOW) will expose them as the villains that they really are.

I would like to thank you. I was dismissive of your views earlier in the thread, and your responses have caused me to read up on the science a bit, something t

Babies is the correct unit of measure, actually. Babies provides a unique unit of measure in that it is minimally variable but, when averaged and used as a constant, can provide a standard unit of measure for determining length, width, speed, time, weight, etc...the possibilities are endless! Almost anything that can be measured can be measured in babies. Imagine - no more confusion between metric or standard...Babies is the answer!

All units below are based off an average newborn baby:
B = Baby (Avg. Length) = 20in. = 50.8cm
Bt = Baby Time = 273.75 days (9 months x 30.4166 days) = 23,652,000 seconds
Bw = Baby Weight = 7.75lbs = 3.515kg
(While there are individual units of measure listed above, all should be referred to simply as 'babies' for scientific documentation purposes as the applicable unit of babies is implied by the circumstance.)

Taking the .04 furlongs across example and converting to babies (assuming this is a square apartment building with a standard 10ft ceiling, .04 furlongs by .04 furlongs by 10ft.), we get a volume of about 1,505.43 babies cubed. Imagining then that this is an asteroid traveling at the fastest speed currently listed on JPL's Current Impact Risks page, 19.14km/s, we can also extrapolate that it would be traveling at a rate of 37,677.15 babies/second. Therefore, this would be an object with a volume of roughly 1,505.43 B traveling at a rate of 891,139,951,800 B/Bt.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT measure in DEAD BABIES. Dead babies is a wildly variable measurement and heavily dependent upon the circumstance of baby death, lifespan, birth defects, and missing parts.

Fixed link: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/cargo/orbitalsciences-index.html

URL for "successfully launched their demo cargo mission to the ISS" is missing the last character, gives 404.

Equilibrium? Extra energy often becoming heat? Ancient swamps thawing? Additional atmospheric water vapor helps cooling?, Apocalyptic heat death in a few decades?

I'm really not trying to be mean to you, because we need to stop poisoning ourselves. But posts like yours do not help. Your post is a "deniers" wet dream. It's makes people who want to be better stewards of the planet look like crazy people.

The temperature trends look like they are going up at an insane rate if you look at the last 500, or 1000 years. But if you look at the last 200K years of half or million years, it's debatable.

The earth is not and hopefully will never be in a state of equilibrium any time soon. Do you know what is in a much closer state of atmospheric equilibrium? The moon is a pretty good place to look. Mars isn't bad either. I don't know about you, but I like our atmosphere. As long as we have it and there are living things on this planet, it will remain that way. Hopefully for a very long time.

I'm not even going to get started on the heat energy thing

I assume the link above is what you are referencing in regards to as "old swamps". At least that's what I'm guessing as I've never heard of the danger of thawing swamps. Plus there's a hell of a lot more methane in those formations than any swamp. It's also unknown if that methane will be released with rising temperature. But like you, I'd rather not find out. I would much prefer it remain an academic debate than see it put to the test.

There is strong evidence for the Albedo effect. However the link regarding atmospheric water vapor also seems to provide compelling evidence that water vapor in the atmosphere is also a strong greenhouse gas.

I understand that trying to make this problem something dire that will affect most of us in our lifetimes seems like a way to make others more motivated. But when it doesn't happen in the ridiculously short time-frames you are using, it makes most people call BS. Spreading this amount of misinformation is really not helping. I apologize for sounding like an ass, but posts like yours make it too easy for those who don't give a shit to keep on not worrying about it.

It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking

No, this is not cherry-picking. There's not question that the earth is warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. The oceans are expanding. The surface temperatures are increasing.

This paper looks at the response in the Antarctic Sea Ice, and has found a possible improvement to its understanding.

No cherry picking involved.

Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!".

It was always suspected that global warming would increase extreme weather events because hurricane intensity is highly related to sea surface temperature when they form, and more energy in the atmosphere gives more evaporation so heavier rainfall.

But the theories are thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and optics. They are not challenged if warming is only 0.1C per decade for a decade instead of the long term trend of 0.16C per decade.

When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?

The northern sea ice is in steep decline. The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheet are in accelerating decline.

How on god's green earth do you manage to get to "THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself" for there?

Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way.

You've not heard of the greenhouse effect then?

The point is that we're not making snap judgements about "non-problems".
We're talking about reducing human contributions to the problem of Global Climate Change (the most obvious way being reducing emissions of green house gasses). Based on your comment it seems that you've never really attempted to familiarize yourself with the even the most basic information about climate change.
A good place to get started is: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators

The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate. How does this compare to the conclusions in the report?

Summary appears to be wrong.
"...were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space."

Interstellar space is apparently 40 times more dense than space in the solar system. The solar wind pushes the particles back to the edge of the solar system, making the plasma more dense at the edge (not less dense).

To quote from NASA
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-277
"Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument detected the movement. The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma. The particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space."

When something like the humble Voyager 1 probe can continue giving usable data for such a long time, it should cause us to ask, why haven't our other missions been as successful?

FYI, the Voyager program was a happy accident. It was designed as part of the Grand-tour of the outer planets that could only happen because of rare alignment of the outer planet that apparently only occurs every 176 years. W/o this alignment and the mutiple gravity assist trajectories available, there would be no Voyager program because the budget to keep the ground support going for the duration of such a long journey was not in the cards (even the actual Voyager mission was a scaled down version of the original Grand-tour plan because of budget cuts).

Contrary to popular belief, the Voyager spacecraft were actually designed for the mission that it is currently on (that's why it launched with an RTG that could last this long). Although not officially part of the main mission, the interstellar phase was always part of the "extended" mission component that is part of most Nasa projects (funding has to be separatly approved for the support-costs required for the extended mission).

Also Voyager wasn't so "humble". Launching a 815kg spacecraft about the size of a car in 1977 wasn't really just a faster/cheaper project. According to the JPL website,

A total of 11,000 workyears was devoted to the Voyager project through the Neptune encounter. This is equivalent to one-third the amount of effort estimated to complete the great pyramid at Giza to King Cheops.

Also, other extended missions for Nasa project have been reasonably successful. For example, most recently, Fermi just entered it's extended mission phase, and of course there are the more pop-culture Sojourner and Spirit and Opportunity...

One astrophysicist now claims Black Holes are made by Freaking Magic...

This comes after NuSTAR found Black Holes "wherever it looked" {my words}, ""We found the black holes serendipitously," explained David Alexander, "We were looking at known targets and spotted the black holes in the background of the images."" anywhere between 0.3 and 11.4 billion light-years from Earth. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130909154918.htm

NuSTAR http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/main/index.html#.UjDw25I03n0

Now it's a race to explain this, and in the lead is Marco Spaans with mini black holes aka "Quantum uctuations in the form" that I would
tend to think would of made itself more pronounced than just adding substance to a Black Hole.

You can check out a 3D visualization of the LADEE spacecraft and it's proposed mission using NASA's 'Eyes on the Solar System' software available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov.

Once you've installed the software return to eyes.nasa.gov and choose the 'LADEE and the Moon' link to launch the correct module.

That's because we are heading for an ice age due to orbital forcing, and very "soon" in a geologists sense. One thing to remember though is that "soon" to a geologist is roughly 20,000 years. In the meantime, we are likely causing warming.

Here is that NASA data you're referring to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/ [nasa.gov]
or here, comparing various data sets:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/0/h/compare_datasets_new.jpg [metoffice.gov.uk]
I would not seriously characterize this as "the earth has been cooling for the past decade." Most notably, the increase in temperature observed from the 1960s has not reversed.
Here, from the BEST project, is the comparison of theory and data:
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/img/annual-with-forcing-small.png [berkeleyearth.org]

Dude, the data certainly does not support warming either. At 95% the data can support BOTH, you just believe ONE SIDE.

Over a time period of decades-- which is the time scale of relevance-- I see clear warming: a rise of about 0.6C in global temperature over the last 50 years. So, no, I disagree. I'd say "the data supports warming" quite clearly and unambiguously.

Here is that NASA data you're referring to:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/
or here, comparing various data sets:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/image/0/h/compare_datasets_new.jpg

I would not seriously characterize this as "the earth has been cooling for the past decade." Most notably, the increase in temperature observed from the 1960s has not reversed.

Here, from the BEST project, is the comparison of theory and data:
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/img/annual-with-forcing-small.png

The technology was called "riblets" and was secretly applied to the hull of Stars and Stripes allowing them to win the 1986 Americas Cup. It also allowed the US to win its first rowing medal in many years at the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Technically, it was a cheat-to-win strategy in most people's opinions at the time. I thought everyone knew about this. Google and Wikipedia are not your friend.

More here: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Riblets.html

And here: http://www.globalspec.com/reference/67396/203279/7-4-drag-reduction-by-riblets

And exactly what technology would that be? Tang or Velcro?

There are a huge number of spinoff technologies from NASA research which 20 seconds of time with Google would have found for you. Off the top of my head: freeze dried food, portable cordless vacuums, memory foam, de-icing systems, infrared ear thermometers, solar panels, fire fighting equipment.

Furthermore Tang was not developed by or for NASA and neither was Velcro. NASA merely popularized it. Tang was created by General Foods in the 1950s and Velcro was invented in the 1940s and later commercialized in the 1950s. If you are going to pick examples of "NASA technology" then you should actually pick examples of technology funded by NASA.

Seriously, name a single technology (useful for other than NASA purposes) which wouldn't have appeared within a few years anyway.

So we're supposed to hypothetically presume that everything created by NASA would somehow have been invented anyway despite the fact that there is no actual evidence that the technology would have appeared without NASA research? And for some reason the fact that NASA did it first is somehow not deserving of our respect? Peculiar argument you have there.

The government provides the mission and funding, the private sector does what it does best.

Bribe senators & congressmen for contracts, inflate the costs to double or triple original estimates, deliver 20 years after spec while milking every dollar they can from the government? So, you want to turn NASA into the Defense Industry II?

At least the defense industry gets a workable budget.

2013 Estimated NASA budget : $17,000,000,000 - http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/632697main_NASA_FY13_Budget_Summary-508.pdf

Estimated cost of one year of the afghan war: $109,500,000,000 - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gNQ3JbWwd6t-PzkuECkRJvsAlNkA

FY 2013 Intelligence Budget: $52,000,000,000 - http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/

DHS 2013 Budget: $54,807,277,000 - http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/mgmt/dhs-budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf

We spend about 3 times as much on intel and spying on our own citizens than space research and capability

When you add in DHS it is 6 times.

A year of one war is almost 9 times the NASA budget.

This does not include all the other crazy defense spending. Even if NASA were completely axed today, it would not take even a tiny dent out of our national deficit. Cutting 'unnecessary' NASA spending is just a way to please ill-informed constituents, and make it look like our elected legislators are working to reign in spending. They are NOT.

Tickets are free, but registration required, see http://www.nasa.gov/ames/events/ladee-science-night, they say this will still occur even if launch is postponed. Ames held a science night for Curiosity and it was fantastic, carnival atmosphere with key people presenting the mission and discussing the science. There were exhibits and they provided free water (may be expensive but much cheaper than dealing with medical emergencies from dehydrated people). However, this is 5 pm to 9 pm, right on commute times where hwy 101, 237, and 85 converge (dang orbital mechanics).

I expect Ames video group will stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc (they have events shown here even when NASA-TV does not). They did the same for IRIS, footage is there to watch for those that didn't see it live.

Amateur radio participation in LADEE lunar science

http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/meetings/LADEEpresentation.html

and download the PDF of Brian Day's presentation at http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/meetings/LADEE-AARCpresentation.pdf

Yes, posting AC (can't find my /. password at the moment).

Tickets are free, but registration required, see http://www.nasa.gov/ames/events/ladee-science-night, they say this will still occur even if launch is postponed. Ames held a science night for Curiosity and it was fantastic, carnival atmosphere with key people presenting the mission and discussing the science. There were exhibits and they provided free water (may be expensive but much cheaper than dealing with medical emergencies from dehydrated people). However, this is 5 pm to 9 pm, right on commute times where hwy 101, 237, and 85 converge (dang orbital mechanics).

I expect Ames video group will stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-arc (they have events shown here even when NASA-TV does not). They did the same for IRIS, footage is there to watch for those that didn't see it live.

Amateur radio participation in LADEE lunar science

http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/meetings/LADEEpresentation.html

and download the PDF of Brian Day's presentation at http://hamradio.arc.nasa.gov/meetings/LADEE-AARCpresentation.pdf

Yes, posting AC (can't find my /. password at the moment).

Our friends at Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio produced a short animation.