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No, he's right. Some people are motivated to reject the science. You can bring that horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. http://ngm.nationalgeographic....

Actually, Antarctica just hit a new temperature record last year:
http://news.nationalgeographic...

But, as the climateologist do repeatedly note, weather is not climate.

You think you're kidding. I must now recommend the television show "Rocket City Rednecks" a bunch of good ol' boys including several NASA engineers who explored numerous engineering challenges. The "use a Winnebago to test recycling and living enclosed for a Mars mission" episode was splendid fun. The need for much more beer than expected for the water recycling was priceless, as was the "don't put the water recycler too close to the driver's seat" lesson.

The show was wonderful, and like Mythbusters explored very real science and engineering tasks in a "what can we find in the parts bin" fashion. the official website is http://channel.nationalgeograp... .

Indeed, like in this episode of Brain Games.

Polar Ice Caps: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Hurricane Lull: http://www.livescience.com/507...

Greening of Africa: http://news.nationalgeographic...

These are "facts", and the "speculation" from the "Global Warming" nuts is also clearly documented. Here are a few good articles on exaggerated claims that never panned out:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

http://www.thenewamerican.com/...

http://dailycaller.com/2014/03...

Please go ahead and make excuses as to why nearly 97% of all Global Warming Projections are wrong : http://www.westernjournalism.c...

Or perhaps you'll simply parrot someone else who doesn't actually know anything, or continue to believe "consensus = Science"

The people saying "global warming" are all paid to say "global warming" to get/keep Government funding, so that government can dictate to everyone (except rich n powerful) that we need to give up every technology that makes the world run.

The fact is, ever number has been fudged to get the results they are wanting, to prove what they need to prove, to keep getting funding to support something that has no basis except "consensus"

When every major prediction has failed, the the consensus cannot be right. I remember all those predictions of "worse hurricanes" followed by "almost no hurricanes", and "Polar Ice caps disappearing" only to have "polar Ice caps expanding (which is now the new "proof" of global warming), on down the line.

not to mention the Greening of Africa, when it was supposed to be getting drier and more desert like: http://news.nationalgeographic...

The problem isn't Global warming, it is that EVERYTHING is blamed on it. Ice growing or shrinking .. GLOBAL WARMING, more snow GLOBAL WARMING, more rain and greening in Africa GLOBAL WARMING!

In fact, global warming may in fact be good for the planet, even if it isn't good for Humans. ;)

The True Story of History's Only Known Meteorite Victim

"On a clear afternoon in Sylacauga, Alabama (see map), in late November 1954, Ann was napping on her couch, covered by quilts, when a softball-size hunk of black rock broke through the ceiling, bounced off a radio, and hit her in the thigh, leaving a pineapple-shaped bruise..."

Birds are usually only non-threatening to us because they're small. But if they were huge, they'd be like monsters.

Along those lines, here's an interesting NatGeo article.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Put feathers on most dinosaurs, and suddenly they look kinda pretty.I'm certain the artist took some liberty with the colors, but that's an intriguing painting.

There is a new HVDC breaker that avoids that issue. http://news.nationalgeographic...

That not only happens in nature but in domestic crops as well. It could happen in any of the "naturally" bred versions of crops we plant. It has nothing specifically to do with GMO whatsoever. By not planting GMOs, you do absolutely nothing to mitigate that risk. So people who are anti-GMO because of that fear are also not basing their opposition on any good reasoning or science.

In fact, transgenics provide potential solutions to those types of blights when they happen. For example, the papaya industry in Hawaii. More recently, researchers have made progress on the citrus greening problem in Florida, which is on its way to being a major crisis.

what the old immigrants did to the revious population.

Do you mean the "Native" Americans that took the land from the Clovis people?

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Any ship embarking on interstellar travel in the near future using any of the first two methods (a generation ship using conventional propulsion or a hyper speed ship using fuel, thrust or time improvements) is likely to be beaten to the destination by a explorers leaving earth hundreds of years later using superior interstellar travel technology.

Although a generation ship carrying massive amounts of fuel and a gigantic solar sail could boost up to speeds of hundreds of km/s, it could still be thousands of years before such a ship reached even the nearest star system... and then it would have to expend vast amounts of stored fuel to slow down, slip into a suitable orbit around the local sun and commence a search for potentially habitable planetary bodies, with no hope of ever being able to generate sufficient thrust to move on to a further star system, should the first prove to have no suitable planets to settle on.

Consider the rate of communications, propulsion, etc. advancement that would have taken place in the intervening 5000- odd years between the departure of interstellar explorers leaving earth over the next 100 years and those leaving earth, say, 2-3000 years from today. How would our present day explorers even communicate with earth using 5000 year old communication technology - heck, it would be tough to communicate with just 100 year old technology, let alone 5000 year old relics. And suppose the mission was successful... later and technologically more advanced departures travelling in the same direction would have to make first contact decisions not too dissimilar to the ones we make today about isolated peoples such as isolated tribes in the Amazon rain forest - only it would be more similar to travelling back 5000 years to the bronze age - round about the time when Stonehenge was built and Papyrus invented.

Future propulsion technologies, would not fare much better. The more efficient the propulsion technology, the faster the rate of travel. This might appear to be the answer, except that special relativity would mean that while time slowed down for the travelling explorers, hundreds or even thousands of years could pass here on Earth for a few years of time for our hyper-speed interstellar travellers. So, while interstellar travellers travelling at hyper-speed could reach their destination in a single life time, they too could be beaten to the punch by a later departure hundreds of years later (or just a months days later in time passed aboard the interstellar ship).

That special relativistic time dilation thingamajig can be a bitch!

Just my thoughts and observation

NWS lists U.S. lightning fatalities here. 26 so far this year, although the figures seem to be several months delayed and the date on #26 has a typo. 1 in 700,000 per year get hit, from this. In contrast, there are 1 in 19,000 per year odds that you will be murdered, and about 69% of those involve firearms.

Uh, you really didn't do well on that one. Perhaps it's your mindset that needs adjustment?

No matter what kind of animal with teeth you look at, those teeth tell you what they evolved to eat.

It just ain't true. Gorillas have big, sharp teeth (including more impressive canines than humans have) but they don't eat meat.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

http://img.thesun.co.uk/aidemi...

I am not sure about a lot of folks, but I view the entire hunt as problematic. If we have multiple fleets hunting, using modern methods we are only a few weeks from putting entire species back on the list. Pollution, ocean acidification, over fishing and depletion of prey, and changing weather patterns/currents, along with multiple other stress factors look to harm the recovery in the long run. This one really scares me when it comes to whales recovering. http://news.nationalgeographic... For now, we really just need to leave them alone and try to clean up our mess.

I thought it took tequila.

        http://news.nationalgeographic...

Sure, when you live on an island barely six feet above sea level, passing hurricanes have threatened (and have succeeded in the past) to wipe these islands clean. But the threat of sea level changes, which have been slowly rising since the last Ice Age, is moot because, in recent times, most of these Pacific atolls have grown in size, due to increasing biomass of growing coral.
http://news.nationalgeographic...

Cutting emissions, IMHO, will have no observable effect on these islands. But I can't blame the natives, though, for trying to get the rich nations of the world to give them free transport to higher and safer havens.

Are apparently ignoring this. Must not pay as much to consider that 80% of the islands are growing.

These "woodles" (see a post above providing this name) should be an improvement in taste when served next to Haity mud pies. Similar nutritional value, but probably a bit tastier.

Not only that, the Titanic discovery was also a cover for the Navy investigating their own submarines.
http://news.nationalgeographic...

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

I just want to add the the USA doesn't sit here and beg other countries for help. We deal with our problems.

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

Before Paris it was the responsibility of the countries in the middle east to police their own. Now it's clear they can't contain it, even with aid so the rest of the world will be dragged into it.

Did they really have to wait for ISIS to strike in Paris? The group's earlier:

• Killing of POWs ...
• ... and Christians
• Selling women to slavery
• Destroying ancient relics

was not enough? If Anonymous had this capability of hurting ISIS' (impressive) online propaganda, why did they not use it before the attack on Paris?

Here are your sources, ignorant.

Okay, if you can take the "Bloody Penguin from Yeti Sports" and simply give it a fresh look and walk away with millions, then "the intellectual value of design" is clearly there. Since it's samzenpus's pick I always automatically assume it's a monetary issue. The word "art" is much like the word "natural", everything and nothing is depending on the context.

An example of the value of art: http://news.nationalgeographic...
Personally, I learned how to code, and how to speak English all because of a game called Meridian 59 http://www.meridian59.com/, and am proud to admit, I still dream of the landscape from time to time. So John can suck it! (Don't tell him I said that.)

Apparently more stable than a block of something which sheds some matter over time, yes.

So, your choices are: 1) measure according to a physical object which can change over time, or 2) measure according to a known set of physical properties which can be reproduced.

And there's nothing to say over time as the science gets better they don't tweak this.

But, in terms of defining in terms of a measure someone can reproduce, it's gotta be better than "1kg is this artifact we made".

I mean, this is what we have now:

The origin story of Big K reads like a fairytale. The cylinder-shaped artifact was forged under the guidance of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), which stated in 1889, as if by royal decree: "This prototype shall henceforth be considered to be the unit of mass."

For over a century, the kilogram was sealed within three glass bell jars beneath the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, where it was protected from dust, moisture, fingerprints, and other corruptions of the outside world. Big K could only be retrieved by a gathering of three custodians, each with a different key.
Gaze into the Crystal Ball

Forty identical sister copies were shipped abroad to calibrate kilograms worldwide. The cylinders were reunited only three times for comparison. Each time, Big K and its twins were delicately wiped with alcohol and ether, steam-cleaned, and weighed. In 1992, scientists were disturbed to discover that Big K had somehow become lighter than its siblings.

So, it's gotta be more stable than an artifact.

The premise behind these simulations is that giving directions to crowds will improve flow of people.

It's a mighty big assumption that the folks in the crowds would follow a signal to "slow down". Between the culture in general (ever see a tidy British style queue in the middle east?), and the general human dynamics of large crowds of people, I don't have much hope of this being a success...

...The activity of the crowd is determined by a very weak signal, if you can give them a strong signal instead they'll probably follow it.

Imagine you have a bunch of giant LED billboards overhead showing everyone in the crowd "SLOW DOWN" or "STOP" or "TURN RIGHT AT 42nd STREET".

A baffle sends a strong signal that is impossible to ignore. Cylindrical pillars seem to be among the most efficient at transmitting this signal in the right directions through the crowd so that it slows them in time to prevent crush injuries without panicking anyone into a stampede. Forget cultural stereotypes and objective cultural differences, at this scale all Muslims, Christians, Soccer fans, British Royals, bipeds, quadrapeds... behave as particles in a non-Newtonian fluid. If these particles encounter a barrier faster than the signal from the barrier can propagate against the flow of the fluid, you get a shock-wave not unlike a sonic boom.

These men actually tried some of the privations of a trip to Mars, on a budget:

        http://channel.nationalgeograp...

The "Rocket City Rednecks" are a wonderful mix of genuine scientific research on a budget, and the sort of project some of us tried on long weekends when we were much younger.

The counter-argument to all of the broadcast hoo-ha is that when you're standing a gazillion miles away from Earth, you're going to be receiving ALL of the broadcast signals on a given frequency. Do you really think that's going to be indistinguishable from noise even if you know what frequency to look at?

We aren't going to find ET by looking at inadvertent EM spill. We are going to find civilizations that want to be found and are sending a bright, intentional signal that has characteristics that make it pop out from the background. It might be at high probability targets, like Earth. Earth would have been judged to be a high probability target by its size, distance from Sol, atmospheric composition, and accompanying gas giants (to clear most of the potential impact material away quickly during solar system formation).

Such a signal may have already been found.

Uhm, the global temperature on Mars has been rising for a while now.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Contrary to that 2007 article, the variations in the Sun's output is not noticeably warming the Earth nor, presumably, Mars. In a few hundred millions of years it will, but that's longer than I want to wait.

Interestingly, on this day in history (90 years & 2 months ago)... http://education.nationalgeogr...

http://ngm.nationalgeographic....
http://www.natureworldnews.com...

Please name the last time these issues happened in the US. You might find LA at their worst to be near China's moderate levels, but nowhere near on average.

Couldn't one of the tennis players just knock it down? Heck, even Chimpanzees can figure out how to do that

The tomb you refer to, The Talpiot Tomb, has not been irrefutably shown to be the actual tomb of Jesus. A case was made for it by a pair of journalists in the first decade of this century that it might somehow irrefutably show that Jesus had not risen from the dead, but the translations that the journalists claim to have made and the so-called evidence that they have which supports their allegations has been since subject to much dispute by archeologists and linguistic scholars alike [1] [2]. The matter is clearly far from settled. Of course, it's very easy to say that the devout might continue to believe even in the face of scientifically irrefutable evidence, but even if that statement were true (which I do not refute), it does not leave science free and clear of any obligation to discover the truth.

The existence of the Aether was disproven through scientific experimentation, so it is wrong to conclude that science cannot disprove things, as long as whatever assumptions you have made about what you may be attempting to disprove are coherent enough to form such experimentation.

For what it's worth, I believe the Shroud may be genuine... but I believe it may be so only because science has not yet been able to determine how the image was made. Even if it shown to be a fraud, however, does not mean that the incident did not happen... it only means that some charlatan tried to artificially lend more credibility to what they were saying than they may have deserved. Even a liar can be telling the truth, after all. Although I'll agree that doesn't help the case for Christianity any.

"'Garbage Patch'es - that implies there's this floating reef of garbage which is simply a well-motivated lie."

So you are saying there aren't floating reefs of garbage? Really? http://education.nationalgeogr...

You really should do some research before posting. It will help make you look less like an ass-hole.

You missed "except when you have to put up with the chmical wastes from solar PV production."

http://news.nationalgeographic...

http://www.science20.com/scien...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green...

"The reporters found that the company was dumping silicon tetrachloride waste on neighboring fields instead of investing in equipment that could reprocess it, rendering those fields useless for growing crops and inflaming the eyes and throats of nearby residents. And the article suggested that the company was not alone in this practice."

" In August 2011, a factory in China’s Zhejiang province owned by Jinko Solar Holding Co., one of the largest photovoltaic companies in the world, spilled hydrofluoric acid into the nearby Mujiaqiao River, killing hundreds of fish. And farmers working adjacent lands, who used the contaminated water to clean their animals, accidently killed dozens of pigs."

[ you really don't want to go anywhere near hydrofluric acid. One drop on your hand can easily result in the entire arm being amputated.]

etc etc

Seriously: the energy cost of making solar panels is only at or just past breakeven over the life of the panels. Windfarms are in a similar situation, because the big turbines have a nasty habit of eating gearboxes (they're only profitable when stopped, but collecting subsidies)

Fusion would be nice, but I doubt we'll see it in my grandchildrens' lifespans.

In the meantime we need fission _now_ (PWR/BWR systems for the moment and LFTR-style system as soon as they're mature enough to be rolled out as civil systems). Continuing to dump carbon into the atmosphere at uncontrolled rates is likely to kill us far faster than any global warming scaremonger might realise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I, for one, would be interested to find out just how far the average person would expect sea levels to rise in the event that all of Earth's ice were melted. I imagine that a lot of the doom and gloomers think that all land everywhere would be covered in water, like Waterworld (and let's be fair, a lot of people accept what they see in movies as factual even when there is absolutely no basis for it; see: Waterworld). I mean, the premise of that movie would have seemed believable to a LOT of people at the time, and probably still even now despite having access to Google and an actual map of the effects.

California survives currently by draining the ground water table - something that has dropped for the last century. And draining ground water means that salt water intrusion may occur, which happens in some places. Ground water loss have been the norm since at least 1964. http://voices.nationalgeograph...

So right now California is draining every available resource just to stay afloat, but in the trend is bad since when even the ground water is depleted there's no reserves.

Make that 2008: http://www.popsci.com/holly-ot...

Japan's newest nukes are of the very latest design, and all of the plants being restarted have passed the latest safety tests, on a date that has been planned for years. No, this is not some panic move "in response to soaring energy prices" as the headline claims.

No, not really.

"The vast majority of plants under construction around the world, 47 in all, are considered Generation II reactor designs—the same 1970s vintage as Fukushima Daiichi, and without integrated passive safety systems."

Note the last phrase 'without integrated passive safety systems". That is the key. Fukashima required external power to shut itself down safely. Yes, TEPCO could have done things differently - site generators uphill, install a seawall that could actually contain a worst-case-scenario earthquake. Installed a hydrogen vent system. But it didn't. And TEPCO stated for years that the system was safe.

Until you can shut down a reactor all by itself, then it isn't safe.

Most of the stuff in meteor storms are sub-millimeter in size, which things like ISS and satellites can survive, at least mechanically, being hit. If you look around, there are already pop-sci articles discussing this and other issues that the showers can have, e.g. one at NatGeo. For more technically and dry coverage, look for something discussing longevity of solar panels in space, where damage from micrometeorites is an on going deterioration process. Also space is big, and even if you paint a 100 m stripe of an orbit around Earth, the chances of something that is pointed at Earth from one side hitting that is on the order of 10 ppm, and even smaller if you place the object somewhere on that orbit instead of trying to count what goes through the orbit at any point.

Be sure to read this NatGeo article which corrects some of the misconceptions and mistakes history passed on to the first linked article:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic....

Every intelligent human is going to have an operational system of instincts for dealing with other intelligent creatures simply because you can't take out that much basic functionality and still have a working mind.

So reversing that premise, why would you think that we could create a working mind that wouldn't effectively have its own "operational system of instincts for dealing with other creatures", as you put it? If it does not, then it would not be a working mind, and I would suggest that societal pressures have far more to do with a person's so-called ethical codes than evolution does.

It's not that it wouldn't have a system, it's that it would be a different system.

Think of it like genetics. We share a ton of genes with other life, 18% of our genes are shared with yeast, that means they're critical enough to our life that they've been preserved over billions of years. If you start screwing around with that 18% things probably break very very quickly so any life you're going to see on earth is likely going to have that 18% because they're a foundation on which everything else rests.

But that doesn't mean that 18% of genes is critical to life in principal. If you went to a different planet you could have a completely different set of foundational genes and a very different ecosystem.

I suspect our intelligence is the same, there's a lot of stuff in the comparable "18%" that every functional human is going to share just because it's so deep and essential. An artificial brain may not share that foundation.

I don't know how much a full solution would affect cost.

remember what the nuclear people used to say: "electricity too cheap to meter"

now it's "we don't know what it will actually cost"

We don't know how much anything truly costs, we're barely aware of what happens to solar panel waste the moment it's built, much less 10,000 years from now. We're just putting a lot more effort into figuring it out for Nuclear.

The Blacks were considered inferior throughout the entire country. The North's attacks on slavery were motivated not by feelings of fairness, but to simply destroy the enemy's economic base.

So, the GP is right stating, that this was not "about slavery" in today's meaning of the concept — the war was not waged to restore fairness and bring about equal rights. You are right in that it was about slavery because it was that tactics of the Federal government, that pushed the rebels over the edge.

Secession was popular in flat states, where large plantations were viable. It was less popular in mountainous areas, where slaves were less common

Yes, were somebody to try to outlaw, say, airplane-building today (such as on account of their pollution), we might see Washington trying to secede. History will then claim, the bigots objected to clean air.

Haha you kill me. At least Europeans (and Asians,and Africans etc) can point out the US on a map. That's at least little bit less ignorant than a lot of Americans

You seem to be be sensitive to the US/European relationship, maybe because of your personal experience. But it take from me, everywhere you go there are good people and bad people. I forgot where this thread even started, but if you feel insulted by my anti-Amercan comments I apologise. I like the US, but I also love to point out its faults. Don't take it personally

I'd say losing 10-20 feet (in depth) of land is a significant cost.

Keep in mind that the current rate of loss is less than a foot a century! Where's the evidence that this will change?

Some Evidence:

West Antartic ice sheet

You don't have to look to far for other evidence either. Yes, I know the timeline there - 100 years minimum, there was another article that predicts a 5 year timeframe for the collapse of a different shelf, which was not predicted to melt for many decades. Basically they're all guessing at the rate, and sometimes apparently even the most pessimistic are far too optimistic.

So, you're saying that nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2 are the only components of the atmosphere? Sorry, I did the math. You are leaving out quite a bit, especially WATER.

Heat capacity IS spectral absorption. RAMAN+IR spectral absorption. If you disagree, then one of us doesn't know what he is talking about, and I have the degree in the subject.

No, it most certainly is not. You take a transparent vessel, put a heat lamp in front of it, and stand on the other side. Normal air? You can feel the heat through the vessel. Fill the vessel with CO2 gas, and you immediately notice a significant reduction in the heat felt. You can quantify the decrease using IR sensors/FLIR cameras and plate thermometers. Very straightforward.

[citation needed]

More gas, more absorption.

Yes, until 100% of the radiation is absorbed, which happens at a pretty low concentration, one that we already passed. IE there is no difference between an atmosphere where 100% of photons are absorbed within 20 meters, and one where it happens within 10. This is because it is SATURATED. More doesn't matter. That is what the word "saturation" means.

"so the CO2 does not stay where it is generated for very long"

Yale begs to disagree. http://e360.yale.edu/digest/co... CO2 domes are a well known phenomenon, and any organization that DENIES their existence should immediately lose credibility in this discussion. Luckily for NASA, that isn't at all what that web page is about.

Also, please stop making shit up because it sounds like it supports your argument. All you are doing is destroying your own credibility. Ideas are not soldiers. You are not obligated to support ideas that are on your side even if they are wrong or weak.

"[citation needed]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://news.nationalgeographic...
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/v...

Really, just a duckduckgo search for "percentage of land that is irrigated" and "percentage of land that is paved". Its a lot. If you don't believe me, take the window seat next time you fly across country and MARVEL at the number of huge circles of irrigated farmland. Or just look out the window of your apartment and note how much of the area that you can see is or isn't paved.

Perhaps a better way to phrase my original point would be this:

"How many horses in 1915 were being used in commercial activities and how many are being used for those same activities in 2015"

Even ranchers no longer use horses as much, I know ranchers in Texas who have switched to helicopters, they are faster and better than horses.

http://smithhelicopters.com/pr...

http://channel.nationalgeograp...

http://fireaviation.com/2014/1...

---

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.o...

1945 was when horses were finally supplanted by tractors, and of course it has only continued from there.

I guess your wish to remain ignorant is interfering with your ability to perform a simple internet search. Here, let me help you. What you describe as "toilet to tap" is:

"Cities take water from rivers or wells, contaminate it as they use it, and send it to wastewater treatment plants for sufficient cleanup to return to the rivers, where it heads downstream to the next city."

Your definition of "toilet to tap" is the same water cycle that's been going on since municipal wastewater treatment facilities came into existence (in other words, long before the term "toilet to tap" was even coined).

What the rest of the world describes as "toilet to tap" is a system where a community's sewage is processed through "highly engineered, well-monitored, advanced treatment processes that remove contaminants", typically involving microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet disinfection. The processed water is then reintroduced to the environment upstream of the community that originally created the wastewater.

If you like, I can further help you become better educated on the subject of reclaimed water...I've got all day. But if you can't see the difference in the definitions above, there's little that can be done to help you.