Slashdot Mirror

The placebo effect is a short term 'feeling better' from some mild problem.

I suggest you google for placebo surgery. Placebo techniques have given individual patients relief from angina pectoris, Parkinson's disease, and osteoarthritis of the knee. One patient in the Parkinson's study had not been physically active for years before surgery, but following placebo surgery she resumed hiking and ice skating.

It's clear that you are the one here who does not know what a placebo is. I suggest you start here.

Massage does no more then if you spent a quite hour reading a good book.

I love reading a good book, but I don't think that it can reduce depression and hostility and increase NK cells and lymphocytes in cancer patients, or help with migraines.

Acupuncture doesn't work. It has been tested in blinded tests.

As I've been pointing out, if you apply that same set of criteria to surgery, then surgery doesn't work.

As for these "blinded tests" of acupuncture, many used acupressure as their control, which is as ridiculous as using morphine as the control in your test of heroin. Others did not test acupuncture as it is actually applied, but used fixed point prescriptions that did not take into account the diagnostic methods of Chinese medicine - rather like testing if an antibiotic can treat sinus congestion without regard to whether the congestion is caused by an infection or not.

Better blinding, such as that used by John J.B. Allen et. al., compares two geninue treatments, one for the condition in question, the other for an unrelated complaint. This study of major depression found acupuncture more effective than the control.

You kill people. That's right, people like you lead people away from proven treatments until it's too late.

Look, jerkwad, I always suggest that clients see a physician at the very first sign that they might have a serious condition. It's right there on my website: "Shiatsu can also be a beneficial form of supportive care for people facing serious illness, such as cancer; it can help relieve stress and some of the side effects of invasive treatments. Shiatsu does not cure disease, but helps support and stimulate the body's own healing potential. It is not a substitute for conventional medical treatment."

Indeed, since I spend a lot more time listening to clients than a physician does, I may be able to spot early warning signs that would otherwise be missed.

The only time I would lead someone away from a treatment would be that if the condition is not life-threatening and is not going to degrade, I would suggest trying a less invasive therapy first - so yes, I will suggest trying bodywork to relieve chronic pain before going under the knife.

Of course, that's not leading anyone away from a proven treatment.

How about citing some double blind studies from actually reputable journals

What, Clinical Journal of Pain and Anesthesia & Analgesia, aren't reputable?

How about you citing some double blind studies of surgical techniques? That's my point: there aren't any such studies that show surgery to be useful. If you demand double blind studies of acupressure, you have to demand them of surgery also. Anything else is bias, pure and simple.

Every placebo controlled study of a surgical technique has found it no better than a placebo operation.

That might just be the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on Slashdot.

There's nothing ludicrous about it at all. It is, to use your terms, what "smart folks found when they looked into this."

The first placebo surgery test was for a treatment for angina pectoris called internal mammary artery ligation. This was at one time a popular procedure, but it's not used now because in a head-to-head comparison, 34% of those getting the surgery reported improvement, while 42% of those getting a placebo cut reported improvement.

A 2002 study of arthroscopic knee surgery found that the outcomes for a placebo procedure were as good as those of the "real" surgery.

In a 2004 study of transplantation of embryonic dopamine neurons into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients, "Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," according to the researcher.

In no similar study has a surgical technique proven better than a placebo cut.

We can argue about what that fact implies, but if you want to be rational and scientific, you can't dismiss it as ludicrous: it simply is the way things are.

Ice shelves are melting. The Northwest Passage is open. That's not disputable. *Something* is driving rapid warming right now, and that means rapid climate change, and rapid change means trauma.

The ice-sheets are growing at the moment, although the "adjusters" do have a nasty habit of making it disapear.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/13/something-is-rotten-in-norway-500000-sq-km-of-sea-ice-disappears-overnight

The Northwest passage has been open before (first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903-1906), so that's not really "evidence" of man-made climate change. Although of course, as I've posted already, there is evidence that man does influence climate, but perhaps not in ways you might associate with anything catastrophic for the species:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190433.htm

I don't know about you, but I think this whole theory of CO2 based Global Warming is looking a little threadbare right now.

Or we can do as the Indians used to do and burn Oklahoma every year.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190439.htm

Addressing scientists on Dec 17 at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Vavrus and colleagues John Kutzbach and Gwenaëlle Philippon provided detailed evidence in support of a controversial idea first put forward by climatologist William F. Ruddiman of the University of Virginia. That idea, debated for the past several years by climate scientists, holds that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases -- methane from terraced rice paddies and carbon dioxide from burning forests -- into the atmosphere. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming.......Thus, the accumulation of greenhouse gases over the past few thousands of years, the Wisconsin-Virginia team argue, is very likely forestalling the onset of a new glacial cycle, such as have occurred at regular 100,000-year intervals during the last million years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190433.htm

, you may see that in fact mankind does influence the climate, perhaps in ways incidentally beneficial to the species. The fact is that nobody is doing research into the positive effects of Global Warming, because a lot of Scientists are engaged at the moment in the process of policy based evidence making . It's a good way to secure grants from Government for your institution and thereby increase your chances of getting tenure (excuse my cynicism) or indeed today, of winning yourself a nobel prize!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5367941.ece

(slashdot will never make this news)

"We're at a very favorable state right now for increased glaciation," says Kutzbach. "Nature is favoring it at this time in orbital cycles, and if humans weren't in the picture it would probably be happening today."

Importantly, the new research underscores the key role of greenhouse gases in influencing Earth's climate. Whereas decreasing greenhouse gases in the past helped initiate glaciations, the early agricultural and recent industrial increases in greenhouse gases may be forestalling them, say Kutzbach and Vavrus.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217190433.htm

Switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540 percent more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, according to estimates from a large on-farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109110629.htm

Similar techniques are being tried also to regrow damaged or missing cartilage.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070906104136.htm

It looks like the current trend is to use stem cells from within a patient's own body. That way there are no ethical issues and no worries about tissue rejection. Researchers are figuring out ways to extract stem cells from a patient's own blood.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Breakthrough-isolating-embryo-quality-stem-cells-from-blood-669-1/

steveha

Interestingly, the article links to another news item, dated 25th August 2006, which essentially states that a large proportion of deaths occur due to cerebral edema. In other words, this new research is just confirming what was apparently already known.

Have you ever read about how kimberlite tubes are probably formed? It sounds very exciting. The initial magma burst upwards is only hasty by geologic terms, but the final burst of gas and magma out of the surface of the earth is at supersonic velocities. People have claimed it's possible some of the material is moving at beyond escape velocity and gets shot into space.
So while I'd love to discover a kimberlite tube, I'd rather it wasn't on MY property.

Well, we found stuff living at the boiling point of water here. Why is it so hard to keep an open mind for the chance that something more exotic than we have found so far on this hunk of dirt exists out there?

As for hotter than the surface of some stars? That's a bit misleading. There are thermal vents on our planet hotter than the surface of some stars if you count the same stars you are referring to - and that's not exactly mind-blowing.

In other news. Temperatures hotter than the surface of stars used in everyday dessert cooking!

Any newspaper reporter, editor, publisher, or owner who wants to "stick their money where their mouth is", ought to NOT vaccinate their own kids for any of these diseases, then see what happens.

Fair enough, however it's not just that by not vaccinating your child they are vulnerable to these diseases. "Herd immunity" means that they will be unlikely to encounter the disease anyway. As vaccination levels drop below the proportion required for herd immunity outbreaks of the disease will become more prolonged and harder to control. So our willful editors who leave their kids unprotected are making a decision that contributes to a weakening in the herd thus also exposing others to greater risk. That's pretty anti-social.

More information here

It's also interesting that the MMR vaccine is of course a multiple vaccination. By administering all 3 vaccines in one injection, the child is not vulnerable to diseases #2 and #3 whilst waiting to recover from vaccine #1, as they would be if receiving a series of single vaccinations. Statistically, this difference saves lives.

Head tracking in this case is referring primarily to position rather than orientation. You can move your head quite a bit while looking at the same location (from different angles).
It doesn't take a whole lot of movement to get some useful depth information from a single eye. The same concept should apply to video on a flat screen.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051007100639.htm

What we really need is more research into GM crops which the environmentalists hate for some reason.

I'll try to field this one. I'm a moderate on the issue. I don't think GM crops are themselves a bad idea, but I am studying environmental law, and I have pretty good exposure to what people in the movement worry about.

You can summarize the problem with GM crops into a few distinct worries:
1) A love of "natural" foods.
2) Worries about crop contamination.
3) What GM technology is *actually* being used for. (Instead of the "feel good" science.)
4) Safety issues in the creation of GM crops.

First, a lot of people worry about "frankenfoods." They don't want "unnatural" crops because they're worried about the safety of these crops. As my use of quotation marks suggests, I'm not a big supporter of this viewpoint, but a lot of customer do feel that way which is one reason why organic food certifications don't allow GM crops. I won't defend this view because it's not my own, and I haven't gotten a good solid explanation of it.

But it brings us to point 2. Pollen from GM crops is a HUGE problem for organic farmers. Planting GM crops freely in an area can destroy the market for organic crops at home as well as for selling to Europe and other parts of the world where GM crops are disdained by customers. You simply cannot protect your crop against contamination in many cases. (Also, besides market concerns, there's the infamous Canadian patents case, Monsanto v. Schmeiser .)

The third point is one that really cheeses of a lot of environmentalists. You hear a lot of awesome things in the news about how scientists have invented rice with extra vitamin A or tomatoes with longer shelf life. The truth is that there are really only two major types of changes which companies have fought to get onto the market -- crops that come with their own built-in Bt insecticide and crops that let you liberally sprinkle around the herbicide RoundUp. (A notable exception to this would be GM papaya engineered to resist the papaya ringspot virus which saved the Hawaiian conventional papaya industry while wiping out the organic industry there.)

Personally, I would have no problem with eating crops modified to be more healthy, but both of the above practices do nothing but help prolong the survival of crop monocultures. A lot of farming pest problems exist largely because farmers fight tooth and nail to plant the same plant over and over again, providing excellent feeding grounds for pests and opportunistic species. The use of Bt has taken a surprisingly long time to create resistance pests, but hey, so it begins. Oh, and RoundUp resistance is starting to become increasingly common, meaning that farmers are going to start turning to more toxic chemicals.

It's like disease resistance and the use of antibiotics in farm animals, another tragedy of the commons situation. People realized that if you give cattle antibiotics, they grow larger, so farmers started pumping cattle full of a variety of antibiotics. One by one, bacteria have become resistant in the animals themselves, through plasmid swapping in the soil and environment, and through exposure throughout the environment thanks to runoff of cattle urine and wastes into streams. So, they keep trying new chemicals as the old ones cease to work (or in the case of tetracycline resistance endanger human health).

So, as insecticides & pesticides become useless, farmers will turn to increasingly more hostile and dangerous chemicals to farm. ...Which they wouldn't need so much if practiced more sustainable agriculture methodology. But the USDA subsidizes the current monoculture-friendly, heavy petroleum byproducts using methods, so as game theory suggests, no one wants to change.

Anyway, the la

If you had ever eaten squirrel and sausage gumbo, you would know that this is a BIG DEAL.

Seriously, it is a big deal for squirrels and other wildlife depending on them from Ohio to Southern New England and some parts of Virginia, isolated reports from Texas and Arkansas. Could be a statistical fluke, some folks at the forum were reporting back-to back bad years. That could be a fluke, too. If it persists, it probably isn't a fluke.

What's wrong with identifying climate change as a cause? It happens naturally, too. Late Pleistocene climates were radically different from the present all over North America. If the apparent warming trend continues, it's going to get real different. If, however, they are a simple prelude to the reassertion of Late Pleistocene climate, expect things to get really, really different, and maybe pretty fast link.

...I've read some papers that make a fairly convincing case that Alzheimers is simply diabetes in the brain.

From that link:

(The protein, known to attack memory-forming synapses, is called an ADDL for "amyloid derived diffusible ligand.")

Wait, WHAT? Are they saying that Alzheimer's patients are just ADDL-headed? (methinks the biochem and medico geeks might be having a lend of us with that acronym)

Just wondering, who do you think you that you can run around getting government involved in everything? Seriously, tax it? Where did that come from? Because more government is all we need, right? If people want to put crap into their bodies, so be it.
Are you going to tax healthy restaurants too? Which menu items will you tax? I hope you won't tax the Salad+Vinegarett combos. I suppose if you support universal healthcare then you could make a case for taxing unhealthy foods. I love people that think we need the government to baby our citizens into behaving and eating well.

On a side note, I haven't RTA, but my guess is they correlate these two, and do not find the cause.
IANABiologist, but I've read some papers that make a fairly convincing case that Alzheimers is simply diabetes in the brain.
Fast foods (and candy of course) are terribly rich in starch. The starch/sugar-> glucose process takes very little effort on behalf of your body, and is very fast. Result is tons of glucose spikes in your blood, which over time decreases insulin sensitivity of your (muscles, brain). That's not even mentioning the free radicals (cancer agents) released when processing the starches.

So the answer is not a blanket "avoid fast food" (or, heaven forbid tax it) but when you go out to eat, choose what you eat carefully. Stay away from the simple carbs like fries, get proteins and fibers.

Could Marijuana Substance Help Prevent Or Delay Memory Impairment In The Aging Brain?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081119120141.htm

Check out the following link. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081119120141.htm By the way, this is the second time I've posted this link because I couldn't find the first posting. What gives?

Check out this link. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081119120141.htm Pot. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

We've been having a lot of this sort of thing lately. --Not all of them get this much notice, or accurate coverage. --There was a report of a 'plane' going down over some American town a week or so back, creating a huge aerial show and loud bang, putting the residents and authorities into a tizzy. --The only thing was that no planes were reported missing and they didn't find any wreckage.

I half suspect when we get one of the big ones that the PTB will have chutzpah to call it a terrorist nuke if they can get away with it.

A skimming of noted events for October. . .

Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their car headlights.

Reports came from residents from Carmel Valley to Salinas of a fireball shooting through the Tuesday night sky and hitting the Earth. A sheriff's deputy patrolling Carmel Valley saw it and thought enough of it to call for reinforcements.

IT appeared against the early evening sky like a flare - moments later roofs rattled and verandas shook as it crashed to earth.

[...]The Evening Telegraph has been inundated with calls and e-mails from readers who saw a strange fireball cutting a swath across the heavens[...]

For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth.

A bright light sped across the sky, followed by a loud explosion. Osborne County Sheriff Curtis Miner tells KSAL News that it was not an unidentified flying object, or anything sinister. It was a large meteor.

-FL

.
Ohio State University scientists are finding that specific elements of marijuana can be good for the aging brain by reducing inflammation there and possibly even stimulating the formation of new brain cells. Their research suggests that the development of a legal drug that contains certain properties similar to those in marijuana might help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimers disease. Though the exact cause of Alzheimers remains unknown, chronic inflammation in the brain is believed to contribute to memory impairment....

I add a few frozen blueberries to my oatmeal every morning. Several studies have found that blueberries help the memories of older rats.

• Blueberries may reverse memory decline
• Diet Of Walnuts, Blueberries Improve Cognition

There were extinctions of the megafauna approximately 50k years ago in Australia...yet not elsewhere. Was it a local climate change or man? Why did a heap o' species just happen to die out in Oz, but not in say other places that are nearby and/or with similar conditions?

When did the ground sloths die out? Nope, not 10k years ago, at least not everywhere. Ground sloths lived on longer in places where man didn't reach until later: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050803173345.htm There are numerous examples of such "coincidences" that I haven't mentioned. Enough, in my mind, to prove causation and not correlation.

The most direct an indisputable example is one of the most recent. Did the megafauna of New Zealand (i.e. moa, Haast's eagle) just happen to die out 700 years ago by a reason other than man? Mmmm.....I doubt it....wait, let's be clearer: No.

Does it mean climate/environmental changes had no effects? No, it doesn't. But I think it hard to argue that man just happened to be around for so much of the change. You might try looking into a book, Eternal frontier by Tim Flannery, which discusses some of these issues: http://skepdic.com/refuge/flannery.html

Instead of fretting about the long-gone mammoth, why don't we prevent the extinction of thousands of plant, fish and animal species that is occurring EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY OF EVERY YEAR due to HUMAN ACTIVITY?

the tasmanian devil is still alive and well

I don't think "well" is the right word to describe the Tasmanian devil's status.

In elementary school, girls do as well as or better in math than boys. In middle school, Mertz and her colleagues suggest, girls with an inclination for math begin to lose interest and fall behind, mostly due to peer pressure and societal expectations. Throughout middle and high school, social stigma and lack of appropriately challenging educational opportunities for the mathematically precocious becomes a hard reality in most American schools. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, often camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.

It falls back on the whole societal stereotype that math, and by extension science, isn't cool and certainly not cool if a girl does it.

As for women leaving, The Athena Factor is a study to read. They researchers found that hostility of the workplace culture is the most important factor driving women out, with "63% of women in science, engineering and technology have experienced sexual harassment." The whole thing is worth a read, and can give some insight into why women don't stick around in IT or any science career.

I'm lucky in that I've worked in the public sector for most of my IT career, and I've not seen as much as what the study found.

"The string theorists predict that there are perhaps 10^1,000 [ten raised to the power of one thousand] different types of universes that can be formed that way," Linde said.

Here is a good start (maybe) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&output=googleabout&btnG=Search+our+site&q=space%20probe%20%22study%20the%20sun%22 They have already observed things that we did not know with space based observation vehicles. The magnetic 'portal' between Earth and the Sun has been confirmed, though not fully studied. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081101093713.htm so there are many things yet that we should really be trying to understand. Articles on the Aurora Borealis might help you with the Earth's magnetosphere and it's role in protecting life on this planet. As the Earth's magnetic poles shift over time, I have not yet seen what effect this might have on planetary weather, never mind radiation. It is presumed that as they shift, a hole (allowing in solar and cosmic radiation) will pass across parts of the the planet where the pole is moving through.

I've also looked for any data on volcanic activity vs. weather/temperature. It's difficult to find hard data without money to spend. NASA has some research available: http://nasadaacs.eos.nasa.gov/search.html I'm not sure what the Russians or EU have available. I need to spend more time reading, but there is always hope that someone at NASA reads /. and would like to answer my questions :-) (did I mention a penchant for optimism?)

Google does provide if you know how to ask. We've known that bone marrow can be induced to make CNS cells since at least 2002. You are, indeed, out of date.

This is not my field either but I cared enough to spend 90 seconds doing the search before I hit reply. You might ask why didn't you? In case you're wondering, the string I used was:
adult stem cells central nervous system

Finding this sort of thing isn't brain surgery. Perhaps pro-life people who you think are being unreasonable are merely better informed?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021185213.htm

i don't know the exact details, but apparently others have given it some thought and seem to have arrived at various solutions to the problem.

> AIDS did break out into the general population in some countries. USA is not the only
> country with a "general population".

Dig deeper. There are still only three known ways to spread the HIV virus, shared needles, blood products/transfusions and taking it up the pooper. The higher incidence of AIDS in Africa is explained by their differing customs. Since our blood supply is now well tested that only leaves two methods for us to worry about and 90-95% of the US population has no chance of contracting the disease.

> Please source the information on polar bears.

This isn't Wikipedia, the 'citation needed' BS is beyond old here. Google is yer freaking friend. "polar bear population statistics" and follow the first link. Yes it's probably biased but click out from it. Or try this one since I'm feeling generous:

Science Daily: Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Forecasting Expert Asserts

> Why is it I have to support what I regard as your parties evil positions. But yours are sacred?

Cpngratulations, you have just taken your first small step towards discovering the joys of Federalism. And I agree that we shouldn't be bailing out banks, giving special tax breaks to oil companies (as opposed to a general reduction in corporate taxes, oil companies as corporations included equally), picking winners and losers amongst the drug companies, airlines, etc. The federal government shouldn't be doing 90% of the things it currently does. Most shouldn't be done by government period, while others should go to the state and local governments.

The Irag War is a different matter though, War is rightfully a Federal issue and everybody did have a say in the matter and our elected Reps did their duty, etc. Some things do have to be done, even in the absence of a 100% consensus. But do remember that at the time of the vote the consensus was a hell of a lot higher than abortion or stem cell research have ever seen. And once a nation does declare War there are no takebacksies. And to Hell with Obama's 'end the war' crap, that is bogus. All Wars end but history records them as Win/Loss and losing would be a disaster. We should be very careful in getting into a War but once in we should be hellbent on winning. Disent in the runup to a War is not just patrotic but keeping your reservations private is borderline treason. After the shooting starts though the exact opposite is called for. Spreading doubts about the eventual victory, undermining troop or civilian morale, adopting the enemy's talking points, etc. are all treason. War is more about breaking the enemy's will than about breaking his things and killing his soldiers, every word uttered that gives the enemy hope means they fight longer and kill more of our people. Too bad we don't prosecute for that stuff anymore.

> Yes Palin has excellent people skills and she's attractive. But she's a consistent liar
> (Bridge to nowhere, plane on ebay) those are not qualities I'm looking for.

All politicians massage the facts a little, some of it is just a product of having to explain a complex topic in a two minute reply. The bridge business is a bit fuzzy. Yea I suspect she turned against it when it became clear it was fast becoming a symbol of the evils of pork. Having just taken out an incumbent Republican gov she probably wasn't too keen on totally pissing off the Party establishment again by taking on Sen Porker himself. until she realized the politics had changed drasticly. The plane is a different thing entirely. She did indeed 'put it up on eBay.' While it attracted bids it didn't sell and was eventually sold through different channels. But the basic point was still valid, upon assuming the office she was trying to cut the excess crap, the eBay line was an excellent way to express that notion in a short soundbite.

There's much disinformation below, so I'm posting way up here to save you time. First, magnetic poll reversal is a chaotic process. It's simply not predictable, and these 2012 guys are buffoons. Second, poll reversal will not cause electronics to blow up due to a rapid change in magnetic fields - the change will be far too slow and weak in strength. It takes a thousand years or more for a pole reversal. However, during that time will likely be a short period of little or no magnetic field, and we will be showered with far higher radiation from the Sun, causing us to design radiation tolerant electronics and likely increasing cancer rates. Given all the other way's humanity is currently trying to kill itself, magnetic pole reversal shouldn't even be on our radar.

However, it's still a fun topic for discussion. There's a spot in the Atlantic called the South Atlantic Anomaly, with is viewed by many to be a new North Pole trying to form. If it breaks through, we're in for a few very interesting thousand years or so.

Well video games ability correlates with surgical ability, so I wouldn't be too surprised.

I guess that explains how algae blooms can form:

Algae blooms visible from space

Harmful algal blooms monitored from space

Florida Red Tides Linked To Mississippi River Nutrient Outflow

I guess that explains how algae blooms can form:

Algae blooms visible from space

Harmful algal blooms monitored from space

Florida Red Tides Linked To Mississippi River Nutrient Outflow

Sampling of such articles here:
(1) "Fire Under Arctic Ice: Volcanoes Have Been Blowing Their Tops In The Deep Ocean" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
(2) "Arctic ocean volcano blew its top â" even under pressure" http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19826625.800
(3) "Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths" http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/06/080626-arctic-volcano.html

Possible methods to resolve question:
(a) send robot submersible with video camera down the methane plume to see what is happening on the ocean floor (i.e. seeing is believing). Is it cold & dark or warm and glowing red?
(b) audit regional distribution of frozen methane on arctic ocean floor, plotting location/concentration relative to undersea arctic ocean volcanoes and hot-water vents
(c) place sensors on ocean floor to measure temperature & pressure

Many people would look foolish if it later turned out the frozen methane was melting due to localized heating of the seabed caused by magma (lava) flows and/or geysers spewing hot water as happens along various undersea ridges

So if time moves faster, how long does it take to cross one? Is it bigger inside than outside?

No, record low amounts of Arctic ice are due to volcanic activity and a lot of human activity in the north.

Volcanic activity is north of Iceland and is not near Russia. Even your link says "The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice". Here's a map of Gakkel Ridge where the volcanoes are located.

Falcon

If, in the end, the increased wealth that CO2 emissions bring you allows you to clean up practices that are polluting and you save more lives than global warming costs, the emissions are worth it even if the most dire of global warming predictions are true.

What increased wealth that CO2 emissions create? The increase in poison ivy? The reduction in the growth rates of other plants. The increase in cooling costs? Drought in some places while others flood?

Falcon

Methane Bubbling From Arctic Lakes, Now And At End Of Last Ice Age

ScienceDaily (Oct. 26, 2007) - A team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age.

Methane bubbling from arctic lakes could have been responsible for up to 87 percent of that methane spike, said UAF researcher Katey Walter, lead author of a report printed in the Oct. 26 issue of Science. The findings could help scientists understand how current warming might affect atmospheric levels of methane, a gas that is thought to contribute to climate change.

"It tells us that this isn't just something that is ongoing now. It would have been a positive feedback to climate warming then, as it is today," said Walter. "We estimate that as much as 10 times the amount of methane that is currently in the atmosphere will come out of these lakes as permafrost thaws in the future. The timing of this emission is uncertain, but likely we are talking about a time frame of hundreds to thousands of years, if climate warming continues as projected."

more

That's ok, most of the climatologists aren't accounting for them either.

The IPCC puts out reports every four years. 5 months ago we found an entire new ocean current important (among other things) in predicting global climate over time, the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation. That means that all the previous IPCC reports that everybody's got their panties in a bunch over were missing a major factor in their models. Oops. Believe me, it's not the only one.

The models to this point are GIGO and we're supposed to move trillions in resources around on their say so. That's just insane. It's phrenology on a massive scale.

I find it odd that the IPCC fails to mention that increased underwater volcanic activity under the arctic has been occurring since at least 1999, including a pyroclastic eruption and one that supposedly was as large as Pompei. Would this perhaps lead to increased water temps that could melt some ice, or would it be better to go ahead and destroy (or at least tax to ruin) western civilization as a precautionary measure? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm http://sweetness-light.com/archive/could-volcanoes-be-melting-the-arctic-ice

Nice try, but there is no indication there is any recent increase. More importantly: if the 1999 eruption had a major (positive) impact on warming, why was 1998 the warmest year?

I find it odd that the IPCC fails to mention that increased underwater volcanic activity under the arctic has been occurring since at least 1999, including a pyroclastic eruption and one that supposedly was as large as Pompei. Would this perhaps lead to increased water temps that could melt some ice, or would it be better to go ahead and destroy (or at least tax to ruin) western civilization as a precautionary measure? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm http://sweetness-light.com/archive/could-volcanoes-be-melting-the-arctic-ice

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903134323.htm

Embryonic stem cells were first isolated in humans by Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in 1997. Last year, he also published a paper on getting adult stem cells to act like embryonic stem cells: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071120092709.htm

Wisconsin has and licenses most of the original embryonic stem cell lines that are approved for federal funding. Of course the popular press will cling to anything done by "Harvard".

The actual text was "The instruction at '0x77f41d24 referenced memory at '0x595c2a4c.' The memory could not be 'read.' Click OK to terminate program." You're right, this is not "basically" (or even remotely close to) the text in Ars's little joke screenshot or what was posted in the summary.

According to ScienceDaily, "Fake Popup Warnings Fool Internet Users Even After Repeated Mistakes", there were popups that said different things. Some were "Windows operating system warnings" whereas others were fakes.

Falcon

There was a ~10 year study on a single forest plot about 40 years ago. Those researches concluded that after 150 years a forest becomes carbon neutral. This study has been the guiding wisdom ever since.

Last week, a new study was published: Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks. Nature 455, 213-215 (September 11, 2008). It examined 519 forest plots around the world ranging in age from 50 to 800 years and found that most of them are carbon sinks. The analysis of a single forest should not have been generalized to all forests. Your assumptions are founded on information that is now outdated based on this new, more general, study.

1. Where are the trees putting the carbon? (Gaining additional wood weight I assume... but when they die and fall over, all the carbon is released again by bacteria.)

While carbon is stored in wood mass, a majority of the carbon is actually stored in the soil. http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/news/473 (I can't find any scientific article that supports your assertion that all the carbon is "released by bacteria")

2. How fast are they sequestering it, compared to the rate at which a clearcut/replant forest would do so?

According to this study, 60% faster than a plantation forest. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37839 A huge amount of carbon is released when a primary forest is clear cut. Logging primary forests releases ~40% of their stored carbon. Source: Green Carbon: The role of natural forests in carbon storage. ANU E Press (July 2008).

The lumber industry is greedy, remember? They want to grow the greatest amount of wood in the fastest possible time. They therefore are perfectly motivated to maximize carbon sequestration. And the way that they do it is: for most species, clearcut once every 25-50 years and then replant.

Your argument is flawed by assuming that plantation forests absorb more carbon than old growth forests. This assumption is not supported by current research. Additionally, it takes 5-20 years before newly planted forest begins to absorb more carbon than it emits. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910133934.htm

You forgot the new and improved "double strange".

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903172201.htm