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I thought it is more like 94% which does not matter in this case, because you need to have something else besides common genes to be "human".

...there is a serious problem with treating these issues as solvable through prohibitions. People want drugs... forcing them to go through back channels ... [creates] a fantastic money-making machine for the criminal element to exploit, and makes criminals out of a whole bunch of people...

A better solution is to treat these things like we currently treat alcoholism...do everything in your power to help out those that can't deal with their drug of choice...but leave everyone else alone.

...[Smokers] can't smoke in enclosed places anymore, so it doesn't negatively impact others, but otherwise they are left alone.

As far as pot, the stuff doesn't even physically addict you...

Yeah, how dare we infringe upon the right of the minority to force their ideals upon the majority, right? This is one of the most blatant inversions of the principle of protection from mob rule that I've ever seen..

That's a fair statement, and here you go:

article at Sciencdaily.com:

"Meanwhile, microelectronics has different issues. Computers are used for approximately two to three years, compared with around 10 years for a car, and the recycling rate for all electronics is quite low. In addition, the manufacture of integrated circuits--the devices at the heart of all electronics products--requires the use of ultrapure materials and energy-intensive manufacturing processes... Furthermore, new technologies such as those used to produce and process nanoscale materials and other advanced manufacturing processes exceed the energy use of older technologies by six to eight orders of magnitude on a per-unit-of-material-processed basis, Gutowski said."

Also see this article which states that 81% of a computer's energy cost is in the manufacture.

There was an article last year about someone coming up with using ultrasonic waves to trigger regrowth of teeth.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/06062 8234304.htm

This seems much more along, and less complicated. I imagine a new use for an ultrasonic transducer is easier to get approved than transgenic tissue grafting.

I really wish there was some central repository of active studies, with an easy way to grade their progress and potential oversight burden. I imagine being able to subscribe to studies and experiments, and receiving updates when available. The most irritating thing about 'scientific discovery' news articles is the fickle nature of the media to keep people in the loop on it. Whenever a bold claim is made, it becomes news. But the incremental progress is not sexy, so you never hear of it again. How many 'promising' cures for various cancers have we heard of, only to never heard of them again?

Last I heard, F@H was a feel-good novelty that is doubtful to ever produce any meaningful results.

Where did you hear that? I don't know any details, but it's easy to find a voice of dissent from your view:

""For the most part, it's not that we're looking for a needle in a haystack, but we're looking for broad properties that require good statistics," said Vijay Pande, associate professor of chemistry at Stanford University. As one of the scientists behind the project, Pande is proud to say that Folding@home has actually provided useful information to the scientific community. SETI@home, however, has yet to discover a single alien transmission."

""These successes are documented in peer review journals. Over 50 papers have resulted from Folding@home," said Pande. He and his students collaborated with developers from Sony Computer Entertainment of America to build a Folding@home client for the PlayStation 3, but that wasn't really Pande's idea."

(In-Depth: Sony, Stanford Experts Talk PS3 Folding@home)

"Now, for the first time, a distributed computing experiment has produced significant results that have been published in a scientific journal. Writing in the advanced online edition of Nature magazine, Stanford University scientists Christopher D. Snow and Vijay S. Pande describe how they with the help of 30,000 personal computers successfully simulated part of the complex folding process that a typical protein molecule undergoes to achieve its unique, three-dimensional shape. Their findings were confirmed in the laboratory of Houbi Nguyen and Martin Gruebele scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who co-authored the Nature study."

(Folding@home Scientists Report First Distributed Computing Success)

Don't think true altruism doesn't exist. Some people really do care about other people and acts of charity are purely for the sake of others. Altruism can even be observed in an MRI. Basically, nice people use a part of their brain that self-centered people don't. Article here, I think it even made it to the front page of Slashdot back in January.

While whites did enough evil, like stealing the whole country,

For Christ's sake, get over it already. That is the way the world worked back then... there was no evil involved. How come I don't hear protesters freaking out about how the Saxons and Angles came out of Europe and stole the UK from the Celts and Picts? Or how the Normans stole it from the Angles and Saxons? I don't see anyone paying treaty money to anyone in Whales or Scotland.

Every place on the globe was invaded by one group or another over history. Even in North America, one tribe would take out another. Some of the bloodiest wars were between the different tribes in what is now Ontario and New York/Pennsylvania. The Iroquois and the Hurons used to skin each other... The Haida were known to come down and eat the odd Tsawwassen every now and then. Why should North American natives be held up as more wronged than any other people that were conquered and assimilated over the years? Just because it happened only a couple hundred years ago? I repeat that is the way the world worked, we can't change it, get over it and stop asking people to pay for our great great great great grandparents deeds. And by the way, the natives often took sides in things hoping to get a better deal. They often took sides hoping to take down rival tribes... they're not so innocent either.

You want to judge history by the morals of today. Get a grip. Even the morals of today only count if you can afford it. Treat your neighbour as you would have him treat you... but if you are starving to death, it is pretty much OK to steal his food. Stop judging whole peoples by what their ancestors did, and even then stop getting high and mighty and calling them evil. That was life back then. They did what they did because the logic back then said they must if they wanted their country and way of life to survive and prosper. Now we are all here. Scrap the guilt, scrap the treaty money, everyone get a job, earn your own way, and shut the fuck up. If you want to live the old way, no-one is stopping you are anyone else from grabbing a spear and forgoing modern medicine in case you stick yourself. Everyone immigrated here to North America at one time or another. There were multiple waves. How come we don't hear complaints about those who came 3000 years taking over things from those who came 5000 years ago? Enough with the guilt trip already.

And don't forget, there are no mammoths or camels in North America because the 'natives' killed them to extinction... not the the 'white man'. So much for the 'guardians of the earth' bullshit that some of you no brain whiners like to come up with. People are people, you don't have to be white to be selfish enough to kill off an entire species, only ignorant. And that does not make them evil. No more so than the wave of immigrants to come here in the last 400 years... the 'white man'.

Zonk, you've linked to the report on crop loss owing to warming to the warmest winter citation.

Here is the CNN report http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/03/15/warmest.wint er.reut/index.html?eref=rss_topstories and NOAA link giving state by state rankings for temperture and precipitaion http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/s2819.htm .

The link you posted is actually more interesting since it suggests that efforts to substitute biofuels for fossil fuels could be hampered by warming since crop losses from warming already exceed $100 billion in the US between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sci ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml

I'll try to keep my submisions down to less than one a day, there was just a confluence of news.

We can already count lost sheep. Yanking this off the firehose even though it was slowly rising:

Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the Carnegie Institution and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have found that crop losses owing to global warming exceeded $100 billion between 1981 and 2002 http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sci ence&article=UPI-1-20070316-15391700-bc-us-climate change-crops.xml. This is of interest not just because this indicates that warming is not good for crops, at least in the way that we grow them now, but that attempts to reduce warming through substituting biofuels for fossil fuels may be squeezed by this effect.

The estimated cost of crop losses is about 25% of the cost of the Iraq war so far http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com _wrapper&Itemid=182.
--
Do something: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Well, hell, what is it then? I think it's something hard-wired.

This has been in work a while (from 2005):

http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleI D=000BCFA2-450E-1289-837D83414B7FFE9F

Doesn't say anything about a solution to the real issues, which are economically and safely recovering the hydrogen in a motor vehicle and the slow rate of absorption.

More promising is using organic nanopores (from corncobs, natch) to store methane:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/07022 0132230.htm

So you don't need space, or submarines and just like before nobody wins, except a bunch of asshat arms manufacturers who want to gamble with our lives and the lives of future generations.

Make no mistake the current arms race is all about profits for arms manufacturers and kick backs for politicians and has absolutely nothing to do with defence, their even trying to replace small arms not with better guns but just with more scifi looking ones.

What the hell are you talking about?

I don't know how more clearly to state this. The fact that global mean relative humidity remains constant to first order has nothing to do with CO2, or with the Sun

LoL.. If you don't know what the hell i am talking about then why are you trying to object to it so hard?

And this is the point. The global mean reletive humididty isn't staying constant!. This is were the models are wrong when it comes to the sun. And judging by the paper you keep refering to as the only way water ahouls belooked at, if the global mean reletive humidity increased by as little as 1/2 a percent increase, it could have a net effect of double that of the incresed Co2 emision's effects. Now this is something not to be scoffed at. For one, watervapor has a greater impact on the greenhouse effect and there is tons more water vapor in the air. And a brighter sun causing more evaporation raising this mean level by 1% could more then account for the increased temperature. But more importantly, it falls in line with the idea of global dimming because the natural controlto it is cloud formation which reflects sunligh.

Incidentally, there are higher order corrections and the relative humidity does vary slightly with temperature, but once again, it depends on temperature, not on solar irradiance.

I don't know. I always though that when you turn the heat up on the stove, the watter boils quicker. Shame on me for getting this wrong. And no i am not trying to say the sun is boiling anything. The sun is a driving factor in evaporation. The more intense this factor the more evaporation occures. Eventualy a certain humidity will be reached and it will be harder for water to evaporate.

We are looking at three seperate factore here. One, how fast the water evaporates with the increases solar intensity. Two, How much this rises the reletive humidity and to what extent is raises it. And three, What kind of greenhouse effect is this process adding. Of course there are more but those are the top three we need to be concerned with.

This is false. The laws of physics do not have a special term for "solar irradiance" in them; evaporation depends only on thermodynamic variables such as temperature, pressure, etc.

Sure there are vaiables. And the sun has an efect on two that you just mentioned. And the only thign false about it is your insistance that they don't matter.

The "intent of climate models" is to simulate the climate. Period.

No, the intent is to check the theories against a simulation of the climate. The models in themself aren't wrong. The way they function is. here is a report describing this entirely. And once the models were changed, they found that it was greater of an effect then expected. This leads us directly into this discusion. Here is a link explaining it a little further. Adn don't give me the they say only 30% bull. The fact is that the russia guys are working from the corections expected to correct the current models and stumbled unto what uncovered this. So you see, It is science working how science is intended to work. Not sitting back with something set in stone because thats the way "the good book says so". I'm not exactly sure why it is so hard for you to except change here? And even if you don't except it, Why are you trying so hard to stop others from exploring it?

This is wrong in multiple ways in the same sentence. You are not improving.

1. The "hockey stick" graph has nothing to do with climate models or the physics that goes into them.
2. Mann's hockey stick graph has not been debunked. On the contrary, two independent studies by the NRC and the NAS found that the overall hockey stick result is correct, although

I ran the numbers recently as well, here is what I came up with. Note that I didn't do any actual measurements and relied only on what I could find in google with a few minutes searching. I've made some pretty generous (read, unrealistically optimistic) assumptions about what the human body is capable of and what people will put up with to have power.

Here is a ballpark estimation of the practicality of human power generation.

Let's assume that a person who's profession was power generation would be highly fit and well suited to long hours turning a generator at high output. If such a person could maintain an electrical output of 400W for 10 hours a day he would produce 4 kilowatt hours of electrical energy (ignoring conversion loss for the sake of simplicity). This is beyond mere 'Olympic' performance and well into the realm of the 'heroic', similar to a good bicycle sprint for 10 hours.

Given a heroic muscular efficiency of 30% (beyond the human normal range of 14-27%) this 4 kilowatt hours represents about 13kWh of input power, or food. This is about 11,000 dietary calories. I'll presume that the waste heat is too low-grade for power generation, but could be used to offset living space heating requirements during cold weather.

If we feed our hero nothing but soybeans (inexpensive and fairly energy dense at 1.75cal/gram and 0.00025 cents per gram in bulk ($6.80 for 60lb) he will need about 6.25 kilos of beans a day, at a price of about $1.60.

So your human power will cost in the range of 40 cents per kilowatt hour, or about 4 times the price of grid electrical power, presuming you can find teams of heroes willing to donate their time for free.

The US consumes around 4,000,000,000,000 kilowatt hours per year. At a rate of 1460 kWh per hero per year, you will need to employ 2,700,000,000 people (almost half the world population) each year to produce the required electrical power. Feeding them will require about 6,100,000,000,000 kilos of beans a year, or about 90 times the annual US soybean crop. You may be able to reduce the number of people required slightly with a methane capture system :) You can probably increase efficiency by feeding the heros that die in the line of duty to the living heros, thereby recyling a hundred or 2 pounds of material.

A typical household in the US consumes about 30 kWh per day. Consider that this is about 8 heroes pedaling generators in your basement, consuming a 40 pound bag of soybeans each day.

Powering a typical smallish refrigerator requires about one kilowatt-hour per day, so it would only take one hero two and a half hours to keep your food cold (or, if he is charging a battery, 5 hours after losses).

A typical real person could reasonably be expected to produce 200W for an hour a day (maybe 2 for extremely dedicated individuals), certainly enough to charge small devices like laptops, but just a drop in the bucket next to the power used by a typical person.

Kinda puts the power of fossil fuels into perspective.

refs:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/reps/enduse/er01_us.ht ml
http://www.los-gatos.ca.us/davidbu/pedgen.html
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?I ndicatorID=46&Country=US
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice &dbid=79
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/06032 2113511.htm
http://coachesinfo.com/category/rowing/77/
http://homepage.mac.com/moises.santillan/paper

Hmmm....how about all the energy well need for the next 1000 years?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/02041 6073334.htm

Oh wow. Basic chemistry... too bad you forgot basic physics. Ya know, the part where CH4 is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. You global warming goofballs are all the same. "Oh noes! Don't burn it!! That creates teh greenhouse gasses! Oh noes!! It's escaping into the atmosphere causing 20 times as much damage!!!" Make up your damned minds already, fucktards.

Maybe the two are linked!

And as an aside - the Israelis were slaves to the Pharoa (that looks mispelled) for how many years according to the Bible? Yet they're the only culture that has been enslaved for a period of that long and left NO archaelogical marks on Egypt, nor had any adoption of Yiddish/Hebrew into Egyptian, nor Egyptian insinuating itself into Hebrew?

Yeah, wouldn't it be great if someone found some evidence of Semitic influence in Egypt? If you want to read more about the history of Jews in Egypt, try Wikipedia.

(Note: I'm an agnostic with strong atheistic tendencies. I also know enough about the Bible to know that there's a lot of historical fact in there.)

Testing String Theory:

Physicists create string theory test

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Scientists have long questioned the validity of "string theory" and now U.S. physicists have created a test for the controversial "theory of everything."

[... click link to read article]

There isn't in fact, anything particularly ridiculous about the concept of Orbiting Solar Power Satelites/Sun Shades -- it might not actually work, but on the other hand there might be ways to get it to work, and you can get a clean power source out of it as well as a possible global warming amelioration strategy:

• solar power satellite
• Space Sunshade Might Be Feasible In Global Warming Emergency
• Bright Future for Solar Power Satellites

I realize it bugs environmentalist-types to think about amelioration, but it's looking like we need to do pretty much everything we can think of at this point. The skeptics seem to miss the fact that while it's at least possible that the consensus could be wrong, that includes the possibility that things are even worse than they say they are... e.g. it appears that the arctic ice is melting much faster than expected. It'll be, uh, interesting to see if the influx of fresh water manages to deflect the gulf stream and plunges Europe into another little ice age, eh?

(Why is it so hard to convince people to replace coal power with nuclear? Coal burning is killing something like 20,000 people a year in the United States... you can't come up with a nuclear accident scenario that gets anywhere near that level, and that's without putting fears of green house gasses on the table.)

... until the experiment has been independently reproduced and there is some more data on whether and how much cosmic radiation affects our climate. So far, there is one paper on this topic (July 2002 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics), and not much else. The experiment is interesting, but rather tenuous in its conclusions. We have a potential mechanism, along with some ways on testing the validity of its predictions. But it's far too early to make this anymore than it is - an idea that needs further exploring.

Besides, can we link to something more than someone's blog? Here's a link that has a lot more substance and not so much speculation: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/02073 1080631.htm

>The human brain provides compelling evidence that massive parallelization works. So: what are we missing?

That depends.. In what way is the brain massively parallel?

Sure it uses many neurons but a processor has many transistors. Do I get to say that processors are massively parallel because every time I do an addition a large number of transistors are used at once; each one only doing a small part of the operation?

The amount of parallelism in the brain is most often over-stated. it's impressive but not magical...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Sci ence&article=UPI-1-20070126-18383300-bc-us-onetrac kmind.xml

The sort of parallelism being discussed here is thread based and at that level you are faced with the equivalent of taking a task and dividing it amongst multiple brains. With the added complexity that the brains you're splitting the task up to are annoyingly literal and will gladly go and corrupt data structures and then cause the computer to crash.

am sure American reps speak better English than Indians and they have their reasons too. They live in a society where they are forced to learn English as their first language. Indians are not. They learn it out of choice and speaking English is a personal decision.

If you think call center employees write those scripts then God help you.

As far as blooming economy is concerned, when was the last time you heard India invading another country and making a quick buck on oil?? Indian economy is all about brain power.

Yes Indians go to western world and kick ass by proving to be more efficient, cost effective and by doing a job some dumb *enter nationality here* could not do at double the wages.

Did you ever hear a general racial out burst in India ?? I don't think so. How many Indians would like to say the same for western world?

Lets not compare the intelligence or IQ. George Bush was elected twice. 'nuff said.

Letting trees decay in the forest is bad for the environment. Actually, it looks like it isn't bad for the environment.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/05081 9123757.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/04/02041 2080812.htm

I suspect the original press release and the articles on Science Daily and PhysOrg are FUBAR. I think an article in the Washington Post is probably more accurate. Unfortunately the Phys. Rev. Letter web site doesn't seem to have the actual paper publicly available yet.

Care to use your expertise in the field to explain this?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/06052 3085540.htm/

Not trying to be a troll, but on one hand, people are bitching about the inaccuracy of modeling and others are waving their hands saying that modeling has nothing to do with predictions.

I understand that there are different specifics for models, perhaps you can give a synopsis?

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentati on/documentation/pressReleases/2003/pressRelease20 030718/index.html

what.. like under-water volcanic activity..

or like..

300 degree C sea vents.. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/05081 9123850.htm

yea.... no corrolation.. must be my SUV causing icebergs to melt..

If you start with an expensive raw material (sugar) and put it through a lossy process like gasification (the chemical efficiency is not stated, but a modern oxygen-blown coal gasifier runs about 76%) you're only going to get even more expensive energy out.

About the only way this makes sense is if you have some very cheap process for making the biomass, and/or a rather high-value use for the hydrogen. Running a laptop on energy-dense sugar syrup would probably qualify, but running a car would not.

Now they have a right to be that way ... I never said they didn't ... but they don't have a right to use the school system to linfect the next generation with their wacko beliefs. Many people might say the same thing about you and some of the positions you hold.

The difference being that their religious claims aren't backed up by any proof, are totally untested and untestable, and have no place in policy-making. Global warming has a lot of proof behind it, it is currently being tested world-wide (and we're all test subjects), and we'd better formulate policy for the worst-case scenario, because it looks like even that one was optimistic ...

We used to believe that climate change would be slow ... we now know that drastic climate change can and has happened in decades, not centuries or millenia. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/06100 4180029.htm

Trying to use religion to keep the next generation from learning about this, and criticizing their parents for being such prolifigate assholes, is an ignorant policy from ignorant people.

Never thought I'd see the day when there'd be an alliance between church and oil company - but then again, Bush invoked god when going after Iraq's oil.

He said the surfaces emitted little jets that seemed to jerk them forward or sideways, as well as smoke trails that formed spiral shapes, suggesting the balls spun. The balls were hot enough to melt plastic and burn a hole in his jeans .

Picking the right type of sustainable fuel is extremely difficult however it is very important for politicians to understand the energy equation of each fuel source. Unfortunately I think most politicians are "technological cretins" and only have a interest in what will get them elected or re-elected so choosing viable and appropriate fuel sources becomes more and more reliant on "interest and lobby groups".

Currently fossil fuel (includes diesel and petrol) is mainly used for transport and looks like being this way for some time to come. Alternative fuels in the form of bio-diesel and ethanol are being touted as a viable alternative to fossil fuel however even these fuels have their drawbacks since you still need to actually grow, harvest, produce and deliver the fuel to the consumer. Bio-diesel is currently seen as the most viable alternative fuel (cheaper and less polluting) since most diesel vehicles can run on it with little or no modification while petrol engines do need to be modified (some more than others) to run on ethanol which is not that environmentally friendly and has a lower energy equation than bio-diesel. On average diesel is approx 30% more efficient and diesel engines usually have allot more torque at much lower RPM than their equivalent petrol counterparts.

You are right so say "So why's the US government pushing hydrogen? It's my suspicion that the oil interests want all the alt-energy money spent on things which cannot work, thus guaranteeing that taxpayer-funded research will never threaten their gravy train.". I would add many governments are touting this around the world and so far nothing has come of it although hybrid (ie. petrol/electric and diesel/electric) are viable. Again you really have to look at the energy equation (time does play a part here) to see if current hybrids are truly viable and cost effective.

Before everyone runs out and buys a diesel (equally applies to a hybrid) I would suggest you do some homework since diesel cars are normally more expensive than their petrol counterparts and you may have to travel a fair distance before you start to save. If the costs are the other-way around (mine was) then it becomes easier to make the decision. Of course buying a motor vehicle is a matter of personal choice and prestige as well and fuel efficiency may not even enter the equation.

The following is an interesting read on the potential ways of manufacturing alternative fuels. The heading reads "'Flashy' New Process Turns Soy Oil, Glucose Into Hydrogen" so read into that what you may.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/06110 3083833.htm

Do you suppose that the imams who were herded off their flight for praying would have been safer if everyone on the plane had been armed? Hell, imagine if the imams had been armed themselves. I doubt that situation would have ended without injurity if not loss of life.

You might think you're safer if you're carrying a gun, but that's only true (and even then, only occasionally true) if you're in the popular majority. If the Japanese-American citizens who were interred during WW2 had, rather than comply with an oppressive regime, used guns to defend themselves, not only would a number of them had ended up dead, it would have played right into the government's propaganda, and justified even more harsh oppression.

Article slashdotted. Here is another source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/07010 3201405.htm

No, it's not about a vaccination. About 10% of Europeans are immune to smallpox (and resistant to HIV) thanks to the Black Plague.

I would agree, though I certainly hope they get past using plastic circuits. Wouldn't it be better to use something like this stuff? Or maybe something else?

Hey, give them a break, they're working on it ...

Chinese learn to smile

Nope, it's growing fatter and fatter

NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.

Overall however, the layer appears to be recovering.

Worldwide urbanization and the ongoing rise of urban noise levels form a major threat to living conditions in and around cities. Urban environments typically homogenize animal communities, and this results, for example, in the same few bird species' being found everywhere. Insight into the behavioral strategies of the urban survivors may explain the sensitivity of other species to urban selection pressures. Here, we show that songs that are important to mate attraction and territory defense have significantly diverged in great tits (Parus major), a very successful urban species. Urban songs were shorter and sung faster than songs in forests, and often concerned atypical song types. Furthermore, we found consistently higher minimum frequencies in ten out of ten city-forest comparisons from London to Prague and from Amsterdam to Paris. Anthropogenic noise is most likely a dominant factor driving these dramatic changes. These data provide the most consistent evidence supporting the acoustic-adaptation hypothesis since it was postulated in the early seventies. At the same time, they reveal a behavioral plasticity that may be key to urban success and the lack of which may explain detrimental effects on bird communities that live in noisy urbanized areas or along highways.

I'm amazed that this got modded "insightful". Calling the gloabal warming trend "highly doubtful" is inflamatory to say the least. There is no serious doubt that the planet is warming. My bogometer pegs every time I listen to one of the GW deniers, and the damn thing nearly broke when I read the link. As a climber, I have seen glaciers all over North America and Europe as they vanish. Colorado scientists tell me that mountan glaciers all over the world are contributing more then the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice. To the tune of several feet of ocean rise by the end of the century. We are in for a rough ride, folks.

I agree with parent about one thing: In the long run we are at the mercy of natural forces. Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and volcanos are familiar disasters which occur in a timescale we easily comprehend. There will be another ice age, and the oceans will drop 120 meters again (as they did at the peak of the last glacial episode 20,000 years ago), but history is incapable of recording such long-term changes. The sea levels will plummet and rise again just as fast, mocking our current period of stability. However, we strongly disagree on this: If there is a likelyhook that human activity is precipitating a change in sea levels that will affect human life across the globe sooner than it would happen naturally, then I believe we owe it to ourselves to honestly evaluate the causes and effects, then take action as appropriate even in the face of (or because of) uncertainty.

Exactly. Very old news. Its not the whole brain, but the navigation part. Doom players can rejoice in the fact they too grow bigger brains when navigating though the gamespace, also ref: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/09/03091 1072236.htm

So are you opposed to speed limits, or just their enforcement?

By sniff for drugs I mean technology.

Read the definition of spam.

Americans are wasting a billion gallons of fuel per year by being so fat.

Lose some weight. It's good for you and it's good for the environment.

from the blood-and-urine-samples-next dept.

The scientific community refers to it as social defeat stress disorder.

More good information and relevent links can be found here.

The scientific community refers to it as social defeat stress disorder.

More good information and relevent links can be found here.

This is not a new idea. It's Global Dimming and it has been here for quite some time. But the reason why we haven't done such thing yet is not that no one figured out the precise plan. It's because we have a reason why we started filtering exhaust. One is medical, another is interference with rain clouds - Remmeber the famine of 1984? Guess what was the reason. For more information check the 2005 BBC's documentary about Global Dimming, it should answer all the question.. Still this is a better idea that putting a giant sunshade to space...

Yeah, because see, all these rocket scientists, they are well known for bein' stoopid. Ain't that a shame to pollute them purty stars.

Let me help you understand what's at stake here. This quote is from the TFA, that you obviously haven't read:

Tools and other gear have accidentally floated away during spacewalks. But NASA has shied away from intentionally jettisoning gear off the ISS in the past because of the threat of space junk hitting the station or other spacecraft. Even tiny flecks of paint have cracked the windows of the space shuttle orbiter because they zoom around Earth at thousands of kilometres per hour.

Total cost of the ISS (so far): close to US$35 billions (source). The collective face NASA is going to make when the ISS is made unusable by some medium-sized space junk: priceless. Added points for the irony of being hit by space junk that comes from the ISS itself. So, yes, allow me to say it again: throwing junk overboard without thrusting is bad policy, and it is stupid.

If all you needed to deorbit something thrown from the ISS was a "small amount of thrust", don't you think that atmospheric drag would have already deorbitted the ISS itself?

Oh wait, are you talking about the same ISS that needs an extra orbital boost from time to time due to atmospheric drag? Hmmm... Interesting... That means the ISS is slowly being dragged toward the earth. Amazing, isn't it? Who would have thought?

In order to deorbit something, you need a very considerable amount of thrust, with an engine and propellant brought up from Earth at enormous cost. Left to its own device, a low-density object such as a bag of trash is going to slowly lose altitude due to atmospheric drag, then burn. No need for propellants. Good old air envelope does the trick.

Which, of course, is in complete contradiction with what you just wrote about the ISS, right? Oh well, what's a few inconsistencies between friends? Besides, the goal is precisely to avoid filling the Earth outer space with dangerous, slow moving bags of trash. If you had read TFA, you would know that the golf ball that was to be putted by a russian cosmonaut is no danger, precisely, because hitting that little golf ball with a gold club is enough to send into the atmosphere, where it will burn harmlessly. Which, again, completely contradicts your previous statement that it takes a lot of thrust to de-orbit trash.

On the other hand, the real heart of the matter is, of course, that even if there is never another rocket launch, the outer space around the Earth will be filled with junk until at least 2055:

The model predicts that even without future rocket or satellite launches, the amount of debris in low orbit around Earth will remain steady through 2055, after which it will increase.

That was one of the the links I posted. But, let me guess: you did not read any of these either, right?

(me)there is no reason not to incinerate their trash. Incinerate? Whaaa?? Look, this is space, ok?

Fine, that sentence should have been: ... there is no reason not to incinerate their trash IN THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE . Happy? I may sound dumb, but I am not THAT dumb, thankyouverymuch.

As for reusing it, I'm afraid that a sizeable fraction of the trash is, er, astronaut dung. I doubt the reuse value of human waste is very high in space, until we have complete hydroponic gardens.

Still, there i