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You've missed the bit about security auditing that the OP mentioned. I hope you remember the Apple file vault debacle, which allowed users to recover the file vault password by a simple one-line grep statement that you could copy & paste in terminal? It took Apple several years to close this hole.

It would be pretty naive to believe that iOS can be considered good enough for confidential information. But I guess the other poster has a point that it's pretty hard to use an iPad for anything useful anyway...

Things have moved on...

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428477/the-iphone-has-passed-a-key-security-threshold/

Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.

So, as this is dated 2003 (that's TWO THOUSAND AND THREE), it's highly unlikely it's a quote from last week, unless amongst his other talents is time travel.

You were right the first time. Muller was never a skeptic. It is impossible to call yourself a skeptic and make this statement,

"Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." - Richard Muller, 2003

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/402357/medieval-global-warming/2/

nobody seems to be able to find anything he's ever said that put him in the "skeptic" camp...

And yet the people who are pro-AGW have heard of him, and have felt the need to create a rebuttal page listing what he has said and where he went wrong. Here is an article written by Muller about the hockey stick graph.

The problem is that he is not an extremist, and when he finds evidence that does support the climate change then he accepts it. However, he does have problems with some of the claims from the scientific community and he calls them out on it. He is a true skeptic, unlike the people who keep insisting that they are called skeptics who turn nasty on anyone who actually has their mind changed by scientific data. Those so-called skeptics are really just deniers.

He himself uses that term, in the quote that's right here in the Slashdot summary! It's not some kind of external appellation. He says:

Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming.

The 3-years-ago part I believe is referring to "Climategate", which Muller was very critical of. In addition, he's criticized the methodology of studies over the years, which has caused him to be viewed as something of a skeptic. In 2004, he wrote a now-famous editorial attacking the "hockey stick graph" for being "poor mathematics".

Just asking: Do you think the Leap has the potential for use in fps gaming? It seems that it has the resolution, and certainly hits the price/value sweet spot. If the demo videos are close to truth, I'd like to give it a shot when it comes out.

From the mid 1990s by the Vice-provost of Caltech: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."

More like that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science

Also:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/26/peer-review-as-censorship/

All reasoning is also based on emotion, which relate to perceptions, assumptions, priorities and preferences which are, to some extent, outside of pure rationality (which why "technocracy" has many issues).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descartes'_Error

But the biggest issue is that our socio-economic-political system is not well-adapted to handle "externalities" including systemic risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Any reasonable projection over the next twenty years shows we will almost certainly have dirt-cheap PV given exponential growth of that industry and rapidly dropping costs. We may even have hot or cold fusion in that time (and other things). With alternatives on the way, there is not a very good case to be made for risking destroy our groundwater for just a bit more fossil fuels:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/module-prices
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/ray-kurzweil-solar-will-power-the-world-in-16-years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity#Solar_power
http://pesn.com/2012/07/19/9602138_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_July19/
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414559/a-new-approach-to-fusion/
And so on...

Accounting for externalities (including US defense spending for long oil supply lines), renewables (and energy efficiency) have been *cheaper* than fossil fuels since the 1970s... Two resources on that from around 1980:

I read about a 'kickstarter' for academic research the other day but oddly enough the one I wanted to put money into was closed already with 1% funding. After thinking about it, I don't understand what it is about these spinoffs that cannot be satisfied by the existing kickstarter? I mean you can kickstart anything right? So what's to stop MedStartr and IAMScientist projects from achieving success on kickstarter? What does a site dedicated to a subdomain offer over kickstarter?

Of course you could. However it wouldn't be as relevant. The author is asserting that non-ionizing radiation is "safe". I suggest that that wasn't necessarily true with an "in your face" obvious example. Just because it is "non-ionizing" does not mean that it is safe. Microwaves resonate with water molecules, sound waves resonate with physical objects, there is evidence that terahertz radiation can resonate with DNA. Resonance may achieved in all manner of physical systems. It simply requires a certain radiating frequency. These physical systems "can" break down if the resonance produced is strong enough. That is where the danger is. That is the big unknown that demands further research with regards to these scanners.

Here is one.
Here is another.

"Collaborating with materials science professor W. Craig Carter, theyâ(TM)ve developed algorithms that mimic patterns and processes in nature to create unique sculptures possible only through 3D printing."

I guess it's a mystery.
Fractals perhaps?

"Most patterns in natureâ"whether scales or spiderwebsâ"have some kind of logic that can be computationally modeled. Armour is bioinspired to protect by being designed specifically to a personâ(TM)s body. Carpal Skin is a prototype of a glove aimed at protecting against carpal tunnel syndrome."

Try this article from Tech Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39437/

Resonance with DNA at the THz level results in potentially destroying DNA. More research appears to be needed, but localized emissions in this frequency range seem to be undesirable.

If resonance does in fact occur, then in laymen terms, it means that DNA acts as an antenna and hence relatively small amount of energy will "boil" your DNA.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24331/
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294

Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they've found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. That's a jaw dropping conclusion.

As you say, the severity/frequency numbers for military brain trauma are different than those for athletes; but I mentioned it because the military has, of late, become interested in studying traumatic brain injuries, as well as developing instruments for measuring exactly what sorts of acceleration events are actually occurring in the field.

The DVBIC chaps have also been expanding their original focus, mostly on veterans with penetrating or massive-shock injury, to include cases of multiple modest blast exposure.

My understanding is that this is partially a matter of greater awareness of traumatic brain injury even at fairly low force levels, and partially a product of improved protective equipment and field medicine capabilities. A fair few more of the blast-trauma patients who would have just bled out in earlier wars are now living long enough to potentially experience chronic neurological problems.

http://www.gizmag.com/nanocrystalline-silicon-nanoshell-photovoltaics/21391/

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39887/

Yes: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27625/

It seems to me this would be best used to get drugs delivered deep within the body, such as in a tumor, without dosing the rest of the body, or even near by areas.

But how do they get the laser there? If it were near the surface, a laser could be used. But deeper in the body, liver, brain, etc., how do you get laser light in there to cause the drug bomb to be dropped?

Quoting TFA:

Mario Magnani, of the University of Urbino, in Italy, calls the method novel and interesting, especially because it appears to leave the red blood cells intact. However, he sees two practical problems: Infrared light doesn’t penetrate deeply into body tissue, making many tumors difficult to access with the technique’s laser.

Wouldn't intersecting focused microwaves be a better approach for heating these blood cells than an infrared laser?

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27720/?p1=blogs

I would expect to find life on Mars.

Their results contain a number of surprises. First, they calculate that almost as much ejecta would have ended up on Europa as on the Moon: around 10^8 individual Earth rocks in some scenarios. That's because the huge gravitational field around Jupiter acts as a sink for rocks, which then get swept up by the Jovian moons as they orbit. But perhaps most surprising is the amount that makes its way across interstellar space. Last year, we looked at calculations suggesting that more Earth ejecta must end up in interstellar space than all the other planets combined.

You commented on "Chinese Firms Ignore Licensing Mandate For Stem Cell Therapy" that stem cell therapy was "smoke and mirrors" (well words to that effect). Could you explain why it seems to work on horses? Or is the whole article fake?

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22998/

I guess we won't discuss the state-of-the-art in neutrino communication, then...

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27648/

These guys used an experiment called NuMI (NeUtrino beam at the Main Injector) to generate an intense beam of neutrinos. The beam consisted of about 25 pulses each separated by 2 seconds or so, with each pulse containing some 10^13 neutrinos.

The beam is pointed at a detector called MINERvA weighing about 170 tonnes and sitting in an underground cavern about a kilometre away. To reach MINERvA, the beam has to travel through 240 metres of solid rock.

MINERvA is one of world's most sensitive neutrino detectors and yet, out of 10^13 neutrinos in each pulse, it detects only about 0.8 of them on average.

Nevertheless, that's enough to send a message. The FermiLab team used a simple on-off protocol to represent the 0s and 1s of digital code and transmitted the word "neutrino".

The entire message took about 140 minutes to send at a data rate that these guys later worked out to be about 0.1 bits per second with an error rate of less than 1 per cent.

-l

You might want to look at this article from the arXiv blog. The authors of the paper basically say that for some values of consumer and seller reaction times to a change in pump price, a cartel-like behavior can emerge in the system without any actual conspiracy.
I'm not saying definitely that is what you're seeing, but it is an interesting suggestion.

At this time, it seems prudent to say that the only reaction likely to ever produce commercially useful energy will involve copious quantities of tritium. Would you please address the main points of tritium self-sufficiency raised by Swiss physicist Michael Dittmar?
The issue is raised in part 4 of his study, page 20, The illusions of tritium self-suciency

More background: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24414/

They didn't sound alike to me. The example in the link (this one, since there are so many) didn't have translations of the same sentence, each language had different meaning (except maybe Italian, I can't understand that). Also, the translated versions sounded more like a computer than anything. You could say that it sounds more like the original than other computers, but the dominant feature is the computerness of the speech.

But at least they got their research grant.

No, this is a ZPM: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27625/?nlid=nlmat&nld=2012-03-08

Just looking at the demos, it seems that identifying the characters might be easier for these, in one sense: they're moving.

And where the manufacturing goes, so eventually does the R&D.

No, they are not off. Yours are four years outdated, and I already mentioned everything you brought up.

Please site your sources.

I did. Note the use of a link to a 2010 survey covering the period I was discussing (ironically, you even quoted the link). Nearly everything I mentioned is from there, though I'll admit to having pulled a few general assertions (e.g. higher volume of patent cases) from uncited sources.

Since Ward initially joined the Eastern District of Texas, the district has seen a tenfold increase in cases since 1999.[8] There were 14 patent cases in 1999,[8] 32 in 2002,[1] 155 in 2005,[8] and 234 in 2006.[1] The district is one of eight with more than 100 new patent filings each year.[8] Ward heard more than 160 patent cases in his first seven years on the bench.[3] He had been handling 90% of the patent cases in Marshall, but later was reduced to 60%.[6]

I'm confused. I said that the East Texas district has a high volume of patent cases at the end of my fourth paragraph, and...you agree? Your quote substantiates what I said. Yes, they have a lot of patent cases. We agree! Hurrah!

Patent cases presented before Ward were more frequently won by the patent holder plaintiff than the defense.[9] One source claims that patent holders win 88% of the time in Ward's court, compared to an average of 68% nationwide.[3] Another source claims that patent cases in Marshall are won by patent holders 78% of the time versus 59% nationwide.[1] And a third source claims that in 90% of cases patent holders win jury verdicts.[8]

Recall, kids, that you should always check your primary sources. Had you done so, you'd have seen that the three sources cited in that paragraph are from 2006. Recall as well that I said that the East Texas district had "about a year in the mid-2000s where the plaintiffs won more frequently" and "when it deservedly earned its reputation", but that their activity returned to normal levels afterwards, hence why it was no longer deserved. Note that the survey I linked is from 2010 - four years after your sources - and took the outlying year into account when it said that the district's average trial success rate over the period from 1996-2009 was at approximately the national norm.

Any other questions?

How much actual science has been done on the effects of THz radiation? Man-made emitters of THz radiation are relatively new and certainly intentional exposure has not been subjected to the same amount of research as IR or microwaves. The current ANSI laser and IEEE RF limits [in the THZ region] are based on extrapolation, not actual measurement. Some LANL research has shown that T-waves can unzip DNA - I'm not comfortable with extrapolated data when the number of people intentionally exposed is so high.

So, you get concentrated arsenic, rare earths, thorium, uranium, lithium, etc. as a side product from this? Sounds like an OPPORTUNITY to sell CHEAP CHEMICALS, not a nightmare. Oh, and that is EXACTLY what is about to occur.

Look, you have sat here and screamed bloody murder about the geyers. Are you aware that it is the cheapest form of mining that we have? Are you also aware that it and hydro are the 2 cheapest energy. MUCH MUCH cheaper than coal, nukes, natural gas, wind, solar, etc. If we can get this done right, we gain cheap mining as well as cheap CLEAN power.

Red stars are cool stars. Since they're red they work at longer wavelengths. Less light is reflected by potential water/ice/snow on the planet surface and kept as heat. Habitable zones of red stars is much larger than other types of stars.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27280/

Here is a story of a woman who lost all her gut bacteria and almost died because she couldn't digest her food. They injected some of her husbands and cured her almost instantly. http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26178/

In any event, the throughput for NVIDIA's Tesla product lines are quite impressive. They really are revolutionizing computational biology, where there are many NP complete and NP Hard problems that can only be tackled with very past processors (in parallel) and with heuristic rather than exact algorithms. Do you know if these are manufactured here or in Asia?

I don't know where they're manufactured; my impression was that most of the really powerful chip-fabrication technology was still essentially based in the US. This is one area in which China is still substantially behind, although they're certainly not stagnant.

I agree that GPUs are making a significant contribution to the biomedical sciences, but once again, most of the progress has been in the US and Europe. Moreover, there are still limits to what they're useful for; in my specialty, X-ray crystallography, they don't gain us much. In any case, any organization with enough money can buy a rackful of GPUs, write a few dozen lines of CUDA, and brag about its newfound processing might and cutting-edge software. I'm not impressed until I see major innovations that truly surpass the work being done in the First World. I'm sure China is working on this, but I haven't seen anything yet that makes me fear for my job (especially not in my field). The most frightening aspect is China's willingness to throw large amounts of money at boosting their scientific output - because many interesting problems are limited as much by expense as by experimental details.

You can sign up here. No guarantees you will always be schilling Slashdot, and the pay isn't really that great. Also, you'll apparently spend more of your time schilling if you sign up on this one. The barrier to entry is high for a non-Chinese native, though.

Further tracing of the story reveals it came out of a MIT publication on December 13th way back in 2011 ;^)

A much more creditable provenance regardless of the lack of information at NREL's website.

In fact, I can only think of one manufacturer of Android phones that use shiny black fronts and chrome frames.

Intel?

Thanks...

Well, that's true and false at the same time...

In many cases the reason they're printing them in the first place is because they *can't* be machined the way they want, so machining after the fact isn't an option.

This is an example, not actually being used in production as far as I know; but the idea is that it will be.
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/38352/?mod=MagOur

However you're right about the tolerance and smoothness. The part I linked and others like it don't need to be perfect around the edges (figuratively and literally) whereas more than likely almost everything in the ISS does.

Note also that any further discussion of Waggener Edstrom's efforts on behalf of Microsoft will be moderated to -1.

"Monitoring conversations, including those that take place with social media, is part of our daily routine; our products can be used as early warning systems, helping clients with rapid response and crisis management.

http://waggeneredstrom.com/about/approach [waggeneredstrom.com]
http://waggeneredstrom.com/clients [waggeneredstrom.com]
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39304/

On my laptop, my Mandriva ("mandreeva") runs Nepomuk semantic ontology-based file archiving and search on KDE.
This is real innovation.
Definitely not impressed with Gnome 3. From what I saw, there wasn't anything much there except nice cosmetics, which your post confirms. Besides, I still think Gnome eats too much visual space.
Nah. Sticking to my KDE.

Semantic sense for the desktop: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21840/?a=f
Goals and objectives of the Nepomuk project: http://nepomuk.semanticdesktop.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main1/Project+Objectives

In the new design, the reactions all take place near the reactor's center instead of starting at one end and moving to the other. To start, uranium 235 fuel rods are arranged in the center of the reactor. Surrounding these rods are ones made up of uranium 238. As the nuclear reactions proceed, the uranium 238 rods closest to the core are the first to be converted into plutonium, which is then used up in fission reactions that produce yet more plutonium in nearby fuel rods. As the innermost fuel rods are used up, they're taken out of the center using a remote-controlled mechanical device and moved to the periphery of the reactor. The remaining uranium 238 rods—including those that were close enough to the center that some of the uranium has been converted to plutonium—are then shuffled toward the center to take the place of the spent fuel.

Currently there is no known material that could be used to encase the fuel rods in -- they need to survive radiation exposure for decades without expanding.

In the new design, the reactions all take place near the reactor's center instead of starting at one end and moving to the other. To start, uranium 235 fuel rods are arranged in the center of the reactor. Surrounding these rods are ones made up of uranium 238. As the nuclear reactions proceed, the uranium 238 rods closest to the core are the first to be converted into plutonium, which is then used up in fission reactions that produce yet more plutonium in nearby fuel rods. As the innermost fuel rods are used up, they're taken out of the center using a remote-controlled mechanical device and moved to the periphery of the reactor. The remaining uranium 238 rods—including those that were close enough to the center that some of the uranium has been converted to plutonium—are then shuffled toward the center to take the place of the spent fuel.

Currently there is no known material that could be used to encase the fuel rods in -- they need to survive radiation exposure for decades without expanding.

Quantum number generators produce random numbers that are measurably different from those that computer programs generate.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25041/

The results show that the sequence generated by Quantis is easily distinguishable from the other data sets. This say Calude and co, is evidence that quantum randomness is indeed incomputable. That means that it could not have been be generated by a computer.

Whether or not it has been disproven does not make it unscientific.

Well then, I suppose you have no concerns about advocating anything you choose to consider "scientific"--even if it's disproven. Luminiferous Ether was a scientific theory. Is it still "scientific", now that it has been disproven? Well, at minimum I'll stipulate that I am considering falsified theories to be unscientific, for the purposes of this discussion.

It is a perfectly valid postulate, just like my 'all sheep are white' example.

The problem with analogies is they are often disanalogous. It is known that there are black sheep. The closer analogy would be "there have never been any naturally purple sheep" as a hypothesis. Empirically, we can reasonably conclude there probably were not purple sheep by the fact none have been observed, but this is, strictly speaking, not a falsifiable test, and therefore not a -scientific- hypothesis.

Can you give me a biological attribute that cannot be explained by natural selection?

In the case of fluorescent ones, yes. They must be explained by design--as they were, as a matter of fact, recently designed by genetic engineers.

Do we have any reason to suspect that something as outlandish as a 'designer' is necessary to explain cats?

Nothing "outlandish" about it at all in the general case, just you deciding to characterize it that way, with no non-subjective weight to the statement at all. As for the specific case I'm referencing, it isn't "outlandish" due to it being fact. Here's a link in case you missed the news: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/27153/

I guess meeting the designer would allow me to put this to rest - of course He could be lying. I may also be seeing things.

Okay, well "seeing things" applies equally well to the notion that there are even animals to potentially evolve. Solipsism, metaphysical Idealism, etc.

As for "meeting the designer", well, that test will be performed, in the long run. In the shorter run, well, I think we'd run into the standard interaction...

Atheist: The great thing about science is that you can verify its claims yourself!

Theist: Okay, glad we agree! Here's a methodology to test for the existence of God, called "Hesychasm". Test it and verify it for yourself!

Atheist: No.

Well, just like any scientific postulate, you would have to show that the claim is not sufficient to account for the observation.

If I was seeking to falsify it, yes. That isn't my stance here. My position is that it is scientifically indeterminate, in the same sense as I don't have to falsify the Copenhagen Interpretation to allow the Everett Interpretation. If your were to propose that -only- Copenhagen is scientifically viable, then you would indeed have to falsify Everett, at minimum.

What you are describing is the very definition of science! We make an observation, postulate a theory, use the theory to make a prediction then falsify the prediction.

No, to be precise you are -not- making a testable prediction. You are saying, in effect, "nothing contradicting this will be found" as the closest thing to it. This is like Newtonian Mechanics being valid as science in its (specifiable) predictions, until it was further refined by observations which did not fully fit the model. It made specific predictions that validated it up until that point. Similarly, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics made -specific- testable predictions which demonstrated it as more accurate across scales. "No exceptions will be found" is not a testable prediction. And, similarly, there are all sorts of testable predictions for "evolution occurs", which is why that remains scientific as stated.

I'm afraid I do not understand your following point regarding how 'only evolution occurs' is unscie

And every time there is evidence that it is just a political con game

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/

As the hockey stick was, as the emails demonstrating knowledge of the fraud that was ongoing did you just get the greens closing ranks and hoping if they keep a united front up, the ludites hatred of all things tech, and the political class's willingness to profit from crisis will carry their position forward.

That's a nice article you linked there. Richard Muller? Maybe you bothered to follow up with what he actually found? The rest of Slashdot did and I think you might be interested in it.

Long ago, the emails have just demonstrated that the people pushing it understand that perfectly well.

As things stand not one of the models that foretold our doom has held up over time. What we get is every 10 years a new set of predictions and models explaining why the last 20 years models and predictions weren't correct but we are still doomed anyway.

And every time there is evidence that it is just a political con game

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/13830/

As the hockey stick was, as the emails demonstrating knowledge of the fraud that was ongoing did you just get the greens closing ranks and hoping if they keep a united front up, the ludites hatred of all things tech, and the political class's willingness to profit from crisis will carry their position forward.

Name one? good god man, it's a hure scientific and bussiness enterprise bringing salinated lands back to life.

https://www.technologyreview.com/business/25763/

Why do you think South africa suddenly became a major wine producer? It's because then lands would not support grape vines but would support vineyards. It's a huge huge problem and has been for centuries.

This 1978 crypto is supposed to be safe against quantum computers: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25629/ (if that's the specific angle you're worried about). The downside is the key management because the keys have to be really really long (i.e. 20,000+ characters vs having a memorable passowrd or passphrase that you'd be able to use today).

Belgium has quite a bit of a renewables coming online:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Belgium#Renewable_energy

I'll be the last person to bash nuclear. New designs are safe, efficient, and cost effective. But once you put enough solar and wind generation out there, and back it with proper storage/buffering facilities (large battery/flywheel banks, pumped storage, etc), the argument is moot.

The price of solar is dropping so fast, solar businesses are struggling to stay afloat. Their loss is our gain, and you'll continue to see the price per watt of solar plummet. Wind is only getting more efficient, as gearboxes are being replaced with more efficient magnetic bearings and transfer systems:

http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/super-smooth-magnetic-bearings-glide-closer-to-the-mainstream.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/25188/page1/

If you read my second link, you'll see GE is building 4 MW direct drive turbine systems. Yeah, 4 megawatts. As efficiency continues to scale up, you'll see windfarm nameplate capacity rival the largest coal and nuclear plants. Yes, yes, you'll still have to deal with generation peaks and valleys, but the energy is there for the taking!

In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)

May have missed ? I'm fairly certain it definitely missed.

I don't think it was a comet, therefore I'm fairly certain a comet didn't miss as described so I think you're wrong.

A cometary fragment explanation is ridiculous. Bonilla's observations state that the time to cross the sun's disc was variable, between 1/3 and 1 second. If some of the bodies were moving three times as fast as others, there is no way they were fragments of the same comet.

His observations over the course of 25 hours along with a minimal escape velocity from Earth of 10 km/s give a stream that is 900,000 km long. To not be seen by Puebla or Mexico city, the stream would have to be less than 600 km wide. In the article's sample picture of a fragmented comet, the pieces are spread out over 80 pixels wide and 240 pixels long. Being generous with the figures I calculated, the stream would be 1 pixel wide and 1500 pixels long. Comets just don't break up like that. With the same 1/3 ratio as the given picture, the swarm would have been at least 300,000 km wide. Not only would that mean it was easily visible crossing the sun from anywhere on Earth (Bonilla had astronomers at Mexico City and Puebla look for them and they couldn't see them), but if it were not flat for some unthinkable reason then Earth would be well inside the swarm and many pieces would have hit us.

The more you increase the speed, the longer and narrower the stream becomes, making it even more ridiculous. The more you increase the altitude to make the stream able to be wider, the more you increase the speed. At 64,000 km the speed needs to be 593 km/s (563 km/s relative to the sun) to meet the observed crossing times. That's fast enough to leave the milky way (>= 525km/s) and certainly the Sun (40 km/s at Earth's orbit).

Now think about this: Why didn't any of this 900,000 km stream of objects impact Earth? The first object to pass would have moved 900,000 km relative to Earth, but the Earth moved 2,700,000 km relative to the sun in that time, so those objects moved either 1,800,000 or 3,600,000 km relative to the sun in that time. And every single object in this 900,000km long, 600km wide flat band was travelling at just the right speed to pass between the sun and Bonilla.

Now try to draw a graph of it, it is impossible. The comet must have been in a very similar orbit to Earth's. Imagine the Earth was not there. The first fragment would be at point A, 500-8000km from where Mexico would be in relation to the sun. 25 hours later the last observed fragment would be at point B, 2,700,000 km from point A and 500-8000km from where Mexico would be in relation to the sun at that time. There is no orbit that those two fragments could share that would make them hit those two points if they were together prior to that.