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The U.S. Geological survey has a "nifty" page describing it's efforts in"finding those fractures that have a high hydraulic conductivity". Maybe they can map the wall to see if there are any cracks.

Oh for Christ's sake, learn how to make a link already.

Loser. You suck. Boo.

"Due to Slashdotting, you are looking at a plain-HTML version of this story. Eventually, we will return it to normal service. Sorry about this." -- kuro5hin.org (26-Jul-2001, 0930 GMT)

I wonder if the slashdot effect will be considered a denial of service attack in the near future...

if(site.bandwidth < slashdot.effect) { site.is_awol(true); slashdot.victory++; }

For info on local quake risk: enter your zipcode.

OK,
- B
--

For info on local quake risk: enter your zipcode.

OK,
- B
--

All you have to do is read some of the descriptions of what goes on in places like The Three Sisters and especiallyYellowstone to get a real scare--the place has heaved up 86 cm this century.

A major caldera explosion at yellowstone could cover the American breadbasket with ash and plunge the world into volcanic winter.

So, why don't they build huge hydrothermal plants at places like that to siphon off some of the heat. That is, assuming that we could actually make a difference. When you are dealing with something capable of ejecting 240 cubic *miles* of ash into the atmosphere, I'm inclined to think we will be powerless.

Test case? The USGS has been providing this sort of data since the 60s & 70s. Depending on what was actually used, the cost to the USDA was much smaller than what it would have cost to pay the insurance claim. Here is the product list and prices. A person can search for what is currently available with GLIS or EarthExplorer.

Test case? The USGS has been providing this sort of data since the 60s & 70s. Depending on what was actually used, the cost to the USDA was much smaller than what it would have cost to pay the insurance claim. Here is the product list and prices. A person can search for what is currently available with GLIS or EarthExplorer.

Test case? The USGS has been providing this sort of data since the 60s & 70s. Depending on what was actually used, the cost to the USDA was much smaller than what it would have cost to pay the insurance claim. Here is the product list and prices. A person can search for what is currently available with GLIS or EarthExplorer.

Test case? The USGS has been providing this sort of data since the 60s & 70s. Depending on what was actually used, the cost to the USDA was much smaller than what it would have cost to pay the insurance claim. Here is the product list and prices. A person can search for what is currently available with GLIS or EarthExplorer.

Earth Science Corps
MS 513
U.S. Geological Survey
Reston, Virginia 20192

for more information on doing so. I have to agree with you: after using the aforementioned maps to find my way to a very remote part of NM last week, I have a new favorite organization as well!

You cant. USGS is a government organization: www.usgs.gov

There are tons and tons of FREE DATA out there for you to grab and peruse. One caveat, most data will be proprietary formats, such as ARC export, ARC shapefiles, ERDAS, and others. SDTS (spatial data transfer standard) is "open" but a pain in the neck to use. I note with glee that FreeGIS has conversion tools for all these formats.

Some places to start your search for FREE GEO DATA, places that I found very handy:

• Starting the Hunt
• USGS Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• GIS Data Depot
• Global Topographic Data
• EROS Data Center - satellite/remote sensing data
• Earth Explorer

There are tons and tons of FREE DATA out there for you to grab and peruse. One caveat, most data will be proprietary formats, such as ARC export, ARC shapefiles, ERDAS, and others. SDTS (spatial data transfer standard) is "open" but a pain in the neck to use. I note with glee that FreeGIS has conversion tools for all these formats.

Some places to start your search for FREE GEO DATA, places that I found very handy:

• Starting the Hunt
• USGS Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• GIS Data Depot
• Global Topographic Data
• EROS Data Center - satellite/remote sensing data
• Earth Explorer

There are tons and tons of FREE DATA out there for you to grab and peruse. One caveat, most data will be proprietary formats, such as ARC export, ARC shapefiles, ERDAS, and others. SDTS (spatial data transfer standard) is "open" but a pain in the neck to use. I note with glee that FreeGIS has conversion tools for all these formats.

Some places to start your search for FREE GEO DATA, places that I found very handy:

• Starting the Hunt
• USGS Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• GIS Data Depot
• Global Topographic Data
• EROS Data Center - satellite/remote sensing data
• Earth Explorer

There are tons and tons of FREE DATA out there for you to grab and peruse. One caveat, most data will be proprietary formats, such as ARC export, ARC shapefiles, ERDAS, and others. SDTS (spatial data transfer standard) is "open" but a pain in the neck to use. I note with glee that FreeGIS has conversion tools for all these formats.

Some places to start your search for FREE GEO DATA, places that I found very handy:

• Starting the Hunt
• USGS Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
• GIS Data Depot
• Global Topographic Data
• EROS Data Center - satellite/remote sensing data
• Earth Explorer

One of the things you cover in Army Basic Training is reading maps, and there's always some idiot who leaves the red lens on his flashlight when they cover this fact.

The Drill Seargent usually reminds the idiot of this fact by a 15 minute dose of wall sits...

As another reply mentions, there have been many studies of assorted other earth motions in the past. Assorted sophisticated equipment has been scattered across California and Japan for decades, along with active volcanic areas. Indeed, one of the deaths at Mount St. Helens was David A. Johnston who had taken laser measurements 90 minutes earlier. Two geologists were flying overhead when the eruption began.

I just hope for the sake of the Pacific Northwest that it doesn't end up being a caldera volcano like Yellowstone.

similarly, in Italy near Vesuvius (which blew up in AD. 79) ground movement in the sorounding area has been observed. Particularly near the town of Pozzuli which is situated above a magma-chamber. In the last 20 years the ground has been moving mostly upwards more than a meter! so that previously sunken Roman temples once again is above the water.

Yours Yazeran

Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer!

While the statement suggests that an eruption, if it occurs, is still a ways off, I still feel kind of excited by the news. If it does turn into an eruption, we'll have been able to study the ground activity that preceeded it in detail for a significant period of time beforehand. But then again, I'm an amateur when it comes to this -- any real geologists know if we've had this kind of research opportunity before?

about the next large asteroid to hit the earth as we looked up and saw it streaking across the sky. So any effort at prevention should start with stepped up methods to detect earth crossing asteroids first. With funding being cut at NASA so we all can get a tax cut, this is not likely.

I was sorry to learn that Gene Shoemaker had passed away

Also the article says nothing about the emissions from burning this gas. Are they any better than the emissions that come from fossil fuels?

Well, one important difference between bio fuels and fossil fuels has to do with the carbon cycle. When you burn fossil fuels, you are essentialy taking carbon that has been burried for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere in the form of CO2. Now, about the only way to get that carbon back out of the air is for some photosynthetic organism to use it to make more complicated carbon-containing compounds such as sugars, starches, proteins, cellulose, etc.

When you burn a bio fuel, on the other hand, you are releasing carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, but it is carbon which was just recently removed from the atmosphere by the photosynthetic plant you used to make your fuel. For example, when you burn enough ethanol derived from corn to release 1kg of carbon into the atmosphere in the form of CO2, you can be sure that at least that much CO2 was removed by your corn plants when they were growing.

This is why, even though the 6000000000 people on the planet exhale a lot of CO2 everyday, one is not contributing to global warming simply by breathing: all the carbon you are exhaling was just recently removed from the atmosphere by whatever plants you ate, or by the plants the animalls you just ate ate (sic).

Of course, there is more to worry about than just CO2, but it is a huge concern.

"Today, any government putting work under GPL is walling it (the work) off from commercial business,"

The USGS makes all of their very expensively collected data available for free at their website, http://www.usgs.gov. It is made freely available on the premise that the US tax payer has already paid for it once and shouldn't have to pay for it again. This is a policy decision that was reached very deliberately. Now the questions are:

• Is there any difference between data as an IP assett and software as an IP assett?
• If not, does the same principle (either way) hold? That is, government software must be provided to those who already paid for it (so that the return on their investment can be maximised) or, that government should never provide any service to its population when the potential exists for some company to make a quick buck off those who can afford it.

My point is that this is as much a challenge to the function of government, and it seems MS would prefer to see a marginalised government as seen in "Snowcrash". The assumption that this country exists for the benefit of private companies and not its citizens is only that and must be challenged.

Xix.

You know, I read your post and thought "He's right, but he should be able to provide a reference...". So I went to look for one, but it seems according to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature and NASA You're just plain wrong. The name of Earth's moon is "Moon". Luna just happens to be the Italian word for it.

if [ -e bombdropping ];
then
mkdir /jail ; chroot /jail deran9ed
echo "it could happen to you too"
else
for i in `find /somewhere/over/the/rainbow -name deran9ed
do
wget -U spooks www.google.com/query?deran9ed
mv $i /jail
done
fi

German Federal Armed Forces banish Microsoft programs from fear of US secret services the Foreign Office and the German Federal Armed Forces safety gaps want to conclude. Instead of American software on the national computers in the future German programs will operate.

In computers, which are used in sensitive areas, no software from Microsoft is to be used anymore. After realizations of German security authorities the American espionage service NSA has encoded data all relevant source codes of the US firm and can read in such a way. In order to protect secrets, the Ministry of Defense sets Siemens and Telekom therefore on encoding techniques of the domestic companies.

The Foreign Office reset meanwhile its plan to introduce video conferences with its representations abroad. Undersecretary of state Gunter Pleuger experienced with a Telekom presentation in Berlin at the beginning of March that all satellite transmission ways for technical reasons run over the American city Denver in the Federal State Colorado.

Pleuger was too uncertain the detour via the USA. " then we can hold our conferences directly in Langley ", spoettelte a Pleuger coworker. In Langley (Virginia) the American secret service CIA resides.

I would disagree with you here. Just because you are on a tight budget doesn't mean you won't be on the cutting edge. The Lobos and Beowulf projects were started at govt labs because of these tight budgets. If you are dealing with open systems, the software and documentation about it is on the web for free. At worst case you will want to buy a book. Also that doesn't mean that they will never buy any of the latest and greatest hardware. The Federal govt is probably the single biggest buyer of unix workstations and servers. These aren't cheap.

I used to work as an employee for the primary contractor at a USGS facility that was an absolute blast. I loved that job. Only a small fraction of the people at many Fed. facilities actually work for the Govt. The rest are employees of contractors. In many cases, when the contract changes, you just switch to being an employee of the new contractor. True, the pay was lower than what I get now in the private sector. I didn't care. I was out of school and eager to soak up all the technology I could get. I'm sure the original person who asked the question is too. Later on the new wife didn't like the wages, which caused problems and eventually resulted in my leaving. It also made head hunters question my ability because they were basing it on my previous payscale. Once informed it was a govt job, they changed their minds. Sure, I may be making over twice what I did before, but I don't have a tenth of the job satisfaction that I did at the USGS.

From a cartoon: Private industry on the left, govt/educational institutions on the right. The caption: super salaries or supercomputers. Take your pick.

• "The Linux kernel lacks key enterprise elements .."
  
  Reeeeeeaaalllly. What "key enterprise elements" are those? With the latest Linux developments, we've got everything from a journalling filesystem to enhanced multi-processor support. Sure, it's tough to make the claim that Linux is going to be superior to Solaris or other "big-iron" Unices for "big-iron" applications, but IMHO it's tough to make that claim about Windows, as well.
  
  This, of course, conveniently ignores the fact that the vast majority of Linux installations (just like the vast majority of Windows installations) do not require these "key enterprise elements" that Ballmer is bleating about. And what are these elements, anyway? Mindlessly throwing out buzzwords might make "PC Magazine" swoon, but people who are interested in specifics are going to yawn and be on their merry way.
  
  
• "You wouldn't want to install Linux on a laptop .."
  
  Is that so? Funny; I just installed Mandrake 7.1 on a Dell laptop last week. The installation went flawlessly. I was up and running and connected to the Internet, reading Slashdot, within two minutes of finishing the installation. As a matter of fact, the PCMCIA modem that I'm using with the laptop was not recognized by Windows. Linux didn't have any problems with it. What was this nonsense about lack of drivers again?
  
  
• "Free does not sustain a business .."
  
  Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the business. But the real issue here is the one that they missed; if every Linux-based business goes belly-up, that does nothing to hamper the continued development and release of the Linux system itself. Sure, companies such as Red Hat have got people working on value-added software such as RPM, but if Red Hat were to vanish from the face of the earth, it would not prevent the Linux kernel from evolving and undergoing continual development.
  
  I think we can chalk this up to simple ignorance; people just don't get that there is no single, controlling corporation behind Linux. They look at Microsoft and see them as the source of the software that runs their computer(s). They don't understand the Linux development model (or if they do understand it, they don't like it because it is so far removed from their expectations.)
  
  
• "Linux growth is leveling off .."
  
  Show me the numbers, baby. At my workplace, we've got Linux replacing Windows NT on many of our development workstations. We've got Linux servers coming in the door to handle many specialized data applications. We're putting together Beowulf clusters to do distributed data processing. We're getting rid of clunky Oracle Forms-based user interfaces and replacing them with ones developed using Troll Tech's Qt toolkit. In short, we've seen a Linux explosion over the past year or so, and I know that the same is true of several other places.

What was significant about the Pinatubo eruption was the 17 Megatons of sulphur dioxide (which measurably increased ozone damage for at least two years), and the sulfates in the cloud of debris (5 cubic kilometers of stuff, with much of the heavier stuff landing nearby) in the upper atmosphere which shaded the Earth and decreased global temperatures.

What was significant about the Pinatubo eruption was the 17 Megatons of sulphur dioxide (which measurably increased ozone damage for at least two years), and the sulfates in the cloud of debris (5 cubic kilometers of stuff, with much of the heavier stuff landing nearby) in the upper atmosphere which shaded the Earth and decreased global temperatures.

A conflicting article on CFC damage to the ozone layer was published Dec. 1999 in Science News.

Volcanos do dump tons of nasty stuff into the air, having adverse consequences on the environtment worldwide. And on that note don't forget that we have ticking timebombs of our own, even in my own backyard, Mt. Rainier.

1964. Its Richter magnitude 9.2. Pictures are here See also: http://www.tsunami.gov/tpic.htm

MS got copies of US Geological Survey maps and "1-meter" satellite photos and has scanned them and wrapped them in a slightly over-complicated website. Coverage is pretty good for most of the US, and even for other parts of the world (don't know if USGS is the data-source outside of the US). The survey maps are mostly circa 1981-1992, and the "1-meter" photos are ~ 1988-1996.

I put "1-meter" in quotes because the resolution of many of the shots seems to be worse than that. If you compare the above referenced image against the terraserver photo of the Washington Monument, it is obvious that terraserver's isn't as good. Though, judging by the scaffolding apparent on the monument, the image at NCSU is about 3 or so years more recent, and may benefit from superior "1-meter" technology.

Terraserver recently got "SPIN-2" satellite images, though I've never used them, because the interface seems to demand JavaScript and an image-viewing plugin (CleverContent) that I haven't bothered with getting/checking for security issues.

There are some holes in the satellite coverage for the US, and the places where USGS maps overlap don't always get the best treatment. Twice I've wanted to look at places that were covered up by the key from one map, when they could obviously have been displayed from an adjacent map. Still, for a free (beer) service it isn't so bad.

But this will give more ammo to people like Rush Limbaugh who think that humans can't actually damage significant portions of the ozone layer anyway and that it's all volcanoes' fault.

Volcanoes do release a lot of ozone-depleting substances into the atmosphere. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo directly caused significant ozone depletion. You can argue all you want that "natural" CFCs are water soluable, but look at what happened! Volcanic clouds were observed to have depleted ozone. This is documented fact.

Also, don't dismiss the impact of other factors (i.e. solar wind, political agendas, the Almighty Dollar) on ozone depletion, or the lack thereof.

While for many people the net may be an integral part of daily life, it is something that we all could continue to live without. Sure the day traders at the online stockbrokers would have a holy fit because they could not dump in mass their Cisco stock due to portion of the Internet being down in Atlanta Georgia. The kids would be upset because they could not play their games or DDOS their friends on IRC. I would be upset because I would be answering 999 telephone calls per hour each one asking why is the Internet down. Forget the fact that it would be on a 15-minute alert cycle on all the news channels that would make the feeding frenzy after the close Florida election look like child's play.

The Internet as we all well know was designed to survive a nuclear strike by the military and DARPA. However, that was before the corporate world got a hold of it. Universities with mega-million dollar government grants can afford multiple connections to the main stream Internet and lets not forget their elite Internet2 hookups. The corporate world takes the bottom dollar and decides if the cost is worth the remote possibility that 99% of the Internet should fail.

Face it the redundancy which was a major feature of the first generation Internet has gotten to the point where as many posters have stated two or three t3's being knocked offline could indeed take out major portions of the United States from the internet. As for Europe we all know most of you are probably, accessing US sites ala Slashdot :P

Now the press would have a field day and chortle over the fact that the e-newsrooms were dead while the broadcast ones were running fine and gloating that they wouldn't be put out of business by this fad called an online news room.

Would I have a fit if the Internet went down to 1-% capability for an extended period? I think not. Sure I would have to find another job eventually and who knows it might even be outdoors. *hisses as the sunlight hits his lily white skin* I have actually on the rough days been thinking of taking up truck driving. The LA freeways would be a vacation compared to what we would be dealing with if the Internet dies that badly.

Do I actually think the situation described in the initial article could happen? Damn right I do. Just imagine a mid-continental plate earthquake say on the New Madrid Fault. Do not believe me? Just check out Uncovering Hidden Hazards in the Mississippi Valley.

Second, this is an old idea. As others have pointed out, it was used to great effect in Kim Stanley Robinson's phenomenal Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy (great science fiction not only because of the science but because of the social, political, interpersonal, and cultural questions it raises).

Third, I find it unconscionable that the scientists (or the writer) didn't consider the possibility that life already exists, or did once exist, on Mars. That final quote -- "we have the chance to spread life beyond its origin" -- is arrogant beyond belief. I suspect that in another century or two (and sooner if we're lucky) the assumption that Earth must be the single "origin" of life will appear as misguided as the belief that Earth was the center of the universe. Yet another example of us stupid humans assuming that the universe exists for our benefit.

This is not to say I'm opposed to extraplanetary colonization or terraforming -- in fact, I think it's critical that, as a species, we ultimately extend ourselves beyond our tiny blue planet. But it would be unconscionable for us to even consider intentionally messing with the climate on Mars until we've determined conclusively that there is no indigineous life. That's not just an ecological argument, it's a scientific one -- if indeed there is life (or evidence of past life) on Mars, the research value would be incalculable. Just think what we could learn about genetics, biology, and evolution if we had access to life that evolved entirely independent of that on our planet. (Or perhaps it didn't evolve independently, giving weight to "panspermia" theories that life can actually be propagated between individual planets and whatnot.)

Considering how long it took us to realize that life survives in some pretty surprising niches on earth -- miles down on the ocean floor, deep inside solid rock, at all kinds of temperature ranges -- I suspect it'll be a long time before we can conclusively declare Mars sterile and even contemplate manipulating the environment. (And that's without even worrying about nonliving attributes of the environment worthy of research, such as geological features.)

Of course, there is some interesting potential here as well. If we do someday terraform Mars, by the time the environment is suitable for higher life we'll probably be pretty good at cloning extinct species and fun stuff like that, so we could turn it into a big nature preserve, Jurassic Park-style. Wouldn't a Canada-like environment be just perfect for those baby woolly mammoth?

Also, this leads me to wonder if we could develop some anti-greenhouse gases that we could use to cool Venus down to habitable levels. If we figured that out, we might also be able to keep ourselves out of trouble if global warming turns out to be the destructive force some have predicted.

So, what am I trying to say? With no habitat to go back to, to repopulate, what's the point of bringing them back?

Will there never be a habitat to go back to? Who's to say that habitat could never be recreated? There is more than double the amount of forest land in New Hampshire than there was at the beginning of the 20'th century. As a result, we are seeing a resurgence in some song bird species, which is a good sign.
And loss of habitat is not the only reason animals go extinct. Wolves were exterminated from the rockies because humans were scared of them. Now there are problems with elk and moose dying of starvation. Is the re-introduction of the wolf to the rockies a bad thing?

The US Geological Survey might have what you need.

Damn it

Not only did I screw up my html, I was wrong.

But then so were you.

The plates are just sliding past each other. At some point, LA will be an island.

San Fran Bay Area

World map

The Mount Pinatubo eruption emitted 42 Megatons of CO2. On the other hand, in 1990, Hawaii emitted 16 Megatons of CO2. As far as I'm aware, the notable emission from Mount Pinatubo was not CO2, but the fact that it created the largest stratospheric SO2 cloud ever observed.

This isn't my area of specialty, so I may have misinterpreted something. My references for my assertations are Pre-Eru ption Vapor in Magma of the Climactic Mount Pinatubo Eruption: Source of the Giant Stratospheric Sulfur Dioxide Cloud regarding Mount Pinatubo, and Table 3.4 - CO2 Emissions in Hawaii by Fuel, 1990 from the Hawaii Greenhouse Gas Inventory.
----------------------------

From http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html:

Emission rates of SO2 from an active volcano range from 10 million tonnes/day according to the style of volcanic activity and type and volume of magma involved. For example, the large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 expelled 3-5 km 3 of dacite magma and injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. The sulfur aerosols resulted in a 0.5-0.6C cooling of the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfate aerosols also accelerated chemical reactions that, together with the increased stratospheric chlorine levels from human-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution, destroyed ozone and led to some of the lowest ozone levels ever observed in the atmosphere.

From http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/glossary.html:

Mount Pinatubo. A volcano in the Philippine Islands that erupted in 1991. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo ejected enough particulate and sulfate aerosol matter into the atmosphere to block some of the incoming solar radiation from reaching Earth's atmosphere. This effectively cooled the planet from 1992 to 1994, masking the warming that had been occurring for most of the 1980s and 1990s.

CO2 and H2O are both powerful greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse warming the global average temperature would be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the big concerns of increasing CO2 concentrations is that if the atmosphere warms up, the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere will also increase. In layman's terms, a warm atmosphere can "hold" more water vapor than a colder atmosphere; see the Clausius Clapyeron equation which shows that saturation vapor pressure (the total "capacity" of the air to "hold" water vapor) increases exponentially with increasing temperature.

As an atmospheric scientist I belive we are carrying on a great experiment, one which has no control experiment to run in parallel. Separating natural climate variability from anthropogenc (man-made) change is one of the biggest challenges we face today. However I encourage anyone who thinks humans aren't having an effect on the environment to take a look at CO2 traces from Mauna Loa which have been kept for over fifty years. There is a steady trend upward that occurs in concert with human emissions. There is little doubt where this CO2 came from.

Concerning the ice ages: variations in the earth's orbit (tilt, eccentricity, precession) are strongly linked with the big ice ages. These occur on scales of tens of thousands of years. However, ice core samples and sea floor samples suggest that the transitions between "normal" climates and "anomalous" climates have happened over only a handful of years, not gradually as was once thought. If we perturb the system hard enough, we could get into another "anomalous" regime (turn off deep convection near Greenland which would shut off the Gulf stream, chilling England etc.).

The truth is, if our climate changes significantly, the earth will keep on turning, millions if not billions of humans may die (think of rising sea levels, mosquito-borne disease etc.), but life will continue. In the end it will not matter who caused what or who was right or who was wrong.

Leigh Orf

Back to what I set out to say, there are many temperature series out there. Some of them go back over one hundred years. Reliable global temperature series don't seem possible in the pre-satelite era. Yes, many European cities have temperature series going back way further than that, and we have cores from the Greenland icecap which give us hints about the local-to-Greenland weather for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still some controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Here are a couple of links:
National Ice Coring Lab This has some ice core data sets, and some perspective on them.

Global Climate Perspectives System These guys have some models and some data up on the web.

Global Temperature Anomolies" This is a NASA site...

This is a fellow who seems to take it as given that the temperatures have increased (I'm still not convinced), but isn't sure about why.

Here is a site put up by some folks who aren't convinced by the popular press coverage of global warming.

I know I've found some much more usefull links in the past, but I can't stumble over them right now. One thing that you want to keep in mind is that ( according to researchers I've talked to) being trendy is vital to getting grant money. If the politicians and the bureaucrats they fund are convinced that global warming is politically significant, you base your grant proposals on the idea that global warming is real, even if the really interesting questions start from another premise. Or, you don't get funded. So while I won't say that anyone is whoring for grants, I will say that the scientific debate might be on rather different terms if it weren't for politics.

BTW, my roommate found this site that should help tell you if you're north or south of DC (at least if you're in an American city).

==

Yeah...that probably IS the reason NASA doesn't want to crash Galileo on Europa...they fear retribution! I did a research paper on Europa not too long ago and I have some links about Europa if anyone is interested.

here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
and here!
sorry if this drags on...some links may not be that great.

Giant Amoeba, 2nd and 3rd picture.

For all you armchair travellers, travelling without moving: MOC Image Atlas, ie. clickable map of Mars with resolutions at most about 1 meter/pixel. There's also a similar thing out of Viking image data, but I can't remember the link.

It's great though, like you were in orbit a la Star Trek and scanning the surface!

While I realize that "Top-n"-style lists like this are subjective, I find it amusing that the Earth Science section mentioned the (relatively insignificant) fact that people sweated out tornadoes in concrete rooms, while ignoring the launches of the Landsat 7 and TERRA spacecraft. The Landsat 7 spacecraft's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus instrument and the TERRA spacecraft's vast array of instruments will be invaluable to Earth scientists studying climate change, urban sprawl, deforestation, drought, famine prediction, and dozens of other scientific disciplines.

I'm not saying that any of the items listed in the review are not noteworthy; I'm just pointing out that the list does not appear to be particularly exhaustive.

I should assume that "Ganymede's Gambit" must refer to some gamble to play the catamite for a time in pursuit of some other goal.

The USGS upgraded the Hector Mines Quake to a 7.1 after reviewing more data.

If you felt it, even a little, go to this questionaire and fill out the form.

-Lung