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What you're describing is an incredibly challenging tasks. One needs several missions to get to better know Europa in general, and specific potential entry areas in particular, first. These missions are going to be expensive and have long lead times. And an actual boring / submersible mission is going to be extremely expensive.

Titan has one main strike against its exploration, that it's so dang far away. But almost everything else about it is tailor-made for exploration. It's ideal for aerocapture. It's trivial to stay aloft, at an altitude of your choice, be it by hot air or lifting gas balloon, blimp (likewise), helicopter, fixed-wing aircraft, tilt-wing aircraft, etc. Low temperatures pose some difficulties but can be nice for electronics, and the rate of heat loss (even in a hot air balloon concept) is so low at such low temperatures that you don't need very big heat sources. The hydrocarbon seas are permanently exposed for whatever means of exploration (aerial, boat, submarine) you choose. Ascent requirements (sample return, for example) are surprisingly low versus a body of that size due to the ability to fly so high in the significant pressure / low gravity environment before needing to fire rockets. And so forth. And there's so darn much we don't know about Titan, perhaps even more than Europa. There's constant complex organic chemistry going on in the upper atmosphere of which we know almost nothing, and probably even some on the surface. There's probable liquid water under the surface and cryovolcanoes that erupt it to the surface. There's earthlike weathering processes done with/to completely different materials, and the entire gas cycle is a giant mystery right now. So yes, I'm pretty excited about whatever mission goes to Titan next.

Too bad the next launch window to Saturn (2018, 4,13km/s delta-V, 8,2 years) is simply not going to happen. : There's not going to be such a low delta-V/time window for a long time - 2020 is 5,18 km/s / 11,0y; 2021 is 4,80km/s / 8,8y; 2024 is 4,81km/s / 10,4y; etc. So if we're lucky maybe we could get the 2021 window (though the increased delta-V reqs would significantly hurt the payload)... otherwise, there won't be a spacecraft getting to Saturn before the mid 2030s. :

A Yellowstone supereruption would wipe out two-thirds of the northern hemisphere. If that have gone off, ashy rain would be the least of our problems.

...believing they'll ride on a dragon's back and live in a magical castle, we give them therapy and some pills.

I recently returned from a vacation, and drove home from the airport to return to my house filled with small robots, vision-enabled game consoles, and mechanized automatons of all kinds. I guess I need some pills.

Sci-fi nerds think they'll ride on a spaceship and live on Mars

No, I don't think I will live on Mars, but I think that some human will, someday. The ultimate distinguishing feature of a human is the extent to which it modifies itself and its environment, so I find it perfectly reasonable to expect that the hostilities of another planet can be overcome with the right technology. There will need to be advances in several fields (rocketry, communications, biotech, medicine, and logistics, to name a few offhand), but we're close.

To make an analogy, if we were walking from New York to Los Angeles, we've probably hit the California state line by now. The road ahead is still going to take a lot of effort, and it's still going to take a long time. We're not done yet, and everybody knows it. There is some uncertainty as to exactly how long it will take to make those last few steps, but perhaps it's time to start thinking about what we'll do when we finally arrive at our destination.

I dream about the leisure society with basic income and healthcare for all, because we already have the technology and resources to do so.

Interesting. Are you actually an expert in what it takes to have a "leisure society with basic income and healthcare for all", and do you understand the sheer amount of resources required to make that happen? And you want that to happen for all people... Let's do some math*.

If we all split everything equally, then every human gets 71,538 square meters. That's it. That's your whole life. From that area's resources, you must derive your "basic income and healthcare" using today's technology.

Of course, much of that is ocean, which really means you only get around 24,000 square meters of land If you want to use the ocean's resources, you'll have to build suitable boats from the resources on the land. About a third of of that area, though, is practically devoid of easily-accessible resources since it's desert. That leaves only about 16,000 square meters of usable land with resources.

Do realize that's a square patch of land about 415 feet on each side. It's roughly double the area of a FIFA-sanctioned international match soccer field, and that is your whole fair share of non-desert land.

Looking toward your "healthcare" need, you only have about 2000 square meters of arable land, most of which overlaps your 5000 square meters of grassland.

For illustration, that's a square patch 146 feet on each side. 1.6 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool, and that's going to feed you (fairly) for your whole life. If you need to grow raw materials for your medicinal needs, that will come out of your food supply. If your "leisure society" includes grilling a steak in the summer, you're going to have to devote quite a lot of your farmland to rais

According to the IAU definition, the north pole for a major planet (or one of its satellites) is the pole on the same side of the ecliptic as the Earth's north pole, the North Celestial Hemisphere. By this definition, Venus and Uranus are retrograde rotators -- they rotate clockwise about their north poles.

For comets and minor planets (including Dwarf planets), the north pole is the pole about which the body rotates counterclockwise. So the north pole of a retrograde-rotating asteroid points into the South Celestial Hemisphere.

This brings us (as do all topics that mention the IAU) to Pluto. Pluto rotates retrograde. It was once considered a major planet, so it's north pole would have been on the same side of the ecliptic as ours. But as a dwarf planet, the opposite definition applies. Even before the 2006 decision, the convention was inconsistently applied. Papers have been published using each definition of the north pole, and they're not always good about stating which convention they used. With New Horizons on the doorstep, we're going to need consistency for mapping and navigation. So I believe the mission has decided to use the current IAU definition consistently to avoid any confusion. There was a huge fight over the coordinate system of Vesta on the Dawn mission, and we don't want that.

Apparently the CDC only has data from 11 States, and Mississippi isn't one of them. Other groups have more data available, but so far the best compilation I've found is at some anti-vax site - http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/wh... Their chart has Mississippi ranked 44th for autism rates, West Virginia is 39th.

And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.

Those are all states where houses commonly have basements, and they are in the hottest zones for radon exposure. Those are all states where a large number of people get their water from wells, and arsenic in the groundwater is a problem. The Radium in groundwater map is tilted towards those 3 states too. When I was a kid in Maine, we drank untreated well water and played in the basement nearly every day.

I think it makes a lot more sense to look at connections between long-term exposure to known toxins and autism.

Apparently the CDC only has data from 11 States, and Mississippi isn't one of them. Other groups have more data available, but so far the best compilation I've found is at some anti-vax site - http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/wh... Their chart has Mississippi ranked 44th for autism rates, West Virginia is 39th.

And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.

Those are all states where houses commonly have basements, and they are in the hottest zones for radon exposure. Those are all states where a large number of people get their water from wells, and arsenic in the groundwater is a problem. The Radium in groundwater map is tilted towards those 3 states too. When I was a kid in Maine, we drank untreated well water and played in the basement nearly every day.

I think it makes a lot more sense to look at connections between long-term exposure to known toxins and autism.

Well, a quick Google search shows you wrong - there is well-documented research into the amount of radioactivity in coal plant emissions. As an example, USGS: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
EPA: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/coalandcoalash.html
and others.

Is it an issue? The released radioactivity from a coal plant is up to 100 times that of a nuclear power plant - but those emissions are so ludicrously low that you can treat it as (100 * 0) = 0. There really isn't a health issue from the emissions.

Mercury, Sulfur, Nitrogen, sure - Radioactivity, not so much.

This is basic high school physics.

Hey, let's see what the experts with more than a high school physics education have to say, which might be more informative than J. Random Dillhole on Slashdot. Hmm, just like the magic 8-Ball, my sources say you're full of shit.

also quite possible. Im no seismic expert by any means. im only going on the limited knowledge I do have that show smaller earthquakes tend to keep bigger ones away

You have no such knowledge. If you did, you could cite it. But you don't. You only have a superstitious idea that it could be true. But in fact, the whole idea is a lot of cockery. Yet, someone brings this bullshit idea up every time we discuss fracking on slashdot, like someone pulled their goddamn cord. Then their mouth flaps and they squawk, but nothing of value is uttered. If you actually wanted to know the truth, you would have googled for it.

Except around extremely large interplate faults, earthquakes are time independent; the chance of there being an earthquake tomorrow depends very little on whether the last earthquake was yesterday or 100 years ago.

As an example, Time-independent and Time-dependent Seismic Hazard Assessment for the State of California: Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast Model 1.0

In this paper we have presented both time-independent and time-dependent probabilities for several faults and statewide ground motion hazard maps for California that show the value of peak ground acceleration with a 10% probability of exceedance for a time period of 30 years starting in 2006. The timedependent maps differ by about 10% to 15% from the timeindependent maps near A-fault sources (figure 4). However, for most of California, located well away from the time-dependent sources, the ground motions are similar.

If fracking is causing seismic activity on interior faults, you're just getting more earthquakes, not reducing the chances of large future ones.

Oh my, thank you for proving my point. Orders of magnitude analysis it is.

Carbon inventory and exchange: we release 10 gigatons of CO2 per year as carbon. Natural inventory in the atmosphere is on the order of 1,000 gigatons (I've seen lower and higher), natural inventory above the thermocline of the ocean is 1,000 gigatons, and below the thermocline it's 150,000 gigatons. Annual interchange from biological ecosystem interactions is estimated at 150 gigatons (90 sea, 60 air). All of these estimates have an error within the annual anthropogenic CO2 release.

Regarding volcanoes undersea, there are an estimated 30,000 of them, and if you look at Klauea, you'll see even a relatively small volcano that is close to the ocean surface could in theory generate 600 MW of electricity, which means that it's about 1.8 GW of thermal energy. Multiply by 30,000 and you have 60,000 GW of heat released to the ocean. Which converts to an annual energy of 525 TW-h, The annual world consumption is 142 TW-h. Variations in that much energy could lead to a tremendous amount of heat added to the ocean, which would affect the global temperature.

That's the back of my envelope, care to share yours that would state unequivocally that it's not a possible contributor? You (or anyone else) can't because the data aren't acquired.

Hence the need for more rigorous science and dropping terms like 'denier.'

It wouldn't have "seeped out", but you're on the right track. hydrogen + oxygen + energy = water. and water + energy = hydrogen + oxygen. We understand a lot of the surface chemical processes on this planet. We don't understand all the subterranean processes, but we have an idea.

Non-terrestrial bodies can carry water. Landing on a single comet and saying "no comets have Earth-like water" is like saying "We've only found life on Earth, therefore no other life exists."

I think some people have a very homogenous view of the universe. Once you've sampled a few, you've sampled them all.

Even on the Earth, there isn't a lot of water. This may give a better visualization.

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/earthhowmuch.html

Here is the paper I mentioned, and here is the USGS's take on the matter. From what I understand there are a number of ways to estimate human CO2 output, one being to add up all the fossil fuels that are being consumed globally, which is likely not terribly accurate but we're still talking about two or three orders of magnitude difference. Another estimation method uses carbon isotope ratios. I get the impression that estimating volcanic emissions is somewhat difficult, but there's a fair amount of continuous monitoring for various reasons. Terrence Gerlach, a vulcanologist with the USGS, seems to have done quite a bit of research into the subject. The nice thing about scholarly publications is that they have to tell you where the numbers come from; if one wants to find out more about either part of the estimates then you just follow the references.

In summation, parts of the estimates come from direct measurements and the other parts seem to be estimates based on fossil fuel consumption. I am sure that there's a whole world of study out there for estimating various factors.

As an aside, humans are still far from matching or exceeding the most violent outgassings that have resulted from the formation of Large Igneous Provinces. I believe the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps released about 3 orders of magnitude more CO2 than humanity has liberated. While our current burn rate would have us match those outgassings in about a thousand years, I don't believe that our fossil fuel reserves are projected to last that long. However, Large Igneous Provinces generally took millions of years to form, not hundreds; there is every reason to believe that what we are doing to the planet is unprecedented. On the other other hand, we're mostly skipping the problems with particulate matter and sulfides that came along with volcanic eruptions. For what it's worth.

Here is the paper I mentioned, and here is the USGS's take on the matter. From what I understand there are a number of ways to estimate human CO2 output, one being to add up all the fossil fuels that are being consumed globally, which is likely not terribly accurate but we're still talking about two or three orders of magnitude difference. Another estimation method uses carbon isotope ratios. I get the impression that estimating volcanic emissions is somewhat difficult, but there's a fair amount of continuous monitoring for various reasons. Terrence Gerlach, a vulcanologist with the USGS, seems to have done quite a bit of research into the subject. The nice thing about scholarly publications is that they have to tell you where the numbers come from; if one wants to find out more about either part of the estimates then you just follow the references.

In summation, parts of the estimates come from direct measurements and the other parts seem to be estimates based on fossil fuel consumption. I am sure that there's a whole world of study out there for estimating various factors.

As an aside, humans are still far from matching or exceeding the most violent outgassings that have resulted from the formation of Large Igneous Provinces. I believe the Deccan Traps and Siberian Traps released about 3 orders of magnitude more CO2 than humanity has liberated. While our current burn rate would have us match those outgassings in about a thousand years, I don't believe that our fossil fuel reserves are projected to last that long. However, Large Igneous Provinces generally took millions of years to form, not hundreds; there is every reason to believe that what we are doing to the planet is unprecedented. On the other other hand, we're mostly skipping the problems with particulate matter and sulfides that came along with volcanic eruptions. For what it's worth.

The amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere is easily measurable, and it matches with the observed increase in CO2 in air, water, and biomass. It's about 40 billion tons per year now: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/GCP/carb...

The amount of CO2 naturally emitted by volcanoes and forest fires and such is a bit harder to calculate but you can get reasonable order-of-magnitude estimates. Volcanoes, for instance, emit about 0.3 billion tons per year. There are lots of sources on the US geological survey page: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/haza...

No matter how you slice it, even the most outlandish estimates for CO2 from natural sources fall 1-2 orders of magnitude short of the amount of CO2 necessary to explain the global increase.

There are natural CO2 absorbing sources but the additional amount they absorb each year is tiny.

We screwed up the ozone layer but are already well along the way to fix it. reference

We can create conditions favorable for earthquakes (fracking) and we can redirect lava flows. reference

The reason why people think climate can not be engineered is ignorance.

Translation:

It's too much for me to actually research this issue, so I will make some shit up about how the prior poster is clearly batshit for pointing out that there are whole classifications of asteroid that are nearly completely pure metal, and that the composition of these objects ranges from 15% iron-nickel alloy to near 100% iron-nickel alloy.

Instead I will focus on how the OP stated that there are asteroids made of solid cold, and focus on how battshit that is! Nevermind that even really old USGS circulars cite the average gold content of meteorites between .0003 PPM and 8.74PPM, with the average gold concentration of earth's crust being between .001 PPM and .006 PPM , which indicates that careful candidate screening would produce far richer old ores than can be obtained here on earth! That's not important! HE'S A SPACE NUTTER!

He's such a nutter! Hoo boy! See everybody, See me shout it from the rooftop? He's a NUTTER, A NUTTER!

I said it, and said it again, that makes it true! TRUE I SAID! TRUE!

Oh gawd, it's wierd again! The KING space nutter! AND HE'S BRINGING SCIENCE IN ON THIS! OMG! SUPER SPACE NUTTER! SPAAAACE NUUTTTER! (Did I get enough vapid spittle in that?)

Seriously AC- YOU are the one who sounds like the true believer. No amount of plausibility study will ever dislodge your diehard faith that humans will never get off this rock, and because of your faith, you want to sabotage others that lack your convictions, all so you can (Maybe, sorta) get something that you want that is at best equally improbable (A happy future leisure-society utopia, from your own admission) and at worst delusionally impossible (Since you hand-wave away all the consequences of your proposal as being solvable by mystery science, even when real scientists outright say that this is not possible, and that expecting science and technology to just whisk it away is not being realistic, and then have the gall to claim being a realist.)

So go ahead, demonize me some more. Hurl more poorly structured ad hominems my way. Repeating a lie a thousand times does not make it true-- Maybe if you keep huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, and laughing like a hyena on nitrous oxide, you will eventually have a cerebreal embolism and spare us all the misery of your continued postings.

FYI here's a link to the same map but with a much better view of the swarm in question.

There is not much in that area except sagebrush and antelopes. The geologic survey found nothing of economic interest: a lot of old basalt flows. There are some wildlife study areas. It is an 8 hour drive from San Francisco, the same from Portland OR, and hundreds of miles from any fracking activity.

I've been watching this swarm on the USGS World Earthquake Map. If it were not so inaccessible, I'd drive out there, but to do that safely would require carrying jerry cans of gas, and water and food for several days. This place is way back of beyond.

The leader in fake news. Make up something, Make it loud. "Just the facts, Ma'am" - Joe Friday, AKA Jack Webb. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...{%22feed%22%3A%227day_m25%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A[[30.221101852485987%2C-131.30859375]%2C[43.229195113965005%2C-106.69921875]]%2C%22overlays%22%3A{%22plates%22%3Atrue}%2C%22viewModes%22%3A{%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Afalse%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse}}

I believe your cost estimates are greatly overestimated, but I did not actually address that subject. I don't really care what gets done or how much it costs, honestly, just that something happens. It's probably too late for my home to ever look the same again, but maybe yours will not be too badly affected. For more information about possible mitigation strategies, I would consult the IPCC report. However, you should know that your theory of no-feedbacks was the prevailing theory about seventy years ago, and it's taken a long time for scientists to come around to the idea that people/CO2 can affect the climate in a noticeable way; this did not happen without evidence. Everyone is hoping that we can find some physical system that lets us ignore atmospheric CO2 levels. Also, an increase in the global average does not imply an equal distribution of heat; temperatures in the Arctic have already warmed by 2 degrees C. There are a lot of other very visible changes, but I don't feel like going into them at the moment.

Simple models show that the CO2-water vapor feedback loop can lead to almost arbitrary temperatures; obviously that is not observed. Scientific predictions have their limitations, but my powers are even more limited; I know I do not have the decades of experience necessary to evaluate either the observations or the climate models. I would strongly advise against the application of "common sense" to massive chaotic system, however: getting the number of butterfly wing-flaps wrong could produce very unexpected weather conditions. To give an example, take a piece of Arctic tundra. You heat up the Earth, making the underlying permafrost melt. This releases a lot of carbon from sudden decomposition. The land then subsides and creates a swamp. Swamps are good at trapping carbon, but you've also changed the albedo so that the land absorbs more sunlight. Does this result in an overall warming effect, or cooling effect, and in what kind of time frame? The only thing that you can know about these sorts of problems without tons of research is that any simple answer is probably wrong.

Personally, I think that an appropriate first step might be to stop subsidizing oil and gas companies to the tune of tens of billions of dollars per year. Another important step would be to change building standards so that heating and cooling are more efficient -- the cost of heating in an Alaskan winter is mind-blowing, just because it's cheaper for the construction company. Similarly, many homes are designed so that air conditioning is a necessity, rather than using passive cooling techniques. Hopefully electric cars will be able to compete on their own merits, but it would be nice to not subsidize auto manufacturers (the numbers I saw worked out to about $30 billion for the industry) to keep making internal combustion engines. Introducing some sort of carbon tax for manufacturers may or may not be a good idea -- I'm not an economist either, but I'm given to understand that markets are bad about pricing externalities -- but it may not even be necessary. It may be that if we stop giving handouts to massively polluting industries, green technologies will prove to be more efficient and competitive. If not, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

You're pretty much the embodiment of this article. Because you don't like the solution, you are pretending like there isn't a problem. I can't tell you definitively if there will be a huge problem, but the best available science seems to point that way. However, you also seem to be listening to extremist rhetoric about possible solutions, and I am pretty sure that there are a lot of very reasonable things that would improve world regardless of whether there was a climate change issue, and might make a significant difference there as well.

Okay, I am mathematically incompetent. That does not make me a troll. If you think that I am mathematically incompetent, then please explain what is wrong with what I am saying.

OK. So let's say 1 gram of water is used per person per year to make lots of energy. For entire population, that is 9Gg or 9,000 tons or about 9x10^-6 cubic kilometers. Let's even round up and say 1x10^-5 cubic kilometers. The earth has

http://water.usgs.gov/edu/eart...

1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers

So, divide the two numbers to get number of years we can use water for fusion before we run out of water,

1,386,000,000
------------------
0.00001

= 138,600,000,000,000 years

or 138 trillion years. So, age of the Universe is about 14 billion years. So water will last on Earth for power purposes for almost 10000 longer than the age of the Universe.

So now assume we use energy at 10000x that rate. Which means about 250GWh/person/year. That means we can only use water for about 14 billion years before we run out. Basically, one full sized nuclear reactor per person running full tilt for the life of the universe.

Is that now clear why you were modded troll? Your concerns are quite preposterous if you think about them for more than a few seconds. The sun will run out of hydrogen first!

Here's an excellent bit from the USGS on just how the model works with lots of intermediate steps to show how they get the final model:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2000/o...

Sam

thank you for this... this sort of thing is exactly what we need to start discussing this scientifically. Past records. Very good. Good man.

You seem to have an agenda.

When I linked you to the movies of the tagged Walruses this year and 2012, that show that they did hit the land when the last of the ice disappeared, you didn't thank me, you just made a claim that the sea ice wasn't shrinking, and some straw man about acidification irritating the bodies of walruses.

Don't you think the specific sea ice data with respect to the location of the population of the Pacific Walruses is a better place to start that the blog of a scientist with an agenda talking generalities?

thank you for this... this sort of thing is exactly what we need to start discussing this scientifically. Past records. Very good. Good man.

You seem to have an agenda.

When I linked you to the movies of the tagged Walruses this year and 2012, that show that they did hit the land when the last of the ice disappeared, you didn't thank me, you just made a claim that the sea ice wasn't shrinking, and some straw man about acidification irritating the bodies of walruses.

Don't you think the specific sea ice data with respect to the location of the population of the Pacific Walruses is a better place to start that the blog of a scientist with an agenda talking generalities?

The funny thing: this event is provably NOT caused by ice loss.

Funny thing, the scientists who are tracking these Walruses at USGS say it IS

http://polarbearscience.com/20... [polarbearscience.com]

Do you think a blogger in the pay of the Heartland Institute is going to be a neutral source on the consequences of climate change?

That page has papers about this occurring in the seventies.

Only one this large in the entirety of last century. And but they have been common in 6 of the last 8 years.

so by this theory, the walruses should beach when the ice is at its lowest.

No, when the edge of the marginal ice near Alaska is beyond the continental shelf.

I can cite evidence to that effect if you like. So you don't even have correlation much less causation.

Please do.

But notice that in 2012, there Walruses, (at least those that were tagged) stayed on a marginal ice flow off the Coast of Alaska until the end of September..

That's the significant thing, Not entire northern hemisphere sea ice extent.

I am simply not one the koolaid drinkers and halfwits chanting along to your mantra. That does not make me wrong, evil, or ignorant.

In this case, you appear to be wrong and ignorant at least. Evil is in the eye of the beholder, but people like you aren't helping the planet. But I agree that we have a correlation and not causation. The causation is probably in the other direction.

I'm not sure of the providence of this citation but it looks authentic.

It's a paper from 1980 about a haulout event in 1978.

The highlighting is done by a person in the pay of the heartland institute, so it likely to be pushing a particularly unscientific agenda. But the paper exists in the scholarly literature. You can often check out the provenance of scholarly papers if you have an internet connection and access to google scholar.

Consider that this might be a normal behavior pattern amongst walruses.

From the first line of your linked paper: In October-November 1978, several thousand living walruses came ashore in at least four localities on St. Lawrence Island where they had not been present before in this century.

There's a strong implication in that that it is not normal behavior.
Note also that the Walruses themselves were not normal: Nearly all of the dead were extremely lean, having less than half as much subcutaneous fat as healthy animals examined in previous years.

I am quite humble about my understandings of their natures. You would do well to be equally humble.

Okay, The scientists at USGS have said that this is due to the retreat of the sea ice, and you humble claim that this is wrong?
I'm not sure that you're using this word "humble" correctly.

It appears for example that this walrus statement comes mostly from the WWF.

It appears to most people that it comes from the US Geological Survey. But the initial findings were by scientists working for NOAA's Aerial Surveys of Arctic Marine Mammals.

That is not a scientific organization but rather an environmental activist organization.

WWF fund and perform a lot of conservation science. But it was the USGS, which is a scientific organization that published the link to climate change.

I am not saying they are wrong but they have a history of very biased analysis.

Such as?

The most extreme example I think would be the application of the Drake Equation to species extinction rates.

I must have missed that press release. Do you have a link to it?

The author of the equation itself disavows it.

I didn't know that. Where did you read that?

That is how you get numbers like "5 million species extinct this year." They're using the drake equation. No organization that uses that equation with a straight face can be taken seriously. Period.

It's not obvious how the Drake Equation, which calculates the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which radio-communication might be possible, could be made to yield "5 million species extinct this year." And that number seems about two orders of magnitude greater than the largest of estimates I've seen. The WWF speculates that we might be losing [10,000 per year](http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/), which is nearer three orders of magnitude lower than that number.

So I look forward to you pointing me to this press release that makes all their other work not to be taken seriously in your eyes.

Because I can't find it.

No, they explained why they guess that. If they did science they'd look at past records and see if they beached themselves in past periods of low ice.

Okay. What makes you think they didn't?

In this case we have periods with less ice then today and they didn't beach themselves.

Big claim. The article doesn't have many of the specific details. Can you show me:

1) At what time the ice extent is believed to be sensitive to walrus haulouts on land in late September
2) How think the ice needs to be to support the Walruses
3) The source data that you have that shows that the ice of that thickness was further from Alaska in periods in which there were no land Haul-outs

We also have periods of more ice where they did.

Are you claiming that all land haul-outs have the same cause?
Do you have any scientific basis for this claim?

So... you see the problem.

Not yet. These guys study these Walruses. They're not just guessing from that news article.

If you look at the movement of the tagged Walruses in the very low ice year of 2012, you can see that a "marginal" sea ice pack remains off the shore of Alaska that they remain with until late September, even though the sea ice extent has retreated far north.

This year even the marginal ice left that area by the start of September, and the Walruses headed to Alaska.

And the first link is that "A" Walruses beach themselves is linked to "B" low sea ice... which fails on analysis.

You haven't convinced me that your analysis is sophisticated enough. I think you're using Northern Summer sea ice extent, where extent is where there is 15% or more sea ice. The Walrus tracking that these scientists have been doing shows that a Walrus can haul out on a block of ice that is more sparse than that.

So you can't even get to "C" which is "because global warming"... Because the link between low sea ice and walruses doesn't pan out.

I don't think sea ice is the only effect on the ecosystem of AGW up there.

Acidification might be causing them to alter where they can find food.

Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the ocean was also depleting the walruses' food supply, making the waters too corrosive for the clams and other shellfish that are their staple.

They have beached themselves with more ice and not beached themselves with less ice. So "less ice" = "beaching" fails.

Okay. Where is your Walrus- sufficient sea ice data?

I'd like to check it because it looks a lot like you're just fucking assuming that it is the same as the sea ice extent, and it looks like you're assuming that the whole hemisphere's extent is a good proxy for the near Alaska sea ice.

Do the fucking science and stop assuming things.

Quite

No, they explained why they guess that. If they did science they'd look at past records and see if they beached themselves in past periods of low ice.

Okay. What makes you think they didn't?

In this case we have periods with less ice then today and they didn't beach themselves.

Big claim. The article doesn't have many of the specific details. Can you show me:

1) At what time the ice extent is believed to be sensitive to walrus haulouts on land in late September
2) How think the ice needs to be to support the Walruses
3) The source data that you have that shows that the ice of that thickness was further from Alaska in periods in which there were no land Haul-outs

We also have periods of more ice where they did.

Are you claiming that all land haul-outs have the same cause?
Do you have any scientific basis for this claim?

So... you see the problem.

Not yet. These guys study these Walruses. They're not just guessing from that news article.

If you look at the movement of the tagged Walruses in the very low ice year of 2012, you can see that a "marginal" sea ice pack remains off the shore of Alaska that they remain with until late September, even though the sea ice extent has retreated far north.

This year even the marginal ice left that area by the start of September, and the Walruses headed to Alaska.

And the first link is that "A" Walruses beach themselves is linked to "B" low sea ice... which fails on analysis.

You haven't convinced me that your analysis is sophisticated enough. I think you're using Northern Summer sea ice extent, where extent is where there is 15% or more sea ice. The Walrus tracking that these scientists have been doing shows that a Walrus can haul out on a block of ice that is more sparse than that.

So you can't even get to "C" which is "because global warming"... Because the link between low sea ice and walruses doesn't pan out.

I don't think sea ice is the only effect on the ecosystem of AGW up there.

Acidification might be causing them to alter where they can find food.

Increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in the ocean was also depleting the walruses' food supply, making the waters too corrosive for the clams and other shellfish that are their staple.

They have beached themselves with more ice and not beached themselves with less ice. So "less ice" = "beaching" fails.

Okay. Where is your Walrus- sufficient sea ice data?

I'd like to check it because it looks a lot like you're just fucking assuming that it is the same as the sea ice extent, and it looks like you're assuming that the whole hemisphere's extent is a good proxy for the near Alaska sea ice.

Do the fucking science and stop assuming things.

Quite

Records of human civilization go back over 3000 years. Industrial civilization goes back less than 200. A good starting point is the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, the first non-demo steam passenger railway. There were earlier locomotives, but this is the moment the industrial revolution got out of beta and started changing people's lives.

Only in the last 80 years or so has human exploitation of natural resources been able to significantly deplete them. Prior to WWII, human efforts just couldn't make a big dent in the planet. Things have picked up since then.

There are lots of arguments over when we start running out of key resource. But the arguments are over decades, not centuries or millenia. The USGS issues mineral commodity summaries. There are decades of resources left for most minerals, but a lot of things run out within 200 years. Mining lower and lower grade ores requires more and more effort and energy. For many minerals, that's already happened. People once found gold nuggets on the surface of the earth. The deepest gold mine is now 4 miles deep.

For many minerals, the easy to extract ores were used up long ago. Industrial civilization got going based on copper, lead, iron, and coal found in high concentrations on or near the surface. All those resources were mined first, and are gone. You only get one chance at industrial civilization per planet.

Civilization can go on, but it will have to be more bio-based than mining-based. Energy isn't the problem; there are renewable sources of energy. Metals can be recycled, but you lose some every round. It's not clear what this planet will look like in a thousand years. It's clear that a lot of things will be scarcer.

(And no, asteroid mining probably won't help much.)

Well, if you only want to consider what is temporarily in the air, we'd want to see if the lawn watering promoted be electricity use cuts normal dust concentration enough to reduce the overall load. Coal ash has raw chemical edges and is less healthy than dust from the ground for that reason. But the radiation aspect is unimportant. You can read more details here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/f...

The reefs in the Caribbean have been dying for decades, but not from acidification.

About a quarter of the way down on this page, http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/201... , you can see what happens as the stony corals die off. The branches of the corals break off and no longer supply refuge to small fish from predators. And there's less ... well ... hard stuff in the way to slow down waves. It's kind of depressing to snorkel or dive in Florida since you can see all the old coral skeletons lying on the ocean floor, slowly being covered with silt. While, of the three images, the one on the right looks the most vibrant, most of what you're seeing is soft coral (no calcium carbonate skeleton) and sponges that are, you know, spongy. Soft corals provide little or no protection to juvenile or feeder fish.

Optimistically, here in Denver three feet of ash on the roof would be like 30 feet of snow.

http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature... THe Yellowstone hot spot does indeed move. Some info on the Hawaiian hotspot also, http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynam... You could go all pedantic on me and say that the spots don't move, the land over them does. But that would be nicking at pits.

Pseudoscience. http://water.usgs.gov/edu/dows...

The magnitude of a quake is the total energy released at the epicenter, and it's true that you can't estimate the magnitude from feel since you have no idea of the distance. But the intensity is the amount of shaking at a particular location, and is probably what bazmonkey was talking about.

Was strong enough to wake me up in San Francisco too, but not strong enough to bring anything down. There are some maps from the USGS that shows that it was a lot stronger in American Canyon than it was here.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...

Was strong enough to wake me up in San Francisco too, but not strong enough to bring anything down. There are some maps from the USGS that shows that it was a lot stronger in American Canyon than it was here.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...

A medium 5+ quake in Iceland near the Bárðarbunga Volcano, which is under half a kilometre of ice
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...

Since it might take a few hours before the complete outcome is clear, USGS does make automated prediction of casualties and damages, based on earthquake magnitude, location and population in the area. The result in this case is most likely no casualties, with a small chance for up to 10 people killed, and a most likely damage of somewhere between 100M$ and 1B$.

There was a 6.0 earthquake in the Napa Valley area near San Francisco today 2014-08-24 03:20:44 UTC-07:00. Could the changes mentioned in the LATimes story contribute to movement along the San Andreas Fault? http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear...{%22feed%22%3A%227day_m25%22%2C%22search%22%3Anull%2C%22sort%22%3A%22newest%22%2C%22basemap%22%3A%22grayscale%22%2C%22autoUpdate%22%3Atrue%2C%22restrictListToMap%22%3Atrue%2C%22timeZone%22%3A%22local%22%2C%22mapposition%22%3A[[30.221101852485987%2C-131.30859375]%2C[43.229195113965005%2C-106.69921875]]%2C%22overlays%22%3A{%22plates%22%3Atrue}%2C%22viewModes%22%3A{%22map%22%3Atrue%2C%22list%22%3Afalse%2C%22settings%22%3Atrue%2C%22help%22%3Afalse}} Sorry for the huge URL.

You mean this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/ear... ?

Timely,

I guess it depends upon what you mean by the "primary purpose". Curiosity has met many, if not practically all, of it's primary goals within the landing ellipse, and it has traversed out of it. All of that was hoped to be achieved in the nominal mission lasting 1 Mars year (~2 Earth years), duration-wise. The thing is, what the selection process referred to as "go to" targets were also considered outside of the landing ellipse and factored into the final choice of the landing site. In Gale's case, the biggest "go to" target was the slope of Mount Sharp/Aeolis Mons. There's some cool-looking stratigraphy on those slopes, and that was one of the siren calls drawing scientists to chose Gale over the others. Some of those outside-the-ellipse "go to" targets have just been reached to date, in the outcrops on Gale crater's floor where bedrock is exposed, but the big one, the slope itself, is still not reached. It will happen within the longer mission, assuming it keeps going at the present rate. That's the good news from the wheel assessment. It will be slower going, but they think they will get there. But until then I still think that one of the primary reasons for visiting this site has not been met.

I like your emendment to the analogy, or maybe we can argue about whether the slope constitutes the main course or the dessert ("bonus"?), I suppose. Whatever the analogy chosen, the advocates for the Gale site always talked about the idea of following the stratigraphy and the changes in it up the sides of that peak that are detectable remotely (e.g., the apparent transition from clays to sulphates). If the mission doesn't actually get there in the end, I still argue that would be a significant disappointment. The lure was that a HUGE amount of stratigraphy was exposed and accessible compared to other sites where the exposure was much thinner.

Tons more on the selection process if people are interested. Unfortunately that article is behind a paywall, but if you search for "MSL site selection" you'll find plenty of other materials, including this one.

.

The unmentionable.

Companies like Synagro and WeCare Organics take municipal waste and deposit it on farm fields where your food is grown.

There is a lot of money in this - the kitty is so rich, sometimes back room deals are made to keep the gravy train rolling and sludge hauling contracts active.

Powerful lobbies, such as the WEF and AWWA "educate" the political establishment to keep nutrient standards low.

Look up what happened in the Chesapake Bay....

Algae blooms are the inevitable result.

On the other side, people have been trying for years to get labeling standards improved so consumers can make informed choices as to if they want to eat food grown in sludge, but year over year the bill dies in committee. The opposing side doesn't have the money to counter the powerful WEF lobby, so congressional masters kill the bill in committee every year its introduced.

One can only hope is that now that algae blooms are happening with greater frequency and more people are being impacted, that new nutrient standards will become the norm and this sludge spreading nonsense will end.

You mean where they've been at the highest point in a decade....

A decade is an awfully small sample size for resources which can have replenishment schedules measured in centuries:

Natural refilling of deep aquifers is a slow process because groundwater moves slowly through the unsaturated zone and the aquifer. The rate of recharge is also an important consideration. It has been estimated, for example, that if the aquifer that underlies the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico—an area of slight precipitation—was emptied, it would take centuries to refill the aquifer at the present small rate of replenishment. In contrast, a shallow aquifer in an area of substantial precipitation such as those in the coastal plain in south Georgia, USA, may be replenished almost immediately.

Source: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleinfiltration.html

Numerous sources were provided with hard numbers, and sources you've linked yourself even show that while coal has similar concentrations to soil, that the ash concentrates this by ten. When the vast majority of the US has surface concentrations below 5 ppm, you can't argue that examples of 15+ ppm is not higher concentration unless you can't count. If you want to argue fly ash is soil, might was well argue the waste at Mayak facility is just soil too.

You seem to have the radon situation backwards too. "The emanation of radon gas from fly ash is less than from natural soil of similar uranium content. " http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/f...

You are getting thing backwards and mixed up. You don't seem to be able to understand the sources you've cited. There are many reasons not to burn fossil fuels, but their use does cut radiation exposure. The nuclear industry has marred its credibility by claiming otherwise. It does the same thing when it claims there are no pipes under Vermont Yankee. You should come to understand that they can't be trusted. That they have been entrusted with the safekeeping of nuclear power plants is a very grave mistake.

Confusing mercury chemistry with the essentially glassy behavior of uranium is a problem for you I think

There was no confusion of mercury chemistry with uranium chemistry, as there was no equating of the two. The mention of mercury was merely another example of how you can't assume heavy metals will not end up in the fly ash. This had no bearing on the statement about uranium in fly ash, which is going off of the straight numbers. You can find the source for that USGS report which spells out the components for feed coal and both types of ash if you don't want to do the math yourself, and you can see there is a clear concentration factor of ten, goes from the amount in the coal that is slightly below average but in the range of typical soil values, to the fly ash which is six times larger than average uranium levels in soil. The statement about uranium getting fixed in peat is also a direct statement about uranium, and not from any analogy involving mercury.

You can even look at specific survey maps of surface soil and rocks and find that the areas around Kentucky has average levels of thorium around 10 ppm, uranium at 3 ppm, with a few areas to the south having above average uranium still working out to ~5 ppm.

Let's consider that for typical coal that is 75% carbon, that we'll ignore the carbon cycle beyond the fact that only half of the carbon produced ends up in the atmosphere, and we'll assume the Seuss effect is a full 30% dilution of carbon from the change in atmospheric carbon. Background carbon is about 200 Bq/kg, and so a kilogram of coal contributing to that dilution gave about 200*0.75*0.5*0.3=22.5 Bq/kg reduction of atmospheric C14. This is on par with the amount of radon at 20-30 Bq/kg in coal, so completely ignoring uranium or any other scrubbed materials, it is already pretty close to breakeven in terms of activity (considering Radon is a high energy alpha emitter and C14 is a lower energy beta, the difference in exposure between the two, even considering the committed dose of C14 being incorporated into the body, is huge). There are still several Bq of uranium and thorium that would get through 99% efficient scrubbers, and ~10 Bq/kg of potassium-40, another couple Bq/kg for polonium (the daughter products of uranium and thorium tend to be more radioactive than the uranium and thorium itself). At that point, you can just act as if every carbon atom that stays in the atmosphere from coal displaces C14 instead of just diluting it, and still get it being at best breakeven.

And yes, the USGS says they are not significantly enriched. If you want to call that not significant, then the reduction of C14 would be considered insignificant also... especially considering you could remove all C14 from the environment and still make a less than 1% change to average human radiation exposure.

Considering that seismic surveying of this type has happened historically on all coastlines of the US, yes, there's plenty of exaggeration going on.