The 'hyperdrive' is basically just subspace drive. This will be helpful for short trips to Mars or Jupiter but would not be useful for interstellar trips. What is needed is Warp Drive where space-time is continuously folded 'warped' allowing the spacecraft to achieve relativistic velocities greater than the speed of light.
The waste on those ships comes from businesses that have either consigned it to shady transporters or have knowingly sent it directly to the ship dumpers. In the United States, the RCRA law requires 'cradle-to-grave' responsibility for the waste with signed manifests to licensed transporters and disposal operations at each step. The waste generator retains final responsibility for the waste wherever it ends up. There is therefore no incentive for a waste generator (i.e. the business that created the waste) to send it away with a ship dumper because it would eventually be found and traced back to its source requiring expensive cleanup and re-disposal at a licensed site, not to mention the very stiff criminal and civil penalties for the individuals responsible...i.e. those who signed the waste manifests.
People here say this was the "brave" thing to do but living is always harder than dying. I don't know what the man's condition was but thousands of people every day are diagnosed with serious terminal illnesses and face their fate with courage and dignity, without the need to kill themselves as they leave the doctor's office. Millions more live (not die) every day with major disabilities and handicaps that make their lives more difficult than it would be for someone who was in "perfect" condition. This man put a shotgun to his head and left his friends and family to deal with a bloody mess to remember him by. His final legacy will be 'he blew his brains out' that will overshadow his lifetime accomplishments and leave his descendants with a permanent memory of suicide.
These companies never 'detach' from the capital and credit markets that they need to stay in business. They enjoy access to free and fair markets supported by the U. S. Constitution. Investors and lenders to such companies depend on financial and accounting standards along with required public disclosures of financial information. When someone threatens to steal their IP or violate a contract they are a party to, they expect access to a fair and impartial court system backed by a stable political system. Let's see them 'detach' from those things...not likely. Being located in the United States is an enormous advantage for these companies and they know it. They just don't want us to know it.
At their core, Microsoft has always been much more interested in applications than in systems software and that's why they have historically been slow to recognize paradigm shifts in the user space...such as when the internet appeared and they were late in providing tcp/ip for Windows. Microsoft originally provided applications development tools and backed into providing systems software only when IBM wanted an OS (DOS 1.0) for their then-new PC. Microsoft has released several new iterations of Windows but their heart has never been into it like it has been for Excel or Halo 3. The biggest reason that people still buy Windows is because it runs Microsoft Office and a big part of 'updating' Windows is to ensure that the newest Office will only run on the newest Windows. So...taking the long point of view, it might be that Windows (but not Micrsoft) is looking at a setting sun but Microsoft will always be very strong in applications and applications development...because that's what they do well.
The judge should ask the RIAA lawyer, 'If 'perpetual' isn't fair, then what is fair?' One year, 5 years, 20 years, whatever we say, or until we go out of business?
Adobe began using javascript in their reader beginning with v7 and that has opened up this whole new world of security issues. Wouldn't it be better if the 'reader' just rendered a static file and didn't run embedded script?
'Venerate' -- "to look upon with feelings of deep respect; revere" (Websters New World Dictionary)
There's nothing wrong with venerating St. Mary...or St. Paul...or St Joseph...or St. Patrick...or any of the saints. Catholics do not 'stumble into polytheism' which would be heresy. None of the saints are ever considered by Catholics (or any Christian) to be divine. Saints are mere mortal people who have gone before us and lived their lives with an exceptionally strong faith. Saints are people who have wrestled with evil...and triumphed.
Yes, it does. The resurrection of Jesus is described in all 4 gospels (Matthew Chapter 28, Mark Chapter 16, Luke Chapter 24, and John Chapter 20 and 21) and these chapters from the 4 gospels are all included in the Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex Sinaiticus version of Mark Chapter 16 omits the longer ending (verses 9-20) which describes the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Mary and the disciples but verses 1-8 that ARE included describe the visit of Mary and Mary Magdalene to the empty tomb where they encounter the angel who tells them that Jesus has been raised and is on his way to Galilee where they will see him. The appearance of the resurrected Jesus to various people in Galilee and elsewhere is included in the other three gospels that are included in the Codex Sinaiticus. Keep in mind also that the Codex Sinaiticus, while a very fine example of an early bible, is not considered the primary or 'best' source for the New Testament gospels which would generally be accepted to be the slightly older Codex Vaticanus. The greatest importance of Codex Sinaiticus is that it is the most complete grouping of biblical writings found at such an early date.
St. Paul wrote 14 letters (epistles) to various groups/individuals that are included in the New Testament. St. Paul certainly alludes to the resurrection (cfa Romans 6:4) but he doesn't really write about it. Mostly he is writing to new Christian faith communities in different cities about what it means to live life as a Christian. The four gospels ('good news') described the events surrounding the resurrection and the resurrection itself and were written after St. Paul's letters, beginning with the Gospel of Mark which was written in approximately 70 AD. St. Paul was martyred by beheading in Rome in 67 AD and is buried at St. Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome.
they say that the ratio of nitrogen isotopes in these comets almost exactly matches the ratio in Earth's atmosphere. That suggests that while Earth's oceans must have come from somewhere else, Earth's early atmosphere was probably seeded by comets.
Or the nitrogen in the comets and the nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere had a common origin which seems much more likely, the story title notwithstanding.
The Microsoft approach with all of the desktop computers networked together is becoming fabulously expensive for support, maintenance, installation, and security. The 'mainframe' computer still connects the desktops but the good stuff (apps and data) is on the 'mainframe' rather than the local desktops so most of the support, maintenance, installation, and security is done on a few of the 'mainframes' rather than the thousands of desktops. The cost advantages of that are so enormous that Microsoft should be attempting to find a way to play in that space by buying companies rather than bellyaching about the anti-competitiveness of IBM. Microsoft has never figured out what they want to do, anyway...video games, corporate computing, home multimedia centers, small business computing, or what? Microsoft wants to do everything but they don't do anything very well.
Maybe you're doing most of your chatting on the cell but there's still some good reasons for a landline:
1) home fax machine 2) landline more likely to function in an emergency as cell systems usually overload and are unavailable 3) landline call to 911 is more likely to show your address to the dispatcher possibly saving your life with a faster response 4) landline will not be lost or misplaced 5) landline more likely to continue to function during an electrical power failure 6) landline can provide emergency dial-up internet service 7) landline will not expose you to uhf radiation 8) landline will not suffer from battery failure 9) landline will not suffer from poor signal quality 10 landline is legally much more difficult for authorities to eavesdrop on
Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC."
This is unbelievably evil, even for Microsoft. Has Steve Ballmer lost his flippin' mind?
Reading past your denigrations, the only thing you actually say is:
and then there's the bit about all the evaporating water when it's really cold. I mean have you never tried to dry laundry outside in the winter?
Even though you pose this as a question, you seem to be saying 'water will not evaporate in a really cold climate' which is incorrect. The evaporation of water into the air is driven by the enthalpy difference between the water and the air and, in the presence of a relatively-warm gulf current, that enthalpy difference can be considerable. Those 'sverdrups' of gulf stream flow are obviously cooled in the northern latitudes and, again, obviously, that cooling mechanism is 'evaporation.' Once the water evaporates, where do you think that it goes? Obviously not to the poles. Again, obviously, the air/moisture circulates back to the equatorial latitudes where the condensed moisture falls as precipitation. Another obvious thing to consider: water flows 'downhill' from a higher gravitational point to a lower one. The gulf stream flow is obviously flowing from a 'higher' point to a 'lower' one as precipitation falls at the equator and water is removed to the atmosphere via evaporation in the northern latidudes.
Reading the news release makes it sound as if the problem was that the expected deep ocean return current was just in the wrong location. They put the floats in the areas where the current was supposed to be and only 8 percent of them actually even went in the 'right' direction. So...their 'conclusion' is that the current is just in the 'wrong' location but that it still exists, although they have never actually observed it. Without being any sort of climate 'expert' it seems obvious that evaporation of water in the northern latitudes is a far more important contributor to the gulf stream flow than the hypothesized deep ocean return current. It even seems probable that most of the evaporation of water on this planet occurs in the northern and southern latitudes. In that model, warm water flows north and south around the planet from the equatorial regions towards the poles and evaporates, thereby cooling the ocean waters and transferring heat and moisture into the atmosphere where it eventually falls as precipitation as it moves back towards the equator. Of course, this evaporation model cannot be correct because it allows the atmosphere to be a major conveyor of heat (as vapor phase water) which does not fit well with the 'greenhouse gas' idea in which the earth is surrounded by atmospheric gases which are blocking the radiation of long-wave infrared radiation into space, thereby warming the earth. I don't think there are any Eisteins in the atmospheric sciences field at the moment.
Yes, IR is radiated over a wide distribution. The same is true of radiation from the Earth's surface. That doesn't prevent a non-negligible portion from being absorbed by CO2 as it radiates upward.
You are finally conceding that the re-radiated IR is not concentrated in the narrow CO2 absorption band. Progress. As I said, though, the re-radiated IR is in a much wider wavelength distribution, only a very tiny portion of which can be re-absorbed by CO2.
As I noted in my first response, the models do have an approximately logarithmic forcing-concentration relationship, and they do predict an unamplified 1.2 C warming to 2xCO2.
Elementary physics establish that there is more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere NOW to absorb all of the IR radiating from the earth's surface in the narrow CO2 absorption bands. The best (and most 'optimistic' to your side) estimate is that increasing CO2 concentrations to 580 ppm would result in an increase in global average temperatures of 1.2C which is not going to cause any global catastrophe or melting. At the present, the atmospheric CO2 is only 32 percent of the way towards even that result. Since a linear temperature increase requires an exponential CO2 concentration increase, this means that most of even that modest 1.2C increase will be...later. Again...the world may have been warming up until 2007 but the temperature increase was NOT due to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
Tell that to China, who has been building more than one new coal plant per week.
They can build all of the plants they want (your numbers are doubtful and unverifiable) but there simply is not enough coal on the world market to sustain such an increase over time, nor will there be.
The temperature mixing between a thermally-excited CO2 molecule and its nearby neighbors is essentially instantaneous as collisions between molecules in a gas mixture are continuous and frequent and such collisions transfer heat as a result. Therefore, the temperature of any cubic centimenter of atmosphere is essentially uniform. With your comment, you are looking at gross mixing in the atmosphere on a much larger scale which is a different process.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The frequencies which energy gets radiated is largely due to its temperature. Now, it will be concentrated within the spectral lines of a given material, but the general distribution still roughly follows the blackbody curve for that temperature. You don't have -20 degree gasses radiating visible or near-IR light (the main relevant transparent bands in the atmosphere) in any relevant quantities.
No, it's not. The emitted wavelength of thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law. It is NOT "concentrated within the spectral lines of a given material" as you claim. The portion of that distibution that lies within the very narrow CO2 absorption bands is tiny. Those upper-atmosphere gases might be at a temperature of -20F due to radiation of heat into space.
The Beer-Lambert Law is elementary physics and accurately predicts that there is more than sufficient CO2 already in the atomosphere to absorb your 'upwelling IR' within a few hundreds of meters of the ground. The re-radiated IR is in a much wider wavelength distribution, only a very tiny portion of which can be re-absorbed by CO2. I know you will not understand this basic principle but maybe there's always the hope that someone else might. It's unbelievable that such obviously false ideas can become widely accepted without question. The world may have been warming up until 2007 but it was obviously not due to rising carbon dioxide levels.
We're already exploiting coal and can easily ramp up global production.
No we can't...because the supply of coal (and the market for it) is limited. At CURRENT production rates, there are an estimated 133 years of coal reserves remaining. However, much of that coal lies at great depths and will only be extracted at great difficulty and expense. A similar situation exists for petroleum reserves. There is no bountiful future supply of either of these and your stupid forecasts based on quadurupling production over the next 50 years are just...nonsense.
If coal liquifaction is economical relative to electric vehicles, you'll continue to see internal combustion; otherwise, you'll get a fleet of coal-driven electric vehicles.) And, in case you didn't notice, lots of people use electricity, and lots more want to.
The basic chemistry of coal means that 'Coal liquifaction' is never going to be a commercial source of internal combustion fuel. That has only been done in a time of war and desperation, produced a very low quality fuel, and was abandoned as soon as possible. Coal gasification has been done on a commercial scale for at least one hundred years, has only been done when a supply of natural gas was not available, and was quickly abandoned when natural gas supplies appeared. As well as a multitude of other problems, coal gasification produces an extremely toxic byproduct residue ("coal tar") that has required major expenditures to clean up at dozens of former coal gasification sites. Coal-fired electricity generation power plants are your only hope for any new use of coal and most of world is shutting existing such facilities down as they age. Most new electricity generation is coming from natural gas turbines, hydroelectric , and wind power. The new Three Gorges Dam in China can generate 22.5 gigawatts of electricity, which is roughly equivalent to 20 nuclear power plants. The State of Texas currently has over 5 gigawatts of wind turbine power generation capacity in operation with more planned. These kinds of projects are not being done to save the world from your stupid carbon dioxide nightmare scenarios. They are being done because they make money...a lot of money. You seem to think that coal mining is an enormous growth industry so let's see you go out and invest your personal money in...coal mining companies. You'll be rich...not.
You want the Schwarzschild equation, not Beer-Lambert, which ignores emission. Beer-Lambert works well for shortwave absorption, because the atmosphere doesn't radiate in shortwave, but doesn't fully capture what's going on in the longwave. Upwelling IR is modified by neighboring layers of GHGs, as long as they're warm enough.
More nonsense. The Beer-Lambert 'Law' has not been repealed. Adding the emissions factor (see my earlier reply) does not change the underlying issue: more CO2 will NOT increase the absorption by CO2. The thermally-excited CO2 will transfer heat to the surrounding atmosphere of N2 and O2 and the atmosphere will then re-radiate infrared radiation into space in a wavelength distribution based on Planck's law. The people who are making the sorts of arguments you are making sound like people who 'know' what the answer is supposed to be before they start the experiment and they fiddle with their equations and data until they get the 'right' answer. Your last sentence above is a 'masterpiece' of crappola if you will: 'upwelling IR is modified by neighboring layers of GHGs as long as they're warm enough.' Are you a music major in college or something?
There are centuries worth of unexploited coal to be used for power by both the developed and developing world. How many times do I have to tell you, there are fossil fuels other than petroleum?
Sure there are...but exploiting and using those reserves will also take centuries. It takes a lot of time and resources to exploit coal. The extraction is difficult, the combustion equipment is difficult to operate and maintain, the logistics of transportation are complex, and the entire process is...very dirty. There is a reason why the 'great white fleet' converted to oil from coal back in 1910. It's highly unlikely that you will ever jump in the driver's seat of your coal-burning buggy to drive on down to the pub. Transportation is the biggest use of FOSSIL FUELS and is likely to remain so and those transportation fuels are likely to be petroleum based as long as they are using 'fossil' fuels. Future Electric cars are likely to be fueled with electricity produced from renewable sources, natural gas, and nuclear power rather than coal. Coal will continue to be used but will not cause any massive runup in atmosperic CO2 that you allude to with your 900ppm by 2100 nonsense.
1) A rising CO2 concentration will cause an increase in the average global temperature. 2) The average global temperature has increased. 3) Therefore, the rising CO2 concentration caused an increase in the global average temperature.
This is obviously circular reasoning but if you cannot see that, you're unlikely to ever see it and I'm unlikely to convince you.
Actually, the January average was 387 ppm. A typo prevented me from saying 385 ppm in the OP.
"There is already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band."
This is false, and is directly contradicted by the line-by-line radiative transfer codes which calculate this absorption (e.g., MODTRAN), as well as actual spectral measurements of increasing IR saturation in the CO2 bands (e.g., here).
No, it isn't false, it's simple physics. Absorption of electromagnetic 'light' radiation passing through a medium is described by the Beer-Lambert equation: I = Io x exp(-kL) where I is the exiting radiation intensity, k is the 'extinction coefficient' determined by the molecular species and concentration, and L is the path length. It's easy to calculate, using the known extinction coefficients for CO2, that 99% of the radiation in the CO2 absorption bands is absorbed within a few hundreds of meters from the source, which in this case is the Earth. The extinction coefficients are derived from measurements in modern, high-resolution spectrometers and are widely published.
Molecules radiate infrared according to their temperature. If they absorb IR from molecules of a similar temperature, then the re-radiated IR will be in the same band as the absorbed IR. Since nearby molecules are generally of a similar temperature, "radiation bouncing around among CO2 molecules" does happen.
You have very fuzzy understanding of what is happening and the principles involved. Molecules absorb infrared radiation based on their vibrational modes and do not care if there are nearby molecules of a 'similar temperature.' The absorption spectra for a particular molecular species is specific to that species, so much so that the absorption spectra are commonly used to 'fingerprint' or identify the presence of a particular molecule. After absorption, the molecule is excited to a higher temperature and subsequently collides with other molecules in the gas, thereby transferring thermal energy to them resulting in a uniform temperature for the gas mixture. Since by far the majority of molecules in the atmosphere are N2 and O2, most of the collisions involving CO2 will be between CO2 and either N2 or O2. All of the molecules in the atmosphere reradiate infrared radiation. The emitted wavelength of the thermal radiation is not the same wavelength as the absorbed radiation, as you claimed, but is instead a probability distribution depending only on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law.
"Current CO2 output" isn't going to stay the same; it's been continually increasing. Under high emissions scenarios we could pass 800-900 ppm this century.
You apparently believe that CO2 production from fossil fuel combustion is about to explode or something. Therefore, you must also believe that there's some new huge deposit of fossil fuels that is going to be exploited soon. The reality is that fossil fuel use is likely to be flat to declining for the forseeable future due to the increasing scarcity and cost of developing new fossil fuel resources. It takes the discovery of enormous new petroleum reserves just to maintain our current production rate of these. Developing the shale oil resources you allude to will require an enormous expenditure of capital and will not occur until petroleum reserves have been much more depleted than they are presently. Based on current fossil fuel use and the measured atmospheric CO2 changes, it will take approximately 100 years for the atmospheric CO2 concentration to reach 2x the pre-industrial value or 580 ppm. The effect of this increase on global temperature would be an increase of approximately 1.2C which would not melt any antarctic ice sheets or lead to global calamity. On the other hand, severe global cooling events have occurred in the recent past and are likely to occur again. Such an event would, unlike a small amount of warming, be a true global catastrophe that would cause enormous hardship and the deaths of billions of people. The sun's output has declined in the last two years so if you want to worry about something, worry about that.
Slashdot Mirror
The 'hyperdrive' is basically just subspace drive. This will be helpful for short trips to Mars or Jupiter but would not be useful for interstellar trips. What is needed is Warp Drive where space-time is continuously folded 'warped' allowing the spacecraft to achieve relativistic velocities greater than the speed of light.
The waste on those ships comes from businesses that have either consigned it to shady transporters or have knowingly sent it directly to the ship dumpers. In the United States, the RCRA law requires 'cradle-to-grave' responsibility for the waste with signed manifests to licensed transporters and disposal operations at each step. The waste generator retains final responsibility for the waste wherever it ends up. There is therefore no incentive for a waste generator (i.e. the business that created the waste) to send it away with a ship dumper because it would eventually be found and traced back to its source requiring expensive cleanup and re-disposal at a licensed site, not to mention the very stiff criminal and civil penalties for the individuals responsible...i.e. those who signed the waste manifests.
People here say this was the "brave" thing to do but living is always harder than dying. I don't know what the man's condition was but thousands of people every day are diagnosed with serious terminal illnesses and face their fate with courage and dignity, without the need to kill themselves as they leave the doctor's office. Millions more live (not die) every day with major disabilities and handicaps that make their lives more difficult than it would be for someone who was in "perfect" condition. This man put a shotgun to his head and left his friends and family to deal with a bloody mess to remember him by. His final legacy will be 'he blew his brains out' that will overshadow his lifetime accomplishments and leave his descendants with a permanent memory of suicide.
These companies never 'detach' from the capital and credit markets that they need to stay in business. They enjoy access to free and fair markets supported by the U. S. Constitution. Investors and lenders to such companies depend on financial and accounting standards along with required public disclosures of financial information. When someone threatens to steal their IP or violate a contract they are a party to, they expect access to a fair and impartial court system backed by a stable political system. Let's see them 'detach' from those things...not likely. Being located in the United States is an enormous advantage for these companies and they know it. They just don't want us to know it.
At their core, Microsoft has always been much more interested in applications than in systems software and that's why they have historically been slow to recognize paradigm shifts in the user space...such as when the internet appeared and they were late in providing tcp/ip for Windows. Microsoft originally provided applications development tools and backed into providing systems software only when IBM wanted an OS (DOS 1.0) for their then-new PC. Microsoft has released several new iterations of Windows but their heart has never been into it like it has been for Excel or Halo 3. The biggest reason that people still buy Windows is because it runs Microsoft Office and a big part of 'updating' Windows is to ensure that the newest Office will only run on the newest Windows. So...taking the long point of view, it might be that Windows (but not Micrsoft) is looking at a setting sun but Microsoft will always be very strong in applications and applications development...because that's what they do well.
Exactly. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
The judge should ask the RIAA lawyer, 'If 'perpetual' isn't fair, then what is fair?' One year, 5 years, 20 years, whatever we say, or until we go out of business?
Adobe began using javascript in their reader beginning with v7 and that has opened up this whole new world of security issues. Wouldn't it be better if the 'reader' just rendered a static file and didn't run embedded script?
'Venerate' -- "to look upon with feelings of deep respect; revere" (Websters New World Dictionary)
There's nothing wrong with venerating St. Mary...or St. Paul...or St Joseph...or St. Patrick...or any of the saints. Catholics do not 'stumble into polytheism' which would be heresy. None of the saints are ever considered by Catholics (or any Christian) to be divine. Saints are mere mortal people who have gone before us and lived their lives with an exceptionally strong faith. Saints are people who have wrestled with evil...and triumphed.
It has no mention of a resurrection.
Yes, it does. The resurrection of Jesus is described in all 4 gospels (Matthew Chapter 28, Mark Chapter 16, Luke Chapter 24, and John Chapter 20 and 21) and these chapters from the 4 gospels are all included in the Codex Sinaiticus. The Codex Sinaiticus version of Mark Chapter 16 omits the longer ending (verses 9-20) which describes the appearance of the resurrected Jesus to Mary and the disciples but verses 1-8 that ARE included describe the visit of Mary and Mary Magdalene to the empty tomb where they encounter the angel who tells them that Jesus has been raised and is on his way to Galilee where they will see him. The appearance of the resurrected Jesus to various people in Galilee and elsewhere is included in the other three gospels that are included in the Codex Sinaiticus. Keep in mind also that the Codex Sinaiticus, while a very fine example of an early bible, is not considered the primary or 'best' source for the New Testament gospels which would generally be accepted to be the slightly older Codex Vaticanus. The greatest importance of Codex Sinaiticus is that it is the most complete grouping of biblical writings found at such an early date.
His [Paul's] story is an epistle
St. Paul wrote 14 letters (epistles) to various groups/individuals that are included in the New Testament. St. Paul certainly alludes to the resurrection (cfa Romans 6:4) but he doesn't really write about it. Mostly he is writing to new Christian faith communities in different cities about what it means to live life as a Christian. The four gospels ('good news') described the events surrounding the resurrection and the resurrection itself and were written after St. Paul's letters, beginning with the Gospel of Mark which was written in approximately 70 AD. St. Paul was martyred by beheading in Rome in 67 AD and is buried at St. Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061211-saint-paul.html
they say that the ratio of nitrogen isotopes in these comets almost exactly matches the ratio in Earth's atmosphere. That suggests that while Earth's oceans must have come from somewhere else, Earth's early atmosphere was probably seeded by comets.
Or the nitrogen in the comets and the nitrogen in the Earth's atmosphere had a common origin which seems much more likely, the story title notwithstanding.
The Microsoft approach with all of the desktop computers networked together is becoming fabulously expensive for support, maintenance, installation, and security. The 'mainframe' computer still connects the desktops but the good stuff (apps and data) is on the 'mainframe' rather than the local desktops so most of the support, maintenance, installation, and security is done on a few of the 'mainframes' rather than the thousands of desktops. The cost advantages of that are so enormous that Microsoft should be attempting to find a way to play in that space by buying companies rather than bellyaching about the anti-competitiveness of IBM. Microsoft has never figured out what they want to do, anyway...video games, corporate computing, home multimedia centers, small business computing, or what? Microsoft wants to do everything but they don't do anything very well.
Maybe you're doing most of your chatting on the cell but there's still some good reasons for a landline:
1) home fax machine
2) landline more likely to function in an emergency as cell systems usually overload and are unavailable
3) landline call to 911 is more likely to show your address to the dispatcher possibly saving your life with a faster response
4) landline will not be lost or misplaced
5) landline more likely to continue to function during an electrical power failure
6) landline can provide emergency dial-up internet service
7) landline will not expose you to uhf radiation
8) landline will not suffer from battery failure
9) landline will not suffer from poor signal quality
10 landline is legally much more difficult for authorities to eavesdrop on
From TFA:
Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC."
This is unbelievably evil, even for Microsoft. Has Steve Ballmer lost his flippin' mind?
Reading past your denigrations, the only thing you actually say is:
and then there's the bit about all the evaporating water when it's really cold. I mean have you never tried to dry laundry outside in the winter?
Even though you pose this as a question, you seem to be saying 'water will not evaporate in a really cold climate' which is incorrect. The evaporation of water into the air is driven by the enthalpy difference between the water and the air and, in the presence of a relatively-warm gulf current, that enthalpy difference can be considerable. Those 'sverdrups' of gulf stream flow are obviously cooled in the northern latitudes and, again, obviously, that cooling mechanism is 'evaporation.' Once the water evaporates, where do you think that it goes? Obviously not to the poles. Again, obviously, the air/moisture circulates back to the equatorial latitudes where the condensed moisture falls as precipitation. Another obvious thing to consider: water flows 'downhill' from a higher gravitational point to a lower one. The gulf stream flow is obviously flowing from a 'higher' point to a 'lower' one as precipitation falls at the equator and water is removed to the atmosphere via evaporation in the northern latidudes.
...or Einsteins either...
Reading the news release makes it sound as if the problem was that the expected deep ocean return current was just in the wrong location. They put the floats in the areas where the current was supposed to be and only 8 percent of them actually even went in the 'right' direction. So...their 'conclusion' is that the current is just in the 'wrong' location but that it still exists, although they have never actually observed it. Without being any sort of climate 'expert' it seems obvious that evaporation of water in the northern latitudes is a far more important contributor to the gulf stream flow than the hypothesized deep ocean return current. It even seems probable that most of the evaporation of water on this planet occurs in the northern and southern latitudes. In that model, warm water flows north and south around the planet from the equatorial regions towards the poles and evaporates, thereby cooling the ocean waters and transferring heat and moisture into the atmosphere where it eventually falls as precipitation as it moves back towards the equator. Of course, this evaporation model cannot be correct because it allows the atmosphere to be a major conveyor of heat (as vapor phase water) which does not fit well with the 'greenhouse gas' idea in which the earth is surrounded by atmospheric gases which are blocking the radiation of long-wave infrared radiation into space, thereby warming the earth. I don't think there are any Eisteins in the atmospheric sciences field at the moment.
Yes, IR is radiated over a wide distribution. The same is true of radiation from the Earth's surface. That doesn't prevent a non-negligible portion from being absorbed by CO2 as it radiates upward.
You are finally conceding that the re-radiated IR is not concentrated in the narrow CO2 absorption band. Progress. As I said, though, the re-radiated IR is in a much wider wavelength distribution, only a very tiny portion of which can be re-absorbed by CO2.
As I noted in my first response, the models do have an approximately logarithmic forcing-concentration relationship, and they do predict an unamplified 1.2 C warming to 2xCO2.
Elementary physics establish that there is more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere NOW to absorb all of the IR radiating from the earth's surface in the narrow CO2 absorption bands. The best (and most 'optimistic' to your side) estimate is that increasing CO2 concentrations to 580 ppm would result in an increase in global average temperatures of 1.2C which is not going to cause any global catastrophe or melting. At the present, the atmospheric CO2 is only 32 percent of the way towards even that result. Since a linear temperature increase requires an exponential CO2 concentration increase, this means that most of even that modest 1.2C increase will be...later. Again...the world may have been warming up until 2007 but the temperature increase was NOT due to CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
Tell that to China, who has been building more than one new coal plant per week.
They can build all of the plants they want (your numbers are doubtful and unverifiable) but there simply is not enough coal on the world market to sustain such an increase over time, nor will there be.
The temperature mixing between a thermally-excited CO2 molecule and its nearby neighbors is essentially instantaneous as collisions between molecules in a gas mixture are continuous and frequent and such collisions transfer heat as a result. Therefore, the temperature of any cubic centimenter of atmosphere is essentially uniform. With your comment, you are looking at gross mixing in the atmosphere on a much larger scale which is a different process.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The frequencies which energy gets radiated is largely due to its temperature. Now, it will be concentrated within the spectral lines of a given material, but the general distribution still roughly follows the blackbody curve for that temperature. You don't have -20 degree gasses radiating visible or near-IR light (the main relevant transparent bands in the atmosphere) in any relevant quantities.
No, it's not. The emitted wavelength of thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law. It is NOT "concentrated within the spectral lines of a given material" as you claim. The portion of that distibution that lies within the very narrow CO2 absorption bands is tiny. Those upper-atmosphere gases might be at a temperature of -20F due to radiation of heat into space.
The Beer-Lambert Law is elementary physics and accurately predicts that there is more than sufficient CO2 already in the atomosphere to absorb your 'upwelling IR' within a few hundreds of meters of the ground. The re-radiated IR is in a much wider wavelength distribution, only a very tiny portion of which can be re-absorbed by CO2. I know you will not understand this basic principle but maybe there's always the hope that someone else might. It's unbelievable that such obviously false ideas can become widely accepted without question. The world may have been warming up until 2007 but it was obviously not due to rising carbon dioxide levels.
We're already exploiting coal and can easily ramp up global production.
No we can't...because the supply of coal (and the market for it) is limited. At CURRENT production rates, there are an estimated 133 years of coal reserves remaining. However, much of that coal lies at great depths and will only be extracted at great difficulty and expense. A similar situation exists for petroleum reserves. There is no bountiful future supply of either of these and your stupid forecasts based on quadurupling production over the next 50 years are just...nonsense.
If coal liquifaction is economical relative to electric vehicles, you'll continue to see internal combustion; otherwise, you'll get a fleet of coal-driven electric vehicles.) And, in case you didn't notice, lots of people use electricity, and lots more want to.
The basic chemistry of coal means that 'Coal liquifaction' is never going to be a commercial source of internal combustion fuel. That has only been done in a time of war and desperation, produced a very low quality fuel, and was abandoned as soon as possible. Coal gasification has been done on a commercial scale for at least one hundred years, has only been done when a supply of natural gas was not available, and was quickly abandoned when natural gas supplies appeared. As well as a multitude of other problems, coal gasification produces an extremely toxic byproduct residue ("coal tar") that has required major expenditures to clean up at dozens of former coal gasification sites. Coal-fired electricity generation power plants are your only hope for any new use of coal and most of world is shutting existing such facilities down as they age. Most new electricity generation is coming from natural gas turbines, hydroelectric , and wind power. The new Three Gorges Dam in China can generate 22.5 gigawatts of electricity, which is roughly equivalent to 20 nuclear power plants. The State of Texas currently has over 5 gigawatts of wind turbine power generation capacity in operation with more planned. These kinds of projects are not being done to save the world from your stupid carbon dioxide nightmare scenarios. They are being done because they make money...a lot of money. You seem to think that coal mining is an enormous growth industry so let's see you go out and invest your personal money in...coal mining companies. You'll be rich...not.
You want the Schwarzschild equation, not Beer-Lambert, which ignores emission. Beer-Lambert works well for shortwave absorption, because the atmosphere doesn't radiate in shortwave, but doesn't fully capture what's going on in the longwave. Upwelling IR is modified by neighboring layers of GHGs, as long as they're warm enough.
More nonsense. The Beer-Lambert 'Law' has not been repealed. Adding the emissions factor (see my earlier reply) does not change the underlying issue: more CO2 will NOT increase the absorption by CO2. The thermally-excited CO2 will transfer heat to the surrounding atmosphere of N2 and O2 and the atmosphere will then re-radiate infrared radiation into space in a wavelength distribution based on Planck's law. The people who are making the sorts of arguments you are making sound like people who 'know' what the answer is supposed to be before they start the experiment and they fiddle with their equations and data until they get the 'right' answer. Your last sentence above is a 'masterpiece' of crappola if you will: 'upwelling IR is modified by neighboring layers of GHGs as long as they're warm enough.' Are you a music major in college or something?
There are centuries worth of unexploited coal to be used for power by both the developed and developing world. How many times do I have to tell you, there are fossil fuels other than petroleum?
Sure there are...but exploiting and using those reserves will also take centuries. It takes a lot of time and resources to exploit coal. The extraction is difficult, the combustion equipment is difficult to operate and maintain, the logistics of transportation are complex, and the entire process is...very dirty. There is a reason why the 'great white fleet' converted to oil from coal back in 1910. It's highly unlikely that you will ever jump in the driver's seat of your coal-burning buggy to drive on down to the pub. Transportation is the biggest use of FOSSIL FUELS and is likely to remain so and those transportation fuels are likely to be petroleum based as long as they are using 'fossil' fuels. Future Electric cars are likely to be fueled with electricity produced from renewable sources, natural gas, and nuclear power rather than coal. Coal will continue to be used but will not cause any massive runup in atmosperic CO2 that you allude to with your 900ppm by 2100 nonsense.
Your thought process on this seems to be:
1) A rising CO2 concentration will cause an increase in the average global temperature.
2) The average global temperature has increased.
3) Therefore, the rising CO2 concentration caused an increase in the global average temperature.
This is obviously circular reasoning but if you cannot see that, you're unlikely to ever see it and I'm unlikely to convince you.
(And by the way, it's more like 388 ppm today.)
Actually, the January average was 387 ppm. A typo prevented me from saying 385 ppm in the OP.
"There is already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band."
This is false, and is directly contradicted by the line-by-line radiative transfer codes which calculate this absorption (e.g., MODTRAN), as well as actual spectral measurements of increasing IR saturation in the CO2 bands (e.g., here).
No, it isn't false, it's simple physics. Absorption of electromagnetic 'light' radiation passing through a medium is described by the Beer-Lambert equation: I = Io x exp(-kL) where I is the exiting radiation intensity, k is the 'extinction coefficient' determined by the molecular species and concentration, and L is the path length. It's easy to calculate, using the known extinction coefficients for CO2, that 99% of the radiation in the CO2 absorption bands is absorbed within a few hundreds of meters from the source, which in this case is the Earth. The extinction coefficients are derived from measurements in modern, high-resolution spectrometers and are widely published.
Molecules radiate infrared according to their temperature. If they absorb IR from molecules of a similar temperature, then the re-radiated IR will be in the same band as the absorbed IR. Since nearby molecules are generally of a similar temperature, "radiation bouncing around among CO2 molecules" does happen.
You have very fuzzy understanding of what is happening and the principles involved. Molecules absorb infrared radiation based on their vibrational modes and do not care if there are nearby molecules of a 'similar temperature.' The absorption spectra for a particular molecular species is specific to that species, so much so that the absorption spectra are commonly used to 'fingerprint' or identify the presence of a particular molecule. After absorption, the molecule is excited to a higher temperature and subsequently collides with other molecules in the gas, thereby transferring thermal energy to them resulting in a uniform temperature for the gas mixture. Since by far the majority of molecules in the atmosphere are N2 and O2, most of the collisions involving CO2 will be between CO2 and either N2 or O2. All of the molecules in the atmosphere reradiate infrared radiation. The emitted wavelength of the thermal radiation is not the same wavelength as the absorbed radiation, as you claimed, but is instead a probability distribution depending only on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law.
"Current CO2 output" isn't going to stay the same; it's been continually increasing. Under high emissions scenarios we could pass 800-900 ppm this century.
You apparently believe that CO2 production from fossil fuel combustion is about to explode or something. Therefore, you must also believe that there's some new huge deposit of fossil fuels that is going to be exploited soon. The reality is that fossil fuel use is likely to be flat to declining for the forseeable future due to the increasing scarcity and cost of developing new fossil fuel resources. It takes the discovery of enormous new petroleum reserves just to maintain our current production rate of these. Developing the shale oil resources you allude to will require an enormous expenditure of capital and will not occur until petroleum reserves have been much more depleted than they are presently. Based on current fossil fuel use and the measured atmospheric CO2 changes, it will take approximately 100 years for the atmospheric CO2 concentration to reach 2x the pre-industrial value or 580 ppm. The effect of this increase on global temperature would be an increase of approximately 1.2C which would not melt any antarctic ice sheets or lead to global calamity. On the other hand, severe global cooling events have occurred in the recent past and are likely to occur again. Such an event would, unlike a small amount of warming, be a true global catastrophe that would cause enormous hardship and the deaths of billions of people. The sun's output has declined in the last two years so if you want to worry about something, worry about that.