"Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning"
It is not circular reasoning. It's how inductive science works. "Hypothesis X predicts we will observe effect Y. Alternate hypotheses W predict different effects Z. We observe Y, but not Z. This observation is evidence in favor of hypothesis X, and does not support alternate hypotheses W."
So, to use your inductive science model, my hypothesis is that washing my car will cause it to rain. I washed the car yesterday and...guess what...it rained. Hypothesis proved.
If you put a bunch of excess CO2 into the air, it hangs around for centuries before being scrubbed out.
Fuzzy thinking. The atmosphere is a 'reservoir' for CO2 to which CO2 is constantly being added and removed. If more is added than is removed, the concentration increases. If less is added than is removed, the concentration decreases. If you look at the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration measured at Mauna Loa since 1958, it rises and falls during the year in a regular cycle apparently related to photosynthetic activity. The long-term average concentration has shown a slight increase from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to a current value of 387 ppm as the average value for January. The increase is probably due to the increased combustion of fossil fuels, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere as a byproduct of combustion. Your statement above is pure nonsense as it is impossible to "put a bunch of excess CO2 into the air" due to the sheer global scale that such an effort would require.
Yes, and in particular look at the direct measurements of solar output outside the atmosphere since 1978.
You apparently have not actually looked at the solar data but, if you did, you would see that the data is compiled by eight different platforms since 1978, the newest of which is SORCE, the solar irradiance has generally declined, and is now at the lowest levels measured. The ACRIM platform website (www.acrim.com) puts it thusly: "TSI monitoring, cosmogenic isotope analyses and correlative climate data indicate that variations of the TSI have been a significant climate forcing during the current inter-glacial period (the last ~ 10 Kyrs.). Phenomenological analyses of TSI monitoring results during the past (nearly) three decades, TSI proxies during the past 400 years and the records of surface temperature show that TSI variation has been the dominant forcing for climate change during the industrial era."
There's a complicated answer to this, but a simpler one is to look at Venus.
Other than the fact that Venus is a lot closer to the sun, has an atmosphere with sulfuric acid clouds and without oxygen and nitrogen, and has a mass only 80 percent of the Earth's, they are a lot alike. Yes, your answer is a simple one.
Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning because the assumptions in that conclusion are that the CO2 effect would manifest itself as a temperature change and that the only cause of such a temperature would be the CO2 effect. Google on 'circular reasoning' for more information.
Water vapor has such a short atmospheric residency...
Water does not have a 'short' atmospheric residency. It is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere. And no, that is not a non-sequitur but is apparently central to your argument.
I point out that water vapor has a tiny residency, on the matter of days, and you point out that it's always there? Duh! And a given molecule of water vapor still only remains in the atmosphere for a matter of days on average. Water is constantly cycling in and out. You could take every last molecule of moisture out of our atmosphere and (neglecting that the plants would die), things would be back to normal in a matter of months. Water vapor cannot force climate change for this reason. It can only react to other types of forcing (say, more water vapor because of hotter seas, or less because of more aerosols increasing cloud formation) because it lasts for such a short period. Hence, it can *amplify or suppress* other types of forcing, but it cannot *be* forcing on its own
Both water and carbon dioxide are constantly cycling in and out of the atmosphere, including from your body. That has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged effect of a longterm change in their average atmospheric concentration on the global climate unless you're trying to build a strawman.
But that's all beside the point; the fact is that for energy to escape from Earth's surface, it has to be absorbed and reradiated many times. Increasing the CO2 concentration significantly increases the expected number of times to be re-radiated.
No, it doesn't. The only 'energy' that would be absorbed would be that which had a wavelength lying within the absorption spectra of a 'greenhouse' gas such as H2O, CO2, CH4, or O3. The re-radiated infra-red radiation would mostly be outside of those spectra and would either radiate out into space or radiate into the earth. Your conceptual model about radiation bouncing around between CO2 molecules in the atmosphere does not agree with the physics of absorption.
Poorly phrased; most visible and IR energy makes it direct to the surface
Most of the radiation with a wavelength in the visible portion of the spectrum makes it to the surface. However, the CO2 in the atomosphere would absorb infra-red radiation in its absorption spectrum regardless of whether it is coming from the sun or the earth. However, the sun is not a source of infra-red radiation, for obvious reasons.
I hope you're right. If the climate in the future is cooler, I would admit that global warming does not seem to be caused by greenhouse gasses. I wonder if you will admit you're wrong if the climate does keep warming. If there's less Arctic ice in twenty years than there is today, will you admit it?
The earth may get cooler but that would NOT be evidence that greenhouse gases had no warming effect, just as a warming earth is not evidence of a greenhouse gas warming effect. The temperature change, by itself, whatever it is, is not evidence of anything. As far as the physics of infra-red absorption, there is nothing to admit either way. The absorption spectra of CO2 are fairly well known as are the atmospheric dimensions and composition. There might be less arctic ice in 20 years, there might be more, or it might be about the same. Whatever the case, it says nothing about the cause of any underlying global temperature change.
Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning.
An optimal greenhouse gas is *transparent* to light in the visible and near-IR spectrum, and *opaque* to far-IR. You need to let the sun's energy in (mostly visible and near-IR) while making it harder for what the Earth radiates (mostly far-IR) out. A gas that blocks everything evenly is not a greenhouse gas.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and a much stronger one than CO2.
In short, until a 10-meter or so column of atmosphere can absorb 95%, increasing CO2 levels is a *major* impactor on surface temperature.
A '10-meter' column of atmosphere is an insignificant height.
Water vapor has a tiny residency in the atmosphere (days), while CO2 has a long residency (hundreds of years).
Water is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere. We even have a special term for it. We call it 'humidity' and it is caused by the presence of oceans of water that are in constant contact with the atmosphere. Similarly, CO2 is always present in the atmosphere. Of course, the same specific molecule of H2O or CO2 is not perpetually present in the atmosphere but, when it comes to those molecules, one is as good as another.
CO2 is perfectly capable of radiating IR.
Yes, but there is so little of it present in the atmosphere compared with other molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen.
It seems impossible to have any reasoned discussion about carbon
dioxide. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has
increased from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to 365 ppm today and
that increase is NOT having a significant effect on
climate. In the 'global warming' scenario, short
wavelength radiation from the sun passes through the atmosphere and
warms the earth. The warmed earth then re-radiates
long-wavelength infra-red radiation back into space, or at least tries
to but is allegedly stopped by carbon dioxide. So...what's
wrong with this? CO2 absorbs infra-red radiation in only a
narrow wavelength band and it will not absorb any infra-red radiation
with a wavelength outside of its absorption band. There is
already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively
absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band. (A
much bigger absorber of infra-red radiation in the atmosphere
is...water vapor...but that's another movie.)
The effect of increasing CO2 concentration is therefore only to cause
absorption to occur at a slightly lower altitude in the atmosphere and
after carbon dioxide absorbs infra-red radiation, it quickly collides
with nearby, and far more abundant, oxygen and nitrogen molecules,
transferring heat to them. These then re-radiate heat out into
space. So...does increasing carbon dioxide concentration
increase temperatures at all? Yes, but only to a relatively small
extent because a linear increase in temperature requires an
exponential increase in carbon dioxide concentration
due to the basic physics of absorption. The best estimate is that
a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the
pre-industrial value (290 to 580 ppm) would increase global
temperatures by 1.2C. Based on our current CO2 output it will
take us another 100 years to reach 580 ppm, by which time we will have
probably exhausted our fossil fuels anyway, if we believe the gloomy
forecasts about petroleum reserves.
So...if carbon dioxide is not changing our climate, what is? Look
to the Sun.
Based on current information,
the sun activity is declining and we can expect cooler weather in the future.
1) Charge for mouse clicks - the first 1,000 could be 'free' and then 10 clicks for a penny. 2) Charge extra for bigger displays. Why should all of that pixel real estate be 'free.' 3) Charge for the number of files 'managed' by the OS. The first 1,000 could be free and then a penny per file above that. 4) Charge for keystrokes. Obviously the users with the most key strokes are 'power' users who should pay more. Why should the 'light' users have to pay for the power users.
5) Charge by the hour when Windows is active. Say ten cents per hour with an automatic discount for reboots caused by system failures.
These are just a few ideas for you folks at Microsoft. If you want to use them, just send the money to me at the usual place.
Because I work at CERN, and that's the injection energy of the SPS. They had not started to ramp the magnetic fields in to get to higher energies. The planned first collisions were at 450 GeV (and ramp afterwards), which never happened.
So...did someone at CERN tell you that the injector energy level was 450 GeV or are you just assuming that that's what it was since that was planned? Also, I would presume that measuring, monitoring, and controlling such a thing would be complex and subject to a lot of unexpected variations in the performance of the systems that might allow a variety of unplanned power fluxes in the early stages of testing so I don't find your blanket assurance that it was "XXX" to be comforting, especially considering that the system burned up so soon after startup.
You sound like a fellow who knows what the answer is going to be before he evefn starts the experiment or calculations. Putting aside your suggestions of murder, what basis do you have for your assertion that the energy of the LHC beam was "only 450 GeV at the time of the accident?"
The LHC started operation on September 10, 2008. Only nine days
later, a 'hot spot' formed which resulted in one ton of liquid helium
being released and major damage to the LHC. Now, they have
inspected and are redoing the calculations on the presumably
ridiculously impossible formation of a persistent black
hole. Maybe they are now investigating the idea that the
damage was caused by a persistent black hole that lasted for 'minutes'
before disappearing. From the BBC:
"Cern has procedures in place to deal with quenches before they damage
equipment, but in this instance a hot spot in the machine got out of
control."
Officially, CERN has said that the hot spot was caused by an electrical
fault. I haven't yet found the 'electrical fault' story to
be convincing. If the damage was actually caused by the
formation of a black hole which persisted for several seconds or even
minutes, then it's unlikely that the LHC will ever be operated
successfully until they can either prevent the formation of such a
black hole (unlikely) or redesign to prevent the black hole from
damaging the system (also unlikely). Perhaps the LHC will become
the world's largest and most expensive manmade tourist
attraction.
Honestly, you don't know what you're talking about. The problems with cleanup at the site are 1) money, 2) the usual technical difficulties working with radiological materials, 3) the sheer number and size of sites to be cleaned up, and 4) the geographical limitations of the Hanford site created by its size, remoteness, and difficulties of access.
People like you come and go, always saying the same thing: 'Management is screwed up"..."contractors are screwed up"..."the plan is screwed up," etc.
The guy who was late for that 'safety briefing?' Most likely, he had difficulties beyond his control such as maybe he couldn't find the location of the safety briefing because the location was poorly described, the only road to where he was going was closed for some sort of activity, he had difficulties with access badging, or something like that. Your comment automatically assumes the guy just overslept or something. LOL. Working at the site is a little like deep sea divers working at depth: it takes a lot of time to get to the action and back and deal with all of the related issues which results in limited on-scene time.
The biggest issues at the site are not the K basins (which are moving along) or the 'canyon buildings' but the management of the underground storage tank waste, the reverse well contamination moving to the Columbia river, and the number and size of surface and subsurface contamination sites.
There are no miracle managers or 'models of efficiency' that are going to 'solve' the Hanford cleanup problems, there is no magic technology that is going to dramatically ease the technical difficulties, and there is no quick shortcut to a cleanup. It's going to be a long slog for DECADES and it's going to cost a lot of money either to continue with the cleanup or to deal with the downstream problems if the cleanup doesn't happen effectively and all of that will be true, no matter who is President.
Your first link is to a structure of an RNA enzyme, not an RNA that is able to make more copies of itself.
You didn't read the article and/or you didn't understand it. The self-replicating RNA was itself an "RNA Enzyme". It is the enzymatic action of the RNA that allows the replication, specifically by lysing RNA substrate. RNA enzymes are not new (the first was discovered in 1960 or so) but an RNA enzyme that is itself RNA is new because it allows the molecule to be self-replicating by also using copies of itself as the enzyme substrate to make more copies. To reiterate, though, this is NOT life...nor is it even close, nor is it a huge breakthrough. It is a continuing discovery in a path of investigation that has been underway for a long time.
TFA article states: "DNA is the software of life..." which is total crap. If they insist on using a computer analogy, they could say 'DNA is the information storage of life' and the 'gene expression mechanism is the software.' Recent advances in epigenetics have shown that gene expression is much more complex than previously thought. To use the computer analogy, there's 'memory' chips and there's 'logic' chips and they are not the same thing.
TFA is just more 'create life' hype to get research funding dollars.
From the article: "Specifically, the researchers synthesized RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely. "Immortalized" RNA, they call it, at least within the limited conditions of a laboratory. More significantly, the scientists then mixed different RNA enzymes that had replicated, along with some of the raw material they were working with, and let them compete in what's sure to be the next big hit: "Survivor: Test Tube."
Not even sure from TFA what the "breakthrough" is supposed to be...'self-replicating RNA' or 'immortalized RNA?' UC Santa Cruz researchers worked out the structure of such a molecule two years ago. This would be slightly more impressive if the researchers could claim that their immortal RNA was capable of de novo synthesis but the only claim they make is that no 'proteins' or 'cellular components' are required for replication from their "raw material" which is apparently some type of RNA.
I'm not a fan of Apple. I might even be an 'Apple hater.' If they get market dominance, they'll be just as big a butt as IBM and Microsoft were in their heydays. But...the phrase 'iPhone killer' is just wrong. Here's why: The iPhone is an extremely good product by any objective measure, mostly due to its user interface and funtionality which are quite a ways ahead of the competition that's still in stores. If the new Palm is somehow able to accomplish something similar to the iPhone, then that's great...but there is simply no way that Palm or anyone could come out with a product using current technology that would be an 'iPhone killer' because the iPhone (and iPod touch) have used the available technology in an extremely aggressive way that is NOT going to be killed off by some other product using that same technology. The Apple products are just too good right now.
More CO2 would have enveloped them in a cloud of heat-trapping gas that would have prevented them from freezing to death in the younger dryas ice age. Time to throw another log on the fire and look at all of that DAMN SNOW!
Non-nursing breasts are on display in our culture every day as a sexual attraction.
Nursing breasts are very important to babies who must have milk to survive. All milk comes from female breasts. Babies fed on cow milk are more likely to have health problems (such as infections and diabetes) than babies fed on human milk. Babies fed on human breast milk have better brain development. Mothers should be encouraged to nurse their babies as much and as long as possible. This means they will be 'breastfeeding in public' unless we intend to ban nursing mothers from public places. It is a decadent and depraved culture that finds images of nursing breasts "obscene" while elevating the display of non-nursing breasts to the status of idol. Shame. The real problem is that our culture apparently has many infantile adults who find the true function of a female breast to be upsetting.
The articles says an eruption happens every 600,000 years but the wikipedia link says "142 or more caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the SRPY hotspot within the past 17 million years" which suggests an average interval of only 120,000 years for a caldera-forming eruption.
From where I sit, PC games are on life support. Look at the Amazon top 25 sellers in video games...all console-related. Kids now spend most of their time on console games. Console sales are exploding. PC games have a long list of issues that consoles don't have: hardware compatibility, upgrades, windows version, inadequate hardware, viruses, 'installation' effort, corrupted install, etc. But...the biggest advantage of consoles now might be the user interface stuff. The wiimotes, numchucks, wireless controllers, zappers, guitars, drumsets, guns, etc. Sitting in front of a desktop screen clutching a mouse just doesn't do it for most games anymore. Yes, a lot of that stuff can be added to a PC but it's more difficult and expensive, not to mention creating potential compatibility issues with other non-game gear on the PC. Sure a PC brings huge storage and more powerful CPUs and GPUs to the table...but those don't seem to be resulting in games that offer enough fun to overcome all of the other limitations. PC games are not going away anytime soon but I expect that most of the development resources are going to consoles right now.
So...what if the aircraft carrier battle group commander gets an encoded message telling him to stand down and divert to South Africa for humanitarian aid? Then imagine that that message was sent from Beijing. If the command and control is compromised (i.e. by cyberwar) the rest of it doesn't matter much. The chinese have figured that out...and the United States hasn't.
Genetic expression is far more complex than we even imagined just a few years ago. Giving scientists a DNA map to use to recreate the organism would be like giving hurricane refugees a set of blueprints and telling them to go build their house...it takes more than the plans, it takes tools, skills, abilities, transcription information and techniques that simply do not exist and, in the case of transcription information, will never exist. This is all just PR with the wooly mammoth as a sexy icon. Who gets the money? That's where to look...
Slashdot Mirror
"Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning"
It is not circular reasoning. It's how inductive science works. "Hypothesis X predicts we will observe effect Y. Alternate hypotheses W predict different effects Z. We observe Y, but not Z. This observation is evidence in favor of hypothesis X, and does not support alternate hypotheses W."
So, to use your inductive science model, my hypothesis is that washing my car will cause it to rain. I washed the car yesterday and...guess what...it rained. Hypothesis proved.
If you put a bunch of excess CO2 into the air, it hangs around for centuries before being scrubbed out.
Fuzzy thinking. The atmosphere is a 'reservoir' for CO2 to which CO2 is constantly being added and removed. If more is added than is removed, the concentration increases. If less is added than is removed, the concentration decreases. If you look at the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration measured at Mauna Loa since 1958, it rises and falls during the year in a regular cycle apparently related to photosynthetic activity. The long-term average concentration has shown a slight increase from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to a current value of 387 ppm as the average value for January. The increase is probably due to the increased combustion of fossil fuels, which releases CO2 into the atmosphere as a byproduct of combustion. Your statement above is pure nonsense as it is impossible to "put a bunch of excess CO2 into the air" due to the sheer global scale that such an effort would require.
Yes, and in particular look at the direct measurements of solar output outside the atmosphere since 1978.
You apparently have not actually looked at the solar data but, if you did, you would see that the data is compiled by eight different platforms since 1978, the newest of which is SORCE, the solar irradiance has generally declined, and is now at the lowest levels measured. The ACRIM platform website (www.acrim.com) puts it thusly: "TSI monitoring, cosmogenic isotope analyses and correlative climate data indicate that variations of the TSI have been a significant climate forcing during the current inter-glacial period (the last ~ 10 Kyrs.). Phenomenological analyses of TSI monitoring results during the past (nearly) three decades, TSI proxies during the past 400 years and the records of surface temperature show that TSI variation has been the dominant forcing for climate change during the industrial era."
There's a complicated answer to this, but a simpler one is to look at Venus.
Other than the fact that Venus is a lot closer to the sun, has an atmosphere with sulfuric acid clouds and without oxygen and nitrogen, and has a mass only 80 percent of the Earth's, they are a lot alike. Yes, your answer is a simple one.
Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning because the assumptions in that conclusion are that the CO2 effect would manifest itself as a temperature change and that the only cause of such a temperature would be the CO2 effect. Google on 'circular reasoning' for more information.
Water vapor has such a short atmospheric residency...
Water does not have a 'short' atmospheric residency. It is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere. And no, that is not a non-sequitur but is apparently central to your argument.
I point out that water vapor has a tiny residency, on the matter of days, and you point out that it's always there? Duh! And a given molecule of water vapor still only remains in the atmosphere for a matter of days on average. Water is constantly cycling in and out. You could take every last molecule of moisture out of our atmosphere and (neglecting that the plants would die), things would be back to normal in a matter of months. Water vapor cannot force climate change for this reason. It can only react to other types of forcing (say, more water vapor because of hotter seas, or less because of more aerosols increasing cloud formation) because it lasts for such a short period. Hence, it can *amplify or suppress* other types of forcing, but it cannot *be* forcing on its own
Both water and carbon dioxide are constantly cycling in and out of the atmosphere, including from your body. That has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged effect of a longterm change in their average atmospheric concentration on the global climate unless you're trying to build a strawman.
But that's all beside the point; the fact is that for energy to escape from Earth's surface, it has to be absorbed and reradiated many times. Increasing the CO2 concentration significantly increases the expected number of times to be re-radiated.
No, it doesn't. The only 'energy' that would be absorbed would be that which had a wavelength lying within the absorption spectra of a 'greenhouse' gas such as H2O, CO2, CH4, or O3. The re-radiated infra-red radiation would mostly be outside of those spectra and would either radiate out into space or radiate into the earth. Your conceptual model about radiation bouncing around between CO2 molecules in the atmosphere does not agree with the physics of absorption.
Poorly phrased; most visible and IR energy makes it direct to the surface
Most of the radiation with a wavelength in the visible portion of the spectrum makes it to the surface. However, the CO2 in the atomosphere would absorb infra-red radiation in its absorption spectrum regardless of whether it is coming from the sun or the earth. However, the sun is not a source of infra-red radiation, for obvious reasons.
I hope you're right. If the climate in the future is cooler, I would admit that global warming does not seem to be caused by greenhouse gasses. I wonder if you will admit you're wrong if the climate does keep warming. If there's less Arctic ice in twenty years than there is today, will you admit it?
The earth may get cooler but that would NOT be evidence that greenhouse gases had no warming effect, just as a warming earth is not evidence of a greenhouse gas warming effect. The temperature change, by itself, whatever it is, is not evidence of anything. As far as the physics of infra-red absorption, there is nothing to admit either way. The absorption spectra of CO2 are fairly well known as are the atmospheric dimensions and composition. There might be less arctic ice in 20 years, there might be more, or it might be about the same. Whatever the case, it says nothing about the cause of any underlying global temperature change.
Oh really?
Pointing to temperature change as evidence of a CO2 effect is circular reasoning.
An optimal greenhouse gas is *transparent* to light in the visible and near-IR spectrum, and *opaque* to far-IR. You need to let the sun's energy in (mostly visible and near-IR) while making it harder for what the Earth radiates (mostly far-IR) out. A gas that blocks everything evenly is not a greenhouse gas.
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and a much stronger one than CO2.
In short, until a 10-meter or so column of atmosphere can absorb 95%, increasing CO2 levels is a *major* impactor on surface temperature.
A '10-meter' column of atmosphere is an insignificant height.
Water vapor has a tiny residency in the atmosphere (days), while CO2 has a long residency (hundreds of years).
Water is ALWAYS present in the atmosphere. We even have a special term for it. We call it 'humidity' and it is caused by the presence of oceans of water that are in constant contact with the atmosphere. Similarly, CO2 is always present in the atmosphere. Of course, the same specific molecule of H2O or CO2 is not perpetually present in the atmosphere but, when it comes to those molecules, one is as good as another.
CO2 is perfectly capable of radiating IR.
Yes, but there is so little of it present in the atmosphere compared with other molecules such as oxygen and nitrogen.
It seems impossible to have any reasoned discussion about carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has increased from 290 ppm in pre-industrial times to 365 ppm today and that increase is NOT having a significant effect on climate. In the 'global warming' scenario, short wavelength radiation from the sun passes through the atmosphere and warms the earth. The warmed earth then re-radiates long-wavelength infra-red radiation back into space, or at least tries to but is allegedly stopped by carbon dioxide. So...what's wrong with this? CO2 absorbs infra-red radiation in only a narrow wavelength band and it will not absorb any infra-red radiation with a wavelength outside of its absorption band. There is already far more CO2 in the atmosphere than is needed to effectively absorb ALL infra-red radiation in the CO2 absorption band. (A much bigger absorber of infra-red radiation in the atmosphere is...water vapor...but that's another movie.)
The effect of increasing CO2 concentration is therefore only to cause absorption to occur at a slightly lower altitude in the atmosphere and after carbon dioxide absorbs infra-red radiation, it quickly collides with nearby, and far more abundant, oxygen and nitrogen molecules, transferring heat to them. These then re-radiate heat out into space. So...does increasing carbon dioxide concentration increase temperatures at all? Yes, but only to a relatively small extent because a linear increase in temperature requires an exponential increase in carbon dioxide concentration due to the basic physics of absorption. The best estimate is that a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the pre-industrial value (290 to 580 ppm) would increase global temperatures by 1.2C. Based on our current CO2 output it will take us another 100 years to reach 580 ppm, by which time we will have probably exhausted our fossil fuels anyway, if we believe the gloomy forecasts about petroleum reserves.
So...if carbon dioxide is not changing our climate, what is? Look to the Sun. Based on current information, the sun activity is declining and we can expect cooler weather in the future.
1) Charge for mouse clicks - the first 1,000 could be 'free' and then 10 clicks for a penny.
2) Charge extra for bigger displays. Why should all of that pixel real estate be 'free.'
3) Charge for the number of files 'managed' by the OS. The first 1,000 could be free and then a penny per file above that.
4) Charge for keystrokes. Obviously the users with the most key strokes are 'power' users who should pay more. Why should the 'light' users have to pay for the power users.
5) Charge by the hour when Windows is active. Say ten cents per hour with an automatic discount for reboots caused by system failures.
These are just a few ideas for you folks at Microsoft. If you want to use them, just send the money to me at the usual place.
Because I work at CERN, and that's the injection energy of the SPS. They had not started to ramp the magnetic fields in to get to higher energies. The planned first collisions were at 450 GeV (and ramp afterwards), which never happened.
So...did someone at CERN tell you that the injector energy level was 450 GeV or are you just assuming that that's what it was since that was planned? Also, I would presume that measuring, monitoring, and controlling such a thing would be complex and subject to a lot of unexpected variations in the performance of the systems that might allow a variety of unplanned power fluxes in the early stages of testing so I don't find your blanket assurance that it was "XXX" to be comforting, especially considering that the system burned up so soon after startup.
You sound like a fellow who knows what the answer is going to be before he evefn starts the experiment or calculations. Putting aside your suggestions of murder, what basis do you have for your assertion that the energy of the LHC beam was "only 450 GeV at the time of the accident?"
The LHC started operation on September 10, 2008. Only nine days later, a 'hot spot' formed which resulted in one ton of liquid helium being released and major damage to the LHC. Now, they have inspected and are redoing the calculations on the presumably ridiculously impossible formation of a persistent black hole. Maybe they are now investigating the idea that the damage was caused by a persistent black hole that lasted for 'minutes' before disappearing. From the BBC:
"Cern has procedures in place to deal with quenches before they damage equipment, but in this instance a hot spot in the machine got out of control."
Officially, CERN has said that the hot spot was caused by an electrical fault. I haven't yet found the 'electrical fault' story to be convincing. If the damage was actually caused by the formation of a black hole which persisted for several seconds or even minutes, then it's unlikely that the LHC will ever be operated successfully until they can either prevent the formation of such a black hole (unlikely) or redesign to prevent the black hole from damaging the system (also unlikely). Perhaps the LHC will become the world's largest and most expensive manmade tourist attraction.
Honestly, you don't know what you're talking about. The problems with cleanup at the site are 1) money, 2) the usual technical difficulties working with radiological materials, 3) the sheer number and size of sites to be cleaned up, and 4) the geographical limitations of the Hanford site created by its size, remoteness, and difficulties of access.
People like you come and go, always saying the same thing: 'Management is screwed up"..."contractors are screwed up"..."the plan is screwed up," etc.
The guy who was late for that 'safety briefing?' Most likely, he had difficulties beyond his control such as maybe he couldn't find the location of the safety briefing because the location was poorly described, the only road to where he was going was closed for some sort of activity, he had difficulties with access badging, or something like that. Your comment automatically assumes the guy just overslept or something. LOL. Working at the site is a little like deep sea divers working at depth: it takes a lot of time to get to the action and back and deal with all of the related issues which results in limited on-scene time.
The biggest issues at the site are not the K basins (which are moving along) or the 'canyon buildings' but the management of the underground storage tank waste, the reverse well contamination moving to the Columbia river, and the number and size of surface and subsurface contamination sites.
There are no miracle managers or 'models of efficiency' that are going to 'solve' the Hanford cleanup problems, there is no magic technology that is going to dramatically ease the technical difficulties, and there is no quick shortcut to a cleanup. It's going to be a long slog for DECADES and it's going to cost a lot of money either to continue with the cleanup or to deal with the downstream problems if the cleanup doesn't happen effectively and all of that will be true, no matter who is President.
The 'gene expression' is the .exe and the DNA is the 'user data.'
Your first link is to a structure of an RNA enzyme, not an RNA that is able to make more copies of itself.
You didn't read the article and/or you didn't understand it. The self-replicating RNA was itself an "RNA Enzyme". It is the enzymatic action of the RNA that allows the replication, specifically by lysing RNA substrate. RNA enzymes are not new (the first was discovered in 1960 or so) but an RNA enzyme that is itself RNA is new because it allows the molecule to be self-replicating by also using copies of itself as the enzyme substrate to make more copies. To reiterate, though, this is NOT life...nor is it even close, nor is it a huge breakthrough. It is a continuing discovery in a path of investigation that has been underway for a long time.
TFA article states: "DNA is the software of life..." which
is total crap. If they insist on using a computer analogy, they
could say 'DNA is the information storage of life' and the 'gene
expression mechanism is the software.' Recent advances in epigenetics
have shown that gene expression is much more complex than previously
thought. To use the computer analogy, there's 'memory' chips and there's 'logic' chips
and they are not the same thing.
TFA is just more 'create life' hype to get research funding dollars.
From the article: "Specifically, the researchers synthesized RNA
enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins
or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.
"Immortalized" RNA, they call it, at least within the limited
conditions of a laboratory. More significantly, the scientists
then mixed different RNA enzymes that had replicated, along with some
of the raw material they were working with, and let them compete in
what's sure to be the next big hit: "Survivor: Test Tube."
Not even sure from TFA what the "breakthrough" is supposed to
be...'self-replicating RNA' or 'immortalized RNA?' UC Santa
Cruz researchers worked
out the structure of such a molecule two years ago.
This would be slightly more impressive if the researchers could claim
that their immortal RNA was capable of de novo synthesis
but the only claim they make is that no 'proteins' or 'cellular
components' are required for replication from their "raw material"
which is apparently some type of RNA.
I'm not a fan of Apple. I might even be an 'Apple hater.' If they get market dominance, they'll be just as big a butt as IBM and Microsoft were in their heydays. But...the phrase 'iPhone killer' is just wrong. Here's why: The iPhone is an extremely good product by any objective measure, mostly due to its user interface and funtionality which are quite a ways ahead of the competition that's still in stores. If the new Palm is somehow able to accomplish something similar to the iPhone, then that's great...but there is simply no way that Palm or anyone could come out with a product using current technology that would be an 'iPhone killer' because the iPhone (and iPod touch) have used the available technology in an extremely aggressive way that is NOT going to be killed off by some other product using that same technology. The Apple products are just too good right now.
More CO2 would have enveloped them in a cloud of heat-trapping gas that would have prevented them from freezing to death in the younger dryas ice age. Time to throw another log on the fire and look at all of that DAMN SNOW!
Non-nursing breasts are on display in our culture every day as a sexual attraction.
Nursing breasts are very important to babies who must have milk to survive. All milk comes from female breasts. Babies fed on cow milk are more likely to have health problems (such as infections and diabetes) than babies fed on human milk. Babies fed on human breast milk have better brain development. Mothers should be encouraged to nurse their babies as much and as long as possible. This means they will be 'breastfeeding in public' unless we intend to ban nursing mothers from public places. It is a decadent and depraved culture that finds images of nursing breasts "obscene" while elevating the display of non-nursing breasts to the status of idol. Shame. The real problem is that our culture apparently has many infantile adults who find the true function of a female breast to be upsetting.
The articles says an eruption happens every 600,000 years but the wikipedia link says "142 or more caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the SRPY hotspot within the past 17 million years" which suggests an average interval of only 120,000 years for a caldera-forming eruption.
From where I sit, PC games are on life support. Look at the Amazon top 25 sellers in video games...all console-related. Kids now spend most of their time on console games. Console sales are exploding. PC games have a long list of issues that consoles don't have: hardware compatibility, upgrades, windows version, inadequate hardware, viruses, 'installation' effort, corrupted install, etc. But...the biggest advantage of consoles now might be the user interface stuff. The wiimotes, numchucks, wireless controllers, zappers, guitars, drumsets, guns, etc. Sitting in front of a desktop screen clutching a mouse just doesn't do it for most games anymore. Yes, a lot of that stuff can be added to a PC but it's more difficult and expensive, not to mention creating potential compatibility issues with other non-game gear on the PC. Sure a PC brings huge storage and more powerful CPUs and GPUs to the table...but those don't seem to be resulting in games that offer enough fun to overcome all of the other limitations. PC games are not going away anytime soon but I expect that most of the development resources are going to consoles right now.
So...what if the aircraft carrier battle group commander gets an encoded message telling him to stand down and divert to South Africa for humanitarian aid? Then imagine that that message was sent from Beijing. If the command and control is compromised (i.e. by cyberwar) the rest of it doesn't matter much. The chinese have figured that out...and the United States hasn't.
Genetic expression is far more complex than we even imagined just a few years ago. Giving scientists a DNA map to use to recreate the organism would be like giving hurricane refugees a set of blueprints and telling them to go build their house...it takes more than the plans, it takes tools, skills, abilities, transcription information and techniques that simply do not exist and, in the case of transcription information, will never exist. This is all just PR with the wooly mammoth as a sexy icon. Who gets the money? That's where to look...
So...I'm guessin that you don't have any questions about the effect of the sun on climate.