From the article: "There is also the matter of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim."
Even with the new sunspots of cycle 24, the sun is becoming...dimmer. "Dim sun" is the new climate buzzword for 2009 to replace 'greenhouse effect.'
The 'idea' of a laptop is not the same as an actual laptop that people
can buy and use. The first laptop that people could really buy
and use was the TRS-80 Model 100
introduced in 1983 which makes the laptop 25 years old.
The only 'religious' thing he's done is attend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, who he now disowns for political reasons. Obama's mother was atheist. He never knew his father. His step-father was muslim.
Generally, there's been some indications of cooling recently. Maybe it's just noise in the measurements that'll go away in a year but...maybe it's not. Seems just as valid, though, to link the recent observed cooling with reduced sunspot activity on the sun as it does to link warming with increased co2 concentrations, which is to say...not very. The truth is that the planetary climate system is far more complex than our current modelling ability can handle and is affected by more variables than we understand. Looks like it will be a very cold winter though.
You'll never hear an Al Gore follower mention it but the Earth has
actually been on a coolingcycle
for the last two years. Maybe we should be starting to look at
schemes to increase planetary warming. This could be
especially worrisome if sunspot cycle 24 continues to be unusuallyweak.
I've already mentioned many times that we know the climate is affected by variables other than CO2. The problem is that those variables don't explain the current changes.
No, the problem is that your thinking refuses to consider that variables other than CO2 might be have dominant effects on climate. You've rejected variations in solar output, cloud reflectivity, and planetary core heat as factors, not based on any actual data, knowledge, or reason but only because they are not part of your CO2-based theory.
No, it doesn't. At best it shows maybe 1 C fluctuations spread out over multiple centuries.
Ice core data from Greenland shows that temperatures in Greenland during the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago were 15C colder than present. The colder temperatures developed abruptly and persisted for approximately 1300 years. The Younger Dryas is an extreme event that can not be explained by the current popular CO2 nonsense.
The surface isn't receiving substantial heat from below because it's not warming from below. You can't get any more clear than that. The processes responsible for core heating or cooling are irrelevant to this observational fact.
Obviously the earth's core is a source of heat and obviously it is warming the crust. The only real question is the degree to which this is occurring. Possible mechanisms include transport of hot/molten material up to the crust, circulation of water at rift zones, conduction of heat from the mantle up through the crust (as measured by your boreholes), and processes associated with crustal subduction. No one knows the magnitude of the heat contribution from any of these mechanisms. It is absolutely asounding how closed your mind is to considering anything beyond CO2 gas in the atmosphere wrt to effects on climate. Personally, I tend to doubt that crustal heat effects are a major contributor to global warming or cooling but my mind is open to the idea, unlike yours.
This has nothing to do with modeling. It's a direct observation: we don't see heat moving up from the core toward the surface. We see the opposite.
If you really think heat is moving from the earth's crustal surface to the core you have a basic misunderstanding of heat transfer concepts and thermodynamics. Lord Kelvin's error was in failing to realize that there was an unknown source of heat at the Earth's core, not in misunderstanding basic concepts.
Study of stochastic fluctuations in forcing on global warming go back until at least the 1970s; in fact, it was an early competing hypothesis to the greenhouse effect. Hasselmann's 1976 paper is seminal here, although I'm not sure which paper was the first to look at clouds specifically.
Did you read the link I provided? "Precision earthshine observations to determine global reflectivity have been under way at BBSO since 1994, with regular observations commencing in late 1997...The low albedo during 1997-2001 increased solar heating of the globe at a rate more than twice that expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This "dimming" of Earth, as it would be seen from space, is perhaps connected with the recent accelerated increase in mean global surface temperatures...But these new data emphasize that clouds must be properly accounted for and illustrate that we still lack the detailed understanding of our climate system necessary to model future changes with confidence."
more heat doesn't have to be retained if it doesn't reach the surface in the first place. There are year to year fluctuations in this amount, due to clouds, which on the long term are dominated by CO2 but in the short term cause significant natural variability.
This shows the entire problem with your reasoning. You admit that clouds can decrease the amount of heat reaching the Earth on a year over year basis but you nevertheless insist, in the complete absence of data, reason, or knowledge, that their effect is a transient one that is "dominated by CO2". The historical record shows that global temperatures have swung to great extremes over just the last few thousand years and are therefore obviously affected by variables other than CO2 and yet you and the entire CO2-done-it bunch dismiss with a wave of your hand other potential variables simply because you don't understand them.
we have deep borehole measurements into the Earth's crust which do not show significant heat rising from the depths.
Interesting that you're willing to let "deep borehole measurements" made at a handful of locations be a proxy for planetary core heat release but you're unwilling to let a much larger and better set of ocean temperature measurements be a similar proxy for global surface temperatures. We don't know what mechanisms predominate in the release of heat from the core, how the mantle circulates, or even what the source of heat is from the core but you are willing to flat out state that it's of no significance, based on a handful of borehole measurements, just as Lord Kelvin was willing to state a few years back that the Earth could only be 4,000 years old based on his modelling of heat release from the core.
Oceans will, on average, tend to have more heat present every year.
This is an improvement for you, at least and is really the only way you can possibly explain away the increase in sea ice cover described in TFA and still cling to your romanticized theory about the effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperatures. Next year will be even more difficult for you, no doubt.
You might say that variations in reflectance are a "well known fact"
but the fact is that studies of the effect of reflectance on global
warming are relatively
recent and are not properly accounted for in current
models. Certainly, the CO2-causes-global-warming fans
ignore it. You claim that the CO2 theory of global warming
does not result in more heat present in the oceans every
year. Would you concede that the alleged 'greenhouse'
effect of CO2 warming occurs every year or do you you claim that the
CO2 molecules take an occasional year off? If the
effect of
atmospheric CO2 on heat retention is continuous (which it must be if
the theory is correct), then increased heat
must be retained every year. If that heat is NOT being
accumulated in the oceans, then where must it be going? The
air? Rocks? Moonbeams? Or are you just waving
that away as a "minor point?" You claim that the variation in
planetary core heat causes a variation in temperatures on the crust of
"a hundredth of a degree" but the fact is that no one has any idea what
the variation in heat from the core even is, much less what the
magnitude of the temperature variation that might be resulting from it
is. Just wave that away as another "minor point." Finally,
you claim that variations in solar output are inconsistent with the
warming which has been observed in those oceans which, according to
you, don't have more heat present every year. The problem
with your entire belief system on this issue is that it is based on
what you want the facts to be rather than what they are.
All else is not equal. For one, there is substantial variability from year to year in cloud cover, which prevents heat from reaching the Earth's surface (reflected into space).
You are conceding, then, that the reflectivity of the cloud cover can vary from year to year. That puts you ahead of many global warming advocates. Isn't it also possible that warmer surface temperatures (which you must admit would be expected with global warming) would lead to increased evaporation, increased atmospheric moisture, and increased cloud cover, thereby increasing reflectivity and providing a global temperature feedback control mechanism? Yet, current models either don't account for that or simply assume that reflectivity is constant.
In addition, there is a lot of variation in how much heat ends up in the ocean vs. stays near the surface;
Yes, heat is not distributed evenly throughout the oceans. Nevertheless, the CO2 theory of global warming must result in more heat present in the oceans every year. If some locations are cooler, others must be warmer and the combined temperatures must be positive if the heat input is positive. Of course, that's not what is observed, which completely undermines the entire simplistic theory of co2-based global warming, but its adherents wave that away as a minor point, just as they ignore variations in heat originating in the planetary core and variations in solar output. Instead they point to sea ice cover decreasing, glaciers receding, increased hurricane activity, and hot weather in Paris to claim that co2-caused global warming is a fact and they go on with nonsense about carbon credits and such.
The greenhouse effect doesn't predict that every year will break or nearly break the previous year's record in a monotonic increase, and you don't see that in the climate model predictions either. You do see an overall upward trend, but on timescales of a decade or so,
From a global energy balance point of view, the amount of heat retained by Earth must increase every year if the theory about atmospheric carbon dioxide significantly reducing heat radiation into space is correct and that retained heat must manifest itself as increased temperatures on Earth...somewhere. Some places colder, some warmer but overall temperatures must increase...every year...all other things being equal. Our ability to measure temperatures on Earth is very limited, of course, but nevertheless the presence of more heat on the Earth's crust must reveal itself in some way.
Well, sure, it's not THAT cold...yet. The general idea of global warming, though, is that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is trapping heat that would otherwise be radiated into space, and the effect is increasing. Most importantly, the amount of the increased heat being retained should generally be increasing as the carbon dioxide concentration increa and it should be impossible for there to be less heat retained, if the theory is correct. If global temperatures in the sea and air decrease, however, that implies that there is less heat, not more, since the temperature is a measurement of the retained heat. There is, of course, variation and 'noise' in the air and water surface measurements as well as the effects of mixing and circulation but the general idea should one of steadily increasing temperatures. Your list should have 2nd warmest, warmest, 2nd warmest, warmest, etc. rather than 9th warmest, 10 warmest, 8 warmest, etc.
Solar output and atmospheric heat retention are two completely independent variables.
At least you admit that solar output is a variable which puts you way ahead of most of global warming people. As far as the 'atmospheric heat retention' I presume you mean the effect of the atmosperic carbon dioxide concentration which is allegedly increasing heat retention. The evidence that a change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from 280 ppm at the end of the last ice age to 385 ppm today has any effect at all on 'atmospheric heat retention' is nonexistent. But even assuming the opposite, your statement above is wrong. How warm do you think a 'greenhouse' is if the sun is not shining? Not very. Atmospheric heat retention is completely dependent on solar output, not independent as you claim. No output...no heat retention. Prepare for coooooooolllllddddd.....
Converting CO2 into vehicle fuels will require MASSIVE amounts of energy. The source of this energy is mysteriously missing from the vendor's website. That would be the FIRST item that they would list on their todo list and their technology announcement if it were legitimate. This "announcement" ranks right up there with those devices to add to your car to burn water so that you can get 200 mpg. Maybe Slashdot can do a story on one of those next week...
The patent is about a particular combination of features which includes for example a magnification function. Also the Dock captures running application - so it is a combination of Toolbar and Minimized Windows.
And this combination has not been there in OS/2. Or any other Dock-like tool.
The OS/2 warpcenter captures running applications and also has a feature similar to, but better, than magnification in which a mouseover of the icon displays active information. Your comments are applicable to the old OS/2 "Toolbar" with its minimized windows list but the "Warpcenter" didn't have the minimized windows list anymore but instead had both active appliations and active threads and allowed you to terminate in either list. The active applications menu also had a "desktop" icon that, with one click, would push every application off of the desktop but leave it still active in the background. There is NOTHING innovative or new in Apple Dock except its "Patent" number.
OS/2 (an x86 operating system developed by IBM back in the 1990s) had the same thing on its desktop since Warp 3 came out back in 1994 with the "Toolbar." The toolbar put icons in a toolbar on the desktop and even had little 'drawers' that opened up with more icons under an icon in the main bar. It also had buttons for shutdown, lists of active programs, suspend mode, and file searching. The Toolbar was pretty good but IBM came out with something better in the form of their "Warpcenter" when they released Warp 4 in 1996. The Warpcenter had rows of icons across the top, bottom, or sides of the screen, allowed multiple 'trays' of additional icons, and also had controls for operation, graphical displays of the utilization of each disk drive, a cpu activity trace (dual trace for dual cpus), and battery charge indicator. It also had a feature that displayed active processes and allowed them to be terminated selectively.
The bottom line is there is absolutely nothing new or innovative in the Apple "Dock" and granting them a patent for it is ridiculous.
I just posted an item to be sold and it gave me a message that I was not a sufficiently qualified seller to use payment options other than paypal but it implied that I could become so-qualified with more positive seller ratings. I went ahead and posted my item and then I went into the 'edit' mode and the editing allowed me to add a bunch of additional payment options including check and money order...so I added them.
Had to go to youtube to see the two ads...they are so bad that slashdot is doing them a huge favor to even have a story about them. What's wrong?
1) Too long 2) Nonsensical 3) Weird 4) Patronizing 5) Boring 6) Confusing
It's hard to believe that a major corporation like Microsoft could produce these...what a waste of money. Even harder to believe that these ever were released...is everyone at Microsoft a clueless moron?
At the moment a Prius is priced several thousand dollars more than a comparable-size and power non-hybrid car but that's just because hybrids are newer and more popular. The cost to manufacture a hybrid should be less than a traditional car because the hybrid, with the exception of its battery, is simpler and with fewer moving parts. The Prius doesn't have a 'multi-speed' gear box, starter motor, alternator, serpentine belt, or torque converter/clutch so all of those are left out along with the collateral stuff associated with them such as wiring harness components, starting battery, interlock controls, and various mechanical linkages and mounting brackets making the assembly line simpler and cheaper. Also, stuff like the engine and radiator are relatively small and presumably less expensive. The Prius does have a planetary gear system as a power-splitting device but it's a relatively simple component to manufacture. The manufacturing cost for the battery is the biggest adder over a traditional car and that is probably, at the moment, only about a $1,000 increase in manufacturing cost over a traditional car while leaving out the other stuff probably saves several thousand. The bottom line is that hybrids should eventually be cheaper to buy than a conventional car and likely cheaper to operate over their service life as well.
Al Gore said "The debate in the scientific community is over." The absence of debate implies that there is no disagreement in the scientific community...and that is...wrong. There is ENORMOUS disagreement about this issue among scientists (and everyone else) about the causes and direction of global climate change. Al and his followers are attempting to move towards a future in which taxes and restrictions are placed on 'carbon footprint' based on the theory that a small change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is causing global climate changes. As TFA suggests, global climate change may actually be caused by solar output and the direction may be the opposite of Al Gore's prediction...and much sooner. The evidence that carbon dioxide concentration may have any effect at all on global temperatures is based on some very shaky assumptions built into crude climate models. The things that people agree on are 1) atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased and 2) global temperatures have warmed slightly in the last few decades. Connecting those two things together as cause-and-effect is NOT a matter of widespread agreement anywhere outside of the movie theatres showing Al's film.
Decreased sunspots results in reduced solar output according to the article. Reduced solar output might very well mean...COLD. Serious cold. A major planetary climate change to much colder winters and shorter summers might be only a year or two away. What might this mean? Some areas of Europe and North America would become uninhabitable. Shelters and transportation would need to be provided for migration from those areas. There would be a worldwide shortage of food due to crop failure in the newly-cold areas. Other areas that are currently poor for agriculture due to limited precipitation and excessive heat would improve and become new fertile areas, provided that equipment and resources can be sent there quickly. Global cooling would be a much bigger problem than global warming because it would happen relatively quickly giving us little time to prepare.
There's evidence that Kennedy's choice for VP, Lyndon Johnson, managed to bump him off three years later allowing LBJ to become president. Maybe McCain's just watching his back by choosing a VP that potential assassination conspirators would like even less than McCain.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article: "There is also the matter of solar irradiance," adds Pesnell. "Researchers are now seeing the dimmest sun in their records. The change is small, just a fraction of a percent, but significant. Questions about effects on climate are natural if the sun continues to dim."
Even with the new sunspots of cycle 24, the sun is becoming...dimmer. "Dim sun" is the new climate buzzword for 2009 to replace 'greenhouse effect.'
The 'idea' of a laptop is not the same as an actual laptop that people can buy and use. The first laptop that people could really buy and use was the TRS-80 Model 100 introduced in 1983 which makes the laptop 25 years old.
The only 'religious' thing he's done is attend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, who he now disowns for political reasons. Obama's mother was atheist. He never knew his father. His step-father was muslim.
Generally, there's been some indications of cooling recently. Maybe it's just noise in the measurements that'll go away in a year but...maybe it's not. Seems just as valid, though, to link the recent observed cooling with reduced sunspot activity on the sun as it does to link warming with increased co2 concentrations, which is to say...not very. The truth is that the planetary climate system is far more complex than our current modelling ability can handle and is affected by more variables than we understand. Looks like it will be a very cold winter though.
You'll never hear an Al Gore follower mention it but the Earth has actually been on a cooling cycle for the last two years. Maybe we should be starting to look at schemes to increase planetary warming. This could be especially worrisome if sunspot cycle 24 continues to be unusually weak.
I've already mentioned many times that we know the climate is affected by variables other than CO2. The problem is that those variables don't explain the current changes.
No, the problem is that your thinking refuses to consider that variables other than CO2 might be have dominant effects on climate. You've rejected variations in solar output, cloud reflectivity, and planetary core heat as factors, not based on any actual data, knowledge, or reason but only because they are not part of your CO2-based theory.
No, it doesn't. At best it shows maybe 1 C fluctuations spread out over multiple centuries.
Ice core data from Greenland shows that temperatures in Greenland during the Younger Dryas 12,000 years ago were 15C colder than present. The colder temperatures developed abruptly and persisted for approximately 1300 years. The Younger Dryas is an extreme event that can not be explained by the current popular CO2 nonsense.
The surface isn't receiving substantial heat from below because it's not warming from below. You can't get any more clear than that. The processes responsible for core heating or cooling are irrelevant to this observational fact.
Obviously the earth's core is a source of heat and obviously it is warming the crust. The only real question is the degree to which this is occurring. Possible mechanisms include transport of hot/molten material up to the crust, circulation of water at rift zones, conduction of heat from the mantle up through the crust (as measured by your boreholes), and processes associated with crustal subduction. No one knows the magnitude of the heat contribution from any of these mechanisms. It is absolutely asounding how closed your mind is to considering anything beyond CO2 gas in the atmosphere wrt to effects on climate. Personally, I tend to doubt that crustal heat effects are a major contributor to global warming or cooling but my mind is open to the idea, unlike yours.
This has nothing to do with modeling. It's a direct observation: we don't see heat moving up from the core toward the surface. We see the opposite.
If you really think heat is moving from the earth's crustal surface to the core you have a basic misunderstanding of heat transfer concepts and thermodynamics. Lord Kelvin's error was in failing to realize that there was an unknown source of heat at the Earth's core, not in misunderstanding basic concepts.
Minor correction: Lord Kelvin actually calculated that the age of the earth was 25 million years old rather than 4,000.
Study of stochastic fluctuations in forcing on global warming go back until at least the 1970s; in fact, it was an early competing hypothesis to the greenhouse effect. Hasselmann's 1976 paper is seminal here, although I'm not sure which paper was the first to look at clouds specifically.
Did you read the link I provided? "Precision earthshine observations to determine global reflectivity have been under way at BBSO since 1994, with regular observations commencing in late 1997...The low albedo during 1997-2001 increased solar heating of the globe at a rate more than twice that expected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This "dimming" of Earth, as it would be seen from space, is perhaps connected with the recent accelerated increase in mean global surface temperatures...But these new data emphasize that clouds must be properly accounted for and illustrate that we still lack the detailed understanding of our climate system necessary to model future changes with confidence."
more heat doesn't have to be retained if it doesn't reach the surface in the first place. There are year to year fluctuations in this amount, due to clouds, which on the long term are dominated by CO2 but in the short term cause significant natural variability.
This shows the entire problem with your reasoning. You admit that clouds can decrease the amount of heat reaching the Earth on a year over year basis but you nevertheless insist, in the complete absence of data, reason, or knowledge, that their effect is a transient one that is "dominated by CO2". The historical record shows that global temperatures have swung to great extremes over just the last few thousand years and are therefore obviously affected by variables other than CO2 and yet you and the entire CO2-done-it bunch dismiss with a wave of your hand other potential variables simply because you don't understand them.
we have deep borehole measurements into the Earth's crust which do not show significant heat rising from the depths.
Interesting that you're willing to let "deep borehole measurements" made at a handful of locations be a proxy for planetary core heat release but you're unwilling to let a much larger and better set of ocean temperature measurements be a similar proxy for global surface temperatures. We don't know what mechanisms predominate in the release of heat from the core, how the mantle circulates, or even what the source of heat is from the core but you are willing to flat out state that it's of no significance, based on a handful of borehole measurements, just as Lord Kelvin was willing to state a few years back that the Earth could only be 4,000 years old based on his modelling of heat release from the core.
Oceans will, on average, tend to have more heat present every year.
This is an improvement for you, at least and is really the only way you can possibly explain away the increase in sea ice cover described in TFA and still cling to your romanticized theory about the effect of atmospheric CO2 on global temperatures. Next year will be even more difficult for you, no doubt.
You might say that variations in reflectance are a "well known fact" but the fact is that studies of the effect of reflectance on global warming are relatively recent and are not properly accounted for in current models. Certainly, the CO2-causes-global-warming fans ignore it. You claim that the CO2 theory of global warming does not result in more heat present in the oceans every year. Would you concede that the alleged 'greenhouse' effect of CO2 warming occurs every year or do you you claim that the CO2 molecules take an occasional year off? If the effect of atmospheric CO2 on heat retention is continuous (which it must be if the theory is correct), then increased heat must be retained every year. If that heat is NOT being accumulated in the oceans, then where must it be going? The air? Rocks? Moonbeams? Or are you just waving that away as a "minor point?" You claim that the variation in planetary core heat causes a variation in temperatures on the crust of "a hundredth of a degree" but the fact is that no one has any idea what the variation in heat from the core even is, much less what the magnitude of the temperature variation that might be resulting from it is. Just wave that away as another "minor point." Finally, you claim that variations in solar output are inconsistent with the warming which has been observed in those oceans which, according to you, don't have more heat present every year. The problem with your entire belief system on this issue is that it is based on what you want the facts to be rather than what they are.
All else is not equal. For one, there is substantial variability from year to year in cloud cover, which prevents heat from reaching the Earth's surface (reflected into space).
You are conceding, then, that the reflectivity of the cloud cover can vary from year to year. That puts you ahead of many global warming advocates. Isn't it also possible that warmer surface temperatures (which you must admit would be expected with global warming) would lead to increased evaporation, increased atmospheric moisture, and increased cloud cover, thereby increasing reflectivity and providing a global temperature feedback control mechanism? Yet, current models either don't account for that or simply assume that reflectivity is constant.
In addition, there is a lot of variation in how much heat ends up in the ocean vs. stays near the surface;
Yes, heat is not distributed evenly throughout the oceans. Nevertheless, the CO2 theory of global warming must result in more heat present in the oceans every year. If some locations are cooler, others must be warmer and the combined temperatures must be positive if the heat input is positive. Of course, that's not what is observed, which completely undermines the entire simplistic theory of co2-based global warming, but its adherents wave that away as a minor point, just as they ignore variations in heat originating in the planetary core and variations in solar output. Instead they point to sea ice cover decreasing, glaciers receding, increased hurricane activity, and hot weather in Paris to claim that co2-caused global warming is a fact and they go on with nonsense about carbon credits and such.
The greenhouse effect doesn't predict that every year will break or nearly break the previous year's record in a monotonic increase, and you don't see that in the climate model predictions either. You do see an overall upward trend, but on timescales of a decade or so,
From a global energy balance point of view, the amount of heat retained by Earth must increase every year if the theory about atmospheric carbon dioxide significantly reducing heat radiation into space is correct and that retained heat must manifest itself as increased temperatures on Earth...somewhere. Some places colder, some warmer but overall temperatures must increase...every year...all other things being equal. Our ability to measure temperatures on Earth is very limited, of course, but nevertheless the presence of more heat on the Earth's crust must reveal itself in some way.
Well, sure, it's not THAT cold...yet. The general idea of global warming, though, is that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is trapping heat that would otherwise be radiated into space, and the effect is increasing. Most importantly, the amount of the increased heat being retained should generally be increasing as the carbon dioxide concentration increa and it should be impossible for there to be less heat retained, if the theory is correct. If global temperatures in the sea and air decrease, however, that implies that there is less heat, not more, since the temperature is a measurement of the retained heat. There is, of course, variation and 'noise' in the air and water surface measurements as well as the effects of mixing and circulation but the general idea should one of steadily increasing temperatures. Your list should have 2nd warmest, warmest, 2nd warmest, warmest, etc. rather than 9th warmest, 10 warmest, 8 warmest, etc.
Solar output and atmospheric heat retention are two completely independent variables.
At least you admit that solar output is a variable which puts you way ahead of most of global warming people. As far as the 'atmospheric heat retention' I presume you mean the effect of the atmosperic carbon dioxide concentration which is allegedly increasing heat retention. The evidence that a change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from 280 ppm at the end of the last ice age to 385 ppm today has any effect at all on 'atmospheric heat retention' is nonexistent. But even assuming the opposite, your statement above is wrong. How warm do you think a 'greenhouse' is if the sun is not shining? Not very. Atmospheric heat retention is completely dependent on solar output, not independent as you claim. No output...no heat retention. Prepare for coooooooolllllddddd.....
2008
is the coldest year of the 21st century and output from the sun is declining.
Maybe Al Gore and his carbon cult followers were...wrong.
Converting CO2 into vehicle fuels will require MASSIVE amounts of energy. The source of this energy is mysteriously missing from the vendor's website. That would be the FIRST item that they would list on their todo list and their technology announcement if it were legitimate. This "announcement" ranks right up there with those devices to add to your car to burn water so that you can get 200 mpg. Maybe Slashdot can do a story on one of those next week...
The patent is about a particular combination of features which includes for example a magnification function. Also the Dock captures running application - so it is a combination of Toolbar and Minimized Windows.
And this combination has not been there in OS/2. Or any other Dock-like tool.
The OS/2 warpcenter captures running applications and also has a feature similar to, but better, than magnification in which a mouseover of the icon displays active information. Your comments are applicable to the old OS/2 "Toolbar" with its minimized windows list but the "Warpcenter" didn't have the minimized windows list anymore but instead had both active appliations and active threads and allowed you to terminate in either list. The active applications menu also had a "desktop" icon that, with one click, would push every application off of the desktop but leave it still active in the background. There is NOTHING innovative or new in Apple Dock except its "Patent" number.
OS/2 (an x86 operating system developed by IBM back in the 1990s) had the same thing on its desktop since Warp 3 came out back in 1994 with the "Toolbar." The toolbar put icons in a toolbar on the desktop and even had little 'drawers' that opened up with more icons under an icon in the main bar. It also had buttons for shutdown, lists of active programs, suspend mode, and file searching. The Toolbar was pretty good but IBM came out with something better in the form of their "Warpcenter" when they released Warp 4 in 1996. The Warpcenter had rows of icons across the top, bottom, or sides of the screen, allowed multiple 'trays' of additional icons, and also had controls for operation, graphical displays of the utilization of each disk drive, a cpu activity trace (dual trace for dual cpus), and battery charge indicator. It also had a feature that displayed active processes and allowed them to be terminated selectively.
The bottom line is there is absolutely nothing new or innovative in the Apple "Dock" and granting them a patent for it is ridiculous.
If something CAN be done, it WILL be done.
I just posted an item to be sold and it gave me a message that I was not a sufficiently qualified seller to use payment options other than paypal but it implied that I could become so-qualified with more positive seller ratings. I went ahead and posted my item and then I went into the 'edit' mode and the editing allowed me to add a bunch of additional payment options including check and money order...so I added them.
Had to go to youtube to see the two ads...they are so bad that slashdot is doing them a huge favor to even have a story about them. What's wrong?
1) Too long
2) Nonsensical
3) Weird
4) Patronizing
5) Boring
6) Confusing
It's hard to believe that a major corporation like Microsoft could produce these...what a waste of money. Even harder to believe that these ever were released...is everyone at Microsoft a clueless moron?
At the moment a Prius is priced several thousand dollars more than a
comparable-size and power non-hybrid car but that's just because
hybrids are newer and more popular. The cost to manufacture a
hybrid should be less than a traditional car because the hybrid, with
the exception of its battery, is simpler
and with fewer moving parts. The Prius doesn't have a
'multi-speed' gear box, starter motor, alternator, serpentine belt, or
torque converter/clutch so all of those are left out along with the
collateral stuff associated with them such as wiring harness
components, starting battery, interlock controls, and various
mechanical linkages and mounting brackets making the assembly
line simpler and cheaper. Also, stuff like the engine and
radiator are relatively small and presumably less expensive. The
Prius does have a planetary
gear system as a power-splitting device but it's a relatively
simple component to manufacture. The manufacturing cost for the
battery is the biggest adder over a traditional car and that is
probably, at the moment, only about a $1,000 increase in manufacturing
cost over a traditional car while leaving out the other stuff probably
saves several thousand. The bottom line is that hybrids
should eventually be cheaper to buy than a conventional car and likely
cheaper to operate over their service life as well.
Al Gore said "The debate in the scientific community is over." The absence of debate implies that there is no disagreement in the scientific community...and that is...wrong. There is ENORMOUS disagreement about this issue among scientists (and everyone else) about the causes and direction of global climate change. Al and his followers are attempting to move towards a future in which taxes and restrictions are placed on 'carbon footprint' based on the theory that a small change in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is causing global climate changes. As TFA suggests, global climate change may actually be caused by solar output and the direction may be the opposite of Al Gore's prediction...and much sooner. The evidence that carbon dioxide concentration may have any effect at all on global temperatures is based on some very shaky assumptions built into crude climate models. The things that people agree on are 1) atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have increased and 2) global temperatures have warmed slightly in the last few decades. Connecting those two things together as cause-and-effect is NOT a matter of widespread agreement anywhere outside of the movie theatres showing Al's film.
Decreased sunspots results in reduced solar output according to the article. Reduced solar output might very well mean...COLD. Serious cold. A major planetary climate change to much colder winters and shorter summers might be only a year or two away. What might this mean? Some areas of Europe and North America would become uninhabitable. Shelters and transportation would need to be provided for migration from those areas. There would be a worldwide shortage of food due to crop failure in the newly-cold areas. Other areas that are currently poor for agriculture due to limited precipitation and excessive heat would improve and become new fertile areas, provided that equipment and resources can be sent there quickly. Global cooling would be a much bigger problem than global warming because it would happen relatively quickly giving us little time to prepare.
Very few scientists seem to disagree.
So you admit that there are actually scientists who disagree? That puts you way out in front of Al Gore and his band of followers on this issue.
There's evidence
that Kennedy's choice for VP, Lyndon Johnson, managed to bump him off
three years later allowing LBJ to become president. Maybe
McCain's just watching his back by choosing a VP that potential
assassination conspirators would like even less than
McCain.