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User: riverat1

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  1. Re:Earth won't turn into Venus! on Is Our Infrastructure Ready For Rising Temperatures? · · Score: 1

    The average yearly global temperature will rise over time from global warming. The current rate is about 0.1 C/decade. But that doesn't mean that recorded temperatures will simply rise by 0.1 C over that decade. Instead you will continue to have extreme hot and extreme cold events but over time because of the warming the extreme hot events become a bit more common and the extreme cold events a little less common and the average rises. With continued warming the heat wave in the US this summer could become the normal summer weather in 30 or 40 years.

    So the rise doesn't seem all that significant but the individual events that become more common can be very disruptive. Just ask corn growers in the Midwest where the harvest will probably be reduced by about 25% this year because of the drought and heat wave at a time the corn should be pollinating.

  2. Re:Irony on SOPA Provisions Being Introduced Piecemeal From Lamar Smith · · Score: 1

    The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

  3. Re:Will homophobes and rednecks now flock to Bing? on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    I heard Bill Gates and Steve Balmer donated $100,000 each to the supporters of gay marriage in the upcoming initiative this fall to deny it in Washington state.

  4. Re:Marriage =/= legal union. on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 2

    I think marriage is a natural development of the human tendency to pair bond. That religions incorporated it into their theology is not surprising.

  5. Re:So now Google is literally a bunch of faggots? on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    The difference being that an animal (or a 7 year old human for that matter) is not legally competent to give informed consent. That is why there will never be legal marriage between humans and animals.

  6. Re:So now Google is literally a bunch of faggots? on Google Launches International Campaign For Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    No one is saying anything about forcing churches to marry same-sex couples if they're against it. There are plenty of other people who are willing to perform the ceremony.

  7. Re:Meh who cares on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    One other thing, if they're both the same you might as well go with the guy who has some on the job experience.

  8. Re:Voter Reform? on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    If that's the case then Arizona is doing vote by mail wrong. In Oregon the ballot is inside a "privacy" envelope that you put in the outer envelope where you sign it. All signatures are compared to a digitized version of your signature before the privacy envelope is separated from the signed envelope. If they can't confirm that your signature matches they call you up and give you the opportunity to confirm that it is your signature and to make a new one for the database if necessary.

    The rarity of voter fraud is because nobody is doing it. if you were in the country illegally would you want to draw attention to yourself by trying to vote? I certainly wouldn't. If all of those things you mention about Chicago are happening now then someone needs to do something about it but voter ID laws will not fix the problem. The only thing that voter ID laws can fix is people impersonating other people at polling places and that as I said is so rare it's not worth the effort to stop.

  9. Re:Meh who cares on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    Perhaps there isn't that much difference between Romney and Obama but one things for sure, if Romney is the next President he will be installing more Supreme Court Justices like the ones who gave us the Citizens United decision, a decision that will go down in infamy like the Dred Scott decision.

  10. Re:Voter Reform? on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    Your signature in the poll book is evidence of who you are and of the fact that you have not already voted. Why is there a need for anything else?

    You can accuse voting officials of fraud all you want but until some of them actually get convicted of it I'm not going to worry about it. Voter ID laws don't do anything to fix that problem anyway.

  11. Re:Voter Reform? on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    When you go to vote you have to sign the poll book before they give you your ballot. Or as is the case here in Oregon where we do vote by mail I have to sign the outside of my ballot which gets compared to my signature on file from when I registered before they remove the ballot and put it in the pile of ballots to be counted. If there was any evidence that what you fear is actually happening I'd be more sympathetic the the voter ID laws but as I said, more people are struck by lightening every year than are accused of in person voter fraud. It's just a made up issue for political gain.

  12. Re:Voter Reform? on US Election Year, Still No Voting Reform · · Score: 1

    We have Voter ID. It's called registering to vote. Your voter registration card should be all the ID you need. Anything else is a waste of peoples time and money. People actually showing up at a poling place to impersonate another voter is so rare that more people are struck by lightening every year than attempt this fraud.

  13. Re:Bye Florida! on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Oops, miscalculation and misreading. The "1.5 x 10^21 Watt-seconds" should have been 5.9 x 10^24 Watt-seconds. There are 4.1868 Watt-seconds of energy in a calorie.

  14. Re:Bye Florida! on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    The average depth of the oceans is around 12,500 feet. If all of the ice on land were to melt it would raise sea level around 230 feet, an insignificant amount of water compared to what is already in the oceans. So there isn't enough ice to cool down the oceans significantly. At any rate the oceans have been absorbing heat energy at a rate of about 300 trillion Watts/second over the last few decades. To put that in perspective the total mass of the Earth's hydrosphere is about 1.4 x 10^21 kg. To raise all of that water by 1 C would take 1.4 x 10^24 calories or 1.5 x 10^21 Watt-seconds of energy (compared to 300 x 10^9 it is currently absorbing).

  15. Re:Bullshit. on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Who are you talking about? It certainly isn't me.

  16. Re:Bullshit. on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Yes, I clicked the link. Political rhetoric has no meaning in a scientific context.

  17. Re:Bullshit. on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Why don't you get back to me when that trend has continued for 20 years or so.

  18. Re:And Now for Something Completely Different on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Just eyeballing the chart it looks to me like there is more area where the sea surface temperature anomaly is above zero than below. But it's hard to tell since the map projection distorts the area as you move away from the equator.

  19. Re:Yea, Sure on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 2

    I was right, it is above your reading level.

  20. Re:Yea, Sure on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    You can find out where the numbers came from if you read the paper I cited. But maybe it's above your reading level.

  21. Re:Good news... on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    Actually burning stuff and nuclear reactions releases less than 1% as much energy as the forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gases including CO2 and methane (0.028 W/m2 vs. 2.9 W/m2). It's on the level of a rounding error.

  22. Re:Good news... on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    The difference between 14.2 and 32.2 cm is pretty significant.

  23. Re:The sky is falling... on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    The Sun shines more energy on the Earth in a few hours than humans use in a whole year. I think there's plenty of solar energy to power us. I read somewhere that it would take a solar array of only 40x40 km to power the human world.

  24. Re:remove excessive CO2? on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    A saying I've seen attributed to several cultures holds "We don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children." How would you feel about it if you were that child born 90 years from now?

  25. Re:remove excessive CO2? on Sea Level Rise Can't Be Stopped · · Score: 1

    ... we don't know what that reservoire is ...

    That reservoir is mostly the oceans. As water temperature rises it is able to hold less CO2 in solution and forces it back into the atmosphere.