However, the various water cooled reactor designs we use are equally flawed, in particular since it's been demonstrated time and again that a reactor which is inherently unstable and requires active control to keep from meltdown is liable to fail.
The idea that, since it works pretty well in a submarine, a big water cooled reactor is the best design for a stationary power plant is about as logical as deciding that a 2 kiloliter Honda motor would be a good bet.
Enough neonicotionoid progress and you might have nothing left to eat. Or take turns pollinating the plants that will become your food with a brush.
Some plants -- particularly some that humans have bred for food, selecting bigger tastier food over reproduction potential -- already have impaired pollination features. Thus, pollination is already accomplished manually for some crops.
There are some ways to handle this on an industrial scale, but gardeners often do it by hand with certain plants. All it takes is a little stroll in the garden and some wrist action. Seriously. Years ago my neighbor always did this with his sweet corn plants and referred to it as "having sex with his corn."
True of some farm animals as well. Wouldn't use that quote though.
The neonicotinoids have been seen as a great advancement in insecticides because they are toxic to insects, but much less so to mammals. Compare them with chemicals like DDT, which are effective against insects, but kill the higher orders in the food chain that eat them.
The problem with them is that they are extremely effective at disrupting bees - about 1/150 of the dose needed to kill other insects is enough to confuse bees. And the products are advertised as rose and garden insecticides, which are naturally attractive to bees. It only takes a few bees worth of nectar gathering to bring down a colony.
I don't see these products marketed for roses or other flowers. What they're sold as is grub treatment for lawns, (and flea treatments for pets), where the idea is to apply them on the grass then water them into the soil, specifically to not affect bees, butterflies, etc. I've wondered how this would affect ground dwelling bees (badly I assume) but honeybees would appear out of danger. Anyway I'm going to read the original paper now, maybe they say how the problem works
The original paper points out this particular melt is occurring on the scale of centuries. The point is not that this is going to drown New Orleans or New York before we. can cope.
The point is that, for all this debate about a tripping point, and is there one, and when do we hit it, the fact odds that there lots of smaller tripping points like this one, and we're passing them all the time, and even if we do get it together at some point to turn off the auxiliary heating element, things aren't going to get back to "normal", ever. And every day we delay means something else changes irreversibly.
We do expect and demand that the public change their lifestyles quite a bit.
Which won't change a damned thing, because the third world is not going to meekly sit back and accept their current level of development. The United States could literally cease to exist tomorrow and the freed energy wouldn't be enough to bring the billions in the third world out of poverty. You can't even convince Westerners to waste less, but you think you're going to convince those in the third world to meekly accept their current lot in life?
First we need less babies.
Capping family sizes is antithetical to western notions of freedom. That's literally the most personal decision you can make, it's not something that can be imposed from the top down in our societies. A civilization without our reverence for individual liberty tried it and arguably failed, or at the very least created all manner of unintended consequences with deleterious outcomes that still haven't been fully quantified.
That's the spirit! Why should we refrain from our current contribution of 25% of civilization's possible demise, when all those not currently contributing might decide to do so in the future? How dare they! Don't they know the gravity of what they're doing, in our imagination? Serves them right! I'm going to go out right now and burn some coal for no reason, just to show them.
Two principles apply: when you want to climb out of a hole, stop digging; and a long journey begins with a single step.
Alternately, we could just sit here and do nothing.
I have never even seen Antarctica, and I don't recall anyone talking about it twenty years ago. If 97% of geographers say Antarctica exists, I'd just like to point out that I've driven 50 miles in every direction but up and haven't seen no sign at all. And I'm pretty sure that my brother's boss once heard that geographers are telling us about this mythical Antarctica to take money from people like me and give it to themselves.
No continent I've ever seen is going to make me worry about sea-level rise, so keep yer commeenistic plots off of Slashdot.
Antarctica can't exist. It's easy to prove. It's often described as the southernmost continent on the planet. Well, what happens if you go there, then head south? Hmm?
I'm a bit puzzled. If it will truly become a crisis, does it not suggest that the ice was frozen for all time and has never in history been running water?
Wouldn't that mean that eons ago, we had a crisis to solve and managed to create the worlds biggest ice-box in the process... who cares if it made some dino-ice cubes?
The world is constantly changing, for better or worse, and people always seem genuinely surprised when it changes.
Yeah, people didn't have a problem when there was a sea covering the southwestern US.
And yet, according to most of the models, the world will be MUCH DRYER, not raining. So, we will see more deserts around the world.
As to floods, well, rivers came about because of floods that cut into the earth and that leads to a constant run-off path. IOW, it will simply create new rivers.
And yet, according to most of the models, the world will be MUCH DRYER, not raining. So, we will see more deserts around the world.
As to floods, well, rivers came about because of floods that cut into the earth and that leads to a constant run-off path. IOW, it will simply create new rivers.
According to most models, when you warm up a planet whose surface is mostly water, it gets WETTER not much dryer. However, according to most models, the same processes which keep certain parts of the current climate dry, such as being downwind of a mountain range like the US southwest, will continue to exist, and the increased temperature in these areas will dry them out even further.
Not to be conspiratorial, but here we go. The first step is to have "smart" guns that will only fire when in the hands of the owner. The second step is to require all firearms to be "smart" guns. The third step is, for everyone's safety, to combat crime, and of course for the children, is to require that all smart guns now have a kill switch. That way the government can safely disable a criminal's firearm.
Since people like Bloomberg are unable to remove firearms from the populace entirely (right now), this is the kind of thing they will push for because it will effectively give them the control they want.
Yes; first they put locks on automobiles, then they made us register them, then they required that you get a license to use them, then they took them away. Well, maybe not yet, but clearly that's the next thing on socialist Obama's obviously car hating agenda.
This probably isn't going to be a popular post but as someone who lives in a country where guns aren't allowed, having a gun or not is not a difference of life and death. Like not even remotely.
That sentence makes it sound like where the poster lives he has to deal with gun violence daily. Like going to a supermarket might have you end up in a gunfight where you better be prepared to go Rambo on someone's ass.
That's not a place I'd want to live in and luckily I don't.
Surely this is scaremongering right? Or does anyone actually worry about such scenarios on a daily basis?
Well, statistics say you're most likely to be killed by a family member or friend, so first thing when I get up I pull the pistol from under my pillow and draw a bead on my wife. Backing carefully into the bathroom I do my business while keeping her in my sights the whole time. Then she arms herself, and with me as backup she goes down the hall to wake up the kids.
However, i have to have enough firepower to defend myself if she and the kids decide together to take me down.
If you're worried about how fast you can reload your concealed weapon and you're not a professional, you should probably look into more proactive means of avoiding victimisation.
Objectively, I'm going to come down on the side of this being a solution in search of a problem. If the gun isn't smart enough to refrain from shooting the Assigned Owner's teenager sneaking in after curfew, or his wife when he's on another of his drunken abuse benders, then it's not smart enough to be any improvement, let alone one worth the hassle.
It could reduce the incidence of stolen gums being used in crime, but since we as a nation have shown no interest in pursuing that goal by legal means, that would seem irrelevant.
how about we just learn to respect the constitution in all regards again
the second amendment is literally 3 or 4 sentences long. I dont know why its so hard to understand the law that says the government "shall not infringe" Mandating ANYTHING is infringing
Including convicted felons, institutionalized mentally ill, and teenage gang members. Who are currently pretty well represented among the arms bearers, as it turns out.
Indeed. "Oil sands" aren't the panacea they are posited to be; regular petroleum production produces 40 barrels of oil for each barrel of oil equivalent that goes into production, oil sands have a ratio of 6:1.
So, when the "skeptics" say "everybody agrees it's warming, just not that it's man-made", your position is that they're wrong, scientifically.
(Not sarcastic, just clarifying)
Sadly, you are trying to explain the contents of the IPCC reports to somebody who is absolutely certain about what they contain, based not on actually looking at them but on unsupported claims from other people who haven't read them either.
In other words, it's meaningless that there's a consensus regarding AGW among scientists; but the consensus among AGW opponents regarding things like what's in the IPCC reports is not only convincing, but in fact trumps actual easily verifiable reality.
Slashdot Mirror
However, the various water cooled reactor designs we use are equally flawed, in particular since it's been demonstrated time and again that a reactor which is inherently unstable and requires active control to keep from meltdown is liable to fail. The idea that, since it works pretty well in a submarine, a big water cooled reactor is the best design for a stationary power plant is about as logical as deciding that a 2 kiloliter Honda motor would be a good bet.
Enough neonicotionoid progress and you might have nothing left to eat. Or take turns pollinating the plants that will become your food with a brush.
Some plants -- particularly some that humans have bred for food, selecting bigger tastier food over reproduction potential -- already have impaired pollination features. Thus, pollination is already accomplished manually for some crops.
There are some ways to handle this on an industrial scale, but gardeners often do it by hand with certain plants. All it takes is a little stroll in the garden and some wrist action. Seriously. Years ago my neighbor always did this with his sweet corn plants and referred to it as "having sex with his corn."
True of some farm animals as well. Wouldn't use that quote though.
The neonicotinoids have been seen as a great advancement in insecticides because they are toxic to insects, but much less so to mammals. Compare them with chemicals like DDT, which are effective against insects, but kill the higher orders in the food chain that eat them.
The problem with them is that they are extremely effective at disrupting bees - about 1/150 of the dose needed to kill other insects is enough to confuse bees. And the products are advertised as rose and garden insecticides, which are naturally attractive to bees. It only takes a few bees worth of nectar gathering to bring down a colony.
I don't see these products marketed for roses or other flowers. What they're sold as is grub treatment for lawns, (and flea treatments for pets), where the idea is to apply them on the grass then water them into the soil, specifically to not affect bees, butterflies, etc. I've wondered how this would affect ground dwelling bees (badly I assume) but honeybees would appear out of danger. Anyway I'm going to read the original paper now, maybe they say how the problem works
The original paper points out this particular melt is occurring on the scale of centuries. The point is not that this is going to drown New Orleans or New York before we. can cope. The point is that, for all this debate about a tripping point, and is there one, and when do we hit it, the fact odds that there lots of smaller tripping points like this one, and we're passing them all the time, and even if we do get it together at some point to turn off the auxiliary heating element, things aren't going to get back to "normal", ever. And every day we delay means something else changes irreversibly.
I ain't died yet in the past, so obviously the logical conclusion is that I won't die in the future.
We do expect and demand that the public change their lifestyles quite a bit.
Which won't change a damned thing, because the third world is not going to meekly sit back and accept their current level of development. The United States could literally cease to exist tomorrow and the freed energy wouldn't be enough to bring the billions in the third world out of poverty. You can't even convince Westerners to waste less, but you think you're going to convince those in the third world to meekly accept their current lot in life?
First we need less babies.
Capping family sizes is antithetical to western notions of freedom. That's literally the most personal decision you can make, it's not something that can be imposed from the top down in our societies. A civilization without our reverence for individual liberty tried it and arguably failed, or at the very least created all manner of unintended consequences with deleterious outcomes that still haven't been fully quantified.
That's the spirit! Why should we refrain from our current contribution of 25% of civilization's possible demise, when all those not currently contributing might decide to do so in the future? How dare they! Don't they know the gravity of what they're doing, in our imagination? Serves them right! I'm going to go out right now and burn some coal for no reason, just to show them.
Two principles apply: when you want to climb out of a hole, stop digging; and a long journey begins with a single step. Alternately, we could just sit here and do nothing.
So. .... If I buy a house now, you're telling me my mortgage won't end up underwater?
I have never even seen Antarctica, and I don't recall anyone talking about it twenty years ago. If 97% of geographers say Antarctica exists, I'd just like to point out that I've driven 50 miles in every direction but up and haven't seen no sign at all. And I'm pretty sure that my brother's boss once heard that geographers are telling us about this mythical Antarctica to take money from people like me and give it to themselves.
No continent I've ever seen is going to make me worry about sea-level rise, so keep yer commeenistic plots off of Slashdot.
Antarctica can't exist. It's easy to prove. It's often described as the southernmost continent on the planet. Well, what happens if you go there, then head south? Hmm?
I'm a bit puzzled. If it will truly become a crisis, does it not suggest that the ice was frozen for all time and has never in history been running water?
Wouldn't that mean that eons ago, we had a crisis to solve and managed to create the worlds biggest ice-box in the process... who cares if it made some dino-ice cubes?
The world is constantly changing, for better or worse, and people always seem genuinely surprised when it changes.
Yeah, people didn't have a problem when there was a sea covering the southwestern US.
Are you saying that melting of ice does not affect temperature?
Do you have a problem with the idea of endothermic reactions?
Sure, the temperature is stable, at the surface where the solid and liquid phases of H2O meet. That's what you meant, right?
Here is a list of the 10 warmest years, globally, since 1880. That's 134 years ago.
2010 2005 1998 2003 2002 2006 2009 2007 2004 2012
Do you notice any trend or commonality among those data points?
Obviously, the warming stopped after 2012
If you live in one of the many areas around the globe that flooded this year, you have lived long enough to see the crisis.
And yet, according to most of the models, the world will be MUCH DRYER, not raining. So, we will see more deserts around the world. As to floods, well, rivers came about because of floods that cut into the earth and that leads to a constant run-off path. IOW, it will simply create new rivers.
And yet, according to most of the models, the world will be MUCH DRYER, not raining. So, we will see more deserts around the world. As to floods, well, rivers came about because of floods that cut into the earth and that leads to a constant run-off path. IOW, it will simply create new rivers.
According to most models, when you warm up a planet whose surface is mostly water, it gets WETTER not much dryer. However, according to most models, the same processes which keep certain parts of the current climate dry, such as being downwind of a mountain range like the US southwest, will continue to exist, and the increased temperature in these areas will dry them out even further.
Not to be conspiratorial, but here we go. The first step is to have "smart" guns that will only fire when in the hands of the owner. The second step is to require all firearms to be "smart" guns. The third step is, for everyone's safety, to combat crime, and of course for the children, is to require that all smart guns now have a kill switch. That way the government can safely disable a criminal's firearm.
Since people like Bloomberg are unable to remove firearms from the populace entirely (right now), this is the kind of thing they will push for because it will effectively give them the control they want.
Yes; first they put locks on automobiles, then they made us register them, then they required that you get a license to use them, then they took them away. Well, maybe not yet, but clearly that's the next thing on socialist Obama's obviously car hating agenda.
This probably isn't going to be a popular post but as someone who lives in a country where guns aren't allowed, having a gun or not is not a difference of life and death. Like not even remotely.
That sentence makes it sound like where the poster lives he has to deal with gun violence daily. Like going to a supermarket might have you end up in a gunfight where you better be prepared to go Rambo on someone's ass.
That's not a place I'd want to live in and luckily I don't.
Surely this is scaremongering right? Or does anyone actually worry about such scenarios on a daily basis?
Well, statistics say you're most likely to be killed by a family member or friend, so first thing when I get up I pull the pistol from under my pillow and draw a bead on my wife. Backing carefully into the bathroom I do my business while keeping her in my sights the whole time. Then she arms herself, and with me as backup she goes down the hall to wake up the kids. However, i have to have enough firepower to defend myself if she and the kids decide together to take me down.
If you're worried about how fast you can reload your concealed weapon and you're not a professional, you should probably look into more proactive means of avoiding victimisation.
Objectively, I'm going to come down on the side of this being a solution in search of a problem. If the gun isn't smart enough to refrain from shooting the Assigned Owner's teenager sneaking in after curfew, or his wife when he's on another of his drunken abuse benders, then it's not smart enough to be any improvement, let alone one worth the hassle. It could reduce the incidence of stolen gums being used in crime, but since we as a nation have shown no interest in pursuing that goal by legal means, that would seem irrelevant.
And that presumably explains why the Usual Suspects oppose any attempt to make ammunition or gunpowder more individually identifiable/traceable.
how about we just learn to respect the constitution in all regards again the second amendment is literally 3 or 4 sentences long. I dont know why its so hard to understand the law that says the government "shall not infringe" Mandating ANYTHING is infringing
Including convicted felons, institutionalized mentally ill, and teenage gang members. Who are currently pretty well represented among the arms bearers, as it turns out.
Indeed. "Oil sands" aren't the panacea they are posited to be; regular petroleum production produces 40 barrels of oil for each barrel of oil equivalent that goes into production, oil sands have a ratio of 6:1.
"To live outside the law you must be honest" The coal industry may not be outside the law, but the same principle applies. You may lie to others about your business, that's business as usual. But when you begin to believe your own lies that's insanity, and leads to bad ends. Even excluding any climate effects, the externalized costs of the coal industry make it more expensive to society than any power source which has NOT been exempted from EPA regs, including all the renewables. These guys who get their income from the coal industry are, pure and simple, on the dole. http://solar.gwu.edu/index_fil... http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/el... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... http://www.cleanair.org/Downwi... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com... http://www.aeaweb.org/articles... http://apo.org.au/sites/defaul... http://www.eea.europa.eu/press...
So the regulars who post here that "the model code is not released to the public" are just wrong. (Again, not sarcastic, just clarifying)
So, when the "skeptics" say "everybody agrees it's warming, just not that it's man-made", your position is that they're wrong, scientifically. (Not sarcastic, just clarifying)
Sadly, you are trying to explain the contents of the IPCC reports to somebody who is absolutely certain about what they contain, based not on actually looking at them but on unsupported claims from other people who haven't read them either. In other words, it's meaningless that there's a consensus regarding AGW among scientists; but the consensus among AGW opponents regarding things like what's in the IPCC reports is not only convincing, but in fact trumps actual easily verifiable reality.