The standard view on Polar Bear population levels is that they've rebounded since controls were put on hunting. This has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the possibility of habitat loss hammering their numbers in the future.
The Mosquito was a very successful aircraft - there was a problem with a few Canadian-built ones vanishing crossing the Atlantic, I believe, but apart from that they were very solid. And very fast.
All I've seen are statements that Northrop finds the plane stealthy. I've no problem with that. What I haven't seen are statements from them that the carbon inclusions are a significant part of this. The articles all imply that this is the case, but they don't directly quote anyone from Northrop saying so or mention a test that would specifically determine this.
I am sure that, as you say, those involved with the tests know what the contribution of the carbon was, but the articles are actually quite vague on the point.
Whether it actually reduced radar signature is an issue here, and without doing a comparison of leading edges with and without the added carbon, how do we know that the slight signature wasn't simply due to the small size and low metal content?
As far as defining maritime jurisdiction goes, that may very well be the case. Consult a lawyer. There are rules on what can be counted in such cases.
As an example, though this page, which is apparently a summary of a Sealand citizenship case in West Germany, states that in international law a state must have (among other things) territory consisting of a natural part of the Earth's surface, which on the face of it would rule out any body consisting entirely of reclaimed land or artificial platforms. If this is a far summary of the law, then Sealand simply have no tenable case for statehood.
It's more akin to oil rigs than to marsh or reclaimed land - and oil rigs don't seem to count as land in determining territorial limits, which is more the relevant point here. Whether it's land in a colloquial sense isn't terribly relevant.
And actually, there isn't any land created by Roughs Tower, even by your definition, because only the constructed platform ever breaks the surface.
Roughs Tower's a metal structure sitting on a sandbank, rather than a mass of rock, sand or earth. It's not land by any reasonable definition. Marsh and swamp have always been considered land rather than sea. Much of the land near Roughs Tower is very marshy, but it's never been considered a sea area - no state or law that I'm aware of considers their land extent to exclude marshes.
It didn't count as a country then either, so it had no rights that could be "grandfathered in" and no jurisdiction that could clash with that of the British government.
Anyone can declare themselves independent, but to be recognised as such you need to have some territory that's separate from other countries, and that fort has never been recognised as such territory by anyone else.
As I understand it, Sealand has no land territory and therefore won't be recognised as a country by anyone.
Legally speaking, it's probably a shipwreck - the platform's attached to a barge which was scuttled in place during the Second World War. Shipwrecks can't have their own government or territorial waters.
Their claim to independence is irrelevant.They haven't been closed down simply because they haven't done anything to provoke such drastic action.
The article doesn't say that Wikileaks is there - the article says that a member of the advisory board, Ben Laurie, is involved with such a company. No statement is actually made about where the servers are.
The Guardian didn't say the data was there - they commented on the background of someone they were talking to. The information about The Bunker, is, as far as I can tell, entirely correct. The assumption that Wikileaks uses it was made by the/. poster rather than being part of the article.
I don't know in detail about the US situation, but in the UK what killed nuclear power was not environmental concerns but the cost. When the government privatised the nuclear power stations they had to finally admit what had until then been denied - that it was the most expensive form of generation then in widespread use. It's possible this has changed, but the dearth of new builds despite apparent government sympathy leads me to believe that it probably hasn't.
As long as you mean "consensus" then no, it doesn't depend. Having a scientific consensus does not mean that every last scientist agrees - only that the broad mass of scientists agree. And on this issue, there is consensus. A very large majority of climatologists agree that human emissions are increasingly causing climate change.
Pointing out one, or ten, dissenters from the consensus does not prove the consensus doesn't exist.
Regardless of what you think of him, he does point out crippling flaws in the article. A more thorough and technical demolition would be quite welcome too, of course.
There's a saying in developmental biology circles that neural crest cells are the only really interestng part of vertebrate embryology. They form (IIRC) the autonomic nervous system, endocrine glands and pigment-producing cells too, as well as the ganglion of the auditory nerve - which is why some animals show a link between colouration and deafness.
This depends on your definition of "many". Compared to the number who've died from HIV or hepatitis, it's fairly trivial. The reason for the ban, AFAICT, was that a few years ago there was less evidence about how many people were eventually likely to be infected, so it was much more plausible that it was a significant threat. It was an act of caution, which of course is a good thing.
Given the trend since, the British blood supply still looks immensely safe.
The graph shows temperature in the main body of the atmosphere, and is probably going to be taken as showing that there's no warming going on. We know that there's warming, though, in the areas that matter - the surface, where we live. Both land and sea.
If you want to argue with the temperature trends, those are the ones to take issue with. Free-air measurements are interesting but far less relevant. Putting them forward like that is setting yourself up a straw man to attack.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems that even Slashdot has slow news weeks.
The standard view on Polar Bear population levels is that they've rebounded since controls were put on hunting. This has, of course, absolutely nothing to do with the possibility of habitat loss hammering their numbers in the future.
The Mosquito was a very successful aircraft - there was a problem with a few Canadian-built ones vanishing crossing the Atlantic, I believe, but apart from that they were very solid. And very fast.
All I've seen are statements that Northrop finds the plane stealthy. I've no problem with that. What I haven't seen are statements from them that the carbon inclusions are a significant part of this. The articles all imply that this is the case, but they don't directly quote anyone from Northrop saying so or mention a test that would specifically determine this.
I am sure that, as you say, those involved with the tests know what the contribution of the carbon was, but the articles are actually quite vague on the point.
Whether it actually reduced radar signature is an issue here, and without doing a comparison of leading edges with and without the added carbon, how do we know that the slight signature wasn't simply due to the small size and low metal content?
As far as defining maritime jurisdiction goes, that may very well be the case. Consult a lawyer. There are rules on what can be counted in such cases.
As an example, though this page, which is apparently a summary of a Sealand citizenship case in West Germany, states that in international law a state must have (among other things) territory consisting of a natural part of the Earth's surface, which on the face of it would rule out any body consisting entirely of reclaimed land or artificial platforms. If this is a far summary of the law, then Sealand simply have no tenable case for statehood.
It's more akin to oil rigs than to marsh or reclaimed land - and oil rigs don't seem to count as land in determining territorial limits, which is more the relevant point here. Whether it's land in a colloquial sense isn't terribly relevant.
And actually, there isn't any land created by Roughs Tower, even by your definition, because only the constructed platform ever breaks the surface.
Err . . . no.
Roughs Tower's a metal structure sitting on a sandbank, rather than a mass of rock, sand or earth. It's not land by any reasonable definition. Marsh and swamp have always been considered land rather than sea. Much of the land near Roughs Tower is very marshy, but it's never been considered a sea area - no state or law that I'm aware of considers their land extent to exclude marshes.
No, it isn't. Those places are soggy, but they're land, and states are defined as being particular patches of land.
If there's no land, there's no state.
It didn't count as a country then either, so it had no rights that could be "grandfathered in" and no jurisdiction that could clash with that of the British government.
Anyone can declare themselves independent, but to be recognised as such you need to have some territory that's separate from other countries, and that fort has never been recognised as such territory by anyone else.
As I understand it, Sealand has no land territory and therefore won't be recognised as a country by anyone.
Legally speaking, it's probably a shipwreck - the platform's attached to a barge which was scuttled in place during the Second World War. Shipwrecks can't have their own government or territorial waters.
Their claim to independence is irrelevant.They haven't been closed down simply because they haven't done anything to provoke such drastic action.
Also, by virtue of WikiLeaks being here
The article doesn't say that Wikileaks is there - the article says that a member of the advisory board, Ben Laurie, is involved with such a company. No statement is actually made about where the servers are.
The Guardian didn't say the data was there - they commented on the background of someone they were talking to. The information about The Bunker, is, as far as I can tell, entirely correct. The assumption that Wikileaks uses it was made by the /. poster rather than being part of the article.
I don't know in detail about the US situation, but in the UK what killed nuclear power was not environmental concerns but the cost. When the government privatised the nuclear power stations they had to finally admit what had until then been denied - that it was the most expensive form of generation then in widespread use. It's possible this has changed, but the dearth of new builds despite apparent government sympathy leads me to believe that it probably hasn't.
Nice try. Give us a link or don't bother. Very few of us have time time to trawl through that much in dearch of an illdefined target.
As long as you mean "consensus" then no, it doesn't depend. Having a scientific consensus does not mean that every last scientist agrees - only that the broad mass of scientists agree. And on this issue, there is consensus. A very large majority of climatologists agree that human emissions are increasingly causing climate change.
Pointing out one, or ten, dissenters from the consensus does not prove the consensus doesn't exist.
Regardless of what you think of him, he does point out crippling flaws in the article. A more thorough and technical demolition would be quite welcome too, of course.
There's a saying in developmental biology circles that neural crest cells are the only really interestng part of vertebrate embryology. They form (IIRC) the autonomic nervous system, endocrine glands and pigment-producing cells too, as well as the ganglion of the auditory nerve - which is why some animals show a link between colouration and deafness.
It's getting increasing use in light microscopy too.
This depends on your definition of "many". Compared to the number who've died from HIV or hepatitis, it's fairly trivial. The reason for the ban, AFAICT, was that a few years ago there was less evidence about how many people were eventually likely to be infected, so it was much more plausible that it was a significant threat. It was an act of caution, which of course is a good thing.
Given the trend since, the British blood supply still looks immensely safe.
I asked about this earlier and there are replies there with translations of most of it.
Thank you both, though. Good of you.
I don't suppose anyone who (unlike myself) has some German would care to translate the captions from the BBC's version of the drawing?
Thanks.
It's not the case that 60% of Britons own an mp3 player or PDA.
The graph shows temperature in the main body of the atmosphere, and is probably going to be taken as showing that there's no warming going on. We know that there's warming, though, in the areas that matter - the surface, where we live. Both land and sea.
If you want to argue with the temperature trends, those are the ones to take issue with. Free-air measurements are interesting but far less relevant. Putting them forward like that is setting yourself up a straw man to attack.