One thing that should go a huge way toward understanding of the brain is to actually be able to get a nice data stream from it and a good way to modify that data stream. Probing a hundred neurons just isn't enough.
I've often wondered about whether one could create something akin to "nano-RFID". That is, a chemical or set of nanoparticles that you could inject evenly into the brain which would be incorporated into neurons which bears a particular set of properties.
1) The particles should be able to emit radiation in some method which can be ideally read through the skull, or at least through the brain (to be collected by transmitters which can transmit through the skull). 2) The emission can be fully passive -- i.e., you stimulate them with some kind of driving radiation and they transmit another. 3) The particles should self-assemble into highly random shapes which modify how they transmit -- frequency, pulse rate, modulation, driving frequency which it responds to, etc -- giving each particle an effectively unique transmission signature. 4) The transmission should be able to be pinpointed precisely in location. 5) The particle should be able to respond to the density of a single neurotransmitters in a way which modifies its transmission properties in a quantifiable manner. Different particles would be created to respond to different neurotransmitters. 6) Other particles should be able to stimulate or suppress the creation of or catalyze the destruction of the various neurotransmitters based on a particular unique combination of frequency, pulse rate, modulation, driving frequency, or whatnot provided to it by external means. 7) The whole brain should be able to be probed and/or modified at a rate measured in the low kHz range.
If you could do something like this, you should be able to quantify pretty much everything about brain function through data analysis, as well as enabling two-way brain-machine interfaces, in a manner involving no ongoing skull punctures which risk infection (if any re-transmitters were needed inside the brain, they could be powered by induction). There's also another interesting possibility: for each neuron that you can fully quantify its behavior, you could simulate its behavior, stimulate its neighbors in the way it would have based on its inputs and have it virtually divide/grow as it would have -- and then shut off the natural, biological neuron. Repeat a hundred billion times, and you could "gently" migrate a person's consciousness into the ether.
Of the many hundreds of claims about global warming made in An Inconvenient Truth, the overwhelming majority reflected the current consensus views of the scientific community. But the link between global warming and hurricanes -- the one that they focused so strongly on that they put it on the cover -- does not.
In the US, for example, we're mainly concerned about Atlantic basin hurricanes. Look at this season -- record-hot sea surface temperatures covering an unthinkably huge swath of the Atlantic. And it's La Nina which generally keeps down wind shear. So why the merely "average" season so far? Two main reasons. One, the weather patterns have created a long train of upper-level lows, which create extra shear and help entrain dry air into developing systems. And two, there's been unusually high atmospheric instability (read: inversion layers). Both of these things are more common in a warming world (as well as shear in general). The reason for the instability, for example, is because a warming world leads to a greater difference in land temperatures and water temperatures, leading to plumes of hot air over land. When these move over the colder marine layer, you have an inversion layer on your hands. Tropical cyclones are powered by warm, moist air rising. If you have a upper-level layer that wants to descend, you're going to rob the system of energy.
The science of hurricane prediction is still rough, and there is no consensus on just how a warming climate will affect hurricanes. However, there is general acceptance that it will reduce the frequency of system development by reducing the windows of opportunity, but will allow for higher strength and faster-developing systems within those windows.
You are, sadly, a rarity. Something is wrong with our society, in that even the educated among us often don't look at the long-term picture concerning their purchases. We look at the long term when we *invest*, but rarely when we *buy*. For example, nobody in the upper midwest in their right mind would buy an 80% efficient furnace if they actually looked at the picture over the lifespan of the furnace (even amortizing the capital costs). Yet the places around here sell tons of them because they're a little bit cheaper upfront. The people who buy them will make excuses for it, like "I'm not going to live here that long", as though the utility bills won't be factored into the resale value of their home. But the real reason is that they're just trying to justify to themselves a reason to not spend as much money. Being nickled and dimed is less emotionally painful than paying a large sum upfront.
Link: "Spinal headaches occur in up to 30 percent of those who undergo a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) or spinal anesthesia."
And almost nobody gets up during those two hours because the doctors typically make you lie flat. The dura just doesn't deal well with being punctured. Some people heal quickly. But a large minority don't. And some never heal.
My milage stats came from the U.S. Federal Department of Transportation
No they don't. Your numbers don't match the "total" in the lower right of that link.
Your assumptions for gas milage are not based in reality, but rather the perfect world of milage tests.
1) You *do* want a perfect standard for testing vehicles. What you *don't* want is randomness. 2) The revised EPA cycles actually compare well with real-world *averages*.
Also, see the comments about the major milage loss when the tires are changed out for safer ones.
Myth. LRR tires have the same average stopping distance as conventional tires.
The lifespan gas saving does not reflect resale value or price
See option #2 above.
They are not going to "drop dead the instant the warranty expires". Rather it assumes that the battery will have to be replaced within 3-5 years after it expires.
1) That's not the number you used before. 2) That doesn't fit a standard failure curve. 3) That doesn't match the experience of high-mileage Prius drivers.
The debilitating headache is not rare; it occurs in a third of all cases and normally lasts 24-48 hours. What's rare is when it lasts a year or more. Somewhere in-between is my spouse's case, which lasted a couple weeks and took medical remediation.
Yeah... too bad it's a spinal fluid test. Those are nasty. My spouse had one and the hole in the dura refused to close, which is apparently a fairly common side effect. Net result: unbearable, nonstop, over-10-on-a-1-to-10-scale headaches that can't be controlled with headache medicine. Caffeine on an IV drip works, but only temporarily. The headaches lasted for weeks until the doctors finally managed to close the hole with a blood clot. The clot doesn't actually fix the problem, but the dura managed to repair itself while the clot held. I've heard of people, however, who *never* healed from it. What a miserable experience.
You use and switch between two different currencies, then have numbers that don't indicate which currency you are using. This is confusings.
No, I don't; I used CAD throughout. I just got tired of writing "CAD" after every number, so I started only writing it in the places where I felt it was needed for emphasis.
You choose an average annual driving distance that is around 12,000 miles, but the average in the U.S. is around 15,000 miles, per the USFDOT.
I didn't choose the number; the study did. And where did you get that number for the average annual driving distance in the US? It's about 12,000, too.
but then you shift over to the average age of a car in the U.S. as opposed to Canada.
Yes; I don't have that data. But I assume it's the same.
Rebates are pretty self-explanatory. Financing costs are interest, processing fees, and the other costs associated with an automobile loan. You do not support your contention that they seem to cancel each other out.
I assumed the readers could do basic math. You have the price of the vehicles. You have the gas costs. You have the final cost of price + gas + fees + rebates. Are you telling me that you can't determine (fees + rebates)?
You make the assumption that the used Prius will be an excellent deal, but you do not support this
What do you think the lifespan gas savings calculation was for?
there is the specter of battery replacement.
Which even today is only $2.3k if you get a new battery, and far less if you get a used one (you must have missed all of the price drops). It's now like getting your transmission replaced, and it'll be even cheaper in the future. And, FYI, given that almost none of the batteries end up getting replaced during the warranty period, what makes you think they're all going to drop dead the instant the warranty expires? Data from Prius taxis strongly suggests this is not the case. Lastly, there are advantages in hybrid maintenance as well relating to the engine getting to operate in a more optimal torque/rpm environment, less wear on the friction brakes, etc.
Let's look at their numbers for the Prius comparison. Competitor: Toyota Matrix XR
Matrix cost listed: $21,800 CAD Prius cost listed: $27,500 CAD Matrix total 5-year cost listed: $38,606 CAD Prius total 5-year cost listed: $40,324 CAD
Assumptions: Total cost includes purchase price, financing, and fuel costs at $1.17/l ($4.43/gal CAD), less rebates. Does not include maintenance or insurance costs. Annual driving distance is 20,000 km (12,427 mi).
Stats: I couldn't find a 2010 "Matrix XR". There's a "Matrix XRS". Heck, let's just assume that they mean the most efficient 2010 Matrix, which is a manual base model that gets 26/32mpg. The 2010 Prius gets 51/48mpg.
Fuel consumption calculations: Given these numbers, the Matrix should consume 429 gallons per year at $1,898 for five years for a total of $9,492. The Prius should consume 251 gallons per year at $1,112/yr for five years for a total of $5,561. The difference, then, is $3,931 CAD. I don't know what "rebates" or "financing" costs they're assuming, but their combination of rebates and financing seems to be approximately a net zero, so the rebate value must be low and the financing costs high.
To quote Billy Mays, however: "But wait, there's more!"
Unlike in this study, a vehicle doesn't just vanish into thin air after five years. The average age of a vehicle on the road in the US today is over 9.5 years and rising. Hence, the projected lifespan until the vehicle hits the scrapheap is about 20 years. So the total fuel difference is actually $15,724 CAD. Some last longer, some shorter. And even if your argument is, "well, I'll just sell my car after five years" -- that leaves two options:
1) The low cost of gas the Prius provides will be reflected in the resale price; OR 2) The buyer of a new Prius may get a bum deal, but the buyer of a used Prius gets a correspondingly *excellent* deal.
Yes, the administration is focusing more on robotic exploration and cancelled Ares -- but Ares was a huge boondoggle that had already been surpassed by a private company using a fraction as much money. Congress is currently trying to keep the pork flowing by keeping the development of various Ares components going even though the rocket that they're to be used for has been cancelled.
A manned mission to Mars is meaningless apart from being a feel-good thing that future alien species could read about in the ruins of our civilization. A manned colony on Mars is not. A manned colony means becoming a two-planet species (and eventually, a near-infinite planet species). The distinction is that a colony is either self-sustaining or is capable of becoming self-sustaining if an emergency makes it necessary. A colony doesn't expand itself with inflatable habitats imported from Earth covered in martian regolith; it makes the habitats, too. A colony doesn't build with regolith bricks cemented with plastics from Earth; it makes the plastics. A colony doesn't fill Earth-made rockets with methane made on Mars; it makes the rockets. It's not enough just to use local resources; you have to be capable of producing every last part for every last system locally -- and all of the parts and raw materials needed to make such a production line, and all of the parts and raw materials needed to make *that*, and so forth.
Various presidents have committed to putting a person on Mars. None have committed to building a *colony* on Mars. And that's what really matters. We shouldn't be blowing our budget on feel-good joyrides. We should be spending it on lowering launch costs and on the obscenely massive amount of engineering needed to make a true Mars colony feasable. This will take a long, long time, and huge amounts of money. But if we never start, we'll never reach the finish line.
And it's so tangential nowadays. Try explaining to your typical Taliban soldier:
"Well, you see, we're bombing the towns you hide in because you're, like most Taliban soldiers, a farmer who was hired as a soldier by a Taliban warlord for a couple dollars a month paycheck -- a warlord who, due to Afghanistan's famously shifting alliances may or may not have been part of the Taliban nearly a decade ago, when the Taliban leadership was allowing al-Qaeda to stay on land in the country in exchange for cash -- land on which al-Qaeda used to host terrorist training camps, where some people were trained who later went on to hijack four planes in the US and kill several thousand people. Got it?"
Why are you talking about D-O events, which are generally accepted to be regional or at best hemispheric in nature and driven by changes in thermohaline circulation (like the Younger Dryas)? We're talking about *global* climate change.
For the record, the Earth as a whole was quite robust against the Younger Dryas, but the North Atlantic (briefly) wasn't. I do find it annoying that you keep trying to turn this conversation from discussion of global climate change to historical blips in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.
Does this dichotomy not strike you as odd to the point of untenability, believing that the Earth's climate is profoundly robust against an event like the one that spawned the Younger Dryas but incredibly fragile against anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Science doesn't work based on what you "feel" should be right. Science works on facts. But if you want help with the "feel" side, CO2 levels are the highest they've been in nearly 15 million years, all of this change since human industrialization.
If you need help understanding how humans could cause *that*, picture this. The Hindenburg was the largest aircraft every built, at over 800 feet long, 135 feet in diameter, and with a volume of 200,000 cubic meters. If numbers don't do the size justice, how about a picture?. Now, carbon dioxide was historically at about 280ppm. So if you filled the hindenburg with pre-industrial air, it would contain 56 cubic meters of CO2. CO2 has a molar mass of 44.010 g/mol. The molar volume of an ideal gas under STP conditions is 22.414 L/mol, or 44.6149728 mol/m^3, so the Hindenburg would contain 110 kilograms of CO2.
A gallon of gasoline, burned, releases about 8.7kg of CO2. Your average sedan has about a 12-gallon gas tank. For a full tank of gas, 12*8.7=104kg of CO2, approximately the same as in *an entire Hindenburg of pre-industrial air*.
The world consumes 30 *billion* *barrels* of oil per year. Each barrel represents about 42 gallons of gasoline (about 3 1/2 Hindenburg's worth of CO2). So every year, the CO2 emitted by our burning of oil could double the CO2 concentration of 100 *trillion* Hindenburgs. *Every year*. Yet oil produces only 45% of our planet's total CO2 emissions, and even less of it's total AGW load. Let's be generous and only call the total 200 trillion Hindenburgs per year.
Earth's surface area is 5.10072e14 m^2. The Hindenburg takes up an area of about 108,000 square meters when stacked side by side, end to end. Hence you could stack about 4.7 trillion Hindenburgs side to side, end to end across the entire surface of the planet. To put our emissions another way, then, a mere five years of emissions could *more than double* the CO2 concentrations in Hindenburg airships stacked side to side, end to end, across the entire surface of the planet.
Does that help with the "feel" side of things? So we can get back to the "facts" side of things?
If you had read the other thread, you would have noticed that the other time I posted this, it was followed by a "whoops" post noting that wrote it in response to the wrong poster. It was supposed to go here.
Moderators: The fact that a person appeals to the moderators does not mean that they know what they are talking about at all.
1) The HADISST paper is not anything like what I asked for. It does however validate the "we only have one position, in multiples" claim I made - that Rei then offers up a link to himself to contradict;) Care must be taken when using HadISST1 for studies of observed climatic variability, particularly in some data- sparse regions, because of the limitations of the interpola- tion techniques
WOW. That's setting a new low in selective quoting. Allow me to finish your quote for you: "... limitations of the interpolation techniques, although it has been done successfully [Sheppard and Rayner, 2002]". You cut the freaking sentence in half to remove the part you didn't like. You want to talk about an agenda? The surest sign of having an agenda is when you have to start selectively quoting scientific research materials and taking quotes out of context.
There's an entire section of the paper -- section 6 -- which goes into the validation of the dataset. It's the peak of absurdity to say that global international shipping and the navy logs of superpowers which frequently mapped out the edge of the arctic sea ice are irreelevant, and only satellites matter. Likewise, it's simply absurd to dismiss every peer-reviewed and validated proxy measure, of which there are dozens.
2) Rei's ignorance shows through in believing that an observed phenomenon ("Arctic Dipole") starts to exist when observed. A scientist knows about his own inability to know about the state before.
What part of "A never-before observed phenomenon" is hard for you to understand? The "observed" part, I assume?
Your #3 is merely an insult, not a point, so no reason to even quote it.
Which peer reviewed studies of ancient ship logs, naval photography during the 20th century and old newspaper magazines are you referring to?:) I'd be really interested to know how they disagree with me.
Sure -- here's one for starters, sort of a meta-analysis of other papers. That should be a good jumping-off point for you.
I agree with you that one location is not the arctic ice extent. On the other hand, we only have "one location" (in multiples, depending on the observer) before 1979.
I also seem to remember the wind patterns of 2007 as being heralded of proof of the arctic climate being in a death spiral - as opposed to being referred to as what it was
Actually, that's a very real thing. A never-before observed phenomenon occurred called the "Arctic Dipole", which encourages melt. We've now seen it repeat on and off for the past several years. It led to the major melt earlier this year. Several papers have since shown that under AGW scenarios, that pattern becomes increasingly likely.
(Nice diagram by Spencer btw, it completely supports my comment with regards to your original statement - but of course not the strawman _you_ constructed from it)
Huh? How does a temperature graph that starts at -0.4 and ends up at +0.4 versus a PDO graph that starts at +0.2 and ends up at about the same place support your argument? There has been dramatic warming over the PDO signal. The PDO signal matches the 1910-1945 warming, but has virtually no affect on the most recent warming.
These things sound like the Hexacopter. It uses an onboard GPS, and you can program it to follow waypoints on a schedule, as well as to operate its camera. It's a pretty nifty thing, and there's a large community working on modifications to them. For example, I know of one person who's working on a "Roomba-style" charging/docking pad that it can fly back to automatically when its battery gets low, then take off again when it gets a new charge. Excepting severe weather, a pair of them could keep 24/7 surveillance on a target with no human involvement.
This is quite a bit of bullshit. Evolution is slow, wasteful and undirected. Technology is rapid, efficient and directed. It's stupid to let people die from the cold for generations when you can simply put on a damn coat.
Okay, do you volunteer to airlift out every last road and skyscraper out of every low lying area on the planet and relocate them up north?
Human society is based on effectively immobile assets. And even when societies without much assets have mass-migrated throughout history, the results have had profound, generally negative ripple effects (for example, the Dark Ages were brought about when pressure from the Mongols in Asia led to a Germanic influx into Europe)
Yes, we have, and those do not support claims that arctic ice is in some sort of rapid unprecedented decline.
The peer-reviewed studies profoundly disagree with you.
On the contrary, we have photos of an "ice free north pole" from the last century.
1) One location != arctic sea ice extent. 2) Weather != climate 3) In the past several million years, the North Pole has not been exposed due to large-scale melting, although it has been exposed periodically due to fractures in the ice. It still has not, although it's getting closer every year.
You seem to forget about the PDO, the AMO, the AO etc. Those seem to (e.g. correlate well) with multi-decadal variations.
According to peer-review, they are much smaller than the climate signal. For example, here's PDO vs. temperature. In recent decades, it's totally overwhelmed by the AGW signal.
The "data quoted at the end"? What end? It's a looping image (really annoying, by the way). And it's still cherry-picking. Individual ice cores for a single location do not a planetwide temperature average represent; that's what peer-reviewed papers on reconstructions using *all* available data are for.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing that should go a huge way toward understanding of the brain is to actually be able to get a nice data stream from it and a good way to modify that data stream. Probing a hundred neurons just isn't enough.
I've often wondered about whether one could create something akin to "nano-RFID". That is, a chemical or set of nanoparticles that you could inject evenly into the brain which would be incorporated into neurons which bears a particular set of properties.
1) The particles should be able to emit radiation in some method which can be ideally read through the skull, or at least through the brain (to be collected by transmitters which can transmit through the skull).
2) The emission can be fully passive -- i.e., you stimulate them with some kind of driving radiation and they transmit another.
3) The particles should self-assemble into highly random shapes which modify how they transmit -- frequency, pulse rate, modulation, driving frequency which it responds to, etc -- giving each particle an effectively unique transmission signature.
4) The transmission should be able to be pinpointed precisely in location.
5) The particle should be able to respond to the density of a single neurotransmitters in a way which modifies its transmission properties in a quantifiable manner. Different particles would be created to respond to different neurotransmitters.
6) Other particles should be able to stimulate or suppress the creation of or catalyze the destruction of the various neurotransmitters based on a particular unique combination of frequency, pulse rate, modulation, driving frequency, or whatnot provided to it by external means.
7) The whole brain should be able to be probed and/or modified at a rate measured in the low kHz range.
If you could do something like this, you should be able to quantify pretty much everything about brain function through data analysis, as well as enabling two-way brain-machine interfaces, in a manner involving no ongoing skull punctures which risk infection (if any re-transmitters were needed inside the brain, they could be powered by induction). There's also another interesting possibility: for each neuron that you can fully quantify its behavior, you could simulate its behavior, stimulate its neighbors in the way it would have based on its inputs and have it virtually divide/grow as it would have -- and then shut off the natural, biological neuron. Repeat a hundred billion times, and you could "gently" migrate a person's consciousness into the ether.
Of the many hundreds of claims about global warming made in An Inconvenient Truth, the overwhelming majority reflected the current consensus views of the scientific community. But the link between global warming and hurricanes -- the one that they focused so strongly on that they put it on the cover -- does not.
In the US, for example, we're mainly concerned about Atlantic basin hurricanes. Look at this season -- record-hot sea surface temperatures covering an unthinkably huge swath of the Atlantic. And it's La Nina which generally keeps down wind shear. So why the merely "average" season so far? Two main reasons. One, the weather patterns have created a long train of upper-level lows, which create extra shear and help entrain dry air into developing systems. And two, there's been unusually high atmospheric instability (read: inversion layers). Both of these things are more common in a warming world (as well as shear in general). The reason for the instability, for example, is because a warming world leads to a greater difference in land temperatures and water temperatures, leading to plumes of hot air over land. When these move over the colder marine layer, you have an inversion layer on your hands. Tropical cyclones are powered by warm, moist air rising. If you have a upper-level layer that wants to descend, you're going to rob the system of energy.
The science of hurricane prediction is still rough, and there is no consensus on just how a warming climate will affect hurricanes. However, there is general acceptance that it will reduce the frequency of system development by reducing the windows of opportunity, but will allow for higher strength and faster-developing systems within those windows.
Wow... a SpongeBob reference on Slashdot? Really? Your kids must be watching that show way too much.
At least, I hope that's the reason...
Perhaps they could ask The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks for some locations to fix. ;) My favorites are this and this.
You are, sadly, a rarity. Something is wrong with our society, in that even the educated among us often don't look at the long-term picture concerning their purchases. We look at the long term when we *invest*, but rarely when we *buy*. For example, nobody in the upper midwest in their right mind would buy an 80% efficient furnace if they actually looked at the picture over the lifespan of the furnace (even amortizing the capital costs). Yet the places around here sell tons of them because they're a little bit cheaper upfront. The people who buy them will make excuses for it, like "I'm not going to live here that long", as though the utility bills won't be factored into the resale value of their home. But the real reason is that they're just trying to justify to themselves a reason to not spend as much money. Being nickled and dimed is less emotionally painful than paying a large sum upfront.
Link: "Spinal headaches occur in up to 30 percent of those who undergo a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) or spinal anesthesia."
And almost nobody gets up during those two hours because the doctors typically make you lie flat. The dura just doesn't deal well with being punctured. Some people heal quickly. But a large minority don't. And some never heal.
My milage stats came from the U.S. Federal Department of Transportation
No they don't. Your numbers don't match the "total" in the lower right of that link.
Your assumptions for gas milage are not based in reality, but rather the perfect world of milage tests.
1) You *do* want a perfect standard for testing vehicles. What you *don't* want is randomness.
2) The revised EPA cycles actually compare well with real-world *averages*.
Also, see the comments about the major milage loss when the tires are changed out for safer ones.
Myth. LRR tires have the same average stopping distance as conventional tires.
The lifespan gas saving does not reflect resale value or price
See option #2 above.
They are not going to "drop dead the instant the warranty expires". Rather it assumes that the battery will have to be replaced within 3-5 years after it expires.
1) That's not the number you used before.
2) That doesn't fit a standard failure curve.
3) That doesn't match the experience of high-mileage Prius drivers.
The debilitating headache is not rare; it occurs in a third of all cases and normally lasts 24-48 hours. What's rare is when it lasts a year or more. Somewhere in-between is my spouse's case, which lasted a couple weeks and took medical remediation.
Yeah... too bad it's a spinal fluid test. Those are nasty. My spouse had one and the hole in the dura refused to close, which is apparently a fairly common side effect. Net result: unbearable, nonstop, over-10-on-a-1-to-10-scale headaches that can't be controlled with headache medicine. Caffeine on an IV drip works, but only temporarily. The headaches lasted for weeks until the doctors finally managed to close the hole with a blood clot. The clot doesn't actually fix the problem, but the dura managed to repair itself while the clot held. I've heard of people, however, who *never* healed from it. What a miserable experience.
You use and switch between two different currencies, then have numbers that don't indicate which currency you are using. This is confusings.
No, I don't; I used CAD throughout. I just got tired of writing "CAD" after every number, so I started only writing it in the places where I felt it was needed for emphasis.
You choose an average annual driving distance that is around 12,000 miles, but the average in the U.S. is around 15,000 miles, per the USFDOT.
I didn't choose the number; the study did. And where did you get that number for the average annual driving distance in the US? It's about 12,000, too.
but then you shift over to the average age of a car in the U.S. as opposed to Canada.
Yes; I don't have that data. But I assume it's the same.
Rebates are pretty self-explanatory. Financing costs are interest, processing fees, and the other costs associated with an automobile loan. You do not support your contention that they seem to cancel each other out.
I assumed the readers could do basic math. You have the price of the vehicles. You have the gas costs. You have the final cost of price + gas + fees + rebates. Are you telling me that you can't determine (fees + rebates)?
You make the assumption that the used Prius will be an excellent deal, but you do not support this
What do you think the lifespan gas savings calculation was for?
there is the specter of battery replacement.
Which even today is only $2.3k if you get a new battery, and far less if you get a used one (you must have missed all of the price drops). It's now like getting your transmission replaced, and it'll be even cheaper in the future. And, FYI, given that almost none of the batteries end up getting replaced during the warranty period, what makes you think they're all going to drop dead the instant the warranty expires? Data from Prius taxis strongly suggests this is not the case. Lastly, there are advantages in hybrid maintenance as well relating to the engine getting to operate in a more optimal torque/rpm environment, less wear on the friction brakes, etc.
Bingo. ;) You're going to be saving an arm and a leg.
I drive a Matrix XR, so I was surprised to hear you say it didn't exist.
I said "I couldn't find", not "it doesn't exist". See Toyota's own site, for example.
And I get much better than 26/32 mpg.
Sorry, but we don't play "And I get..." in this thread. ;) We use standardized drive cycles for a reason.
As such, if you used the XRS numbers in your comparison, that would guarantee it's completely wrong.
Did you miss where I said I chose the most efficient Matrix model listed? Which obviously was not an XRS. It was the one just listed as "Matrix".
Let's look at their numbers for the Prius comparison. Competitor: Toyota Matrix XR
Matrix cost listed: $21,800 CAD
Prius cost listed: $27,500 CAD
Matrix total 5-year cost listed: $38,606 CAD
Prius total 5-year cost listed: $40,324 CAD
Assumptions: Total cost includes purchase price, financing, and fuel costs at $1.17/l ($4.43/gal CAD), less rebates. Does not include maintenance or insurance costs. Annual driving distance is 20,000 km (12,427 mi).
Stats: I couldn't find a 2010 "Matrix XR". There's a "Matrix XRS". Heck, let's just assume that they mean the most efficient 2010 Matrix, which is a manual base model that gets 26/32mpg. The 2010 Prius gets 51/48mpg.
Fuel consumption calculations: Given these numbers, the Matrix should consume 429 gallons per year at $1,898 for five years for a total of $9,492. The Prius should consume 251 gallons per year at $1,112/yr for five years for a total of $5,561. The difference, then, is $3,931 CAD. I don't know what "rebates" or "financing" costs they're assuming, but their combination of rebates and financing seems to be approximately a net zero, so the rebate value must be low and the financing costs high.
To quote Billy Mays, however: "But wait, there's more!"
Unlike in this study, a vehicle doesn't just vanish into thin air after five years. The average age of a vehicle on the road in the US today is over 9.5 years and rising. Hence, the projected lifespan until the vehicle hits the scrapheap is about 20 years. So the total fuel difference is actually $15,724 CAD. Some last longer, some shorter. And even if your argument is, "well, I'll just sell my car after five years" -- that leaves two options:
1) The low cost of gas the Prius provides will be reflected in the resale price; OR
2) The buyer of a new Prius may get a bum deal, but the buyer of a used Prius gets a correspondingly *excellent* deal.
Yes, the administration is focusing more on robotic exploration and cancelled Ares -- but Ares was a huge boondoggle that had already been surpassed by a private company using a fraction as much money. Congress is currently trying to keep the pork flowing by keeping the development of various Ares components going even though the rocket that they're to be used for has been cancelled.
A manned mission to Mars is meaningless apart from being a feel-good thing that future alien species could read about in the ruins of our civilization. A manned colony on Mars is not. A manned colony means becoming a two-planet species (and eventually, a near-infinite planet species). The distinction is that a colony is either self-sustaining or is capable of becoming self-sustaining if an emergency makes it necessary. A colony doesn't expand itself with inflatable habitats imported from Earth covered in martian regolith; it makes the habitats, too. A colony doesn't build with regolith bricks cemented with plastics from Earth; it makes the plastics. A colony doesn't fill Earth-made rockets with methane made on Mars; it makes the rockets. It's not enough just to use local resources; you have to be capable of producing every last part for every last system locally -- and all of the parts and raw materials needed to make such a production line, and all of the parts and raw materials needed to make *that*, and so forth.
Various presidents have committed to putting a person on Mars. None have committed to building a *colony* on Mars. And that's what really matters. We shouldn't be blowing our budget on feel-good joyrides. We should be spending it on lowering launch costs and on the obscenely massive amount of engineering needed to make a true Mars colony feasable. This will take a long, long time, and huge amounts of money. But if we never start, we'll never reach the finish line.
I did a series on the subject over here, called "The Colonization Of Other Worlds":
Part 1: Beyond the Space Elevator: A Glimpse of Alternative Methods for Space Launch
Part 2: Where Will We Begin?
Part 3: Who Will Bring It About And Why?
Part 4: The Industry Dilemma
And it's so tangential nowadays. Try explaining to your typical Taliban soldier:
"Well, you see, we're bombing the towns you hide in because you're, like most Taliban soldiers, a farmer who was hired as a soldier by a Taliban warlord for a couple dollars a month paycheck -- a warlord who, due to Afghanistan's famously shifting alliances may or may not have been part of the Taliban nearly a decade ago, when the Taliban leadership was allowing al-Qaeda to stay on land in the country in exchange for cash -- land on which al-Qaeda used to host terrorist training camps, where some people were trained who later went on to hijack four planes in the US and kill several thousand people. Got it?"
Why are you talking about D-O events, which are generally accepted to be regional or at best hemispheric in nature and driven by changes in thermohaline circulation (like the Younger Dryas)? We're talking about *global* climate change.
For the record, the Earth as a whole was quite robust against the Younger Dryas, but the North Atlantic (briefly) wasn't. I do find it annoying that you keep trying to turn this conversation from discussion of global climate change to historical blips in North Atlantic thermohaline circulation.
Science doesn't work based on what you "feel" should be right. Science works on facts. But if you want help with the "feel" side, CO2 levels are the highest they've been in nearly 15 million years, all of this change since human industrialization.
If you need help understanding how humans could cause *that*, picture this. The Hindenburg was the largest aircraft every built, at over 800 feet long, 135 feet in diameter, and with a volume of 200,000 cubic meters. If numbers don't do the size justice, how about a picture?. Now, carbon dioxide was historically at about 280ppm. So if you filled the hindenburg with pre-industrial air, it would contain 56 cubic meters of CO2. CO2 has a molar mass of 44.010 g/mol. The molar volume of an ideal gas under STP conditions is 22.414 L/mol, or 44.6149728 mol/m^3, so the Hindenburg would contain 110 kilograms of CO2.
A gallon of gasoline, burned, releases about 8.7kg of CO2. Your average sedan has about a 12-gallon gas tank. For a full tank of gas, 12*8.7=104kg of CO2, approximately the same as in *an entire Hindenburg of pre-industrial air*.
The world consumes 30 *billion* *barrels* of oil per year. Each barrel represents about 42 gallons of gasoline (about 3 1/2 Hindenburg's worth of CO2). So every year, the CO2 emitted by our burning of oil could double the CO2 concentration of 100 *trillion* Hindenburgs. *Every year*. Yet oil produces only 45% of our planet's total CO2 emissions, and even less of it's total AGW load. Let's be generous and only call the total 200 trillion Hindenburgs per year.
Earth's surface area is 5.10072e14 m^2. The Hindenburg takes up an area of about 108,000 square meters when stacked side by side, end to end. Hence you could stack about 4.7 trillion Hindenburgs side to side, end to end across the entire surface of the planet. To put our emissions another way, then, a mere five years of emissions could *more than double* the CO2 concentrations in Hindenburg airships stacked side to side, end to end, across the entire surface of the planet.
Does that help with the "feel" side of things? So we can get back to the "facts" side of things?
If you had read the other thread, you would have noticed that the other time I posted this, it was followed by a "whoops" post noting that wrote it in response to the wrong poster. It was supposed to go here.
Moderators: The fact that a person appeals to the moderators does not mean that they know what they are talking about at all.
WOW. That's setting a new low in selective quoting. Allow me to finish your quote for you: "... limitations of the interpolation techniques, although it has been done successfully [Sheppard and Rayner, 2002]". You cut the freaking sentence in half to remove the part you didn't like. You want to talk about an agenda? The surest sign of having an agenda is when you have to start selectively quoting scientific research materials and taking quotes out of context.
There's an entire section of the paper -- section 6 -- which goes into the validation of the dataset. It's the peak of absurdity to say that global international shipping and the navy logs of superpowers which frequently mapped out the edge of the arctic sea ice are irreelevant, and only satellites matter. Likewise, it's simply absurd to dismiss every peer-reviewed and validated proxy measure, of which there are dozens.
What part of "A never-before observed phenomenon" is hard for you to understand? The "observed" part, I assume?
Your #3 is merely an insult, not a point, so no reason to even quote it.
Sure -- here's one for starters, sort of a meta-analysis of other papers. That should be a good jumping-off point for you.
False. Here's a nice starter for you.
Actually, that's a very real thing. A never-before observed phenomenon occurred called the "Arctic Dipole", which encourages melt. We've now seen it repeat on and off for the past several years. It led to the major melt earlier this year. Several papers have since shown that under AGW scenarios, that pattern becomes increasingly likely.
Huh? How does a temperature graph that starts at -0.4 and ends up at +0.4 versus a PDO graph that starts at +0.2 and ends up at about the same place support your argument? There has been dramatic warming over the PDO signal. The PDO signal matches the 1910-1945 warming, but has virtually no affect on the most recent warming.
These things sound like the Hexacopter. It uses an onboard GPS, and you can program it to follow waypoints on a schedule, as well as to operate its camera. It's a pretty nifty thing, and there's a large community working on modifications to them. For example, I know of one person who's working on a "Roomba-style" charging/docking pad that it can fly back to automatically when its battery gets low, then take off again when it gets a new charge. Excepting severe weather, a pair of them could keep 24/7 surveillance on a target with no human involvement.
Okay, do you volunteer to airlift out every last road and skyscraper out of every low lying area on the planet and relocate them up north?
Human society is based on effectively immobile assets. And even when societies without much assets have mass-migrated throughout history, the results have had profound, generally negative ripple effects (for example, the Dark Ages were brought about when pressure from the Mongols in Asia led to a Germanic influx into Europe)
The peer-reviewed studies profoundly disagree with you.
1) One location != arctic sea ice extent.
2) Weather != climate
3) In the past several million years, the North Pole has not been exposed due to large-scale melting, although it has been exposed periodically due to fractures in the ice. It still has not, although it's getting closer every year.
According to peer-review, they are much smaller than the climate signal. For example, here's PDO vs. temperature. In recent decades, it's totally overwhelmed by the AGW signal.
People deserve to know who they're sourcing.
Right. Because the American Journal of Homeopathic Medicine is the same as Science and Nature.
The "data quoted at the end"? What end? It's a looping image (really annoying, by the way). And it's still cherry-picking. Individual ice cores for a single location do not a planetwide temperature average represent; that's what peer-reviewed papers on reconstructions using *all* available data are for.