If it were so trivially obvious that the CO2 effect is saturated, it follows that lots of scientists are either too stupid to understand this or they understand it but are deliberately ignoring it or 'covering it up'.
IR spectroscopy is a routine industrial technique for sample analysis. The IR absorbtion curves of CO2 and H2O do not depend on the motivations of the observer, or even if the observer is in the same arm of the galaxy as the material doing the absorbing. (Yes, astronomers do this sort of study.)
You're implying the existence of some controlling guild of IR spectrographers (presumably housed in the UN's bunkers under the World Trade Centre and travelling exclusively in Black Helicopters(TM)), who would take every person who ever finds a need to interpret IR spectrograms and brainwash them under the Black Mesa. Kill the non-compliant ones, of course.
Are you seriously telling me that I was indoctrinated into this cult when I was 14, studying IR spectrometry from my father (a plastics chemist, not a climatologist ; using his 1950s text books) to answer a question about astronomy, several years before having to cover the same stuff again (in different units, in 1980s textbooks) in Physics and Chemistry classes. And you're proposing that the Black Helicopter IR Spectroscopy Thought Police somehow sneaked into Dad's library and changed the diagrams in his textbooks, including duplicating his illegible copperplate scrawl on the other sides of the pages?
Are you seriously telling me that the IR spectroscopy that I was taught again as a technique for mineral and humic acid identification in Soil Science at university in my twenties was also under the control of the Black Helicopter IR Spectroscopy Thought Police? Despite having to run these calibration and correction curves on the machines for myself. These dumb, dumb, dumb machines (photocell pickup mechanically linked to the position of the graph paper on the recorder) must have had some sort of supervisory software introduced to them (software in the pantograph linkage maybe, or in the felt-tipped pen, perhaps? In the 1980s?)
Have you considered the implications of what you're claiming as a conspiracy? Or possibly... the H2O and CO2 absorbtion bands do not completely overlap, so that even in an atmosphere with significant H2O, the addition of CO2 will still have a significant effect on it's IR transmissivity. (The converse also applies for CO2 dominated atmospheres to which you add H2O.)
For what it's worth - and possibly to confuse you further, I'm a geologist specialising in finding and exploiting oil and gas reserves. So, obviously, I'm on your side as a shill for the anti-anthropogenic climate change PR companies (paid for by my employers in the oil industry, amongst others). The fact that, as a geologist, the discussion is over within my professional circles : dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere causes an increase in global temperatures. We see the consequences (in terms of changes in faunal composition, changes in sedimentation provenance and weathering...) as part of our working toolset. We are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, therefore the temperature will rise in the same way that it has at least 5 times in the past. No further time needs to be wasted on debating this, and we can get back on with finding more fossil fuels to burn.
Anyway, as a sceptic, you can have whatever inclinations you want. That won't make your claims true. Meantime, you can worry about what effects your actions are going to have on your descendants.
aH, i SEE. tHE COOLANT (Bloody CapsLock!) cycles heat from the radioactive core to a heat exchanger, at atmospheric pressure and a dull red heat (700degC - maybe quite a distinctly red heat? Been a while since I ran a furnace that hot.) ; in the heat exchanger, the steam is generated, super-critically, and runs off to a conventional turbine and generator.
Same sort of cycle that the (Douneray-style) fast breeders tried, but without the delightful concept of running red-hot sodium metal through a steam generator filled with high pressure water. Talk about making a rod for your own back!
I grabbed the important points from the 5 minute summary : Thorium much more common than uranium (I'm a geologist ; I know this); blah about separating radiation hazards from pressure hazards ; blah about self-dumping reactor cores. Unacceptable to the military because didn't produce enough of the "Killstoff" elements (stealing a style of terminology from German WW2 rocket chemistry).
Technical point - the talking head asserted that (approx quote) "we will never, ever run out of [this stuff]". Sorry, cobber, I'm a geologist ; I probably have a much better grasp of what "never, ever" means than you do. I'm not going to waste 2 hours of my life on listening to what is essentially marketing blah when I've got the main technical blah already.
Maybe now that the military have got more "Killstoff" than they can think what to do with, this sort of technology has a workable chance. But not until.
Essentially everyone who plays games that feature any kind of P2P functionality WILL notice because these games will break.
Will they? Does that mean that I can't play Solitaire, or X-com, or Elite in my DOSBox emulator then? Have any interesting games been written that use this functionality?
Anyone using skype will likely notice some issues with being unable to connect sometimes.
And this will differ from today's situation just how?
That would destroy the internet as we know it. [...] Problem is that many websites have a ton of 3rd-party ads displaying.
Do you see a problem with a lot of internet advertising disappearing? I don't. Except for a relatively small proportion of people who attempt to make money from their sites by having adverts rather than content. Call it a slaughter of the innocents, or call it whatever you want to, but I don't have any problem with destroying advertising. Why do you think I've been a vigorous user of AdBlock for years? And JunkBuster before that, going back to when I was on dial-up.
Is there a list of centenarians with Slashdot ID's?
I don't know if - or why - there should be such a list, but since I'm pushing my half century, the average life span is pushing three-quarters of a century, and there are about 16,000 people who've been on the site for longer than I have... I think it's quite possible that there are a number of centenarians on the site.
Such a person could - theoretically - have worked on making the World War 2 code-breaking computers as a young man (or woman, but that's pretty unlikely for social reasons, not biological ones) and everything since. Would be an interesting person for an Ask Slashdot? (are the editors watching?)
My guess is they would put the pressure on YouTube to detect videos with too many QRCodes in their frames and remove them and it will soon be in their Terms of Service.
I doubt that YouTube would be terribly fussed by the legal aspects of this. With these QR codes the fact that there is some "other data" in the file is pretty glaringly obvious, but it should also be pretty glaringly obvious how to re-work this idea to offer true steganography : just leave the embedded signal running as a few percent of shifts in red, green or blue (or luminance? Depends on your encoding?) signals overprinted on otherwise normal-looking video. You'd end up with something that looks like it comes from a rather shoddy camera with a problem in it's circuits. Or indeed, like a video from an NTSC source (what's the nickname? Never Twice the Same Colour, or something similar?) Then you're into full-blown steganography.
Not having ever read the YouTube terms of service, I don't *know*, but I'd be moderately surprised if there wasn't already a catch-all clause in there banning steganography, and even more surprised if there wasn't already a clause banning any illegal usage.
History proves one thing: civil wars are fucking MESSY!!
Hmmm, around about 10% of the population, last time we had one. Which in modern America would be about 30 million dead. 10,000 times September-11. Most of World War Two, including the famine casualties.
There's a sort-of "Inverse Godwin's Law" concerning that. It's effect is that "any post complaining about someone's grammer (or spelling) will inevitably contain a significant grammar (or speelung) mistake.
Or, in the words of someone who I've forgotten, "the perversity of the universe tends to a maximum".
the historic coup de grasse at the battle of Chesepeake.
[Shakes head] I'm almost tempted to learn enough about foreign history (American) to work out what you're talking about. It's a "coup de grace", the "blow of (holy) mercy". In the words of the advertising campaign, "Speak English, Boy!"
Neil de Grasse Tyson would be turning in his grave. If he were dead. And if he gave a shit, which is fairly unlikely.
A guy with a rifle is not a threat to any modern Army. What they fear are roadside bombs, IEDs, and similar devices.
And box-cutters in the carry-on luggage. Don't forget the box cutters!
Users are frustrated that the punch cards and terminals that they depend on for data processing are just not available for the PC.
Are you sure about that? The desire certainly still exists :
news://bit.listserv.ibm-main
"This lead to a final design that could be built from materials all ready to hand: some old curtain rails, an old piece of shelving, tracing paper, a desk lamp, some masking tape, and Blu-Tack." "I had originally thought about making the whole reader from Lego, but then thought why torture myself?" Why indeed?
youtube.com
The wimps version : 6mm holes and paperclips. OTOH, no cheating by doing image processing.
forums.xkcd.com
The obligatory XKCD. Sort-of.
http://cqhuifan.en.made-in-china.com/product/yqoxrjYDEXkl/China-Punch-Card-Reader-Time-Attendance-Machine-HF-S200-.html
THe Chinese are making things that aren't entirely dissimilar, which could be a basis for going upscale, in a self-torturing sort of way.
I hesitate, but the thought is parent to the deed : Rule 34.
strikes some real fear into my heart, in an automotive context. I can see that passengers might need such things (I prefer to talk to the driver myself), but the implied complexity of such things sounds like an invitation to distraction to me for the driver.
Definitely time to construct the controls so that they can't be seen or operated from the driving seat. "Can't be", not "are difficult to ".
I would expect that Canadians have no shortage of similar "war stories." Ditto Antarctican over-winterers, several of whom I've worked/ mountaineered with ; it wasn't even worth discussing.
True story. There's a very finite supply of people with security clearances and the technical know-how to build, let alone maintain, this infrastructure.
Natural methane seeps in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas aren't a problem. They'll have been bubbling away for millennia, on average, and the methane (CO2) they produce will have been picked up by the existing carbon sinks. Novel methane seeps which have recently opened up in (for example) in tundra regions, are a problem.
Most of what you say I agree with in general, though I'd maybe go up to a couple of billion on the long-term sustainable population. And much higher if we get off this planet (which in the geologically long term, we must do; otherwise we're dead).
But I must disagree on one point:
Humans were intended
No they weren't ; no matter how "special" you personally think you are, there was no intention that went into the apparent design of you or any other organism. You (and all your ancestors, all the way back) are simply the descendants of the ones that didn't die.
Oh, sorry ; second point:
Animalian agriculture supporting a meat diet (that humans are not even supposed to eat)
I used to think that. Having studied the matter more (wearing my geologist's hat, with a considerable educated amateur interest in the evolution of humans), I reluctantly have to concede that eating small quantities of meat is a normal part of the diet of members of the genus Homo. That's you, me and probably everyone who has ever posted on Slashdot.
I thought cars and other things that burn fossil fuels output carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide?
You thought wrongly.
and then plant more trees all over the world to turn the CO2 into oxygen?
My tree planting efforts in the middle of the North Atlantic and on the Greenland ice sheets have not been unmitigated successes. Also my avocado plantation on the Siberian tundra has yet to yield fruit. Or leaves. Or stems. I think instead of trying to plant trees where they don't grow now, I'll try slashing and burning a few thousand square km of existing woodland to make room for my carbon dioxide-absorbing forest. Or won't that help?
Uh, isn't burning other fuels just as bad -- I mean, separating C, H, and O chains is separating C,H, & O chains no matter if it came from long dead or recent dead stuff.
Burning non-fossil fuels means releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which has been removed from the atmosphere in the recent past. And unless you're involved in active de-forestation (not many people are), then most of the time you're also planting replacement trees, which themselves will absorb carbon dioxide in significant quantities in the coming years.
Burning fossil fuels is much worse than burning "biomass"
Some of the coastlines that humans charted in the mid-millennium (probably the Chinese) are now covered with ice shelves.
You have a chart of some sort, which asserts to be a map of the Antarctic coastline from around 1500CE, and you don't know it's origins. So... how do you get that assertion of it being Antarctic coastline? There's a global orientation map? Or there's writing? Writing can (generally) be dated and it's origin determined.
My bullshit detector is honking away furiously. Citation please.
Huh? What? Where can I get some? Hang on, is that physically possible? You'd have to use some material that would combine IR photons to form a visible photon.
Slashdot Mirror
IR spectroscopy is a routine industrial technique for sample analysis. The IR absorbtion curves of CO2 and H2O do not depend on the motivations of the observer, or even if the observer is in the same arm of the galaxy as the material doing the absorbing. (Yes, astronomers do this sort of study.)
You're implying the existence of some controlling guild of IR spectrographers (presumably housed in the UN's bunkers under the World Trade Centre and travelling exclusively in Black Helicopters(TM)), who would take every person who ever finds a need to interpret IR spectrograms and brainwash them under the Black Mesa. Kill the non-compliant ones, of course.
Are you seriously telling me that I was indoctrinated into this cult when I was 14, studying IR spectrometry from my father (a plastics chemist, not a climatologist ; using his 1950s text books) to answer a question about astronomy, several years before having to cover the same stuff again (in different units, in 1980s textbooks) in Physics and Chemistry classes. And you're proposing that the Black Helicopter IR Spectroscopy Thought Police somehow sneaked into Dad's library and changed the diagrams in his textbooks, including duplicating his illegible copperplate scrawl on the other sides of the pages?
Are you seriously telling me that the IR spectroscopy that I was taught again as a technique for mineral and humic acid identification in Soil Science at university in my twenties was also under the control of the Black Helicopter IR Spectroscopy Thought Police? Despite having to run these calibration and correction curves on the machines for myself. These dumb, dumb, dumb machines (photocell pickup mechanically linked to the position of the graph paper on the recorder) must have had some sort of supervisory software introduced to them (software in the pantograph linkage maybe, or in the felt-tipped pen, perhaps? In the 1980s?)
Have you considered the implications of what you're claiming as a conspiracy? Or possibly ... the H2O and CO2 absorbtion bands do not completely overlap, so that even in an atmosphere with significant H2O, the addition of CO2 will still have a significant effect on it's IR transmissivity. (The converse also applies for CO2 dominated atmospheres to which you add H2O.)
For what it's worth - and possibly to confuse you further, I'm a geologist specialising in finding and exploiting oil and gas reserves. So, obviously, I'm on your side as a shill for the anti-anthropogenic climate change PR companies (paid for by my employers in the oil industry, amongst others). The fact that, as a geologist, the discussion is over within my professional circles : dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere causes an increase in global temperatures. We see the consequences (in terms of changes in faunal composition, changes in sedimentation provenance and weathering ...) as part of our working toolset. We are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, therefore the temperature will rise in the same way that it has at least 5 times in the past. No further time needs to be wasted on debating this, and we can get back on with finding more fossil fuels to burn.
Anyway, as a sceptic, you can have whatever inclinations you want. That won't make your claims true. Meantime, you can worry about what effects your actions are going to have on your descendants.
Same sort of cycle that the (Douneray-style) fast breeders tried, but without the delightful concept of running red-hot sodium metal through a steam generator filled with high pressure water. Talk about making a rod for your own back!
I grabbed the important points from the 5 minute summary : Thorium much more common than uranium (I'm a geologist ; I know this); blah about separating radiation hazards from pressure hazards ; blah about self-dumping reactor cores. Unacceptable to the military because didn't produce enough of the "Killstoff" elements (stealing a style of terminology from German WW2 rocket chemistry).
Technical point - the talking head asserted that (approx quote) "we will never, ever run out of [this stuff]". Sorry, cobber, I'm a geologist ; I probably have a much better grasp of what "never, ever" means than you do. I'm not going to waste 2 hours of my life on listening to what is essentially marketing blah when I've got the main technical blah already.
Maybe now that the military have got more "Killstoff" than they can think what to do with, this sort of technology has a workable chance. But not until.
Will they? Does that mean that I can't play Solitaire, or X-com, or Elite in my DOSBox emulator then? Have any interesting games been written that use this functionality?
And this will differ from today's situation just how?
Do you see a problem with a lot of internet advertising disappearing? I don't. Except for a relatively small proportion of people who attempt to make money from their sites by having adverts rather than content. Call it a slaughter of the innocents, or call it whatever you want to, but I don't have any problem with destroying advertising. Why do you think I've been a vigorous user of AdBlock for years? And JunkBuster before that, going back to when I was on dial-up.
I don't know if - or why - there should be such a list, but since I'm pushing my half century, the average life span is pushing three-quarters of a century, and there are about 16,000 people who've been on the site for longer than I have ... I think it's quite possible that there are a number of centenarians on the site.
Such a person could - theoretically - have worked on making the World War 2 code-breaking computers as a young man (or woman, but that's pretty unlikely for social reasons, not biological ones) and everything since. Would be an interesting person for an Ask Slashdot? (are the editors watching?)
I doubt that YouTube would be terribly fussed by the legal aspects of this. With these QR codes the fact that there is some "other data" in the file is pretty glaringly obvious, but it should also be pretty glaringly obvious how to re-work this idea to offer true steganography : just leave the embedded signal running as a few percent of shifts in red, green or blue (or luminance? Depends on your encoding?) signals overprinted on otherwise normal-looking video. You'd end up with something that looks like it comes from a rather shoddy camera with a problem in it's circuits. Or indeed, like a video from an NTSC source (what's the nickname? Never Twice the Same Colour, or something similar?) Then you're into full-blown steganography.
Not having ever read the YouTube terms of service, I don't *know*, but I'd be moderately surprised if there wasn't already a catch-all clause in there banning steganography, and even more surprised if there wasn't already a clause banning any illegal usage.
Nope, sorry, I'd have to get a dictionary at "prosentnik".
FTFY
Hmmm, around about 10% of the population, last time we had one. Which in modern America would be about 30 million dead. 10,000 times September-11. Most of World War Two, including the famine casualties.
Or, in the words of someone who I've forgotten, "the perversity of the universe tends to a maximum".
OIC.
[Shakes head] I'm almost tempted to learn enough about foreign history (American) to work out what you're talking about. It's a "coup de grace", the "blow of (holy) mercy". In the words of the advertising campaign, "Speak English, Boy!"
Neil de Grasse Tyson would be turning in his grave. If he were dead. And if he gave a shit, which is fairly unlikely.
And box-cutters in the carry-on luggage. Don't forget the box cutters!
I think that this is the first time (in 16-odd years on Slashdot) that I've wished I had mod points for promoting an AC comment!
Are you sure about that? The desire certainly still exists :
news://bit.listserv.ibm-main "This lead to a final design that could be built from materials all ready to hand: some old curtain rails, an old piece of shelving, tracing paper, a desk lamp, some masking tape, and Blu-Tack.""I had originally thought about making the whole reader from Lego, but then thought why torture myself?" Why indeed? youtube.com The wimps version : 6mm holes and paperclips. OTOH, no cheating by doing image processing. forums.xkcd.com The obligatory XKCD. Sort-of. http://cqhuifan.en.made-in-china.com/product/yqoxrjYDEXkl/China-Punch-Card-Reader-Time-Attendance-Machine-HF-S200-.html THe Chinese are making things that aren't entirely dissimilar, which could be a basis for going upscale, in a self-torturing sort of way.
I hesitate, but the thought is parent to the deed : Rule 34.
strikes some real fear into my heart, in an automotive context. I can see that passengers might need such things (I prefer to talk to the driver myself), but the implied complexity of such things sounds like an invitation to distraction to me for the driver.
Definitely time to construct the controls so that they can't be seen or operated from the driving seat. "Can't be", not "are difficult to ".
... unless the employees were provided with appropriate PPE.
My wife, fiancée at the time, was somewhat surprised to see me perfectly comfortable to visit her at -30degC in Siberia one Easter, after spending several months working in Tanzania at +30degC. Appropriate clothing ; no problem. -55degC was not uncommon in the winter there, and that was considered absolutely no reason to stop working.
I would expect that Canadians have no shortage of similar "war stories." Ditto Antarctican over-winterers, several of whom I've worked/ mountaineered with ; it wasn't even worth discussing.
Can't you hire some cheap from China? Or India?
So? They'll all be being re-formatted with pirate WinXP copies as we speak.
Natural methane seeps in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas aren't a problem. They'll have been bubbling away for millennia, on average, and the methane (CO2) they produce will have been picked up by the existing carbon sinks. Novel methane seeps which have recently opened up in (for example) in tundra regions, are a problem.
But I must disagree on one point :
No they weren't ; no matter how "special" you personally think you are, there was no intention that went into the apparent design of you or any other organism. You (and all your ancestors, all the way back) are simply the descendants of the ones that didn't die.
Oh, sorry ; second point :
I used to think that. Having studied the matter more (wearing my geologist's hat, with a considerable educated amateur interest in the evolution of humans), I reluctantly have to concede that eating small quantities of meat is a normal part of the diet of members of the genus Homo. That's you, me and probably everyone who has ever posted on Slashdot.
You thought wrongly.
My tree planting efforts in the middle of the North Atlantic and on the Greenland ice sheets have not been unmitigated successes. Also my avocado plantation on the Siberian tundra has yet to yield fruit. Or leaves. Or stems. I think instead of trying to plant trees where they don't grow now, I'll try slashing and burning a few thousand square km of existing woodland to make room for my carbon dioxide-absorbing forest. Or won't that help?
There is something deliciously ironic about that image. At least, there is if you think where the Saxons came from.
Burning non-fossil fuels means releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which has been removed from the atmosphere in the recent past. And unless you're involved in active de-forestation (not many people are), then most of the time you're also planting replacement trees, which themselves will absorb carbon dioxide in significant quantities in the coming years.
Burning fossil fuels is much worse than burning "biomass"
You have a chart of some sort, which asserts to be a map of the Antarctic coastline from around 1500CE, and you don't know it's origins. So ... how do you get that assertion of it being Antarctic coastline? There's a global orientation map? Or there's writing? Writing can (generally) be dated and it's origin determined.
My bullshit detector is honking away furiously. Citation please.
Huh? What? Where can I get some? Hang on, is that physically possible? You'd have to use some material that would combine IR photons to form a visible photon.