Looking at that image, the two main features look like symmetric interference patterns, fairly simple ones. Why not do the Fourier (or other) analysis to recompose the original light signals?
The EPA we have now is the one Bush/Cheney built for fracking. There is no "general scientific consensus", except perhaps among the geologists employed by fracking corps. The Wikipedia article has plenty of footnoted examples of holes in the "fracking is not toxic" story. We might like to believe that fracking can be done in a way that isn't harmful to the environment, but we don't have what we need to believe it. Big actions on largely unknown systems like what's underground deliver surprises, like earthquakes. The industry has a solid record of ignoring unknowns and risks, and there's no reason to believe this time will be different.
I can tell you, having dealt with execs and lawyers in big oil corps, that their culture is indeed evil and values damaging the environment when they can get away with it as something of a trophy. Having dealt with other resource extraction corporadoes I can tell you that it's a fairly common machismo, the flipside of deriding "tree huggers". The money is of course what they're after, but the collateral damage is the scenic view. Of course it's necessary for most people whose profit seeking will necessarily damage the place to turn that necessity into a virtue, or at least tell themselves that to keep the guilt at bay.
Geothermal produces electricity, which is a different industry than natgas production. All of these industries are subsidized in highly structured ways, and just switching to geothermal development isn't how US energy industries operate, even if the direct economics favors it. Yet geothermal has begun real development, even though its subsidies aren't anywhere near as rich as for oil/gas production, or competitive with $120 oil barrels. These industries have lots of momentum, and Boone Pickens spent over a decade firing up fracking. Nobody nearly as connected is championing geothermal. Yet it is ramping up.
Preventing fracking from starting up isn't some "draconian measure". It's the fracking that's draconian.
On what basis are you assuring me that fracking is safe? As I pointed out, you were reassuring me of other safety without even knowing the facts about it. Now you're reassuring me that fracking overall is safe. On what basis?
I also said that coal is bad, so your comment about my not caring about WV mountaintop removal is unwarranted.
It takes only a few years to get a geothermal plant running. That's shorter than even fracking, where the correct bureaucratic procedures make it slow because its risk is so high and largely unknown. Geothermal doesn't have to be a long term solution - it's at least as short term as fracking. Redirecting from fracking into geothermal is the right decision for all but the petrocorps that prefer to buy their way past the regulations. We shouldn't help them do that.
This is not simply a case of "something might go wrong". This is a case of fracking actually going wrong, and finally having a fracker admitting it. Which, as we always see (hello, Gulf of BP), gradually finds the energy corp admitting more and more of the truth.
CERN's black hole experiments were first analyzed by highly competent scientists who determined from other experiments and detailed theories proven in other experiments that the risk of a black hole was negligible.
Fracking is being done by unaccountable energy corps who have always demonstrated their reckless behavior by actually damaging us and leaving the public with the bill.
There is no worthwhile comparison between the two. Which is why you're posting as an Anonymous Coward: you're all about making reckless statements without accountability. Hello, BP.
I've done a lot in my career, including working for big hedge funds and other banks. But I refused to work for any oil or nuke corp, even though I was asked more than once. My conscience is worth more than they will pay. I wish the US assigned costs and values to work and consequences better, so the brain drain would steal talent from oil corps to sustainable development instead of the reverse. Not everyone has the variety of opportunities I've had to work elsewhere.
Those two groups aren't "unfriendly to Big Oil", they're two groups that should be but instead allow Big Oil to pollute and destroy with only minor extra costs of doing business. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh do not share that opinion.
You're not a geologist. You don't work for any oil corp. You're a liar. An anonymous liar. Your claims to a long history of it don't make it any more credible.
1. You don't know anything about the tectonics of this area. 2. You don't know the truth about whether groundwater is "usually" affected. And the fracking that has gotten underway (at least procedurally, which is the only thing standing in its way), including in NY State is not using non-toxic technologies.
You are talking like you are qualified to make recommendations, but you're not. Further, nobody's talking about "cutting off the natural gas" - except you. There's lots of natgas being produced without fracking.
Yes, coal is the worst. The fracking industry is the same as the coal industry. Fracking is not lessening coal, even if it's replacing some new coal with also-dirty fracking. The profits in fracking are simply because the frackers are exempted from the costs of their damage. What we must do, like with all these dead-end energy techs, is make sure that those costs are assigned properly, which will stop it. And which will then make the actually more profitable sources, like geothermal, the targets for development and financing by private for-profit efforts. When we stop this corporate socialism, actual economics will give us the sustainable energy we need. Because the actual economics make sustainable energy more profitable.
You're a liar, as the other posts citing research showing fracking damage amply demonstrate. Here you're using the weasel words "no unexpected effects" from fracking. So now it's safe to assume that oil corps expected the damage.
I'm certainly not going to base my views on your 44 word Anonymous Coward Slashdot shallow denial. Except my view that you're a liar.
You're an Anonymous Coward. Sign your name and the oil corp and we'll believe that you are who you say. BTW, it's more like hundreds of millions of gallons of fracking fluids. That's millions of gallons of toxic chemicals, even if your percentages are true. An actual geologist working for a major oil corp who isn't lying would have said millions.
But even so, what does it matter that the EPA and the GWPC have been bribed and bullied by oil corps to lie to us about fracking safety?
Oil corps have earned only distrust and hatred. Anything they say should be treated as a lie unless conclusively proven to be true. Fracking is just the latest round of lies and abuse.
What's terrible is that your statement is more accurate when read without a tone of irony. Oil company employees have a practically faultless record of being paid shills. Though mainly only people willing to be paid shills take that kind of work.
No, there's no science concluding that small quakes overall reduce large quakes, rather than add to stresses that make large quakes larger and/or more likely. Some science suggests maybe, but even there only on some fault systems, not necessarily on others.
We are messing with major consequences that we don't understand. For short term gain, gambling against long term losses - that will be paid by someone who didn't make the short term profits. As usual.
Yes, people die every day. So what's some more optional killing among friends?
NYC has a nuke plant just up the Hudson which has all kinds of unregulated underground pipe leaks already. It's on a fault line that official geologists said would max quake at something like 1% of the actual max quake geologists now have; the low number was the basis for the quake protections installed there. These faults are unstable anyway, but within a range. Extra quakes from fracking will add to the probability of a quake large enough to dump the nukes into the Hudson. Downstream is something like 15 million people, just within the first few hours. If you thought a couple of big office buildings collapsing downtown on 9/11/2001 busted up the NYC/USA/global economy, wait until you see tens of millions of people panicking as they fail to evacuate the NYC area during "the next Fukushima".
And then there's all the other damage to groundwater and from escaping gas and fracking fluids. The "little" quakes are if nothing else signs of severe damage being done to underground systems that we barely even know about, let alone understand.
Instead of fracking, we should do big engineering and drilling for geothermal. It's much cheaper to build, doesn't destroy the ground like fracking, and produces energy for a much longer period after. It's truly sustainable. Fracking is just another desperate grab for petrofuel profits that dump the costs beyond the horizon on everyone else.
It's surprising that this petrofuel corp is admitting anything at all. The truth will turn out to be even worse, as these energy corps always hide and lie as long as physically possible. They use the same PR corps that kept tobacco's death and destruction officially secret and off the liability lists for generations.
Soon enough we'll hear about even more damage the drill babies know they're doing. And then eventually, if we don't stop this destructive profit extraction, we'll hear about all the other damage they insisted on ignoring. But of course then it will be too late to matter. Which is always the drill babies' main strategy.
Of course if some big tech corps, that have lived through a decade and more of Microsoft subject to restrictions for abusing its PC monopoly, tell some journalist that they're not going to help Microsoft compete unfairly with Linux then they must be telling the truth.
Journalists are stupid. Especially when they expect the rest of us to be as gullible as they are for a living.
Is there a good plugin for Eclipse that replaces my Ubuntu Evolution email MUA? How about a Firefox plugin? I'd like all my desktop apps to have the same degree of integration that Eclipse contexts have, with the easy scripting, updating and extensibility.
And how about a plugin that manages tasks in Eclipse that are stored (and shared) in MS Exchange or Zimbra?
$free ones are preferred, but they've got to be quality. Yes, I know I'm spoiled.
But they don't have to pay, so it's profitable. Vastly profitable, as their record profits (during a record depression) prove beyond any doubt. And it didn't take $140 barrels to get those profits; most of the time the price was $90-120. And it didn't take those record profits to make producing the oil worthwhile; even at half the profits they were the most profitable corps on Earth, producing all around the globe.
You're arguing that oil is too expensive to drill in many countries until it sells for $140 or close to it. But the facts prove you wrong. You can't defend it with an hypothetical condition that's not necessary to cause them to act, as they already have.
Just above normal background radiation levels, but you wouldn't want to go bathing in it? Normal background radiation levels are perfectly safe for bathing.
Nobody in the 1970s or 1990s said we'd be out of gas by now. Except the usual few nut jobs, who today say we'll never run out.
What we learned in the 1970s is that global oil production would peak around 2010. Which it probably has, despite the kinds of big lies oil corps and oil producing nations tell. Those lies produced major "corrections" to Iraq's, Nigeria's and several other countries' "proven reserves" during the past decade, when they couldn't keep lying anymore about the truly dwindling size of what they have left.
We also learned in the 1970s that after the global peak, the global output would drop off at about the same rate it increased to the peak. Because in the early 1970s we saw Hubbert's predictions made in 1956 about the US come true, validating his theories which next predicted global peak in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile global oil demand just increases. With falling supply past the peak, the shortages grow rapidly.
Oil sands and tar sands are profitable only to the extractors and sellers until it's pollution. But then the costs keep coming, all externalized onto the general public (and worst onto the poorest in the public). $140 is still too little to pay for all the costs including the damage. But indeed the oil corps are talking about anything they can put into a barrel at $140 per. Regardless of who really has to pay the rest.
How does Apple's HQ pretend that we have a green economy? Who's saying it runs off unicorn farts? Though "run off sunshine" is exactly what we're trying to do, and Californians have been doing more than most for generations.
If what you're complaining about is that the US has better environmental protection than China does, that's not hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping China from cleaning up the way the US did, except its greed for the dollar at the expense of its workers. And when China does, if its growing population of people with enough money to protect themselves from being poisoned does protect themselves, their rising costs will help the US compete with them economically.
None of that is hypocrisy. It's economics and the politics that follows it.
It's guaranteed to be over only if you surrender. You are a part of the American mindset. It's your job to change your mind, and as many around you as you can. We surround them.
We make governments to protect our rights. When our governments are filled with people who don't do anything, that is by design: the design of the people who damage our rights. While governments dither and deadlock, corporate people are robbing and damaging us. Every day corporate teams produce new ways to attack us, which requires government diligence that has failed miserably.
Rather than applaud from a distance, you should go to an Occupy Australia demonstration. This is direct action that you support - in principle. The more people support that action in person the more it will mean. It's the next step away from representative democracy. And since that last step is a sham, it's the closest step to it you can take. Just do it. BTW, it's a lot of fun, and the despair you might have (but might not even feel - yet) shrinks in good company.
Mostly plausible. But Netscape was primarily a way for Jim Clark of SGI to raise money on Marc Andreesen. That's why "Netscape" turned down the M$ offer as too low - it surely was less than $500M, before the Netscape IPO's aftereffects eventually made $500M look quaint. Without Clark, Andreesen and Netscape disrupting MS, it's not clear how that kind of dotcom money would have played out. Netscape's IPO was the template, and "blind template" was the defining factor in the whole wave.
I don't think you can get too specific in this hypothetical. All I think is sure is that a lot of money would have found a major pressure for an "alternative" like Netscape, and a lot of consumer demand would have found an alternative to Microsoft. If not focused as clearly in the actual Netscape, then probably in some broader application development. Which, given that the browser should not be an app frame but rather just an Internet navigator (like the Mac Finder or the Windows Explorer), would probably have actually have been better for Internet development. More like Android and iPhone apps are now, but 10+ years earlier.
Dare I say "Marimba"? Pointcast? Something of that ilk, though without those product's Netscape rooted path.
Slashdot Mirror
But if they did, the image wouldn't be a symmetrical interference pattern. The original source light before interference would appear in the image.
Looking at that image, the two main features look like symmetric interference patterns, fairly simple ones. Why not do the Fourier (or other) analysis to recompose the original light signals?
The EPA we have now is the one Bush/Cheney built for fracking. There is no "general scientific consensus", except perhaps among the geologists employed by fracking corps. The Wikipedia article has plenty of footnoted examples of holes in the "fracking is not toxic" story. We might like to believe that fracking can be done in a way that isn't harmful to the environment, but we don't have what we need to believe it. Big actions on largely unknown systems like what's underground deliver surprises, like earthquakes. The industry has a solid record of ignoring unknowns and risks, and there's no reason to believe this time will be different.
I can tell you, having dealt with execs and lawyers in big oil corps, that their culture is indeed evil and values damaging the environment when they can get away with it as something of a trophy. Having dealt with other resource extraction corporadoes I can tell you that it's a fairly common machismo, the flipside of deriding "tree huggers". The money is of course what they're after, but the collateral damage is the scenic view. Of course it's necessary for most people whose profit seeking will necessarily damage the place to turn that necessity into a virtue, or at least tell themselves that to keep the guilt at bay.
Geothermal produces electricity, which is a different industry than natgas production. All of these industries are subsidized in highly structured ways, and just switching to geothermal development isn't how US energy industries operate, even if the direct economics favors it. Yet geothermal has begun real development, even though its subsidies aren't anywhere near as rich as for oil/gas production, or competitive with $120 oil barrels. These industries have lots of momentum, and Boone Pickens spent over a decade firing up fracking. Nobody nearly as connected is championing geothermal. Yet it is ramping up.
Preventing fracking from starting up isn't some "draconian measure". It's the fracking that's draconian.
On what basis are you assuring me that fracking is safe? As I pointed out, you were reassuring me of other safety without even knowing the facts about it. Now you're reassuring me that fracking overall is safe. On what basis?
I also said that coal is bad, so your comment about my not caring about WV mountaintop removal is unwarranted.
It takes only a few years to get a geothermal plant running. That's shorter than even fracking, where the correct bureaucratic procedures make it slow because its risk is so high and largely unknown. Geothermal doesn't have to be a long term solution - it's at least as short term as fracking. Redirecting from fracking into geothermal is the right decision for all but the petrocorps that prefer to buy their way past the regulations. We shouldn't help them do that.
This is not simply a case of "something might go wrong". This is a case of fracking actually going wrong, and finally having a fracker admitting it. Which, as we always see (hello, Gulf of BP), gradually finds the energy corp admitting more and more of the truth.
CERN's black hole experiments were first analyzed by highly competent scientists who determined from other experiments and detailed theories proven in other experiments that the risk of a black hole was negligible.
Fracking is being done by unaccountable energy corps who have always demonstrated their reckless behavior by actually damaging us and leaving the public with the bill.
There is no worthwhile comparison between the two. Which is why you're posting as an Anonymous Coward: you're all about making reckless statements without accountability. Hello, BP.
I've done a lot in my career, including working for big hedge funds and other banks. But I refused to work for any oil or nuke corp, even though I was asked more than once. My conscience is worth more than they will pay. I wish the US assigned costs and values to work and consequences better, so the brain drain would steal talent from oil corps to sustainable development instead of the reverse. Not everyone has the variety of opportunities I've had to work elsewhere.
Those two groups aren't "unfriendly to Big Oil", they're two groups that should be but instead allow Big Oil to pollute and destroy with only minor extra costs of doing business. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh do not share that opinion.
You're not a geologist. You don't work for any oil corp. You're a liar. An anonymous liar. Your claims to a long history of it don't make it any more credible.
Goodbye.
1. You don't know anything about the tectonics of this area.
2. You don't know the truth about whether groundwater is "usually" affected. And the fracking that has gotten underway (at least procedurally, which is the only thing standing in its way), including in NY State is not using non-toxic technologies.
You are talking like you are qualified to make recommendations, but you're not. Further, nobody's talking about "cutting off the natural gas" - except you. There's lots of natgas being produced without fracking.
Yes, coal is the worst. The fracking industry is the same as the coal industry. Fracking is not lessening coal, even if it's replacing some new coal with also-dirty fracking. The profits in fracking are simply because the frackers are exempted from the costs of their damage. What we must do, like with all these dead-end energy techs, is make sure that those costs are assigned properly, which will stop it. And which will then make the actually more profitable sources, like geothermal, the targets for development and financing by private for-profit efforts. When we stop this corporate socialism, actual economics will give us the sustainable energy we need. Because the actual economics make sustainable energy more profitable.
You're a liar, as the other posts citing research showing fracking damage amply demonstrate. Here you're using the weasel words "no unexpected effects" from fracking. So now it's safe to assume that oil corps expected the damage.
I'm certainly not going to base my views on your 44 word Anonymous Coward Slashdot shallow denial. Except my view that you're a liar.
You're an Anonymous Coward. Sign your name and the oil corp and we'll believe that you are who you say. BTW, it's more like hundreds of millions of gallons of fracking fluids. That's millions of gallons of toxic chemicals, even if your percentages are true. An actual geologist working for a major oil corp who isn't lying would have said millions.
But even so, what does it matter that the EPA and the GWPC have been bribed and bullied by oil corps to lie to us about fracking safety?
Oil corps have earned only distrust and hatred. Anything they say should be treated as a lie unless conclusively proven to be true. Fracking is just the latest round of lies and abuse.
What's terrible is that your statement is more accurate when read without a tone of irony. Oil company employees have a practically faultless record of being paid shills. Though mainly only people willing to be paid shills take that kind of work.
No, there's no science concluding that small quakes overall reduce large quakes, rather than add to stresses that make large quakes larger and/or more likely. Some science suggests maybe, but even there only on some fault systems, not necessarily on others.
We are messing with major consequences that we don't understand. For short term gain, gambling against long term losses - that will be paid by someone who didn't make the short term profits. As usual.
Yes, people die every day. So what's some more optional killing among friends?
NYC has a nuke plant just up the Hudson which has all kinds of unregulated underground pipe leaks already. It's on a fault line that official geologists said would max quake at something like 1% of the actual max quake geologists now have; the low number was the basis for the quake protections installed there. These faults are unstable anyway, but within a range. Extra quakes from fracking will add to the probability of a quake large enough to dump the nukes into the Hudson. Downstream is something like 15 million people, just within the first few hours. If you thought a couple of big office buildings collapsing downtown on 9/11/2001 busted up the NYC/USA/global economy, wait until you see tens of millions of people panicking as they fail to evacuate the NYC area during "the next Fukushima".
And then there's all the other damage to groundwater and from escaping gas and fracking fluids. The "little" quakes are if nothing else signs of severe damage being done to underground systems that we barely even know about, let alone understand.
Instead of fracking, we should do big engineering and drilling for geothermal. It's much cheaper to build, doesn't destroy the ground like fracking, and produces energy for a much longer period after. It's truly sustainable. Fracking is just another desperate grab for petrofuel profits that dump the costs beyond the horizon on everyone else.
It's surprising that this petrofuel corp is admitting anything at all. The truth will turn out to be even worse, as these energy corps always hide and lie as long as physically possible. They use the same PR corps that kept tobacco's death and destruction officially secret and off the liability lists for generations.
Soon enough we'll hear about even more damage the drill babies know they're doing. And then eventually, if we don't stop this destructive profit extraction, we'll hear about all the other damage they insisted on ignoring. But of course then it will be too late to matter. Which is always the drill babies' main strategy.
Of course if some big tech corps, that have lived through a decade and more of Microsoft subject to restrictions for abusing its PC monopoly, tell some journalist that they're not going to help Microsoft compete unfairly with Linux then they must be telling the truth.
Journalists are stupid. Especially when they expect the rest of us to be as gullible as they are for a living.
Is there a good plugin for Eclipse that replaces my Ubuntu Evolution email MUA? How about a Firefox plugin? I'd like all my desktop apps to have the same degree of integration that Eclipse contexts have, with the easy scripting, updating and extensibility.
And how about a plugin that manages tasks in Eclipse that are stored (and shared) in MS Exchange or Zimbra?
$free ones are preferred, but they've got to be quality. Yes, I know I'm spoiled.
But they don't have to pay, so it's profitable. Vastly profitable, as their record profits (during a record depression) prove beyond any doubt. And it didn't take $140 barrels to get those profits; most of the time the price was $90-120. And it didn't take those record profits to make producing the oil worthwhile; even at half the profits they were the most profitable corps on Earth, producing all around the globe.
You're arguing that oil is too expensive to drill in many countries until it sells for $140 or close to it. But the facts prove you wrong. You can't defend it with an hypothetical condition that's not necessary to cause them to act, as they already have.
Just above normal background radiation levels, but you wouldn't want to go bathing in it? Normal background radiation levels are perfectly safe for bathing.
Nobody in the 1970s or 1990s said we'd be out of gas by now. Except the usual few nut jobs, who today say we'll never run out.
What we learned in the 1970s is that global oil production would peak around 2010. Which it probably has, despite the kinds of big lies oil corps and oil producing nations tell. Those lies produced major "corrections" to Iraq's, Nigeria's and several other countries' "proven reserves" during the past decade, when they couldn't keep lying anymore about the truly dwindling size of what they have left.
We also learned in the 1970s that after the global peak, the global output would drop off at about the same rate it increased to the peak. Because in the early 1970s we saw Hubbert's predictions made in 1956 about the US come true, validating his theories which next predicted global peak in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile global oil demand just increases. With falling supply past the peak, the shortages grow rapidly.
Oil sands and tar sands are profitable only to the extractors and sellers until it's pollution. But then the costs keep coming, all externalized onto the general public (and worst onto the poorest in the public). $140 is still too little to pay for all the costs including the damage. But indeed the oil corps are talking about anything they can put into a barrel at $140 per. Regardless of who really has to pay the rest.
What are you talking about? Oil prices have been up around $100 or more for several years.
Let's have a legit citation or a retraction.
How does Apple's HQ pretend that we have a green economy? Who's saying it runs off unicorn farts? Though "run off sunshine" is exactly what we're trying to do, and Californians have been doing more than most for generations.
If what you're complaining about is that the US has better environmental protection than China does, that's not hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping China from cleaning up the way the US did, except its greed for the dollar at the expense of its workers. And when China does, if its growing population of people with enough money to protect themselves from being poisoned does protect themselves, their rising costs will help the US compete with them economically.
None of that is hypocrisy. It's economics and the politics that follows it.
It's guaranteed to be over only if you surrender. You are a part of the American mindset. It's your job to change your mind, and as many around you as you can. We surround them.
We make governments to protect our rights. When our governments are filled with people who don't do anything, that is by design: the design of the people who damage our rights. While governments dither and deadlock, corporate people are robbing and damaging us. Every day corporate teams produce new ways to attack us, which requires government diligence that has failed miserably.
Rather than applaud from a distance, you should go to an Occupy Australia demonstration. This is direct action that you support - in principle. The more people support that action in person the more it will mean. It's the next step away from representative democracy. And since that last step is a sham, it's the closest step to it you can take. Just do it. BTW, it's a lot of fun, and the despair you might have (but might not even feel - yet) shrinks in good company.
Mostly plausible. But Netscape was primarily a way for Jim Clark of SGI to raise money on Marc Andreesen. That's why "Netscape" turned down the M$ offer as too low - it surely was less than $500M, before the Netscape IPO's aftereffects eventually made $500M look quaint. Without Clark, Andreesen and Netscape disrupting MS, it's not clear how that kind of dotcom money would have played out. Netscape's IPO was the template, and "blind template" was the defining factor in the whole wave.
I don't think you can get too specific in this hypothetical. All I think is sure is that a lot of money would have found a major pressure for an "alternative" like Netscape, and a lot of consumer demand would have found an alternative to Microsoft. If not focused as clearly in the actual Netscape, then probably in some broader application development. Which, given that the browser should not be an app frame but rather just an Internet navigator (like the Mac Finder or the Windows Explorer), would probably have actually have been better for Internet development. More like Android and iPhone apps are now, but 10+ years earlier.
Dare I say "Marimba"? Pointcast? Something of that ilk, though without those product's Netscape rooted path.
No, you just don't know how to ask "what if?" questions about the past. Try looking at some of the actually insightful comments in this thread.
Or don't. If not, at least stay out of the way while the rest of us do something useful here. Play with some porn or something 100% reliable.