It always depends on how you compare. "All other things remaining equal" is one of the ways one can compare. It's valid but one has to be careful about conclusions because the other things are not remaining equal.
CO2 has a large impact on plants in arid regions because plants have to sacrifice a lot of water in order to get the CO2, and when there's more CO2 in the air the plants lose much less water. See for instance here
When water is not scarce most plants benefit from the extra CO2 but there are plants with an enhanced carbon metabolism that are more efficient at capturing CO2 and they don't benefit from rising concentrations: corn, sorghum, sugar cane , a range of tropical grasses.
You underestimate the value of boring solutions. There's always this hope that high tech is going to save us but if you want to reduce the carbon footprint, the best place to start would probably be to isolate the house as much as possible and get a high yield gas furnace. And get a small low power car instead of a big one. These are boring low tech solutions but they make a large difference. It's hard to find hightech solutions with the same impact.
Batteries have always had energy densities that were orders of magnitude less than fossil fuels. I would fully agree that having high density energy storage is hugely important and especially so with renewable energy sources because they're so variable. But somehow people always look at the energy sources and not at the buffers.
The gap for batteries is so large though that I doubt claims that we'll be moving to a situation where most cars are electric.
The most interesting buffer I can think of is dams. Using solar power or wind power to pump up water. And at some point a hot bath: solar power heats a liquid that goes into a large reservoir, and then electricity is generated around the clock from the reservoir.
Electric cars are more an upper middle class thing.
Or maybe Mars is not yet a stepping stone, more a cool challenge? It wouldn't be so much for the science. The science can be done in unmanned missions.
There are people willing to go there even if they won't survive very long.
I think the idea that we're trying to colonize the planet is a bit of a straw man. A first attempt at an outpost that will probably fail after a while, is there support for that? I think there is.
Just the odd observation, but the treelike organisation is suitable for well defined species, in other words when lifeforms act pretty much according to closed source strategies (but not completely). According to some smart people in the beginning the dominant organisation was open source, lots of exchange.
The open source thing still happens of course, and it's fascinating when it happens. It gets the news sometimes when the subject is Influenza. There was an important article almost 50 years ago (Symbiogenesis, see Lynn Margulis) stating that some components of the eukaryotic cell have actually been imported from prokaryotes: mitochondria and organelles.
It would be a good idea to reintroduce the pillory for this and put all those involved in there for a few days. Teachers and police. It would send a clear message that mistakes like that aren't just understandable overreaction but are in fact despicable behaviour that should not be tolerated.
Oh wait, we all think it's understandable overreaction that sort of got out of hand! Damn. My bad.Wrong planet. Or wrong country.
Well, the initial reaction is not the only issue, but it is also an issue and it's related to the other issue. There is something seriously wrong if a kid brings a device to school declaring it a watch, and a teacher thinks it's a terrorist with a bomb. And it only gets worse after that.
You're right about the unsupported assertion, although it's got nothing to do with fact-based decision making. And it wasn't 97%. http://global100.adl.org/#coun...
The two-state solution is not anti-zionist. Since it maintains the jewishness of the main state it is acceptable to a broad range of the Israeli public as well as to a large part of the international players and international public. The interpretation about the makeup of the second state varies a lot though: the more left wing Israelis will accept a larger Palestinian state but rarely a real state that would be armed, contiguous and viable. The facts on the ground point towards a Bantustan of disconnected statelets that cannot survive without external help.
The one state solution is anti-zionist if it does away with the jewishness of the state and transforms the state in one of its citizens as the US or France have. That idea is unacceptable for liberal zionism. That is, in principle, not because it would be unfeasible. There is also a rightwing interpretation of a one-state-solution, although they aren't thinking of a Jeffersionian democracy. Thers's also post-zionism, which can mean anything from liberal zionism to antizionism.
The idea that a Palestinian state would be committed to Jewish genocide is a racist caricature.
Clear communication does not require precise definition and in fact this often works counterproductive. The word 'antisemitic' is generally understood as being against Jews, in a way that resembles european attitudes against Jews in the thirties for instance That part of it is clear enough. Picking a logical but unused meaning of the word does not add clarity. The part that does demand attention is what is sufficient to put someone into that basket and you give examples of that.
I hope they've got 3d printers. It's one of those things that provides fixes for a variety of problems. These isolation experiments would still require some kind of 'McGyverMath'. Measures of dual usage of objects, ability to use things in ways not originally intended. But just printing the shapes you need can help a lot. That and a stash of TEC7, WD40 and a ball of wire:)
I only object against the word 'clear'. There are constant attempts to defend the distinction between criticism of the state of Israel and antisemitism. In reality it requires a lot of sophistication and political correctness to criticize the Israeli side in a way that avoids the antisemitism stamp. It's pretty obvious. If you take the simple case of mixing up 'jewish' and 'israeli'. There has been a very strong support amongst jews for Israel, and in Israeli public communication there has been a longstanding practice of talking for all the Jews. But as soon as someone blames 'the Jews' instead of 'the state of Israel' this person becomes an antisemite and therefore a foul person. I can't imagine the majority of people passing that test. To put it differently, the test is rigged. When discussing Nazi stuff in WW2 I've also mixed 'german' and 'nazi' constantly. It's normal.
As times change the meaning of the laws changes as well. For the last generation or so laws that target Holocaust denial are almost entirely about targeting critics of Israel. On the one hand by equating critics of Israel with antisemites, on the other hand by equating the Holocaust denial that is common in the arab world with german or western european Holocaust denial. In fact the two are very different. the latter is denial of guilt, or it used to be that, while the former is not. In the arab world Holocaust denial is highly correlated with recent Israeli operations against for instance Gaza. It's an act of spite.
And really, I've read that 97% of the inhabitants of Gaza are antisemites. Authoritative poll. That conclusion is completely daft.
The heaviest load I recall was 9/11 . A lot of newssites were down and if you wanted to find out what was going on you could go to slashdot , which was holding up with a thousands of comments for each post. IIRC.
Slashdot Mirror
It always depends on how you compare. "All other things remaining equal" is one of the ways one can compare. It's valid but one has to be careful about conclusions because the other things are not remaining equal.
CO2 has a large impact on plants in arid regions because plants have to sacrifice a lot of water in order to get the CO2, and when there's more CO2 in the air the plants lose much less water. See for instance here
When water is not scarce most plants benefit from the extra CO2 but there are plants with an enhanced carbon metabolism that are more efficient at capturing CO2 and they don't benefit from rising concentrations: corn, sorghum, sugar cane , a range of tropical grasses.
I think LEDs are high tech with a big impact, eye roll man.
You underestimate the value of boring solutions. There's always this hope that high tech is going to save us but if you want to reduce the carbon footprint, the best place to start would probably be to isolate the house as much as possible and get a high yield gas furnace. And get a small low power car instead of a big one. These are boring low tech solutions but they make a large difference. It's hard to find hightech solutions with the same impact.
I fully agree.
Batteries have always had energy densities that were orders of magnitude less than fossil fuels. I would fully agree that having high density energy storage is hugely important and especially so with renewable energy sources because they're so variable. But somehow people always look at the energy sources and not at the buffers.
The gap for batteries is so large though that I doubt claims that we'll be moving to a situation where most cars are electric.
The most interesting buffer I can think of is dams. Using solar power or wind power to pump up water. And at some point a hot bath: solar power heats a liquid that goes into a large reservoir, and then electricity is generated around the clock from the reservoir.
Electric cars are more an upper middle class thing.
Or maybe Mars is not yet a stepping stone, more a cool challenge? It wouldn't be so much for the science. The science can be done in unmanned missions.
There are people willing to go there even if they won't survive very long.
I think the idea that we're trying to colonize the planet is a bit of a straw man. A first attempt at an outpost that will probably fail after a while, is there support for that? I think there is.
Movie makers are actually experts in how to make a bomb look like a bomb
Summarizing, if it doesn't look like a bomb, it probably is one. OMG so the teachers in that Texas school had the right reaction!
But at that time there wasn't as much proof for it. It's official now :)
Just the odd observation, but the treelike organisation is suitable for well defined species, in other words when lifeforms act pretty much according to closed source strategies (but not completely). According to some smart people in the beginning the dominant organisation was open source, lots of exchange.
The open source thing still happens of course, and it's fascinating when it happens. It gets the news sometimes when the subject is Influenza.
There was an important article almost 50 years ago (Symbiogenesis, see Lynn Margulis) stating that some components of the eukaryotic cell have actually been imported from prokaryotes: mitochondria and organelles.
It would be a good idea to reintroduce the pillory for this and put all those involved in there for a few days. Teachers and police. It would send a clear message that mistakes like that aren't just understandable overreaction but are in fact despicable behaviour that should not be tolerated.
Oh wait, we all think it's understandable overreaction that sort of got out of hand! Damn. My bad.Wrong planet. Or wrong country.
Then don't use 'probably' in the title.
That's it.
Well, the initial reaction is not the only issue, but it is also an issue and it's related to the other issue. There is something seriously wrong if a kid brings a device to school declaring it a watch, and a teacher thinks it's a terrorist with a bomb. And it only gets worse after that.
No let's call a linguist to convince us that these 17 types are a myth and in reality there is only one type of ice.
That should read 'The Grauniad reports' , everyone knows that.
My ransomware app just randomly posts a message "I know what you've been doing!" with a mention of my paypal account.
You're right about the unsupported assertion, although it's got nothing to do with fact-based decision making.
And it wasn't 97%. http://global100.adl.org/#coun...
The two-state solution is not anti-zionist. Since it maintains the jewishness of the main state it is acceptable to a broad range of the Israeli public as well as to a large part of the international players and international public. The interpretation about the makeup of the second state varies a lot though: the more left wing Israelis will accept a larger Palestinian state but rarely a real state that would be armed, contiguous and viable. The facts on the ground point towards a Bantustan of disconnected statelets that cannot survive without external help.
The one state solution is anti-zionist if it does away with the jewishness of the state and transforms the state in one of its citizens as the US or France have.
That idea is unacceptable for liberal zionism. That is, in principle, not because it would be unfeasible.
There is also a rightwing interpretation of a one-state-solution, although they aren't thinking of a Jeffersionian democracy.
Thers's also post-zionism, which can mean anything from liberal zionism to antizionism.
The idea that a Palestinian state would be committed to Jewish genocide is a racist caricature.
Clear communication does not require precise definition and in fact this often works counterproductive. The word 'antisemitic' is generally understood as being against Jews, in a way that resembles european attitudes against Jews in the thirties for instance
That part of it is clear enough. Picking a logical but unused meaning of the word does not add clarity. The part that does demand attention is what is sufficient to put someone into that basket and you give examples of that.
I hope they've got 3d printers. It's one of those things that provides fixes for a variety of problems. :)
These isolation experiments would still require some kind of 'McGyverMath'. Measures of dual usage of objects, ability to use things in ways not originally intended. But just printing the shapes you need can help a lot. That and a stash of TEC7, WD40 and a ball of wire
I only object against the word 'clear'. There are constant attempts to defend the distinction between criticism of the state of Israel and antisemitism. In reality it requires a lot of sophistication and political correctness to criticize the Israeli side in a way that avoids the antisemitism stamp. It's pretty obvious. If you take the simple case of mixing up 'jewish' and 'israeli'. There has been a very strong support amongst jews for Israel, and in Israeli public communication there has been a longstanding practice of talking for all the Jews. But as soon as someone blames 'the Jews' instead of 'the state of Israel' this person becomes an antisemite and therefore a foul person. I can't imagine the majority of people passing that test. To put it differently, the test is rigged.
When discussing Nazi stuff in WW2 I've also mixed 'german' and 'nazi' constantly. It's normal.
That's just wordgames. The common interpretation is anti-jew.
As times change the meaning of the laws changes as well. For the last generation or so laws that target Holocaust denial are almost entirely about targeting critics of Israel. On the one hand by equating critics of Israel with antisemites, on the other hand by equating the Holocaust denial that is common in the arab world with german or western european Holocaust denial. In fact the two are very different. the latter is denial of guilt, or it used to be that, while the former is not. In the arab world Holocaust denial is highly correlated with recent Israeli operations against for instance Gaza. It's an act of spite.
And really, I've read that 97% of the inhabitants of Gaza are antisemites. Authoritative poll. That conclusion is completely daft.
The heaviest load I recall was 9/11 . A lot of newssites were down and if you wanted to find out what was going on you could go to slashdot , which was holding up with a thousands of comments for each post. IIRC.