Exactly. In the simplest version of this, the brakes can be spring loaded such that power is required to keep them off the track. If the power cuts, the springs force the brakes into the rail and halts the elevator.
Air brake systems on large trucks work this way, except instead of electricity keeping the emergency ("spring") brake disengaged, its compressed air. If there's ever a catastrophic loss of air pressure (drops below about 30 psi), the spring brake pops on and locks the wheels.
Ok, so basically your issue is that I said midwest rather than rural midwest? Got it.
I'm referring to rural midwest here. Chicago, Detroit, etc are midwest, but are also not lacking in Whole Foods. If the goal is to reduce prices so that lower income markets can be accessed, rural midwest is statistically lower income, so would be a potential market. I could have said rural New York or rural California, but the midwest has a lot of rural areas so it seemed like a good place to start. Maybe that's not what Amazon has in mind, but my original post was an attempt to see if Whole Foods had tried to access that market at all. You may be right that the population density just isn't large enough to warrant it, but then one has to wonder why WalMarts are so prevalent.
You're right regarding AR, but NE and KS are midwest as defined by the Census Bureau, and I've met many in those states that consider themselves midwesterners.
It's amusing that since I say I live in Boston you think I haven't been to the midwest. To be clear I have family in the midwest and do very much work in the midwest, (I frequently work in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois). I should have been more clear that when I referred to midwest I meant rural midwest, not urban midwest. The income levels in the rural midwest are lower than on the coastal urban areas, as shown in this map:
I recognize that cost of living is significantly lower in the midwest as well, which offsets a lot of that difference. I was very explicit when I said it's easier to access high income folks in coastal urban areas, and I'm right. Find me a dozen millionaires in Portis, KS. If I throw a rock in Manhattan I'll probably hit a couple millionaires in one throw.
You're telling me about the Detroit/Ann Arbor Whole Foods experience, which is not rural in the same way that central Kansas is, nor is it in the lower income areas. I have been to plenty of places in midwest rural areas where the only game in town is a Walmart, even for groceries. If Amazon/Whole Foods wants to access those people, they'll have to build there. There are 4 Whole Foods in Kansas - 728,000 people per store. There are 30 Whole Foods in Massachusetts - 227,000 people per store.
I agree that you can get similar or better quality at other places on some items. You can go to a good local butcher to get good meats and cheeses. You can go to a local farm stand and get better veggies, etc. I think the advantage of Whole Foods is that you can get all that in one place. I'm not a frequent Whole Foods shopper but when I go I do notice much higher quality (albeit at a much higher price) than my local chain stores (stop and shop, market basket, shaws), especially for meats.
A question for Midwest slashdotters: how common are they in the Midwest, compared to other grocery stores? I'm up in Boston where I have 3 Whole Foods within 10 miles of me. If Amazon really wants to drop prices to attract a lower income crowd, then I'd think they'd want to start building them in areas that are accessible to that crowd (not that the Midwest is all low income, just that it's easier to access high income folks in coastal urban areas).
How about this (no clue if this is reasonable): 1) older programmers use spaces, younger use tabs. 2) older programmers have more seniority leading to higher salary (even if their job title doesn't change).
---> programmers that use spaces make more money.
I work at a company for which the above would be correct, but I'm not a programmer so I don't know if programming positions are similar (increases in pay with seniority while maintaining job title).
Same here, definitely not rich growing up, but you could get used lego at garage/yard/tag sales, flea markets, thrift stores, auctions for almost nothing. I don't ever remember buying a new set of them, but remember getting loads of used ones.
Although honestly, Lincoln logs are where it was at for me.
The ozone problem and greenhouse gas problem are separate issues. Ozone is a comparably minor greenhouse gas compared to CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and (yes) water.
Ozone depletion in the stratosphere was and is still a major problem, driven largely by part per trillion levels of halocarbons from a variety of man-made emissions. The reason it's not being talked about so much anymore? Because Montreal Protocol regulations worked. CFC concentrations are down and the ozone hole is slowly repairing itself:
CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, and so is water. The difference is that water concentrations are limited in the atmosphere: too much and it becomes a cloud and then rain. CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, can just keep rising.
Without rises in other greenhouse gases, the water concentration is such that the short term global temperature trend would be stable. Instead, since other GHG's are causing further warming, it's allowing more water to be stable in the atmosphere. That's driving global temperatures even further up, resulting in positive feedback. There's a nice ACS article about it here:
Quake II is still one of my favorites to play. The scenes that are in the human processing facility are terrifying, with the sounds of screams in the background and insane marines banging their heads on the walls. Generally good gameplay all around, and the multiplayer was killer.
I agree that Wolfenstein should be on there. It was the granddaddy of FPS's. It set the style of picking up supplies for reloads and healing, the visual of having the end of your gun always visible at the bottom of your screen, and just generally developing a hate for Nazis. I still occasionally fire it up for kicks - there's something jarring about not being able to lift your head to look around. Adds to the suspense.
Generally it look like this is a popularity list, without much deep thought. That none of the FF's are on it is surprising. Halo was popular but not original at all.
You're examples are referring to progress, not fluctuations. Yes, it took 1800 years for heliocentrism, but there was progress during that time that lead the to technology and mathematics that could prove the geocentric model wrong. The fluctuation was the political mess starting in the 1500's where the church fought back against the clearer logic of heliocentrism. That held back the transition until Galileo and others had much clearer evidence that that was irrefutable (but that didn't stop the church from refuting it for a time).
Yes it took a long time to go from double helix to sequencing, but that's progress. No free lunch to EM drive is still very much questionable.
An example of fluctuation is the folks that hung on to classical physics in the face of clear evidence for quantum theory being more accurate. Some of them were prominent physicists that, if they had embraced QM earlier could have pushed the field forward rather than holding it back. Another example is creationism, a backward force that is sometimes gaining and sometimes losing traction (vs 100 years ago), but will someday (hopefully) be seen as a fluctuation.
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble...
No no, please don't end that with an ellipsis. Finish your thought there. What is the next thing he should say? Maybe:
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should stop having a scientific debate about it. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should just give up trying to figure it out. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should stop taking data and go with our last answer. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should listen to what our religious leaders say. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We're incapable of knowing this at all. - said a scientist that should be fired
How do trends in democracy fit into scientific progress? Democracy isn't a scientific theory.
There's no guarantee that society gets better, or that politics gets better. Democracy is an ideology or movement that sometimes is popular and sometimes isn't. Science is always trying to do a better job at describing the truth (even if theories and models are just the closest representation of truth possible).
Theories generally do improve because data gets better/more precise/more accurate. New theories need to be able to accommodate old data, as well as the new stuff that is in conflict with the old theory. The history of science if rife with examples of this.
That said, there are times when theories are accepted or rejected for political or social reasons, regardless of their ability to reflect the truth (e.g. creationism, climate change denial, initial rejection of special relativity, heliocentrism). These are short term fluctuations, and as increasingly more data comes to light, the fluctuations generally stabilize to the theory that's closer to the truth (except creationism, there's no reasoning with that theory until we invent a time machine).
Whether they hacked the RNC or not, that they hacked either side is what's scary. If they hacked only the DNC, we should be concerned that they only went after one candidate and not the other, showing clear favor for the other. On their other hand if they hacked both and only released the DNC emails, now they possibly have dirt on the incoming president for leverage. We should be concerned about that too.
In terms of whether this would have mattered, Nate Silver at 538 points out that if the voters in swing states had swung 1% back to Clinton overall, she would have won. So the possibility that the leaks could have swayed 1 out of 100 people to vote against her is very very real.
Actually it's a link to all of the data if you scroll down. Click on methane and it'll show you the methane plot.
It is a nonetheless a number to get upset about even though it's small. If you'd like a larger number: the mass of methane in the atmosphere is 5x10^12 kg. That seems like a lot, right? A hundred years ago it was 2.5x10^12 kg.
Feel free to do some research on your own about why 2 ppm is still a significant amount of methane from a radiative forcing perspective. Here is data showing the role of methane in climate forcing. A factor of 2 increase in CH4 will double that "methane" contribution. If you're still not concerned about such a small concentration, here is a link to CFC concentrations. They were only in the part per trillion (yes, trillion) range in the atmosphere when they were wreaking chemical havoc on the ozone. This is an example where small concentrations in the atmosphere can have a large impact.
We have the data in 5 years or shorter increments back to 1000 AD. Also, there is no model that would suggest that such swings could or would happen on such a short timescale. Without external meddling (such as humans), atmospheric concentrations of this kind of gas just don't move around that quickly (however others can).
To (1), see this and this and this and the obligatory xkcd. Important take home message - it's not just the raw scale of increase, but the rate of increase. It's well outside of a natural timescale which those same historical records indicate is on the order of thousands of years. What's happening now is 8x faster. Also, we know what natural causes drive global temperatures (Milankovitch cycles, ninos, volcanic eruptions, and other things) and can model that. When we take those into account, the observed warming is NOT recovered. Only including the effects of increased CO2 and CH4 levels accounts for the observations.
To (2), see this, and this and a lot of other refs if you google it. Main take home point: in the past, natural global warming (which should take place over thousands of years, see above links), has lead to the further emission of CO2 coming out of the oceans and other places (see here, hence the lag. This was predicted to be the case by Hansen et al before the lag was discovered.
A few ppb makes a large difference when the optical pathlength through the atmosphere is so long. You don't need much CH4 to make a big difference in light absorption. In this case it went up 10 ppb in two years, out of 1800, so it's a 0.5% increase. Much more than 0.000002%.
To be clear, methane has been monitored for more than a few years. See here
It is also been indirectly measured via ice cores back hundreds of thousands of years.
In addition the the current surge, what should be alarming is the following:
In the past 100 years, the concentration of atmospheric methane has nearly doubled from 925 ppb in 1916 to >1800 ppb now. In the past 250 years it's nearly tripled. That's very fast and very far outside of statistical variation and is clearly not slowing down.
FWIW, the Vermont law specifically defines GMO as modified using modern molecular techniques, not hybridization:
""Genetically engineered (GE) seed" means seed produced using a variety of methods, as identified by the National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used to modify genetically organisms or influence their growth and development by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes. Such methods include cell fusion, microencapsulation and macroencapsulation, and recombinant DNA technology (including gene deletion, gene doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes when achieved by recombinant DNA technology). Such methods do not include the use of traditional breeding, conjugation, fermentation, hybridization, in vitro fertilization, or tissue culture. (6 V.S.A. Â 641)."
""Genetically modified organism" (GMO), as defined by Vermont statute, means any organism altered or produced through genetic modification from a donor, vector, recipient organism, or by other means using modern molecular techniques (6 VSA Â 1030)."
The real question is why did someone think using a drilled out oil well as a natural gas storage facility was a good idea?
Let's do some quick math:
97100 metric tons CH4 = 1.4 x 10^11 standard liters CH4. If the gas is compressed to 2000 psi (136 atm), that requires 1 x 10^9 L of storage space. A billion liters. Find an above ground billion-liter, high pressure storage tank that can serve LA's natural gas needs, and I'm sure the gas company will jump on it. In the meantime, gas companies use drilled-out wells for gas storage all over the world. They have a lot of volume and are already known to be able to hold high pressures of gas (which is how the gas got out in the first place). It's like storing your water in a dried out lake bed rather than digging your own hole.
I work in the field, and I don't know any climate scientist out there whose sole job is to prove it's real - the measurements have been out for years empirically showing that the global warming is real. But "real" is a low-level, qualitative conclusion. Right now it's all about understanding and quantifying the causes and consequences, given the empirical data we have and the models we choose to employ.
The models generally agree on certain things (like warming), but there is a huge amount of variation between them in other ways. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to take a look at the abstracts from the most recent Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), or even better, attend it. There's no "right" model, and certainly no "right" + plug-and-play model. IMHO I don't see that happening for a very long time.
I agree with the units issue. The American pre-distribution NG sectors work in standard cubic feet (where standard is usually but not always 15C and 1 atm). Sometimes they work in standard liters. In Europe they frequently work in normal cubic meters.
If I were reporting this, I would give units of cfh and btu/hr. Btu is what a person is actually paying for.
There's also a lot of unknowns about whether the CH4 even makes it to the surface. There's a lot of microbial activity between the sea floor and surface that loves to eat methane and release CO2:
I'm not the one calling your words scum or dross. It's a legitimate question that I'm responding to. I have in fact thought about the implications of a lack of gravity upon chemical reactions, which is why I pointed out the few cases where it would be important. For homogeneous reactions (which are central to biochemistry), I encourage you to calculate the force of gravity, compared to local electrostatic forced such as dipoles and bond dipoles.
I agree with what you're saying that precipitation reactions will be affected by lack of gravity, as I repeatedly pointed out when I refer to biphasic reaction and phase-related reactions.
I maintain the assertion that the number of reactions that are affected by gravity very few and far between. In fact the last sentence of that abstract contradicts one of the few examples that claimed to observe effects of weightlessness.
Just thinking about this physically, the forces associated with electrostatic interactions and molecular diffusion are many orders of magnitude larger than that of gravity. Gravity is not relevant on the molecular scale. Any effects that may be relevant would be associated with differences in solvent flow or phase-related reactions.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. In the simplest version of this, the brakes can be spring loaded such that power is required to keep them off the track. If the power cuts, the springs force the brakes into the rail and halts the elevator.
Air brake systems on large trucks work this way, except instead of electricity keeping the emergency ("spring") brake disengaged, its compressed air. If there's ever a catastrophic loss of air pressure (drops below about 30 psi), the spring brake pops on and locks the wheels.
Ok, so basically your issue is that I said midwest rather than rural midwest? Got it.
I'm referring to rural midwest here. Chicago, Detroit, etc are midwest, but are also not lacking in Whole Foods. If the goal is to reduce prices so that lower income markets can be accessed, rural midwest is statistically lower income, so would be a potential market. I could have said rural New York or rural California, but the midwest has a lot of rural areas so it seemed like a good place to start. Maybe that's not what Amazon has in mind, but my original post was an attempt to see if Whole Foods had tried to access that market at all. You may be right that the population density just isn't large enough to warrant it, but then one has to wonder why WalMarts are so prevalent.
You're right regarding AR, but NE and KS are midwest as defined by the Census Bureau, and I've met many in those states that consider themselves midwesterners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's amusing that since I say I live in Boston you think I haven't been to the midwest. To be clear I have family in the midwest and do very much work in the midwest, (I frequently work in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois). I should have been more clear that when I referred to midwest I meant rural midwest, not urban midwest. The income levels in the rural midwest are lower than on the coastal urban areas, as shown in this map:
http://visualizingeconomics.co...
and the disparity is getting worse:
https://www.bea.gov/newsreleas...
I recognize that cost of living is significantly lower in the midwest as well, which offsets a lot of that difference. I was very explicit when I said it's easier to access high income folks in coastal urban areas, and I'm right. Find me a dozen millionaires in Portis, KS. If I throw a rock in Manhattan I'll probably hit a couple millionaires in one throw.
You're telling me about the Detroit/Ann Arbor Whole Foods experience, which is not rural in the same way that central Kansas is, nor is it in the lower income areas. I have been to plenty of places in midwest rural areas where the only game in town is a Walmart, even for groceries. If Amazon/Whole Foods wants to access those people, they'll have to build there. There are 4 Whole Foods in Kansas - 728,000 people per store. There are 30 Whole Foods in Massachusetts - 227,000 people per store.
I agree that you can get similar or better quality at other places on some items. You can go to a good local butcher to get good meats and cheeses. You can go to a local farm stand and get better veggies, etc. I think the advantage of Whole Foods is that you can get all that in one place. I'm not a frequent Whole Foods shopper but when I go I do notice much higher quality (albeit at a much higher price) than my local chain stores (stop and shop, market basket, shaws), especially for meats.
A question for Midwest slashdotters: how common are they in the Midwest, compared to other grocery stores? I'm up in Boston where I have 3 Whole Foods within 10 miles of me. If Amazon really wants to drop prices to attract a lower income crowd, then I'd think they'd want to start building them in areas that are accessible to that crowd (not that the Midwest is all low income, just that it's easier to access high income folks in coastal urban areas).
How about this (no clue if this is reasonable):
1) older programmers use spaces, younger use tabs.
2) older programmers have more seniority leading to higher salary (even if their job title doesn't change).
---> programmers that use spaces make more money.
I work at a company for which the above would be correct, but I'm not a programmer so I don't know if programming positions are similar (increases in pay with seniority while maintaining job title).
Same here, definitely not rich growing up, but you could get used lego at garage/yard/tag sales, flea markets, thrift stores, auctions for almost nothing. I don't ever remember buying a new set of them, but remember getting loads of used ones.
Although honestly, Lincoln logs are where it was at for me.
Rob
The ozone problem and greenhouse gas problem are separate issues. Ozone is a comparably minor greenhouse gas compared to CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and (yes) water.
Ozone depletion in the stratosphere was and is still a major problem, driven largely by part per trillion levels of halocarbons from a variety of man-made emissions. The reason it's not being talked about so much anymore? Because Montreal Protocol regulations worked. CFC concentrations are down and the ozone hole is slowly repairing itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/en...
CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, and so is water. The difference is that water concentrations are limited in the atmosphere: too much and it becomes a cloud and then rain. CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, can just keep rising.
Without rises in other greenhouse gases, the water concentration is such that the short term global temperature trend would be stable. Instead, since other GHG's are causing further warming, it's allowing more water to be stable in the atmosphere. That's driving global temperatures even further up, resulting in positive feedback. There's a nice ACS article about it here:
https://www.acs.org/content/ac...
Exactly.
*NEWS FLASH* SCANDAL: Facebook lobbies governments.
If this is how they lobby, then this is some of the mildest I've seen. Compare this to NRA or Tobacco lobbies. E.g.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/pol...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...
Quake II is still one of my favorites to play. The scenes that are in the human processing facility are terrifying, with the sounds of screams in the background and insane marines banging their heads on the walls. Generally good gameplay all around, and the multiplayer was killer.
I agree that Wolfenstein should be on there. It was the granddaddy of FPS's. It set the style of picking up supplies for reloads and healing, the visual of having the end of your gun always visible at the bottom of your screen, and just generally developing a hate for Nazis. I still occasionally fire it up for kicks - there's something jarring about not being able to lift your head to look around. Adds to the suspense.
Generally it look like this is a popularity list, without much deep thought. That none of the FF's are on it is surprising. Halo was popular but not original at all.
You're examples are referring to progress, not fluctuations. Yes, it took 1800 years for heliocentrism, but there was progress during that time that lead the to technology and mathematics that could prove the geocentric model wrong. The fluctuation was the political mess starting in the 1500's where the church fought back against the clearer logic of heliocentrism. That held back the transition until Galileo and others had much clearer evidence that that was irrefutable (but that didn't stop the church from refuting it for a time).
Yes it took a long time to go from double helix to sequencing, but that's progress. No free lunch to EM drive is still very much questionable.
An example of fluctuation is the folks that hung on to classical physics in the face of clear evidence for quantum theory being more accurate. Some of them were prominent physicists that, if they had embraced QM earlier could have pushed the field forward rather than holding it back. Another example is creationism, a backward force that is sometimes gaining and sometimes losing traction (vs 100 years ago), but will someday (hopefully) be seen as a fluctuation.
No no, please don't end that with an ellipsis. Finish your thought there. What is the next thing he should say? Maybe:
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should stop having a scientific debate about it. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should just give up trying to figure it out. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should stop taking data and go with our last answer. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We should listen to what our religious leaders say. - said a scientist that should be fired
Well, guys, we really don't know this. Be a little more humble. We're incapable of knowing this at all. - said a scientist that should be fired
How do trends in democracy fit into scientific progress? Democracy isn't a scientific theory.
There's no guarantee that society gets better, or that politics gets better. Democracy is an ideology or movement that sometimes is popular and sometimes isn't. Science is always trying to do a better job at describing the truth (even if theories and models are just the closest representation of truth possible).
Theories generally do improve because data gets better/more precise/more accurate. New theories need to be able to accommodate old data, as well as the new stuff that is in conflict with the old theory. The history of science if rife with examples of this.
That said, there are times when theories are accepted or rejected for political or social reasons, regardless of their ability to reflect the truth (e.g. creationism, climate change denial, initial rejection of special relativity, heliocentrism). These are short term fluctuations, and as increasingly more data comes to light, the fluctuations generally stabilize to the theory that's closer to the truth (except creationism, there's no reasoning with that theory until we invent a time machine).
Whether they hacked the RNC or not, that they hacked either side is what's scary. If they hacked only the DNC, we should be concerned that they only went after one candidate and not the other, showing clear favor for the other. On their other hand if they hacked both and only released the DNC emails, now they possibly have dirt on the incoming president for leverage. We should be concerned about that too.
In terms of whether this would have mattered, Nate Silver at 538 points out that if the voters in swing states had swung 1% back to Clinton overall, she would have won. So the possibility that the leaks could have swayed 1 out of 100 people to vote against her is very very real.
Actually it's a link to all of the data if you scroll down. Click on methane and it'll show you the methane plot.
It is a nonetheless a number to get upset about even though it's small. If you'd like a larger number: the mass of methane in the atmosphere is 5x10^12 kg. That seems like a lot, right? A hundred years ago it was 2.5x10^12 kg.
Feel free to do some research on your own about why 2 ppm is still a significant amount of methane from a radiative forcing perspective. Here is data showing the role of methane in climate forcing. A factor of 2 increase in CH4 will double that "methane" contribution. If you're still not concerned about such a small concentration, here is a link to CFC concentrations. They were only in the part per trillion (yes, trillion) range in the atmosphere when they were wreaking chemical havoc on the ozone. This is an example where small concentrations in the atmosphere can have a large impact.
We have the data in 5 years or shorter increments back to 1000 AD. Also, there is no model that would suggest that such swings could or would happen on such a short timescale. Without external meddling (such as humans), atmospheric concentrations of this kind of gas just don't move around that quickly (however others can).
To (1), see this and this and this and the obligatory xkcd. Important take home message - it's not just the raw scale of increase, but the rate of increase. It's well outside of a natural timescale which those same historical records indicate is on the order of thousands of years. What's happening now is 8x faster. Also, we know what natural causes drive global temperatures (Milankovitch cycles, ninos, volcanic eruptions, and other things) and can model that. When we take those into account, the observed warming is NOT recovered. Only including the effects of increased CO2 and CH4 levels accounts for the observations.
To (2), see this, and this and a lot of other refs if you google it. Main take home point: in the past, natural global warming (which should take place over thousands of years, see above links), has lead to the further emission of CO2 coming out of the oceans and other places (see here, hence the lag. This was predicted to be the case by Hansen et al before the lag was discovered.
A few ppb makes a large difference when the optical pathlength through the atmosphere is so long. You don't need much CH4 to make a big difference in light absorption. In this case it went up 10 ppb in two years, out of 1800, so it's a 0.5% increase. Much more than 0.000002%.
To be clear, methane has been monitored for more than a few years. See here
It is also been indirectly measured via ice cores back hundreds of thousands of years.
In addition the the current surge, what should be alarming is the following:
In the past 100 years, the concentration of atmospheric methane has nearly doubled from 925 ppb in 1916 to >1800 ppb now. In the past 250 years it's nearly tripled. That's very fast and very far outside of statistical variation and is clearly not slowing down.
FWIW, the Vermont law specifically defines GMO as modified using modern molecular techniques, not hybridization:
""Genetically engineered (GE) seed" means seed produced using a variety of methods, as identified by the National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, used to modify genetically organisms or influence their growth and development by means that are not possible under natural conditions or processes. Such methods include cell fusion, microencapsulation and macroencapsulation, and recombinant DNA technology (including gene deletion, gene doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes when achieved by recombinant DNA technology). Such methods do not include the use of traditional breeding, conjugation, fermentation, hybridization, in vitro fertilization, or tissue culture. (6 V.S.A. Â 641)."
""Genetically modified organism" (GMO), as defined by Vermont statute, means any organism altered or produced through genetic modification from a donor, vector, recipient organism, or by other means using modern molecular techniques (6 VSA Â 1030)."
The real question is why did someone think using a drilled out oil well as a natural gas storage facility was a good idea?
Let's do some quick math:
97100 metric tons CH4 = 1.4 x 10^11 standard liters CH4. If the gas is compressed to 2000 psi (136 atm), that requires 1 x 10^9 L of storage space. A billion liters. Find an above ground billion-liter, high pressure storage tank that can serve LA's natural gas needs, and I'm sure the gas company will jump on it. In the meantime, gas companies use drilled-out wells for gas storage all over the world. They have a lot of volume and are already known to be able to hold high pressures of gas (which is how the gas got out in the first place). It's like storing your water in a dried out lake bed rather than digging your own hole.
I work in the field, and I don't know any climate scientist out there whose sole job is to prove it's real - the measurements have been out for years empirically showing that the global warming is real. But "real" is a low-level, qualitative conclusion. Right now it's all about understanding and quantifying the causes and consequences, given the empirical data we have and the models we choose to employ.
The models generally agree on certain things (like warming), but there is a huge amount of variation between them in other ways. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to take a look at the abstracts from the most recent Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), or even better, attend it. There's no "right" model, and certainly no "right" + plug-and-play model. IMHO I don't see that happening for a very long time.
I agree with the units issue. The American pre-distribution NG sectors work in standard cubic feet (where standard is usually but not always 15C and 1 atm). Sometimes they work in standard liters. In Europe they frequently work in normal cubic meters.
If I were reporting this, I would give units of cfh and btu/hr. Btu is what a person is actually paying for.
Closer to 35 times better (on a 100 yr horizon):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
Agreed, CO2 and CH4 going into the atmosphere are both bad. CO2 just isn't quite so bad.
Good point regarding acidity. Now I need to do the calculation of pH increase as a function of X megatons of CO2 evolution in the ocean.
There's also a lot of unknowns about whether the CH4 even makes it to the surface. There's a lot of microbial activity between the sea floor and surface that loves to eat methane and release CO2:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
http://link.springer.com/artic...
Tons of CO2 is a lot better in the atmosphere than tons of CH4.
I'm not the one calling your words scum or dross. It's a legitimate question that I'm responding to. I have in fact thought about the implications of a lack of gravity upon chemical reactions, which is why I pointed out the few cases where it would be important. For homogeneous reactions (which are central to biochemistry), I encourage you to calculate the force of gravity, compared to local electrostatic forced such as dipoles and bond dipoles.
I agree with what you're saying that precipitation reactions will be affected by lack of gravity, as I repeatedly pointed out when I refer to biphasic reaction and phase-related reactions.
I maintain the assertion that the number of reactions that are affected by gravity very few and far between. In fact the last sentence of that abstract contradicts one of the few examples that claimed to observe effects of weightlessness.
Just thinking about this physically, the forces associated with electrostatic interactions and molecular diffusion are many orders of magnitude larger than that of gravity. Gravity is not relevant on the molecular scale. Any effects that may be relevant would be associated with differences in solvent flow or phase-related reactions.