As I have said in another post, the is a good website, http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics [grist.org], most of the sites it refers to present real research.
C'mon, just say it. All of you climatologists need to Say "We have no fucking clue" in chorus and three part harmony.
Global warming, global cooling, impending ice ages, heating sun, cooling sun. I'm tired of it.
There was never any scientific consensus on global cooling back on the '70s.
See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222
The sun affects the temperature on earth, it is not causing today's global warming. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666
This is a complex issue. So is rocket science and we still have great photographs of the moons of Jupiter. Many of us are in information overload these days, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.
Would someone please point out for me what is insightful about the parent post?
Basically there has been a general warming trend that roughly correlates with the Industrial Revolution(IR) in the US and Europe. Year-to-year, it fluxuates, but overall there is an increase. Now the Greenies among us will instantly attribute this to emissions, but remember...correlation is not causation.
I know of no one who "instantly" has come to the conclusion that anthropogenic global warming is real and is a threat. Once one has read creditable scientific articles about it, and come to the inevitable conclusion, one's response to the sort of statements you make might come instantly, but there is nothing wrong with a quick response to such statements. The fact that correlation is not causation does not mean that it is never the case that if two things are correlated, one causes the other. Scientists are not using correlation to prove causation.
The IR brought advances to many aspects of our lives, which include meteorological mesurement and recording. Our temperature readings prior to the IR were not quite as accurate or consistently recorded (mass-produced thermometers anyone?). This is one factor that might affect what we are observing.
There is also geological record, which indicates many cooling and warming periods throughout the history of the Earth. We may just be experiencing a natural trend.
This is a hot-button media topic, and you see a lot of studies thrown around...many of which have questionably biased funding sources. And they all love to throw around one-sided statistics, which are the dirtiest lies that you can tell.
IMHO, don't get worked up about it. You don't need to cover your home in solar panels and go out and buy the first electric car you can find. But I think everyone should be mindful of their energy use, and try not to be wasteful. Save a little where you can, but don't horribly inconvenience yourself.
The results of anthropogenic global warming over the next 20 to 50 years will be quite serious, much more than an inconvenience. Due to the thermal inertia of the earth's temperature, by the time we see the severe problems of global warming it is too late. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/24/18548/9954
Are you in a building with double glazing? That can affect the signal a lot.. in fact in some offices you can't get a mobile signal at all due to this.
The problem is not double glazing per se, but Low-E (low-emissivity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-emissivity coatings on the glass, intended to reflect infrared radiation. These coatings are usually metallic oxides, which attenuate radio signals. My house has all Low-E windows and the exterior walls are coated with stucco - on a metal (chicken-wire) mesh. It is not quite a Faraday cage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage, but I do not have to wear my tinfoil hat indoors.
IANAP but I think by being a great absorber, it becomes a great emitter too: Black body [wikipedia.org]. So it may not actually get much hotter than something less black. I guess it depends on where the equilibrium point is, and I don't have any intuition about that.
The position of the equilibrium point is what is significant here. What you are talking about is Kirchhoff's Law: At [thermal] equilibrium, the radiation emitted must equal the radiation absorbed. The carbon in this case is a forest of long tubes of graphite. The graphite part means that it is a great absorber and a great emitter. The forest of long tubes part means that is is a great trapper of photons. Think of Midtown Manhattan in summer. During the day solar photons come in, some absorbed by the buildings and streets, some reflected. The reflected ones are likely to hit one of those surfaces again, some get absorbed, some reflected. (Exercise for the reader, write a recursive function to calculate the apparent absorbance of the "forest" based on an assumed uniform absorbance of the surfaces and a surface-configuration factor). At night, the hot surfaces are radiating heat, but most of it just hits another surface. This is the importance of the forest of tubes. This surface configuration is one of the reasons that cities get hotter than the surrounding areas (absorbance, heat capacity, thermal conductivity and evapotranspiration of water are important, too).
So the thermal equilibrium point for this system is what is important. In direct sunlight, this stuff will be at a much higher equilibrium temperature than a flat-black painted surface. Why is this important for solar collection? Another poster said http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=421132&cid=22079240
The answer is yes. Using black materials to turn sunlight into heat is very practical. I'm looking out at my neighbor's solar panels, which are pretty much a glass topped box painted black inside with a network of water pipes to capture the heat.
However, this is not exactly a breakthrough, because the material, while darker than black paint, is not enough darker to make it worth considering the cost. For the price difference, you'd be better off simply build a bigger collector.
That is fine if what we care about is the quantity of heat, not its quality, that is, if we want a great deal of heat but at a low temperature differential. What this poster suggests is fine if we want a, say, 50 to 70 Fahrenheit degree differential for space heating a home. but for boiling water (for distillation or power generation) at atmospheric pressure without using concentrating collectors, or running a Stirling engine, the high-quality (large temperature-differential) heat is important.
This material will allow for very-high-temperature solar collection.
Is this too expensive for what there offering
Sigh.
Here we go again, wielding the language of Shakespeare with all the delicate sensitivity and purpose of a surgeon wielding a cosh.
No, no, no. You don't understand.
There offering = advertising online storage Here offering = advertising local storage
The school district I work for is clamoring for a switch to MSO from Star Office 8. Why? Because we can't find people to train employees in SO8, which means our training funds from the state are wasted and because we are completely unsupported.
It's all done in the open with members from all political parties watching (but never touching) every aspect of the count.
Yeah, and that worked so well with the 2000 Florida recount.
The problems in Florida were with punch-card ballots, not with hand-marked paper ballots. Remember hanging chads? Of course, sometimes marks on paper ballots can also be ambiguous.
This was one of the biggest problems with the Free Software movement before Open Source came along.. no-one talked about the benefits that businesses could get from the community. For a while, no-one talked about anything else, and then it went quiet again. RMS will tell you that we need to talk about freedom. I happen to agree, but we also need to talk about the practical advantages of open software development too.
Yeah. But the poster mentions 2mbps. 2 milli bps. Now that is slow. Five hundred seconds to get one bit.
SI prefixes are case sensitive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
I noticed that, at the security line, it was always "suggested" that I take off my shoes and put them through the X-ray scanner. I asked if I was "required" to take off my shoes, and was told I was not. But any time I walked through with my shoes on, I was pulled aside for hand scanning and was required to take off my shoes. On one trip, I asked an intelligent-looking security agent if I was required to take my shoes off and he told me "No." I then asked him if I would be automatically pulled aside for hand scanning if I wore my shoes and he gave me an "I could be fired for making this smile so unambiguous" smile. So, I guess the rules ablut shoes are secret, too, although it would take any normal person about 15 minutes of watching to figure it out. I have been really pissed every time since going through security, knowing my government refuses to be straight with me. What if we all wore our shoes through the line?
If you are planning to drop by, note that this was last night. (First line of text on the Web page: On Wednesday, November 10th the DaVinci Institute will be hosting a very visionary event.)
If you are in the neighborhood, the Boulder Linux Users' Group will be meeting at 7:00 PM tonight in Fleming Law Building, room 102 just a few hundred yards from Fiske Planetarium, site of last night's DaVinci Instutue meeting. Richard Johnson will be speaking on "Anatomy of a Widespread Security Compromise."
When did the term "X-Windows" come into play?
Long after the term "X Window System" came into play. X-Windows, X Windows, and X Window are used by those whose minds have been tainted by the term Microsoft Windows.
From the man page for X (note that X is upper case), slightly reformatted:
The X.Org Foundation requests that the following names be used when referring to this software:
X X Window System X Version 11 X Window System, Version 11 X11
X Window System is a trademark of The Open Group.
Trivia question: What book, on its titlepage, has the quotation: " It is a window system named X, not a system named X Window."
Cell providers already have "mini tower" equipment they can set up in their stores to assure that they never have an embaressing dead spot at their own retail location. They even set those up at business sites to assure an otherwise uncoverable corperate campus gets hit with signal.
I guess it was only a matter of time until they converted such units to a home game model...
Residential-scale versions already exist, for example this goes for, as I remember, about $400.
A Boy Scout camp in northwestern New Jersey. The name stands for NOrth BErgen BOy SCOuts. Bergen County is the county in the northeast corner of New Jersey. I spent many wonderful times there far too many years ago.
Re:One problem from the world of ice cream
on
Gas Goes Solid
·
· Score: 4, Informative
When the temperature of your freezer goes up by even a fraction of a degree (and it need not go anywhere near as high as 0 degrees celsius), some of the ice melts. When the temperature drops again, it re-freezes, but in a slightly different location.
Bzzt. No. But thanks for playing.
Whether a liquid or a solid, water is has a vapor pressure. If a system of ice and air is at the same temperature, there will be water vapor in the the air. The system will be (once there is enought water vapor in the air) in equilibrium - there will be no net movment of water from its ice form to its vapor form. But this is dynamic equilibrium, ice will be moving to vapor at the same rate that vapor is moving to ice. (Both processes - solid to gas and gas to solid - are called sublimation.)
If there is a temperature difference in your freezer, the ice will move from the (even slightly) warmer spot to a colder one. However, the process, for instance, of having all your ice cubes smoothing their edges and attaching themselves to each other would occur even if the contents of the freezer were all at the same temperature. The ice is trying to get itself into its minimum energy configuration, where it would be one big sphere.
If the top of the ice cream container is cooler than the rest of it, water will migrate to the top. The migration just requires a spatial temperature gradient, not a temporal temperature change.
... and that is why Sun did not provide the source for Star Office, where the spell checker and thesaurus, among others, are licensed from third parties.
Slashdot Mirror
They do not do all the thinking for me, I read the articles to which they refer, have you?
Global warming is well understood. That scientists have uncertainty about some of the details is common with well-understood science. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/232046/03
There was never any scientific consensus on global cooling back on the '70s. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/23/18534/222 The sun affects the temperature on earth, it is not causing today's global warming. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/28/090/30666 This is a complex issue. So is rocket science and we still have great photographs of the moons of Jupiter. Many of us are in information overload these days, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.
Would someone please point out for me what is insightful about the parent post?
We know with a great deal of certainty what is causing it. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/11/23656/027 and http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/22/224450/84
I know of no one who "instantly" has come to the conclusion that anthropogenic global warming is real and is a threat. Once one has read creditable scientific articles about it, and come to the inevitable conclusion, one's response to the sort of statements you make might come instantly, but there is nothing wrong with a quick response to such statements. The fact that correlation is not causation does not mean that it is never the case that if two things are correlated, one causes the other. Scientists are not using correlation to prove causation.
Temperature measurements by thermometer are only a small part of the historical record. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/31/15216/865
With the exception of catastrophic events, such as a massive volcanic eruption or a meteor impact, there has never been such a rapid change in the earth's temperature. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/22147/335 and http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/232454/78
See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/13/221250/49 and http://gristmill.grist.org/
The results of anthropogenic global warming over the next 20 to 50 years will be quite serious, much more than an inconvenience. Due to the thermal inertia of the earth's temperature, by the time we see the severe problems of global warming it is too late. See http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/24/18548/9954
The position of the equilibrium point is what is significant here. What you are talking about is Kirchhoff's Law: At [thermal] equilibrium, the radiation emitted must equal the radiation absorbed. The carbon in this case is a forest of long tubes of graphite. The graphite part means that it is a great absorber and a great emitter. The forest of long tubes part means that is is a great trapper of photons. Think of Midtown Manhattan in summer. During the day solar photons come in, some absorbed by the buildings and streets, some reflected. The reflected ones are likely to hit one of those surfaces again, some get absorbed, some reflected. (Exercise for the reader, write a recursive function to calculate the apparent absorbance of the "forest" based on an assumed uniform absorbance of the surfaces and a surface-configuration factor). At night, the hot surfaces are radiating heat, but most of it just hits another surface. This is the importance of the forest of tubes. This surface configuration is one of the reasons that cities get hotter than the surrounding areas (absorbance, heat capacity, thermal conductivity and evapotranspiration of water are important, too).
So the thermal equilibrium point for this system is what is important. In direct sunlight, this stuff will be at a much higher equilibrium temperature than a flat-black painted surface. Why is this important for solar collection? Another poster said http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=421132&cid=22079240
That is fine if what we care about is the quantity of heat, not its quality, that is, if we want a great deal of heat but at a low temperature differential. What this poster suggests is fine if we want a, say, 50 to 70 Fahrenheit degree differential for space heating a home. but for boiling water (for distillation or power generation) at atmospheric pressure without using concentrating collectors, or running a Stirling engine, the high-quality (large temperature-differential) heat is important.
This material will allow for very-high-temperature solar collection.
IANAP, I am a physical inorganic chemist.
No, no, no. You don't understand.
There offering = advertising online storage
Here offering = advertising local storage
How about Solveig http:http://www.getopenoffice.org/contact.html
I took a class from her and she is great. She can teach StarOffice as well as OOo, not much difference in using them.
The problems in Florida were with punch-card ballots, not with hand-marked paper ballots. Remember hanging chads? Of course, sometimes marks on paper ballots can also be ambiguous.
Yeah. But the poster mentions 2mbps. 2 milli bps. Now that is slow. Five hundred seconds to get one bit. SI prefixes are case sensitive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix
Since the time of Cicero the exception proves the rule has been a fundamental legal concept: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftwarch.pl?041906
And PyQt http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/pyqt/ http://www.diotavelli.net/PyQtWiki is the Python wrapper. There is a book http://www.valdyas.org/python/book.html that is quite good.
For those who are curious: "The dimensions of an Olympic pool are required to be 25 metres by 50 metres." http://www.faqfarm.com/Q/What_are_the_dimensions_o f_an_Olympic-sized_swimming_pool
I am still looking for the definition of 'military-grade encryption'.
Damn! Where is a silver bullet whien you really need one?
I noticed that, at the security line, it was always "suggested" that I take off my shoes and put them through the X-ray scanner. I asked if I was "required" to take off my shoes, and was told I was not. But any time I walked through with my shoes on, I was pulled aside for hand scanning and was required to take off my shoes. On one trip, I asked an intelligent-looking security agent if I was required to take my shoes off and he told me "No." I then asked him if I would be automatically pulled aside for hand scanning if I wore my shoes and he gave me an "I could be fired for making this smile so unambiguous" smile. So, I guess the rules ablut shoes are secret, too, although it would take any normal person about 15 minutes of watching to figure it out. I have been really pissed every time since going through security, knowing my government refuses to be straight with me. What if we all wore our shoes through the line?
If you are planning to drop by, note that this was last night. (First line of text on the Web page: On Wednesday, November 10th the DaVinci Institute will be hosting a very visionary event.)
If you are in the neighborhood, the Boulder Linux Users' Group will be meeting at 7:00 PM tonight in Fleming Law Building, room 102 just a few hundred yards from Fiske Planetarium, site of last night's DaVinci Instutue meeting. Richard Johnson will be speaking on "Anatomy of a Widespread Security Compromise."
Long after the term "X Window System" came into play. X-Windows, X Windows, and X Window are used by those whose minds have been tainted by the term Microsoft Windows.
From the man page for X (note that X is upper case), slightly reformatted:
Trivia question: What book, on its titlepage, has the quotation: " It is a window system named X, not a system named X Window."
Cell providers already have "mini tower" equipment they can set up in their stores to assure that they never have an embaressing dead spot at their own retail location. They even set those up at business sites to assure an otherwise uncoverable corperate campus gets hit with signal.
I guess it was only a matter of time until they converted such units to a home game model...
Residential-scale versions already exist, for example this goes for, as I remember, about $400.
A Boy Scout camp in northwestern New Jersey. The name stands for NOrth BErgen BOy SCOuts. Bergen County is the county in the northeast corner of New Jersey. I spent many wonderful times there far too many years ago.
If you are in the USA, the national organization is
the National Model Railroad Association. You can find everything you might want to know at the site.
When the temperature of your freezer goes up by even a fraction of a degree (and it need not go anywhere near as high as 0 degrees celsius), some of the ice melts. When the temperature drops again, it re-freezes, but in a slightly different location.
Bzzt. No. But thanks for playing.
Whether a liquid or a solid, water is has a vapor pressure. If a system of ice and air is at the same temperature, there will be water vapor in the the air. The system will be (once there is enought water vapor in the air) in equilibrium - there will be no net movment of water from its ice form to its vapor form. But this is dynamic equilibrium, ice will be moving to vapor at the same rate that vapor is moving to ice. (Both processes - solid to gas and gas to solid - are called sublimation.)
If there is a temperature difference in your freezer, the ice will move from the (even slightly) warmer spot to a colder one. However, the process, for instance, of having all your ice cubes smoothing their edges and attaching themselves to each other would occur even if the contents of the freezer were all at the same temperature. The ice is trying to get itself into its minimum energy configuration, where it would be one big sphere.
If the top of the ice cream container is cooler than the rest of it, water will migrate to the top. The migration just requires a spatial temperature gradient, not a temporal temperature change.
... and that is why Sun did not provide the source for Star Office, where the spell checker and thesaurus, among others, are licensed from third parties.
(If this is too obscure, check openoffice.org.)
Yup. There is nothing like Linux for getting all your ducks in a row.
Since a similar law went into effect in Colorado, I receive abut one telemarketing call every three months, instead of one or two a week.
It works.