Earth isn't warm because of CO2, it's because of H2O vapor.
Increases in CO2 increase temperature which drives increases in H2O vapor which also increases temperature. Increases in temperature also cause solubility of CO2 in water to decrease, so the oceans also release CO2.
It's called a positive feedback mechanism, and climate scientists have known about it for a long time.
Yep, as long as you don't look at the real data we've been steadily cooling since 1998. My weather girl says it's colder now then it's been since God created weather. She's pretty and blond, so she must be smart.
But if you actually look at the temperature record, last year was the warmest on record and the one before was the third warmest and we've been on a steady warming trend for 40 years.
I'll go away as soon as you explain the difference between the 1990 IPCC predictions for and the actual measured temperatures reported in HadCRUT for 1990-2011.
No you wont, because the temperatures are well within the prediction envelope. As is sea level rise. Sea level rise stands a chance of breaking through the top of the prediction envelope soon.
A slight reduction in insolation can only be good. But it's temporary reduction and therefore not a solution to the problem.
. Most of the people who die due to coal related illness die in the northeastern US. Which makes sense because that's where the power plants are. It's better than it used to be. 20 years ago coal was killing twice that many. 40 years ago it was more than four times as many.
If WiscNet, a non-profit organization, can't provide service at lower prices than a for-profit corporation like AT&T without forced revenue from tax subsidies, then I'd say that AT&T is competitive.
And is AT&T going to give up it's subsidies in order to level the playing field? I didn't think so. So we'll see AT&T with its billions in subsidies and tens of billions in profits battling WiscNet with is $0 in subsidies and $0 in profits. AT&T can provide services to the schools and libraries for free for a few years until the competition is dead. Then they can charge whatever the hell they want. (That seems to be AT&T's internet pricing formula).
I'm somewhat surprised that the "R-word" is mentioned so little. The programs being dismantled were put in place by Democrats. Republicans think that alone is reason to get rid of them. And, of course, anything that benefits the public must be bad.
The Republicans are in charge now, and they don't have a lot of time before the voters kick them out. So they're working as quickly as they can to dismantle the University of Wisconsin system. They'd like to pseudo-privatize the big school in Madison. "Flexibility" is the buzzword there, and it means less public funds, higher tuitions, and fewer in-state students.
In the telecom area, I think the next step will be to force areas that have a telephone cooperatives for phone and internet to sell to a commercial for profit entity and well below the infrastructure value. "Cooperatives are communistic, don't cha know, but AT&T is competitive, and that brings down prices." Rural communities with cooperatives in WI have better internet access (fiber) than I do in the city in CA (cable).
Operational impacts can be planned for and reasonably dealt with.
How are we planning for and currently dealing with the 15,000 people killed annually by pollution from coal plants in the US? The 30,000 killed by the effects of petroleum distillates?
Replace those with passively safe breeding designs like TWR that can happily chug on fuel until it is plain old lead suitable for adding to paint chips.
Fission reactors don't produce lead they produce a variety of daughter elements of lower atomic number than the parent nucleus. With an abundance of neutrons around, any lead in a fission reactor is fissile. Unlike the usual fuel isotopes, lead isn't a natural neutron emitter, and so can't start the reaction. But once the reaction is going you can burn lead if you can maintain enough neutron flux.
Did know that in some thermonuclear bomb designs the bulk of the explosive power comes from fission of lead? More typically it's depleted uranium, but lead does do the job.
Something I posted earlier today in another thread:
How many people is electricity worth? Estimated death rates to provide a terawatt of power to the US for a year: Coal based power kills about 65,000 people per terawatt year mostly from pollution. Oil based power kills 130,000 per terawatt year from production and pollution (wars not included). Natural gas apparently kills about 35,000 people per terawatt year. Biofuels kill 100,000 people per terawatt year, primarily due to farming and logging accidents and air pollution. Photovoltaics kill 3500 people per terawatt year, mostly from falls, electrocutions and other accidents. Wind power kills 1300 people per terawatt year, primarily in accidents. Hydroelectric kills about 900 people per terawatt year in industrial accidents and catastrophic failures (dam breaks), but would probably be much if we have a large west coast earthquake. And nuclear thus far kills about 350 people per terawatt year. I haven't been able to find estimates for geothermal or solar thermal. I would guess that solar thermal will be about the same as wind power, and geothermal to be somewhat higher than hydroelectric.
Yes, the US could phase out nuclear power. The technical ability exists. The political will (which currently means dollars) for such a transition does not exist. If the will did exist, that would mean someone with deep pockets would be pushing for it. Pockets that deep mean oil and coal, and thus we will only replace nuclear power with a much higher death toll.
1) A lot of the problem with radiation is long-term effects. Will exposure to radiation released in Fukushima increase deaths due to cancer in the next 20 or 30 years?
The problem with that answer is we don't know. Around Chernobyl, most everyone in the affected areas took iodine pills, that probably explains why the number of thyroid cancers seen 5 years out was smaller than predicted. But the longer time-frame cancers didn't materialize, either. My belief is that the increase in cancers due to Chernobyl was offset by the decrease in air pollution and water pollution related cancers because industrial activity plummeted when the Soviet Union collapsed, so the cancer deaths measured by WHO (~5000, IIRC) are underestimates of the true radiation related cancers.
As far as birth defects go, undoubtedly there were many. Again you can't really determine whether the cause of any specific one was nuclear, chemical, or an act of God.
How many people is electricity worth? Estimated death rates to provide a terawatt of power to the US for a year: Coal based power kills about 65,000 people per terawatt year mostly from pollution. Oil based power kills 130,000 per terawatt year from production and pollution (wars not included). Natural gas apparently kills about 35,000 people per terawatt year. Biofuels kill 100,000 people per terawatt year, primarily due to farming and logging accidents and air pollution. Photovoltaics kill 3500 people per terawatt year, mostly from falls, electrocutions and other accidents. Wind power kills 1300 people per terawatt year, primarily in accidents. Hydroelectric kills about 900 people per terawatt year in industrial accidents and catastrophic failures (dam breaks), but would probably be much if we have a large west coast earthquake. And nuclear thus far kills about 350 people per terawatt year. I haven't been able to find estimates for geothermal or solar thermal. I would guess that solar thermal will be about the same as wind power, and geothermal to be somewhat higher than hydroelectric.
So there's a starting point. I think we can rule out anything in above photovoltaics as being too dangerous. The rest can be part of the debate, but that debate needs to include how much power each could reasonably supply. There also needs to be cost per terawatt year considered. And other environmental costs, as well. If we can do it without nuclear and don't mind the additional price in lives and dollars then lets do without nuclear.
Somehow I find Crichton more convincing then Gore.
Somehow, I find climatologists more convincing than either bad science fiction writers or failed politicians. When you're getting your science advice from a SciFi writer who doesn't understand chaos theory or climatology or a holier than thou politician who at least has talked to some people who do understand it, you're getting your information in the wrong place. That less than 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere is why the snow melts in the summer in Chicago and why it rarely falls in Miami. Take it away and you've got permanent ice age. Increase it by 40% and you've got something else. It's illogical to assume otherwise.
Lack of location shoots was part of what doomed the later prequels. To much conversation while walking in front of computer generated scenery or conversation while sitting in front of computer generated scenery. Mechanical switching between the camera on person A and the camera on person B. No way for the actors to interact with or react to their environments.
A simple corridor conversation in ANH or ESB would be two people in the frame walking and talking and yelling and stopping and starting and dodging extras with the camera being pulled along on a dolly as a single shot.
The same thing in RoTS would be distant shot of two people walking for 10 meters. Inexplicably they stop and turn to face one another. Close up of person A talking. Close up of person B talking. Close up of person A talking [repeat as needed] Distant shot of the two people continuing their walk. No art. No flow.
CGI made George Lucas forget everything he knew about film making. Not having sufficient technology is the best thing that could happen to a Star Wars series.
Hmmmm. You mean historical data like this? CO2 was 280 ppm 1000 years ago and is about 390 ppm now, I guess it's only 30% lower. If you go back 8000 years, it's 260 ppm, it's 35% lower. So you're right, I misspoke. I should have said "Humanity has increased CO2 levels by 40%" rather than "CO2 levels were 40% lower".
Yeah, most companies can afford to give up 1/8th of their market. Leaves room in CA for a lot of start ups. The niche for online bookseller is no longer filled.
They might lose that much however, as companies move out of state and leave people unemployed.
And when the state decides that it will no longer do business with these companies and blocks their web sites from all state owned networks? Yeah, I'm sure that Amazon doesn't really want to get purchases from staff and students of the University of California system. I wonder what fraction of Amazon's MP3 purchases originate from UC campuses. I wonder what fraction of Amazon's cloud computing resources is allocated to people or projects at UC campuses. I wonder how much the competition would like to take Amazon's state owned/operated markets.
The tax requirements for members of the armed forces differ from those of other residents, so I can't tell you. If you didn't file a California tax return, you probably don't owe use tax. If you worked for a company and were sent to work at a California branch for several months, California Income Tax would have been deducted from your pay, you would have been subject to use tax for any untaxed out of state purchases that you primarily use in California, and you would have been required to file a California Non-Resident Tax return.
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Earth isn't warm because of CO2, it's because of H2O vapor.
Increases in CO2 increase temperature which drives increases in H2O vapor which also increases temperature. Increases in temperature also cause solubility of CO2 in water to decrease, so the oceans also release CO2. It's called a positive feedback mechanism, and climate scientists have known about it for a long time.
Hi AC! You're lying and stupid. That will be all.
Yep, as long as you don't look at the real data we've been steadily cooling since 1998. My weather girl says it's colder now then it's been since God created weather. She's pretty and blond, so she must be smart.
But if you actually look at the temperature record, last year was the warmest on record and the one before was the third warmest and we've been on a steady warming trend for 40 years.
I'll go away as soon as you explain the difference between the 1990 IPCC predictions for and the actual measured temperatures reported in HadCRUT for 1990-2011.
No you wont, because the temperatures are well within the prediction envelope. As is sea level rise. Sea level rise stands a chance of breaking through the top of the prediction envelope soon.
A slight reduction in insolation can only be good. But it's temporary reduction and therefore not a solution to the problem.
Are you going away?
. Most of the people who die due to coal related illness die in the northeastern US. Which makes sense because that's where the power plants are. It's better than it used to be. 20 years ago coal was killing twice that many. 40 years ago it was more than four times as many.
Repeat after me: "There is nothing illegal or immoral about public infrastructure."
Of course it's false. You don't expect the corporatists to tell the truth, do you?
If WiscNet, a non-profit organization, can't provide service at lower prices than a for-profit corporation like AT&T without forced revenue from tax subsidies, then I'd say that AT&T is competitive.
And is AT&T going to give up it's subsidies in order to level the playing field? I didn't think so. So we'll see AT&T with its billions in subsidies and tens of billions in profits battling WiscNet with is $0 in subsidies and $0 in profits. AT&T can provide services to the schools and libraries for free for a few years until the competition is dead. Then they can charge whatever the hell they want. (That seems to be AT&T's internet pricing formula).
I'm somewhat surprised that the "R-word" is mentioned so little. The programs being dismantled were put in place by Democrats. Republicans think that alone is reason to get rid of them. And, of course, anything that benefits the public must be bad.
The Republicans are in charge now, and they don't have a lot of time before the voters kick them out. So they're working as quickly as they can to dismantle the University of Wisconsin system. They'd like to pseudo-privatize the big school in Madison. "Flexibility" is the buzzword there, and it means less public funds, higher tuitions, and fewer in-state students.
In the telecom area, I think the next step will be to force areas that have a telephone cooperatives for phone and internet to sell to a commercial for profit entity and well below the infrastructure value. "Cooperatives are communistic, don't cha know, but AT&T is competitive, and that brings down prices." Rural communities with cooperatives in WI have better internet access (fiber) than I do in the city in CA (cable).
Operational impacts can be planned for and reasonably dealt with.
How are we planning for and currently dealing with the 15,000 people killed annually by pollution from coal plants in the US? The 30,000 killed by the effects of petroleum distillates?
Replace those with passively safe breeding designs like TWR that can happily chug on fuel until it is plain old lead suitable for adding to paint chips.
Fission reactors don't produce lead they produce a variety of daughter elements of lower atomic number than the parent nucleus. With an abundance of neutrons around, any lead in a fission reactor is fissile. Unlike the usual fuel isotopes, lead isn't a natural neutron emitter, and so can't start the reaction. But once the reaction is going you can burn lead if you can maintain enough neutron flux.
Did know that in some thermonuclear bomb designs the bulk of the explosive power comes from fission of lead? More typically it's depleted uranium, but lead does do the job.
Something I posted earlier today in another thread:
How many people is electricity worth? Estimated death rates to provide a terawatt of power to the US for a year: Coal based power kills about 65,000 people per terawatt year mostly from pollution. Oil based power kills 130,000 per terawatt year from production and pollution (wars not included). Natural gas apparently kills about 35,000 people per terawatt year. Biofuels kill 100,000 people per terawatt year, primarily due to farming and logging accidents and air pollution. Photovoltaics kill 3500 people per terawatt year, mostly from falls, electrocutions and other accidents. Wind power kills 1300 people per terawatt year, primarily in accidents. Hydroelectric kills about 900 people per terawatt year in industrial accidents and catastrophic failures (dam breaks), but would probably be much if we have a large west coast earthquake. And nuclear thus far kills about 350 people per terawatt year. I haven't been able to find estimates for geothermal or solar thermal. I would guess that solar thermal will be about the same as wind power, and geothermal to be somewhat higher than hydroelectric.
Yes, the US could phase out nuclear power. The technical ability exists. The political will (which currently means dollars) for such a transition does not exist. If the will did exist, that would mean someone with deep pockets would be pushing for it. Pockets that deep mean oil and coal, and thus we will only replace nuclear power with a much higher death toll.
I don't think we know the size of the long term exclusion zone yet. 80k could be over or under the eventual number.
1) A lot of the problem with radiation is long-term effects. Will exposure to radiation released in Fukushima increase deaths due to cancer in the next 20 or 30 years?
The problem with that answer is we don't know. Around Chernobyl, most everyone in the affected areas took iodine pills, that probably explains why the number of thyroid cancers seen 5 years out was smaller than predicted. But the longer time-frame cancers didn't materialize, either. My belief is that the increase in cancers due to Chernobyl was offset by the decrease in air pollution and water pollution related cancers because industrial activity plummeted when the Soviet Union collapsed, so the cancer deaths measured by WHO (~5000, IIRC) are underestimates of the true radiation related cancers.
As far as birth defects go, undoubtedly there were many. Again you can't really determine whether the cause of any specific one was nuclear, chemical, or an act of God.
How many people is electricity worth? Estimated death rates to provide a terawatt of power to the US for a year: Coal based power kills about 65,000 people per terawatt year mostly from pollution. Oil based power kills 130,000 per terawatt year from production and pollution (wars not included). Natural gas apparently kills about 35,000 people per terawatt year. Biofuels kill 100,000 people per terawatt year, primarily due to farming and logging accidents and air pollution. Photovoltaics kill 3500 people per terawatt year, mostly from falls, electrocutions and other accidents. Wind power kills 1300 people per terawatt year, primarily in accidents. Hydroelectric kills about 900 people per terawatt year in industrial accidents and catastrophic failures (dam breaks), but would probably be much if we have a large west coast earthquake. And nuclear thus far kills about 350 people per terawatt year. I haven't been able to find estimates for geothermal or solar thermal. I would guess that solar thermal will be about the same as wind power, and geothermal to be somewhat higher than hydroelectric.
So there's a starting point. I think we can rule out anything in above photovoltaics as being too dangerous. The rest can be part of the debate, but that debate needs to include how much power each could reasonably supply. There also needs to be cost per terawatt year considered. And other environmental costs, as well. If we can do it without nuclear and don't mind the additional price in lives and dollars then lets do without nuclear.
You can't prevent resale.
a business (AA) being forced to use a specific third party processor owned by a competitor and paying for the "privilege"
AA isn't paying for the privilege, the customer is. What AA is objecting to is people being able to compare prices and buy tickets at the same site.
Somehow I find Crichton more convincing then Gore.
Somehow, I find climatologists more convincing than either bad science fiction writers or failed politicians. When you're getting your science advice from a SciFi writer who doesn't understand chaos theory or climatology or a holier than thou politician who at least has talked to some people who do understand it, you're getting your information in the wrong place. That less than 0.04% of the Earth's atmosphere is why the snow melts in the summer in Chicago and why it rarely falls in Miami. Take it away and you've got permanent ice age. Increase it by 40% and you've got something else. It's illogical to assume otherwise.
Lack of location shoots was part of what doomed the later prequels. To much conversation while walking in front of computer generated scenery or conversation while sitting in front of computer generated scenery. Mechanical switching between the camera on person A and the camera on person B. No way for the actors to interact with or react to their environments.
A simple corridor conversation in ANH or ESB would be two people in the frame walking and talking and yelling and stopping and starting and dodging extras with the camera being pulled along on a dolly as a single shot.
The same thing in RoTS would be distant shot of two people walking for 10 meters. Inexplicably they stop and turn to face one another. Close up of person A talking. Close up of person B talking. Close up of person A talking [repeat as needed] Distant shot of the two people continuing their walk. No art. No flow.
CGI made George Lucas forget everything he knew about film making. Not having sufficient technology is the best thing that could happen to a Star Wars series.
Hmmmm. You mean historical data like this? CO2 was 280 ppm 1000 years ago and is about 390 ppm now, I guess it's only 30% lower. If you go back 8000 years, it's 260 ppm, it's 35% lower. So you're right, I misspoke. I should have said "Humanity has increased CO2 levels by 40%" rather than "CO2 levels were 40% lower".
Yeah, most companies can afford to give up 1/8th of their market. Leaves room in CA for a lot of start ups. The niche for online bookseller is no longer filled.
They might lose that much however, as companies move out of state and leave people unemployed.
And when the state decides that it will no longer do business with these companies and blocks their web sites from all state owned networks? Yeah, I'm sure that Amazon doesn't really want to get purchases from staff and students of the University of California system. I wonder what fraction of Amazon's MP3 purchases originate from UC campuses. I wonder what fraction of Amazon's cloud computing resources is allocated to people or projects at UC campuses. I wonder how much the competition would like to take Amazon's state owned/operated markets.
The tax requirements for members of the armed forces differ from those of other residents, so I can't tell you. If you didn't file a California tax return, you probably don't owe use tax. If you worked for a company and were sent to work at a California branch for several months, California Income Tax would have been deducted from your pay, you would have been subject to use tax for any untaxed out of state purchases that you primarily use in California, and you would have been required to file a California Non-Resident Tax return.
Everyone loves to cheat on their taxes.
That's what people who cheat on their taxes say to make themselves feel better.
Yes, prior to this, California had a tax on honesty.