These are some excellent points. I have the same doubts about early 20th century temperature records in addition to the relatively crude methods used before modern thermometer technologies. To measure such small changes thermometers have to be extremely accurate and you would need a whole lot of them to account for local variations.
What I would like to see is a consistent upward trend on a station by station basis over a period of at least 20-30 years. Both on land and on sea. Although a 100-300 year trend would be a lot more persuasive. Ultimately the real question is going to be whether some specific place on the planet has become too hot for human habitation. When will the daytime high in Jakarta reach 70 degrees C for instance? Why is it that we never see rising graphs for specific locations? If the earth really is getting warmer then specific places on the earth should be getting warmer too. In fact I'd like to see charts of 100 different weather stations from around the world going back at least 30 years and decide for myself whether the graphs are going up or down. When we see consistent upward graphs for every station and that continues for 20-30 years we might have to start preparing for the worst: for the possible extinction of our species. And, no, there isn't anything we can do about it.
Can someone tell me exactly what AGW is predicting in terms of temperature increases? How many degrees celsius per year/decade/millenium are we talking about? Unfortunately the only way to confirm any scientific theory is to wait and see if the predictions pan out. Anything else is not science.
It doesn't seem any hotter now than it did 30 years ago. Presumably 30 years is just too small of a time scale though. Probably 1000 is more realistic. It will be difficult for anyone now alive to confirm or deny that sort of prediction. You're going to have trouble getting people all worked up about something which is undetectable by anyone with less funding than, say, NASA.
And your evidence is never presented in an understandable way. Even the evidence for special theory of relativity can be presented in a way that most people can understand, but apparently climate science has trouble with that. Climate scientists can go on and on with "just trust us" and lots of people will, but not everyone. Some completely rational, logical people will want to judge the evidence for themselves.
I know I do, and what I have seen so far, including this, I don't find particularly convincing. AGW does have some plausibility to it because higher CO2 does tend to lead to higher temperatures in simplified laboratory experiments but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I want to see some of that. So far I haven't.
How about a 10 year prediction? How much warmer (in degrees celcius) will the average land or water temperature be in 10 years? How about temperatures at particular locations. How much warmer will it be in Indonesia in 10 years? Can AGW make such a prediction?
If I am still alive in 10 years and the predictions come true to within a reasonable margin of error then I will be willing to agree that the earth is in fact getting warmer at the moment. It still doesn't prove that humans are causing it of course. That is not provable by science. But it doesn't matter because we should start planning for Armageddon within a time period determined by the decade temperature rise.
All this talk about whether global warming is natural or is caused by burning things doesn't really matter. Why are we looking for a scapegoat? All that matters is whether or not the earth is getting warmer. If it is, whether it's natural or not, we had better start preparing. I have yet to hear a single credible plan about how anyone is going to stop the billions of humans on the planet from burning stuff to survive. Let's face it. It's just not going to happen.
Maybe SUVs will get outlawed in the US. Hooray! I hate the things. Maybe a 70 mpg minimum will be required for any non-commerical vehicle sold in the US (if you tried that for commercial vehicles you'd have mass starvation which could be another 'solution' I suppose). Maybe we'll build a few more nuclear power plants although I think NIMBY will prevent most of that.
Maybe England and Canada and Australia will follow along as they so often seem to do with whatever silly idea the US comes up with. Or maybe not. In any case the rest of the planet representing the majority of land area and population will just laugh and continue to burn things until they run out of things to burn. And yes this includes trees and coal. And those laughable drop-in-the-bucket schemes that the US will come up with wouldn't have delayed the end by much anyway. People are going to do what they must to survive and that usually involves burning things.
So if AGW is true then our species is doomed and there is no way around it. I propose a possible solution. The end will take at least a millenium. That gives us (especially the US) the chance to start putting all the money that would have been spent catching, imprisoning, and executing millions of climate criminals and building hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants everywhere and cleaning up the inevitable accidents into a new era for the space program.
See how I did that? The greens have their agenda (although they are pretty vague about what exactly that is), and I have mine. Let's start devoting every dollar we now spend on the defense budget into building an interstellar generation ship big enough for a few thousand people to live on. That will be a start. Maybe by the time the end comes in 1000 - 100,000 years we will be fully prepared to live off world and will have colonized other star systems. It is funny that the very thing that allowed us to flourish as a technological species, heat engines which create electricity and do the work that we used to require things like horses or rivers to do, will have become our doom.
While the US and maybe a few close allies could Francify their electricity production by going nearly 100% nuclear and introduce bumper car like transportation systems with electric cars that are powered by nuclear powered overhead wires once they reach the major highways, is the rest of the world going to be able to do that? Maybe eventually but not right now. I think much of AGW is based on the idea that we will essentially never run out of fossil fuels, but nuclear fuel will eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of uranium etc on this planet. So then it's either burn or face massive die offs of just leave the planet. So we should start preparing for that. We have no idea whether intelligent life in the galaxy is rare, but it may be. We should do everything we can to preserve our species regardless of what may happen to this particular planet.
If the predictions of AGW come true then all life on earth is doomed. First equatorial locations will become uninhabitable by anyone not in a special air conditioned space suit and then that uninhabitable area will gradually (over many thousands of years) spread toward the poles.
The last days of our species will be spent with the entire population of the earth living at the poles. And then that will be it. Life on earth may continue to flourish for a while for extremophiles. Most other life will die out and evolution will have to work its magic.
This is another excellent reason to start putting more money into the space program. We should be colonizing other worlds and building city sized nuclear pulse interstellar ships in orbit. It's possible that all intelligent life has this same problem with the chemistry of burning and greenhouse gasses. In the long term we should start thinking about getting off world and adapting to survival in space.
Even a 0.1 degree C increase per year in equatorial locations will mean a 10 degree C increase in just a century. In 200 years we are talking a 20 degree C rise. A 20 degree increase means places like Singapore may require a space suit to go out in the afternoon. It already gets to near 40 degrees C there at times. So we are talking a daytime high temperature of something like 60 degrees C. At first underground homes may be the way to go in places like that.
Of course initially the loss of habitable area on the planet will be offset by the gain of habitable area in higher latitudes.
In just 1000 years, if the worldwide temperatures increase by 100 degrees C I think it's clear our species and many others like us will have very big problems. Would the equatorial oceans start to boil? The last of our species would be living in underground homes in Antarctica.
In short, if the AGW theory is true, and our fossil fuels don't run out, then all human and mammalian life on this planet is doomed. It's just a matter of time. And there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it. I say enjoy this planet while it lasts because eventually it will resemble Venus.
The alternatives cost even more money and aren't even remotely practical. If we really are going to be facing rising temperatures in the next 10,000 years we should just realistically prepare for that. Until equatorial areas become too hot to support human life I don't even see the emergency. BTW, when does AGW theory predict that that is going to happen exactly? In the next 10 years or the next 10 million years?
And how exactly do you decide who is credible? I have an idea. If you really think this is so important, if you are honestly so concerned for your descendants thousands of years from now, make the effort to understand the evidence and decide for yourself. And then decide what, if anything, can be done about the problem with current technology.
Changing it back might be foolish, but it'd be nice if we could at least try to stop the change that is still occuring.
Who is 'we' and how would you propose that our entire species get together and agree not to burn anything? Most third world countries will just laugh and with the possible exception of North Korea, no one will be able to enforce a ban on burning. You'd need a genuine world government and literally millions of patrolling death squads to enforce such a ban. It's pure fantasy.Well there is one practical way: destroy all human life on the planet. Possibly with those intensely radioactive bombs the Russians were working on. Even if you could destroy 90% of the human infestation you'd slow down global warming quite a bit.
DHS = STASI. And this is just the beginning. When it comes to the US government you can never be too paranoid. Yet another reason not to use facebook. But it's not just facebook I bet. Forums like this or any forums critical of the TSA are obviously being monitored for dissent. For 'domestic extremists', which really means anyone who would advocates abolishing the TSA or DHS.
1. Stalk pretty young girl. The younger the better. 2. Extract her blood with a needle and inject yourself with it while it is still warm. 3. Rinse. Repeat. 4. Solve Rubik's Cube and prepare for eternal life.
If I were publishing a paper I think I would first put the paper up on my personal web site. Then I would upload it to TPB and Demonoid. Only after releasing the information at no cost to anyone who wanted it would I officially submit it for publication in a journal that only uber-rich people can afford to read.
The first action would be to truly publish my research so that anyone in the world with an interest in my research could learn from it and to encourage the worldwide collaboration among scientists that is necessary for a healthy scientific community. Science was historically about sharing information and trying to learn new things about the world together. Now science has become all about information hoarding and trying to keep research a secret so as to possibly profit from it. And we wonder why science hasn't advanced as much as some people in the 50s and 60s thought it might. We are all busy reinventing wheels instead of learning from others and moving forward.
1. Interstellar missions require thousands of nuclear bombs. 2. Governments are the only ones how have nuclear bombs. 3. Governments are required for interstellar missions.
Until we rewrite the laws of physics the only practical interstellar propulsion is going to be Freeman Dyson's Orion pulsed nuke system. IOW interstellar travel is all about nuclear bombs.
Here are the steps: 1. Start a small permanent lunar base (Moonbase Alpha) whose immediate goal is to set up mining/smelting operations while seeing if long term survival on the moon is possible. Once we have lunar manufacturing a lot of things become much easier. 2. Construct a nuclear power plant to power the settlement as well as supply plutonium for nuclear bomb manufacturing. Solar is not adequate for serious manufacturing capacity. Although solar furnaces might be possible. 3. Start work on building a spacecraft manufacturing facility at an earth-moon Lagrange point. 4. Before even thinking about interstellar ships, build smaller nuclear powered interplanetary craft to finish exploring the solar system and nuclear powered shuttles for transfers between the moon and the Lagrange spacecraft assembly station. 5. Continue to grow the size of the moonbase by allowing anyone with relavent technical skills on semi-annual transport ships. It shouldn't be just astronauts and pilots. The idea would be to have an entire 'army' of people up there working together toward a common idealistic goal.
Very often the police themselves are the ones doing the lying. Did your elder brother mention all the casual testilying to you as well? Typically police have no sense of ethics themselves and so just assume that everyone else is lying all the time as well. They will typically say things like "everyone lies". You don't have to be a psychologist to figure out why they think that.
Except that in the US, even if somone is shoting at the police, 9/10 times if they kill somone, they get fired.
Bullshit. Name one instance. Police are practically never punished for anything they do here. If you managed to find a single instance it would be one in a million. Although there are exceptions to every rule, the cops in the US are much, much worse than their UK counterparts. When I leave my house I am much more afraid of the police than I am of any criminals. Cops are far more dangerous and violent. And if they attack you they also throw you in jail and file false charges against you just for fun.
What a shame. At 48 degrees declination Arecibo cannot be pointed in its direction. Arecibo can only reach up to 38 degrees. We could have sent a "Hello World" message with an EIRP of 24 Terawatts and then waited 1200 years for a reply. Alas, Arecibo cannot be pointed at Gliese 581 either since it can only reach down to a -1 degrees dec. I call that cosmic censorship. We really need to build more Arecibos at different lattitudes. We are such a cheap and lazy species.
We could start building a super-Orion pulsed nuke generation ship now and complete it in maybe 100 years. Then we launch humanity's first starship from L1 Lagrange Station manufacturing/assembly facility and it would only take another 6000 years or so to reach the planet. OTOH we could reach Gliese 581 in only 200 years, Tau Ceti or Epsilon Indi in 120 years, Epsilon Eridani in 105 years, or Alpha Centauri in a mere 44 years.
I just don't see how this has any importance, whatsoever, because I don't see how it can have any measurable effect on any decision made by anyone on this planet in the foreseeable future.
Imagine that you were considering a move to the southern hemisphere, building a small (15-25 meter) radio telescope, and starting your own personal SETI project focusing on the most likely stars within 50 light years. The importance of this discovery is statistical. It makes it more likely that there is a habitable planet within a more realistic travel/communication range of 50 - 100 light years. It may be a slight effect but it is a measurable effect. If it encourages more people to get involved with passive and active SETI projects then it at least served some small purpose.
Faith is the antithesis of science. The scientific method = rationality. Believing in old fairy tales because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy or gives you a second father, or seems to lift the burden of trying to understand the vast wonder and mystery of the universe = irrationality. Science and religion have always been enemies. Religious authorities may no longer be putting prominent scientists to death for being 'deniers' at least in our part of the world but that's only because they no longer have that kind of power.
I think the theory of global warming has more in common with the theory of Santa Claus than evolution or vaccination. It's the same kind of 'science' that gave us the Nuclear Winter theory. And like Nuclear Winter, the theory is based as much on politics as it is on science.
Some people are just skeptical that computer models = science. I have another name for a computer model: a computer hypothesis. It is nothing more than a hypothesis that needs to be tested experimentally. The models make a testable prediction and science requires actually waiting to see if the prediction comes true.
Could the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis be true? Sure. Is it true? There is still insufficient data to demonstrate it, but maybe in another 50-100 years we will have enough. If the evidence were really as solid as a lot of you guys seem to believe I don't think there would be nearly as much skepticism about it. Controversy in science tends to be inversely proportional to the amount of available evidence. Once proven the topic will no longer spawn 1000+ posts on slashdot. People will just yawn. Actually the topic already makes me yawn because true or not there is nothing we as a species can do about it. Well, short of a world government police state with 1984-level surveillance powers all over the planet or some major scientific breakthrough that makes people not want to burn stuff anymore. It is science that caused the problem. Only science can fix it. The only remotely realistic solution I've heard is for the entire planet to go 100% nuclear, but who is going to enforce that? Again, you need a world government to do that. And you'd also have to make electricity a hell of a lot cheaper than it is now or people are still going to burn stuff for various purposes.
What's with all the hate for the Aptera? Did the owner rape your sister or something? I can't believe so many of you are getting so worked up about hating this guy and his company and his car. I smell some kind of agenda, although I can't imagine what it could possibly be. Maybe you guys work for companies that make those pathetic hybrids that barely get more than 50 mpg? It was a concept car that never made it off the ground. It could have been any small automotive startup. The fact that it was a car that looked like an airplane and got much higher gas mileage than anything else on the road in North America is not why they failed. Even for major manufacturers, most concept cars never see the light of day. I would have bought an Aptera if they could have sold it for less than 30k. It was strikingly beautiful and had an incredibly low coefficient of drag. I think it would have been one of the best cars ever made.
For now I will continue to salivate over Volkswagen's efforts with the XL1. Although I much prefered the former, more radical, tandem 2 seater L1 A real jetson-mobile.
Because no one has ever made money by appealing to a niche market. Either you sell to the masses or not at all. Have I got that right? I would have bought one of these if he ever sold any and it wasn't too expensive.
This is actually my major beef with the rapid update cycle. A rapid update cycle is OK if nothing much changes in how something works, and the update is not disruptive. Either the Chrome approach of updating without you noticing most of the time, or the old Firefox approach of infrequent major updates work quite OK for me.
So if the devs do something stupid or impulsive or add some really annoying feature or remove one you found essential what do you do? What about when this happens every few days or every week? You could leave your internet connection unplugged so you are not surprised by devastating feature changes you weren't expecting every few days. Or you could switch to a sane browser that doesn't do this. For instance Firefox 3.6.24.
It's very arguable because firefox still has noscript. I have tried using notscript with chrome. It sucks and it is not even a comprehensive solution to javascript/flash whitelisting. it has holes you could drive a truck through and the developer openly admits it. You can run firefox strictly noscripted and sandboxed with sandboxie in a limited user account.
Also the cafe should be in a non-english speaking country with poor diplomatic relations with the US. And the more obscure the language the better. And the cafe should be busy and probably not even be known as an internet cafe. You should also try to use a portable Tor browser from a USB stick and then use an anonymous proxy in addition. Instead of gloves you might be able to coat your fingers with glue.
Another option is to crack someone's WEP key from a laptop, preferably in a different state and then use Tor + anon proxy from their connection. Using a 'protected' wireless router is better for obvious reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
These are some excellent points. I have the same doubts about early 20th century temperature records in addition to the relatively crude methods used before modern thermometer technologies. To measure such small changes thermometers have to be extremely accurate and you would need a whole lot of them to account for local variations.
What I would like to see is a consistent upward trend on a station by station basis over a period of at least 20-30 years. Both on land and on sea. Although a 100-300 year trend would be a lot more persuasive. Ultimately the real question is going to be whether some specific place on the planet has become too hot for human habitation. When will the daytime high in Jakarta reach 70 degrees C for instance? Why is it that we never see rising graphs for specific locations? If the earth really is getting warmer then specific places on the earth should be getting warmer too. In fact I'd like to see charts of 100 different weather stations from around the world going back at least 30 years and decide for myself whether the graphs are going up or down. When we see consistent upward graphs for every station and that continues for 20-30 years we might have to start preparing for the worst: for the possible extinction of our species. And, no, there isn't anything we can do about it.
Can someone tell me exactly what AGW is predicting in terms of temperature increases? How many degrees celsius per year/decade/millenium are we talking about? Unfortunately the only way to confirm any scientific theory is to wait and see if the predictions pan out. Anything else is not science.
It doesn't seem any hotter now than it did 30 years ago. Presumably 30 years is just too small of a time scale though. Probably 1000 is more realistic. It will be difficult for anyone now alive to confirm or deny that sort of prediction. You're going to have trouble getting people all worked up about something which is undetectable by anyone with less funding than, say, NASA.
And your evidence is never presented in an understandable way. Even the evidence for special theory of relativity can be presented in a way that most people can understand, but apparently climate science has trouble with that. Climate scientists can go on and on with "just trust us" and lots of people will, but not everyone. Some completely rational, logical people will want to judge the evidence for themselves.
I know I do, and what I have seen so far, including this, I don't find particularly convincing. AGW does have some plausibility to it because higher CO2 does tend to lead to higher temperatures in simplified laboratory experiments but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I want to see some of that. So far I haven't.
How about a 10 year prediction? How much warmer (in degrees celcius) will the average land or water temperature be in 10 years? How about temperatures at particular locations. How much warmer will it be in Indonesia in 10 years? Can AGW make such a prediction?
If I am still alive in 10 years and the predictions come true to within a reasonable margin of error then I will be willing to agree that the earth is in fact getting warmer at the moment. It still doesn't prove that humans are causing it of course. That is not provable by science. But it doesn't matter because we should start planning for Armageddon within a time period determined by the decade temperature rise.
All this talk about whether global warming is natural or is caused by burning things doesn't really matter. Why are we looking for a scapegoat? All that matters is whether or not the earth is getting warmer. If it is, whether it's natural or not, we had better start preparing. I have yet to hear a single credible plan about how anyone is going to stop the billions of humans on the planet from burning stuff to survive. Let's face it. It's just not going to happen.
Maybe SUVs will get outlawed in the US. Hooray! I hate the things. Maybe a 70 mpg minimum will be required for any non-commerical vehicle sold in the US (if you tried that for commercial vehicles you'd have mass starvation which could be another 'solution' I suppose). Maybe we'll build a few more nuclear power plants although I think NIMBY will prevent most of that.
Maybe England and Canada and Australia will follow along as they so often seem to do with whatever silly idea the US comes up with. Or maybe not. In any case the rest of the planet representing the majority of land area and population will just laugh and continue to burn things until they run out of things to burn. And yes this includes trees and coal. And those laughable drop-in-the-bucket schemes that the US will come up with wouldn't have delayed the end by much anyway. People are going to do what they must to survive and that usually involves burning things.
So if AGW is true then our species is doomed and there is no way around it. I propose a possible solution. The end will take at least a millenium. That gives us (especially the US) the chance to start putting all the money that would have been spent catching, imprisoning, and executing millions of climate criminals and building hundreds of thousands of nuclear power plants everywhere and cleaning up the inevitable accidents into a new era for the space program.
See how I did that? The greens have their agenda (although they are pretty vague about what exactly that is), and I have mine. Let's start devoting every dollar we now spend on the defense budget into building an interstellar generation ship big enough for a few thousand people to live on. That will be a start. Maybe by the time the end comes in 1000 - 100,000 years we will be fully prepared to live off world and will have colonized other star systems. It is funny that the very thing that allowed us to flourish as a technological species, heat engines which create electricity and do the work that we used to require things like horses or rivers to do, will have become our doom.
While the US and maybe a few close allies could Francify their electricity production by going nearly 100% nuclear and introduce bumper car like transportation systems with electric cars that are powered by nuclear powered overhead wires once they reach the major highways, is the rest of the world going to be able to do that? Maybe eventually but not right now. I think much of AGW is based on the idea that we will essentially never run out of fossil fuels, but nuclear fuel will eventually run out. There is only a finite supply of uranium etc on this planet. So then it's either burn or face massive die offs of just leave the planet. So we should start preparing for that. We have no idea whether intelligent life in the galaxy is rare, but it may be. We should do everything we can to preserve our species regardless of what may happen to this particular planet.
If the predictions of AGW come true then all life on earth is doomed. First equatorial locations will become uninhabitable by anyone not in a special air conditioned space suit and then that uninhabitable area will gradually (over many thousands of years) spread toward the poles.
The last days of our species will be spent with the entire population of the earth living at the poles. And then that will be it. Life on earth may continue to flourish for a while for extremophiles. Most other life will die out and evolution will have to work its magic.
This is another excellent reason to start putting more money into the space program. We should be colonizing other worlds and building city sized nuclear pulse interstellar ships in orbit. It's possible that all intelligent life has this same problem with the chemistry of burning and greenhouse gasses. In the long term we should start thinking about getting off world and adapting to survival in space.
Even a 0.1 degree C increase per year in equatorial locations will mean a 10 degree C increase in just a century. In 200 years we are talking a 20 degree C rise. A 20 degree increase means places like Singapore may require a space suit to go out in the afternoon. It already gets to near 40 degrees C there at times. So we are talking a daytime high temperature of something like 60 degrees C. At first underground homes may be the way to go in places like that.
Of course initially the loss of habitable area on the planet will be offset by the gain of habitable area in higher latitudes.
In just 1000 years, if the worldwide temperatures increase by 100 degrees C I think it's clear our species and many others like us will have very big problems. Would the equatorial oceans start to boil? The last of our species would be living in underground homes in Antarctica.
In short, if the AGW theory is true, and our fossil fuels don't run out, then all human and mammalian life on this planet is doomed. It's just a matter of time. And there is absolutely nothing that anyone can do about it. I say enjoy this planet while it lasts because eventually it will resemble Venus.
The alternatives cost even more money and aren't even remotely practical. If we really are going to be facing rising temperatures in the next 10,000 years we should just realistically prepare for that. Until equatorial areas become too hot to support human life I don't even see the emergency. BTW, when does AGW theory predict that that is going to happen exactly? In the next 10 years or the next 10 million years?
And how exactly do you decide who is credible? I have an idea. If you really think this is so important, if you are honestly so concerned for your descendants thousands of years from now, make the effort to understand the evidence and decide for yourself. And then decide what, if anything, can be done about the problem with current technology.
Changing it back might be foolish, but it'd be nice if we could at least try to stop the change that is still occuring.
Who is 'we' and how would you propose that our entire species get together and agree not to burn anything? Most third world countries will just laugh and with the possible exception of North Korea, no one will be able to enforce a ban on burning. You'd need a genuine world government and literally millions of patrolling death squads to enforce such a ban. It's pure fantasy.Well there is one practical way: destroy all human life on the planet. Possibly with those intensely radioactive bombs the Russians were working on. Even if you could destroy 90% of the human infestation you'd slow down global warming quite a bit.
DHS = STASI. And this is just the beginning. When it comes to the US government you can never be too paranoid. Yet another reason not to use facebook. But it's not just facebook I bet. Forums like this or any forums critical of the TSA are obviously being monitored for dissent. For 'domestic extremists', which really means anyone who would advocates abolishing the TSA or DHS.
1. Stalk pretty young girl. The younger the better.
2. Extract her blood with a needle and inject yourself with it while it is still warm.
3. Rinse. Repeat.
4. Solve Rubik's Cube and prepare for eternal life.
If I were publishing a paper I think I would first put the paper up on my personal web site. Then I would upload it to TPB and Demonoid. Only after releasing the information at no cost to anyone who wanted it would I officially submit it for publication in a journal that only uber-rich people can afford to read.
The first action would be to truly publish my research so that anyone in the world with an interest in my research could learn from it and to encourage the worldwide collaboration among scientists that is necessary for a healthy scientific community. Science was historically about sharing information and trying to learn new things about the world together. Now science has become all about information hoarding and trying to keep research a secret so as to possibly profit from it. And we wonder why science hasn't advanced as much as some people in the 50s and 60s thought it might. We are all busy reinventing wheels instead of learning from others and moving forward.
You realize that Kenya is a poor third world country, right?
1. Interstellar missions require thousands of nuclear bombs.
2. Governments are the only ones how have nuclear bombs.
3. Governments are required for interstellar missions.
Until we rewrite the laws of physics the only practical interstellar propulsion is going to be Freeman Dyson's Orion pulsed nuke system. IOW interstellar travel is all about nuclear bombs.
Here are the steps:
1. Start a small permanent lunar base (Moonbase Alpha) whose immediate goal is to set up mining/smelting operations while seeing if long term survival on the moon is possible. Once we have lunar manufacturing a lot of things become much easier.
2. Construct a nuclear power plant to power the settlement as well as supply plutonium for nuclear bomb manufacturing. Solar is not adequate for serious manufacturing capacity. Although solar furnaces might be possible.
3. Start work on building a spacecraft manufacturing facility at an earth-moon Lagrange point.
4. Before even thinking about interstellar ships, build smaller nuclear powered interplanetary craft to finish exploring the solar system and nuclear powered shuttles for transfers between the moon and the Lagrange spacecraft assembly station.
5. Continue to grow the size of the moonbase by allowing anyone with relavent technical skills on semi-annual transport ships. It shouldn't be just astronauts and pilots. The idea would be to have an entire 'army' of people up there working together toward a common idealistic goal.
Very often the police themselves are the ones doing the lying. Did your elder brother mention all the casual testilying to you as well? Typically police have no sense of ethics themselves and so just assume that everyone else is lying all the time as well. They will typically say things like "everyone lies". You don't have to be a psychologist to figure out why they think that.
Except that in the US, even if somone is shoting at the police, 9/10 times if they kill somone, they get fired.
Bullshit. Name one instance. Police are practically never punished for anything they do here. If you managed to find a single instance it would be one in a million. Although there are exceptions to every rule, the cops in the US are much, much worse than their UK counterparts. When I leave my house I am much more afraid of the police than I am of any criminals. Cops are far more dangerous and violent. And if they attack you they also throw you in jail and file false charges against you just for fun.
What a shame. At 48 degrees declination Arecibo cannot be pointed in its direction. Arecibo can only reach up to 38 degrees. We could have sent a "Hello World" message with an EIRP of 24 Terawatts and then waited 1200 years for a reply. Alas, Arecibo cannot be pointed at Gliese 581 either since it can only reach down to a -1 degrees dec. I call that cosmic censorship. We really need to build more Arecibos at different lattitudes. We are such a cheap and lazy species.
We could start building a super-Orion pulsed nuke generation ship now and complete it in maybe 100 years. Then we launch humanity's first starship from L1 Lagrange Station manufacturing/assembly facility and it would only take another 6000 years or so to reach the planet. OTOH we could reach Gliese 581 in only 200 years, Tau Ceti or Epsilon Indi in 120 years, Epsilon Eridani in 105 years, or Alpha Centauri in a mere 44 years.
I just don't see how this has any importance, whatsoever, because I don't see how it can have any measurable effect on any decision made by anyone on this planet in the foreseeable future.
Imagine that you were considering a move to the southern hemisphere, building a small (15-25 meter) radio telescope, and starting your own personal SETI project focusing on the most likely stars within 50 light years. The importance of this discovery is statistical. It makes it more likely that there is a habitable planet within a more realistic travel/communication range of 50 - 100 light years. It may be a slight effect but it is a measurable effect. If it encourages more people to get involved with passive and active SETI projects then it at least served some small purpose.
Faith is the antithesis of science. The scientific method = rationality. Believing in old fairy tales because it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy or gives you a second father, or seems to lift the burden of trying to understand the vast wonder and mystery of the universe = irrationality. Science and religion have always been enemies. Religious authorities may no longer be putting prominent scientists to death for being 'deniers' at least in our part of the world but that's only because they no longer have that kind of power.
I think the theory of global warming has more in common with the theory of Santa Claus than evolution or vaccination. It's the same kind of 'science' that gave us the Nuclear Winter theory. And like Nuclear Winter, the theory is based as much on politics as it is on science.
Some people are just skeptical that computer models = science. I have another name for a computer model: a computer hypothesis. It is nothing more than a hypothesis that needs to be tested experimentally. The models make a testable prediction and science requires actually waiting to see if the prediction comes true.
Could the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis be true? Sure. Is it true? There is still insufficient data to demonstrate it, but maybe in another 50-100 years we will have enough. If the evidence were really as solid as a lot of you guys seem to believe I don't think there would be nearly as much skepticism about it. Controversy in science tends to be inversely proportional to the amount of available evidence. Once proven the topic will no longer spawn 1000+ posts on slashdot. People will just yawn. Actually the topic already makes me yawn because true or not there is nothing we as a species can do about it. Well, short of a world government police state with 1984-level surveillance powers all over the planet or some major scientific breakthrough that makes people not want to burn stuff anymore. It is science that caused the problem. Only science can fix it. The only remotely realistic solution I've heard is for the entire planet to go 100% nuclear, but who is going to enforce that? Again, you need a world government to do that. And you'd also have to make electricity a hell of a lot cheaper than it is now or people are still going to burn stuff for various purposes.
What's with all the hate for the Aptera? Did the owner rape your sister or something? I can't believe so many of you are getting so worked up about hating this guy and his company and his car. I smell some kind of agenda, although I can't imagine what it could possibly be. Maybe you guys work for companies that make those pathetic hybrids that barely get more than 50 mpg? It was a concept car that never made it off the ground. It could have been any small automotive startup. The fact that it was a car that looked like an airplane and got much higher gas mileage than anything else on the road in North America is not why they failed. Even for major manufacturers, most concept cars never see the light of day. I would have bought an Aptera if they could have sold it for less than 30k. It was strikingly beautiful and had an incredibly low coefficient of drag. I think it would have been one of the best cars ever made.
For now I will continue to salivate over Volkswagen's efforts with the XL1. Although I much prefered the former, more radical, tandem 2 seater L1 A real jetson-mobile.
Because no one has ever made money by appealing to a niche market. Either you sell to the masses or not at all. Have I got that right? I would have bought one of these if he ever sold any and it wasn't too expensive.
This is actually my major beef with the rapid update cycle. A rapid update cycle is OK if nothing much changes in how something works, and the update is not disruptive. Either the Chrome approach of updating without you noticing most of the time, or the old Firefox approach of infrequent major updates work quite OK for me.
So if the devs do something stupid or impulsive or add some really annoying feature or remove one you found essential what do you do? What about when this happens every few days or every week? You could leave your internet connection unplugged so you are not surprised by devastating feature changes you weren't expecting every few days. Or you could switch to a sane browser that doesn't do this. For instance Firefox 3.6.24.
It's very arguable because firefox still has noscript. I have tried using notscript with chrome. It sucks and it is not even a comprehensive solution to javascript/flash whitelisting. it has holes you could drive a truck through and the developer openly admits it. You can run firefox strictly noscripted and sandboxed with sandboxie in a limited user account.
Also the cafe should be in a non-english speaking country with poor diplomatic relations with the US. And the more obscure the language the better. And the cafe should be busy and probably not even be known as an internet cafe. You should also try to use a portable Tor browser from a USB stick and then use an anonymous proxy in addition. Instead of gloves you might be able to coat your fingers with glue.
Another option is to crack someone's WEP key from a laptop, preferably in a different state and then use Tor + anon proxy from their connection. Using a 'protected' wireless router is better for obvious reasons.