We it is not repair, but there has been a recent report (the Stern Review) which looks at the economic impacts of acting now or later on climate change. It represents the first attempted at linking economic impacts to the impacts of climate change.
The article plays things pretty fast and loose. The swap one thing for another while trying to argue their point. Example the graph of the two reconstructions (one the Michael Mann reconstruction, one the record they use to debunk this) show two completely different things. The upper one (hockey stick) shows the first attempt of it's kind to reconstruct the global average temperature while the other shows the european temperature reconstruction. I can not comment on the validity of the lower reconstruction but comparing the two is disingenuous to say the least. European temperatures may well have been higher in a particular period without necessarily impacting on the the global temperature. Incidently the upper plot has been replaced by a number of more recent upto date reconstructions.
Later they claim that the 'UN' or scientists replace a fundamental law of physics with their Lambda value. This is again disingenuous. The lambda values used in this report do not represent a physical law but rather represent an empirical relationship between 'forcings' and temperature change.
He uses a mixture of miss information and real facts. The facts, or their interpretation can themselves be misleading. For example he mentions that the volume of ice mass in Antarctica has increased in the observations. This is true but does not support his case (the same UN report he seeks to attack mentions the same). As the temperature have warmed around the perimeter of Antarctica the precipitation (snow) has increased in the interior but the temperature remain well below that needed to remove ice mass.
The two examples above are just two strands that I picked up whilst reading through. What interests me is whether the writer really believes what he is writing? Does he really believe that this is a UN consipiracy to be debunked. He clearly has gathered a large amount of information together to make his case. I am curious about whether he believes what he writes or whether he has an agenda (perhaps to counter a contry agenda?).
Apart from the volume of water contained in glaciers you also need to factor in thermal expansion of the water as the oceans warm up. Long term effects but definately effects.
The original port of this model from the cray super computer was to linux. Most of the early developement was in linux. The windows port was, as I understand it, just past of the history of the project. The company which developed the client software worked in visual c++ - the model was got to a stage where it was stable (on window - the hardest part of the process) and then there was a huge pressure to release to the public.
A OS X port and potentially a linux port are both immenent with the release of the BOINC client. Not every project can release with all ports on all plateforms with a limited number of project workers.
It's all done in fortran - speed is a necessity and these kind of programs can not be easily translated into cross platform languages like numercial python.
There is a port in the process for both OS X and linux but this wont be released until the project moves over to the BOINC platform. Which according the website will happen sometime in the next month or two.
lorenz said "climate is what you expect, weather is what you get" so forget weather this is dealing with climate!
This is the idea - weather forecasts will never show skill out beyond 12 to 14 days because uncertainty in the exact state of the weather now will always propogate upwards until the errors in representing the state overwelm the forecast.
Climate forecast on the other had look at the mean state - how many rainy days do you expect in New york summers? This is a predictable quantity. Models can see how these mean states change with time.
What I don't understand however is how "There is currently no known direct connection between him and the "Sasser" programmer arrested in Niedersachsen."
is consistent with
"initial evidence of the authorities of Baden-Württemberg points to the 21 year-old using the "Sasser" in order to develop the much more dangerous worm "Agobot/Phatbot".
In the UK, if you own a TV you are required by law the pay the 100 pound licence fee each year. Only if you are able to demonstrate that you don't own a TV are the fees waived.
This will raise some intersting questions: Apart from resulting in nonTV owners (and hence non licience payers) accessing the BBC it would this not lead to much wider dissemination of the BBC TV outside the UK. Wouldn't this damage the existing syndication relationships that the BBC has set up. I am amased that any broadcaster risk distribution over the internet. Certainty thinking outside the box.
It is an insult. Socialism is an inhuman and invalid philosophy of governing with a horrid track record: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all socialists. It reverses centuries of human progress (where people have gained rights comparative to government) by giving government all the rights again.
That sounds you are discribing communism. The UK labour party is, on paper at least, a socialist party. They have been in and out of power in the UK since the war, they are demoncratic and while slightly centralising have generally respected the civil and political rights in the same way the other party has. This is also true for the majority of europe and many other contries, where social democratic parties have participated in power.
What I find amusing is that even 15 years after the cold war ended some people can't seperate the communist system of the 'evil enemy' from socialism. Face it mate, Tony Blair, who you seem to be a fan of, is the leader of the UK socialist party.
which is why you post as an anonymous coward to attack those liars is it?
"why is the leader of a nominally socialist party tied into this destructive alliance..."
If he truly was socialist, he would not deserve office.
I'm always amused at how the cold warm polarised the world. I sat on a train yesterday and listerned to a couple of americans talking to their son. The father accused the son of being almost 'socialistic'. I gathered from the tone that this was ment to be an insult and the son quickly distanced himself from this position. I don't have any particular feelings for support of a socialist party, but having seen socialist parties come and go with out the world falling down, I find that knee jerk fear of the word quite odd.
Isn't this a repeat of a story put up a month or so ago?
I had a quick look on the old articles and couldn't find it but I have a strong sense of deja vu.
OK, there have been 20 odd missions to mars so far (it's in that ball park - don't ask me to name them all). However only about 6 have succeded! These include fully tested, fully funded fully cold war 'must bloody beat the other faction' missions that went BANG. That is a lot more BANG for your buck than Beagle will make.
When it comes to interplanetary missions we AIN'T there yet. OK you spend a billion on it maybe you will get it's success rate up to 50/50. Why bother? Why not send 10 missions for 1 tenth of the price with a 33% success record?
There is no such thing as a perfect mission!! Not to another planet, not at this stage.
IF it succedes in returning the data, it is likely to enhence our scientific understanding of Mars much more than the 2 rovers NASA has launched. NASA needs the PR of rovers moving about and the matian images they will send back. Beagle will actually experiment on the matian rocks. This is where will need to look if we are interested in whether there is life on mars. We will get a bit of scientific data in there rather than just the matian weather .
Just 'cos it ain't got no wheels and the budget was small doesn't mean that it isn't any good.
It's named after the beagle, which if I remember rightly was the ship Captain Cook used to sail to Australia and through the pacific.
I guess it's trying to conjure up the image of exploring to great unknown.
Beagel 2 unlikely to boast future british missions
on
Fingers Crossed for Beagle
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If beagel makes it and returns data it will be a fantastic achievement. To event attempt to do this on this budget is staggering. In real contrast to NASA and even ESA space missions. If it works there is alot to be proud of.
It's unlikely to do much to boast the british space industry. There is little space funding outside british funding of ESA and ESA only contracts out to companies/universities for an equivalent sum as that nation put in. There doesn't look like the UK is prepared to change it's space funding arrangements (too much of research funding is tied up on the ground based observatory stuff) and so the british space industry is unlikely to benifit. This coupled with the increased protectionism in NASA will limit any boast British space projects might get.
The scientific literature is something that is being continuously developed. It's something that the media don't understand. There just needs to be one paper published which disputes the scientific concensus and every journal runs with it, while there are maybe 10 other papers which support the consensus.
This is a normal part of the peer review. We will have to see if this new paper stands up or has flaws itself. Don't hold you breath. The way we view the world has not suddenly just changed. There is just a new strand to the science to be looked at and investigated in more detail.
This misses something. This must be a reduction in CO2 relative to conventional power generation. How else can a powerplant reduce CO2 when it is producing it.
"The United States has long pressured European airlines to submit passenger information in order to prevent the arrival of terrorists in the country."
This is a growing issue at the moment. Initially the US ask for data as a security measure and the European Union complied. Recently the US has stepped back from it's pledge to only use the data for security checks. The US doesn't want to give assurances that the data wont be used for other purposes.
This looks like it may escalate. There are suggestions that european airlines may loose landing lights and face fines. This could lead to a tit for tat response. Airline war anyone?
while he is busy spraying CFC in the air (yeah, aerosols no longer contain CFC's, so he was wrong about that too).
the aerosol issue is a different one. Aerosols (airborn particals) are thought to dampen climate change. Aerosols come from factories, volcanos, cars and yes, spray cans project tiny droplets of water which are, yes, aerosols, but no, they probably don't effect global temperatures much. The one's he refers to are volcanic and industry derived particles. The worry is that as industry becomes cleaner a greater portion of the global warming will become apparent. Just follow his link:
Except a lot of ice (ex : much of Antarctica) is on land in the form of glaciers.
The bulk of the earths water not contained in the oceans is hold up in the glaciers. Antartica's being the bigest by far, with the greenland ice sheet still being substantial.
These glaciers would substantially add to the earth's sea levels but are more stable than the sea ice. Current projections give the greenland glaciers around 300 years before they become totally unstable, whilst the model simulations suggest that the antartic sheets will remain stable (and my even grow abit, due to increased percipitation). Cryosphere (ice) models are perhaps the lest well understood, and these projections may well change as our models improve.
One huge difference is the penetration of modern computers into the home and the access to the internet.
I think that the tools are available for all platforms that the technically minded kids will be able to get a taste of. In many ways it is more straight forward now. As the internet becomes a greater part of out lives, access to information and support becomes easier. Ok there is a bigger jungle out there (rather than the tangle of backyard over growth that was available in the 1980s), many more programming languages, many more potentials to find yourself out of your depth, but there is also much more documentation of other peoples experience.
NASA's current mars offering will launch today with a 1 second time window!!
Unlike the ESA mission which achieved an earth orbit before heading for Mars, the NASA mission will launch directly at mars. This means that the speed, and the exact timing of the launch to coincide with the position of the earth (so that it IS pointing at Mars when they press go) has to be down to an incrediable accuracy.
be amased, be very amased, because we CAN do some cool stuff.
I retract that comment. This was part of the original sales pitch for the 2 rover launch but from reading the launch details it looks like they have gone for 2 seperate landing sites. They are going for prospect of data from two sites over the need to mitigating rover failure by deploying both at one site.
I'd be interested in what caused this change in plan?
I'm not challenging you assertion that competition is good or bad, but you are fundimentally misreading the current state of space research if you see it as a competition. Anyone involved in space science will know that we are currently seeing unprecedented levels of collaboration not competition.
There is no point in inventing the wheel 3 times. We all gain from pooling scientific data. Previous mars missions inform the current ones. The current ones inform future ones. The different missions compliment each other, scientificially at least.
Slashdot Mirror
The report can be found here
Later they claim that the 'UN' or scientists replace a fundamental law of physics with their Lambda value. This is again disingenuous. The lambda values used in this report do not represent a physical law but rather represent an empirical relationship between 'forcings' and temperature change.
He uses a mixture of miss information and real facts. The facts, or their interpretation can themselves be misleading. For example he mentions that the volume of ice mass in Antarctica has increased in the observations. This is true but does not support his case (the same UN report he seeks to attack mentions the same). As the temperature have warmed around the perimeter of Antarctica the precipitation (snow) has increased in the interior but the temperature remain well below that needed to remove ice mass.
The two examples above are just two strands that I picked up whilst reading through. What interests me is whether the writer really believes what he is writing? Does he really believe that this is a UN consipiracy to be debunked. He clearly has gathered a large amount of information together to make his case. I am curious about whether he believes what he writes or whether he has an agenda (perhaps to counter a contry agenda?).
Apart from the volume of water contained in glaciers you also need to factor in thermal expansion of the water as the oceans warm up. Long term effects but definately effects.
A OS X port and potentially a linux port are both immenent with the release of the BOINC client. Not every project can release with all ports on all plateforms with a limited number of project workers.
There is a port in the process for both OS X and linux but this wont be released until the project moves over to the BOINC platform. Which according the website will happen sometime in the next month or two.
This is the idea - weather forecasts will never show skill out beyond 12 to 14 days because uncertainty in the exact state of the weather now will always propogate upwards until the errors in representing the state overwelm the forecast.
Climate forecast on the other had look at the mean state - how many rainy days do you expect in New york summers? This is a predictable quantity. Models can see how these mean states change with time.
What I don't understand however is how
"There is currently no known direct connection between him and the "Sasser" programmer arrested in Niedersachsen."
is consistent with
"initial evidence of the authorities of Baden-Württemberg points to the 21 year-old using the "Sasser" in order to develop the much more dangerous worm "Agobot/Phatbot".
any ideas? or am I missing something.
This will raise some intersting questions: Apart from resulting in nonTV owners (and hence non licience payers) accessing the BBC it would this not lead to much wider dissemination of the BBC TV outside the UK. Wouldn't this damage the existing syndication relationships that the BBC has set up. I am amased that any broadcaster risk distribution over the internet. Certainty thinking outside the box.
That sounds you are discribing communism. The UK labour party is, on paper at least, a socialist party. They have been in and out of power in the UK since the war, they are demoncratic and while slightly centralising have generally respected the civil and political rights in the same way the other party has. This is also true for the majority of europe and many other contries, where social democratic parties have participated in power.
What I find amusing is that even 15 years after the cold war ended some people can't seperate the communist system of the 'evil enemy' from socialism. Face it mate, Tony Blair, who you seem to be a fan of, is the leader of the UK socialist party.
"why is the leader of a nominally socialist party tied into this destructive alliance..."
If he truly was socialist, he would not deserve office.
I'm always amused at how the cold warm polarised the world. I sat on a train yesterday and listerned to a couple of americans talking to their son. The father accused the son of being almost 'socialistic'. I gathered from the tone that this was ment to be an insult and the son quickly distanced himself from this position. I don't have any particular feelings for support of a socialist party, but having seen socialist parties come and go with out the world falling down, I find that knee jerk fear of the word quite odd.
Isn't this a repeat of a story put up a month or so ago? I had a quick look on the old articles and couldn't find it but I have a strong sense of deja vu.
OK, there have been 20 odd missions to mars so far (it's in that ball park - don't ask me to name them all). However only about 6 have succeded! These include fully tested, fully funded fully cold war 'must bloody beat the other faction' missions that went BANG. That is a lot more BANG for your buck than Beagle will make.
When it comes to interplanetary missions we AIN'T there yet. OK you spend a billion on it maybe you will get it's success rate up to 50/50. Why bother? Why not send 10 missions for 1 tenth of the price with a 33% success record? There is no such thing as a perfect mission!! Not to another planet, not at this stage.
Just 'cos it ain't got no wheels and the budget was small doesn't mean that it isn't any good.
It's named after the beagle, which if I remember rightly was the ship Captain Cook used to sail to Australia and through the pacific. I guess it's trying to conjure up the image of exploring to great unknown.
It's unlikely to do much to boast the british space industry. There is little space funding outside british funding of ESA and ESA only contracts out to companies/universities for an equivalent sum as that nation put in. There doesn't look like the UK is prepared to change it's space funding arrangements (too much of research funding is tied up on the ground based observatory stuff) and so the british space industry is unlikely to benifit. This coupled with the increased protectionism in NASA will limit any boast British space projects might get.
This is a normal part of the peer review. We will have to see if this new paper stands up or has flaws itself. Don't hold you breath. The way we view the world has not suddenly just changed. There is just a new strand to the science to be looked at and investigated in more detail.
This misses something. This must be a reduction in CO2 relative to conventional power generation. How else can a powerplant reduce CO2 when it is producing it.
This is a growing issue at the moment. Initially the US ask for data as a security measure and the European Union complied. Recently the US has stepped back from it's pledge to only use the data for security checks. The US doesn't want to give assurances that the data wont be used for other purposes.
This looks like it may escalate. There are suggestions that european airlines may loose landing lights and face fines. This could lead to a tit for tat response. Airline war anyone?
See this article in computerworld.com and hi pakistan has info on the US threat to deny landing rights while out-law.com has news on the EU response.
the aerosol issue is a different one. Aerosols (airborn particals) are thought to dampen climate change. Aerosols come from factories, volcanos, cars and yes, spray cans project tiny droplets of water which are, yes, aerosols, but no, they probably don't effect global temperatures much. The one's he refers to are volcanic and industry derived particles. The worry is that as industry becomes cleaner a greater portion of the global warming will become apparent. Just follow his link:
The bulk of the earths water not contained in the oceans is hold up in the glaciers. Antartica's being the bigest by far, with the greenland ice sheet still being substantial.
These glaciers would substantially add to the earth's sea levels but are more stable than the sea ice. Current projections give the greenland glaciers around 300 years before they become totally unstable, whilst the model simulations suggest that the antartic sheets will remain stable (and my even grow abit, due to increased percipitation). Cryosphere (ice) models are perhaps the lest well understood, and these projections may well change as our models improve.
which makes it slightly ironic that she is proposing admendments to the bill then doesn't it!!
I think that the tools are available for all platforms that the technically minded kids will be able to get a taste of. In many ways it is more straight forward now. As the internet becomes a greater part of out lives, access to information and support becomes easier. Ok there is a bigger jungle out there (rather than the tangle of backyard over growth that was available in the 1980s), many more programming languages, many more potentials to find yourself out of your depth, but there is also much more documentation of other peoples experience.
Unlike the ESA mission which achieved an earth orbit before heading for Mars, the NASA mission will launch directly at mars. This means that the speed, and the exact timing of the launch to coincide with the position of the earth (so that it IS pointing at Mars when they press go) has to be down to an incrediable accuracy.
be amased, be very amased, because we CAN do some cool stuff.
I'd be interested in what caused this change in plan?
There is no point in inventing the wheel 3 times. We all gain from pooling scientific data. Previous mars missions inform the current ones. The current ones inform future ones. The different missions compliment each other, scientificially at least.