Any sort of plants in the greenhouse reduce the temperature through evaporation of water and incorporation of energy into the chemicals that make up the plant. The lower temperature makes the system less efficient.
Consider that the cost of 4 square miles of photovoltaic panels would probably be a measurable percent of US GDP. Even 0.4 square miles of them, which would generate the power of this plant, would be much much more expensive.
Nice try. TFA gives a cost of $750e6 for 200e6 watts. That's $3.75 per watt, comparable to modern panels and more expensive than some of the more cost-effective new panels.
1 hour is just a rough guess based on how long rocks or the side of a concrete building feel warm after the sun stops shining on them. How long it would actually last is an engineering task.
The numbers in TFA work out to an efficiency of 1.9% for 4 square miles and a 2000 foot chimney. That's probably the limit for what can be economically built. Even if they could get better efficiency for a larger system, it's not going to scale up much. They're already fighting serious problems with airflow resistance. Photovoltaics routinely exceed 20%.
In their favor, storing an hour or more of heat shouldn't be too difficult, so the output will be more regular that photovoltaics.
The brightness of the image and ambient lighting makes a difference. The more light that goes into your eye, the faster it responds. I run 1600x1200 @ 62 Hz interlaced, and sometimes I notice flicker. When that happens I close the shades, and the flicker goes away.
I've seen automatic updates cause shutdown delays in excess of 20 minutes. Yeah, that really shows a system speedup. And automatic updates of firefox can delay startup several minutes. No fun when something has to be done NOW! and the update comes as a surprise.
If the Chinese are manufacturing below cost, they are losing and everyone else is winning. Soon after they attempt to raise prices or restrict exports to take advantage of their near-monopoly, others will build new refineries or modify old refineries to handle the new product. Time and again, attempts to monopolize have proved failures if not backed by military force.
If the Chinese aren't manufacturing below cost and no-one else is producing, then other countries are in some way making efficient production impossible.
The elements used to make fertilizer don't disappear from the planet. The claims of "sustainable farming" advocates are largely bogus when they extend beyond protection against erosion.
One of the major accomplishments of 20th century economists such as Milton Friedman was to prove that tariffs hurt everyone except the owners of the companies insulated from competition by the tariffs. The tariffs did not help the USA 1870-1920, they made business less efficient than it could have been.
IP laws have a piddling effect compared to the ruinous effects of taxation, regulation, and removal of people from the labor force by welfare and similar systems.
At the time, we had some reason to believe that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. Iraq was deliberately and obviously preventing the inspections that they had agreed to in their surrender in the Kuwait war. All Iraq had to do to prevent the new war was allow inspections. I even remember hearing claims that some Iraqi scientists were feeding Hussein stories that they were developing nuclear weapons, even when they weren't. They feared for their lives if they didn't tell him they were developing weapons. So even the Iraqis didn't know if they were making nukes, yet people call the US liars for using nukes as a reason for attacking. Also remember that there was a period of many months during which the US was massing troops to invade Iraq. Nobody who was paying attention doubted we were going to do it. Iraq could have buried or shipped out of the country anything they wanted to hide in maybe two days, and they had MONTHS to do it.
Was it the right choice? Would we be better off now if Hussein and his tribe were still in power? Could we have done something else to displace Hussein or make him impotent? Beats me.
Oil was a consideration. A dangerous dictatorship was another consideration. Perform for yourself this thought experiment: would we attack Canada if Canada declared it would no longer export oil to the US? How long would the US president remain in office if he tried a fool stunt like that? That should answer the claim that it's all about oil.
As others have noted and you have ignored, there are varieties of atheists. You have deliberately ignored the negative atheist, who merely says "I don't believe in god" and doesn't bother to provide proof.
The positive atheist is the one you are trying to combat. He says "god does not exist", and you say "prove it". Not his job: The burden of proof is on the proposer of the positive.
Nonetheless, the positive atheist can disprove god in most cases, and the remaining cases can be discarded for good reasons. Basically, the positive atheist just says "define god", and the theist will get some rope and hang himself. That's because the definitions fall into one of the following categories:
Self-contradictory. Contradictions can't exist in reality.
Contradicts something known to be true in the real world.
Implies things that contradict things known to be true. This is why Darwin so upset the Christians of his day.
Are incomprehensible. This falls outside the realm of valid discussion, and is reightly ignored.
Falls outside of what we normally are arguing about when we talk about god. "God is love", or "God is that rock" are examples. You can demonstrate those things exist, but so what? It's not really what we're talking about.
God is everything (pantheism). Again, so what?
Everything that remains has no predictive power. The thing defined cannot be tested. It has no effect on anything. Therefor it isn't real.
All that's left now is the claim that god made the universe, set it in motion, and hasn't done anything since then. This is a (dishonest) attempt to avoid testability, but it still fails for the same reason: god can't be tested now, so he doesn't exist now. That's a pretty good reason (after embellishment) to say that god didn't exist before now and won't exist after now.
Looking at it slightly differently and in fewer words, everything that happens is real and happens naturally. Nothing real is left over to be explained by the supernatural (i.e. god). If god isn't required to cause natural actions, then god isn't part of nature, god isn't real.
You can, but you have to be careful about it. And frequently, more than one "is" is needed. For instance:
I am alive. Jumping off cliffs headfirst is not conducive to staying alive. I want to stay alive. Therefor I ought not to jump off cliffs headfirst.
See how easy it is? All you have to do is ignore the lousy philosophers who seek to divorce morality from your ability to see what's going on. And think for yourself.
Well, deism - the claim that god exists but works by natural processes and isn't interested in what's happening today - is technically theism because is involves belief in a god. But since deism claims that god is natural, it falls outside what we usually consider religion, because usually religion involves the supernatural.
Really, it's a mess. Once you start throwing out the rules of logic - and anything that posits a god does - it becomes impossible to determine what anything is, or the truth or falsehood of any proposition.
One mistake - ANY mistake - can lead to the conclusion that something is nothing. From there, it is trivial to "prove" anything. That's why scientists are always re-running tests, trying new experiments to challenge old conclusions. Cleaning up mistakes brings us closer to understanding reality. Also, simple, direct experiments are preferred when possible, because fewer variables and less complication reduces the possibility of errors.
A plausible explanation for why the Greeks, using the advice of stoned hippy chicks, overcame their competitors, is that their competitors were even worse. In actuality, you'd be better off reading Plutarch et. al. to see where leadership came from. Following the incomprehensible advice of oracles was the exception, not the rule.
Some atheists will distinguish between negative (weak) atheism (a lack of belief in god(s)), and positive (strong) atheism (the rejection of claims that god(s) exist). It's a worthwhile distinction, and using it will avoid a lot of pointless arguments.
Christianity involves more than just "belief in Christ", at a minimum it requires that Jesus existed, was (is) divine, and corresponds to a substantial degree to that entity so identified in the Bible (ymmv). Eliminate any of these 3 and call it Christianity, you will be so far from what is generally considered Christianity that people will not understand what you're talking about.
The Bible contains a lot more that just the chronicle of the alleged life of Jesus. It contains a "history", poetry, morality tales, commandments, and many descriptions of the nature of the universe and man's proper place within the universe. Although there are a wide variety of interpretations of this last item, it is what puts Christianity into the class of things that many dictionaries call religion. Christianity is what we call certain groups among a much larger set of groups that also claim that the universe has a particular nature and man has a proper place therein, and we call those groups religions. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. are all groups that make such claims; they are religions. "Islam", "Christianity", "Buddhism", etc. are also nouns, that is they are names of things.
Negative atheism consists of so little that it cannot qualify as a religion. At a minimum, it assumes nothing. An empty universe doesn't believe in god. Advancing a little, mindless objects don't believe in god. Even advancing negative atheism to consideration as part of a philosophical position involves minimal assumptions. (You exist. I exist. Hey, I'm talking to you.) There's not a lot that is normally called religion that can be implied by those assumptions.
Positive atheism makes further assumptions (That the word "god" is worth discussing, that there is a way to determine if things exist or not, etc.) These assumptions imply more about the nature of the universe, but not enough to identify a particular set of beliefs about the universe and man's place therein to call it a religion.
As a last note, although there is some overlap, religion should be distinguished from philosophy. Religions generally incorporate a supernatural element. Religions usually involve worship.
Religion wastes time and other resources that could be otherwise be used productively.
Religion is irrational and anti-rational. A religious person must accept contradictions or avoid thinking about things that challenge his beliefs. Either weakens his ability to think effectively.
Adding genes to fix color blindness really caught my attention. If that can be done, it should be possible to turn anyone into a tetrachromat or better.
Slashdot Mirror
Invisible and pink are mutually exclusive. Q.E.D.
FWIW, "God" as usually defined, is also self-contradictory.
Kinda like a theramin. Or one of those games where you maneuver a marble around on a board and try to keep it out of the holes.
Please, people, the idea is to make better interfaces.
Any sort of plants in the greenhouse reduce the temperature through evaporation of water and incorporation of energy into the chemicals that make up the plant. The lower temperature makes the system less efficient.
Nice try. TFA gives a cost of $750e6 for 200e6 watts. That's $3.75 per watt, comparable to modern panels and more expensive than some of the more cost-effective new panels.
1 hour is just a rough guess based on how long rocks or the side of a concrete building feel warm after the sun stops shining on them. How long it would actually last is an engineering task.
In the 1920s compensation curves on records had not been standardized.
The numbers in TFA work out to an efficiency of 1.9% for 4 square miles and a 2000 foot chimney. That's probably the limit for what can be economically built. Even if they could get better efficiency for a larger system, it's not going to scale up much. They're already fighting serious problems with airflow resistance. Photovoltaics routinely exceed 20%.
In their favor, storing an hour or more of heat shouldn't be too difficult, so the output will be more regular that photovoltaics.
The brightness of the image and ambient lighting makes a difference. The more light that goes into your eye, the faster it responds. I run 1600x1200 @ 62 Hz interlaced, and sometimes I notice flicker. When that happens I close the shades, and the flicker goes away.
Aw, gee. I was hoping to see Creature From the Black Lagoon and the 2 Three Stooges episodes again and again and again and again and again...
More than 130 digits are needed to calculate the the number of electrons that would fill the universe.
I've seen automatic updates cause shutdown delays in excess of 20 minutes. Yeah, that really shows a system speedup. And automatic updates of firefox can delay startup several minutes. No fun when something has to be done NOW! and the update comes as a surprise.
If the Chinese are manufacturing below cost, they are losing and everyone else is winning. Soon after they attempt to raise prices or restrict exports to take advantage of their near-monopoly, others will build new refineries or modify old refineries to handle the new product. Time and again, attempts to monopolize have proved failures if not backed by military force.
If the Chinese aren't manufacturing below cost and no-one else is producing, then other countries are in some way making efficient production impossible.
The elements used to make fertilizer don't disappear from the planet. The claims of "sustainable farming" advocates are largely bogus when they extend beyond protection against erosion.
One of the major accomplishments of 20th century economists such as Milton Friedman was to prove that tariffs hurt everyone except the owners of the companies insulated from competition by the tariffs. The tariffs did not help the USA 1870-1920, they made business less efficient than it could have been.
IP laws have a piddling effect compared to the ruinous effects of taxation, regulation, and removal of people from the labor force by welfare and similar systems.
The USA's economy won't improve, so long as politicians and environmentalists are bent on destroying it, and we don't even realize it.
The, fixed it for you.
At the time, we had some reason to believe that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons. Iraq was deliberately and obviously preventing the inspections that they had agreed to in their surrender in the Kuwait war. All Iraq had to do to prevent the new war was allow inspections. I even remember hearing claims that some Iraqi scientists were feeding Hussein stories that they were developing nuclear weapons, even when they weren't. They feared for their lives if they didn't tell him they were developing weapons. So even the Iraqis didn't know if they were making nukes, yet people call the US liars for using nukes as a reason for attacking. Also remember that there was a period of many months during which the US was massing troops to invade Iraq. Nobody who was paying attention doubted we were going to do it. Iraq could have buried or shipped out of the country anything they wanted to hide in maybe two days, and they had MONTHS to do it.
Was it the right choice? Would we be better off now if Hussein and his tribe were still in power? Could we have done something else to displace Hussein or make him impotent? Beats me.
Oil was a consideration. A dangerous dictatorship was another consideration. Perform for yourself this thought experiment: would we attack Canada if Canada declared it would no longer export oil to the US? How long would the US president remain in office if he tried a fool stunt like that? That should answer the claim that it's all about oil.
Trite but true.
As others have noted and you have ignored, there are varieties of atheists. You have deliberately ignored the negative atheist, who merely says "I don't believe in god" and doesn't bother to provide proof.
The positive atheist is the one you are trying to combat. He says "god does not exist", and you say "prove it". Not his job: The burden of proof is on the proposer of the positive.
Nonetheless, the positive atheist can disprove god in most cases, and the remaining cases can be discarded for good reasons. Basically, the positive atheist just says "define god", and the theist will get some rope and hang himself. That's because the definitions fall into one of the following categories:
All that's left now is the claim that god made the universe, set it in motion, and hasn't done anything since then. This is a (dishonest) attempt to avoid testability, but it still fails for the same reason: god can't be tested now, so he doesn't exist now. That's a pretty good reason (after embellishment) to say that god didn't exist before now and won't exist after now.
Looking at it slightly differently and in fewer words, everything that happens is real and happens naturally. Nothing real is left over to be explained by the supernatural (i.e. god). If god isn't required to cause natural actions, then god isn't part of nature, god isn't real.
You can, but you have to be careful about it. And frequently, more than one "is" is needed. For instance:
I am alive. Jumping off cliffs headfirst is not conducive to staying alive. I want to stay alive. Therefor I ought not to jump off cliffs headfirst.
See how easy it is? All you have to do is ignore the lousy philosophers who seek to divorce morality from your ability to see what's going on. And think for yourself.
Well, deism - the claim that god exists but works by natural processes and isn't interested in what's happening today - is technically theism because is involves belief in a god. But since deism claims that god is natural, it falls outside what we usually consider religion, because usually religion involves the supernatural.
Really, it's a mess. Once you start throwing out the rules of logic - and anything that posits a god does - it becomes impossible to determine what anything is, or the truth or falsehood of any proposition.
One mistake - ANY mistake - can lead to the conclusion that something is nothing. From there, it is trivial to "prove" anything. That's why scientists are always re-running tests, trying new experiments to challenge old conclusions. Cleaning up mistakes brings us closer to understanding reality. Also, simple, direct experiments are preferred when possible, because fewer variables and less complication reduces the possibility of errors.
A plausible explanation for why the Greeks, using the advice of stoned hippy chicks, overcame their competitors, is that their competitors were even worse. In actuality, you'd be better off reading Plutarch et. al. to see where leadership came from. Following the incomprehensible advice of oracles was the exception, not the rule.
Some atheists will distinguish between negative (weak) atheism (a lack of belief in god(s)), and positive (strong) atheism (the rejection of claims that god(s) exist). It's a worthwhile distinction, and using it will avoid a lot of pointless arguments.
Christianity involves more than just "belief in Christ", at a minimum it requires that Jesus existed, was (is) divine, and corresponds to a substantial degree to that entity so identified in the Bible (ymmv). Eliminate any of these 3 and call it Christianity, you will be so far from what is generally considered Christianity that people will not understand what you're talking about.
The Bible contains a lot more that just the chronicle of the alleged life of Jesus. It contains a "history", poetry, morality tales, commandments, and many descriptions of the nature of the universe and man's proper place within the universe. Although there are a wide variety of interpretations of this last item, it is what puts Christianity into the class of things that many dictionaries call religion. Christianity is what we call certain groups among a much larger set of groups that also claim that the universe has a particular nature and man has a proper place therein, and we call those groups religions. Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc. are all groups that make such claims; they are religions. "Islam", "Christianity", "Buddhism", etc. are also nouns, that is they are names of things.
Negative atheism consists of so little that it cannot qualify as a religion. At a minimum, it assumes nothing. An empty universe doesn't believe in god. Advancing a little, mindless objects don't believe in god. Even advancing negative atheism to consideration as part of a philosophical position involves minimal assumptions. (You exist. I exist. Hey, I'm talking to you.) There's not a lot that is normally called religion that can be implied by those assumptions.
Positive atheism makes further assumptions (That the word "god" is worth discussing, that there is a way to determine if things exist or not, etc.) These assumptions imply more about the nature of the universe, but not enough to identify a particular set of beliefs about the universe and man's place therein to call it a religion.
As a last note, although there is some overlap, religion should be distinguished from philosophy. Religions generally incorporate a supernatural element. Religions usually involve worship.
Adding genes to fix color blindness really caught my attention. If that can be done, it should be possible to turn anyone into a tetrachromat or better.