I understand it fine. Which is why I don't understand why the thing isn't made so bulletproof that you could test the wheels with the entire crew jumping up and down on top of the rover.
Because then it'd be far too heavy.
There are more consequences of weight than just having to have a (super-linearly) larger rocket, though that is a significant issue given NASA's budget and not something that can be ignored even if it were the only issue.
The MSL is already so heavy that they can't use the simple airbag landing method they used for Spirit and Opportunity. Instead, they're having to use a pretty crazy method of dangling the rover by a cable from a rocket-propelled landing platform.
Increase the weight significantly, and that method becomes much harder if not impossible. It's a square-cube problem. The strength of the rover's structure goes up as the cross-sectional area, but the mass -- and thus the force experienced on landing for a given velocity -- goes up as the volume. In a very real sense, your heavier rover is actually weaker when it comes to this aspect of the mission. Which means you need much larger rockets that are simultaneously much more precise in absolute terms, and thus vastly more precise in percentage terms.
I don't know what related industry you work in, but if weight isn't a dominant issue then it's really not that closely related to space travel.
Yeah, really. Six figures for a programming job is fantastic pretty much no matter how you slice it. If it seems like the guy who's making ten times that isn't contributing a commensurate amount over what you do, well, welcome to reality. Especially the reality of trading and finance.
I understand that you feel that anyone who wants to publish any kind of scientific findings receives equal time, money, and attention for having done so. I have never witnessed this personally, while I have seen the opposite.
Touching on my previous point a minute, do you think that the science has as much bearing on what gets studied and what does not as the human angle does?
You seem to conflate what is researched with what findings are published. That isn't how it works. You don't study "humans cause global warming" or "global warming doesn't exist". You study the climate and arrive at the conclusion your research leads you to. Even if it's not what the people paying for the research want to hear. In terms of attention from the scientific community, that goes mostly to novelty, as in solid papers that contradict or substantially add to existing theory. "Me too" papers do not receive much attention.
That's my personal experience in an actual University research position. In one instance my professor conducted DARPA-funded research where his ultimate conclusion was "Nope, not going to work." Did he lose his funding? Was his research suppressed? Did they demand that he change his conclusion? Ha, no on all counts, he continued to be one of the top funding draws in the department including from DARPA.
You are thinking that researchers are only successful if they achieve the desired results, whether its the results desired by their sponsors, or desired by the rest of the community. This simply isn't true, and that's both historically and in my own personal experience as a researcher. And if you're the pioneer who up-ends existing thought with a solid paper, you become famous.
Paying for a specific pre-determined conclusion no matter what the data says, rather than for the research itself, is a very small portion of all research. Plenty of research is payed for hoping and wanting a specific outcome, even by the researcher, but it's the results that matter.
A perfect example of how your thinking doesn't play out in reality: The Bush Administration 100% wanted an "AGW isn't real" conclusion from the scientists directly employed by the Executive branch. If there was ever a case of a research sponsor wanting a specific result no matter what, that was it. But as we know, the researchers nevertheless reached the opposite conclusion, such that the Administration felt the need to edit it for their own benefit. Notice: The paymasters were so unscrupulous that they would have a non-scientist political bureaucrat edit a scientific paper, but could not convince the scientists to arrive at the conclusion they wanted. Because the research did not support that conclusion.
Obviously human psychology plays a role in the scientific community. But it doesn't work how you think it does. Scientists may hold on to their favorite theories and be reluctant to change, but they don't ostracize and reject scientists with contrary theories who publish compelling results with good science. Look at Michelson and Moreley, whose own experiment contradicted their deeply-held belief in the Luminiferous Aether. It was the popular theory at the time, yet their negative result was not rejected by the scientific community.
Do we really think that cosmology has anything near the amount of real, human, and political capital in play?
Human capital, as in psychological? Cosmology has way, way more. We're talking about the fundamentals of how the universe operates, and many scientists have very strong psychological aversions to some of the weirdness we've discovered. Segueing into particle physics (which is ever more closely related), there are videos online where Richard Feynman describes the reaction to his Quantum Electrodynamics talk at a physics conference, and the shocked and disbelieving response of the audience. Einstein's Special Relativity was received the same way at first, and Einst
Let's try and not go completely off the rails by claiming that I am every denier you have ever faced on the internet, that I am incapable of facing reality, or what-have-you.
No, you're a specific denier who I have faced on the Internet before. If you'd like to face reality, now would be a perfect time.
In a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.
If you want to expand that to 'no dissent allowed', that's all well and good, but you really have to acknowledge that the consensus is at a minimum drastically diminished. Either level of severity supports my main thesis here - One cannot put much value in the consensus in and of itself.
The central argument of your thesis -- that dissent is rejected -- is false. Dissent is not rejected. Bad papers and science are rejected. Good papers and science that dissent are accepted. As the link clearly shows. That's the reality that you aren't accepting.
The specific paper the comment was referring to was going to be published by the journal, despite being a terribly flawed paper, simply because it was dissenting. Basically the opposite bias of the one you claim. And how do we know that this paper was singled out for terribleness by the researchers, and not merely because it dissented? Because of all the other papers that are published that dissent, but aren't terrible. Your whole thesis falls apart in the face of the reality that good, dissenting opinions are accepted by the climatology community.
That this constitutes a small percentage of the published literature tells you something about the state of the science. It means there is relatively little to dissent about among those who are studied. In areas where there is ample room for dissent -- cosmology is a good example -- there are many papers published that wildly disagree with the most popular theories.
"Consensus" is a vague term and was never intended to imply unanimous agreement. Simply a very large preponderance of agreement.
Your argument that this consensus is invalid (or merely 'drastically diminished', please let's not quibble) because the consensus was created in an environment where disagreement with the pre-formed consensus is rejected, is demonstrably false.
I remember hearing that a lot in 2009. Don't hear it so much this year, for some reason.
Well the reason you heard it then was because many people's subjective experience of the weather was different than the climate. People in the northern hemisphere were getting cold weather and lots of snow, and saying "Ha! Global Warming my ass!" in which case it's important to note that weather and climate are not the same, and increasing global temperatures aren't necessarily going to mean that there will be higher temperatures in a particular region. 2009 was nevertheless one of the hottest years on record.
But then again, sometimes they do coincide. So far, it's been a very hot summer for us in the Northern Hemisphere, and hey, the global temperatures are also higher than ever before. So real reason to point it out; local weather and global climate happen to have coincided for the people who are having the conversation (mostly US and Europe here on/.).
Weather still doesn't prove climate change, if that was your point. Global warming is indicated by record high global temperature, not our hot summer. Notice that the global average is a record high, even though half the planet is in the cold part of their year.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was an Argentinian blog where the "Global warming my ass, look outside!" conversation was happening right now.
I like how they added in the implication that this was referring to all skeptical research. Nice abuse of lack of context, there. Those were specific papers which were monstrously flawed. Valid skeptical research is in fact published. As this handy link from another post shows.
But you don't want to hear that. Obviously if only a few percent of climate researchers disagree with global warming, it's because the huge number that otherwise would have disagreed in published papers were run out of time.
You can try to read things into Climategate emails, or you can look at the actual reality of the climate science field.
Keep telling yourself there's no dissent allowed. That this contradicts reality must make it appealingly self-consistent within your worldview.
The funny thing about this community, though, is that the 'heretics' are ejected from it. You do just as well waiting to find Muslims amongst the Catholics. In other words, in a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.
The funny thing about that assessment is that it is a completely made up assumption.
There are climate scientists who dissent from the "consensus" and they are not ejected. They are still active and accepted.
They just don't dissent nearly as much as you do, because being real scientists they must look at the real data and theory and its real weaknesses, and those weaknesses are much less than you assume.
I suppose since you won't find any climate scientists who agree with you that the whole thing is a baseless sham, that means your first assumption is correct. It couldn't just be that your opinion has no basis in reality.
What I found most fascinating in the summary was the statement "it's been a scorcher for all of us" (or words to that effect), which is both untrue (we've had a few hot days here, mostly cool) and refers to WEATHER and not CLIMATE. So, when WEATHER supports the global warming argument, WEATHER is proof. When WEATHER doesn't support the global warming argument, we're told that "WEATHER ISN'T CLIMATE, YOU MOUTH BREATHING KNUCKLE DRAGGER."
No what proves it is the record high GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE. Not your LOCAL TEMPERATURE. The first is CLIMATE the second is WEATHER. Way to just demonstrate that you still don't understand the difference, or what scientists are actually looking at.
A line about it being a scorcher for people "around the world" (not everyone) doesn't change that.
Which Earth was used to conduct these experiments that provided the evidence? Are we confusing "the scientific method" with "correlation" again?
Our earth. The scientific method is about making predictions, and matching those predictions with observation. What, you think observations of historical facts don't count, and only by examining a human-industry-less earth that is otherwise identical can you possibly be doing science?
What a cute conception of science you have! I'll let all the geologists and paleontologists know they aren't doing science according to someone's uninformed assumption of what science is! "Correlation isn't causation", that's really all you've got.
You mean the ones who keep shouting down anyone who dares question the science behind global warming, calling them mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers, even when some of those people doing the questioning are climate scientists?
Tell you that you don't understand what you're talking about isn't shouting you down.
People who actually do understand, and are questioning the conclusions of climate scientist, are also climate scientists and they are doing good work.
But their questions are NOTHING like your questions. Because they do understand.
But keep painting yourself as the shouted-down voice of rationality. It's funny. Obfuscant. Heh. I like that too.
On the bridge of the Enterprise, I have no problems with Number One. Number two is a different matter. That's why I use Star Fleet brand enemas. With a Star Fleet Enema, I can boldy go like no one has gone before!
Yeah, stupid meteorologists, talking about "cold fronts". No such thing! They should say "Fronts containing less heat." But then again all fronts contain heat, so what's a warm front? It's just warm compared to cold fronts.
Maybe it's because of my electrical engineering schooling and years spent acting as if it was the positive charge carriers that were moving, but I don't see any problem with saying "let the cold in". Cold is a negative heat delta. Big whoop. When you open the door in the winter, cold air blasts you in the face, cold air got in the house, and the house becomes colder. You let the cold in.
"Cold" may not exist but the concept is valid, and you can only tell the difference because of absolute zero. It's very similar to negative energy, a common concept in physics. The question of whether or not it "exists" vs is a valid way to conceptualize energies that only average to zero, is just how you view it.
There are legitimate contexts where it is 100% pedantically accurate to talk about things that don't exist.
You can tell from photos at low velocity/altitude (and many reports from people who worked on them) that they leaked... But it's true, nobody has verified that they stop.
Just a quick thought, but at low speeds aerodynamic efficiency is of very low impact (eg a barge at 2 kts and a kayak at 2 kts). The faster they go, the more that efficiency matters - having a material that could deform to improve flow as speeds increased could be a good thing - especially if it were used around the freight compartments of a tractor-trailer or rail car: squishing-down to more evenly flow around the carried contents could have some promise.
The question, though, is why does not having an efficient shape at low speeds matter, if you have to be able to assume an efficient shape anyway? If you have a vehicle designed to be able to travel at speeds where it matters, why not design it with an aerodynamic shape to begin with?
Since it won't let you carry more cargo, the only thing that comes to mind is maybe ease of loading and unloading cargo. Which it seems like there are easier ways to address.
Besides, land and water based freight is more about throughput not velocity. We aren't going to replace a huge freighter with it's giant pile of stackable shipping containers with some speedy aerodynamic thing. When we want shipping to be fast, we use planes, which are already designed to be aerodynamic.:)
Well from context I'm assuming they're talking about space junk... But that still doesn't answer the question of what kind of junk. Space heroin? Space Chinese boats? Space genitals?
Also from context, I'm assuming they're implying that entering their apartment will result in one being torn apart by said space junk much like a satellite caught in the path of orbiting debris.
Which makes the possibility that they meant genitals even more horrifying.
coal burning which is of course more CO2 being released into the environment that SUVs put out and give you less gas mileage than an economy car so of course it wasn't green enough for California.
Of course that's wrong on both counts. Coal plants are significantly more efficient than vehicle ICEs, such that multiplying transmission, battery, and electric motor efficiencies (which are quite high except battery storage) you end up well ahead. Part of why is because size and weight are non-issues for the coal plant, and because it can always operate at optimum RPM. So you've already won on CO2, but overall emissions are better because, again, weight is no issue so you can have as heavy scrubbers or other emissions controls you want, while for a vehicle ICE any weight in emissions controls must be balanced against lost fuel efficiency from carrying the extra weight.
And that's with coal, pretty much the worst case. And sure, it's not that great a win, it's not like you can tool around in your electric vehicle acting like you're not polluting the environment at all when the electricity is coming from a coal plant. But it's better. And here's the best part: As the percentage of power coming from non-coal sources increases, which we need to do anyway, then the environmental friendliness of your electric vehicle increases without you doing anything.
Decoupling energy generation from transportation is going to create a lot of opportunities for improvement that kvetching about how electric vehicles don't help because the power comes from coal plants can't.
I really have to ask something of any engineers reading this who work in R&D- how many of you spend your dev time reading patents to find useful tech you could use in what you're developing?
Alternatively how many of you avoid doing so at all cost for fear getting 3 times the penalties if someone sues you for something you didn't think your tech infringed but is later found to infringe?
Engineer working in R&D here; you nailed it with Option B there (and really the whole post).
I was explicitly instructed by our legal department to never conduct patent searches. The mere act of doing so, even if I never read the relevant patent, could suggest knowing violation and thus treble damages.
Instead, the lawyer said that when our product unintentionally but inevitably infringes on another company's patent, we sit down across from them with our big pile of patents which is hopefully bigger than theirs and come to an agreement. The main reason we try to acquire such a big pile of patents is exactly for these defensive purposes.
One thing I'm not sure about is what happens during our patenting process. We write up descriptions of ideas we came up with in the course of designing the product that we think are patentable, and send them off to legal, and they'll send them back to us for editing and such. What they do on their end is what I'm not sure of. I would think they don't do searches for prior art for the same reason we don't, but patents applications are supposed to list relevant prior art and I can't imagine the Patent Office doesn't get suspicious when every single application lists zero prior art. Well, okay, I can imagine that.
The fact that emissions and mpg become ever more important and that there's less room on the road are indications of that. Were it not, and were the Dodge, MB and Golf available today in a new state, with the same (easily upgraded) mod cons, which one would you prefer ?
If emissions and mpg didn't matter, which would I prefer? Well I hear that in that universe the Golf is powered by unicorn farts and it leaves a sweet-smelling rainbow trail from the exhaust pipe. So I'd take the Golf!
Here's an observation about living within constraints, that I think will be echoed tenfold in future generations: Gee, maybe if they had focused more on efficiency then, we wouldn't have to restrict ourselves so much today to deal with their lack of foresight.
True. But the number it has found has promising suggestions.
Indeed. It's very promising that as soon as we are capable of detecting a new class of planet, we do, and lots of em. Even outside of Kepler. I would think the prevailing prediction at this point would be that planetary systems and planets are common, and we are likely going to discover many planets in the habitable zones of their stars.
The nice thing though is that we only have to wait a couple years to actually know. Which is why I think we should just wait on declaring "earth-like" planets found. The Kepler mission is designed to find those planets, earth-size and in the habitable zone, so let's not jump the gun is all I'm saying. Finding tons of earth-size planets is in and of itself quite awesome.:)
Isn't our solar system's ecliptic plane closely aligned with the galactic plane?That's what I remember from the last time I actually looked at the Milky Way up in the sky, anyway.
No, it's actually close to perpendicular. Earth is tilted relative about 30 degrees to the solar ecliptic, still well off the galactic plane. That's why the Milky Way kinda goes diagonally in the sky, and the planets usually don't appear in it.
I had always assumed this was for the same reason that the plane of rotation of most of the planets are aligned with their planes of revolution around the sun...
It is very similar. Think of the planets as systems orbiting the sun much like the solar system is relative to the galaxy. Overall the planets orbit in the same plane around the sun since the planetary system is drawn towards the solar plane and the overall angular momentum. Each planetary system though has its own angular momentum and rotation plane. Some are wildly skewed from the solar plane. For the moons around the planets, the planet is the dominant source of gravity. Just like for the planets, the sun is dominant and the tug towards the galactic plane is very tiny.
I'm not sure if there's any bias at all, but having other star systems appear edge on to us is more or less a matter of chance. So of all the stars Kepler is looking at, only a small fraction of planets are even possible for it to see. Which makes the number it has already discovered that much more amazing.
Let us have our fun. There are many rocks of a size, and we didn't know that before.
Hey, I think earth-size is plenty exciting without having to say earth-like. Personally I think earth-like should at least imply in the habitable zone. Which is what the Kepler mission was specifically designed to be able to find, so I see no need to jump the gun when just finding so many exoplanets is itself a great discovery.
We're 1 year and four months into a 3 1/2 year mission. When you consider that such planets happening to orbit their sun in such a way as for their eclipse to fall upon us in the short time available to see so many is wonderful. I doubt we'll see many of these twice in the habitable zone due to orbital precession.
I might be getting my time-lines wrong, but last March was when it was launched, and the 3 1/2 year mission is from first observation since it's needed to ensure at least 3 observations of earth-like (in the sense of having an ~1 yr orbit around a sol-like star) planet, and ideally 4. So it's actually less time than that into the actual mission. Which means it's basically impossible for us to have seen earth-size planets in earth-like orbits.
Which is fine. The mere fact that planets appear to be so common is a fantastic indicator that earth-like planets exist in quantity. We'll hopefully know more by the time Kepler is done.
I don't know about precession... is precession of the axis of rotation around the star really going to make that much difference in just a couple orbits?
Well you'd think that if more die, fewer would live, but zombie chips are actually a pretty significant problem in manufacturing.
It's funny I just realized reading your reply that I used the wrong word in like half that post, but it just feels so weird to call the plural of silicon die "dice" that I've never internalized it. But I have no problem calling the singular of gaming dice a die.
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I understand it fine. Which is why I don't understand why the thing isn't made so bulletproof that you could test the wheels with the entire crew jumping up and down on top of the rover.
Because then it'd be far too heavy.
There are more consequences of weight than just having to have a (super-linearly) larger rocket, though that is a significant issue given NASA's budget and not something that can be ignored even if it were the only issue.
The MSL is already so heavy that they can't use the simple airbag landing method they used for Spirit and Opportunity. Instead, they're having to use a pretty crazy method of dangling the rover by a cable from a rocket-propelled landing platform.
Increase the weight significantly, and that method becomes much harder if not impossible. It's a square-cube problem. The strength of the rover's structure goes up as the cross-sectional area, but the mass -- and thus the force experienced on landing for a given velocity -- goes up as the volume. In a very real sense, your heavier rover is actually weaker when it comes to this aspect of the mission. Which means you need much larger rockets that are simultaneously much more precise in absolute terms, and thus vastly more precise in percentage terms.
I don't know what related industry you work in, but if weight isn't a dominant issue then it's really not that closely related to space travel.
If they are making too much, they are sucking a lot of money out of the system.
Welcome to reality. Especially the reality of trading and finance.
If this blood-sucking is stopped on its tracks, the overall economy will be more efficient. Out with those fucking leaches!
Agreed, though honestly, good luck with that.
But that still leaves me with no sympathy for a programmer earning a mere six figures.
Yeah, really. Six figures for a programming job is fantastic pretty much no matter how you slice it. If it seems like the guy who's making ten times that isn't contributing a commensurate amount over what you do, well, welcome to reality. Especially the reality of trading and finance.
I understand that you feel that anyone who wants to publish any kind of scientific findings receives equal time, money, and attention for having done so. I have never witnessed this personally, while I have seen the opposite.
Touching on my previous point a minute, do you think that the science has as much bearing on what gets studied and what does not as the human angle does?
You seem to conflate what is researched with what findings are published. That isn't how it works. You don't study "humans cause global warming" or "global warming doesn't exist". You study the climate and arrive at the conclusion your research leads you to. Even if it's not what the people paying for the research want to hear. In terms of attention from the scientific community, that goes mostly to novelty, as in solid papers that contradict or substantially add to existing theory. "Me too" papers do not receive much attention.
That's my personal experience in an actual University research position. In one instance my professor conducted DARPA-funded research where his ultimate conclusion was "Nope, not going to work." Did he lose his funding? Was his research suppressed? Did they demand that he change his conclusion? Ha, no on all counts, he continued to be one of the top funding draws in the department including from DARPA.
You are thinking that researchers are only successful if they achieve the desired results, whether its the results desired by their sponsors, or desired by the rest of the community. This simply isn't true, and that's both historically and in my own personal experience as a researcher. And if you're the pioneer who up-ends existing thought with a solid paper, you become famous.
Paying for a specific pre-determined conclusion no matter what the data says, rather than for the research itself, is a very small portion of all research. Plenty of research is payed for hoping and wanting a specific outcome, even by the researcher, but it's the results that matter.
A perfect example of how your thinking doesn't play out in reality: The Bush Administration 100% wanted an "AGW isn't real" conclusion from the scientists directly employed by the Executive branch. If there was ever a case of a research sponsor wanting a specific result no matter what, that was it. But as we know, the researchers nevertheless reached the opposite conclusion, such that the Administration felt the need to edit it for their own benefit. Notice: The paymasters were so unscrupulous that they would have a non-scientist political bureaucrat edit a scientific paper, but could not convince the scientists to arrive at the conclusion they wanted. Because the research did not support that conclusion.
Obviously human psychology plays a role in the scientific community. But it doesn't work how you think it does. Scientists may hold on to their favorite theories and be reluctant to change, but they don't ostracize and reject scientists with contrary theories who publish compelling results with good science. Look at Michelson and Moreley, whose own experiment contradicted their deeply-held belief in the Luminiferous Aether. It was the popular theory at the time, yet their negative result was not rejected by the scientific community.
Do we really think that cosmology has anything near the amount of real, human, and political capital in play?
Human capital, as in psychological? Cosmology has way, way more. We're talking about the fundamentals of how the universe operates, and many scientists have very strong psychological aversions to some of the weirdness we've discovered. Segueing into particle physics (which is ever more closely related), there are videos online where Richard Feynman describes the reaction to his Quantum Electrodynamics talk at a physics conference, and the shocked and disbelieving response of the audience. Einstein's Special Relativity was received the same way at first, and Einst
"Climate change isn't happening, and the cause is anthropogenic" would have been clearer and funnier too imo.
Let's try and not go completely off the rails by claiming that I am every denier you have ever faced on the internet, that I am incapable of facing reality, or what-have-you.
No, you're a specific denier who I have faced on the Internet before. If you'd like to face reality, now would be a perfect time.
In a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.
If you want to expand that to 'no dissent allowed', that's all well and good, but you really have to acknowledge that the consensus is at a minimum drastically diminished. Either level of severity supports my main thesis here - One cannot put much value in the consensus in and of itself.
The central argument of your thesis -- that dissent is rejected -- is false. Dissent is not rejected. Bad papers and science are rejected. Good papers and science that dissent are accepted. As the link clearly shows. That's the reality that you aren't accepting.
The specific paper the comment was referring to was going to be published by the journal, despite being a terribly flawed paper, simply because it was dissenting. Basically the opposite bias of the one you claim. And how do we know that this paper was singled out for terribleness by the researchers, and not merely because it dissented? Because of all the other papers that are published that dissent, but aren't terrible. Your whole thesis falls apart in the face of the reality that good, dissenting opinions are accepted by the climatology community.
That this constitutes a small percentage of the published literature tells you something about the state of the science. It means there is relatively little to dissent about among those who are studied. In areas where there is ample room for dissent -- cosmology is a good example -- there are many papers published that wildly disagree with the most popular theories.
"Consensus" is a vague term and was never intended to imply unanimous agreement. Simply a very large preponderance of agreement.
Your argument that this consensus is invalid (or merely 'drastically diminished', please let's not quibble) because the consensus was created in an environment where disagreement with the pre-formed consensus is rejected, is demonstrably false.
That's reality. Can you accept it?
I thought weather is not climate.
I remember hearing that a lot in 2009. Don't hear it so much this year, for some reason.
Well the reason you heard it then was because many people's subjective experience of the weather was different than the climate. People in the northern hemisphere were getting cold weather and lots of snow, and saying "Ha! Global Warming my ass!" in which case it's important to note that weather and climate are not the same, and increasing global temperatures aren't necessarily going to mean that there will be higher temperatures in a particular region. 2009 was nevertheless one of the hottest years on record.
But then again, sometimes they do coincide. So far, it's been a very hot summer for us in the Northern Hemisphere, and hey, the global temperatures are also higher than ever before. So real reason to point it out; local weather and global climate happen to have coincided for the people who are having the conversation (mostly US and Europe here on /.).
Weather still doesn't prove climate change, if that was your point. Global warming is indicated by record high global temperature, not our hot summer. Notice that the global average is a record high, even though half the planet is in the cold part of their year.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was an Argentinian blog where the "Global warming my ass, look outside!" conversation was happening right now.
But it's the globe as a whole that matters.
I like how they added in the implication that this was referring to all skeptical research. Nice abuse of lack of context, there. Those were specific papers which were monstrously flawed. Valid skeptical research is in fact published. As this handy link from another post shows.
But you don't want to hear that. Obviously if only a few percent of climate researchers disagree with global warming, it's because the huge number that otherwise would have disagreed in published papers were run out of time.
You can try to read things into Climategate emails, or you can look at the actual reality of the climate science field.
Keep telling yourself there's no dissent allowed. That this contradicts reality must make it appealingly self-consistent within your worldview.
The funny thing about this community, though, is that the 'heretics' are ejected from it. You do just as well waiting to find Muslims amongst the Catholics. In other words, in a community that rejects dissent, consensus is a non-fact.
The funny thing about that assessment is that it is a completely made up assumption.
There are climate scientists who dissent from the "consensus" and they are not ejected. They are still active and accepted.
They just don't dissent nearly as much as you do, because being real scientists they must look at the real data and theory and its real weaknesses, and those weaknesses are much less than you assume.
I suppose since you won't find any climate scientists who agree with you that the whole thing is a baseless sham, that means your first assumption is correct. It couldn't just be that your opinion has no basis in reality.
What I found most fascinating in the summary was the statement "it's been a scorcher for all of us" (or words to that effect), which is both untrue (we've had a few hot days here, mostly cool) and refers to WEATHER and not CLIMATE. So, when WEATHER supports the global warming argument, WEATHER is proof. When WEATHER doesn't support the global warming argument, we're told that "WEATHER ISN'T CLIMATE, YOU MOUTH BREATHING KNUCKLE DRAGGER."
No what proves it is the record high GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE. Not your LOCAL TEMPERATURE. The first is CLIMATE the second is WEATHER. Way to just demonstrate that you still don't understand the difference, or what scientists are actually looking at.
A line about it being a scorcher for people "around the world" (not everyone) doesn't change that.
Which Earth was used to conduct these experiments that provided the evidence? Are we confusing "the scientific method" with "correlation" again?
Our earth. The scientific method is about making predictions, and matching those predictions with observation. What, you think observations of historical facts don't count, and only by examining a human-industry-less earth that is otherwise identical can you possibly be doing science?
What a cute conception of science you have! I'll let all the geologists and paleontologists know they aren't doing science according to someone's uninformed assumption of what science is! "Correlation isn't causation", that's really all you've got.
You mean the ones who keep shouting down anyone who dares question the science behind global warming, calling them mouth-breathing knuckle-draggers, even when some of those people doing the questioning are climate scientists?
Tell you that you don't understand what you're talking about isn't shouting you down.
People who actually do understand, and are questioning the conclusions of climate scientist, are also climate scientists and they are doing good work.
But their questions are NOTHING like your questions. Because they do understand.
But keep painting yourself as the shouted-down voice of rationality. It's funny. Obfuscant. Heh. I like that too.
Hello, this is Captain Jean Luc Picard.
On the bridge of the Enterprise, I have no problems with Number One. Number two is a different matter. That's why I use Star Fleet brand enemas. With a Star Fleet Enema, I can boldy go like no one has gone before!
Yeah, stupid meteorologists, talking about "cold fronts". No such thing! They should say "Fronts containing less heat." But then again all fronts contain heat, so what's a warm front? It's just warm compared to cold fronts.
Maybe it's because of my electrical engineering schooling and years spent acting as if it was the positive charge carriers that were moving, but I don't see any problem with saying "let the cold in". Cold is a negative heat delta. Big whoop. When you open the door in the winter, cold air blasts you in the face, cold air got in the house, and the house becomes colder. You let the cold in.
"Cold" may not exist but the concept is valid, and you can only tell the difference because of absolute zero. It's very similar to negative energy, a common concept in physics. The question of whether or not it "exists" vs is a valid way to conceptualize energies that only average to zero, is just how you view it.
There are legitimate contexts where it is 100% pedantically accurate to talk about things that don't exist.
You can tell from photos at low velocity/altitude (and many reports from people who worked on them) that they leaked... But it's true, nobody has verified that they stop.
Just a quick thought, but at low speeds aerodynamic efficiency is of very low impact (eg a barge at 2 kts and a kayak at 2 kts). The faster they go, the more that efficiency matters - having a material that could deform to improve flow as speeds increased could be a good thing - especially if it were used around the freight compartments of a tractor-trailer or rail car: squishing-down to more evenly flow around the carried contents could have some promise.
The question, though, is why does not having an efficient shape at low speeds matter, if you have to be able to assume an efficient shape anyway? If you have a vehicle designed to be able to travel at speeds where it matters, why not design it with an aerodynamic shape to begin with?
Since it won't let you carry more cargo, the only thing that comes to mind is maybe ease of loading and unloading cargo. Which it seems like there are easier ways to address.
Besides, land and water based freight is more about throughput not velocity. We aren't going to replace a huge freighter with it's giant pile of stackable shipping containers with some speedy aerodynamic thing. When we want shipping to be fast, we use planes, which are already designed to be aerodynamic. :)
Well from context I'm assuming they're talking about space junk... But that still doesn't answer the question of what kind of junk. Space heroin? Space Chinese boats? Space genitals?
Also from context, I'm assuming they're implying that entering their apartment will result in one being torn apart by said space junk much like a satellite caught in the path of orbiting debris.
Which makes the possibility that they meant genitals even more horrifying.
coal burning which is of course more CO2 being released into the environment that SUVs put out and give you less gas mileage than an economy car so of course it wasn't green enough for California.
Of course that's wrong on both counts. Coal plants are significantly more efficient than vehicle ICEs, such that multiplying transmission, battery, and electric motor efficiencies (which are quite high except battery storage) you end up well ahead. Part of why is because size and weight are non-issues for the coal plant, and because it can always operate at optimum RPM. So you've already won on CO2, but overall emissions are better because, again, weight is no issue so you can have as heavy scrubbers or other emissions controls you want, while for a vehicle ICE any weight in emissions controls must be balanced against lost fuel efficiency from carrying the extra weight.
And that's with coal, pretty much the worst case. And sure, it's not that great a win, it's not like you can tool around in your electric vehicle acting like you're not polluting the environment at all when the electricity is coming from a coal plant. But it's better. And here's the best part: As the percentage of power coming from non-coal sources increases, which we need to do anyway, then the environmental friendliness of your electric vehicle increases without you doing anything.
Decoupling energy generation from transportation is going to create a lot of opportunities for improvement that kvetching about how electric vehicles don't help because the power comes from coal plants can't.
I really have to ask something of any engineers reading this who work in R&D- how many of you spend your dev time reading patents to find useful tech you could use in what you're developing?
Alternatively how many of you avoid doing so at all cost for fear getting 3 times the penalties if someone sues you for something you didn't think your tech infringed but is later found to infringe?
Engineer working in R&D here; you nailed it with Option B there (and really the whole post).
I was explicitly instructed by our legal department to never conduct patent searches. The mere act of doing so, even if I never read the relevant patent, could suggest knowing violation and thus treble damages.
Instead, the lawyer said that when our product unintentionally but inevitably infringes on another company's patent, we sit down across from them with our big pile of patents which is hopefully bigger than theirs and come to an agreement. The main reason we try to acquire such a big pile of patents is exactly for these defensive purposes.
One thing I'm not sure about is what happens during our patenting process. We write up descriptions of ideas we came up with in the course of designing the product that we think are patentable, and send them off to legal, and they'll send them back to us for editing and such. What they do on their end is what I'm not sure of. I would think they don't do searches for prior art for the same reason we don't, but patents applications are supposed to list relevant prior art and I can't imagine the Patent Office doesn't get suspicious when every single application lists zero prior art. Well, okay, I can imagine that.
Too many steps. With Superman, the solution starts at spinning and it ends at spinning.
The fact that emissions and mpg become ever more important and that there's less room on the road are indications of that. Were it not, and were the Dodge, MB and Golf available today in a new state, with the same (easily upgraded) mod cons, which one would you prefer ?
If emissions and mpg didn't matter, which would I prefer? Well I hear that in that universe the Golf is powered by unicorn farts and it leaves a sweet-smelling rainbow trail from the exhaust pipe. So I'd take the Golf!
Here's an observation about living within constraints, that I think will be echoed tenfold in future generations: Gee, maybe if they had focused more on efficiency then, we wouldn't have to restrict ourselves so much today to deal with their lack of foresight.
True. But the number it has found has promising suggestions.
Indeed. It's very promising that as soon as we are capable of detecting a new class of planet, we do, and lots of em. Even outside of Kepler. I would think the prevailing prediction at this point would be that planetary systems and planets are common, and we are likely going to discover many planets in the habitable zones of their stars.
The nice thing though is that we only have to wait a couple years to actually know. Which is why I think we should just wait on declaring "earth-like" planets found. The Kepler mission is designed to find those planets, earth-size and in the habitable zone, so let's not jump the gun is all I'm saying. Finding tons of earth-size planets is in and of itself quite awesome. :)
Isn't our solar system's ecliptic plane closely aligned with the galactic plane?That's what I remember from the last time I actually looked at the Milky Way up in the sky, anyway.
No, it's actually close to perpendicular. Earth is tilted relative about 30 degrees to the solar ecliptic, still well off the galactic plane. That's why the Milky Way kinda goes diagonally in the sky, and the planets usually don't appear in it.
I had always assumed this was for the same reason that the plane of rotation of most of the planets are aligned with their planes of revolution around the sun...
It is very similar. Think of the planets as systems orbiting the sun much like the solar system is relative to the galaxy. Overall the planets orbit in the same plane around the sun since the planetary system is drawn towards the solar plane and the overall angular momentum. Each planetary system though has its own angular momentum and rotation plane. Some are wildly skewed from the solar plane. For the moons around the planets, the planet is the dominant source of gravity. Just like for the planets, the sun is dominant and the tug towards the galactic plane is very tiny.
I'm not sure if there's any bias at all, but having other star systems appear edge on to us is more or less a matter of chance. So of all the stars Kepler is looking at, only a small fraction of planets are even possible for it to see. Which makes the number it has already discovered that much more amazing.
Let us have our fun. There are many rocks of a size, and we didn't know that before.
Hey, I think earth-size is plenty exciting without having to say earth-like. Personally I think earth-like should at least imply in the habitable zone. Which is what the Kepler mission was specifically designed to be able to find, so I see no need to jump the gun when just finding so many exoplanets is itself a great discovery.
We're 1 year and four months into a 3 1/2 year mission. When you consider that such planets happening to orbit their sun in such a way as for their eclipse to fall upon us in the short time available to see so many is wonderful. I doubt we'll see many of these twice in the habitable zone due to orbital precession.
I might be getting my time-lines wrong, but last March was when it was launched, and the 3 1/2 year mission is from first observation since it's needed to ensure at least 3 observations of earth-like (in the sense of having an ~1 yr orbit around a sol-like star) planet, and ideally 4. So it's actually less time than that into the actual mission. Which means it's basically impossible for us to have seen earth-size planets in earth-like orbits.
Which is fine. The mere fact that planets appear to be so common is a fantastic indicator that earth-like planets exist in quantity. We'll hopefully know more by the time Kepler is done.
I don't know about precession... is precession of the axis of rotation around the star really going to make that much difference in just a couple orbits?
Well you'd think that if more die, fewer would live, but zombie chips are actually a pretty significant problem in manufacturing.
It's funny I just realized reading your reply that I used the wrong word in like half that post, but it just feels so weird to call the plural of silicon die "dice" that I've never internalized it. But I have no problem calling the singular of gaming dice a die.
It turns out their REAL kink is being cuckolded by powerful military contractors.
Aw man, that is nasty.
I'm kinda baffled why anyone in the military thought a heat ray pain gun would help them achieve satisfaction... but who am I to judge someone's kink?