And stop putting words in my mouth. I said it's COMPLEX. I didn't say it behaved DIFFERENTLY.
My repetition of the question should be an indication to you that your answers are unsatisfactory. I surmise from your posting history that you are a proponent of the theory that CO2 emissions are not causing climate change. In order for your theory to be credible, there must be a chain of defensible logic for you to be able to cater for the observations we make of the glass jar - because your theory and the glass jar appear to be at odds. So I'm seeking to clarify exactly how you theory explains this apparent contradiction.
Is CO2 NOT a greenhouse gas after all (that is, the glass jar experiment is a trick or an illusion)
Does CO2 act as a greenhouse gas in the jar but not in the earth's atmosphere? (some unobserved mechanism changes the molecular properties of CO2 when it is in the atmosphere, and simultaneously, some other, previously unobserved greenhouse gas maintains the atmosphere at it's present temperature.)
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as outlined in the experiment and observation of the glass jar, and by application of the laws of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy - but some external mechanism is postulated by your theory which completely counteracts the effect of additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Whilst simultaneously, some other mechanism is affecting the climate or otherwise causing the phenomena that we interpret as confirmation of the theory of Anthropogenic Climate Change. E.g. the increase in ocean temperature, which exactly corresponds to what we would expect from increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, is not caused by the increased concentration of CO2, but by something else. Which you will now explain.
Just as an example, how does CO2 circulate through our atmosphere? Does the circulation of CO2 play a role in transportation of heat into the upper atmosphere? How about when compared to how other greenhouse gases circulate? Is it possible that CO2 can transfer heat into the ocean? Or from the ocean? What about other greenhouse gases? Are there so many other effective GHG's in our atmosphere, that CO2 doesn't realize it's full potential as a GHG? What if the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere is offset by the accompanied increase in surface area of our atmosphere. What if the increased surface area and corresponding increase in heat loss EXCEEDS the increased greenhouse effect?
Are you expecting me to GUESS the compensatory mechanism that your theory relies upon?
Why??
And why should I? is the there a prize for me at the end, do I get a lolly?
It's your theory. YOU choose a mechanism from that grab bag of hokey folk medicine based ideas above. You cannot throw ideas into the air and moan and complain when serious people ignore them. That's like throwing chaff in front of a train.
Ah, so you are saying that CO2 behaves differently outside a glass jar to inside, and this change in behaviour means that CO2 DOES NOT act as a greenhouse gas outside the jar?
Please elaborate on your theorem.
Why does it behave differently? As you know, the specific qualities of CO2 that cause it it trap heat ( specifically, energy in the infra red spectra ) happen at the molecular level. How would the molecules of CO2 know whether they are inside the jar or not?
Also just a note on language. You might not realise it, but the way you express yourself gives the impression that YOU DON'T KNOW whether CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Is this the case?
Over time the observation stations move closer to city cores or cities move closer to them - and cities are known to be warmer than rural areas. It's called the Urban Heat Island effect, or UHI.
Which observation stations were included in the CRU dataset which suffered from unadjusted UHI?
The observation stations also move lower in elevation, and south.
Which observation stations were those?
There are even serious questions about the physical locations where the historical data was gathered.
Which physical locations are in question?
The charts don't adjust for these known biases,
Show proof for this assertion. How would the charts appear if the know biases from the stations (which you are now going to name) is properly adjusted. And show working. Justify the formula you are using to derive the data for your charts.
and the motivation behind that lack is the reason people suspect the provenance of the unpublished data.
What data is unpublished?
These folk aren't building nuclear weapons. They're measuring the temperature of the day at various points. The temperature of the day today isn't a state secret, and it most certainly isn't for days in the distant past.
No, it certainly is not. Therefore it amazes me that the members of the denialist movement, who are apparently so expert as to be able to dismiss the results of other groups without conducting any research themselves, also don't see the basic hypocrisy in criticising others for lack of transparency, when they themselves NEVER show us the data they use to reach their vigorously defended conclusions!
Our atmosphere is just a gas mixture, so yes, a sample (an experimental sample and a control) of our atmosphere taken from the atmosphere would logically form a good model.
And logically, adding CO2 to a large sample of atmosphere will have the same effect as adding it to a small one. It is, after all thermodynamics, the conservation of energy.
If you feel that adding CO2 to the larger sample will (counterintuitively) have a different result then adding it to the small sample, then:
Please detail exactly what the effect will be. Will the atmosphere be colder? Will it remain the same?
Please provide evidence and detail of the phenomena that allows the atmosphere to seemingly defy the laws of thermodynamics. And show working
So... we didn't look into whether their numbers were right.
Anybody who thinks the numbers aren't right should feel free to take the raw data and produce their own numbers. Showing working, of course. Until then, well, frankly, those people and their theories aren't likely to be taken seriously.
So people who want hard numbers, underlying datasets and provenance of data are being "uncharitable".
Conspiracy theorists were using the FOI process to harass the scientists and attempting to impede the progress of their work. Simultaneous to the latter discussion of these events, Australians scientists who published their results demonstrating a warming trend due to anthropogenic causes were being told by denialists that if they didn't shut up, they would be physically harmed and their children would be sexually abused. So I think calling the attitude of these people 'uncharitable' is an understatement. Don't you?
Clearly, you have no idea how deep this evil conspiracy goes.
Firstly, it's a little known fact that the greenhouse effect was first postulated early last century. At first I thought it must have been an intergenerational conspiracy - an effort by scheming scientists of the 1900's for which they receive no reward, but which modern day scientists are now reaping. Thos original scientists knew even then that simply postulating that CO2 was a greenhouse gas would mean that their descendants in the conspiracy would one day be essentially hand the golden keys to a gigantic vault of grants money. Sure, if you look at there tax returns it might seem that their earnings are relatively modest in comparison to say, Lord Monkton. But we know that the government is involved in handing them wads of cash under the table - there's another set of books somewhere, let me assure you.
The other possibility, of course, is that environmentalists have somehow travelled back through time and planted the research that was supposedly conducted back then. I'm still researching this one.
Second little tidbit of information - the basic premise of the greenhouse effect can easily be verified by employing a pair of jars, a CO2 canister and some thermometers. What does this tell us? Well, it's obvious. Members of the conspiracy have gotten to the glass manufacturers. Nanomachines. Nanomachines embedded in the glass itself detect the CO2 and make it seem like it is warmer! How deep the rabbit hole goes!
This is your "debunking". Saying without even a shred of proof, that machine repair is "not infeasible". Second, there are no assembly lines that operate with no human intervention. Humans still maintain those assembly lines and hence, are "human intervention". Humans still have command authority over what that assembly line does, again more "human intervention".
You missed the point of the illustration, which is not that car assembly lines run unattended but that cars are built entirely by robots, without human intervention. The degree of automation is bound by economics, not technology. If robots can build a car then they can certainly repair a piece of mining equipment.
Look at it another way. We know from the get go that asteroid mining will struggle to be economically viable, mostly because any material which requires that much energy investment to transport to earth will be amongst the most expensive material available. Consequently mining an asteroid will have to be done in the most efficient way possible. That rules out using humans right there. Having to feed and house humans, plus give them atmosphere at the right pressure, plus, you know, the monetary compensation as a consequence of having one of the worst jobs ever and seriously affecting you health by living bathed in dangerous radiation 24x7 PLUS no gravity, and having no contact and no possibility of contact with your loved ones. The addition of humans will MAKE the plan financially un-viable.
So if we needed to do it (and quite frankly there is no sign of that happening, but that is a separate conversation), we would use robots, we would use techniques that minimise the chance of breakdown, if breakdowns happen we would simply send a replacement machine or use another machine to do the repair. We are already automating every mechanised, repeatable process as soon as the economies of scale mean that the capital investment in robotics can be justified. For asteroid mining, capital investment in creating a human suitable environment would be several times greater that the capital investment needed to design and build a machine that presses the buttons that humans would otherwise be needed to press. No mining company would ever send humans: too much investment, too much ongoing cost, too many ethical issues.
Entire cars can be produced on an assembly line with no human intervention.
I would love to see this supposed assembly line with my own eyes.
Well, google is you friend - if you are still not satisfied it would probably mean a plane ticket.
I don't think it can be done, at least not without some humans working to maintain those machines which are making the cars. And who came up with these "machines" you are talking about? Is this some other machine?
I think not. Creative energies have to be expended, and these things are not happening on the Earth contrary to what other fantasies of watching Terminator or The Matrix that you have been watching lately.
Even when it is possible to fully automate a process, often there are people involved either because it takes time to automate a process, the automation equipment is only going to be used occasionally so is not purchased, or because people happen to like hand-crafted products. There is a certain quality to hand crafted items that can't be made by a machine no matter how hard you try.
I'm not saying there is no place for an automated factory, but please, give a good example next time and try to explain why people no longer are needed in this universe in some fashion that makes sense before you spout off this drivel.
Good luck with that strawman. Try more kerosene, that usually helps.
I agree that when people start getting out into space there will be a high degree of automation for nearly everything that happens there. Labor shortages alone are going to require automated equipment, but I don't see an argument here that makes sense in terms of a complete prohibition of sending people into space, or that there will be zero need for having somebody on the ground on Phobos to take care of some machinery that can be repaired or dealt with easier there rather than having to have a team of several dozen try to come up with the programming necessary for the remote manipulator that is also broken down to repair that machine. Saying there is no need for people in space is just as nutty as saying everything will be done by hand and that we can walk to the Moon.
See previous post for the debunking of the 'humans are needed to repair the machines' myth.
And you laughed, I gather. Still doesn't make it an unrealistic.
Most people would understand that the word laughable carries the same meaning as farcical, comical, ridiculous, any number of descriptors which indicate that not only is the idea unrealistic, it is piteously so. Like believing that animals talk and have human emotions because Disney says so. If a kid believes that animals talk, it's cute and we think they are funny. If an adult believes it, we think they are to be pitied.
Humans after all do the control and repair on those machines on Earth.
Sure, and 100 years ago, humans dug up coal with a pick and a pony cart. But now, they use gigantic draglines and longline face machines to dig out the coal in an essentially automated fashion. Sure, humans occasionally interact with those machines to repair them - but not because it is infeasible to have a machine do the repairs, but because it doesn't (currently) make the most economic sense. Entire cars can be produced on an assembly line with no human intervention. So if it made economic sense we would certainly do the same for mining equipment. In the asteroid example if a machine broke down, we would send another to take it's place, or send another machine to fix it. We would never send a human - because for one that would be a crap job, a return to to the type of working conditions we haven't seen in the west since the industrial age, for two, humans are crap at undertaking tasks in space, our bodies aren't designed for it, and for three, the killer reason, it doesn't make economic sense.
Speaking of laughable, humans can't breath dirt either. But somehow, they manage to mine stuff underground. What's missing from your argument is the observation that humans can modify their environment extensively. So there's no need to try to breath vacuum when you can breath air in an environment you either made or brought with you.
But again, why would we send a human to do such a crappy, unrewarding job, when it can be done more easily, more cheaply, and more safely by a machine? We wouldn't, anymore that we would return to mining by pick and shovel.
The real obstacle is that any attempt to extract resources currently costs a large number of orders of magnitude more than the value of the resource mined. That has to go down a lot before it makes sense. It probably won't do so in the near future, but there is no inherent obstacle that keeps the price up.
Which is basically you admitting we would never do it anyway. Because we don't have a shortage of resources, owing to the fact that we really aren't using any, with the notable exception of fossil fuels. All the metals we use go back into the environment, which means we could simply recycle - if it made economic sense to do so.
Why would we send a human to do a machines job?
When the machine can't do the job.
A circumstance which demonstrably does not apply in the case of mining. This isn't the 1960's. We no longer envision the future of space exploration to be ships filled with humans doing 1960's jobs BUT IN SPACE. Human beings recognise the limitations of our own bodies, and devise tools (machines) to cater for those limitations. This trait is one of our greatest strengths, and foundation of all our achievements in the last 300 years. We aren't going to throw that away because a small group of people is romantically attached to the way we THOUGHT the future would look like in the blinkered past.
That idea is laughable. When we mine things on earth, we mostly use machines to do so - even though the conditions here are just about ideal for humans. Therefore, it is patently absurd to suggest that we would send humans into space to mine asteroids - asteroids without an atmosphere, exposed to vast quantities of radiation and most tellingingly of all, virtually no gravity. Why would we send a human to do a machines job?
And indeed, the same argument can be made for the plan for a Popsicle Skyscraper and Giant Escalator to Nowhere. Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy to freeze a humungous Cordial Skyscraper in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such engineering challenges to (hopefully) better life for those here on Earth. Even something unrelated to building Escalators that Lead Nowhere or giant popsicle skyscrapers (such as big ass freezers) could be scaled up to benefit people in the more remote, hotter regions of the world.
How do you think those satellites got there? How do you think that technology was refined enough to work? Yeah, MANNED SPACE FLIGHT is what pushes the boundaries. It is what allows all the rest of this.
History suggests that you have it the wrong way around. It is unmanned flight that pushes the boundaries, human flight trailing along far behind. Sputnik came before Gagarin. Luna-9/Surveyor landed on the moon before Apollo. Voyager/Cassini/Mars Rovers came before - well, before anything at all. Right now, Voyager 1 has passed the heliopause - it has left the solar system. Meanwhile, humans fix the toilets in LEO. How is that pushing the boundary? Humans are the vestigial organ of space exploration and exploitation. They've never been needed, and never will be.
Unless these satellites have to breath air or produce urine for some reason, chances are that the technology they use owes nothing to human spaceflight.
It's more the other way around. Current seat price on the Shuttle (which is already pretty darn expensive) is something like $100 million, perhaps a bit more. The Discovery class probes are around half a billion dollars. This is as close to "cut rate" as NASA gets. That's five astronauts in space. You're off by a factor of 200.
By my calculation, you're implicitly admitting that it costs the same to launch the shuttle into LEO as it does to send a probe into the outer reaches of the solar system. LEO isn't exploration. It's a bus route. You are comparing a bus ride to a scientific expedition into the unknown.
It remains, for example, that a few geologists on Mars for a few years, would do a lot more scientific work than a few dozen space probes, perhaps even a few hundred space probes over a few decades of exploration
Advocates of last century concepts of space exploration like to say this, but there is no proof. The concept seems based on the notion that humans can move faster over rough ground than robots. I might say that kangaroos move faster than humans over rough ground - logically then, we should send kangaroos rather than humans. Or, on a more serious note, robots that move like kangaroos, or cheetahs, or any other method of perambulation that is superior to the rather clumsy bipedal method.
(there's some hideous inefficiencies here, since in the unmanned exploration scenario an unanswered question requires a new unmanned mission, which typically takes a decade or more to develop and deploy currently).
That line of argument is nonsense. For probes, the ability to discover and respond to previously unthought of questions is limited to the range and flexibility of the instruments that they carry. If we think of a line of enquiry that those instruments cannot measure, then we need to send another probe (or, at least, the right instrument). The same issue would apply for humans, who, at best, can expect to carry the same range of instruments a probe could. Probably less, given the limited carrying capacity of a human. So there seems little basis for imagining human carriage more flexible than robot carriage.
To which Science interjects and says: See this is why you and I aren't friends anymore. You keep expecting me to pick sides and I won't, it's not my argument. But I will say that your much heralded Pink Unicorn Proof stinks as a proof for your own beliefs, because it is at best a caricature, and at worst an attempt to prove a generalised theorem by 'proving' a singular instance: i.e. "Everybody knows that Invisible Pink Unicorns don't exist therefore nothing exists that we cannot see" My son mathematics and my dad Logic would like a word with you....
Did you also have a picture of your girlfriend from when she was 13 and trade that with your friends? Because if you read the case summary, that is what happened in this case. Somehow this whole situation got turned on its head. I can't immediately think of a reason for these girls to be charged with a crime - they should instead be given a legal means of respite toward their abusers. Specifically, the boys who were trading naked pictures of them. That is the truth of sexting. Its not a consenting expression, it's not a mutual exchange. It's a form of abuse. It's male students sending lewd pictures to girls who have turned them down. It's male students envincing photos of female students that, once traded around, cannot be removed from the public record, and so for the female, the adolescent mistake turns into a mistake that they can't put behind them.
So I think a form of relief is required - to make it clear that our classmates aren't to be treated in this horrific manner.
No one because all you armchair freedom fighters are too much of pussies to actually do anything besides posturing on the internet.
The reason for the widespread compliance within the population is not because they are all wimps. Revolution is like amputation. You only amputate your leg if you really have to. If wounded in the leg, and given the choice to do nothing, or amputate it, most people will adopt a wait and see approach - it's not that bad just yet.
Whereas real healing lies in the utilisation of other, finer instruments - the scalpel, the antibiotic, the anaesthetic. In the context of government it is by wielding the fine instrument that you overpower the powerful in their entrenched power bases. These fine instruments are things like:
Witholding your capital from corporations who act counter to the interests of the community
Witholding your labour from corporations who act counter to the interests of the community
Raising awareness of the issue in the community
Lobbying those who can be influenced
Replacing those who can't with someone else.
These are a hard slog. And lot's of people like to complain, but are too lazy to do their duty, to step up to the table and fix what is wrong. So the solution is to call for revolution. Blowing the dog whistle of revolution justifies doing nothing - after all, they did their civic duty by blowing the whistle, who would ask more of them? The revolutionary whistle is like a relief valve - there's a problem, hearts and minds are stirred - pressure builds up - someone calls for revolution - no we can't do that, it's not justified - the relief valve opens and the pressure is gone. People go home to bed, and in the morning, pay their due to their masters.
Ironically, the US love of guns and the kneejerk tendency to suggest violence as the solution to issues of governance means that of all the democracies in the world, the US population is amongst the most compliant of all populations toward their government.
People accept views in line with their own usually without regard to source. Far too many put any effort in determining if quotes are from the actual source let alone what some of the those groups with fancy names really represent.
What if the source was Islamic extremists?
In the last federal election an operative of the Liberal party published a pamphlet purporting to be from an Islamic organisation to it's members - supporting the Labor party. Also the following has occurred:
Editors from certain right wing newspapers have published editorials, and then published letters from non-existent members of the public in support of those editorials
Paid operatives of both major parties have rung in to radio shows to pose questions to opposing candidates, claiming to be someone else
This legislation is a somewhat clumsy attempt to prevent those forms of identity abuse.
Also worth noting is that the identity information can only be obtained by the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is not part of the government in the sense that the political machines of the various parties cannot apply any pressure or influence. So for example if I express a political opinion about the South Australian election and it happens that my identity is on file. The media organisation does not have to hand my identity over to anyone but the Commissioner - not to the police, and certainly not to a political party or the government. And the government cannot pressure the Commissioner to act in a way that might influence the outcome of the electoral process.
NASA is not being canned. Only the useless, unscientific boondoggle that is Constellation. The interesting part of NASAs output (the robotic missions) aren't being defunded.
Because if we really wanted to mine it from the moon, we STILL wouldn't need to send humans. Do you imagine that regolith is mined with a pick and shovel?
Yes - you've hit the nail on the head. It's hard to believe. My scepticism is a direct result of the irrational leap in your argument.
It shouldn't be, because it is such a complex system that we know so little about.
It's not really that complicated. In a bell jar, CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. It will do the same outside of the bell jar as well - a change in location will have no effect on the thermodynamic properties of a molecule of CO2. This is high school level thermodynamics. The complexity arise when you need to measure the size of the subsequent effect, as other things come into play - eg dissipation due to conversion into kinetic energy, the temporary effects of absorption by ice melting etc. But these are questions of scale that do not bear upon the actual reality of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and thus the fact that more CO2 in the system will cause the average temperature to rise.
The number of unknowns are massive.
You believe so, yet at the same time, there is daily criticism directed at the practice of climate science from members of your movement. If you think there is so much still to discover, why are you so against the practice of discovery?
You may assume that 1-3 imply 4 since you have been told that so many times it automatically makes sense to you.
No, I assume that 1-3 imply 4 because of the laws of thermodynamics. And I assume that the two parts of your theory - that phenomena unobserved by us are nullifying the effects of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, whilst other, unrelated phenomena produce the exact same effect that increasing CO2 WOULD have produced - I assume you theory is bollocks. Because, put briefly, it SOUNDS like bollocks, and you have failed to produce a shred of evidence in support of it.
Slashdot Mirror
And stop putting words in my mouth. I said it's COMPLEX. I didn't say it behaved DIFFERENTLY.
My repetition of the question should be an indication to you that your answers are unsatisfactory. I surmise from your posting history that you are a proponent of the theory that CO2 emissions are not causing climate change. In order for your theory to be credible, there must be a chain of defensible logic for you to be able to cater for the observations we make of the glass jar - because your theory and the glass jar appear to be at odds. So I'm seeking to clarify exactly how you theory explains this apparent contradiction.
Just as an example, how does CO2 circulate through our atmosphere? Does the circulation of CO2 play a role in transportation of heat into the upper atmosphere? How about when compared to how other greenhouse gases circulate? Is it possible that CO2 can transfer heat into the ocean? Or from the ocean? What about other greenhouse gases? Are there so many other effective GHG's in our atmosphere, that CO2 doesn't realize it's full potential as a GHG? What if the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere is offset by the accompanied increase in surface area of our atmosphere. What if the increased surface area and corresponding increase in heat loss EXCEEDS the increased greenhouse effect?
Are you expecting me to GUESS the compensatory mechanism that your theory relies upon?
Why??
And why should I? is the there a prize for me at the end, do I get a lolly?
It's your theory. YOU choose a mechanism from that grab bag of hokey folk medicine based ideas above. You cannot throw ideas into the air and moan and complain when serious people ignore them. That's like throwing chaff in front of a train.
Please elaborate on your theorem.
Why does it behave differently? As you know, the specific qualities of CO2 that cause it it trap heat ( specifically, energy in the infra red spectra ) happen at the molecular level. How would the molecules of CO2 know whether they are inside the jar or not?
Also just a note on language. You might not realise it, but the way you express yourself gives the impression that YOU DON'T KNOW whether CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Is this the case?
Over time the observation stations move closer to city cores or cities move closer to them - and cities are known to be warmer than rural areas. It's called the Urban Heat Island effect, or UHI.
Which observation stations were included in the CRU dataset which suffered from unadjusted UHI?
The observation stations also move lower in elevation, and south.
Which observation stations were those?
There are even serious questions about the physical locations where the historical data was gathered.
Which physical locations are in question?
The charts don't adjust for these known biases,
Show proof for this assertion. How would the charts appear if the know biases from the stations (which you are now going to name) is properly adjusted. And show working. Justify the formula you are using to derive the data for your charts.
and the motivation behind that lack is the reason people suspect the provenance of the unpublished data.
What data is unpublished?
These folk aren't building nuclear weapons. They're measuring the temperature of the day at various points. The temperature of the day today isn't a state secret, and it most certainly isn't for days in the distant past.
No, it certainly is not. Therefore it amazes me that the members of the denialist movement, who are apparently so expert as to be able to dismiss the results of other groups without conducting any research themselves, also don't see the basic hypocrisy in criticising others for lack of transparency, when they themselves NEVER show us the data they use to reach their vigorously defended conclusions!
So you are saying that CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas?
Thanks in advance.
So... we didn't look into whether their numbers were right.
Anybody who thinks the numbers aren't right should feel free to take the raw data and produce their own numbers. Showing working, of course. Until then, well, frankly, those people and their theories aren't likely to be taken seriously.
So people who want hard numbers, underlying datasets and provenance of data are being "uncharitable".
Conspiracy theorists were using the FOI process to harass the scientists and attempting to impede the progress of their work. Simultaneous to the latter discussion of these events, Australians scientists who published their results demonstrating a warming trend due to anthropogenic causes were being told by denialists that if they didn't shut up, they would be physically harmed and their children would be sexually abused. So I think calling the attitude of these people 'uncharitable' is an understatement. Don't you?
Firstly, it's a little known fact that the greenhouse effect was first postulated early last century. At first I thought it must have been an intergenerational conspiracy - an effort by scheming scientists of the 1900's for which they receive no reward, but which modern day scientists are now reaping. Thos original scientists knew even then that simply postulating that CO2 was a greenhouse gas would mean that their descendants in the conspiracy would one day be essentially hand the golden keys to a gigantic vault of grants money. Sure, if you look at there tax returns it might seem that their earnings are relatively modest in comparison to say, Lord Monkton. But we know that the government is involved in handing them wads of cash under the table - there's another set of books somewhere, let me assure you.
The other possibility, of course, is that environmentalists have somehow travelled back through time and planted the research that was supposedly conducted back then. I'm still researching this one.
Second little tidbit of information - the basic premise of the greenhouse effect can easily be verified by employing a pair of jars, a CO2 canister and some thermometers. What does this tell us? Well, it's obvious. Members of the conspiracy have gotten to the glass manufacturers. Nanomachines. Nanomachines embedded in the glass itself detect the CO2 and make it seem like it is warmer! How deep the rabbit hole goes!
This is your "debunking". Saying without even a shred of proof, that machine repair is "not infeasible". Second, there are no assembly lines that operate with no human intervention. Humans still maintain those assembly lines and hence, are "human intervention". Humans still have command authority over what that assembly line does, again more "human intervention".
You missed the point of the illustration, which is not that car assembly lines run unattended but that cars are built entirely by robots, without human intervention. The degree of automation is bound by economics, not technology. If robots can build a car then they can certainly repair a piece of mining equipment.
Look at it another way. We know from the get go that asteroid mining will struggle to be economically viable, mostly because any material which requires that much energy investment to transport to earth will be amongst the most expensive material available. Consequently mining an asteroid will have to be done in the most efficient way possible. That rules out using humans right there. Having to feed and house humans, plus give them atmosphere at the right pressure, plus, you know, the monetary compensation as a consequence of having one of the worst jobs ever and seriously affecting you health by living bathed in dangerous radiation 24x7 PLUS no gravity, and having no contact and no possibility of contact with your loved ones. The addition of humans will MAKE the plan financially un-viable. So if we needed to do it (and quite frankly there is no sign of that happening, but that is a separate conversation), we would use robots, we would use techniques that minimise the chance of breakdown, if breakdowns happen we would simply send a replacement machine or use another machine to do the repair. We are already automating every mechanised, repeatable process as soon as the economies of scale mean that the capital investment in robotics can be justified. For asteroid mining, capital investment in creating a human suitable environment would be several times greater that the capital investment needed to design and build a machine that presses the buttons that humans would otherwise be needed to press. No mining company would ever send humans: too much investment, too much ongoing cost, too many ethical issues.
I would love to see this supposed assembly line with my own eyes.
Well, google is you friend - if you are still not satisfied it would probably mean a plane ticket.
I don't think it can be done, at least not without some humans working to maintain those machines which are making the cars. And who came up with these "machines" you are talking about? Is this some other machine?
I think not. Creative energies have to be expended, and these things are not happening on the Earth contrary to what other fantasies of watching Terminator or The Matrix that you have been watching lately.
Even when it is possible to fully automate a process, often there are people involved either because it takes time to automate a process, the automation equipment is only going to be used occasionally so is not purchased, or because people happen to like hand-crafted products. There is a certain quality to hand crafted items that can't be made by a machine no matter how hard you try.
I'm not saying there is no place for an automated factory, but please, give a good example next time and try to explain why people no longer are needed in this universe in some fashion that makes sense before you spout off this drivel.
Good luck with that strawman. Try more kerosene, that usually helps.
I agree that when people start getting out into space there will be a high degree of automation for nearly everything that happens there. Labor shortages alone are going to require automated equipment, but I don't see an argument here that makes sense in terms of a complete prohibition of sending people into space, or that there will be zero need for having somebody on the ground on Phobos to take care of some machinery that can be repaired or dealt with easier there rather than having to have a team of several dozen try to come up with the programming necessary for the remote manipulator that is also broken down to repair that machine. Saying there is no need for people in space is just as nutty as saying everything will be done by hand and that we can walk to the Moon.
See previous post for the debunking of the 'humans are needed to repair the machines' myth.
That idea is laughable.
And you laughed, I gather. Still doesn't make it an unrealistic.
Most people would understand that the word laughable carries the same meaning as farcical, comical, ridiculous, any number of descriptors which indicate that not only is the idea unrealistic, it is piteously so. Like believing that animals talk and have human emotions because Disney says so. If a kid believes that animals talk, it's cute and we think they are funny. If an adult believes it, we think they are to be pitied.
Humans after all do the control and repair on those machines on Earth.
Sure, and 100 years ago, humans dug up coal with a pick and a pony cart. But now, they use gigantic draglines and longline face machines to dig out the coal in an essentially automated fashion. Sure, humans occasionally interact with those machines to repair them - but not because it is infeasible to have a machine do the repairs, but because it doesn't (currently) make the most economic sense. Entire cars can be produced on an assembly line with no human intervention. So if it made economic sense we would certainly do the same for mining equipment. In the asteroid example if a machine broke down, we would send another to take it's place, or send another machine to fix it. We would never send a human - because for one that would be a crap job, a return to to the type of working conditions we haven't seen in the west since the industrial age, for two, humans are crap at undertaking tasks in space, our bodies aren't designed for it, and for three, the killer reason, it doesn't make economic sense.
Speaking of laughable, humans can't breath dirt either. But somehow, they manage to mine stuff underground. What's missing from your argument is the observation that humans can modify their environment extensively. So there's no need to try to breath vacuum when you can breath air in an environment you either made or brought with you.
But again, why would we send a human to do such a crappy, unrewarding job, when it can be done more easily, more cheaply, and more safely by a machine? We wouldn't, anymore that we would return to mining by pick and shovel.
The real obstacle is that any attempt to extract resources currently costs a large number of orders of magnitude more than the value of the resource mined. That has to go down a lot before it makes sense. It probably won't do so in the near future, but there is no inherent obstacle that keeps the price up.
Which is basically you admitting we would never do it anyway. Because we don't have a shortage of resources, owing to the fact that we really aren't using any, with the notable exception of fossil fuels. All the metals we use go back into the environment, which means we could simply recycle - if it made economic sense to do so.
Why would we send a human to do a machines job?
When the machine can't do the job.
A circumstance which demonstrably does not apply in the case of mining. This isn't the 1960's. We no longer envision the future of space exploration to be ships filled with humans doing 1960's jobs BUT IN SPACE. Human beings recognise the limitations of our own bodies, and devise tools (machines) to cater for those limitations. This trait is one of our greatest strengths, and foundation of all our achievements in the last 300 years. We aren't going to throw that away because a small group of people is romantically attached to the way we THOUGHT the future would look like in the blinkered past.
That idea is laughable. When we mine things on earth, we mostly use machines to do so - even though the conditions here are just about ideal for humans. Therefore, it is patently absurd to suggest that we would send humans into space to mine asteroids - asteroids without an atmosphere, exposed to vast quantities of radiation and most tellingingly of all, virtually no gravity. Why would we send a human to do a machines job?
And indeed, the same argument can be made for the plan for a Popsicle Skyscraper and Giant Escalator to Nowhere. Nobody is saying that it will be cheap or even easy to freeze a humungous Cordial Skyscraper in the remotely near future. But is that really a valid reason to not even make the attempt? You have to start somewhere, and it will NEVER be cheap/routine if we as a society don't start working toward that goal. Along the way, we can use the technological advances derived from such engineering challenges to (hopefully) better life for those here on Earth. Even something unrelated to building Escalators that Lead Nowhere or giant popsicle skyscrapers (such as big ass freezers) could be scaled up to benefit people in the more remote, hotter regions of the world.
How do you think those satellites got there? How do you think that technology was refined enough to work? Yeah, MANNED SPACE FLIGHT is what pushes the boundaries. It is what allows all the rest of this.
History suggests that you have it the wrong way around. It is unmanned flight that pushes the boundaries, human flight trailing along far behind. Sputnik came before Gagarin. Luna-9/Surveyor landed on the moon before Apollo. Voyager/Cassini/Mars Rovers came before - well, before anything at all. Right now, Voyager 1 has passed the heliopause - it has left the solar system. Meanwhile, humans fix the toilets in LEO. How is that pushing the boundary? Humans are the vestigial organ of space exploration and exploitation. They've never been needed, and never will be.
Unless these satellites have to breath air or produce urine for some reason, chances are that the technology they use owes nothing to human spaceflight.
It's more the other way around. Current seat price on the Shuttle (which is already pretty darn expensive) is something like $100 million, perhaps a bit more. The Discovery class probes are around half a billion dollars. This is as close to "cut rate" as NASA gets. That's five astronauts in space. You're off by a factor of 200.
By my calculation, you're implicitly admitting that it costs the same to launch the shuttle into LEO as it does to send a probe into the outer reaches of the solar system. LEO isn't exploration. It's a bus route. You are comparing a bus ride to a scientific expedition into the unknown.
It remains, for example, that a few geologists on Mars for a few years, would do a lot more scientific work than a few dozen space probes, perhaps even a few hundred space probes over a few decades of exploration
Advocates of last century concepts of space exploration like to say this, but there is no proof. The concept seems based on the notion that humans can move faster over rough ground than robots. I might say that kangaroos move faster than humans over rough ground - logically then, we should send kangaroos rather than humans. Or, on a more serious note, robots that move like kangaroos, or cheetahs, or any other method of perambulation that is superior to the rather clumsy bipedal method.
(there's some hideous inefficiencies here, since in the unmanned exploration scenario an unanswered question requires a new unmanned mission, which typically takes a decade or more to develop and deploy currently).
That line of argument is nonsense. For probes, the ability to discover and respond to previously unthought of questions is limited to the range and flexibility of the instruments that they carry. If we think of a line of enquiry that those instruments cannot measure, then we need to send another probe (or, at least, the right instrument). The same issue would apply for humans, who, at best, can expect to carry the same range of instruments a probe could. Probably less, given the limited carrying capacity of a human. So there seems little basis for imagining human carriage more flexible than robot carriage.
To which Science interjects and says: See this is why you and I aren't friends anymore. You keep expecting me to pick sides and I won't, it's not my argument. But I will say that your much heralded Pink Unicorn Proof stinks as a proof for your own beliefs, because it is at best a caricature, and at worst an attempt to prove a generalised theorem by 'proving' a singular instance: i.e. "Everybody knows that Invisible Pink Unicorns don't exist therefore nothing exists that we cannot see" My son mathematics and my dad Logic would like a word with you....
To which particularly religious men reply: "We created you, Religion, out of absolutely nothing!"
Which has a nice ironic ring to it
Did you also have a picture of your girlfriend from when she was 13 and trade that with your friends? Because if you read the case summary, that is what happened in this case. Somehow this whole situation got turned on its head. I can't immediately think of a reason for these girls to be charged with a crime - they should instead be given a legal means of respite toward their abusers. Specifically, the boys who were trading naked pictures of them. That is the truth of sexting. Its not a consenting expression, it's not a mutual exchange. It's a form of abuse. It's male students sending lewd pictures to girls who have turned them down. It's male students envincing photos of female students that, once traded around, cannot be removed from the public record, and so for the female, the adolescent mistake turns into a mistake that they can't put behind them.
So I think a form of relief is required - to make it clear that our classmates aren't to be treated in this horrific manner.
No one because all you armchair freedom fighters are too much of pussies to actually do anything besides posturing on the internet.
The reason for the widespread compliance within the population is not because they are all wimps. Revolution is like amputation. You only amputate your leg if you really have to. If wounded in the leg, and given the choice to do nothing, or amputate it, most people will adopt a wait and see approach - it's not that bad just yet.
Whereas real healing lies in the utilisation of other, finer instruments - the scalpel, the antibiotic, the anaesthetic. In the context of government it is by wielding the fine instrument that you overpower the powerful in their entrenched power bases. These fine instruments are things like:
These are a hard slog. And lot's of people like to complain, but are too lazy to do their duty, to step up to the table and fix what is wrong. So the solution is to call for revolution. Blowing the dog whistle of revolution justifies doing nothing - after all, they did their civic duty by blowing the whistle, who would ask more of them? The revolutionary whistle is like a relief valve - there's a problem, hearts and minds are stirred - pressure builds up - someone calls for revolution - no we can't do that, it's not justified - the relief valve opens and the pressure is gone. People go home to bed, and in the morning, pay their due to their masters.
Ironically, the US love of guns and the kneejerk tendency to suggest violence as the solution to issues of governance means that of all the democracies in the world, the US population is amongst the most compliant of all populations toward their government.
Note this legislation is not aimed at people who publish anonymously - rather those people who publish an opinion claiming to be someone else.
People accept views in line with their own usually without regard to source. Far too many put any effort in determining if quotes are from the actual source let alone what some of the those groups with fancy names really represent.
What if the source was Islamic extremists? In the last federal election an operative of the Liberal party published a pamphlet purporting to be from an Islamic organisation to it's members - supporting the Labor party. Also the following has occurred:
This legislation is a somewhat clumsy attempt to prevent those forms of identity abuse.
Also worth noting is that the identity information can only be obtained by the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is not part of the government in the sense that the political machines of the various parties cannot apply any pressure or influence. So for example if I express a political opinion about the South Australian election and it happens that my identity is on file. The media organisation does not have to hand my identity over to anyone but the Commissioner - not to the police, and certainly not to a political party or the government. And the government cannot pressure the Commissioner to act in a way that might influence the outcome of the electoral process.
NASA is not being canned. Only the useless, unscientific boondoggle that is Constellation. The interesting part of NASAs output (the robotic missions) aren't being defunded.
Is it certain that they have selected a man, rather than a woman - and if so, why? Is it advantageous to have a penis in space?
Because if we really wanted to mine it from the moon, we STILL wouldn't need to send humans. Do you imagine that regolith is mined with a pick and shovel?
A quick grep of the constitution shows no references to vibes.
Google is your friend
It is hard for you to believe?
Yes - you've hit the nail on the head. It's hard to believe. My scepticism is a direct result of the irrational leap in your argument.
It shouldn't be, because it is such a complex system that we know so little about.
It's not really that complicated. In a bell jar, CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. It will do the same outside of the bell jar as well - a change in location will have no effect on the thermodynamic properties of a molecule of CO2. This is high school level thermodynamics. The complexity arise when you need to measure the size of the subsequent effect, as other things come into play - eg dissipation due to conversion into kinetic energy, the temporary effects of absorption by ice melting etc. But these are questions of scale that do not bear upon the actual reality of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and thus the fact that more CO2 in the system will cause the average temperature to rise.
The number of unknowns are massive.
You believe so, yet at the same time, there is daily criticism directed at the practice of climate science from members of your movement. If you think there is so much still to discover, why are you so against the practice of discovery?
You may assume that 1-3 imply 4 since you have been told that so many times it automatically makes sense to you.
No, I assume that 1-3 imply 4 because of the laws of thermodynamics. And I assume that the two parts of your theory - that phenomena unobserved by us are nullifying the effects of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, whilst other, unrelated phenomena produce the exact same effect that increasing CO2 WOULD have produced - I assume you theory is bollocks. Because, put briefly, it SOUNDS like bollocks, and you have failed to produce a shred of evidence in support of it.