I am glad your wife is Christian. She is probably a lot better off as an Egyptian Christian in Canada than she would be in her homeland. My remark is not a racist remark at all. Islamist is an accurate description of the 9/11 hijackers and not a blanket statement about Muslims. You should not allow political correctness to prevent you from making honest statements of fact.
I guess I meant to say I am strip searched before I can get on a plane. And yes I get that special attention too, as a white male traveling alone. But I cooperate because I have nothing to hide and wish to contribute in restoring peace of mind to my fellow travelers that the Islamists took away. I would think your wife would be more apologetic for the transgressions of her brothers in faith.
The sooner we wipe out the crazy genocidal bullies who pretend that a badly-written cod-philosophic marxist rant gives them some kind of magic right to murder the world, the better for the rest of humanity.
Isn't it a better alternative to elitist pacificists surrendering their faux-democracies to the rising Islamic Fascist Caliphate.
Luckily, it's looking increasingly likely that their economy will crash before too long, and they will be taken over by Hispanics.
At different times in our history you could have substituted Africans, Italians, Irish, Poles as the next great threat... We'll be ok.
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Why would we want to contact another civilization until we are unified as a race
Perhaps because we have some spare time on our radiotelescopes. I for one have no interest in uniting with the rest of humanity under anything less than the United States Constitution.
For the love of God, the level of surveillance that the anglosphere tolerates is unfathomable by the standards of 1,000 years ago. In Britain, there's a movement to monitor every child's eating habits and American intrusion is legendary in its own right!
I think you are exaggerating a bit. Isn't it prudent to put security cameras on a few street corners and in the subway considering they have been attacked already by Islamic terrorists?
As an American the only inconvenience I have found post 9/11 is having to put my shoes through an X-ray machine before I get on an airplane.
Let's face one little truth. Going on OUR evolutionary path, we MUST proceed with caution into space. We should avoid seeking out other races until we can approach them with confidence.
Even if we contacted a distant civilization, a dialog would take centuries. A physical meeting would take thousands of years. This is more than enough time for your Utopian dreams to be realized.
This comment is kind of extreme but it is not intended as flamebait. It is to highlight some of the absurdity in the thinking of the envonmentalist response. I am not sure if you are laughing with me or at me.
Low beta can imply significant crossrange, but the real advantage of it is that you have more time to radiate off your heat.
This is of no real value in terms of weight or reusability.
Yes, but they also do lovely things like crash through frozen lakes and nearly roll off cliffs (see Soyuz). Steerable chutes are definitely an improvement, but they're not a catchall. And, unlike wings, all the mass of a chute is wasted; they don't give you more surface area, more storage space, etc.
Not very likely given that the CEV landing site is a dry lake. It is pretty well established that chutes are more weight efficient than wings. That is not an argument you are likely to win. Ofcourse the well designed Kliper will use both. Furthermore, the Kliper design is not very flexible. It cannot be used for a lunar mission, it lacks significant propulsion, interior volume, adaptability to a translunar stage etc.
There's a reason why Japan, NASA, ESA, and Russia are all pushing toward reusables with their next generation vehicles.
Japan and Europe are not yet space faring nations. Neither is even developing a manned capability. Russia has no reusable program beyond Kliper. The CEV is reusable 20 times, like Kliper. What are you talking about? There is no fully reusable system in any real stage of planning by anyone.
So? It's not to be side mounted, so what's the problem?
During the last shuttle launch the ET impacted with a turkey vulture. Had the strike occured at a higher speed and altitude the vehicle could have been brought down. Exposure of the heat shield to the ascent environment is a high risk over many flights. Again, this is well established. The CEV designers happily relearned this lesson from Apollo in robust design.
Seriously, though: present day, who has the better rockets? Russia's been moving at a snail's pace, but at least they've been moving. Who would have guessed, at the time of the N1 disaster, that the Russian space program would have cheap, reliable rockets compared to the US *after* their economy tanked and the country broke up?
However, wings are not an inherent penalty to a spacecraft. They allow you to lower your reentry beta, give you good subsonic maneuverability, and probably most important, give you more surface area to dissipate heat on. Furthermore, it's not like the space inside the wings goes to waste.
If cross range reentry is a requirement, fine. The shuttle has never made use of its maximum cross range of 1100 miles. It still gets hung up in space due to tight weather restrictions on landing. Ballistic reentry vehicles are not as constrained by ground level winds. I would say supersonic manuaverability is the olnly advantage of a winged vehicle. Both the Russian design and the CEV hit the ground under steerable chutes. If fact landing into a strong headwind with steerable parachutes is desireable. Heat dissipation on the CEV for the orbital or lunar reentry profiles is elegantly handled by replaceable carbon-carbon heatshields.
Yes, it's not an "minimal surface area to volume ratio" -- but, A) you don't want that, because it makes reentry harder, and B) that shape is a sphere; when was the last time you saw a spherical spacecraft designed to reenter?
The Soyuz bell shape comes close. NASA's tried and true conical design is a good tradeoff between low drag ascent performance and high drag and controllability for reentry.
Thermal protection is required for reentry. You might complain about the particular system used by the shuttle, but complaining about having a TPS is just silly:)
The complaint is about the extent of the winged vehicle TPS and its exposure to the launch environment. Winged designs will continue to be dogged by this vulnerability.
Reusability is a good point, but it's not inherently a problem. The shuttle was a first generation reusable. We've learned huge amounts, and any next gen reusable is bound to be far cheaper.
The X-33 debocle killed SSTO for years to come. 2 Reusable stages are still too large and expensive. At best we could create an improved lighter space shuttle. But the severe architectural problem of parallel boost would remain.
I think that the Russians have a good concept with their Kliper spacecraft -- an evolved, not revolutionary, reusable vehicle, and only a relatively short number of reuses (~20) for the first generation.
The Russian design is ok. Not unlike LockMart's proposal for the CEV, which I am glad was rejected. Not sure what new shape buys them. It can't be that manuverable. The thermal protection system is exposed to the ascent environment. I am more interested in what they will launch it with. Today's Soyuz cannot launch a 6 person spacecraft.
Also, they're keeping it small, which is a good idea at this stage. The concept of making your first reusable be a revolutionary design, and huge at that, with an underfunded development budget, was just plain silly.
It is not silly if you are worried about a new administration coming in to deconstruct the program, and if external military requirements were added, like with the shuttle. I personally do not envy, nor do I think the US should emulate Russia's glacially conservative design evolution approach.
How silly and petty you Kyotoists are. Do you propose that we build rockets out of recycled plastic bottles? This is why your movement is dying. You are irresponsible. There would be a lot less CO2 if you held your breath.
Here is a big cheer for the fact that the object is re-usable. This is fast becoming one of the more considered aspects of shuttle design, and given taht there is a "The Carbon Trust" campaign going on in the uk [and the world!] a reuable shuttle is a big bonus.
The DC-X and space shuttle are not at all comparable. The DC-X has about 1/100th the performance of the shuttle. The use of decent engines if frivolously wasteful. I am not surprised Bezos is attracted to it. The weight penalty imposed on the space shuttle for reusability, wings, wheels, thermal protection is huge. Strip all of that away and use a simple aerodynamic shape and you have the NASA CEV.
What does "Carbon Trust" have anything to do with vehicles that use LOX and LH2 for fuel and are built out of Li-Al?
Yes, I read it. I stand by my assesssment. The guy is a charlatan and a serial entrepreneur who has never created a successful venture. But I am sure he has pocketed lots of other people's money.
They're not really that dramatic of conclusions. Theory predicted that CO2 should contribute to global warming and observation revealed that the extreme amounts of CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere have correlated with global warming.
I find it amusing how you choose your the correlations that strengthen your argument and ignore the ones that weaken it.
So, you admit that you believe there is some kind of global climatology conspiracy involved here? I see no other way to interpret your postings.
Absolutely! I have already commented extensively about the feeding frenzy for funding that apocalyptic climate research has generated. I don't believe it is centrally organised. Do you not see that there are multitude vested political interests stoking the hysteria?
Here in Pennsylvania they built all these wonderful roads and bridges and never thought to do any maintenance in the past 50 years. Now you have bridges with chunks of concrete falling off and roads that look worse than an iraqi highway. Hell one of the overpasses on I-70 fell in last year. Don't even talk about the layout of the roads in western PA...
As someone who has passed through Pennsylvania on several drive cross country I would tend to agree with you. I-80 is narrow, in rough shape, and is veritable shoot gallery of crossing deer. Other bad stretches of highways I have known:
I-90 Massachusetts Turnpike - the most expensive 120 miles in the nation (surprise), in a state rotten with DOT corruption. For all that it is a crudy road.
I-70 Denver to Eisenhower Tunnel - death on wheels up and down, especially in the snow
I-90 Albany to Buffalo - another white elephant. High tolls, lousy conditions
Some good ones:
LA's 405 - yep it is crowded but traffic moves and it is well maintained
I-70 KC-Denver - it is like an airport runway and in great shape
I-10 Houston to Tuscon - in about 15 hours. Amazing.
Really? You don't notice that it started off quite negative, rose to an average of 0 between 1960 and 1990 (which is how 0 is defined on that graph) and then became quite positive?
I don't like citing wikipedia but it is the closest thing to what I am looking for. Can you really make such dramatic conclusions about the last 20 years worth of data? I wish they would show the standard deviation for the averaged points. The measurement variation is huge! I find the 2004 annotation amusing. It looks to me like the temperature trend is down. Climate scientists have no shame! Isn't it irresponsible to cry wolf and ruin the world economy when so many are poised to reap its benefits?
Of course this whole science thing is overrated, right? In all honesty though, there simply is not enough money to take care of all of the costs given that the Bush administration wants to send men to Mars to the detriment of many, many science missions at NASA.
Hubble is in the 16th year of a 10 year mission. It replacement, the James Webb Telescope will be launched in 2013. The Hubble mission cannot last forever. I have read that there are 51 active NASA missions total. JPL alone has 11. Planetary science has flourished while US manned launch capability has stagnated. Allowing some active missions to end in the next few years should free up money for exciting new projects like Project Constellation. The Bush Administration deserves credit for reenergising the moribund US manned program.
Although the figure you cite might qualify as nothing, the upper bound, IMO, does not. Further more, if successful, we will also learn more about what we're capable of doing, and what the effect will be on the environment.
This is precisely why Kyotoists will fail in America, Australia, India, China... You have no significant justification for a brazen seizure of unprecidented wealth. So it will continue to be rejected.
Some economists (as opposed to us on the sidelines) actually speculate that measures to help the environment might actually stimulate the economy. Granted, this is speculation. It might stress the economy some. Not as much as global warming will, but some.
Personally, I have no reason to trust "experts" in the area of climate change. There are none. If you are refering to the so called "carbon market", the Europeans came up with that term. Their growth levels are so enemic they might actually consider it stimulus. Consider the source. It is a standard misguided rationing program. Such constructs have never built wealth for anyone other than a few insiders who can sell the initial issues. I'm surprised they suggest such a discredited vehicle.
The drastic climate change has only come in the last 100 or so years. The next 50 years will likely result in more drastic changes.
I look at the greenies own data and I see a blip of an increase since 1980. Most of the 20th century was pretty flat. Wouldn't CO2 emissions have started affecting climate hundreds of years earlier if the climate was as sensative anthrogenic changes as you suggest? Or is that a discussion you are uncomfortable with?
...Decades ago, big tobacco was doing the same thing with tobacco
Whenever someone like you brings up big tobacco they are imagining $$$ coming from the courts for climate change. It is the only practical avenue for the greenies to circumvent the will of the electorate.
As for Kyoto, I'll admit ignorance. Do you deny there's a problem, or are you only claiming that Kyoto's no solution? If the latter, what do you recommend?
I deny there is a problem. Kyoto is madness. I recommend continuing on the environmental path established 50 years ago. To reduce harmful pollutants. That is President Bush's policy. CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food.
Personally, I'm in favor of incentives to reduce pollution and encourage efficiency. I think nuclear power (fusion and fission) can be part of the solution, especially (with respect to fission) in the short term.
Efficiency will get you 20-40% reduction in usage. Energy usage grows at 5% per year. Ding. Next. Nuclear power is great. Unfortunately the greenies have hobbled reactor research since 3 mile island. Now we need the Japanese to construct them. I would like to see large ones dedicated to producing hydrogen. Don't waste your breath about fusion. After decades of hearing it is only a decade away, it is tiresome.
Again, I'm not claiming that Kyoto is the solution (and nor are those who are pushing Kyoto - they merely claim that it's a good first step). Rather, I'm claiming that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and harmful. If you think otherwise, the benefits/dangers of Kyoto don't really factor into it.
Don't you think it is a bit unrealistic to ask for $1 trillion in worldwide economic devastation and offer nothing in return? Some first step. Do you really have confidence in the Kyoto architects? Are they really credible? Your last declarations are particularly amusing. Repeating them over and over does not make it true. Climate has been warming for 12000 years. What was the result? The ascent of man. I fear the day when the warming stops.
You mean one that you hypothesized, and is not supported by any scientists that I'm aware of. This isn't the best answer to global warming deniers, but it does capture the flavor of their debating style.
Ofcourse you haven't heard it from scientists. The 50% chance that warming will be beneficial does not help them extort funding.
As for a disingenuous debating style, ever tried to get a straight answer from the Kyotoists what exactly the $1 trillion "investment" will get us? I've heard 0.02 deg C temperature decrease in a century! Is it worth destroying the world economy over the whim of a few greenies who claim that you can favorably manipulate climate by hobbling growth? I call Kyoto "economic Jonestown". Bring on the heat!
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
That is one dim view. We might also be celebrating and feasting in peace and harmony due to dumper crop yields that a milder climate with elevated CO2 concentrations would bring.
That's pretty strange claim. Population genetics is a serious mathematical formulation, as are any number of models for mutation, as are the mathematics behind things like genetic algorithms and other such models of how things in biology works. I have no idea what other than those things you'd be asking for.
Hardly. Biology stands alone among the major sciences for its empiricism and lack of rigor. Population genetics is an admirable exception.
Compared to physics, the basic variables and known things about biology are to a much higher precision in some sense... Biology isn't necessarily as inherently mathematically inclined as physics, but that's in part because the things it studies are less fundamental and unitary. All the evidence, however, is processed with mathematical measurements and modeling, just the same.
Seems to me that biochemistry (DNA) and cellular biology are fundemental and unitary. As for biology not being "mathematically inclined", that is crap, it is just that concepts are complicated and deep. That doesn't stop physicists.
Again, I don't see what you are talking about. Models and descriptions of how mutation happens, when, and why, and where and to what degree, is a very complex and robust subject in biology that cannot be summed up in any simple principle.
If you haven't studied classical dynamics (principle of least action), thermodynamics (basic laws), quantum mechanics (wave postulates and Schroedinger's equation), general relativity (principle of equivalence) you wouldn't. My point is there are postulates based on simple elegant ideas from which the ediface of those subjects are derived. The ideas of evolution, at a fundemental and unitary level, must have a similiar representation. That is the point of my last post.
On abortion, I can see the reason in saying that with no bright line, we must err on the side of life. But with stem cells, they are so far over on the "non-person" side of that line that that argument becomes nonsense.
Seems we agree. The source of stem cell lines will continue to be of interest.
The debate over evolution in general (common descent, natural selection shaping speciation events, etc.) is over. The only reason people are still debating is because they generally don't know what they are talking about, but they sure are proud to demonstrate it!
I support the idea of evolution. But unlike base theories in physics or chemistry it has gone 150 years without a serious mathematical formulation and is underdeveloped. What we are taught is trivial and provokes questions. The description in words that species morph through random mutation and natural selection is not good enough. The mutation of species seems to be governed by a least action principle of some kind. Say this and get the response, "Nothing more to see, luddite, move along." Sadly, this is the nature of the response of biologists to the cranks, and has opened up the "debate".
Really, this exemplifies the sort of research we've been talking about when it comes to stem cells. Unfortunately, the actual scientific possibilities were overshadowed by a bunch of political bullshit.
The source of stem cells is a profoundly important debate. Do we really want to breed and sacrifice a race of sound humans to fix broken bodies already deselected by nature?
Stem cells, biology (evolution!), global warming...The subjection of science to political considerations has to stop.
The debate over evolution will end once the science starts getting a better defense. Global warming is political by nature. It is a scientific growth industry which obtains venture capital by spreading fear. Its track record of prediction is among the worst in all of science. It is also the primary tactic of a "green movement" whose real motive is to foist a weird, agrarian, impoverished ideal on prosperous industrial society.
The '$' in Micro$oft is intentional. It is a common diminutive form used to express revulsion for their business practices. If you read the site regularly you would know that, you jackass. I accept the other corrections.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power"
Your mindless tautologies do not amount to a tactical strategy against the islamists. Will it take another, worse attack before you take them seriously?
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I am glad your wife is Christian. She is probably a lot better off as an Egyptian Christian in Canada than she would be in her homeland. My remark is not a racist remark at all. Islamist is an accurate description of the 9/11 hijackers and not a blanket statement about Muslims. You should not allow political correctness to prevent you from making honest statements of fact.
I guess I meant to say I am strip searched before I can get on a plane. And yes I get that special attention too, as a white male traveling alone. But I cooperate because I have nothing to hide and wish to contribute in restoring peace of mind to my fellow travelers that the Islamists took away. I would think your wife would be more apologetic for the transgressions of her brothers in faith.
Isn't it a better alternative to elitist pacificists surrendering their faux-democracies to the rising Islamic Fascist Caliphate.
At different times in our history you could have substituted Africans, Italians, Irish, Poles as the next great threat... We'll be ok.
Perhaps because we have some spare time on our radiotelescopes. I for one have no interest in uniting with the rest of humanity under anything less than the United States Constitution.
For the love of God, the level of surveillance that the anglosphere tolerates is unfathomable by the standards of 1,000 years ago. In Britain, there's a movement to monitor every child's eating habits and American intrusion is legendary in its own right!
I think you are exaggerating a bit. Isn't it prudent to put security cameras on a few street corners and in the subway considering they have been attacked already by Islamic terrorists?
As an American the only inconvenience I have found post 9/11 is having to put my shoes through an X-ray machine before I get on an airplane.
Even if we contacted a distant civilization, a dialog would take centuries. A physical meeting would take thousands of years. This is more than enough time for your Utopian dreams to be realized.
This comment is kind of extreme but it is not intended as flamebait. It is to highlight some of the absurdity in the thinking of the envonmentalist response. I am not sure if you are laughing with me or at me.
This is of no real value in terms of weight or reusability.
Not very likely given that the CEV landing site is a dry lake. It is pretty well established that chutes are more weight efficient than wings. That is not an argument you are likely to win. Ofcourse the well designed Kliper will use both. Furthermore, the Kliper design is not very flexible. It cannot be used for a lunar mission, it lacks significant propulsion, interior volume, adaptability to a translunar stage etc.
Japan and Europe are not yet space faring nations. Neither is even developing a manned capability. Russia has no reusable program beyond Kliper. The CEV is reusable 20 times, like Kliper. What are you talking about? There is no fully reusable system in any real stage of planning by anyone.
During the last shuttle launch the ET impacted with a turkey vulture. Had the strike occured at a higher speed and altitude the vehicle could have been brought down. Exposure of the heat shield to the ascent environment is a high risk over many flights. Again, this is well established. The CEV designers happily relearned this lesson from Apollo in robust design.
Seriously, the recent Russian track record is abyssmal. Unlike LockMart or Boeing who have a huge string of successes going. Ask the satellite insurers. When a failure does occur they resort to KGB mode and keep the investigation shrouded in secrecy. How many Block DM stages will fail before they get it right.. It is only a matter of time before it creeps into their manned systems. Their manned program is going nowhere beyond supplying the few people who are marooned on the ISS some emergency rations.
If cross range reentry is a requirement, fine. The shuttle has never made use of its maximum cross range of 1100 miles. It still gets hung up in space due to tight weather restrictions on landing. Ballistic reentry vehicles are not as constrained by ground level winds. I would say supersonic manuaverability is the olnly advantage of a winged vehicle. Both the Russian design and the CEV hit the ground under steerable chutes. If fact landing into a strong headwind with steerable parachutes is desireable. Heat dissipation on the CEV for the orbital or lunar reentry profiles is elegantly handled by replaceable carbon-carbon heatshields.
The Soyuz bell shape comes close. NASA's tried and true conical design is a good tradeoff between low drag ascent performance and high drag and controllability for reentry.
The complaint is about the extent of the winged vehicle TPS and its exposure to the launch environment. Winged designs will continue to be dogged by this vulnerability.
The X-33 debocle killed SSTO for years to come. 2 Reusable stages are still too large and expensive. At best we could create an improved lighter space shuttle. But the severe architectural problem of parallel boost would remain.
The Russian design is ok. Not unlike LockMart's proposal for the CEV, which I am glad was rejected. Not sure what new shape buys them. It can't be that manuverable. The thermal protection system is exposed to the ascent environment. I am more interested in what they will launch it with. Today's Soyuz cannot launch a 6 person spacecraft.
It is not silly if you are worried about a new administration coming in to deconstruct the program, and if external military requirements were added, like with the shuttle. I personally do not envy, nor do I think the US should emulate Russia's glacially conservative design evolution approach.
How silly and petty you Kyotoists are. Do you propose that we build rockets out of recycled plastic bottles? This is why your movement is dying. You are irresponsible. There would be a lot less CO2 if you held your breath.
Here is a big cheer for the fact that the object is re-usable. This is fast becoming one of the more considered aspects of shuttle design, and given taht there is a "The Carbon Trust" campaign going on in the uk [and the world!] a reuable shuttle is a big bonus.
The DC-X and space shuttle are not at all comparable. The DC-X has about 1/100th the performance of the shuttle. The use of decent engines if frivolously wasteful. I am not surprised Bezos is attracted to it. The weight penalty imposed on the space shuttle for reusability, wings, wheels, thermal protection is huge. Strip all of that away and use a simple aerodynamic shape and you have the NASA CEV.
What does "Carbon Trust" have anything to do with vehicles that use LOX and LH2 for fuel and are built out of Li-Al?
Yes, I read it. I stand by my assesssment. The guy is a charlatan and a serial entrepreneur who has never created a successful venture. But I am sure he has pocketed lots of other people's money.
I find it amusing how you choose your the correlations that strengthen your argument and ignore the ones that weaken it.
Absolutely! I have already commented extensively about the feeding frenzy for funding that apocalyptic climate research has generated. I don't believe it is centrally organised. Do you not see that there are multitude vested political interests stoking the hysteria?
My user name rocks! What is yours, you loser? Owned!
An award for someone who gave out an award? Why don't we recognise actual innovators?
As someone who has passed through Pennsylvania on several drive cross country I would tend to agree with you. I-80 is narrow, in rough shape, and is veritable shoot gallery of crossing deer. Other bad stretches of highways I have known:
Some good ones:
I don't like citing wikipedia but it is the closest thing to what I am looking for. Can you really make such dramatic conclusions about the last 20 years worth of data? I wish they would show the standard deviation for the averaged points. The measurement variation is huge! I find the 2004 annotation amusing. It looks to me like the temperature trend is down. Climate scientists have no shame! Isn't it irresponsible to cry wolf and ruin the world economy when so many are poised to reap its benefits?
The Hubble Project site says differently.
Hubble is in the 16th year of a 10 year mission. It replacement, the James Webb Telescope will be launched in 2013. The Hubble mission cannot last forever. I have read that there are 51 active NASA missions total. JPL alone has 11. Planetary science has flourished while US manned launch capability has stagnated. Allowing some active missions to end in the next few years should free up money for exciting new projects like Project Constellation. The Bush Administration deserves credit for reenergising the moribund US manned program.
This is precisely why Kyotoists will fail in America, Australia, India, China... You have no significant justification for a brazen seizure of unprecidented wealth. So it will continue to be rejected.
Personally, I have no reason to trust "experts" in the area of climate change. There are none. If you are refering to the so called "carbon market", the Europeans came up with that term. Their growth levels are so enemic they might actually consider it stimulus. Consider the source. It is a standard misguided rationing program. Such constructs have never built wealth for anyone other than a few insiders who can sell the initial issues. I'm surprised they suggest such a discredited vehicle.
I look at the greenies own data and I see a blip of an increase since 1980. Most of the 20th century was pretty flat. Wouldn't CO2 emissions have started affecting climate hundreds of years earlier if the climate was as sensative anthrogenic changes as you suggest? Or is that a discussion you are uncomfortable with?
Whenever someone like you brings up big tobacco they are imagining $$$ coming from the courts for climate change. It is the only practical avenue for the greenies to circumvent the will of the electorate.
As for Kyoto, I'll admit ignorance. Do you deny there's a problem, or are you only claiming that Kyoto's no solution? If the latter, what do you recommend?
I deny there is a problem. Kyoto is madness. I recommend continuing on the environmental path established 50 years ago. To reduce harmful pollutants. That is President Bush's policy. CO2 is not a pollutant, it is plant food.
Personally, I'm in favor of incentives to reduce pollution and encourage efficiency. I think nuclear power (fusion and fission) can be part of the solution, especially (with respect to fission) in the short term.
Efficiency will get you 20-40% reduction in usage. Energy usage grows at 5% per year. Ding. Next. Nuclear power is great. Unfortunately the greenies have hobbled reactor research since 3 mile island. Now we need the Japanese to construct them. I would like to see large ones dedicated to producing hydrogen. Don't waste your breath about fusion. After decades of hearing it is only a decade away, it is tiresome.
Again, I'm not claiming that Kyoto is the solution (and nor are those who are pushing Kyoto - they merely claim that it's a good first step). Rather, I'm claiming that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and harmful. If you think otherwise, the benefits/dangers of Kyoto don't really factor into it.
Don't you think it is a bit unrealistic to ask for $1 trillion in worldwide economic devastation and offer nothing in return? Some first step. Do you really have confidence in the Kyoto architects? Are they really credible? Your last declarations are particularly amusing. Repeating them over and over does not make it true. Climate has been warming for 12000 years. What was the result? The ascent of man. I fear the day when the warming stops.
You mean one that you hypothesized, and is not supported by any scientists that I'm aware of. This isn't the best answer to global warming deniers, but it does capture the flavor of their debating style.
Ofcourse you haven't heard it from scientists. The 50% chance that warming will be beneficial does not help them extort funding.
As for a disingenuous debating style, ever tried to get a straight answer from the Kyotoists what exactly the $1 trillion "investment" will get us? I've heard 0.02 deg C temperature decrease in a century! Is it worth destroying the world economy over the whim of a few greenies who claim that you can favorably manipulate climate by hobbling growth? I call Kyoto "economic Jonestown". Bring on the heat!
But sure, let's sit back and watch what happens. Big experiment in social restructuring, could be fun. Could be hard for someone, but that's the breaks. And maybe in 100 years, after the migrations have started in earnest and whole continents empty into whole other continents, rivers of human flesh and misery passing each other in hopeless crawls from one ecological disaster area to another, maybe our grandchildren won't be digging up and violating our corpses in blind rage at how stupid and cynical we were at the very moment in 400 years of screwing up when we could have turned this ship around and saved them a lot of human misery.
That is one dim view. We might also be celebrating and feasting in peace and harmony due to dumper crop yields that a milder climate with elevated CO2 concentrations would bring.
That's pretty strange claim. Population genetics is a serious mathematical formulation, as are any number of models for mutation, as are the mathematics behind things like genetic algorithms and other such models of how things in biology works. I have no idea what other than those things you'd be asking for.
Hardly. Biology stands alone among the major sciences for its empiricism and lack of rigor. Population genetics is an admirable exception.
Compared to physics, the basic variables and known things about biology are to a much higher precision in some sense. .. Biology isn't necessarily as inherently mathematically inclined as physics, but that's in part because the things it studies are less fundamental and unitary. All the evidence, however, is processed with mathematical measurements and modeling, just the same.
Seems to me that biochemistry (DNA) and cellular biology are fundemental and unitary. As for biology not being "mathematically inclined", that is crap, it is just that concepts are complicated and deep. That doesn't stop physicists.
Again, I don't see what you are talking about. Models and descriptions of how mutation happens, when, and why, and where and to what degree, is a very complex and robust subject in biology that cannot be summed up in any simple principle.
If you haven't studied classical dynamics (principle of least action), thermodynamics (basic laws), quantum mechanics (wave postulates and Schroedinger's equation), general relativity (principle of equivalence) you wouldn't. My point is there are postulates based on simple elegant ideas from which the ediface of those subjects are derived. The ideas of evolution, at a fundemental and unitary level, must have a similiar representation. That is the point of my last post.
On abortion, I can see the reason in saying that with no bright line, we must err on the side of life. But with stem cells, they are so far over on the "non-person" side of that line that that argument becomes nonsense.
Seems we agree. The source of stem cell lines will continue to be of interest.
The debate over evolution in general (common descent, natural selection shaping speciation events, etc.) is over. The only reason people are still debating is because they generally don't know what they are talking about, but they sure are proud to demonstrate it!
I support the idea of evolution. But unlike base theories in physics or chemistry it has gone 150 years without a serious mathematical formulation and is underdeveloped. What we are taught is trivial and provokes questions. The description in words that species morph through random mutation and natural selection is not good enough. The mutation of species seems to be governed by a least action principle of some kind. Say this and get the response, "Nothing more to see, luddite, move along." Sadly, this is the nature of the response of biologists to the cranks, and has opened up the "debate".
Really, this exemplifies the sort of research we've been talking about when it comes to stem cells. Unfortunately, the actual scientific possibilities were overshadowed by a bunch of political bullshit.
The source of stem cells is a profoundly important debate. Do we really want to breed and sacrifice a race of sound humans to fix broken bodies already deselected by nature?
Stem cells, biology (evolution!), global warming...The subjection of science to political considerations has to stop.
The debate over evolution will end once the science starts getting a better defense. Global warming is political by nature. It is a scientific growth industry which obtains venture capital by spreading fear. Its track record of prediction is among the worst in all of science. It is also the primary tactic of a "green movement" whose real motive is to foist a weird, agrarian, impoverished ideal on prosperous industrial society.
The '$' in Micro$oft is intentional. It is a common diminutive form used to express revulsion for their business practices. If you read the site regularly you would know that, you jackass. I accept the other corrections.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety"
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power"
Your mindless tautologies do not amount to a tactical strategy against the islamists. Will it take another, worse attack before you take them seriously?