The Mars warming is thought to have been caused by winds removing surface dust and exposing more of the dark underlying rock. The extra sunlight absorbed by the rock then heated up the planet. See here:http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/200 7/marswarming.html
Significant changes in the albedo of Mars have been observed. On the other hand, the monitoring of the Sun's output does not show the increase that would be necessary for it to be the cause of the warming on Mars.
On the other hand, if what you say is true then the conclusion is simple: our system of government simply doesn't work. That's a pretty profound conclusion and I'd be most fascinated to hear how you think it should be replaced.
Having just two parties was never part of the constitution, and forcing everyone to chose between only two complete ideologies leaves much of the populace feeling disenfranchised. Other countries manage to give minority parties some representation, and I think some change to make that happen here in the USA would be a massive help. Since this would benefit neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who have a near complete monopoly on power at both the state and federal level, there seems to be little hope of it ever happening.
There are many other good ideas for improving the political process, but they all run into that one stumbling block: What is good for the voters is bad for the parties, and without the support of at least one party nothing can be done.
I'm sure IBM makes some charitable contributions. I think they should turn the publicity around by donating this debt to the Red Cross or City of Hope or something. Then if the school district doesn't pay up, the school district will be the bad guys.
John Cramer has been writing science articles for the science fiction magazine Analog for some time. They are available online here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV
First off, plants aren't very efficient solar collectors. It's hard to find good numbers, but 3% to 6% efficiency is quoted here: http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-33998 .html. Your yield is going to be worse than that, since some of the energy has to go to growing the plant.
The only figure I could find for ethanol yield of corn is 328 gallons/acre, so if all the energy used is also from ethanol we should net 82 gallons.
Solar thermal, or even photovoltaic, perhaps could be scaled up to be a major energy source, but trying to grow our fuel is only a path to perennial poverty.
* "The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update" - "For every BTU dedicated to producing ethanol there is a 34% energy gain."
So to produce one gallon of ethanol outside the industry, three more have to be produced and consumed internally? That sounds like a terrible use of farm land.
Why don't you just extract the energy directly from the aluminum in one conversion step instead of 2?
What you are describing is the Aluminum-air battery (or fuel cell - it's about half way in between.)
There are difficulties, for instance the fouling of the anode with the hydroxide residue. There are (rather old, and unconfirmed) reports that these problems have been adequately solved, but there is still little interest in them. Over all, I think this AlGa Hydrogen production scheme is more complicated and much less efficient.
I think the lack of interest is from the massive change in infrastructure that would be required to handle the reprocessing of the aluminum waste. This hydrogen generation method has the same problem.
Global warming = more heat = more energy = a more energetic system (ie weather patterns).
Usable energy for driving weather comes from heat differential. Global warming heats the poles more, so the heat differential goes down.
Global warming = less heat differential = less energy = a less energetic system (ie weather patterns).
Wait, did I just prove global warming doesn't cause more hurricanes? Not at all. Weather is too complex for my simple argument, or yours. We need to rely on the best models available and observational data. Hurricanes are too small to be a natural part of the global models, but the conditions they show look favorable to hurricane production. Observations have not shown a significant increase in hurricanes, but intensity of Atlantic storms seems to have gone up.
It looks probable that global warming will increase hurricane danger, at least in the Atlantic, but there is still significant doubt.
The more "correct" pronunciation of giga- was historically with a soft g (i.e. j), and with the i pronounced like a long e (as I think is still done in pico-). The currently more common usage of a hard g and short i didn't become dominate until computers started being described with numbers needing a giga- prefix.
So jigawatts was a correct pronunciation of the g, but not of the i.
... these numbers can misleading, partly because of large non-recurring costs, like new fabs.
The cost of an asset like a fab would be amortized over its useful life for accounting purposes.
Let's say you've spent $100 million on a new fab this year, and its not yet producing any revenue. Will this cause a loss? Probably not, since you have a brand spanking new fab worth $100 million on your books now. The fab will fall in value quickly in the future, and will cost a lot to operate and maintain, so that's where you can get losses if your revenue from the fab isn't enough.
1) SCO loses their lawsuits. They then go bankrupt, and avoiding delisting now isn't going to make a whit of difference.
2) SCO wins the legal war. Although it seems unlikely, it is only this possibility that makes buying the stock make any sense at all. After winning, they should have enough money to get relisted easily, if they want to.
What is the point of even talking about sixty times the current? In a short article with little technical detail, and no mention of efficiency, this only seems to like an attempt to mislead people into thinking something important has been accomplished.
LiPo? Lithium Polonium? Reading more carefully, I see you're using Po for polymer. I don't think reusing an element's symbol for something else in a chemical formula is wise.
A foot of sea level rise will directly cause problems for a small, but not insignificant, number of people. Many more will face reduced property values because their property will be affected in decades to come. But talking about "land that won't be under water when [children are] grown", presumably in much less than fifty years, is an overstatement of the situation. If you want to talk about the additional number of people subject to storm surges based on the projected rise of 6 cm (linear extrapolation of current rate) over the next twenty years, fine, but be clear about it.
I'm not denying problems, but the hyperbole used by both sides in this discussion is causing a great deal of misunderstanding. Well, the hyperbole is mostly confined to one side: The other is mostly ignorance or wishful thinking.
The numbers I've been reading are not one foot. I'm hearing a meter or two.
What you are hearing, and repeating, is impeding rational discussion. Putting a time frame on sea level increases reduces the impact of the arguments of the advocates for rapid remediation, so it is left off. How many of the people who watched "An Inconvenient Truth" thought the meters of sea level change Al Gore talked about would occur during their own lives, or at least their children's?
I'm not against mitigation. We've already created a problem for future generations, and if we ignore it the problem will become worse. The first, easiest and cheapest thing we can do is to stop building power plants that burn coal and spew the carbon dioxide into the air, and I think that should be done NOW. I also know that most of the changes we will see in the coming decades are already locked in, so the changes we make now will be for the benefit of the more distant future.
...if your children can't breathe seawater, now would be a good time to find some land that won't be under water when they're grown.
You do realize we're talking about a foot or so over the next fifty years, right? Some estimates are for up to a meter by 2100, but it is seriously back loaded.
The higher temperature of the Cretaceous has already been referred to. Estimates suggest that at the beginning of the Cretaceous, the Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) was around 20C (about 5 hotter than today's value of 15C), and was about the same at the period's end - but peaked to a high of 25C in the Upper Cretaceous.
Your link is to a very poor, idealized graph of receptor sensitivity. A better, although still crude, one is here: http://www.photo.net/photo/edscott/vis00010.htm This does show the small extra peak of the red receptor to blue light that he mentioned.
Just because the Earth's magnetic field strength doesn't mean there is necessarily going to be a reversal soon. A reversal will be preceded by a weakening, but it is not expected that every, or even most, weakenings will lead to a reversal.
Rushing in precipitously would have endangered the rover and lost the easily available data about the rim. The rim of the crater is not exactly like the surrounding plains, and I'm sure there is some interest in the situation there.
Spending too long checking out the rim and descent routes runs the risk of the rover failing before it gets to the good stuff.
Somewhere in between there must be a happy medium. If were up to me I'd probably opt to go faster, but I trust their judgment much more than mine.
Victoria isn't just "yet another crater". There are no other reachable opportunities that are close to as interesting.
I'm pretty sure I saw a quote a while back saying they would go in even if they didn't think the rover could get back out, as long as they thought it would still be operational after the descent. They do want to examine the rim first, since they may well not get another chance, and they need to find a safe way down.
Since Borax contains no hydrogen less tightly bound than in water, it couldn't possibly be a good hydrogen delivery medium. The article you kindly linked to clearly states the chemical involved is sodium borohydride
Yes, this administration's reinterpretation of the constitution feels like Animal Farm come to life. And they represent the party that claims to want 'strict constructionists' on the Supreme Court!
I would think you could afford to use a hard scratch resistant coating, like maybe sapphire, instead of glass on solar cells sent to Luna. I suspect that's much harder than the dust.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mars warming is thought to have been caused by winds removing surface dust and exposing more of the dark underlying rock. The extra sunlight absorbed by the rock then heated up the planet. See here:http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/20
Significant changes in the albedo of Mars have been observed. On the other hand, the monitoring of the Sun's output does not show the increase that would be necessary for it to be the cause of the warming on Mars.
Having just two parties was never part of the constitution, and forcing everyone to chose between only two complete ideologies leaves much of the populace feeling disenfranchised. Other countries manage to give minority parties some representation, and I think some change to make that happen here in the USA would be a massive help. Since this would benefit neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who have a near complete monopoly on power at both the state and federal level, there seems to be little hope of it ever happening.
There are many other good ideas for improving the political process, but they all run into that one stumbling block: What is good for the voters is bad for the parties, and without the support of at least one party nothing can be done.
I'm sure IBM makes some charitable contributions. I think they should turn the publicity around by donating this debt to the Red Cross or City of Hope or something. Then if the school district doesn't pay up, the school district will be the bad guys.
John Cramer has been writing science articles for the science fiction magazine Analog for some time. They are available online here: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV
2. There's a lot of hydrogen, but not all that much energy.
First off, plants aren't very efficient solar collectors. It's hard to find good numbers, but 3% to 6% efficiency is quoted here: http://www.bautforum.com/archive/index.php/t-33998 .html. Your yield is going to be worse than that, since some of the energy has to go to growing the plant.
The only figure I could find for ethanol yield of corn is 328 gallons/acre, so if all the energy used is also from ethanol we should net 82 gallons.
Solar thermal, or even photovoltaic, perhaps could be scaled up to be a major energy source, but trying to grow our fuel is only a path to perennial poverty.
So to produce one gallon of ethanol outside the industry, three more have to be produced and consumed internally? That sounds like a terrible use of farm land.
What you are describing is the Aluminum-air battery (or fuel cell - it's about half way in between.)
There are difficulties, for instance the fouling of the anode with the hydroxide residue. There are (rather old, and unconfirmed) reports that these problems have been adequately solved, but there is still little interest in them. Over all, I think this AlGa Hydrogen production scheme is more complicated and much less efficient.
Some information is here:
http://www.aluminum.org/Template.cfm?Section=Tech
I think the lack of interest is from the massive change in infrastructure that would be required to handle the reprocessing of the aluminum waste. This hydrogen generation method has the same problem.
Usable energy for driving weather comes from heat differential. Global warming heats the poles more, so the heat differential goes down.
Global warming = less heat differential = less energy = a less energetic system (ie weather patterns).
Wait, did I just prove global warming doesn't cause more hurricanes? Not at all. Weather is too complex for my simple argument, or yours. We need to rely on the best models available and observational data. Hurricanes are too small to be a natural part of the global models, but the conditions they show look favorable to hurricane production. Observations have not shown a significant increase in hurricanes, but intensity of Atlantic storms seems to have gone up.
It looks probable that global warming will increase hurricane danger, at least in the Atlantic, but there is still significant doubt.
The more "correct" pronunciation of giga- was historically with a soft g (i.e. j), and with the i pronounced like a long e (as I think is still done in pico-). The currently more common usage of a hard g and short i didn't become dominate until computers started being described with numbers needing a giga- prefix.
So jigawatts was a correct pronunciation of the g, but not of the i.
The cost of an asset like a fab would be amortized over its useful life for accounting purposes.
Let's say you've spent $100 million on a new fab this year, and its not yet producing any revenue. Will this cause a loss? Probably not, since you have a brand spanking new fab worth $100 million on your books now. The fab will fall in value quickly in the future, and will cost a lot to operate and maintain, so that's where you can get losses if your revenue from the fab isn't enough.
I only see two possible outcomes:
1) SCO loses their lawsuits. They then go bankrupt, and avoiding delisting now isn't going to make a whit of difference.
2) SCO wins the legal war. Although it seems unlikely, it is only this possibility that makes buying the stock make any sense at all. After winning, they should have enough money to get relisted easily, if they want to.
What is the point of even talking about sixty times the current? In a short article with little technical detail, and no mention of efficiency, this only seems to like an attempt to mislead people into thinking something important has been accomplished.
LiPo? Lithium Polonium? Reading more carefully, I see you're using Po for polymer. I don't think reusing an element's symbol for something else in a chemical formula is wise.
I'm not denying problems, but the hyperbole used by both sides in this discussion is causing a great deal of misunderstanding. Well, the hyperbole is mostly confined to one side: The other is mostly ignorance or wishful thinking.What you are hearing, and repeating, is impeding rational discussion. Putting a time frame on sea level increases reduces the impact of the arguments of the advocates for rapid remediation, so it is left off. How many of the people who watched "An Inconvenient Truth" thought the meters of sea level change Al Gore talked about would occur during their own lives, or at least their children's?
I'm not against mitigation. We've already created a problem for future generations, and if we ignore it the problem will become worse. The first, easiest and cheapest thing we can do is to stop building power plants that burn coal and spew the carbon dioxide into the air, and I think that should be done NOW. I also know that most of the changes we will see in the coming decades are already locked in, so the changes we make now will be for the benefit of the more distant future.
You do realize we're talking about a foot or so over the next fifty years, right? Some estimates are for up to a meter by 2100, but it is seriously back loaded.
From http://www.bbm.me.uk/portsdown/PH_130_Envmnt.htm#
Your link is to a very poor, idealized graph of receptor sensitivity. A better, although still crude, one is here: http://www.photo.net/photo/edscott/vis00010.htm
This does show the small extra peak of the red receptor to blue light that he mentioned.
It cuts both ways. If those had been marketed as science fiction I probably would have watched them.
Just because the Earth's magnetic field strength doesn't mean there is necessarily going to be a reversal soon. A reversal will be preceded by a weakening, but it is not expected that every, or even most, weakenings will lead to a reversal.
Rushing in precipitously would have endangered the rover and lost the easily available data about the rim. The rim of the crater is not exactly like the surrounding plains, and I'm sure there is some interest in the situation there.
Spending too long checking out the rim and descent routes runs the risk of the rover failing before it gets to the good stuff.
Somewhere in between there must be a happy medium. If were up to me I'd probably opt to go faster, but I trust their judgment much more than mine.
Victoria isn't just "yet another crater". There are no other reachable opportunities that are close to as interesting.
I'm pretty sure I saw a quote a while back saying they would go in even if they didn't think the rover could get back out, as long as they thought it would still be operational after the descent. They do want to examine the rim first, since they may well not get another chance, and they need to find a safe way down.
Since Borax contains no hydrogen less tightly bound than in water, it couldn't possibly be a good hydrogen delivery medium. The article you kindly linked to clearly states the chemical involved is sodium borohydride
Yes, this administration's reinterpretation of the constitution feels like Animal Farm come to life. And they represent the party that claims to want 'strict constructionists' on the Supreme Court!
I would think you could afford to use a hard scratch resistant coating, like maybe sapphire, instead of glass on solar cells sent to Luna. I suspect that's much harder than the dust.