It's hard to believe such a small change could make any noticeable difference at all, and I've heard people say AGW is impossible because it is so small, just like you are saying it's obvious because it's so big.
This is why you need to look at the details of the change, and not just say, "wow, that is big." or "wow, that is small." If you do that, you're likely to end up with an answer that is completely wrong.
It's not hard to believe if you do some back-of-envelope calculations. The main thing to consider is that most of the gases in the atmosphere have virtually no impact on the greenhouse effect because they do not absorb much infrared light so CO2 contributes up to 25% of the total greenhouse effect (which is 30 degrees celsius in total). The other thing is that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is very small to start with (only 0.3%) so 0.02% is a relatively large chunk of the CO2 proportion.
So your stated 0.02% increase is a 7% increase in CO2 concentration (0.02/0.3) which will have a significant impact on the ~ 8 degrees celsius contribution of CO2 towards the greenhouse effect. That's over 0.5 degree celsius assuming a linear relationship to temperature and ignoring positive/negative feedback etc.
Incidentally the actual increase in CO2 is about 0.07% of overall atmosphere since 1960 (315 to 385 ppm).
... if you're running an internet flourist, it must be nice to be able to contact the cloud operator when february nears and be able to just rent a few more servers for a week.
Pancake day must be quite an event in your part of the world - over here most people get by with what they already have in the cupboard.
Of course, the opposite is true... I remember someone who insisted in writing ER diagrams to describe our system, despite it not being an RDB, and not being accurately described by ER diagrams -- but to him everything was an ER diagram.
I can't say whether entity relationship diagrams were appropriate in the situation you describe but there is nothing wrong in principle in using ER diagrams to describe non-RDB systems. ER diagrams describe the logical or semantic model, not the physical implementation, and are therefore DB agnostic. Yes, they are often used to help design an RDB schema but their real value is to understand your data at the semantic level.
Unfortunately, many don't grasp this distinction and you'll see many RDB systems where the ER description is used directly to create a normalised DB schema. Except for simple and small databases these will usually perform poorly. And you'll also see both RDB and non-RDB systems where developers have not appropriately considered the semantic view of the data in the system. Except for simple and small databases these will usually become difficult to maintain over time.
I wasn't intending to imply the universe doesn't exist (though it would be interesting if it could be shown that if agnostics exist, and also that their beliefs are rational, then this implies the universe and therefore God, do not exist;)
I was just pointing out that to justify agnosticism on the basis of logical reasoning causes a problem or 2. Of course it depends how you define agnosticism - perhaps I was being a bit cheeky with my broad definition as it needed to include all non-proven beliefs, not just religious ones. For example there's no inconsistency in saying that agnosticism has a basis in logic, if agnosticism doesn't refer to "truths" within logic. I guess it's a bit like the problem that it is not possible to prove the consistency of any grammar using only statements in that grammar, but it is possible to prove the consistency of other grammars.
It's all a bit academic really as there are clearly differences between the statements of "self-evident truth" found in logic and those found in faith. But from the point of view of logic are these statements any different?
The only rational answers to the "god" question are:
1) "Unknowable"
2) "not relevant"
Any other assertion, be it for or against, fails at logic.
And by the same logical reasoning the only answer to the "Ronald McDonald is an alien from Mars" argument are: 1) "Unknowable"
2) "not relevant"
So agnosticism based on logical argument is not particularly useful.
Furthermore, if logic is the reason for your agnosticism as you seem to suggest, then to be consistent you cannot have any unsupported beliefs, including those regarding the truth of axioms in logic. Thus agnosticism cannot be a rational stance either - the same logic denies the concept of rational argument.
In other words it's not logically consistent to assert "I take to be true only those things that can be proven to be true", as the proofs you are relying on depend on unprovable truths.
So seriously, lets stop the fear mongering, four accidents of significance and only one - due to a terribly stupid design - resulted in actual threats to the public. Nuclear power is safe, and if people would just take the time to actually understand it they would know it.
It is statements such as this that contribute to the public suspicion of the nuclear industry IMO. Nuclear power is not "safe", it has risks like any other industrial scale power generation. The public knows there are risks, it knows that the nuclear industry has a history of trying to hide the risks, and it knows that human factors are often more significant than reactor design when safety is concerned.
At some point the industry needs to hold their hands up and say "yes we have been doing it wrong", and if the risks really are less now than they were in the past, try to convince the public that things will be different. But I suspect this wont happen while we are still using reactors with all the same attributes as the ones at Fukushima for example, or storing fuel in ways that were never envisaged by the original designers.
My view is that there will always be accidents (until proven otherwise) and it's not acceptable to rely on people risking their lives every time there's an accident in order to prevent further risk to the public. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima would have been far worse but for the actions of a few "heroes". Nuclear safety should not have to depend on heroes.
I'm not convinced it was a worst case scenario. There were times when they were not able to get near the reactors due to the high levels of radioactivity. What would have happened if they were unable to cool the reactors at all?
You are quite a long way off with your estimate, though you're right that the effect would be small.
One mole of lead is 207 grams so the energy you are talking about would cause a 1 K rise in only (207 * 2 * 10^12) / (6.02 * 10^23) or 6.9 * 10^-10 grams of lead.
And the heat capacity (by mass) of water is about 32 times that of lead so you could heat up even less than that - just over 2 * 10^-11 grams of water.
If someone drives an X-ray emitter past me they are going to find my boot up their ass.
Though the detectors are perfectly capable of detecting boots, due to the low penetrability of the electromagnetic waves I think you should be reassured your boot will remain well hidden.
And to snuff out perceived current or future threats.
Given mans' penchant for war and the recent development of space travel, another race might have good reason for seeing us as a future threat, particularly if they think we're close to having the technology for developing WMADs (Weapons of Mass Alien Destruction).
More than likely, they would be explorers, observers, teachers, or all the above.
Really? Because when I look around at everything around us, I see the evidence of such incredibly intricate and complex systems that I am further convinced in the existence of some kind of creator.
Intricate and complex systems often result from surprisingly simple causes e.g. iteration of z(n+1) = z(n) + c (where c is a complex number), gives rise to the Mandelbrot Set.
Carbon dating has been proved time and again an inaccurate measure of age so we can only theorize how old something really is (best educated guesstimate) unless there is very clear documentation as to the age.
Carbon dating is never used to data dinosaur fossils - its half-life is far too short. Other isotopes with much longer half lives are used to date rocks and fossils.
In clarification, don't confuse work with energy. They aren't quite exactly the same thing. What is correct to say, is a force does no work if it does not cause a displacement of the object along the vector of the force. This says nothing about the expense of energy though other than to say, an appropriate amount of energy expended will accounted for in the work done. It does not mean that that is the only energy expense nor that for energy to be expended work must be done.
It's a long time since I was really up on physics and maths and I may have been imprecise with terminology etc. I agree that the vector components of the force need to be considered - particularly important for the string-rock system under discussion where the force on the rock along the tangent is 0, hence the KE does not change (assuming string is attached to a fixed point, frictionless system etc). I'm not sure I understand your last sentence - are you thinking about systems with friction etc?
I've enjoyed reading these posts - it's good to get back up to speed with some of the basic concepts I used to be familiar with as a student. I've found a couple of the links here useful.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth having a look at server name indication which is supported by modern browsers. This allows multiple secure vhosts and certs per IP address.
That's .007%
Ah, my bad.
Also proportion of CO2 in atmosphere becomes 0.03%, calculation becomes 0.02/0.03 x 8 = 5 degrees celsius etc
It's hard to believe such a small change could make any noticeable difference at all, and I've heard people say AGW is impossible because it is so small, just like you are saying it's obvious because it's so big. This is why you need to look at the details of the change, and not just say, "wow, that is big." or "wow, that is small." If you do that, you're likely to end up with an answer that is completely wrong.
It's not hard to believe if you do some back-of-envelope calculations. The main thing to consider is that most of the gases in the atmosphere have virtually no impact on the greenhouse effect because they do not absorb much infrared light so CO2 contributes up to 25% of the total greenhouse effect (which is 30 degrees celsius in total). The other thing is that the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is very small to start with (only 0.3%) so 0.02% is a relatively large chunk of the CO2 proportion.
So your stated 0.02% increase is a 7% increase in CO2 concentration (0.02/0.3) which will have a significant impact on the ~ 8 degrees celsius contribution of CO2 towards the greenhouse effect. That's over 0.5 degree celsius assuming a linear relationship to temperature and ignoring positive/negative feedback etc.
Incidentally the actual increase in CO2 is about 0.07% of overall atmosphere since 1960 (315 to 385 ppm).
Once DNA-based life had become common, was it inevitable that evolution would lead eventually to intelligent life on Earth?
... if you're running an internet flourist, it must be nice to be able to contact the cloud operator when february nears and be able to just rent a few more servers for a week.
Pancake day must be quite an event in your part of the world - over here most people get by with what they already have in the cupboard.
Of course, the opposite is true ... I remember someone who insisted in writing ER diagrams to describe our system, despite it not being an RDB, and not being accurately described by ER diagrams -- but to him everything was an ER diagram.
I can't say whether entity relationship diagrams were appropriate in the situation you describe but there is nothing wrong in principle in using ER diagrams to describe non-RDB systems. ER diagrams describe the logical or semantic model, not the physical implementation, and are therefore DB agnostic. Yes, they are often used to help design an RDB schema but their real value is to understand your data at the semantic level.
Unfortunately, many don't grasp this distinction and you'll see many RDB systems where the ER description is used directly to create a normalised DB schema. Except for simple and small databases these will usually perform poorly. And you'll also see both RDB and non-RDB systems where developers have not appropriately considered the semantic view of the data in the system. Except for simple and small databases these will usually become difficult to maintain over time.
"its", not "it's", not its, not it's. Also sorry.
I wasn't intending to imply the universe doesn't exist (though it would be interesting if it could be shown that if agnostics exist, and also that their beliefs are rational, then this implies the universe and therefore God, do not exist ;)
I was just pointing out that to justify agnosticism on the basis of logical reasoning causes a problem or 2. Of course it depends how you define agnosticism - perhaps I was being a bit cheeky with my broad definition as it needed to include all non-proven beliefs, not just religious ones. For example there's no inconsistency in saying that agnosticism has a basis in logic, if agnosticism doesn't refer to "truths" within logic. I guess it's a bit like the problem that it is not possible to prove the consistency of any grammar using only statements in that grammar, but it is possible to prove the consistency of other grammars.
It's all a bit academic really as there are clearly differences between the statements of "self-evident truth" found in logic and those found in faith. But from the point of view of logic are these statements any different?
The only rational answers to the "god" question are:
1) "Unknowable" 2) "not relevant"
Any other assertion, be it for or against, fails at logic.
And by the same logical reasoning the only answer to the "Ronald McDonald is an alien from Mars" argument are: 1) "Unknowable" 2) "not relevant"
So agnosticism based on logical argument is not particularly useful.
Furthermore, if logic is the reason for your agnosticism as you seem to suggest, then to be consistent you cannot have any unsupported beliefs, including those regarding the truth of axioms in logic. Thus agnosticism cannot be a rational stance either - the same logic denies the concept of rational argument.
In other words it's not logically consistent to assert "I take to be true only those things that can be proven to be true", as the proofs you are relying on depend on unprovable truths.
So seriously, lets stop the fear mongering, four accidents of significance and only one - due to a terribly stupid design - resulted in actual threats to the public. Nuclear power is safe, and if people would just take the time to actually understand it they would know it.
It is statements such as this that contribute to the public suspicion of the nuclear industry IMO. Nuclear power is not "safe", it has risks like any other industrial scale power generation. The public knows there are risks, it knows that the nuclear industry has a history of trying to hide the risks, and it knows that human factors are often more significant than reactor design when safety is concerned.
At some point the industry needs to hold their hands up and say "yes we have been doing it wrong", and if the risks really are less now than they were in the past, try to convince the public that things will be different. But I suspect this wont happen while we are still using reactors with all the same attributes as the ones at Fukushima for example, or storing fuel in ways that were never envisaged by the original designers.
My view is that there will always be accidents (until proven otherwise) and it's not acceptable to rely on people risking their lives every time there's an accident in order to prevent further risk to the public. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima would have been far worse but for the actions of a few "heroes". Nuclear safety should not have to depend on heroes.
I just got this message when logged in: "operator: direct telnet telehack.com will be faster than the web interface"
I'm not convinced it was a worst case scenario. There were times when they were not able to get near the reactors due to the high levels of radioactivity. What would have happened if they were unable to cool the reactors at all?
Yes there are risks, but if anything, what Fukushima went through proves it's not as dangerous as people might think
This accident proves nothing except that the consequences of nuclear accidents are unpredictable.
You've reminded me of the latin scene in Life of Brian - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIAdHEwiAy8
You are quite a long way off with your estimate, though you're right that the effect would be small.
One mole of lead is 207 grams so the energy you are talking about would cause a 1 K rise in only (207 * 2 * 10^12) / (6.02 * 10^23) or 6.9 * 10^-10 grams of lead.
That's less than the mass of a human ovum. Orders of magnitude (mass)
And the heat capacity (by mass) of water is about 32 times that of lead so you could heat up even less than that - just over 2 * 10^-11 grams of water.
If someone drives an X-ray emitter past me they are going to find my boot up their ass.
Though the detectors are perfectly capable of detecting boots, due to the low penetrability of the electromagnetic waves I think you should be reassured your boot will remain well hidden.
Same reason everyone uses *zilla to describe something big. Its part of modern culture.
The use of *gate is so common now, perhaps the phenomenon should be called gatezilla.
Here's a better graph of sea ice. It's actually greater now than it has been than in the past 30 years.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
+1 informative for the posting the link, -1 interpretation for implying the opposite of what the graph shows.
I'm almost done reading them all!
That's my next challenge - once I've finished reading the web.
Actually, come to think of it, a well-trained dog is probably one of your better security options.
A well-trained dog would be good, but I reckon having an un-house-trained dog would deter most unwelcome visitors.
Why do conquerers conquer? Resources!
And to snuff out perceived current or future threats.
Given mans' penchant for war and the recent development of space travel, another race might have good reason for seeing us as a future threat, particularly if they think we're close to having the technology for developing WMADs (Weapons of Mass Alien Destruction).
More than likely, they would be explorers, observers, teachers, or all the above.
Or weapons inspectors?
Really? Because when I look around at everything around us, I see the evidence of such incredibly intricate and complex systems that I am further convinced in the existence of some kind of creator.
Intricate and complex systems often result from surprisingly simple causes e.g. iteration of z(n+1) = z(n) + c (where c is a complex number), gives rise to the Mandelbrot Set.
Carbon dating has been proved time and again an inaccurate measure of age so we can only theorize how old something really is (best educated guesstimate) unless there is very clear documentation as to the age.
Carbon dating is never used to data dinosaur fossils - its half-life is far too short. Other isotopes with much longer half lives are used to date rocks and fossils.
There's a good description of the science behind radiometric dating and some of the misconceptions regarding its accuracy here: Radiometric Dating - A Christian Perspective
These comments! There should be a Law.
Yes, a law administered by circuit judges.
In clarification, don't confuse work with energy. They aren't quite exactly the same thing. What is correct to say, is a force does no work if it does not cause a displacement of the object along the vector of the force. This says nothing about the expense of energy though other than to say, an appropriate amount of energy expended will accounted for in the work done. It does not mean that that is the only energy expense nor that for energy to be expended work must be done.
It's a long time since I was really up on physics and maths and I may have been imprecise with terminology etc. I agree that the vector components of the force need to be considered - particularly important for the string-rock system under discussion where the force on the rock along the tangent is 0, hence the KE does not change (assuming string is attached to a fixed point, frictionless system etc). I'm not sure I understand your last sentence - are you thinking about systems with friction etc?
I've enjoyed reading these posts - it's good to get back up to speed with some of the basic concepts I used to be familiar with as a student. I've found a couple of the links here useful.