It would go off but would look nothing like an atmospheric burst. It would be a really bright spherical event that mostly produced an incredibly intense flux of gamma rays, with some neutrons as well. The only actual matter to heat up would be the bomb itself, so the size of the visible explosion would be small, but unbelivably bright. The idea is to cause this really intense light and gamma ray burst to heat the surface of the asteroid enough to cause vaporization and ablation. That would cause a small thrust that changes the direction of the asteroid enough to miss the Earth.
Actually, the way the two standoff nuclear explosives they studied would work, is to bombard the asteroid with "highly concentrated and directionally focused x-rays or neutrons," the latter of course being a "neutron bomb." The neutron bomb is the more effective method, presumably because of the momentum transferred directly by the high-speed shower of neutrons.
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)] required to deflect the following: Hypothetical long-period 1km comet with 9-24 months to impact: 12.8 Hypothetical 1km asteroid 15yr ahead: 10.5 VD17, a 500m asteroid for 2088: 9.6 Apophis after 2029 approach, assuming a 2036 a collision prediction: 9.4 Hypothetical 200m asteroid 10 yr ahead: 8.7 Apophis by 2029 (with current orbit knowledge): 8.5 Apophis by 2029 (with highly accurate orbit knowledge): 6.3
The point of the distinction between the last two is that the probability window we have to push out of the earth's path becomes much smaller the more accurately we know the orbital parameters of the object. So the more accurately we can calculate it, the less we have to actually push it (up to a point, of course). Also, it looks like very little is gained by exploding things underground as opposed to on the surface. So we apparently aren't going to need a crack team of good-looking drilling experts after all.
They claim 10-100 times more effective than other methods. First of all they dont define more effective. Second of all, they seem to dismiss ideas like a gravity tug out of hand as not developed enough.
The idea of throwing nukes at an object of potentially unknown size bugs me, especially when much more controlled options exist. All that needs to be done is to nudge the NEO out of small zones known as "keyholes" that are small, finite portions of space where the pull of the Earth will push the object into a collision course on its next orbit rather than another random non-intersecting orbit.
A fairly massive object (something a Delta IV Heavy could launch) would be perfectly capable of handling an Apophis sized object with enough lead time (on the order of years, but certainly less than decades), by flying in formation with the object in the right location to shift its orbit slightly. This is a lot easier than Apollo, which we pulled off in less than 10 years, so to dismiss it as too difficult is ridiculous, and it seems a lot more responsible than launching nukes at an object we dont fully understand.
Did you read the full study? It quantifies the "gravity tractor" along with the other methods mentioned, the gravity tractor being the most useless, other than conventional explosives. If you don't like nuclear, a simple high-velocity kinetic impactor is the next most effective (as long as it's a single solid object).
I don't know...One of the issues with non-lethal weapons it they make it a lot easier to break up a protest. If you actually had to kill people to settle them down, media and conscience could more easily affect change.
I don't think so. If a protest gets out of hand, and starts turning over cars and smashing windows, and the police start firing real bullets into the crowd to disperse them, I don't think the protesters are going to gain or lose any supporters.
How would this device differ from tasers, tear gas, or rubber bullets?
People have won lawsuits after the egregious/lethal application of tasers.
This sounds a whole lot less likely (especially than tasers) to be lethal. The exception would be with epileptics, but I think those would be very rare cases.
I'm sure that egregious applications of ANYTHING could still result in lawsuits. But if you're talking about liability for using the device when the sufficient cause to use it is being challenged, I think the devices you mentioned are a lot more problematic, because they are all much more traumatic for the subject than a device that causes dizziness or disorientation (even if it leads to puking) without pain.
Bob claims that Vlad says there's an "evil" color that gets everyone. But the description of the device uses pulses of light at varying wavelengths to cause the effect. So if there's only one wavelength, then why do they need to change the light?
Who knows -- they're not exactly spewing the details. It could be rapidly varying wavelengths within a narrow range, that narrow range constituting the "evil color."
This is all very interesting, but does it at all help us understand how scientists were able to use the Casimir Effect to send "Bunny #15" into the future? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJaU211gdg8
You, like Al Gore, are entitled to your own opinion. But you, like Al Gore, are not entitled to your own set of facts. Gore uses facts. You rely on disingenuous asshatery. Oh, and RealClimate is run by real climate scientists, as opposed to those bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry.
The only facts that Al Gore deals in are the ones he distorts for his twisted agenda. I deal with the facts as they are. RealClimate is run by real partisans, bought and paid for by the State, some of whom have degrees.
and all the ice cores there show a current cooling trend
Bullshit.
That link has nothing to do with ice cores. No climate scientist or anyone even vaugely aquanted with the data, would dispute that Antarctica is in a cooling trend according to the ice cores. I'm not going to do your research for you. Download some ice core data.
because the only places on the earth with significant recent warming are in Alaska, Canada and Russia
Bullshit. In Montana, the state next to mine, they've had more 100 degree days since 2000 than they did in the entire previous century.
This is exactly the kind of pseudo-statistical logic that has taken the place of science in your global warming religion.
Averaging all the earth's temperatures together to find a warming trend and then blaming that trend for occurrences taking place where it's not warming is either grossly ignorant or grossly deceitful.
Bullshit. Taking an average disguises the true impact of climate change, which is having the greatest impact at the polls.
Ha! You mean poles? Without taking an average, there is no possible way for you to claim that any kind of "global" trend exists, and certainly no way for you to use it as a causal factor for tropical storms! Warming happening in the northern latitudes has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, and is completely contrary to the CO2 computer models that they try to duplicate it with. And, as I stated before, the antarctic is cooling, and even your flunkies at the IPCC would back me up on that one.
If we are wrong, some oil companies might not rake in 10 billion next quarter. If we are wrong, consumers will save money through reduced energy use. If you are wrong, there will be hundreds of millions of refugees across the planet, coastal cities will be completely flooded, thousands of species will become extinct and farmland will turn into swamp or desert. I'll make do with a reduced BP Amoco stock price and a reduced energy bill at the end of the month, and you can buy a canoe and try not to drown. Deal?
Maybe you should try to think of the global economy as an ecosystem, and then you will start to see the light. You can't just say, oh, we'll just wipe out the plankton, big deal. It is a big deal with repercussions that far exceed what can be anticipated. Same thing with wiping out a major industry in the economy. Economic tampering by socialistic lunatics has the potential to bring far more suffering into the world than you are obviously aware. Even the minor U.S. political tampering with ethanol demand is already causing artificial food crises in various parts of the world. But it's a logical fallacy regardless to try to defend your position by saying that the consequences of your position are more terrible than my position. The bottom line is that your position is based on a combination of obsolete hypotheses, political opportunism, peer pressure, propaganda and lies. There's no reason for any reasonable person to believe in it, no matter how horrible its predictions are. If you want a doomsday prediction to guide science and government action, you should start thinking about the next ice age, which will mean the obliteration of life as we know it, and has the added advantage of being nonfictional.
You could have saved your time if you'd just written: bullshit, bullshit and bullshit, since it's all the same anyway. No, you can't point to any one storm and say it happened because of global warming. But warmer temperatures absolutely do worsen tropical storms, and the earth has been warming. And RealClimate shot down the "thickening Antarctic ice" canard three years ago.
RealClimate is about as objective as Al Gore. They should register as a religious institution -- maybe they could get a tax break. Antarctic ice is increasing and all the ice cores there show a current cooling trend. If you're going to say "warmer temperatures worsen tropical storms" then you can't also say "the earth has been warming" -- because the only places on the earth with significant recent warming are in Alaska, Canada and Russia. Averaging all the earth's temperatures together to find a warming trend and then blaming that trend for occurrences taking place where it's not warming is either grossly ignorant or grossly deceitful.
You global warming deniers are the new flat earthers. But at least flat earthers didn't screw over the rest of the planet. If you are also so confident it isn't happening, move to a nice coastal area in Malaysia and stay there.
Okay... then you global warming fundamentalists are the new Spanish Inquisition. And you should all move to the himalayas so you can escape the impending global flood.
So, IF (huge if) other civilisations follwed this path, this might be a possible reason why we don't see or hear their broadcasts -- because like us their high-powered broadcast media only existed for a short time, and were soon replaced by more efficient low-powered interactive media
I completely agree that it's ridiculous for us to expect other civilizations to be sending out radio waves based on our 100- year use of them. Radio waves have a lot of limitations, and we have no idea if we'll be using them much longer. If gravity wave communication becomes possible, for example, then that's probably what the rest of the galaxy would be using if they developed high technology.
However, no other civilization will be exactly the same as us. It seems that we have to treat a very fine line to remain high-tech. Other civilizations will probably either never have gone down the high-tech path, and only communicate in song, story, and dance; or else will have become intelligent enough to consciously choose simplicity of life, and only communicate in song, story, and dance.
...or, given our seemingly biophilic Universe, our assumptions about the general behaviour of intelligent civilizations are flawed.
A paradox is a paradox for a reason: it means there's something wrong in our thinking.
Exactly. I would guess that ET would look somewhat like us, but I seriously doubt he would act like us. Once an intelligent species can achieve religion, philosophy, and the joys of love between a male and a female, what are the chances that they are going to become as obsessed with physical science as a handful of Europeans did on our planet, to develop the kind of technology we're looking for? Of course, it's impossible to do anything other than baselessly speculate. But I speculate that we're extremely unique in our pursuit of hi-tech.
Keep in mind, that even on our own planet, humanity (in the form of Ergaster) first invented what technology it needed, (bifurcated hand axes, picks, etc.) and then made not a single further technological improvement in one million years. The course humanity took which lead it in a highly technical direction, for example, which lead it to develop the technology of writing, does not seem like a necessarily common course to me. It certainly wasn't common on our planet. It's just that once these technologies, such as writing, emerged, they tended to spread from culture to culture. None of the known extant cultures today which have progressed in isolation from this spread of technology have independently developed writing, or other technology beyond their basic needs. Nor do they seem feel any urge to do so. To me this confirms that this development is in fact an aberation.
The original poster's contention was that it would make it "much warmer" on the surface. This assumes: a) That the temperature of the surface is not already increased to the same extant as waste and ultimateley produced heat from the generated energy. b) That the amount of heat unintentionally generated would be enough to make an LARGE (i.e much, many, big amount, lots, not a little bit at all) difference, even taking into account the localised drop in temperature at the point of geothermal electricity generation.
I agree that over the long term the generated heat of the core must be transmitted to the surface. But there are large (for practical purposes unlimited) "stores" of energy down there, both in the form of heat and in the form of the liquid state of rock. So I think it is very possible to significantly raise the surface temperature, by transferring heat from the core to the surface at a faster rate than what is currently being done (which rate is being assumed to be the rate of fission heat generation). Of course it couldn't be done forever, but it would be interesting to calculate how long it could be done, given current energy consumption.
Please wake up. The science is proven. Computer models of the earth's atmosphere correspond extremely well with what is happening in real life. They prove the devastating effects of CO2 emissions. The denial of extremely strong proof might be macho cool, but it shows only a politician's understanding of the world. This is not alarmist crap.
This is nonsense. The science is proven wrong if anything. What the computer models show, programmed with the popular assumptions regarding CO2 effects, are incompatible with observable data, although the data is massaged in such a way as to make it look like it's similar to reality. Specifically, the parts of the globe that are actually warming are the mountainous regions of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, where exposed rock comes into frequent contact with snow and ice. This pattern of warming is consistent with increased insolation (incoming solar radiation). What the CO2 computer models show instead is an increase in the arctic water temperature, that heat transported there through ocean currents that don't exist in real life. Then they display the model data and the real life data only as temperature by latitude, and voila, they match! It's slight of hand. The fact is they can't get these CO2 models to even come close to the observable phenomena.
I don't think that active volcanic places count. When you have pools of boiling water on the surface, that makes it a wee bit too easy. The trick is when you have to drill miles into the earth to get to the heat.
But every ton of CO2 released into the atmoshere has a devastating effect on our lives. Not that CO2 is poisonous, but if significantly effects the absorption of solar energy. Why do you think there are record floods in South Asia, the polar ice cap is melting and huricane season is no longer simply interesting. It is because the condition of our atmosphere is changing.
1) If you think that CO2 is causing it to flood in South Asia, you are thinking more from superstition than science. 2) Net antarctic ice is accumulating, not melting. 3) If you think CO2 is making hurricanes larger or track towards major cities, you have a screw loose.
Power produced by geothermal energy does end up producing heat. But it has an almost unnoticeable effect on our environment, and when it is shut off, its effects are shut off. This is absolutely not the case with fossil fuels, especially coal.
So get to know the science, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
One of the best theoretical advantages of geothermal energy is exactly that it could be used to transfer massive amounts of energy into the climate system. The next ice age is anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years away, and unlike CO2-induced global warming, it is not make-believe.
Wow, that's so misinformed I can only laugh. Do you have any idea on how many goats that would take?
Sahara, for example, was born 4000 years ago because of a climate change. Land use by man was not an important factor in the creation of the Sahara. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/390097.stm
The theory you reference is at least as laughable as the goat theory. The reason for the change 4000 years ago was the depletion of glacial meltwater from the last ice age. And FYI, goats are self-replicating.
Bullshit. The American indians simply lacked the technology to have a significant impact on their environment until they got horses, at which point their population expanded and they routinely exhausted hunting grounds, and became far more mobile as a result. As for African cultures, the majority of the Sahara desert became so because of goats, which were protected from predators by humans.
The fact is, it's the industrialized world that first became concerned about the environment, because we're rich enough to have the luxury of considering issues beyond subsistence.
Agreed. Although there are competing theories, I believe the most accepted one is that the original Native Americans were responsible for the extinction of the native american megafauna such as the wooly mammoth and giant sloth; and likewise the original Australians (predecessors of the current aboriginal population) were responsible for the extinction of all the Australian megafauna. So just as with other predators introduced into a new environment, they wiped out all species that they could kill faster than the species could reproduce itself.
Because no one leaves the Board of a Directors of a company that they think is going to be successful and does a HUGE favor like this, and receives nothing in the end. Since they are not a publicly traded company, their financials don't have to be disclosed either, so no one has any way of verifying this without some sort of official investigation. Even without direct proof, it is still a huge conflict of interest in mine, and many other people's opinions.
It benefits (arguably) both parties. Framing it as a favor to the company is prejudging what's going on. There's nothing in the actual FACTS presented that represents a conflict of interest. You (and many other people) may wish to presume that there is a conflict of interest, and hence corruption, involved; but it's still nothing more than presumption. As a matter of principle, I choose to presume innocence until there is evidence of guilt; as that is the presumption that I wish others to make when viewing my actions.
That's fine, but what is not fine is him making decisions in a position of power at IU that have a direct financial effect on a company he still likely receives payment in some form from. That is about as close to conflict of interest as you can get.
Sure, but where do you get the information that he receives payment from the company?
The summary says, "IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university's websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU's press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha"
Basically, university staff will have to devote time (for which the university pays them) to do things to ChaCha's benefit, and ChaCha will not compensate them.
In the article ChaCha says they'd be happy to pay them, as they pay their other "guides". They're not getting paid by ChaCha because they're doing what is already their job, just using the ChaCha software to do it. i.e., providing information to students, faculty, and the public about the school.
Um, maybe because public employees are being forced to donate labor toward a private company the university president has glaring conflict-of-interest ties with?
How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company? How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?
The problem is the 20th century ideology that says, "no cause that requires sacrifice can possibly be legitimate." That ideology caused WWII to become the hell that it was
Care to elaborate on that, because I can't figure out what you're talking about. Last time I checked, that war was chock full of people willing to die for the cause. A large number of them were part of the Axis.
This ideology prevented the French and British from doing anything until about Hitler until it was too late. A response on their part to defend Poland like the U.S. defended Kuwait would have prevented the war and saved many millions of lives at a comparatively tiny cost. The U.S. similarly refused to sacrifice for its allies until it was attacked and the war in Europe had been virtually lost. If we had gotten involved when Britain did, we likewise would have saved millions of lives, many American lives included.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the way the two standoff nuclear explosives they studied would work, is to bombard the asteroid with "highly concentrated and directionally focused x-rays or neutrons," the latter of course being a "neutron bomb." The neutron bomb is the more effective method, presumably because of the momentum transferred directly by the high-speed shower of neutrons.
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)], given a 9,000kg vehicle launch mass:
Nuclear, Subsurface: 11.9
Nuclear, Surface: 11.5
Nuclear, Standoff - Neutron: 10.3
Nuclear, Standoff - X-ray: 9.9
Kinetic @50km/s (avg): 9.0
Kinetic @10km/s (avg): 8.5
Surface Thruster (non-rotating asteroid) @10 years: 8.1
Surface Thruster (rotating asteroid) @10 years: 7.7
Gravity Tractor, @10 years: 6.9
Conventional Explosive, Subsurface: 6.8
Conventional Explosive, Surface: 6.4
Momentum change [in log10(kg m/s)] required to deflect the following:
Hypothetical long-period 1km comet with 9-24 months to impact: 12.8
Hypothetical 1km asteroid 15yr ahead: 10.5
VD17, a 500m asteroid for 2088: 9.6
Apophis after 2029 approach, assuming a 2036 a collision prediction: 9.4
Hypothetical 200m asteroid 10 yr ahead: 8.7
Apophis by 2029 (with current orbit knowledge): 8.5
Apophis by 2029 (with highly accurate orbit knowledge): 6.3
The point of the distinction between the last two is that the probability window we have to push out of the earth's path becomes much smaller the more accurately we know the orbital parameters of the object. So the more accurately we can calculate it, the less we have to actually push it (up to a point, of course). Also, it looks like very little is gained by exploding things underground as opposed to on the surface. So we apparently aren't going to need a crack team of good-looking drilling experts after all.
Did you read the full study? It quantifies the "gravity tractor" along with the other methods mentioned, the gravity tractor being the most useless, other than conventional explosives. If you don't like nuclear, a simple high-velocity kinetic impactor is the next most effective (as long as it's a single solid object).
I don't think so. If a protest gets out of hand, and starts turning over cars and smashing windows, and the police start firing real bullets into the crowd to disperse them, I don't think the protesters are going to gain or lose any supporters.
This sounds a whole lot less likely (especially than tasers) to be lethal. The exception would be with epileptics, but I think those would be very rare cases.
I'm sure that egregious applications of ANYTHING could still result in lawsuits. But if you're talking about liability for using the device when the sufficient cause to use it is being challenged, I think the devices you mentioned are a lot more problematic, because they are all much more traumatic for the subject than a device that causes dizziness or disorientation (even if it leads to puking) without pain.
Who knows -- they're not exactly spewing the details. It could be rapidly varying wavelengths within a narrow range, that narrow range constituting the "evil color."
This is all very interesting, but does it at all help us understand how scientists were able to use the Casimir Effect to send "Bunny #15" into the future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJaU211gdg8
The only facts that Al Gore deals in are the ones he distorts for his twisted agenda. I deal with the facts as they are. RealClimate is run by real partisans, bought and paid for by the State, some of whom have degrees.
That link has nothing to do with ice cores. No climate scientist or anyone even vaugely aquanted with the data, would dispute that Antarctica is in a cooling trend according to the ice cores. I'm not going to do your research for you. Download some ice core data.
This is exactly the kind of pseudo-statistical logic that has taken the place of science in your global warming religion.
Ha! You mean poles? Without taking an average, there is no possible way for you to claim that any kind of "global" trend exists, and certainly no way for you to use it as a causal factor for tropical storms! Warming happening in the northern latitudes has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, and is completely contrary to the CO2 computer models that they try to duplicate it with. And, as I stated before, the antarctic is cooling, and even your flunkies at the IPCC would back me up on that one.
Maybe you should try to think of the global economy as an ecosystem, and then you will start to see the light. You can't just say, oh, we'll just wipe out the plankton, big deal. It is a big deal with repercussions that far exceed what can be anticipated. Same thing with wiping out a major industry in the economy. Economic tampering by socialistic lunatics has the potential to bring far more suffering into the world than you are obviously aware. Even the minor U.S. political tampering with ethanol demand is already causing artificial food crises in various parts of the world. But it's a logical fallacy regardless to try to defend your position by saying that the consequences of your position are more terrible than my position. The bottom line is that your position is based on a combination of obsolete hypotheses, political opportunism, peer pressure, propaganda and lies. There's no reason for any reasonable person to believe in it, no matter how horrible its predictions are. If you want a doomsday prediction to guide science and government action, you should start thinking about the next ice age, which will mean the obliteration of life as we know it, and has the added advantage of being nonfictional.
RealClimate is about as objective as Al Gore. They should register as a religious institution -- maybe they could get a tax break. Antarctic ice is increasing and all the ice cores there show a current cooling trend. If you're going to say "warmer temperatures worsen tropical storms" then you can't also say "the earth has been warming" -- because the only places on the earth with significant recent warming are in Alaska, Canada and Russia. Averaging all the earth's temperatures together to find a warming trend and then blaming that trend for occurrences taking place where it's not warming is either grossly ignorant or grossly deceitful.
Okay... then you global warming fundamentalists are the new Spanish Inquisition. And you should all move to the himalayas so you can escape the impending global flood.
I completely agree that it's ridiculous for us to expect other civilizations to be sending out radio waves based on our 100- year use of them. Radio waves have a lot of limitations, and we have no idea if we'll be using them much longer. If gravity wave communication becomes possible, for example, then that's probably what the rest of the galaxy would be using if they developed high technology.
However, no other civilization will be exactly the same as us. It seems that we have to treat a very fine line to remain high-tech. Other civilizations will probably either never have gone down the high-tech path, and only communicate in song, story, and dance; or else will have become intelligent enough to consciously choose simplicity of life, and only communicate in song, story, and dance.
Exactly. I would guess that ET would look somewhat like us, but I seriously doubt he would act like us. Once an intelligent species can achieve religion, philosophy, and the joys of love between a male and a female, what are the chances that they are going to become as obsessed with physical science as a handful of Europeans did on our planet, to develop the kind of technology we're looking for? Of course, it's impossible to do anything other than baselessly speculate. But I speculate that we're extremely unique in our pursuit of hi-tech.
Keep in mind, that even on our own planet, humanity (in the form of Ergaster) first invented what technology it needed, (bifurcated hand axes, picks, etc.) and then made not a single further technological improvement in one million years. The course humanity took which lead it in a highly technical direction, for example, which lead it to develop the technology of writing, does not seem like a necessarily common course to me. It certainly wasn't common on our planet. It's just that once these technologies, such as writing, emerged, they tended to spread from culture to culture. None of the known extant cultures today which have progressed in isolation from this spread of technology have independently developed writing, or other technology beyond their basic needs. Nor do they seem feel any urge to do so. To me this confirms that this development is in fact an aberation.
I agree that over the long term the generated heat of the core must be transmitted to the surface. But there are large (for practical purposes unlimited) "stores" of energy down there, both in the form of heat and in the form of the liquid state of rock. So I think it is very possible to significantly raise the surface temperature, by transferring heat from the core to the surface at a faster rate than what is currently being done (which rate is being assumed to be the rate of fission heat generation). Of course it couldn't be done forever, but it would be interesting to calculate how long it could be done, given current energy consumption.
This is nonsense. The science is proven wrong if anything. What the computer models show, programmed with the popular assumptions regarding CO2 effects, are incompatible with observable data, although the data is massaged in such a way as to make it look like it's similar to reality. Specifically, the parts of the globe that are actually warming are the mountainous regions of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia, where exposed rock comes into frequent contact with snow and ice. This pattern of warming is consistent with increased insolation (incoming solar radiation). What the CO2 computer models show instead is an increase in the arctic water temperature, that heat transported there through ocean currents that don't exist in real life. Then they display the model data and the real life data only as temperature by latitude, and voila, they match! It's slight of hand. The fact is they can't get these CO2 models to even come close to the observable phenomena.
I don't think that active volcanic places count. When you have pools of boiling water on the surface, that makes it a wee bit too easy. The trick is when you have to drill miles into the earth to get to the heat.
1) If you think that CO2 is causing it to flood in South Asia, you are thinking more from superstition than science. 2) Net antarctic ice is accumulating, not melting. 3) If you think CO2 is making hurricanes larger or track towards major cities, you have a screw loose.
One of the best theoretical advantages of geothermal energy is exactly that it could be used to transfer massive amounts of energy into the climate system. The next ice age is anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand years away, and unlike CO2-induced global warming, it is not make-believe.
Not forever. Just until terrorists blow up the power plant.
The theory you reference is at least as laughable as the goat theory. The reason for the change 4000 years ago was the depletion of glacial meltwater from the last ice age. And FYI, goats are self-replicating.
Agreed. Although there are competing theories, I believe the most accepted one is that the original Native Americans were responsible for the extinction of the native american megafauna such as the wooly mammoth and giant sloth; and likewise the original Australians (predecessors of the current aboriginal population) were responsible for the extinction of all the Australian megafauna. So just as with other predators introduced into a new environment, they wiped out all species that they could kill faster than the species could reproduce itself.
Neither an idiot nor an employee of ChaCha or IU, but not a cynic either.
It benefits (arguably) both parties. Framing it as a favor to the company is prejudging what's going on. There's nothing in the actual FACTS presented that represents a conflict of interest. You (and many other people) may wish to presume that there is a conflict of interest, and hence corruption, involved; but it's still nothing more than presumption. As a matter of principle, I choose to presume innocence until there is evidence of guilt; as that is the presumption that I wish others to make when viewing my actions.
Sure, but where do you get the information that he receives payment from the company?
In the article ChaCha says they'd be happy to pay them, as they pay their other "guides". They're not getting paid by ChaCha because they're doing what is already their job, just using the ChaCha software to do it. i.e., providing information to students, faculty, and the public about the school.
It's impossible that he served on the board and made the deal with the company because he believes in the product?
How does using this software to provide help to students and faculty constitute donating labor to a private company? How does having formerly served on the board of the company constitute a conflict of interest, glaring or otherwise?
This ideology prevented the French and British from doing anything until about Hitler until it was too late. A response on their part to defend Poland like the U.S. defended Kuwait would have prevented the war and saved many millions of lives at a comparatively tiny cost. The U.S. similarly refused to sacrifice for its allies until it was attacked and the war in Europe had been virtually lost. If we had gotten involved when Britain did, we likewise would have saved millions of lives, many American lives included.