this clearly shows that humans are in no way responsible for global warming.
Unfortunately, it shows nothing of the sort.
It says that water vapor is the most significant greenhouse effect gas. Water vapor indeed is a greenhouse gas, but water vapor cycles in and out of the atmosphere based primarily on temperature. The hotter is is, the more water evaporates into the atmosphere; the colder it is, the more water condenses out of the atmosphere. So, basically, water vapor is an amplifying agent-- if you increase the temperature, more water evaporates, and the greenhouse effect increases. This is well known.
...Given the fact that 1 eruption can change global climate for several years...
An eruption can change climate for several years... but not due to the emission of greenhouse gasses, which are trivial.
The aerosols from an eruption, however-- the ash and sulfates-- can block sunlight and have a significant cooling effect. This is a very real effect, and making sure that climate models correctly model the effect of historic volcano eruptions is a useful way of verifying the fidelity of climate models.
CO2 emissions from volcanoes on the other hand, are just not significant. It's somewhat hard comprehend the scale of 30 trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide, which is the amount emitted by humans per year, but if you picture a cube of coal about 10km on a side, that will start to give you an idea. This is much larger than the total of what is out by volcanoes, including both eruption and non-eruption emissions.
So where the ice was 100 years ago before global warming started is exactly where "normal" is and where the ice should always have and forever have stayed?
Depends what you mean by the word "normal." The dinosaurs lived perfectly well in a world that had no ice caps at all, and in which the entire center of the United States was a shallow ocean that stretched from Colorado to Pennsylvania. You could call that "normal" if you like.
However, there would be a great deal of disruption to human civilization to change to that state. We have an ecosystem (and an economic system) that is well adapted for the climate we have now, not one that is significantly warmer and with significantly higher sea levels. It would cause trillions of dollars of costs just to relocate the part of the population that lives in places that will be underwater, not even to mention changing the agricultural infrastructure. Doing this slowly is one thing. Doing ten thousand years worth of climate change in fifty years is another.
It would be nice for Canada, Norway, and Siberia, though. Not so nice for the United States (except for Alaska); we have a very good climate for agriculture right now, and don't really want to have the climate of Mexico move up to Kansas. Oddly, Canada, Norway and Russia are the most adamant of the countries that are trying to block restrictions on greenhouse effect gas emissions. That's probably just a coincidence, though, since those countries are also major fossil-fuel exporters.
it is incredibly foolish to believe that humans are responsible for the melting of the polar icecaps. one volcano eruption puts off more CO2 than all of the emmissions that humans have put out since there were humans.
That statement is factually incorrect. Volcanos do not emit more CO2 than humans-- they emit less, by orders of magnitude.
From http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/scienceshot-volcano-co2-emission.html : "A popular myth among climate change skeptics is that volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide dwarf those generated by humans. But a new report in today's issue of Eos reveals precisely the opposite: In a mere 2 to 5 days, smokestacks, tailpipes, and other human sources of CO2 spew a year's worth of volcanic emissions of that greenhouse gas. According to the paper, five recent studies suggest that volcanoes worldwide (such as Alaska's Shishaldin, shown) emit, on average, between 130 million and 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. But in 2010, anthropogenic emissions of the planet-warming gas were estimated to be a whopping 35 billion metric tons. Individual events—such as Mount Pinatubo, whose major eruption in 1991 lasted about 9 hours—can produce CO 2 at the same rate that humans do, but they do so only for short periods of time. It would take more than 700 Mount Pinatubo-sized eruptions over the course of a year to emit as much carbon dioxide as people do, the study notes."
Let me note that it is misinformed statements like this that tend to make real scientists dismiss global-warming deniers as crackpots. If you really want skepticism of anthropogenic global warming to be taken seriously, you need to have a basic understanding of the real world.
I am skeptical that humankind is causing more than 50% of whatever it is that contributes to global warming.
As I said, I can't stop you from calling this "skepticism," but you are basically ignoring the actual evidence, and asserting, without any sort of proof, an alternate hypothesis that there is (1) some as-yet unknown mechanism that makes human-induced warming is less than the models predict, (2) a different as-yet unknown mechanism that accounts for the observed warming matching the warming predicted by the models, and (3) yet another as-yet unknown mechanism that prevents the factors that amplify the forcing of mechanism 2 from also amplifying the greenhouse effect. Let me suggest perhaps you should exert your skepticism on that.
Saying "well, maybe human factors account for half of the warming" may sound like a reasonable compromise position-- "well, each side has points, so the true situation should be about halfway between"-- but this is in fact a logical fallacy known as "argumentum ad temperantiam", or "the fallacy of the mean." http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html Turns out that the truth is not always halfway between two positions; particularly when there is extensive evidence for one side, and no evidence at all for the other.
Hence, if we magically shut down everything for a year, global warming will still continue, but more than half per year of what it was before.
If we magically shut down everything for a year, global warming would continue due to the carbon dioxide that we've already put into the air-- the effect is cumulative, and has a lag.
I am not saying that we aren't contributing to global warming. I am saying that I personally don't believe we are responsible for most of it.
Your "personal beliefs" are fine; just don't confuse "I personally believe" with "the evidence suggests."
...I don't favor bans of inefficient light bulbs, but I do favor excise taxes on them. I don't favor plastic bag bans, but I do favor excise taxes on them.
As it happens, in the United States the word "tax" is such a politically poisonous word that it is vastly easier to actually ban something than it is to tax it, even though a tax would allow greater freedom of choice and becthe preferred solution for everybody involved.
I believe global warming, or "climate change" as they so put it, is happening. However, I am skeptical that a majority is the cause of humankind.
Obviously you can be skeptical if you want to. Nevertheless, the evidence of human-induced global warming (aka "climate change") is overwhelming.
Back in the '80's, the deniers said "well, the physics says that carbon dioxide will cause warming, but we don't see it in the actual global temperature measurements (yet), so it's just a theory. NOW, apparently, what you're saying is "well, I agree we see it in the data, but I don't believe in the physics."
So here's the question: what the heck WOULD be considered sufficient evidence to convince the "skeptics"? The theory, computer models, ground temperature measurements, satellite measurements, balloon measurements, vertical temperature profiles, infrared emission spectroscopy-- every measurement says that carbon dioxide warms the planet, and the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is known and measured. As far as I can tell, there IS no possible amount of evidence to convince the "skeptics", because they are not skeptics at all, they are people who already have their conclusion they want and aren't going to change it.
Let me point out the three things that an alternate theory must explain:
1. An alternate theory must provide a mechanism to explain how it is that carbon dioxide does NOT increase global temperature, when the theory says it should. This is theory that's been well known since 1967. 2. The alternate theory must provide a mechanism to explain why the global temperature actually IS warming (coincidentally, just exactly the amount predicted if you take Manabe and Weatherald's 1967 calculation of the effect of carbon dioxide). This mechanism has to account for the fact that we now have good measurements of parameters such as solar intensity-- you can't just handwave; the theory has to fit the measurements, and there a many, many measurements. 3. Whatever mechanism you're proposing for part 2 will include some factor that amplifies a small forcing to an effect large enough to show up in the temperature measurements. Therefore, a third thing that you theory has to explain is why this amplification DOESN'T also amplify the greenhouse forcing.
So far, NOBODY has come up with a theory that fits these three criteria, other than "the greenhouse effect works pretty much as predicted by the models."
If he were merely a skeptic, that's ok; a skeptic is a person who's willing to look at the data and see what they say.
However, far too many of the people who call themselves "skeptics" are in fact not skeptics at all, but global-warming deniers: they don't care what the data is, and aren't really interested in learning. They're not really skeptical, because they already have their conclusion, and are only interested in arguments that support it.
To quote S. Fred Singer, "The deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name."
Not really. You could turn photovoltaic power into heat energy (with a resistor), and use it to heat up a molten salt, but the efficiency losses and the cost of turning this back into electrical power is absurd.
According to TFA 15% is the same efficiency as photovoltaic but the cost of the system is supposed to be 1/3 of equiv photovoltaic.
Yes, they said that, but they're wrong. No possible way it can get down to 1/3 the cost of photovoltaic panels. I frankly doubt if they can make it as low as twice times the cost of photovoltaic.
On a large enough scale, I think a Brayton engine might make it cheaper than photovoltaic, but part of that is because of the high efficiencies, and the other part the economy of scale of large turbines. I doubt a piston engine can be that cheap, not operating at these temperatures.
Maybe they're thinking about the photovoltaic cost of twenty years ago. PV has gone WAY down in the last few decades.
Yes, they have reinvented the steam engine. In this case, literally: it runs on stream. (As opposed to many more modern heat engines, which usually use other working fluids).
The innovation seems to be that they have separated the heat absorption from the expansion of the working fluid.
If the best they can do is 15%, it will not be competitive with photovoltaic, ever. This needs tracking and mirrors, and that kind of moving parts just can't beat the production efficiencies of silicon solar cells.
I wonder if she will be arrested as she had hers printed on her rubber dress.
If it's not her actual ballot, but just a "here's how to vote" sample ballot, that would be ok.
I agree with the concept that you shouldn't photograph and share your ballot, though. The whole point of a secret ballot is destroyed if it is not secret, and that leads to the possibility of very explicit fraud.
There will definitely be some functioning microprocessors of every variety left if any humans survive.
No, I don't think so. I'm not sure what the lifetime of the actual microprocessors chip is, but more specifically, they don't boot themselves, and all the magnetic and all the electronic storage will be gone. All the documentation is likely to be gone as well, and without some pretty detailed information about what to do with it and how, it's going to be moderately useless.
Basically, these people need to learn from the Amish, who are already skilled in knowing how to survive without the complicated infrastructure of a high-tech society.
--if there really is going to be a civilization-destroying apocalypse, the Amish are going to be the ones who rebuild civilization, 'cause the rest of us all starved to death by about the fifth winter.
(Yes, the Amish don't live completely independently of the rest of society. But they are a darn sight closer than any of the rest of us.)
Instead of trying to find life on everything floating around random bits of fusion, look for specific parameters.
We can speculate that it takes a certain type of asteroid belt for a planet to have complex life, but since we don't have real evidence to prove that, it would be premature to filter our planet search based on a parameter of which we don't know the relevance. Especially since the only way to figure out whether it's relevant would be to look hard at all planets, in order to confirm or disprove the hypothesis.
Relying on a hypothesis that turned out not to be valid has already slowed down exoplanet searches once. Hot super-Jupiters could have been found by transit searches long ago, but nobody thought to devote resources to do the observation, since "of course" Jupiter-sized planets could only exist at high distances from their stars.
I will hypothesize that the poster originally wrote "I have an enclosed..." and then edited it to add "two-seat" but failed to adjust the article.
By the way, the conjunction "and" does not ever, in English, substitute for the article "a". Don't you mean "Does no one know how to use a and an anymore?"
The headline says "Fast and Comfortable as Automobiles" but later in the text it says "Over a period of about an hour and a half, Brecht and I managed to reach an average speed of 40 km/h (25 mph)" and "my attempt to go any faster than 50 km/h (30 mph) left me frustrated -- the vehicle lacks the high gears needed for those speeds" (and the article goes on to note that the electric motor cuts out entirely at that speed; it's entirely pedal powered.) I wouldn't call "able to reach average speeds of 25 miles per hour" to be "fast as automobiles."
The Model S's range, rated by the EPA at 265 miles with the largest battery, finally fits the American conception of driving.
But at $78,500 before a $7,500 tax rebate that doesn't fit the American concept of pricing.
It doesn't have to fit every American's price range. It just has to fit the price range of its target audience, which is people who would be buying Mercedes and BMW sedans.
(Also, that $78,500 price quoted was for a model near the top of the line-- the base model is $49,990. http://www.rsportscars.com/tesla/2013-tesla-model-s/ Still a big chunk of cash, but not significantly more than other cars of its class.)
This IS Beta Centauri Five!!! Beta Centauri Six exploded, six months after we were left here. The orbit of the planet shifted. ADMIRAL Kirk never came back to check on our progress...
Amusing, but, no, Alpha Centauri B is not Beta Centauri. Beta Centauri is a completely different star, about 300 light years away.
Does your local Wal-Mart store have badges on the bags of frozen tilapia that says which ones were raised on shit and which ones weren't?
Amazing how people are apparently ignorant of how biology works.
100% of your food grows from recycled feces. What the heck did you think happens to fecal matter after it's excreted; you think it is put on a rocket and shot to Aldebaran? This is the ecological cycle; input goes to output which is recycled back into the organic chain.
Water too (or whatever it is you drink): It's all been cycled through the bladders of countless animals.
You want only carbon that has never passed through the digestive tract of an animal? Move to a different planet.
SpaceX was already working on the development of the Falcon 9 before NASA got into the act....
Sorry, no, it wasn't.
Elon Musk had announced plans to do Falcon-9, at some unspecified time in the future, after Falcon-1 was making a profit, but they were not "working on it". Here is what the wikipedia article (the one you linked in your previous post) says on the subject: "Musk is quoted as stating that if NASA funding had not been available to develop the Falcon-9, the vehicle would have been developed with private funding, but at a slower pace."
"would have been developed" is not the same as "working on it."
.... I'll admit that NASA money was involved and that it is a subsidy of the development of the Falcon 9, but it wasn't a "cost-plus" project nor has NASA been involved with the design choices.
That's fine: I did not state that it was a "cost plus" contract. (Not all NASA contracts are cost plus fixed fee.) Nor did I state that NASA was involved in the design choices (other than writing the specifications for what the vehicle must accomplish). All I'd said was that NASA funded its development.
Despite the NASA's involvement in the Falcon 9 has been more for general mission requirements and technology transfer as required by law... and to help promote the development of spaceflight in America, something also required by law and a part of the agency's explicit mission and charter as given to NASA by the United States Congress.
Yes, exactly. This is part of NASA's explicit mission.
NASA wasn't the first customer either, as SpaceX had a manifest of several other customers before NASA became one of them.
NASA was the first paying customer for Falcon-9. It was not the first customer for Falcon-1: I didn't say it was.
[goes on to list other customers for Falcon-1]
Yes, that's right; Falcon 1 was not funded by NASA, and developing a space booster from a clean sheet of paper was a magnificent feat, and a very impressive accomplishment for Space-X. I like Falcon-1; it's a nice design. I wish they hadn't taken it out of production, since there are many payloads that really could use a small, low cost booster like that.
The development of Falcon-9 was funded by NASA. There may have been projections for other customers on the manifest at one time, but only the ones that actually paid money count as "funding" the rocket.
Slashdot Mirror
this clearly shows that humans are in no way responsible for global warming.
Unfortunately, it shows nothing of the sort.
It says that water vapor is the most significant greenhouse effect gas. Water vapor indeed is a greenhouse gas, but water vapor cycles in and out of the atmosphere based primarily on temperature. The hotter is is, the more water evaporates into the atmosphere; the colder it is, the more water condenses out of the atmosphere. So, basically, water vapor is an amplifying agent-- if you increase the temperature, more water evaporates, and the greenhouse effect increases. This is well known.
I would like to really suggest you read the IPCC Working-Group 1 report, "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change" http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
You would be able to argue more effectively if you started out by being aware of what is already known.
...Given the fact that 1 eruption can change global climate for several years...
An eruption can change climate for several years... but not due to the emission of greenhouse gasses, which are trivial.
The aerosols from an eruption, however-- the ash and sulfates-- can block sunlight and have a significant cooling effect. This is a very real effect, and making sure that climate models correctly model the effect of historic volcano eruptions is a useful way of verifying the fidelity of climate models.
CO2 emissions from volcanoes on the other hand, are just not significant. It's somewhat hard comprehend the scale of 30 trillion kilograms of carbon dioxide, which is the amount emitted by humans per year, but if you picture a cube of coal about 10km on a side, that will start to give you an idea. This is much larger than the total of what is out by volcanoes, including both eruption and non-eruption emissions.
So where the ice was 100 years ago before global warming started is exactly where "normal" is and where the ice should always have and forever have stayed?
Depends what you mean by the word "normal." The dinosaurs lived perfectly well in a world that had no ice caps at all, and in which the entire center of the United States was a shallow ocean that stretched from Colorado to Pennsylvania. You could call that "normal" if you like.
However, there would be a great deal of disruption to human civilization to change to that state. We have an ecosystem (and an economic system) that is well adapted for the climate we have now, not one that is significantly warmer and with significantly higher sea levels. It would cause trillions of dollars of costs just to relocate the part of the population that lives in places that will be underwater, not even to mention changing the agricultural infrastructure. Doing this slowly is one thing. Doing ten thousand years worth of climate change in fifty years is another.
It would be nice for Canada, Norway, and Siberia, though. Not so nice for the United States (except for Alaska); we have a very good climate for agriculture right now, and don't really want to have the climate of Mexico move up to Kansas. Oddly, Canada, Norway and Russia are the most adamant of the countries that are trying to block restrictions on greenhouse effect gas emissions. That's probably just a coincidence, though, since those countries are also major fossil-fuel exporters.
it is incredibly foolish to believe that humans are responsible for the melting of the polar icecaps. one volcano eruption puts off more CO2 than all of the emmissions that humans have put out since there were humans.
That statement is factually incorrect. Volcanos do not emit more CO2 than humans-- they emit less, by orders of magnitude.
http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2011/2011-22.shtml
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html
http://www.agu.org/pubs/pdf/2011EO240001.pdf
http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html
From http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/06/scienceshot-volcano-co2-emission.html :
"A popular myth among climate change skeptics is that volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide dwarf those generated by humans. But a new report in today's issue of Eos reveals precisely the opposite: In a mere 2 to 5 days, smokestacks, tailpipes, and other human sources of CO2 spew a year's worth of volcanic emissions of that greenhouse gas. According to the paper, five recent studies suggest that volcanoes worldwide (such as Alaska's Shishaldin, shown) emit, on average, between 130 million and 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. But in 2010, anthropogenic emissions of the planet-warming gas were estimated to be a whopping 35 billion metric tons. Individual events—such as Mount Pinatubo, whose major eruption in 1991 lasted about 9 hours—can produce CO 2 at the same rate that humans do, but they do so only for short periods of time. It would take more than 700 Mount Pinatubo-sized eruptions over the course of a year to emit as much carbon dioxide as people do, the study notes."
Let me note that it is misinformed statements like this that tend to make real scientists dismiss global-warming deniers as crackpots. If you really want skepticism of anthropogenic global warming to be taken seriously, you need to have a basic understanding of the real world.
I am skeptical that humankind is causing more than 50% of whatever it is that contributes to global warming.
As I said, I can't stop you from calling this "skepticism," but you are basically ignoring the actual evidence, and asserting, without any sort of proof, an alternate hypothesis that there is (1) some as-yet unknown mechanism that makes human-induced warming is less than the models predict, (2) a different as-yet unknown mechanism that accounts for the observed warming matching the warming predicted by the models, and (3) yet another as-yet unknown mechanism that prevents the factors that amplify the forcing of mechanism 2 from also amplifying the greenhouse effect. Let me suggest perhaps you should exert your skepticism on that.
Saying "well, maybe human factors account for half of the warming" may sound like a reasonable compromise position-- "well, each side has points, so the true situation should be about halfway between"-- but this is in fact a logical fallacy known as "argumentum ad temperantiam", or "the fallacy of the mean." http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/middle-ground.html Turns out that the truth is not always halfway between two positions; particularly when there is extensive evidence for one side, and no evidence at all for the other.
Hence, if we magically shut down everything for a year, global warming will still continue, but more than half per year of what it was before.
If we magically shut down everything for a year, global warming would continue due to the carbon dioxide that we've already put into the air-- the effect is cumulative, and has a lag.
I am not saying that we aren't contributing to global warming. I am saying that I personally don't believe we are responsible for most of it.
Your "personal beliefs" are fine; just don't confuse "I personally believe" with "the evidence suggests."
...I don't favor bans of inefficient light bulbs, but I do favor excise taxes on them. I don't favor plastic bag bans, but I do favor excise taxes on them.
As it happens, in the United States the word "tax" is such a politically poisonous word that it is vastly easier to actually ban something than it is to tax it, even though a tax would allow greater freedom of choice and becthe preferred solution for everybody involved.
I believe global warming, or "climate change" as they so put it, is happening. However, I am skeptical that a majority is the cause of humankind.
Obviously you can be skeptical if you want to. Nevertheless, the evidence of human-induced global warming (aka "climate change") is overwhelming.
Back in the '80's, the deniers said "well, the physics says that carbon dioxide will cause warming, but we don't see it in the actual global temperature measurements (yet), so it's just a theory. NOW, apparently, what you're saying is "well, I agree we see it in the data, but I don't believe in the physics."
So here's the question: what the heck WOULD be considered sufficient evidence to convince the "skeptics"? The theory, computer models, ground temperature measurements, satellite measurements, balloon measurements, vertical temperature profiles, infrared emission spectroscopy-- every measurement says that carbon dioxide warms the planet, and the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is known and measured. As far as I can tell, there IS no possible amount of evidence to convince the "skeptics", because they are not skeptics at all, they are people who already have their conclusion they want and aren't going to change it.
Let me point out the three things that an alternate theory must explain:
1. An alternate theory must provide a mechanism to explain how it is that carbon dioxide does NOT increase global temperature, when the theory says it should. This is theory that's been well known since 1967.
2. The alternate theory must provide a mechanism to explain why the global temperature actually IS warming (coincidentally, just exactly the amount predicted if you take Manabe and Weatherald's 1967 calculation of the effect of carbon dioxide). This mechanism has to account for the fact that we now have good measurements of parameters such as solar intensity-- you can't just handwave; the theory has to fit the measurements, and there a many, many measurements.
3. Whatever mechanism you're proposing for part 2 will include some factor that amplifies a small forcing to an effect large enough to show up in the temperature measurements. Therefore, a third thing that you theory has to explain is why this amplification DOESN'T also amplify the greenhouse forcing.
So far, NOBODY has come up with a theory that fits these three criteria, other than "the greenhouse effect works pretty much as predicted by the models."
If he were merely a skeptic, that's ok; a skeptic is a person who's willing to look at the data and see what they say.
However, far too many of the people who call themselves "skeptics" are in fact not skeptics at all, but global-warming deniers: they don't care what the data is, and aren't really interested in learning. They're not really skeptical, because they already have their conclusion, and are only interested in arguments that support it.
To quote S. Fred Singer, "The deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name."
Not really. You could turn photovoltaic power into heat energy (with a resistor), and use it to heat up a molten salt, but the efficiency losses and the cost of turning this back into electrical power is absurd.
According to TFA 15% is the same efficiency as photovoltaic but the cost of the system is supposed to be 1/3 of equiv photovoltaic.
Yes, they said that, but they're wrong. No possible way it can get down to 1/3 the cost of photovoltaic panels. I frankly doubt if they can make it as low as twice times the cost of photovoltaic.
On a large enough scale, I think a Brayton engine might make it cheaper than photovoltaic, but part of that is because of the high efficiencies, and the other part the economy of scale of large turbines. I doubt a piston engine can be that cheap, not operating at these temperatures.
Maybe they're thinking about the photovoltaic cost of twenty years ago. PV has gone WAY down in the last few decades.
Yes, they have reinvented the steam engine.
In this case, literally: it runs on stream. (As opposed to many more modern heat engines, which usually use other working fluids).
The innovation seems to be that they have separated the heat absorption from the expansion of the working fluid.
If the best they can do is 15%, it will not be competitive with photovoltaic, ever. This needs tracking and mirrors, and that kind of moving parts just can't beat the production efficiencies of silicon solar cells.
I wonder if she will be arrested as she had hers printed on her rubber dress.
If it's not her actual ballot, but just a "here's how to vote" sample ballot, that would be ok.
I agree with the concept that you shouldn't photograph and share your ballot, though. The whole point of a secret ballot is destroyed if it is not secret, and that leads to the possibility of very explicit fraud.
There will definitely be some functioning microprocessors of every variety left if any humans survive.
No, I don't think so. I'm not sure what the lifetime of the actual microprocessors chip is, but more specifically, they don't boot themselves, and all the magnetic and all the electronic storage will be gone. All the documentation is likely to be gone as well, and without some pretty detailed information about what to do with it and how, it's going to be moderately useless.
...Modern diagnostic computer systems should be standardized, so independent mechanics and hobby workers can still afford to work on them.
Bingo: that's what the proposed law is about.
Or, if not standardized, at least documented.
Basically, these people need to learn from the Amish, who are already skilled in knowing how to survive without the complicated infrastructure of a high-tech society.
--if there really is going to be a civilization-destroying apocalypse, the Amish are going to be the ones who rebuild civilization, 'cause the rest of us all starved to death by about the fifth winter.
(Yes, the Amish don't live completely independently of the rest of society. But they are a darn sight closer than any of the rest of us.)
But it is potentially useful speculation.
No, it's not terribly useful.
Instead of trying to find life on everything floating around random bits of fusion, look for specific parameters.
We can speculate that it takes a certain type of asteroid belt for a planet to have complex life, but since we don't have real evidence to prove that, it would be premature to filter our planet search based on a parameter of which we don't know the relevance. Especially since the only way to figure out whether it's relevant would be to look hard at all planets, in order to confirm or disprove the hypothesis.
Relying on a hypothesis that turned out not to be valid has already slowed down exoplanet searches once. Hot super-Jupiters could have been found by transit searches long ago, but nobody thought to devote resources to do the observation, since "of course" Jupiter-sized planets could only exist at high distances from their stars.
This is nice, but it is entirely speculation. There really isn't enough data to make a conclusion.
I have an two-seat enclosed
Does no one know how to use a and and anymore?
I will hypothesize that the poster originally wrote "I have an enclosed..." and then edited it to add "two-seat" but failed to adjust the article.
By the way, the conjunction "and" does not ever, in English, substitute for the article "a". Don't you mean "Does no one know how to use a and an anymore?"
The headline says "Fast and Comfortable as Automobiles" but later in the text it says "Over a period of about an hour and a half, Brecht and I managed to reach an average speed of 40 km/h (25 mph)" and "my attempt to go any faster than 50 km/h (30 mph) left me frustrated -- the vehicle lacks the high gears needed for those speeds" (and the article goes on to note that the electric motor cuts out entirely at that speed; it's entirely pedal powered.)
I wouldn't call "able to reach average speeds of 25 miles per hour" to be "fast as automobiles."
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
My ROT-26 decryptor technology can defeat your use of dual ROT-13 encryption in under 100 milliseconds! (*way* under 100 milliseconds).
--and I'm upgrading to ROT-52!
The Model S's range, rated by the EPA at 265 miles with the largest battery, finally fits the American conception of driving.
But at $78,500 before a $7,500 tax rebate that doesn't fit the American concept of pricing.
It doesn't have to fit every American's price range. It just has to fit the price range of its target audience, which is people who would be buying Mercedes and BMW sedans.
(Also, that $78,500 price quoted was for a model near the top of the line-- the base model is $49,990. http://www.rsportscars.com/tesla/2013-tesla-model-s/ Still a big chunk of cash, but not significantly more than other cars of its class.)
We send an unmanned ship carrying all of human knowledge, a few robots, a bunch of DNA samples and the equipment needed to grow clones.
Well, that has been proposed-- for that matter, by me http://web.archive.org/web/20100409080615/http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/star_voyage_020319-1.html
(although I'm by no means the first)
We might not be able to do it now, but it's likely that we could in time.
Yes, quite a bit of technology development needed.
This IS Beta Centauri Five!!! Beta Centauri Six exploded, six months after we were left here. The orbit of the planet shifted. ADMIRAL Kirk never came back to check on our progress...
Amusing, but, no, Alpha Centauri B is not Beta Centauri. Beta Centauri is a completely different star, about 300 light years away.
http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/hr/5267.html
to traverse four light years of space
It simply needs to be long-lasting, and repairable en-route.
with absolutely no resources available from Earth once it's on its way
Make it big, contains adequate resources to support itself indefinately. An ecosystem.
The hard resource is energy. What's the power supply for a very very long voyage?
We really need fusion for this.
Does your local Wal-Mart store have badges on the bags of frozen tilapia that says which ones were raised on shit and which ones weren't?
Amazing how people are apparently ignorant of how biology works.
100% of your food grows from recycled feces. What the heck did you think happens to fecal matter after it's excreted; you think it is put on a rocket and shot to Aldebaran? This is the ecological cycle; input goes to output which is recycled back into the organic chain.
Water too (or whatever it is you drink): It's all been cycled through the bladders of countless animals.
You want only carbon that has never passed through the digestive tract of an animal? Move to a different planet.
SpaceX was already working on the development of the Falcon 9 before NASA got into the act....
Sorry, no, it wasn't.
Elon Musk had announced plans to do Falcon-9, at some unspecified time in the future, after Falcon-1 was making a profit, but they were not "working on it". Here is what the wikipedia article (the one you linked in your previous post) says on the subject:
"Musk is quoted as stating that if NASA funding had not been available to develop the Falcon-9, the vehicle would have been developed with private funding, but at a slower pace."
"would have been developed" is not the same as "working on it."
.... I'll admit that NASA money was involved and that it is a subsidy of the development of the Falcon 9, but it wasn't a "cost-plus" project nor has NASA been involved with the design choices.
That's fine: I did not state that it was a "cost plus" contract. (Not all NASA contracts are cost plus fixed fee.) Nor did I state that NASA was involved in the design choices (other than writing the specifications for what the vehicle must accomplish). All I'd said was that NASA funded its development.
Despite the NASA's involvement in the Falcon 9 has been more for general mission requirements and technology transfer as required by law... and to help promote the development of spaceflight in America, something also required by law and a part of the agency's explicit mission and charter as given to NASA by the United States Congress.
Yes, exactly. This is part of NASA's explicit mission.
NASA wasn't the first customer either, as SpaceX had a manifest of several other customers before NASA became one of them.
NASA was the first paying customer for Falcon-9. It was not the first customer for Falcon-1: I didn't say it was.
[goes on to list other customers for Falcon-1]
Yes, that's right; Falcon 1 was not funded by NASA, and developing a space booster from a clean sheet of paper was a magnificent feat, and a very impressive accomplishment for Space-X. I like Falcon-1; it's a nice design. I wish they hadn't taken it out of production, since there are many payloads that really could use a small, low cost booster like that.
The development of Falcon-9 was funded by NASA. There may have been projections for other customers on the manifest at one time, but only the ones that actually paid money count as "funding" the rocket.