Programming is the battle between a stupid machine and someone trying to coerce it to perform particular tasks. Programming languages are the weapons and asm is the equivalent of hand to hand combat and it is also the language of the machine.
To survive the battle with the machine, suitable weapons must be engaged to effectively fight it. Also, to defeat one's enemy, they must know the enemy and how it 'thinks'.
Contrary to popular opinion, asm can be modular and structured and even object oriented. It's up to the author to do so as they are not constrained in their efforts by the language. Details (presumed to be irrelevent to programers) are often not hidden (to the point of near impossibility when attempting to find the needed information).
Asm like all languages has advantages and disadvantages. There are several disadvantages which make it pretty much last on the list of weapons to use. First and foremost, the code is tied to a particular processor. Second, learning an asm language for each possible processor gets to be a major burden. Third, it usually takes a much greater number of instructions to accomplish a task. Fourth, there is no handholding for the programmer or protection from their screwups.
Asm has advantages over others. It's capable of the ultimate tight fast code. It can be totally open for analysis and bug chasing and doesn't suffer from compiler errors injected by other programmers at other companies. It's a very short list of very positive advantages which are outweighed most of the time by the longer list of disadvantages.
For any of you who back in the dark ages of window's 3.1 attempted to use the borland 4.0 or 4.5 c compiler with optimization on, my condolences. I discovered one of my production programs to fail dramatically when engaging a rare command line parameter - whose only application turned out to simply be initializing an array of 10 elements with different than default values for crt display coloring. Considering that the program bombed out totally almost immediately, it was a 10 minute job to trace thru execution in asm to determine that the compiler's code generation was attempting to set in local storage, the final loop value for a register variable that had no local storage. Net result, the base pointer register value stored on entry to the subroutine was stomped thus screwing up all local variables in all higher level routines, resulting in massive program failure. Borland went through at least one major release after being notified of the bug without fixing it. I migrated over to mickiesoft's visual c after their failure to fix that problem.
There are two morals to that story. First off, knowing asm can get you through problems caused by others - like compiler vendors. Second, asm can be used to generate projects that don't have serious bugs whereas even perfect coding in a project can have serious bugs injected by suppliers of other software.
Despite the added cost of doing much asm (rather than limiting it to very small portions of a project), the costs of not doing these tend to remain with us in massively bloated and slow code requiring much higher performance equipment and in the form of never ending bugs.
Unfortunately, there's probably not even enough people capable of doing excellent asm to ever permit it to be a substantial component of any current or future projects. However, it's value in improving the capabilities of programmers in general is undoubtedly worth far more than a PE course (phys ed) or extra history class requirement in the span of a 4 year degree.
>Call me back when you learn some science. The earth's magnetic field does not signifcantly shield against cosmic rays. Cosmic rays do not come from the sun.
Not any cosmic rays come from the sun, eh? OH? REALLY??? Guess what, you're in TOTAL GROSS ERROR there. Cosmic rays primarily in the realm of 10kev to 100kev are sourced by the sun along with the usual 1kev solar wind - which is substantially deflected by the earth's magnetic field. It's why we haven't lost much of our atmosphere yet like Mars has. You don't think the earth's climate would be affected by losing a substantial fraction of its atmosphere????? Note that high energy cosmic rays (> 100kev up to at least 10^20 eV) generally originate from outside the solar system and come from a pantheon of sources and those of the highest energies detected don't really seem to yet have suitable theories as to what the heck generated them.
Where'd you learn that bit of BS about the origins of cosmic rays not being from the sun? Besides, your reading comprehension is a bit low as it was mentioned that it was the variations of the SUN's magnetic field that had a serious climatic effect from cloud formation, NOT relatively short term variations in the earth's magnetic field.
>Again, learn some science. Maybe you haven't noticed, but methane is very reactive in the presence of molecular oxygen. It turns into water and CO2 relatively quickly.
Quick? According to wikipedia, a release of methane of 1 unit mass has 63 times that of the same mass of co2 over a twenty year period. Note too that co2 has a rather limited lifespan in the atmosphere as well. Also note that the article mentions methane levels since 1750 are up 150% (and if you were a scientist or even someone of normal intellect, you'd recognize that is concentrations not initial releases).
So far it's you who seems to need to learn some science. It's obvious you are short on comprehension and quickly resort to adhom insults and attacks to try to bolster your argument or to attack an opposing argument.
In reference to jupiter turbulence... >The upwelling zone around 37 degrees south is certainly regional.
Then you agree that global warming couldn't possibly be the cause of increased hurricane numbers and strengths as hurricanes only happen in localized regions.
>Read it again, idjit. I'm saying that the existence of ice ages does not have any bearing on whether we are altering the climate.
It does indicate that massive fluctuations occur naturally and somewhat regularly. It provides an indication of just how massive an effort would be required to overcome the natural fluctuations.
>I'm a scientist, asshat. I don't "believe" anything about SETI.
I somehow doubt that claim. You have presented serious evidence here to the contrary about your claim of being a scientist.
As for SETI you obviously BELIEVE it's worth including it in your nick. You evidently BELIEVE it's worth investing some of your time in. Investing your money into it doesn't seem to be suggested by the other evidence.
>There is a possibility that extraterrestrial intelligences exist. I think that it is worth the effort to look, even if the results are negative.
I guess over 30 years of negative results doesn't qualify as negative results.
>Belief has nothing to do with it.
BELIEFS have everything to do with it. See above. Faith is as much a part of science as it is in religions. If you were a scientist, you'd know that.
>You know nothing of any work I have done regarding the development of intelligence or any estimates I may have made of the number of communicating civilizations that may exist in the Galaxy.
You're right about something! I only know about that which you have written. That it seems self contradictory in places and indicative of you not being what you claim just makes me know even less about you (in most ways - but very telling in others).
internet and cellphones didn't exist back the last time there was a big cycle. I doubt you remember tv in the 50s.
Of course a slight rain is all that's necessary for me to lose satellite internet.
Big ones are fairly infrequent. Big ones headed our way are even more so. A really big one headed our way might take out far more than the stuff you mention - like the whole power grid with severe damage to equipment.
sunspots are relatively cooler so less energy - but it's small (unless you've got massive amounts of solar surface area involved). The real factor is the magnetic effects on cosmic ray flux which impacts cloud formation - which has MAJOR effects on temperatures.
Figure no sunspots - cold cloudy weather Lots of sunspots - hot dry, drought conditions with sunny skies
note this is the preponderence or overall effect, not some daily prescription for everywhere all the time.
Looking out side and thinking back for 4 months- we've had cloudy weather, coolest jan on record - a fairly good amount of rain - but then we're at the sunspot minimum - and the last cycle went out with a literal bang - some really serious coronal mass ejections and solar storms in its last two years - rather than the more usual whimper.
predicting solar flares is more of a crystal ball affair. The bad news is last year or so they detected a solar flare from a star that was only about 0.8 solar mass which was a million times more potent than anything seen on earth. From what we've seen so far, a flare about 6 sigma above the typical could very likely blow most of the electric utility grid transformers in the world - taking years to bring electricity back to many areas in and outside of the US.
Something 6 orders of magnitude higher than what we've seen - especially in the upcoming era of low/no earth magnetic field could be a 'kill shot'. We now know it can happen but have no clue as to if it will happen.
don't worry - the leftist dems have decided to get rid of the voting machines. They've decided once they're in power to make things easy and automatically cast votes for everyone, saving millions of tax dollars.
You're ignoring the flip side - droughts and sweltering summer heat due to the reduction in cloud formation. And TV news casts filled with nutcakes whining about manmade global warming. Next, they'll be blaming your qrp rig for heating up the ionosphere too.
Actually, it isn't a storm - it's a cycle and we've seen enough of them to get a good idea of things. Also, we can see a bit of the conveyer system that's setting up for the next cycle. What's more important - there's not any politics in this at present time - not even pressure from the local chamber of commerce to claim what a great place to live due to the lovely weather.
As for predictions - it's more like saying there's going to be cold fronts in December coming south from the frozen northlands than trying to say it's going to be rainy and cloudy and 94 degrees on july 4th in washington DC this year.
Except for the period 1750? or so where there were no sunspots seen for 50 yrs which violates the nominal 11 yr sunspot cycle we've grown to know and love, it's a decent bet that we've got a doozy coming. It'll be fun for ham radio, more fun than the 60s 70s 80s or even the 90s. The bad news is - no sunspots seemed to translate in to a bit of global cooling last time around and modern research suggests hotter, sunnier and more drought - so the manmade global warming true believers are going to be out in force in a few years with much less liklihood of getting snowed in yet again.
As for weather here, I've given up trying to figure out how they can botch the 3 day forecast so bad and so often and decided to concentrate on understanding how they can botch the current conditions so often and so bad.
Sorry but the early evolution theorists had to insist on long term stability for their new found religion.
Unfortunately, we do not live in a long term stable planet, within a long term stable star system, within a long term stable galaxy, within a stable local group, within a nice quiet quiescent universe.
BTW, andromeda is headed our way on a collision course - which could very well send us whizzing out into the nether realms outside of the galaxy or spiraling in towards the central regions. Not to fail to mention just what might happen when our 300 million solar mass dense central object (usually referred to as a super massive black hole) splats into Andromeda's billion + solar mass supermassive central black hole. That could be a sight best viewed (for survival purposes) from the other side of the universe.
If algor plans to stop this cataclysmic event (the andromeda train wreck) - he'd better get started now because in 10 years, it'll be too late. I look forward to seeing his solution to the problem. (actually it's already too late by about 10 billion years or more)
1) the cosmic ray particles are involved in cloud formation which is a massive blocking agent for total radiant solar energy. Their contribution as energy is not relevent to the discussion. Actually, cosmic radiation is readily measurable on the ground and you would stroke out if you ever saw the signal level from a human sized detector. The effects are quite significant in cloud formation for lower atmospheric clouds.
2) the southern hemisphere of jupiter is regional?
3) I believe NASA has just reported finding enough water ice to flood the planet to an average depth of 10 to 20 meters down there in the southern regions using subsurface radar.
4) residence time is shorter eh? Didn't realize plants and plankton preferred breathing in methane to co2.
5) So now you're blaming ancient ice ages on modern people! Must be some sort of reverse causality thing going on here.
Hate to mention this to a SETI true believer but reality sucks. Earth's climate changes and it's influenced by many factors outside of earth. Most of these factors are extremely violent and I'd say this planet has been extremely lucky of it's lifetime to have been able to continue to support life at all. There are climate cycles that appear to be associated with star formation bursts, our location within the galactic disk and its variances above and below the center of the disk (due to orbit), local conditions like is the sun feeling ok or did it just 'burp'. Never mind worrying about the kuiper belt objects or Oort cloud unknowns or for that matter some accidental billiard table event over in the asteroid belt - after all the shoemaker levy comet created several splashes on jupiter bigger than the earth with virtually no time from discovery to impact other than to reserve time on telescopes to watch the event. Of course no amount of sky surveys are going to detect that outer object coming here from the direction of the sun - until it hits the atmosphere.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to migratory birds. It'll be a good time to invest in high strength sunscreen producing companies too. Hopefully, we'll be lucky enough to avoid any serious coronal mass ejections during that time as I'd hate to lose a bunch of atmosphere. It might be a good time to disinvest of any holdings in GPS related companies or for that matter - any space based companies with satellites that depend on the earth's field for protection. Same goes for any companies still making magnetic compasses - if they haven't gone broke by then.
Otherwise, it'll pretty much be business as usual for a few thousand years.
Jupiter's southern hemisphere is in serious turbulence now. Last year brought out Red Jr. the new (and first ever) new red spot since The red spot was first discovered. There's lots of storms going on there now. (current scientific observations).
If you've ever looked at the output of something like a large area gamma ray detector sitting on a bench in the lab, you'll start to understand that cosmic ray flux (and other atmospheric radiation sources) are probably not just another source of cloud formation. I suspect the experts who assume it is are actually unaware of just how much of it there actually is around the sky. It and h2o vapor may not be the only requirements for forming clouds that way - it probably isn't considering we do not have virtually 100% cloud cover all the time.
Once realized just how much there is of cosmic rays and radiation background, it becomes much harder to accept that this is not the primary natural cloud formation mechanism.
As for global warming (manmade or otherwise) clouds (especially if one includes rain effects) are a serious forcing agent and they help provide a regulating negative feedback.
Water vapor accounts for around 96% of all greenhouse gas effects. Clouds are water vapor on steroids.
The climate guys have had to acknowledge the presence of effects now. They just categorize them as unknown and assumed to be minor - despite the growing body of serious evidence to the contrary.
What is known now is the effects are not from direct energy which varies slightly - and that is what they point to in order to avoid the really serious effects of solar magnetic activity variations and it's impact on cloud formation via cosmic ray flux. This is more like comparing a rise of co2 of 5% to a rise in methane of 5%. Essentially, it's no comparison.
Ah. So the buffalo hunters of the 19th century who almost exterminated the bufalo and virtually starved the indians out helped save the planet from an earlier threat of global warming eh?
I guess we should blame the alaskan pipeline for the current problem. I understand the carribou herds are way up.
But what about Terminex? Maybe they can save the world by expanding their genocide of termites.
Algor and mrs. bill clinton and a few others control the dem party. If someone they believed told them that the sun was cooler than earth was going to be next year, they'd claw each other's faces off to be first for the 'sun mission'. That probably not being the case, they'd probably reinstitute the draft to get 'volunteers' like you or me to go instead.
It might allieviate the threat of global warming. If they can effectively radiate the filling heat away at the filling station then the air coming out or the exhaust pipe ought to be very cold.
$3 worth of energy to fill it is pretty much the giveaway. Either they are lying thru their teeth about the whole thing or it's got to be a almost a 50-100 mile per liter car. Can anyone say paper and carbon fibers? While one could probably overcome losses, serious losses of internal combustion engine/transmission combinations, once the tank has been filled, the inefficiency becomes mostly just friction of minimal machinery. Also, the pneumatic motor has to switch to compressor when the brake goes on (to be the brake).
Of course the compressed air tank has got to be a serious danger and likely capable of rupturing during an accident, possibly more so than gasoline tank. One must wonder if that tank is designed from paper and carbon fiber as well to achieve a low enough weight to keep from wrecking the mileage.
Somehow I seem to keep getting visions of a motorized skate board with a seat atop a rather large pressure tank. That and snow flurries in India during summer and boiled fishes all along the Indian coast.
It seems more likely that GRBs and their lesser kin are more associated with keeping fungus down and making sure that little if any life beyond that level survives.
The universe may be teeming with life - but not necessarily beyond 1 cell. In any case, our violent universe with massive active forces seems to be more significant than originally thought.
One thought is - what about intervening material screwing up polarization? Also, an afterglow is not the supernova light - it's the lower energy equivalent of what caused the grb in the first place (as I understand the idea). That's likely to be a bit further away than the extremely high magnetic fields are likely to be around the star, probably dependent upon earlier sluffed off materials (planetary nebula sorta stuff). The magnetic field may likely be way down by that time frame. After all, it does tend to take minutes or hours before the supernova spectrum light becomes dominant.
The whole goal of the patent system is to protect the inventor/developer from others deciding to use their work to compete against them and prevent that work from being protected as trade secrets which might be lost virtually forever. Sometimes the reasons patents are done (especially additional ones) is to lockout variations which may not be worth doing due to existing investment in a current, perhaps less efficient fasion. Patents are good for a fairly short period of time and become public domain at the end. Items patented in the 1980s and 1990s are pretty much all over now and available to whomever desires to use them. What's more, the basic information is on file for whoever wants to have it. Trade secrets are in force until someone else discovers or steals them - or unfortunately for all concerned - unless they are lost - even to the owners.
It sounds like the donation bit is another scam for someone to profit off the non profit arena.
Actually trying to develop something for profit with an expired patent and the whole world knowing how it's done is not something that can generally happen. Investors tend to be way too nervous about the potential loss of their total investment to worry about how much profit they might make - if all goes perfectly well.
Acquiring patents that are partially expired is not so hazardous. But no company would sell or donate the most important ones that are applicable to any market they are in - lest they create a serious competitor.
The only flaw in communism is that it's designed for (actually based upon) certain types of insects, not for higher life forms.
The notion that the cold war stagnated russian technological process is like blaming a hot stove for cooling a pot of ice water down to boiling.
the Soviet Union has always had plenty of kook ideas, at least in time of war. When there's no external or internal threat, there's not any reason to change anything. Part of the reason perhaps is that the plush jobs (compared to ditch digging by hand) tend to want the best and brightest but ask for the more politically astute and spectacular (as in comic book science). Unfortunately, the reward for failure there was quite a bit worse than here so the optimal mix was usually to suggest something that so totally spectacular it couldn't be built yet due to..... (someone else's problem).
R&D is spurred by several factors, usually related to survival on some scale or another. For the Soviets, it was survival of the elites in power, from either domestic or foreign destruction. For companies, it is the survival of the companies, keeping up with competitors and keeping customers happy. It's totally the 'joys' of monopoly for the customers - or more aptly put - the serfs.
There is no competition in the socialist workers paradise. It's bureaucratic hell - harvest the crop when the equipment is scheduled to be available, not when the crop is ready - if the crop is ready and the schedule is not - too bad. Same goes for the schedule being ready and the crop not ready.
I too would like to see what the gizmo was she made. Such a project can be done with a tremendously wide variation in knowledge and ability. To win would imply she invented something that hasn't been done previously, indicating a top flight mind, unlike, some of those math geeks that placed lower which seemed to imply an unhealthy fanaticism and focus just to learn the rudiments of where to start.
As for dark matter being discovered, I guess I discovered it too many years ago, when I was a little kid looking under the bed at night. Definitely dark matter under there.
It's a pity they've hyped the 'exotic' part as much as has been done. I don't think that has helped progress.
Let's see why there might be equivalency between the two sides.
Monsanto has to sell to customers and dead customers don't buy squatt.
Monsanto is a large company with deep pockets and is prime pickings in court for any shyster lawyer with a sick or dying sob story or two.
Monsanto has many branches and divisions and sell many different sorts of products and must maintain solid relationships and trust with their customers and must show they are not going down the toilet due to some billion dollar lawsuit.
Hmm, sounds like suitable reasons to lie and risk billions and corporate survival on a handful of hick jurors and lawyers with pretty hair like john edwards. They'd lose less money to shut the whole thing down than they'd spend on hiring their own lawyers.
On the other hand what is greenpiece like? they're a corporation staffed substantially by volunteers and their ranks are full of kooks with nothing to lose. They have to rabble rouse and make trouble in order to acquire corporate income which comes in the form of donations as they are a service company. If they don't complain about something, why should anyone donate? No donations, no pay for those who actually make their living from the organization.
Can or would an organization like this possibly be sued successfully? If so, would it actually damage it or merely generate more revenue for the organization? Are there any stockholders to lose their investment in it?
What happens if they run out of things to complain about? What happens if they make false claims? Anything? Or is making false claims and losing just another opportunity for more fund raising from the 'true believers' customer base?
Based on my subjective assessment of my answers to these questions (not presented here) it would seem that there would probably be an advantage, longterm and probably short term as well, that these people would lie through their teeth intentionally about anything associated with their business and it would be to their advantage to lie. And that doesn't even include the typical rank and file 'associate' whose job requirements essentially boil down to the 'I care' bit and is pretty much getting paid about as much as they are worth (which is zilch). Missunderstanding and missinterpreting due to lack of competency.
Oh well, so much for the equivalence of totally nonequivalent entities.
Actually charging and discharging batteries can release h2. Then again, h2o makes for yet another green house gas (water vapor), which is the most common.
As for the technology - it's leaped lightyears ahead over the last few decades, maybe it will go forward. Whatever the case, whether it's gasoline, h2, batteries or giant rubber bands, it takes lots of potential energy to transport people and things. Properly channeled, that energy is a useful servant. Each type of energy storage has its faillure modes and when those happen, it's catastrophic. To some extent safety suggests that the chosen approach should offer minimal liklihood of those negative conditions.
I recall a program on hydrogen from 10 or 20 years ago presenting that sort of stuff. Perhaps the program was overly optimistic in its claims. I can't even recall the material used. Essentially, the material was put into a pressure tank and absorbed hydrogen like crazy as the pressure went up. Seems like it permitted to store a return about the same amount of h2 by pressuring to 300 or 500 psi as a similar tank could store at 1000 or 2000 psi.
It's function was basically like a sponge. There was a bit of time delay in releasing but not so much in the pressurization. Hence, it didn't appear to take more energy than to pressurize a tank to that pressure level - other than that of putting in more h2 than just a tank that size at that pressure would hold (temperature assumed to be the same).
Since the 'sponge' material didn't release h2 instantly, a rupture was not as catastrophic as a tank filled with gas at that same pressure.
Of course the new material (6% h2 by weight?) is going to provide quite a bit of dead weight to the storage unit. Maybe they're onto something that could prove useful in the future.
then again, odds are that any h2 car that becomes viable is going to very probably be carrying the go juice around in the form of hydrocabons like gasoline. Otherwise, the h2 is merely a storage mechanism rather than an energy source, and there may be better or more suitable energy storage mechanisms around in the form of battery technologies which actually store the energy in the form of reversible chemical reactions.
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Programming is the battle between a stupid machine and someone trying to coerce it to perform particular tasks. Programming languages are the weapons and asm is the equivalent of hand to hand combat and it is also the language of the machine.
To survive the battle with the machine, suitable weapons must be engaged to effectively fight it. Also, to defeat one's enemy, they must know the enemy and how it 'thinks'.
Contrary to popular opinion, asm can be modular and structured and even object oriented. It's up to the author to do so as they are not constrained in their efforts by the language. Details (presumed to be irrelevent to programers) are often not hidden (to the point of near impossibility when attempting to find the needed information).
Asm like all languages has advantages and disadvantages. There are several disadvantages which make it pretty much last on the list of weapons to use. First and foremost, the code is tied to a particular processor. Second, learning an asm language for each possible processor gets to be a major burden. Third, it usually takes a much greater number of instructions to accomplish a task. Fourth, there is no handholding for the programmer or protection from their screwups.
Asm has advantages over others. It's capable of the ultimate tight fast code. It can be totally open for analysis and bug chasing and doesn't suffer from compiler errors injected by other programmers at other companies. It's a very short list of very positive advantages which are outweighed most of the time by the longer list of disadvantages.
For any of you who back in the dark ages of window's 3.1 attempted to use the borland 4.0 or 4.5 c compiler with optimization on, my condolences. I discovered one of my production programs to fail dramatically when engaging a rare command line parameter - whose only application turned out to simply be initializing an array of 10 elements with different than default values for crt display coloring. Considering that the program bombed out totally almost immediately, it was a 10 minute job to trace thru execution in asm to determine that the compiler's code generation was attempting to set in local storage, the final loop value for a register variable that had no local storage. Net result, the base pointer register value stored on entry to the subroutine was stomped thus screwing up all local variables in all higher level routines, resulting in massive program failure. Borland went through at least one major release after being notified of the bug without fixing it. I migrated over to mickiesoft's visual c after their failure to fix that problem.
There are two morals to that story. First off, knowing asm can get you through problems caused by others - like compiler vendors. Second, asm can be used to generate projects that don't have serious bugs whereas even perfect coding in a project can have serious bugs injected by suppliers of other software.
Despite the added cost of doing much asm (rather than limiting it to very small portions of a project), the costs of not doing these tend to remain with us in massively bloated and slow code requiring much higher performance equipment and in the form of never ending bugs.
Unfortunately, there's probably not even enough people capable of doing excellent asm to ever permit it to be a substantial component of any current or future projects. However, it's value in improving the capabilities of programmers in general is undoubtedly worth far more than a PE course (phys ed) or extra history class requirement in the span of a 4 year degree.
>Call me back when you learn some science. The earth's magnetic field does not signifcantly shield against cosmic rays. Cosmic rays do not come from the sun.
Not any cosmic rays come from the sun, eh? OH? REALLY??? Guess what, you're in TOTAL GROSS ERROR there. Cosmic rays primarily in the realm of 10kev to 100kev are sourced by the sun along with the usual 1kev solar wind - which is substantially deflected by the earth's magnetic field. It's why we haven't lost much of our atmosphere yet like Mars has. You don't think the earth's climate would be affected by losing a substantial fraction of its atmosphere????? Note that high energy cosmic rays (> 100kev up to at least 10^20 eV) generally originate from outside the solar system and come from a pantheon of sources and those of the highest energies detected don't really seem to yet have suitable theories as to what the heck generated them.
Where'd you learn that bit of BS about the origins of cosmic rays not being from the sun? Besides, your reading comprehension is a bit low as it was mentioned that it was the variations of the SUN's magnetic field that had a serious climatic effect from cloud formation, NOT relatively short term variations in the earth's magnetic field.
>Again, learn some science. Maybe you haven't noticed, but methane is very reactive in the presence of molecular oxygen. It turns into water and CO2 relatively quickly.
Quick? According to wikipedia, a release of methane of 1 unit mass has 63 times that of the same mass of co2 over a twenty year period. Note too that co2 has a rather limited lifespan in the atmosphere as well. Also note that the article mentions methane levels since 1750 are up 150% (and if you were a scientist or even someone of normal intellect, you'd recognize that is concentrations not initial releases).
So far it's you who seems to need to learn some science. It's obvious you are short on comprehension and quickly resort to adhom insults and attacks to try to bolster your argument or to attack an opposing argument.
In reference to jupiter turbulence...
>The upwelling zone around 37 degrees south is certainly regional.
Then you agree that global warming couldn't possibly be the cause of increased hurricane numbers and strengths as hurricanes only happen in localized regions.
>Read it again, idjit. I'm saying that the existence of ice ages does not have any bearing on whether we are altering the climate.
It does indicate that massive fluctuations occur naturally and somewhat regularly. It provides an indication of just how massive an effort would be required to overcome the natural fluctuations.
>I'm a scientist, asshat. I don't "believe" anything about SETI.
I somehow doubt that claim. You have presented serious evidence here to the contrary about your claim of being a scientist.
As for SETI you obviously BELIEVE it's worth including it in your nick. You evidently BELIEVE it's worth investing some of your time in. Investing your money into it doesn't seem to be suggested by the other evidence.
>There is a possibility that extraterrestrial intelligences exist. I think that it is worth the effort to look, even if the results are negative.
I guess over 30 years of negative results doesn't qualify as negative results.
>Belief has nothing to do with it.
BELIEFS have everything to do with it. See above. Faith is as much a part of science as it is in religions. If you were a scientist, you'd know that.
>You know nothing of any work I have done regarding the development of intelligence or any estimates I may have made of the number of communicating civilizations that may exist in the Galaxy.
You're right about something! I only know about that which you have written. That it seems self contradictory in places and indicative of you not being what you claim just makes me know even less about you (in most ways - but very telling in others).
ASSUMING there is in
internet and cellphones didn't exist back the last time there was a big cycle. I doubt you remember tv in the 50s.
Of course a slight rain is all that's necessary for me to lose satellite internet.
Big ones are fairly infrequent. Big ones headed our way are even more so. A really big one headed our way might take out far more than the stuff you mention - like the whole power grid with severe damage to equipment.
sunspots are relatively cooler so less energy - but it's small (unless you've got massive amounts of solar surface area involved). The real factor is the magnetic effects on cosmic ray flux which impacts cloud formation - which has MAJOR effects on temperatures.
Figure no sunspots - cold cloudy weather
Lots of sunspots - hot dry, drought conditions with sunny skies
note this is the preponderence or overall effect, not some daily prescription for everywhere all the time.
Looking out side and thinking back for 4 months- we've had cloudy weather, coolest jan on record - a fairly good amount of rain - but then we're at the sunspot minimum - and the last cycle went out with a literal bang - some really serious coronal mass ejections and solar storms in its last two years - rather than the more usual whimper.
predicting solar flares is more of a crystal ball affair. The bad news is last year or so they detected a solar flare from a star that was only about 0.8 solar mass which was a million times more potent than anything seen on earth. From what we've seen so far, a flare about 6 sigma above the typical could very likely blow most of the electric utility grid transformers in the world - taking years to bring electricity back to many areas in and outside of the US.
Something 6 orders of magnitude higher than what we've seen - especially in the upcoming era of low/no earth magnetic field could be a 'kill shot'. We now know it can happen but have no clue as to if it will happen.
don't worry - the leftist dems have decided to get rid of the voting machines. They've decided once they're in power to make things easy and automatically cast votes for everyone, saving millions of tax dollars.
but will you have problems holding the equestrian events due to the heat - like atlanta did?
You're ignoring the flip side - droughts and sweltering summer heat due to the reduction in cloud formation. And TV news casts filled with nutcakes whining about manmade global warming. Next, they'll be blaming your qrp rig for heating up the ionosphere too.
Actually, it isn't a storm - it's a cycle and we've seen enough of them to get a good idea of things. Also, we can see a bit of the conveyer system that's setting up for the next cycle. What's more important - there's not any politics in this at present time - not even pressure from the local chamber of commerce to claim what a great place to live due to the lovely weather.
As for predictions - it's more like saying there's going to be cold fronts in December coming south from the frozen northlands than trying to say it's going to be rainy and cloudy and 94 degrees on july 4th in washington DC this year.
Except for the period 1750? or so where there were no sunspots seen
for 50 yrs which violates the nominal 11 yr sunspot cycle we've grown to know and love, it's a decent bet that we've got a doozy coming. It'll be fun for ham radio, more fun than the 60s 70s 80s or even the 90s. The bad news is - no sunspots seemed to translate in to a bit of global cooling last time around and modern research suggests hotter, sunnier and more drought - so the manmade global warming true believers are going to be out in force in a few years with much less liklihood of getting snowed in yet again.
As for weather here, I've given up trying to figure out how they can botch the 3 day forecast so bad and so often and decided to concentrate on understanding how they can botch the current conditions so often and so bad.
Sorry but the early evolution theorists had to insist on long term stability for their new found religion.
Unfortunately, we do not live in a long term stable planet, within a long term stable star system, within a long term stable galaxy, within a stable local group, within a nice quiet quiescent universe.
BTW, andromeda is headed our way on a collision course - which could very well send us whizzing out into the nether realms outside of the galaxy or spiraling in towards the central regions. Not to fail to mention just what might happen when our 300 million solar mass dense central object (usually referred to as a super massive black hole) splats into Andromeda's billion + solar mass supermassive central black hole. That could be a sight best viewed (for survival purposes) from the other side of the universe.
If algor plans to stop this cataclysmic event (the andromeda train wreck) - he'd better get started now because in 10 years, it'll be too late. I look forward to seeing his solution to the problem. (actually it's already too late by about 10 billion years or more)
Thanks for warning us of the nature of your post.
1) the cosmic ray particles are involved in cloud formation which is a massive blocking agent for total radiant solar energy. Their contribution as energy is not relevent to the discussion. Actually, cosmic radiation is readily measurable on the ground and you would stroke out if you ever saw the signal level from a human sized detector. The effects are quite significant in cloud formation for lower atmospheric clouds.
2) the southern hemisphere of jupiter is regional?
3) I believe NASA has just reported finding enough water ice to flood the planet to an average depth of 10 to 20 meters down there in the southern regions using subsurface radar.
4) residence time is shorter eh? Didn't realize plants and plankton preferred breathing in methane to co2.
5) So now you're blaming ancient ice ages on modern people! Must be some sort of reverse causality thing going on here.
Hate to mention this to a SETI true believer but reality sucks. Earth's climate changes and it's influenced by many factors outside of earth. Most of these factors are extremely violent and I'd say this planet has been extremely lucky of it's lifetime to have been able to continue to support life at all. There are climate cycles that appear to be associated with star formation bursts, our location within the galactic disk and its variances above and below the center of the disk (due to orbit), local conditions like is the sun feeling ok or did it just 'burp'. Never mind worrying about the kuiper belt objects or Oort cloud unknowns or for that matter some accidental billiard table event over in the asteroid belt - after all the shoemaker levy comet created several splashes on jupiter bigger than the earth with virtually no time from discovery to impact other than to reserve time on telescopes to watch the event. Of course no amount of sky surveys are going to detect that outer object coming here from the direction of the sun - until it hits the atmosphere.
BTW, Mr Spock is most likely to be a fungus.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to migratory birds. It'll be a good time to invest in high strength sunscreen producing companies too. Hopefully, we'll be lucky enough to avoid any serious coronal mass ejections during that time as I'd hate to lose a bunch of atmosphere. It might be a good time to disinvest of any holdings in GPS related companies or for that matter - any space based companies with satellites that depend on the earth's field for protection. Same goes for any companies still making magnetic compasses - if they haven't gone broke by then.
Otherwise, it'll pretty much be business as usual for a few thousand years.
Jupiter's southern hemisphere is in serious turbulence now. Last year brought out Red Jr. the new (and first ever) new red spot since The red spot was first discovered. There's lots of storms going on there now. (current scientific observations).
If you've ever looked at the output of something like a large area gamma ray detector sitting on a bench in the lab, you'll start to understand that cosmic ray flux (and other atmospheric radiation sources) are probably not just another source of cloud formation. I suspect the experts who assume it is are actually unaware of just how much of it there actually is around the sky. It and h2o vapor may not be the only requirements for forming clouds that way - it probably isn't considering we do not have virtually 100% cloud cover all the time.
Once realized just how much there is of cosmic rays and radiation background, it becomes much harder to accept that this is not the primary natural cloud formation mechanism.
As for global warming (manmade or otherwise) clouds (especially if one includes rain effects) are a serious forcing agent and they help provide a regulating negative feedback.
Water vapor accounts for around 96% of all greenhouse gas effects. Clouds are water vapor on steroids.
The climate guys have had to acknowledge the presence of effects now. They just categorize them as unknown and assumed to be minor - despite the growing body of serious evidence to the contrary.
What is known now is the effects are not from direct energy which varies slightly - and that is what they point to in order to avoid the really serious effects of solar magnetic activity variations and it's impact on cloud formation via cosmic ray flux. This is more like comparing a rise of co2 of 5% to a rise in methane of 5%. Essentially, it's no comparison.
Ah. So the buffalo hunters of the 19th century who almost exterminated the bufalo and virtually starved the indians out helped save the planet from an earlier threat of global warming eh?
I guess we should blame the alaskan pipeline for the current problem. I understand the carribou herds are way up.
But what about Terminex? Maybe they can save the world by expanding their genocide of termites.
Algor and mrs. bill clinton and a few others control the dem party. If someone they believed told them that the sun was cooler than earth was going to be next year, they'd claw each other's faces off to be first for the 'sun mission'. That probably not being the case, they'd probably reinstitute the draft to get 'volunteers' like you or me to go instead.
It might allieviate the threat of global warming. If they can effectively radiate the filling heat away at the filling station then the air coming out or the exhaust pipe ought to be very cold.
$3 worth of energy to fill it is pretty much the giveaway. Either they are lying thru their teeth about the whole thing or it's got to be a almost a 50-100 mile per liter car. Can anyone say paper and carbon fibers? While one could probably overcome losses, serious losses of internal combustion engine/transmission combinations, once the tank has been filled, the inefficiency becomes mostly just friction of minimal machinery. Also, the pneumatic motor has to switch to compressor when the brake goes on (to be the brake).
Of course the compressed air tank has got to be a serious danger and likely capable of rupturing during an accident, possibly more so than gasoline tank. One must wonder if that tank is designed from paper and carbon fiber as well to achieve a low enough weight to keep from wrecking the mileage.
Somehow I seem to keep getting visions of a motorized skate board with a seat atop a rather large pressure tank. That and snow flurries in India during summer and boiled fishes all along the Indian coast.
It seems more likely that GRBs and their lesser kin are more associated with keeping fungus down and making sure that little if any life beyond that level survives.
The universe may be teeming with life - but not necessarily beyond 1 cell. In any case, our violent universe with massive active forces seems to be more significant than originally thought.
One thought is - what about intervening material screwing up polarization? Also, an afterglow is not the supernova light - it's the lower energy equivalent of what caused the grb in the first place (as I understand the idea). That's likely to be a bit further away than the extremely high magnetic fields are likely to be around the star, probably dependent upon earlier sluffed off materials (planetary nebula sorta stuff). The magnetic field may likely be way down by that time frame. After all, it does tend to take minutes or hours before the supernova spectrum light becomes dominant.
The whole goal of the patent system is to protect the inventor/developer from others deciding to use their work to compete against them and prevent that work from being protected as trade secrets which might be lost virtually forever. Sometimes the reasons patents are done (especially additional ones) is to lockout variations which may not be worth doing due to existing investment in a current, perhaps less efficient fasion. Patents are good for a fairly short period of time and become public domain at the end. Items patented in the 1980s and 1990s are pretty much all over now and available to whomever desires to use them. What's more, the basic information is on file for whoever wants to have it. Trade secrets are in force until someone else discovers or steals them - or unfortunately for all concerned - unless they are lost - even to the owners.
It sounds like the donation bit is another scam for someone to profit off the non profit arena.
Actually trying to develop something for profit with an expired patent and the whole world knowing how it's done is not something that can generally happen. Investors tend to be way too nervous about the potential loss of their total investment to worry about how much profit they might make - if all goes perfectly well.
Acquiring patents that are partially expired is not so hazardous. But no company would sell or donate the most important ones that are applicable to any market they are in - lest they create a serious competitor.
The only flaw in communism is that it's designed for (actually based upon) certain types of insects, not for higher life forms.
..... (someone else's problem).
The notion that the cold war stagnated russian technological process is like blaming a hot stove for cooling a pot of ice water down to boiling.
the Soviet Union has always had plenty of kook ideas, at least in time of war. When there's no external or internal threat, there's not any reason to change anything. Part of the reason perhaps is that the plush jobs (compared to ditch digging by hand) tend to want the best and brightest but ask for the more politically astute and spectacular (as in comic book science). Unfortunately, the reward for failure there was quite a bit worse than here so the optimal mix was usually to suggest something that so totally spectacular it couldn't be built yet due to
R&D is spurred by several factors, usually related to survival on some scale or another. For the Soviets, it was survival of the elites in power, from either domestic or foreign destruction. For companies, it is the survival of the companies, keeping up with competitors and keeping customers happy. It's totally the 'joys' of monopoly for the customers - or more aptly put - the serfs.
There is no competition in the socialist workers paradise. It's bureaucratic hell - harvest the crop when the equipment is scheduled to be available, not when the crop is ready - if the crop is ready and the schedule is not - too bad. Same goes for the schedule being ready and the crop not ready.
I too would like to see what the gizmo was she made. Such a project can be done with a tremendously wide variation in knowledge and ability. To win would imply she invented something that hasn't been done previously, indicating a top flight mind, unlike, some of those math geeks that placed lower which seemed to imply an unhealthy fanaticism and focus just to learn the rudiments of where to start.
As for dark matter being discovered, I guess I discovered it too many years ago, when I was a little kid looking under the bed at night. Definitely dark matter under there.
It's a pity they've hyped the 'exotic' part as much as has been done. I don't think that has helped progress.
Let's see why there might be equivalency between the two sides.
Monsanto has to sell to customers and dead customers don't buy squatt.
Monsanto is a large company with deep pockets and is prime pickings in court for any shyster lawyer with a sick or dying sob story or two.
Monsanto has many branches and divisions and sell many different sorts of products and must maintain solid relationships and trust with their customers and must show they are not going down the toilet due to some billion dollar lawsuit.
Hmm, sounds like suitable reasons to lie and risk billions and corporate survival on a handful of hick jurors and lawyers with pretty hair like john edwards. They'd lose less money to shut the whole thing down than they'd spend on hiring their own lawyers.
On the other hand what is greenpiece like? they're a corporation staffed substantially by volunteers and their ranks are full of kooks with nothing to lose. They have to rabble rouse and make trouble in order to acquire corporate income which comes in the form of donations as they are a service company. If they don't complain about something, why should anyone donate? No donations, no pay for those who actually make their living from the organization.
Can or would an organization like this possibly be sued successfully? If so, would it actually damage it or merely generate more revenue for the organization? Are there any stockholders to lose their investment in it?
What happens if they run out of things to complain about? What happens if they make false claims? Anything? Or is making false claims and losing just another opportunity for more fund raising from the 'true believers' customer base?
Based on my subjective assessment of my answers to these questions (not presented here) it would seem that there would probably be an advantage, longterm and probably short term as well, that these people would lie through their teeth intentionally about anything associated with their business and it would be to their advantage to lie. And that doesn't even include the typical rank and file 'associate' whose job requirements essentially boil down to the 'I care' bit and is pretty much getting paid about as much as they are worth (which is zilch). Missunderstanding and missinterpreting due to lack of competency.
Oh well, so much for the equivalence of totally nonequivalent entities.
Actually charging and discharging batteries can release h2. Then again, h2o makes for yet another green house gas (water vapor), which is the most common.
As for the technology - it's leaped lightyears ahead over the last few decades, maybe it will go forward. Whatever the case, whether it's gasoline, h2, batteries or giant rubber bands, it takes lots of potential energy to transport people and things. Properly channeled, that energy is a useful servant. Each type of energy storage has its faillure modes and when those happen, it's catastrophic. To some extent safety suggests that the chosen approach should offer minimal liklihood of those negative conditions.
Something new?
I recall a program on hydrogen from 10 or 20 years ago presenting that sort of stuff. Perhaps the program was overly optimistic in its claims. I can't even recall the material used. Essentially, the material was put into a pressure tank and absorbed hydrogen like crazy as the pressure went up. Seems like it permitted to store a return about the same amount of h2 by pressuring to 300 or 500 psi as a similar tank could store at 1000 or 2000 psi.
It's function was basically like a sponge. There was a bit of time delay in releasing but not so much in the pressurization. Hence, it didn't appear to take more energy than to pressurize a tank to that pressure level - other than that of putting in more h2 than just a tank that size at that pressure would hold (temperature assumed to be the same).
Since the 'sponge' material didn't release h2 instantly, a rupture was not as catastrophic as a tank filled with gas at that same pressure.
Of course the new material (6% h2 by weight?) is going to provide quite a bit of dead weight to the storage unit. Maybe they're onto something that could prove useful in the future.
then again, odds are that any h2 car that becomes viable is going to very probably be carrying the go juice around in the form of hydrocabons like gasoline. Otherwise, the h2 is merely a storage mechanism rather than an energy source, and there may be better or more suitable energy storage mechanisms around in the form of battery technologies which actually store the energy in the form of reversible chemical reactions.