>I was actually saying that leaving carbon in the ground is the most secure
One would tend to naturally think so and the fact it is still there after xxx time would seem to imply it. However, it wasn't designed specifically to contain and it's there by sheer accident (so far as engineering goes). That implies some are likely to be very secure while others have already let their contents escape into the atmosphere. With that exxon valdez size spill occuring every day in the ocean - there's plenty of small leaks going on around the world's oceans with the only saving grace being a lack of concentration.
>I'm considering competing for the prize in this by making ocean seeding profitable through the induced fishery. Let me know if you'd like to work on this. I don't think I can pull it off without some help.
Good luck with it. Planetary science is not really in my arena of interest or expertise, nor is biology. More fish sounds like a pretty good idea. It would seem that fishing (except for the technology) is mostly still at the primitive state of hunter/gatherer and the notion of farming (except for a few onshore efforts typically shrimp and catfish) is something yet to happen. Even free ranging would be an advancement. More ocean vegetation to suck up co2 certainly offers the ability to utilize an overabunance of that while helping out with the subsurface food chain. Hopefully, red tide style events can be avoided as a part of the unintended consequences of any change.
Life adapts and is hard to kill off, if not impossible to kill off intentionally. Considering that there are natural sources of co2 which were never part of the environmental system (volcanoes etc), and considering that fossil fuels appear to have once been life which acquired its carbon from co2 in the atmosphere, it would make sense that there must have been higher levels in the past, probably the fairly recent past, at least recent enough for these 'at risk' life forms to have been around at that time.
As for the 10 yr thing- it's political or alarmist and isn't science based. Since we don't know or understand the details or the mechanisms, it's utter speculation. It's already been used to push for specific solutions which would have resulted in intentional efforts to try to warm the planet, an outcome that would be not only a vast waste of scarce economic resources but also something that would be opposite of the concensus crowd's current desires for change. When fighting fires with unknown chemicals involved, doing nothing (but to let it burn) is a very important option - especially considering that any proactive action they take could results in a far worse situation. To fight a gasoline fire where there is leaking gasoline on a city street and trying to dillute it with water can be a disaster. It is an insoluable flamable liquid which can be spread and expand the fire and it can be washed into storm drains, where it vaporizes - creating a massive bomb capable of blowing up blocks of buildings - an outcome far worse than a tanker truck burning a moderate hole in the asphalt on the street over a period of a few hours.
It should be noted the previous alarmists' 10yr deadline is long gone along with the consequences arriving deadline. Not only were they evidently wrong about the nature of the predicted disaster (perhaps even got it backwards - then again maybe they got that part right), but the disaster wasn't a disaster on their proscribed time frame and failure to take action resulted in no negative consequences (and again action would have resulted in a blatant attempt to create what would now be considered to be disasterous unwanted effects).
It's very much akin to someone yelling fire in the crowded theatre. There may or may not be a fire there and if there is, it might be someone lighting a cigarette in the men's rooms. The consequences are that at the very least, the movie is disrupted and the movie experience ruined and wasted for the people and at the worst many could die ov
I wasn't aware we had 200-400 years of upper atmospheric research.
In any case, since we only have 10 years to fix the problem before we all die (from waterskiing?), it wouldn't seem to matter that the methane only lasts for 15 yrs.
carbon sequestration in the ground is no guarantee of success. I believe the estimates for oil leakage into the oceans from below the oceans amounts to about 1 exxon valdez per day. The tar balls on the beach at Galveston and Freeport are continual examples of such leakage, being first noted by the French explorer La Salle several centuries back. Coal and peat fires can be started by lightning and evidently burn for years. This methane 'ice' has been offered as some of the possible mysteries of the bermuda triangle triggering off of some cause - perhaps subsurface landslides as well as some bit of localized warming - then bubbling up and sinking ships or platforms. Perhaps the only safe method of co2 sequestering is in the form of limestone which generally works until someone decides they need to make cement out of it or otherwise make use of it.
On the other hand, methane is continually being produced by various natural sources as well as some perhaps existing and trapped prior to our current atmosphere. Considering that some subsurface structures trap oil and natural gas while other similar structures turn up as dry holes indicate that again just leaving it to momma nature to continue sequestering it may not provide a good alternative. Of course, it's probable that human sequestering would likely be worse - assuming we could. Sometimes those natural places - like salt domes have been later used for temporary storage and sometimes - failures happen to lead to very large bangs as the material seeps out and finds a source of flame.
The net removal of methane at 20x the damage for an exchange to co2 is well worth the effort as long as there is any risk that the methane reaches the atmosphere.
As for those deposits - it may well be plausible that warming isn't the only risk of release. A landslide or serious tremor might avalanche the material into a serious release.
As for coal, it's far worse to deal with than methane for energy conversion. There's more radioactive natural impurities in coal than would ever be permitted to be emitted by a nuclear power plant. There are other impurities which cause problems as well. It's not so much that these are truly serious problems - other than that they are measurable and regulators love to regulate things they can measure. In fact, a few years ago, the EPA tried to regulate ozone levels in the Houston TX region to lower than natural occuring levels. It was so bad that not even total evacuation of humans and their activities could have met the attempted requirements.
Cosmoclimatology isn't just solar. I believe the solar radiative energy output (uv, light, ir) was constant to perhaps 0.1% but that isn't as influential (at that small change amount) as variations in magnetic fields (and the interaction with the earth's magnetic field). It's the charged particles - (cosmic rays) that affect cloud formation which determines the warming/cooling. The nominal 11 year sunspot cycle has been active in a fairly normal fashion and this cycle just starting out seems to be promising to be a serious one, just as there was in the 1950s.
Even though we are in the middle of the minimum right now, there have been some serious flares during the last year which is well past the peak, something like x9 or x10 level. It may be that while the output is fairly constant, the magnetic field activities may have been building up the last several decades.
In the 1750 - 1800 time frame, there were no sunspots observed. This was a rather cold period of time with the Thames freezing over solid in London etc.
Note too that there are the usual periodic variations of where the earths pole is precessing to combined with the slight ellipse of the earth's orbit which causes a shifts in seasons as to when they occur relative to the earth/sun distance.
Influences of a supernova are not generally long term. Since cosmic rays are charged particles and don't take direct paths, it's impossible to tell where they came from and since different path
For anyone fearful of co2 increase as a cause of global warming, methane stuff should be an armagedon nightmare. It's got to be a minimum of 20 to 30 times more effective at trapping atmospheric heat than co2 - that means for every mole of methane we burn, which otherwise would escape to the atmosphere, and convert to a mole of co2 - we have reduced the net greenhouse gas effects by a factor of at least 20.
We've also liberated lots of usable energy in the process too - makingit worthwhile.
The thing about climate change is that those studying it look at the fact that it changed, and then look for reasons why. It's forensic science rather than laboratory science and like the CSI tv show crime scenes, it's a rather cold case on the time line, making it far more difficult to ascertain the 'who done it'. What's more, there's far more suspects than are currently still around the crime scene. I suspect most climatologists have still never even heard of cosmoclimatology which might actually be the guilty culprit.
NASA's reign pretty well ended before apollo soyuz. That's when the last moon mission was scrubbed due to lack of interest. Perhaps ironically, star trek had a bit of a hand in its demise as much as the been there done that attitude of the public. It was a time when NASA went from a large multi year project to an extended bureaucracy, fat and content to continue on based on its own laurels.
Rather than inventing the new, they decided to build the shuttle off the shelf to show off their past accomplishments at making progress. To pull off the shuttle project, they decided to lump in satellite launching and delivery of payloads to orbit into the shuttle program as this was becoming a nice source of external revenue and a reason for 'needing' the shuttle. They kept compromising and reducing the designs of the shuttle to try to fit it into the ever bloating budget. Payloads transferred to space on manned space flights are far more expensive than on unmanned launch vehicles - opening the way for others to compete for the bags of money being thrown at space by all the different private companies - who brought you xm sat. radio, satellite internet, satellite tv, affordable gps, cheap international telephone calling, etc, etc, etc.
Lesser known fatalities of this seed change included the first mission to mars. Note that some of NASA's earlier plans or options were scrapped by nuclear treaties as well which prohibited nuclear powered vehicles.
It's not to say that NASA totally tanked or totally wasted every every dime spent. They went in for unmanned space exploration which was far cheaper and brought far more bang for the buck, without having to pay serious salaries to buck rogers or pay serious costs to get him into orbit for the mission. Much of the first efforts at this was highly successful and it was only later that the screwups started showing up - like the hubble mirror and several martian probes. It's also only later that such phenomenon like coronal mass ejections became understood well enough to realize that a trip to mars by people was a bit more tricky than first thought. We were quite lucky in the apollo missions that none of the flight crews got cooked by one. Even though the ISS is inside much of the earth's protective cocoon it's still necessary to have developed a safe room to protect the inhabitants when such events head our way.
Some of the reasoning for bush II's interest in the moon (other than legacy crap and maybe a bit more idealism than most tend to attribute to him) is the potential for (potentially hostile)foreign bases - ie military bases - to be established on the moon. What we would contract haliburton to build might be a mining base with mass driver launching of mined and processed materials back to earth for fun and profit. The same facility in the hands of a hostile foreign power could be built as a cannon, firing multi-ton projectiles capable of leveling targets like artillary and virtually incapable of being destroyed by opposing forces, especially considering there is only a handful of launch sites around capable of sending something to the moon that would be the obvious first targets.
It's entirely possible that it's even just a bluff to dissuade others from even trying to develope and implement their plans. Part of Reagan's SDI (star wars for ignorant twitts) was literally that - a bluff (or perhaps little white lies about what we already had on the basic level). What's more, it worked!
Yes and No. Until the time occurs again when the politics has been removed from science, it's going to be around. It won't matter what proofs are shown the alarmist industry will just shift focus to something else, probably equally erroneous.
Towards the end of a Nova program about 2 yrs ago which was on the glaciers sliding into the ocean - after covering the science about what's going on 2000 ft below the frozen top where the bottom is melting - (evidently due to volcanic activity) there was the obligatory references to global warming which was shown in the program to not be a factor in this phenomenona.
evidently, some believe that 17000 repetitions make one truth.
well, if you have such good correlation, then why didn't it show the co2 levels were higher than now when the temperatures were higher than now by 4-6 degrees - back in the optimum about a thousand years ago - when greenland was being colonized by the vikings and the limeys were growing their own grapes for wine? Oooops!
Your ice core stuff isn't as correlated as hyped. Your models do not constitute reality and are missing even items that have become known, never mind factors which we haven't discovered or observed yet.
The alarmists of the 70s are mostly still around, being alarmists in the 90s and 2000s. I refuse to refer to or consider that butterfly collector paul erhlich as a climatologist. Concensus isn't about science as science is about the study and description of reality. Concensus and the alarmist industry is about wealth and power, more so than any greedy corrupt international company you care to name. You can get all the concensus you want of 1st graders agreeing that 2+2 equals 5 - regardless of how many you get to agree with that, it still doesn't change reality.
The fact is that it's been hotter than now and it's been colder than now and will be again, regardless of man's existance on this planet. CO2 is not a major green house gas, it is a minor one. The fact that it has changed slightly during the time that modern man has been in an industrial age may indicate a relationship between the two. That does not indicate that rather small amounts of CO2 and tiny variations in the amount affects the climate. As for the ice cores, sometimes the co2 rise lags the temperature rise - implying perhaps that maybe co2 levels are a function of temperature rather than temperatures being a function of co2 levels. Let's see - it's colder out - do plants grow more (and suck up more co2) when it's colder or when there's less sunlight???? Are termites more active when it's hotter or colder? Hmmm - sounds like there could be some sorta relationships between climate, the environment and co2 right there.
Considering that water vapor is the predominant greenhouse gas, the question of cloud formation arises. Clouds have much more effect on heating and cooling than does straight water vapor. Cloud formation is heavily tied to cosmic rays as they provide ionized trails for watervapor to form (Note the purpose of the Wilson Cloud Chamber experiments was to study cloud formation and that's where cosmic rays were first discovered). According to some rather high powered scientists, there are serious factors which are even outside the solar system which affect earth's climate - with correlations better than that which exists with co2/climate. This is called cosmoclimatology.
If you believe in science, then you would look forward to seeing how it fits together with reality - both with and without the manmade global warming stuff. You would want to see whether there might be anything to it. If, on the other hand, you are promoting propaganda, perhaps even a pseudo scientific religion, then you will doubtlessly sluff it off as being something unworthy of discussion. The real reason would be that it is a threat to your new found religion. Such is the difference between religion and science. Which are you?
First off, one must remember that Fermi croaked off long before Carl Say-again hit his prime. (Early 70s as I recall). Most thoughts then came from straight sci-fi writers. It was also before much of the short term violent nature of the universe was recognized. Back then black holes were a mathematical curiosity. It was still being seriously debated whether the universe was a big bang or was in a steady state.
From today's vantage point, it seems likely that most of the galaxy could well be uninhabitable. In fact, galaxies could become uninhabitable due to a neighbor.
>1) A species capable of galactic colonization must be organized
Possibly, but then the andromeda strain wasn't. Simple life forms could well be spread, remaining dormant in the interstellar space for millions of years.
It looks to me like ET and Mr Spock are most likely to be a fungus.
>2) Organization requires competition. The better the competition, >the better the organization
Organization doesn't require competition. Gov. is an organization that crushes competition and the bigger - the more oppressive.
>3) Competition promotes conflict - either between species or within >competing factions of a species
Competition is required for technological progress. For a society that is not in some competition, there is no need for change hence it stagnates.
>4) As the ability to colonize space develops, so does the ability to >destroy the whole species
As technology increases - that includes the power necessary to do so and that means exploiting stored energy. Any large amount of stored energy can be released quickly with destructive effects. I doubt it's possible to destroy the whole species but it's probably enough to destroy the society that permitted or spawned the effort. A simple example - once a group leaves the gravity well of the earth, and has the ability to move objects in space - say large enough to be a multiperson space craft but not necessarily the size of mount everest - they have the capability of dropping these objects onto the earth's surface with kinetic energies possibly much higher the largest nukes ever made.
>5) Since colonizing a new area is the essential goal of all species (survival requires species to spread as far as possible) reaching >this "ultimate" goal will require overcoming the competition at all costs including destroying the original habitat and all members of the species.
Considering that earth will become a cinder eventually - before it evaporates inside the sun, moving is essential. Habitats are transient. Even ants and termites need to change their habitats - never mind the beaver who turns the stream into a meadow. As for existing natives elseswhere - it's doubtful they exist now and if they do, like ET and Mr Spock - the inhabitants is fungus.
6) All species capable of colonizing space must enevitably destroy themselves.
Definitely not something that is in evidence. In fact, our current danger of self extinction has nothing to do with space. The culprits probably believe in a flat earth. The cold war was about the notion that it is easier to take than to make and the fundamental notions of the enemy was to create a noncompetitive worker's utopia (run by the tooth fairy or was it run by big brother?) - a scheme that would require turning human beings effectively into ants or termites.
>Colonization is not possible. Cooperation will NOT lead to galactic colonization as it will ony lead to cooperative use of existing resources.
Colonizing the solar system is possible. It's neither easy nor cheap. It's an expensive proposition to get weight into orbit, and not cheap to get it out of orbit away from earth.
Colonizing the galaxy - that's still far into science fiction. According to the rules as we know it - It'd take around 10 cubic Km of sea water just to get enough hydrogen to have a fusion rocket that could send a smally colony ship off at 50% speed of ligh
Real break even occurs when the device can pay for itself. Thermo has rather serious rules about just how much one can get out of a system thru heat flow. Theoretically, a gas engine is limited to several pecent less than 50%. Good luck creating a transmission capable of getting that power into useful work with only an additional 50% loss. There may be lots of waste heat around but if the differences in temp. are small, efficiencies for extracting even are low.
As long as the new technique can pay for itself in energy savings over its lifetime then it's worthwhile. Note that the cost of the product (including maintenance and repair) is actually somewhat indicative of the expense in creating it and its over all cost to society (even though the bills go straight to a person or company).
Offhand the notion sounds nice but waste heat often becomes a case of diminishing returns when trying to harness it.
Sometimes having an existing infrastructure delays the advent of a new structure. Always, having an existing bureaucracy screws delays and fouls up things. For example cell phones really took off in areas of the world where phone service was almost nonexistant or unusable. Sometimes, it's just a desire on the part of the natives to mimick or be like the 'leaders' and are willing to spend far more of their usually far more meager incomes to have it. we had both an existing infrastructure to compete with and an existing set of bureaucracies to muck up the works.
Why beef up the hardwired dial up telephone network to improve and expand operations when cellphone technologies are available and hardly anyone has a phone anyway? Why beef up the telephone networks to permit dialup when broadband technologies are available probably for less given the absence of existing infrastructure? DSL depends on good twisted pair wire to attach the equipment to. If that wire doesn't exist, it makes sense to put in something better as long as money is being invested or to go to something that doesn't need the new infrastructure like extended wifi / microwave setups.
Then again, the lack of literacy in the US means that fewer people have interest in the internet than the general amount of population would indicate. Most of the web actually requires the ability to read in order to use it. Also, when folks are already tapped to the limit with pagers and cell phones, they tend not to want to spend more money on internet - especially when it's free at the public library, work, school and even the local bookstore.
As for the FCC, they have violated their own rules and even their basic mandate promoting the power line carrier 'broadband', BPL, to the detriment of society since it causes massive amounts of wideband RF pollution which can even affect police and fire communications under extreme situations). The FCC's neglegence in protecting licensed spectrum users from this unlicensed abomination of pollution borders on the criminal negligence so don't claim they've been trying to protect the cable and phone companies from other competition.
As for other bureaucracies - some of them have vested interests in seeing their meal tickets acquire additional revenues for them to suck off of. Having competition come in - especially in areas these bureaucracies have no control over is bad for these leaches.
There are other alternatives possible. Satellite is available everywhere - assuming you can get some clown with the necessary equipment to come out and nail a dish to the side of your house for $50/hour. It turns out that some sat providers now are cheaper than paying for a second dedicated phone line after you add in all the required taxes and fees that turn a $25/mo. phone bill into a $50/mo bill.
Obviously, there are some rural areas where literacy is a rare commodity perhaps almost as bad as many urban areas. In other rural areas, it's not and the demand for broadband is there for some - although dial-up is adaquate for many others. The sheer cost of the infrastructure and the return on the investment - even at the high prices being charged make it a long term proposition.
Another alternative possibility of competition being used some is the super extension of the wifi approach where comm links are being established over many miles rather than many feet. While expensive in technology, it doesn't have the gov. regulation and massive taxation of the monopoly companies like cable.
For those of you alive and cognizant when cable tv first hit the scene, you would have seen that it was a disaster from the beginning. Choices were made by municipalities on how much they could get out of the companies, trying to bleed them dry and driving up prices and lowering quality from the beginning. Where I was at the time, we got the worst of all worlds, lowest channel count, poorest quality and highest prices currently available.
Kudos on recognizing and admitting that microblack holes might not be formed at all (and a possible inference that maybe they're somebody's wet dream rather than an actual part of the universe). It seems such things get overhyped and are often related to acquiring pubicity (fame and fortune) rather than serious attempts at explainations.
I've also wondered for a good while now just how biased the experiments have become and when. After all, detection equipment and data processing are designed based on expectations and interpretations from earlier experiences. It appears that such complexities have been around for quite some time now where so much is pretty much beyond the researcher's ability to do so without the assistance of rather sophisticated and perhaps biased tools.
As for the cosmic rays - the vast majority of those are very low power compared to what is being done now under controlled environments. However, there are plenty of higher energy ones impacting the atmosphere at rates pretty much dependent on just how high the energy is. The highest ones are quite rare but contain substantially more energy than anything an earth based or human controlled experiment could ever produce. Even in sci-fi land, the notion of building and controlling a device the size of the inner solar system composed of all of the mass of a rather decent sized globular cluster is well beyond the pale.
If it's possible to form a micro black hole with human attainable energy levels, then cosmic rays must be doing so quite regularly in our atmosphere on a random basis. Since nothing has ever been seen - if you discount the publicity activities many years ago by that UT guy suggesting the Tunguska event was one, then it's pretty well assured that the latest member of the disaster pantheon is another paper tiger.
Btw, please describe what a prism shape is. A prism generally refers to an optical device, often made of glass, and prism are available in a variety of shapes. Hence a prism shape is at best very ambiguous if not meaningless.
As for the example of the partial meter stick, if you're talking about the stretching or compacting of space preferentially in a direction, then why wouldn't the meter stick be subject to the expansion or contraction as well?
Also, your earlier reference to what you referred to as the star wars trash dump has a name. It's called a trash compactor. They're actually available in much bigger sizes than those that fit in the kitchen cabinet.
well - it's been far hotter gobally than now and it's been far colder than now. This is both before and after humans developed some technology. Climates change! What's more it's going to be hotter than now in the future and it's going to be far colder than now in the future and it will be happening after the human race is no longer around and probably be happening prior to its ultimate demise as well.
You're welcome to believe that the dust mite on the tail of the dog is in control of the direction the dog is traveling in but you'll have to accept the fact that we're laughing our heads off at your foolishness. human caused global warming is pretty close to that scenario.
As for changing minds - just remember it's the same people preaching global warming catastrophe now that were preaching coming ice age disaster 30 some odd years ago. They suggested putting lamp black on the glaciers to melt them back then. In theory such efforts might could work at melting them but I'm not sure we are big and powerful enough to pull off such a massive effort. Of course, if we are undergoing global warming at present, melting the glaciers would have been an extremely stupid idea to have done 30 years ago - and according to them back then - we only had 10 years to do something about it - just like today - they say - 'we don't know 100% fer sure but we positive we only have 10 years to do something about it'
My guess is, they were right 30 years ago and wrong today. We seem to be coming off a mini ice age that's lasted the past 400 years or so which implies things are heating up. Personally, I think having more growing seasons and warmer temperatures tend to facilitate rather than hinder human life. Ice ages tend to be rather hard on all terrain life forms. Also, since ice ages tend to last for thousands and thousands of years, and that most of earth's existance seems to be in colder climatic conditions, and since we're over due for the next one - historically speaking - I'm not that worried about some presumption of things getting slightly warmer. What is really scary is the demise of the human race caused by leftist idiology and gross stupidity. Now that is a real waste!
Look on the brighter side! If it warms up another 5 to 7 degrees, the brits might be able to grow wine grapes again and put those snotty frogs and their overpriced wino juice in their place.
sorry but mr. G wasn't alone, nor the originator. He did observe things and report them. The cosmologies of the time were earth centered and sun centered universes. Both date back far before mr. G. Unfortunately, the earth centered version was supported by mr. A, perhaps the most famous philospher of all time while the sun centered version was supported by mr. uhh - well he's not quite famous enough for me to remember him and it isn't worth looking up at the moment (so maybe you get the point). The theories were a bit competitive for a while but the fact that parallax of stars was a null experiment - nobobdy back then could detect one whit of parallax and this negative result pretty much put the kabosh on the sun centered universe.
mr. G's observations started the ball rolling again on the sun centered universe from a scientific standpoint. As it turns out though, the catholic church had bitten on mr. A's theories lock stock and barrel and it seems there was this religious cult of sun worshippers pushing the sun centered universe for their own religious idiology. Consequently, poor mr. G had a whole lotta problems in the peer review process of the time. I think they even made him recant publicly.
The thing about science is - it's an attempt at the best description of reality. It's not about opinions or concensus. What's more, it tends to cycle somewhat. Old theories seldom die, they merely get recycled in modified form. Note the flat earth was not really a theory - only an urban legend as the egyptians and greeks already had estimated the size of the earth during their heyday. In Job (book of the Bible) the jews mention the earth as an orb hung on nothing - in amongst all the moaning being done by that guy. The informationseems to have made down to the general immigrant population there in egypt.
As for global warming, one sees the evidence quite well down here at 27deg n lat. for the cosmic ray / magnetic field connections. We're at a sunspot minimum and the number of cloudy rainy days this year have exceeded clear days by a significant amount. During sunspot maximas, we often have the worst droughts, historically speaking.
Another example is that while there is a nominal sunspot cycle of 11 years, sunspots have been observed for several hundred years now. There was a period of about 1750 to around 1800 where none were observed on the face of the sun (that's over 4 nominal cycles worth). That's about the time that the Thames river froze over in a significant fashion.
As I recall from reading/hearing about the research is that there is a better short term correlation between solar sunspot activity and temperature than there is between co2 levels and temperature. Also, cosmic rays - which are usually high energy protons (charged particles)are correlated with sunspot cycles. Many or are probably produced by the sun but since they are charged, they change directions in magnetic fields so where they come from tends to remain an unknown.
In any case, cosmic rays and gamma rays impacting the earth provide a substantial but unseen effect in the atmosphere. Note that there are some large area arrays of uv optical sensors deployed to observe incoming high energy hits but it's nothing you're going to see by looking up at the sky. Not only do they provide ionization trails for cloud formation - I suspect they provide those precursor trails for lightning strikes and are responsible for when and what pattern a lightning bolt actually takes when discharging the built up charges.
Hmm, buying military weapons at wally world or cheaper healthcare. Sounds like a nice false choice although one must recognize that receiving healthcare requires that one still be alive in the first place.
If you follow the history, you'll find that everything associated with higher health care has been caused by the government. This includes what the gov. did and what the gov. didn't do. To assume the democrats or anyone in gov. is going to lower the costs of health care is to assume that john edwards, that shyster lawyer who made millions off of lies, junk science and gullible rubes on the jury is the best brain surgeon in the country and he'll operate on you for free.
From the time that health insurance begin to be included in employemment packages back in world war 2, virutally everything the gov. has done has driven up the costs. There are cost shifting where people who supposedly can afford care are being hit for more money to help pay for those who can't. The cost of every item in health care has a massive expense called lawsuit protection - where every nickel product costs a dollar due to this expense. The doctors play defensive medicine to keep from getting sued and too bad for the old general practicioner who still feels like working 1 day a week because that may not be enough to pay his malpractice insurance, assuming he could still get it.
The insurance companies don't want to spend extra effort to analyze the legimitacy of bills since their policies sell for a premium and they might make 15% off of either the $100 / month rate or off the $1000 / month rate. When the employers pay, the insured doesn't care what the payments are and it doesn't help him/her to scrutinize the bill. Hospitals have seriously huge bureaucracies now paid for by $10/pill over the counter advil and aspirin so they gouge people thru the nose too. Gov. encouraged the insurance to be paid by the employers. Gov. doesn't stop lawsuit abuse or even try to curb what is going on in that arena where it has become the daily lottery for lawyers and whoever they can drag in off the street as a client.
The FDA has made it almost impossible for smaller newer companies to get started, protecting the existing giants. They've made it impractical for low volume illnesses to have cures since there's not enough money in it to pay for the years of testing required. And, the number of lives lost due to the extended delays involved in life saving drug approval probably exceed those lost by what would happen were the FDA to vanish off the face of the earth.
A case in point is that brazinsky fellow in houston with his brain cancer therapy. I think he is probably still in trials, but the FDA went after him for years. It seems like he was treating 10-20% successfully on a disease that was 100% fatal. On the shyster side, the guy that did the goat gland transplants merely relocated across the border to mexico.
And that brings up yet another factor, the gov.'s failure to regulate the border, allowing in millions of illegals, not all of whom are here to work. This has created a new cost shifting paradigm where the employers of these illegals (the ones working) are paying subsistance wages and expecting society to pick up the tab for education and healthcare for them as they take up jobs at below market rates (and sometimes at market rates).
A wellfare loafer (foreign or domestic) could starve to death now trying to figure out which competing gov. agency is the best one to go to for a free handout, despite millions of dollars wasted on advertising the handouts by these agencies.
Politics for now and the forseeable future is going to be best described as a choice of which party is going to do the least damage to society. And the sad part is, it's often hard to tell.
Two things are for certain, especially concerning the dems. The first is that everything they are promising now is extremely destructive and unsustainable were it to be implemented. The second is that they are lying through their teeth about everything they claim to stand for. Also, there's plenty of this crap to spread around to other parties.
I tend to view things from the perspectives of southern Texas where there is already efforts underway to establish wind farms off the coast and it seldom drops below 30c for much of the year during daylight. However, my view of consumption is more based upon the nature of solar radiation intensities which peak around midday - at least below the arctic cirle and the fact that the vast majority of people work indoors during the day.
I live in a rather unique house which includes four inches of special insulation in the walls. It's major use is in small commercial walk-in freezers using five and a half inches worth of the material. It's not the only insulation in the walls either. Here, we describe the climate as balmy with 6 weeks of fall, 6 weeks of winter, 6 weeks of spring and 9 months of rather hot summer which seldom drops to 30c during the day and sometimes not even at night. Fortunately, it seldom goes over 38c.
I attempted to avoid the direct question of whether it was a good idea to generalize the notion of energy storage into thermal. After all, both hot and cold are readily available in locations not too far away but still a bit too expensive for practical exploitation as energy sources. It would seem that other approaches such as raising water to above a hydroelectric dam would be more effective.
Of course, the simple time shifting of use - assuming the losses due to increased heat flow are acceptable - does make good sense, enough to make me wonder why it wasn't being done all along, at least by some reasonable fraction of that industry. After all, in commercial environments that use a great deal of electricity, there tend to be different charges for usage during different times - to push companies into shifting off loads.
I still don't quite understand why the peak loads would be shifted off of midday so much. I would not expect there to be much electrical heating in that climate nor would I expect the work patterns to be that far off.
The load shedding I described is not done around here. It is done in some states in the deep south and I've also seen it done by some utilities in Minnesota. It seems to be more the nature of the power industry in the region than the location and weather patterns associated with the region.
Your post indicated involvement in climate study. If so, you might be interested to know we are in our typical sunspot minimum climate right now. It's been quite cloudy, significantly rainy, and consequently, somewhat cooler than average. The weather here gets blamed on el nino and la nina in the pacific, but here it tends to track fairly well with the sunspots with few clouds, warmer temperatures and sometimes serious long term droughts, alieviated infrequently by hurricanes and strong wet pacific cold fronts. Then again, this is a desert and it is a bit unsettling to see water lillys growing among the cactus.
There seem to be many April magazine Articles that float around for years. My all time favorite is the one about 10^40 bits in a crystal or maybe it was 10^60 bits. It was enticing people into april 1 mode for years after that - spawned a number of subsequent professional articles too. All you need for a crystal is something somewhat larger than the earth - and some interface circuitry. Those who shoulda known better tended to be those who were the last to know.
This may not be quite so similar but it's definitely no new idea to store energy from production time to usage time. I guess with higher temp superconductors, maybe a nice refridgerator might be in order.
The big problem this stuff tries to address is based on the factor that peak electric loading occurs mid-day - when it's hot out, most everyone is awake and working. It is a serious problem and peak demand electricity has been a serious cost factor. Solar panels do offer peak output mid day so can help by selling some of their rather expensive electrons at primo prices. Wind often is strongest with the coastal breezes in mornings and evenings - due to unequal heating rates of water versus land.
Unfortunately, for every conversion of energy - there are thermodynamic penalties that must be paid and cannot be overcome using whatever particular technique happens to be employed in that particular circumstance. The notion of using energy in heat (or lack there of for cold) is particularly bad in cases where the resulting energy needs are in other forms - such as needing electricity again. Thermodynamic efficiencies for heat engines are a factor of the difference in temperatures between heat source and sink - and the lower the differences - the less efficient it can be.
Something as simple as cooling down commercial refridgerators at off peak hours is probably a good idea both from energy savings standpoint and from cost standpoints - assuming the insulation is sufficiently good to keep out the heat and permit a net savings. As for new innovatinve ideas it hardly seems to be something worthy of more than a passing mention in some grocery store checkout line magazine article about 10 ways to reduce your corporate electric bill.
In some areas of the country, there are systems with devices tied to electric meters that offer another, slightly more intrusive alternative which is essentially to have the equivalent of an old pre text message vintage pocket pager wired to a power relay. When the little pocket pager radio device is activated, the relay shuts off the power to the customer device for about 15 minutes. Typically, it's big ticket items for consumers like electric waterheaters, airconditioners and irrigation pumps (for farmers). This is called load shedding and it's used to minimize some of that expensive daytime peak power. One can create a rolling temporary shutdown that can shed a few million killowatts continually. Often these systems are involved with tens of thousands of customers and cover areas that could be whole states.
Like the refridgerator at night thing, it doesn't tend to save energy, but rather to distribute it around to reduce the peak load - sometimes at the expense of actually increasing the overall usage.
Please note that we've had powerline carrier mechanisms including remote meter reading for years and years. IP or any broad band over power line is a giant disaster, economically and environmentally. It creates massive RF interference because unshielded wire is no way to send RF. Essentially, it's generated interference everywhere it's been tried. 60hz (and 50hz) noise is the price we must pay for electricity in the first place. It pervades everywhere and is a pain to deal with on designing virtually every piece of electronics in existance. The BPL crap extends that sort of problem up into the RF spectrum, potentially causing interference to radio and tv stations as well as emergency frequencies for first responders.
It is an idea which is undesirable, causes severe problems and is a more expensive solution with inferior results compared to existing alternatives. To get to this stage, the FCC has had to ignore both its own prviously established regulations and its basic mandate.
The sooner that fiasco dissappears, the better off the human race will be.
Big bang has the most support over alternatives like steady state - which evidently still has some adherents - apparently like halton arp.
Despite being the most supported, there seem to be more kludges and band-aids on the theory than seems reasonable. The latest is that apparently, we're accelerating rather than slowing down. That's an experimental observation based upon supernovae intensity - which like most other things - can have alternative causes.
What's worse, it seems that searching for star trek solutions is more lucrative than for more mundane ones. Hence, what is called dark matter is now primarily exotic new previously undiscovered phenomenon - rather than regular matter not radiating. It's very much the same sort of thing as lawyers seeking to establish precendent with new laws rather to gain a reputition rather using existing laws that have all the precedents taken care of and it's merely making use of it.
One of the most recent 'proof' or 'evidence' of dark matter is a photo that surfaced recently showing gravitaiton lensing concentrated around a galaxy colision where the visible gas clouds had been swept out and were located elsewhere. The obvious conclusion was that since the gas was moved, all the matter was swept out of the area, leaving only mysterious dark matter. While gas can tend to be swept out, it doesn't happen to larger bodies like planet type bodies (or primordial fog particles). Perhaps such things are quite mysterious as they are unknown - but it doesn't necessarily mean they are made from something exotic or mysterious.
Like most things nowadays, a healthy dose of skepticism should be in order. Certainty is only for religions.
If there really is an acceleration of separation in the universe, then it would imply that the universe will die spread out and dark. However, considering that there isn't a real cause known for such an event - it means we don't know enough to have a clue what will happen in future and perhaps we are clueless as to what happened in the distance past. It might even mean we are back to square one for the infinitely large and the ultra small.
Some things seem to imply that all of space and time is totally connected turning things into a jumbled knot.
Considering that some quasars show as many as 13 or so different red shifted renditions of absorption lines - it just might be possible that there's a lotta stuff out there that just isn't glowing - and hence is dark matter.
Despite the apparent preponderence of evidence (note that a general agreement of scientists cannot be proof of anything)which points to the big bang, that doesn't mean the steady state theory is totally gone. Arp may be virtually the last high powered holdout, but being the last one doesn't guarantee that he is wrong or the multitude is right. And, it wouldn't be the first time such a serious swapover has happened. The earth centered cosmology competed and dominated the sun centered cosmology for over a thousand years, providing superior predictive power and showing more promise than the sun centered which even suffered from a negative result experiment that seemed to actually falsify it (failure to find parallax in any of the fixed stars). It was only later that in the midst of a religious battle between a sun worshipping cult and the catholic church that scientists actually started to determine that despite its successes, that perhaps the greatest philospher of all time was in error, the catholic church screwed up taking a position on the wrong side of reality and that the whack-job sun worshippers were actually right about the sun being the center of the universe - at least as understood at that time. It was only duringthe 20th century that it started to become evident that the totality of all things was more than just the milky way.
There really isn't a choice - it's going to be under 'ground'. The choice will be whether the ground is raised over the top of the dwelling - like an adobe hut or whether the hole in the ground used to get the material out will also be used.
There's about 15 pounds of atmosphere over our heads in every square inch column to space. There's also a magnetic field that has some effect. That much material is not going to be transported from earth - especially considering there's some already there. Besides, transporting h2o to the moon will be a horrendous expense since it seems unlikely any will be found there.
As for the which approach will be used, I'm betting on both. Don't expect the glass dome stuff though - except for the occaisional very short term scenic viewing. The rest of the 'above ground' is going to more closely ressemble a pueblo than anything else and much of the base will be inside the caves/mines below the ground rather than 'outside'. At least there, one doesn't have to worry about rain or strong winds damaging the structure - only the various forms of radiation that can even be almost as deadly as losing a space suit's pressure.
For the fairly longterm future, this place is going to be far duller and far more inhospitable than an Arctic research base - and far more dangerous too. Club Clavius competing with Club Med is going to be a long time coming.
Just consider that to date, no one has estabilished a permanent human habitat at the bottom of any of our oceans. The little experiments done to date have been only a few feet under the water's surface and were for very short periods of time. Imagine one 10,000 ft down - potentially only 3 or 4 miles away from civilization and were that distance flat & horizontal on the earth's surface it could be walked in an hour by almost anyone not bedridden. That far down is well below modern military submarine depth but well within the capabilities of deep submersibles. Note that while we talk of colonizing the moon and mars and asteroids - we've not colonized the ocean floor - not even on the shallow shelfs. There is essentially no ocean farming or ranching (nevermind the catfish farm ponds on the back 40 - they're virtually insignificant unless you love fried catfish).
Colonizing the moon will likely have some benefits and will probably be of strategic importance and will probably happen long before ocean colonizing ever begins. There is a wealth of man's accounts at colonizing and there are many factors - usually the worst ones - which will be applicable - far more so than some frustrated scifi writer's wet dreams put down on paper. Ultimately, economics must enter the fray and the effort must be considered to be 'worth it' for it ever to continue or expand. Otherwise it just becomes a temporary outpost in a barren hostile land.
What some people here are failing to realize is that it's not necessarily the unrecognizable odd cartoon creatures but rather that something capable of being a bomb has suddenly appeared there effectively out of nowhere. It is the out of place object and the new object with no accountability for why it's there or who put it there that should always draw attention from the authorities.
Unfortunately, terrorists can also place bombs in objects which are not out of place - like Tom Clancy's superbowl nuke in the cigarette machine.
Setting up temporary equipment like yours has got to be more problematic now than it once was. Just having a tag explaining what it is will not totally eliminate the prospects that some might be concerned still. After all, a terrorist can put a tag on his bomb saying it's the exact same thing your device is - or more likely - a label identifying it as telephone company equipment or internet equipment. What could make the difference in your case is the actual positioning of the equipment such that it would be in a good place or a poor place to create casualties were it a bomb. However, that's a more subtle form of being out of place and being subtle probably means that a bomber could succeed - and if/when that happens - good luck being able to deploy your equipment without providing full time manned 'protection' and it better not be someone that looks middle eastern.
as for ted the red, alias capt planet, it's about his speed to do something like this intentionally. the guy should be billed for the entire gov. cost incurred and punitively fined for the equivalent loss in revenues and lost wages that it cost the populace and business.
Despite the complaints of all this paranoia (and that 'unpopular' war in iraq), isn't it interesting how the US hasn't been hit domestically or virtually anywhere else in the world since 911 (other than the war zones and perhaps that bit of anthrax shortly after 911). Our current rate of getting hit is significantly less than it was averaging back in the 'wonderful' 90s - back before we finally realized we were actually at war because an enemy was waging war against us. Amazing isn't it.
Actually, it tends to depend on what your heating, a drafty barn or a small box. One intellectual pandemic problem in this country and probably most others is the presumption that on hearing an idea, a person jumps to the conclusion that they know all about it, usually after being told about it by whatever sources are around - like teachers, politicians, news media nitwitts, friends over cocktails regurtitating what they were told..... That combined with the desire to avoid thinking about it for themselves or an inability to think for themselves has made the notion of a little bit of common sense to be something totally uncommon.
Politicians suffer from this more than others as, in general, they have little knowledge or common sense and their job performance merely requires the ability to get elected. Allowing politicians - best described as political hacks - to have control over much of anything is courting disaster.
A politician whose solution is to ban something (pretty much anything)and / or to tax it into oblivion is usually an extremely dangerous, arrogant and condescending (extremely ignorant) dolt unworthy of any public trust. Due to complexity, gov. solutions tend to be 'one size fits all' and too bad for who or what doesn't fit. Gov. solutions have included the guillotine for shortening and the rack for lengthening people who didn't fit the proscribed gov. size figeratively speaking.
So far as florescents go, they're good for a lot of things, especially the little screw in lightbulb replacements. We started using them extensively over 5 years ago in our home. Except for small incandescent flame shaped bulbs, our outside illumination is all florescent flood lights and some of our most used room lights are as well, along with various floor and table lights.
Even at the high prices several years ago of over $4 per bulb and even with 1 out of 5 being DOA the energy savings and life span would cover the added cost over incandescents so we used them.
That being said, we also use some regular bulbs, mostly in fixtures that don't see much use. Florescents do tend to be harder on the eyes due to their flickering which oftimes are not directly detectable. As we usually shop on price, we've found that different brands do vary and many are a bit harsh in coloring. For reading, I prefer natural light followed by incandescent - but that is a table lamp not the main room light.
The notion that some imbecile wants to ban incandescent lights or tax them severely is frightening. Nowadays, people who are using incandescents primarily either are rather ignorant of this quiet revolution or have reasons for wanting to use incandescents - reasons that no political hack is going to know or can possibly accomodate with exceptions. Either that, or they are into conspicuous consumption where they are trying to waste money.
Considering the brilliant amount of lighting often found in areas that have tube florescents, it's debatable as to just how much is being wasted in overillumination and the need for specific intense lighting in localized areas versus more moderate levels for general coverage (although no one wants to work in a manmade cave either).
When it comes to waste though, it is outdoor lighting and light pollution which takes the cake. There are some places near here that have public baseball fields lit so brightly with lights that are not fully shielded that it becomes dangerous to drive down the freeway near them due to the blinding effects. There are parking lots and new car lots that have so much light reflecting off the vehicles and pavement that it lights up the sky. It's bright enough to comforably read there in the middle of the night when the place is closed and is well beyond what is useful to observe possible criminal activity. The nearby walmart parking lot is far dimmer yet it is open.
There are also many street lights and automatic night lights without full shielding which means even more light i
I guess when enough potential prosecution witnesses croak off, others commit perjury and evidence is illegally witheld from investigative subpoena, the ability to make a case tends to evaporate.
However, the purpose of mentioning that wasn't about the validity of whitewater or clinton involvement per se. It was rather about Hillary's track record of lying, obfuscating and withholding evidence for 2 years - all of which did come to light. Whitewater, unlike the current scooter libby trial, did have a prosecutable crime involved where some were charged and prosecuted for the actual crime, not just a 'process' crime of failing to remember some rather insignificant details (relative to the job) over a 2 year investigation. If you notice, libby is being prosecuted for claiming to have a bad memory and not being able to remember certain details while hilliary was never charged for her failure to 'remember' details - including why she didn't turn over subpoenaed evidence later found in her posession. That is to show that most people tend to get prosecuted for less than what hillary is known to have done, regardless of whether she was criminally involved in whitewater or not.
Besides, your estimates of whitewater being the most overinvestigated scandal in history rings empty compared to that of the libby one. It seems the prosecutor knew within very few weeks of starting, that there wasn't a crime as popularized by the press since the person at the center wasn't a covert agent at the time or within the time limits. Also, the prosecutor knew that the leaker was actually richard armitage, a slug from the bush 1 presidency who almost made sec. of the navy back then, despite rather weak allegations of involvement in the early golden triangle heroin trade by some in the world press. Since the target was cheney (to accomplish a repeat of the nixon era impeachment), the prosecutor, or more aptly for this case - the persecutor, continued after libby in the hopes of going after cheney - in the vein of the agnew attack. After all if one wants to get rid of bush due to his luke warm conservatism, one doesn't want the prospects of bush being replaced by cheney and with less than a 60 vote margin for the repubs, the dems could have significant control over a replacement vp.
I wasn't aware that those enemy combatants who had US citizenship captured in battle really needed a trial since they were caught in the act of waging war against US forces. I'm wondering if they were in fact still US citizens since they were waging war against the US as part of a foreign force to whom it is obvious they had given their alliegence to that foreign entity and de facto rejecting their US citizenship and rights.
I'm still trying to come to terms with exactly why this foreign operative surveillence effort has been called a domestic spying effort just because some of the suspects were located in the US and making/receiving foreign calls to known/suspected terrorists. Such efforts have been covertly going on since the 1960s, before communications satellites.
This enemy is quite a bit different from the nazis germans of wwii and even worse than the japanese soldiers, but not by much. While it's evident in hindsight that FDR's actions concerning japanese citizens was overly harsh, it's apparent at present that bush's actions to date are seriously deficient in the defense of the country, perhaps including a failing of dealing very harshly with a significant fraction of the muslim community.
As for bush's domestic spying efforts, I'm not worried about it since there is nothing about it that I know of which, when taken in context, is something new or extraordinary. It clearly isn't the criminal activity one finds in the case of democrat political operatives following and recording newt gingrich's telephone conversations and then disclosing them to democrat politicians and releasing it to the press - which has been a felony since the 1930s. Nor is it the equivalent of having over 500 FBI files of political appoin
Ethanol is really just an inefficient solar energy storage mechanism.
As far as your pessimism goes, it hardly compensates for your virtually naive optimism about government actually solving problems. After showing classical examples of gov. involvement in squandering your tax dollars with ADM, you then continue to believe that it can be rehabilitated to do what you think (and maybe can prove). Gov. works by issuing grants, which are prizes to those who write the best essay (proposal) and usually have the best 'pedigree' and many times, the best political hack(s) as sponsors who do so to bring in the pork. The politicians themselves are experts only at getting elected to office and seldom at the tasks involved in governance.
In general, they do not know or understand the differences between your approach and ADM's. They do understand ADM is a big operation that probably contributes to their efforts and maybe they play golf with some of the executives and perhaps employ a significant number of people in their state or district - and that you do none of those.
Also, as long as there is cheap oil available - even if the owners of it are selling it for much more to the oil companies, there is the probability that any effort to invest in new techniques and infrastructure will be sabotaged and the investment will be wasted. Usually the gougers will price things according to the maximum they can get without causing the risk of alternatives being implemented. Sometimes though they charge more, let the alternatives be built and then drop the price lower so that the alternatives are cannot compete at all. The latter runs the risk of losing future revenues while the former runs the risk of losing current revenues. The best way to deal with it is to counter with as cost competitive as possible solutions - which usually means similar.
One should wonder just how much of that excess profit winds up promoting terrorists versus how much winds up being used to propagandize people here in order to ban domestic production.
Whatever is the ultimate solution will prove itself first in niche markets where it can compete with the alternatives, perhaps long before more general usage becomes acceptable. It will also be whatever requires the minimum investment in infrastructure change and new infrastructure. Before this changeover, it will doubtlessly require technological innovations to improve costs and reliability. Finally, it will almost assuredly not be that which the gov. politicians and bureaucrats chose but rather something that has been delayed due to having to compete against a subsidized inferior gov. solution - like ethanol. Consequently, you should adjust your thinking accordingly, lest you miss the boat.
Hillary's expressed views don't matter. They are whatever she thinks will get her elected. While she apparently does have strongly held core values which she goes by, these are evidently not acceptable to over 50% of the US population and probably not acceptable to over 95% of the populace. She also appears to believe that the ends justify the means and that the truth is whatever promotes her cause.
It can best be summed up in the old adage, "never believe a liar".
Can you imagine Hillary's real views on this subject based on what we know about her and the former administration? In the Whitewater investigations under oath, she expressed virtually no knowledge of being involved in the formal legal aspects of it and didn't know what happened to her billing records. Those records were subsequently found laying around the private quarters of the White House two years later - and showed a somewhat different story - at least to the amount of time she billed to that client. Early on, in their administration, it was discovered that 500 FBI files (serious security concerns for the owners) were in the possession of Craig Livingstone, a former bar bouncer? and Clinton White House security person. These files primarily belonged to political opponents, primarily republicans. In fact, this might have explained many strange events in the kid glove treatments the Clintons have received over the years since then.
If you think you are really in favor of property rights, remember that guns are property and all gun laws that apply to law abiding citizens restrict property rights. If you think you're in favor of privacy, remember that gun registration destroys that privacy. If you favor either, you're in good company with Hillary Clinton, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler on the subjects of privacy and property. Those three have much more in common. How much remains to be seen.
All that means is the patent won't be worth going to court over. That is, if someone can prove that the key elements (claims in the back of the patent which are absolutely the only thing that the patent covers) were not original and perhaps already in use. If they were existing prior to patent submission in even in a signed and dated engineering lab book, then they are prior art.
Otherwise, the patent is only as good as the lawyers sueing in court to protect it.
Small developers usually don't patent due to the expense. Also, since the patent is only as good as the lawyers he can hire, it can be an expensive proposition to defend it. For software, it can often turn out that copyrights can provide protection from the most egregious and costly infringements and that is much simpler and was pretty much free although its scope is substantially less than a patent's could be.
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>I was actually saying that leaving carbon in the ground is the most secure
One would tend to naturally think so and the fact it is still there after xxx time would seem to imply it. However, it wasn't designed specifically to contain and it's there by sheer accident (so far as engineering goes). That implies some are likely to be very secure while others have already let their contents escape into the atmosphere. With that exxon valdez size spill occuring every day in the ocean - there's plenty of small leaks going on around the world's oceans with the only saving grace being a lack of concentration.
>I'm considering competing for the prize in this by making ocean seeding profitable through the induced fishery. Let me know if you'd like to work on this. I don't think I can pull it off without some help.
Good luck with it. Planetary science is not really in my arena of interest or expertise, nor is biology. More fish sounds like a pretty good idea. It would seem that fishing (except for the technology) is mostly still at the primitive state of hunter/gatherer and the notion of farming (except for a few onshore efforts typically shrimp and catfish) is something yet to happen. Even free ranging would be an advancement. More ocean vegetation to suck up co2 certainly offers the ability to utilize an overabunance of that while helping out with the subsurface food chain. Hopefully, red tide style events can be avoided as a part of the unintended consequences of any change.
Life adapts and is hard to kill off, if not impossible to kill off intentionally. Considering that there are natural sources of co2 which were never part of the environmental system (volcanoes etc), and considering that fossil fuels appear to have once been life which acquired its carbon from co2 in the atmosphere, it would make sense that there must have been higher levels in the past, probably the fairly recent past, at least recent enough for these 'at risk' life forms to have been around at that time.
As for the 10 yr thing- it's political or alarmist and isn't science based. Since we don't know or understand the details or the mechanisms, it's utter speculation. It's already been used to push for specific solutions which would have resulted in intentional efforts to try to warm the planet, an outcome that would be not only a vast waste of scarce economic resources but also something that would be opposite of the concensus crowd's current desires for change. When fighting fires with unknown chemicals involved, doing nothing (but to let it burn) is a very important option - especially considering that any proactive action they take could results in a far worse situation. To fight a gasoline fire where there is leaking gasoline on a city street and trying to dillute it with water can be a disaster. It is an insoluable flamable liquid which can be spread and expand the fire and it can be washed into storm drains, where it vaporizes - creating a massive bomb capable of blowing up blocks of buildings - an outcome far worse than a tanker truck burning a moderate hole in the asphalt on the street over a period of a few hours.
It should be noted the previous alarmists' 10yr deadline is long gone along with the consequences arriving deadline. Not only were they evidently wrong about the nature of the predicted disaster (perhaps even got it backwards - then again maybe they got that part right), but the disaster wasn't a disaster on their proscribed time frame and failure to take action resulted in no negative consequences (and again action would have resulted in a blatant attempt to create what would now be considered to be disasterous unwanted effects).
It's very much akin to someone yelling fire in the crowded theatre. There may or may not be a fire there and if there is, it might be someone lighting a cigarette in the men's rooms. The consequences are that at the very least, the movie is disrupted and the movie experience ruined and wasted for the people and at the worst many could die ov
I wasn't aware we had 200-400 years of upper atmospheric research.
In any case, since we only have 10 years to fix the problem before we all die (from waterskiing?), it wouldn't seem to matter that the methane only lasts for 15 yrs.
carbon sequestration in the ground is no guarantee of success. I believe the estimates for oil leakage into the oceans from below the oceans amounts to about 1 exxon valdez per day. The tar balls on the beach at Galveston and Freeport are continual examples of such leakage, being first noted by the French explorer La Salle several centuries back. Coal and peat fires can be started by lightning and evidently burn for years. This methane 'ice' has been offered as some of the possible mysteries of the bermuda triangle triggering off of some cause - perhaps subsurface landslides as well as some bit of localized warming - then bubbling up and sinking ships or platforms. Perhaps the only safe method of co2 sequestering is in the form of limestone which generally works until someone decides they need to make cement out of it or otherwise make use of it.
On the other hand, methane is continually being produced by various natural sources as well as some perhaps existing and trapped prior to our current atmosphere. Considering that some subsurface structures trap oil and natural gas while other similar structures turn up as dry holes indicate that again just leaving it to momma nature to continue sequestering it may not provide a good alternative. Of course, it's probable that human sequestering would likely be worse - assuming we could. Sometimes those natural places - like salt domes have been later used for temporary storage and sometimes - failures happen to lead to very large bangs as the material seeps out and finds a source of flame.
The net removal of methane at 20x the damage for an exchange to co2 is well worth the effort as long as there is any risk that the methane reaches the atmosphere.
As for those deposits - it may well be plausible that warming isn't the only risk of release. A landslide or serious tremor might avalanche the material into a serious release.
As for coal, it's far worse to deal with than methane for energy conversion. There's more radioactive natural impurities in coal than would ever be permitted to be emitted by a nuclear power plant. There are other impurities which cause problems as well. It's not so much that these are truly serious problems - other than that they are measurable and regulators love to regulate things they can measure. In fact, a few years ago, the EPA tried to regulate ozone levels in the Houston TX region to lower than natural occuring levels. It was so bad that not even total evacuation of humans and their activities could have met the attempted requirements.
Cosmoclimatology isn't just solar. I believe the solar radiative energy output (uv, light, ir) was constant to perhaps 0.1% but that isn't as influential (at that small change amount) as variations in magnetic fields (and the interaction with the earth's magnetic field). It's the charged particles - (cosmic rays) that affect cloud formation which determines the warming/cooling. The nominal 11 year sunspot cycle has been active in a fairly normal fashion and this cycle just starting out seems to be promising to be a serious one, just as there was in the 1950s.
Even though we are in the middle of the minimum right now, there have been some serious flares during the last year which is well past the peak, something like x9 or x10 level. It may be that while the output is fairly constant, the magnetic field activities may have been building up the last several decades.
In the 1750 - 1800 time frame, there were no sunspots observed. This was a rather cold period of time with the Thames freezing over solid in London etc.
Note too that there are the usual periodic variations of where the earths pole is precessing to combined with the slight ellipse of the earth's orbit which causes a shifts in seasons as to when they occur relative to the earth/sun distance.
Influences of a supernova are not generally long term. Since cosmic rays are charged particles and don't take direct paths, it's impossible to tell where they came from and since different path
For anyone fearful of co2 increase as a cause of global warming, methane stuff should be an armagedon nightmare. It's got to be a minimum of 20 to 30 times more effective at trapping atmospheric heat than co2 - that means for every mole of methane we burn, which otherwise would escape to the atmosphere, and convert to a mole of co2 - we have reduced the net greenhouse gas effects by a factor of at least 20.
We've also liberated lots of usable energy in the process too - makingit worthwhile.
The thing about climate change is that those studying it look at the fact that it changed, and then look for reasons why. It's forensic science rather than laboratory science and like the CSI tv show crime scenes, it's a rather cold case on the time line, making it far more difficult to ascertain the 'who done it'. What's more, there's far more suspects than are currently still around the crime scene. I suspect most climatologists have still never even heard of cosmoclimatology which might actually be the guilty culprit.
NASA's reign pretty well ended before apollo soyuz. That's when the last moon mission was scrubbed due to lack of interest. Perhaps ironically, star trek had a bit of a hand in its demise as much as the been there done that attitude of the public. It was a time when NASA went from a large multi year project to an extended bureaucracy, fat and content to continue on based on its own laurels.
Rather than inventing the new, they decided to build the shuttle off the shelf to show off their past accomplishments at making progress. To pull off the shuttle project, they decided to lump in satellite launching and delivery of payloads to orbit into the shuttle program as this was becoming a nice source of external revenue and a reason for 'needing' the shuttle. They kept compromising and reducing the designs of the shuttle to try to fit it into the ever bloating budget. Payloads transferred to space on manned space flights are far more expensive than on unmanned launch vehicles - opening the way for others to compete for the bags of money being thrown at space by all the different private companies - who brought you xm sat. radio, satellite internet, satellite tv, affordable gps, cheap international telephone calling, etc, etc, etc.
Lesser known fatalities of this seed change included the first mission to mars. Note that some of NASA's earlier plans or options were scrapped by nuclear treaties as well which prohibited nuclear powered vehicles.
It's not to say that NASA totally tanked or totally wasted every every dime spent. They went in for unmanned space exploration which was far cheaper and brought far more bang for the buck, without having to pay serious salaries to buck rogers or pay serious costs to get him into orbit for the mission. Much of the first efforts at this was highly successful and it was only later that the screwups started showing up - like the hubble mirror and several martian probes. It's also only later that such phenomenon like coronal mass ejections became understood well enough to realize that a trip to mars by people was a bit more tricky than first thought. We were quite lucky in the apollo missions that none of the flight crews got cooked by one. Even though the ISS is inside much of the earth's protective cocoon it's still necessary to have developed a safe room to protect the inhabitants when such events head our way.
Some of the reasoning for bush II's interest in the moon (other than legacy crap and maybe a bit more idealism than most tend to attribute to him) is the potential for (potentially hostile)foreign bases - ie military bases - to be established on the moon. What we would contract haliburton to build might be a mining base with mass driver launching of mined and processed materials back to earth for fun and profit. The same facility in the hands of a hostile foreign power could be built as a cannon, firing multi-ton projectiles capable of leveling targets like artillary and virtually incapable of being destroyed by opposing forces, especially considering there is only a handful of launch sites around capable of sending something to the moon that would be the obvious first targets.
It's entirely possible that it's even just a bluff to dissuade others from even trying to develope and implement their plans. Part of Reagan's SDI (star wars for ignorant twitts) was literally that - a bluff (or perhaps little white lies about what we already had on the basic level). What's more, it worked!
Yes and No. Until the time occurs again when the politics has been removed from science, it's going to be around. It won't matter what proofs are shown the alarmist industry will just shift focus to something else, probably equally erroneous.
Towards the end of a Nova program about 2 yrs ago which was on the glaciers sliding into the ocean - after covering the science about what's going on 2000 ft below the frozen top where the bottom is melting - (evidently due to volcanic activity) there was the obligatory references to global warming which was shown in the program to not be a factor in this phenomenona.
evidently, some believe that 17000 repetitions make one truth.
well, if you have such good correlation, then why didn't it show the co2 levels were higher than now when the temperatures were higher than now by 4-6 degrees - back in the optimum about a thousand years ago - when greenland was being colonized by the vikings and the limeys were growing their own grapes for wine? Oooops!
Your ice core stuff isn't as correlated as hyped. Your models do not constitute reality and are missing even items that have become known, never mind factors which we haven't discovered or observed yet.
The alarmists of the 70s are mostly still around, being alarmists in the 90s and 2000s. I refuse to refer to or consider that butterfly collector paul erhlich as a climatologist. Concensus isn't about science as science is about the study and description of reality. Concensus and the alarmist industry is about wealth and power, more so than any greedy corrupt international company you care to name. You can get all the concensus you want of 1st graders agreeing that 2+2 equals 5 - regardless of how many you get to agree with that, it still doesn't change reality.
The fact is that it's been hotter than now and it's been colder than now and will be again, regardless of man's existance on this planet. CO2 is not a major green house gas, it is a minor one. The fact that it has changed slightly during the time that modern man has been in an industrial age may indicate a relationship between the two. That does not indicate that rather small amounts of CO2 and tiny variations in the amount affects the climate. As for the ice cores, sometimes the co2 rise lags the temperature rise - implying perhaps that maybe co2 levels are a function of temperature rather than temperatures being a function of co2 levels. Let's see - it's colder out - do plants grow more (and suck up more co2) when it's colder or when there's less sunlight???? Are termites more active when it's hotter or colder? Hmmm - sounds like there could be some sorta relationships between climate, the environment and co2 right there.
Considering that water vapor is the predominant greenhouse gas, the question of cloud formation arises. Clouds have much more effect on heating and cooling than does straight water vapor. Cloud formation is heavily tied to cosmic rays as they provide ionized trails for watervapor to form (Note the purpose of the Wilson Cloud Chamber experiments was to study cloud formation and that's where cosmic rays were first discovered). According to some rather high powered scientists, there are serious factors which are even outside the solar system which affect earth's climate - with correlations better than that which exists with co2/climate. This is called cosmoclimatology.
If you believe in science, then you would look forward to seeing how it fits together with reality - both with and without the manmade global warming stuff. You would want to see whether there might be anything to it. If, on the other hand, you are promoting propaganda, perhaps even a pseudo scientific religion, then you will doubtlessly sluff it off as being something unworthy of discussion. The real reason would be that it is a threat to your new found religion. Such is the difference between religion and science. Which are you?
First off, one must remember that Fermi croaked off long before Carl Say-again hit his prime. (Early 70s as I recall). Most thoughts then came from straight sci-fi writers. It was also before much of the short term violent nature of the universe was recognized. Back then black holes were a mathematical curiosity. It was still being seriously debated whether the universe was a big bang or was in a steady state.
From today's vantage point, it seems likely that most of the galaxy could well be uninhabitable. In fact, galaxies could become uninhabitable due to a neighbor.
>1) A species capable of galactic colonization must be organized
Possibly, but then the andromeda strain wasn't. Simple life forms could well be spread, remaining dormant in the interstellar space for millions of years.
It looks to me like ET and Mr Spock are most likely to be a fungus.
>2) Organization requires competition. The better the competition, >the better the organization
Organization doesn't require competition. Gov. is an organization that crushes competition and the bigger - the more oppressive.
>3) Competition promotes conflict - either between species or within >competing factions of a species
Competition is required for technological progress. For a society that is not in some competition, there is no need for change hence it stagnates.
>4) As the ability to colonize space develops, so does the ability to >destroy the whole species
As technology increases - that includes the power necessary to do so and that means exploiting stored energy. Any large amount of stored energy can be released quickly with destructive effects. I doubt it's possible to destroy the whole species but it's probably enough to destroy the society that permitted or spawned the effort. A simple example - once a group leaves the gravity well of the earth, and has the ability to move objects in space - say large enough to be a multiperson space craft but not necessarily the size of mount everest - they have the capability of dropping these objects onto the earth's surface with kinetic energies possibly much higher the largest nukes ever made.
>5) Since colonizing a new area is the essential goal of all species (survival requires species to spread as far as possible) reaching >this "ultimate" goal will require overcoming the competition at all costs including destroying the original habitat and all members of the species.
Considering that earth will become a cinder eventually - before it evaporates inside the sun, moving is essential. Habitats are transient. Even ants and termites need to change their habitats - never mind the beaver who turns the stream into a meadow. As for existing natives elseswhere - it's doubtful they exist now and if they do, like ET and Mr Spock - the inhabitants is fungus.
6) All species capable of colonizing space must enevitably destroy themselves.
Definitely not something that is in evidence. In fact, our current danger of self extinction has nothing to do with space. The culprits probably believe in a flat earth. The cold war was about the notion that it is easier to take than to make and the fundamental notions of the enemy was to create a noncompetitive worker's utopia (run by the tooth fairy or was it run by big brother?) - a scheme that would require turning human beings effectively into ants or termites.
>Colonization is not possible. Cooperation will NOT lead to galactic colonization as it will ony lead to cooperative use of existing resources.
Colonizing the solar system is possible. It's neither easy nor cheap. It's an expensive proposition to get weight into orbit, and not cheap to get it out of orbit away from earth.
Colonizing the galaxy - that's still far into science fiction. According to the rules as we know it - It'd take around 10 cubic Km of sea water just to get enough hydrogen to have a fusion rocket that could send a smally colony ship off at 50% speed of ligh
Real break even occurs when the device can pay for itself. Thermo has rather serious rules about just how much one can get out of a system thru heat flow. Theoretically, a gas engine is limited to several pecent less than 50%. Good luck creating a transmission capable of getting that power into useful work with only an additional 50% loss. There may be lots of waste heat around but if the differences in temp. are small, efficiencies for extracting even are low.
As long as the new technique can pay for itself in energy savings over its lifetime then it's worthwhile. Note that the cost of the product (including maintenance and repair) is actually somewhat indicative of the expense in creating it and its over all cost to society (even though the bills go straight to a person or company).
Offhand the notion sounds nice but waste heat often becomes a case of diminishing returns when trying to harness it.
Sometimes having an existing infrastructure delays the advent of a new structure. Always, having an existing bureaucracy screws delays and fouls up things. For example cell phones really took off in areas of the world where phone service was almost nonexistant or unusable. Sometimes, it's just a desire on the part of the natives to mimick or be like the 'leaders' and are willing to spend far more of their usually far more meager incomes to have it. we had both an existing infrastructure to compete with and an existing set of bureaucracies to muck up the works.
Why beef up the hardwired dial up telephone network to improve and expand operations when cellphone technologies are available and hardly anyone has a phone anyway? Why beef up the telephone networks to permit dialup when broadband technologies are available probably for less given the absence of existing infrastructure? DSL depends on good twisted pair wire to attach the equipment to. If that wire doesn't exist, it makes sense to put in something better as long as money is being invested or to go to something that doesn't need the new infrastructure like extended wifi / microwave setups.
Then again, the lack of literacy in the US means that fewer people have interest in the internet than the general amount of population would indicate. Most of the web actually requires the ability to read in order to use it. Also, when folks are already tapped to the limit with pagers and cell phones, they tend not to want to spend more money on internet - especially when it's free at the public library, work, school and even the local bookstore.
As for the FCC, they have violated their own rules and even their basic mandate promoting the power line carrier 'broadband', BPL, to the detriment of society since it causes massive amounts of wideband RF pollution which can even affect police and fire communications under extreme situations). The FCC's neglegence in protecting licensed spectrum users from this unlicensed abomination of pollution borders on the criminal negligence so don't claim they've been trying to protect the cable and phone companies from other competition.
As for other bureaucracies - some of them have vested interests in seeing their meal tickets acquire additional revenues for them to suck off of. Having competition come in - especially in areas these bureaucracies have no control over is bad for these leaches.
There are other alternatives possible. Satellite is available everywhere - assuming you can get some clown with the necessary equipment to come out and nail a dish to the side of your house for $50/hour. It turns out that some sat providers now are cheaper than paying for a second dedicated phone line after you add in all the required taxes and fees that turn a $25/mo. phone bill into a $50/mo bill.
Obviously, there are some rural areas where literacy is a rare commodity perhaps almost as bad as many urban areas. In other rural areas, it's not and the demand for broadband is there for some - although dial-up is adaquate for many others. The sheer cost of the infrastructure and the return on the investment - even at the high prices being charged make it a long term proposition.
Another alternative possibility of competition being used some is the super extension of the wifi approach where comm links are being established over many miles rather than many feet. While expensive in technology, it doesn't have the gov. regulation and massive taxation of the monopoly companies like cable.
For those of you alive and cognizant when cable tv first hit the scene, you would have seen that it was a disaster from the beginning. Choices were made by municipalities on how much they could get out of the companies, trying to bleed them dry and driving up prices and lowering quality from the beginning. Where I was at the time, we got the worst of all worlds, lowest channel count, poorest quality and highest prices currently available.
Kudos on recognizing and admitting that microblack holes might not be formed at all (and a possible inference that maybe they're somebody's wet dream rather than an actual part of the universe). It seems such things get overhyped and are often related to acquiring pubicity (fame and fortune) rather than serious attempts at explainations.
I've also wondered for a good while now just how biased the experiments have become and when. After all, detection equipment and data processing are designed based on expectations and interpretations from earlier experiences. It appears that such complexities have been around for quite some time now where so much is pretty much beyond the researcher's ability to do so without the assistance of rather sophisticated and perhaps biased tools.
As for the cosmic rays - the vast majority of those are very low power compared to what is being done now under controlled environments. However, there are plenty of higher energy ones impacting the atmosphere at rates pretty much dependent on just how high the energy is. The highest ones are quite rare but contain substantially more energy than anything an earth based or human controlled experiment could ever produce. Even in sci-fi land, the notion of building and controlling a device the size of the inner solar system composed of all of the mass of a rather decent sized globular cluster is well beyond the pale.
If it's possible to form a micro black hole with human attainable energy levels, then cosmic rays must be doing so quite regularly in our atmosphere on a random basis. Since nothing has ever been seen - if you discount the publicity activities many years ago by that UT guy suggesting the Tunguska event was one, then it's pretty well assured that the latest member of the disaster pantheon is another paper tiger.
Btw, please describe what a prism shape is. A prism generally refers to an optical device, often made of glass, and prism are available in a variety of shapes. Hence a prism shape is at best very ambiguous if not meaningless.
As for the example of the partial meter stick, if you're talking about the stretching or compacting of space preferentially in a direction, then why wouldn't the meter stick be subject to the expansion or contraction as well?
Also, your earlier reference to what you referred to as the star wars trash dump has a name. It's called a trash compactor. They're actually available in much bigger sizes than those that fit in the kitchen cabinet.
well - it's been far hotter gobally than now and it's been far colder than now. This is both before and after humans developed some technology. Climates change! What's more it's going to be hotter than now in the future and it's going to be far colder than now in the future and it will be happening after the human race is no longer around and probably be happening prior to its ultimate demise as well.
You're welcome to believe that the dust mite on the tail of the dog is in control of the direction the dog is traveling in but you'll have to accept the fact that we're laughing our heads off at your foolishness. human caused global warming is pretty close to that scenario.
As for changing minds - just remember it's the same people preaching global warming catastrophe now that were preaching coming ice age disaster 30 some odd years ago. They suggested putting lamp black on the glaciers to melt them back then. In theory such efforts might could work at melting them but I'm not sure we are big and powerful enough to pull off such a massive effort. Of course, if we are undergoing global warming at present, melting the glaciers would have been an extremely stupid idea to have done 30 years ago - and according to them back then - we only had 10 years to do something about it - just like today - they say - 'we don't know 100% fer sure but we positive we only have 10 years to do something about it'
My guess is, they were right 30 years ago and wrong today. We seem to be coming off a mini ice age that's lasted the past 400 years or so which implies things are heating up. Personally, I think having more growing seasons and warmer temperatures tend to facilitate rather than hinder human life. Ice ages tend to be rather hard on all terrain life forms. Also, since ice ages tend to last for thousands and thousands of years, and that most of earth's existance seems to be in colder climatic conditions, and since we're over due for the next one - historically speaking - I'm not that worried about some presumption of things getting slightly warmer. What is really scary is the demise of the human race caused by leftist idiology and gross stupidity. Now that is a real waste!
Look on the brighter side! If it warms up another 5 to 7 degrees, the brits might be able to grow wine grapes again and put those snotty frogs and their overpriced wino juice in their place.
sorry but mr. G wasn't alone, nor the originator. He did observe things and report them. The cosmologies of the time were earth centered and sun centered universes. Both date back far before mr. G. Unfortunately, the earth centered version was supported by mr. A, perhaps the most famous philospher of all time while the sun centered version was supported by mr. uhh - well he's not quite famous enough for me to remember him and it isn't worth looking up at the moment (so maybe you get the point). The theories were a bit competitive for a while but the fact that parallax of stars was a null experiment - nobobdy back then could detect one whit of parallax and this negative result pretty much put the kabosh on the sun centered universe.
mr. G's observations started the ball rolling again on the sun centered universe from a scientific standpoint. As it turns out though, the catholic church had bitten on mr. A's theories lock stock and barrel and it seems there was this religious cult of sun worshippers pushing the sun centered universe for their own religious idiology. Consequently, poor mr. G had a whole lotta problems in the peer review process of the time. I think they even made him recant publicly.
The thing about science is - it's an attempt at the best description of reality. It's not about opinions or concensus. What's more, it tends to cycle somewhat. Old theories seldom die, they merely get recycled in modified form. Note the flat earth was not really a theory - only an urban legend as the egyptians and greeks already had estimated the size of the earth during their heyday. In Job (book of the Bible) the jews mention the earth as an orb hung on nothing - in amongst all the moaning being done by that guy. The informationseems to have made down to the general immigrant population there in egypt.
As for global warming, one sees the evidence quite well down here at 27deg n lat. for the cosmic ray / magnetic field connections. We're at a sunspot minimum and the number of cloudy rainy days this year have exceeded clear days by a significant amount. During sunspot maximas, we often have the worst droughts, historically speaking.
Another example is that while there is a nominal sunspot cycle of 11 years, sunspots have been observed for several hundred years now. There was a period of about 1750 to around 1800 where none were observed on the face of the sun (that's over 4 nominal cycles worth). That's about the time that the Thames river froze over in a significant fashion.
As I recall from reading/hearing about the research is that there is a better short term correlation between solar sunspot activity and temperature than there is between co2 levels and temperature. Also, cosmic rays - which are usually high energy protons (charged particles)are correlated with sunspot cycles. Many or are probably produced by the sun but since they are charged, they change directions in magnetic fields so where they come from tends to remain an unknown.
In any case, cosmic rays and gamma rays impacting the earth provide a substantial but unseen effect in the atmosphere. Note that there are some large area arrays of uv optical sensors deployed to observe incoming high energy hits but it's nothing you're going to see by looking up at the sky. Not only do they provide ionization trails for cloud formation - I suspect they provide those precursor trails for lightning strikes and are responsible for when and what pattern a lightning bolt actually takes when discharging the built up charges.
Hmm, buying military weapons at wally world or cheaper healthcare. Sounds like a nice false choice although one must recognize that receiving healthcare requires that one still be alive in the first place.
If you follow the history, you'll find that everything associated with higher health care has been caused by the government. This includes what the gov. did and what the gov. didn't do. To assume the democrats or anyone in gov. is going to lower the costs of health care is to assume that john edwards, that shyster lawyer who made millions off of lies, junk science and gullible rubes on the jury is the best brain surgeon in the country and he'll operate on you for free.
From the time that health insurance begin to be included in employemment packages back in world war 2, virutally everything the gov. has done has driven up the costs. There are cost shifting where people who supposedly can afford care are being hit for more money to help pay for those who can't. The cost of every item in health care has a massive expense called lawsuit protection - where every nickel product costs a dollar due to this expense. The doctors play defensive medicine to keep from getting sued and too bad for the old general practicioner who still feels like working 1 day a week because that may not be enough to pay his malpractice insurance, assuming he could still get it.
The insurance companies don't want to spend extra effort to analyze the legimitacy of bills since their policies sell for a premium and they might make 15% off of either the $100 / month rate or off the $1000 / month rate. When the employers pay, the insured doesn't care what the payments are and it doesn't help him/her to scrutinize the bill. Hospitals have seriously huge bureaucracies now paid for by $10/pill over the counter advil and aspirin so they gouge people thru the nose too. Gov. encouraged the insurance to be paid by the employers. Gov. doesn't stop lawsuit abuse or even try to curb what is going on in that arena where it has become the daily lottery for lawyers and whoever they can drag in off the street as a client.
The FDA has made it almost impossible for smaller newer companies to get started, protecting the existing giants. They've made it impractical for low volume illnesses to have cures since there's not enough money in it to pay for the years of testing required. And, the number of lives lost due to the extended delays involved in life saving drug approval probably exceed those lost by what would happen were the FDA to vanish off the face of the earth.
A case in point is that brazinsky fellow in houston with his brain cancer therapy. I think he is probably still in trials, but the FDA went after him for years. It seems like he was treating 10-20% successfully on a disease that was 100% fatal. On the shyster side, the guy that did the goat gland transplants merely relocated across the border to mexico.
And that brings up yet another factor, the gov.'s failure to regulate the border, allowing in millions of illegals, not all of whom are here to work. This has created a new cost shifting paradigm where the employers of these illegals (the ones working) are paying subsistance wages and expecting society to pick up the tab for education and healthcare for them as they take up jobs at below market rates (and sometimes at market rates).
A wellfare loafer (foreign or domestic) could starve to death now trying to figure out which competing gov. agency is the best one to go to for a free handout, despite millions of dollars wasted on advertising the handouts by these agencies.
Politics for now and the forseeable future is going to be best described as a choice of which party is going to do the least damage to society. And the sad part is, it's often hard to tell.
Two things are for certain, especially concerning the dems. The first is that everything they are promising now is extremely destructive and unsustainable were it to be implemented. The second is that they are lying through their teeth about everything they claim to stand for. Also, there's plenty of this crap to spread around to other parties.
I tend to view things from the perspectives of southern Texas where there is already efforts underway to establish wind farms off the coast and it seldom drops below 30c for much of the year during daylight. However, my view of consumption is more based upon the nature of solar radiation intensities which peak around midday - at least below the arctic cirle and the fact that the vast majority of people work indoors during the day.
I live in a rather unique house which includes four inches of special insulation in the walls. It's major use is in small commercial walk-in freezers using five and a half inches worth of the material. It's not the only insulation in the walls either. Here, we describe the climate as balmy with 6 weeks of fall, 6 weeks of winter, 6 weeks of spring and 9 months of rather hot summer which seldom drops to 30c during the day and sometimes not even at night. Fortunately, it seldom goes over 38c.
I attempted to avoid the direct question of whether it was a good idea to generalize the notion of energy storage into thermal. After all, both hot and cold are readily available in locations not too far away but still a bit too expensive for practical exploitation as energy sources. It would seem that other approaches such as raising water to above a hydroelectric dam would be more effective.
Of course, the simple time shifting of use - assuming the losses due to increased heat flow are acceptable - does make good sense, enough to make me wonder why it wasn't being done all along, at least by some reasonable fraction of that industry. After all, in commercial environments that use a great deal of electricity, there tend to be different charges for usage during different times - to push companies into shifting off loads.
I still don't quite understand why the peak loads would be shifted off of midday so much. I would not expect there to be much electrical heating in that climate nor would I expect the work patterns to be that far off.
The load shedding I described is not done around here. It is done in some states in the deep south and I've also seen it done by some utilities in Minnesota. It seems to be more the nature of the power industry in the region than the location and weather patterns associated with the region.
Your post indicated involvement in climate study. If so, you might be interested to know we are in our typical sunspot minimum climate right now. It's been quite cloudy, significantly rainy, and consequently, somewhat cooler than average. The weather here gets blamed on el nino and la nina in the pacific, but here it tends to track fairly well with the sunspots with few clouds, warmer temperatures and sometimes serious long term droughts, alieviated infrequently by hurricanes and strong wet pacific cold fronts. Then again, this is a desert and it is a bit unsettling to see water lillys growing among the cactus.
Love it,
There seem to be many April magazine Articles that float around for years. My all time favorite is the one about 10^40 bits in a crystal or maybe it was 10^60 bits. It was enticing people into april 1 mode for years after that - spawned a number of subsequent professional articles too. All you need for a crystal is something somewhat larger than the earth - and some interface circuitry. Those who shoulda known better tended to be those who were the last to know.
This may not be quite so similar but it's definitely no new idea to store energy from production time to usage time. I guess with higher temp superconductors, maybe a nice refridgerator might be in order.
The big problem this stuff tries to address is based on the factor that peak electric loading occurs mid-day - when it's hot out, most everyone is awake and working. It is a serious problem and peak demand electricity has been a serious cost factor. Solar panels do offer peak output mid day so can help by selling some of their rather expensive electrons at primo prices. Wind often is strongest with the coastal breezes in mornings and evenings - due to unequal heating rates of water versus land.
Unfortunately, for every conversion of energy - there are thermodynamic penalties that must be paid and cannot be overcome using whatever particular technique happens to be employed in that particular circumstance. The notion of using energy in heat (or lack there of for cold) is particularly bad in cases where the resulting energy needs are in other forms - such as needing electricity again. Thermodynamic efficiencies for heat engines are a factor of the difference in temperatures between heat source and sink - and the lower the differences - the less efficient it can be.
Something as simple as cooling down commercial refridgerators at off peak hours is probably a good idea both from energy savings standpoint and from cost standpoints - assuming the insulation is sufficiently good to keep out the heat and permit a net savings. As for new innovatinve ideas it hardly seems to be something worthy of more than a passing mention in some grocery store checkout line magazine article about 10 ways to reduce your corporate electric bill.
In some areas of the country, there are systems with devices tied to electric meters that offer another, slightly more intrusive alternative which is essentially to have the equivalent of an old pre text message vintage pocket pager wired to a power relay. When the little pocket pager radio device is activated, the relay shuts off the power to the customer device for about 15 minutes. Typically, it's big ticket items for consumers like electric waterheaters, airconditioners and irrigation pumps (for farmers). This is called load shedding and it's used to minimize some of that expensive daytime peak power. One can create a rolling temporary shutdown that can shed a few million killowatts continually. Often these systems are involved with tens of thousands of customers and cover areas that could be whole states.
Like the refridgerator at night thing, it doesn't tend to save energy, but rather to distribute it around to reduce the peak load - sometimes at the expense of actually increasing the overall usage.
Please note that we've had powerline carrier mechanisms including remote meter reading for years and years. IP or any broad band over power line is a giant disaster, economically and environmentally. It creates massive RF interference because unshielded wire is no way to send RF. Essentially, it's generated interference everywhere it's been tried. 60hz (and 50hz) noise is the price we must pay for electricity in the first place. It pervades everywhere and is a pain to deal with on designing virtually every piece of electronics in existance. The BPL crap extends that sort of problem up into the RF spectrum, potentially causing interference to radio and tv stations as well as emergency frequencies for first responders.
It is an idea which is undesirable, causes severe problems and is a more expensive solution with inferior results compared to existing alternatives. To get to this stage, the FCC has had to ignore both its own prviously established regulations and its basic mandate.
The sooner that fiasco dissappears, the better off the human race will be.
It's all speculation.
Big bang has the most support over alternatives like steady state - which evidently still has some adherents - apparently like halton arp.
Despite being the most supported, there seem to be more kludges and band-aids on the theory than seems reasonable. The latest is that apparently, we're accelerating rather than slowing down. That's an experimental observation based upon supernovae intensity - which like most other things - can have alternative causes.
What's worse, it seems that searching for star trek solutions is more lucrative than for more mundane ones. Hence, what is called dark matter is now primarily exotic new previously undiscovered phenomenon - rather than regular matter not radiating. It's very much the same sort of thing as lawyers seeking to establish precendent with new laws rather to gain a reputition rather using existing laws that have all the precedents taken care of and it's merely making use of it.
One of the most recent 'proof' or 'evidence' of dark matter is a photo that surfaced recently showing gravitaiton lensing concentrated around a galaxy colision where the visible gas clouds had been swept out and were located elsewhere. The obvious conclusion was that since the gas was moved, all the matter was swept out of the area, leaving only mysterious dark matter. While gas can tend to be swept out, it doesn't happen to larger bodies like planet type bodies (or primordial fog particles). Perhaps such things are quite mysterious as they are unknown - but it doesn't necessarily mean they are made from something exotic or mysterious.
Like most things nowadays, a healthy dose of skepticism should be in order. Certainty is only for religions.
If there really is an acceleration of separation in the universe, then it would imply that the universe will die spread out and dark. However, considering that there isn't a real cause known for such an event - it means we don't know enough to have a clue what will happen in future and perhaps we are clueless as to what happened in the distance past. It might even mean we are back to square one for the infinitely large and the ultra small.
Some things seem to imply that all of space and time is totally connected turning things into a jumbled knot.
Considering that some quasars show as many as 13 or so different red shifted renditions of absorption lines - it just might be possible that there's a lotta stuff out there that just isn't glowing - and hence is dark matter.
Despite the apparent preponderence of evidence (note that a general agreement of scientists cannot be proof of anything)which points to the big bang, that doesn't mean the steady state theory is totally gone. Arp may be virtually the last high powered holdout, but being the last one doesn't guarantee that he is wrong or the multitude is right. And, it wouldn't be the first time such a serious swapover has happened. The earth centered cosmology competed and dominated the sun centered cosmology for over a thousand years, providing superior predictive power and showing more promise than the sun centered which even suffered from a negative result experiment that seemed to actually falsify it (failure to find parallax in any of the fixed stars). It was only later that in the midst of a religious battle between a sun worshipping cult and the catholic church that scientists actually started to determine that despite its successes, that perhaps the greatest philospher of all time was in error, the catholic church screwed up taking a position on the wrong side of reality and that the whack-job sun worshippers were actually right about the sun being the center of the universe - at least as understood at that time. It was only duringthe 20th century that it started to become evident that the totality of all things was more than just the milky way.
There really isn't a choice - it's going to be under 'ground'. The choice will be whether the ground is raised over the top of the dwelling - like an adobe hut or whether the hole in the ground used to get the material out will also be used.
There's about 15 pounds of atmosphere over our heads in every square inch column to space. There's also a magnetic field that has some effect. That much material is not going to be transported from earth - especially considering there's some already there. Besides, transporting h2o to the moon will be a horrendous expense since it seems unlikely any will be found there.
As for the which approach will be used, I'm betting on both. Don't expect the glass dome stuff though - except for the occaisional very short term scenic viewing. The rest of the 'above ground' is going to more closely ressemble a pueblo than anything else and much of the base will be inside the caves/mines below the ground rather than 'outside'. At least there, one doesn't have to worry about rain or strong winds damaging the structure - only the various forms of radiation that can even be almost as deadly as losing a space suit's pressure.
For the fairly longterm future, this place is going to be far duller and far more inhospitable than an Arctic research base - and far more dangerous too. Club Clavius competing with Club Med is going to be a long time coming.
Just consider that to date, no one has estabilished a permanent human habitat at the bottom of any of our oceans. The little experiments done to date have been only a few feet under the water's surface and were for very short periods of time. Imagine one 10,000 ft down - potentially only 3 or 4 miles away from civilization and were that distance flat & horizontal on the earth's surface it could be walked in an hour by almost anyone not bedridden. That far down is well below modern military submarine depth but well within the capabilities of deep submersibles. Note that while we talk of colonizing the moon and mars and asteroids - we've not colonized the ocean floor - not even on the shallow shelfs. There is essentially no ocean farming or ranching (nevermind the catfish farm ponds on the back 40 - they're virtually insignificant unless you love fried catfish).
Colonizing the moon will likely have some benefits and will probably be of strategic importance and will probably happen long before ocean colonizing ever begins. There is a wealth of man's accounts at colonizing and there are many factors - usually the worst ones - which will be applicable - far more so than some frustrated scifi writer's wet dreams put down on paper. Ultimately, economics must enter the fray and the effort must be considered to be 'worth it' for it ever to continue or expand. Otherwise it just becomes a temporary outpost in a barren hostile land.
What some people here are failing to realize is that it's not necessarily the unrecognizable odd cartoon creatures but rather that something capable of being a bomb has suddenly appeared there effectively out of nowhere. It is the out of place object and the new object with no accountability for why it's there or who put it there that should always draw attention from the authorities.
Unfortunately, terrorists can also place bombs in objects which are not out of place - like Tom Clancy's superbowl nuke in the cigarette machine.
Setting up temporary equipment like yours has got to be more problematic now than it once was. Just having a tag explaining what it is will not totally eliminate the prospects that some might be concerned still. After all, a terrorist can put a tag on his bomb saying it's the exact same thing your device is - or more likely - a label identifying it as telephone company equipment or internet equipment. What could make the difference in your case is the actual positioning of the equipment such that it would be in a good place or a poor place to create casualties were it a bomb. However, that's a more subtle form of being out of place and being subtle probably means that a bomber could succeed - and if/when that happens - good luck being able to deploy your equipment without providing full time manned 'protection' and it better not be someone that looks middle eastern.
as for ted the red, alias capt planet, it's about his speed to do something like this intentionally. the guy should be billed for the entire gov. cost incurred and punitively fined for the equivalent loss in revenues and lost wages that it cost the populace and business.
Despite the complaints of all this paranoia (and that 'unpopular' war in iraq), isn't it interesting how the US hasn't been hit domestically or virtually anywhere else in the world since 911 (other than the war zones and perhaps that bit of anthrax shortly after 911). Our current rate of getting hit is significantly less than it was averaging back in the 'wonderful' 90s - back before we finally realized we were actually at war because an enemy was waging war against us. Amazing isn't it.
"Using lights as heaters is silly"
Actually, it tends to depend on what your heating, a drafty barn or a small box. One intellectual pandemic problem in this country and probably most others is the presumption that on hearing an idea, a person jumps to the conclusion that they know all about it, usually after being told about it by whatever sources are around - like teachers, politicians, news media nitwitts, friends over cocktails regurtitating what they were told..... That combined with the desire to avoid thinking about it for themselves or an inability to think for themselves has made the notion of a little bit of common sense to be something totally uncommon.
Politicians suffer from this more than others as, in general, they have little knowledge or common sense and their job performance merely requires the ability to get elected. Allowing politicians - best described as political hacks - to have control over much of anything is courting disaster.
A politician whose solution is to ban something (pretty much anything)and / or to tax it into oblivion is usually an extremely dangerous, arrogant and condescending (extremely ignorant) dolt unworthy of any public trust. Due to complexity, gov. solutions tend to be 'one size fits all' and too bad for who or what doesn't fit. Gov. solutions have included the guillotine for shortening and the rack for lengthening people who didn't fit the proscribed gov. size figeratively speaking.
So far as florescents go, they're good for a lot of things, especially the little screw in lightbulb replacements. We started using them extensively over 5 years ago in our home. Except for small incandescent flame shaped bulbs, our outside illumination is all florescent flood lights and some of our most used room lights are as well, along with various floor and table lights.
Even at the high prices several years ago of over $4 per bulb and even with 1 out of 5 being DOA the energy savings and life span would cover the added cost over incandescents so we used them.
That being said, we also use some regular bulbs, mostly in fixtures that don't see much use. Florescents do tend to be harder on the eyes due to their flickering which oftimes are not directly detectable. As we usually shop on price, we've found that different brands do vary and many are a bit harsh in coloring. For reading, I prefer natural light followed by incandescent - but that is a table lamp not the main room light.
The notion that some imbecile wants to ban incandescent lights or tax them severely is frightening. Nowadays, people who are using incandescents primarily either are rather ignorant of this quiet revolution or have reasons for wanting to use incandescents - reasons that no political hack is going to know or can possibly accomodate with exceptions. Either that, or they are into conspicuous consumption where they are trying to waste money.
Considering the brilliant amount of lighting often found in areas that have tube florescents, it's debatable as to just how much is being wasted in overillumination and the need for specific intense lighting in localized areas versus more moderate levels for general coverage (although no one wants to work in a manmade cave either).
When it comes to waste though, it is outdoor lighting and light pollution which takes the cake. There are some places near here that have public baseball fields lit so brightly with lights that are not fully shielded that it becomes dangerous to drive down the freeway near them due to the blinding effects. There are parking lots and new car lots that have so much light reflecting off the vehicles and pavement that it lights up the sky. It's bright enough to comforably read there in the middle of the night when the place is closed and is well beyond what is useful to observe possible criminal activity. The nearby walmart parking lot is far dimmer yet it is open.
There are also many street lights and automatic night lights without full shielding which means even more light i
I guess when enough potential prosecution witnesses croak off, others commit perjury and evidence is illegally witheld from investigative subpoena, the ability to make a case tends to evaporate.
However, the purpose of mentioning that wasn't about the validity of whitewater or clinton involvement per se. It was rather about Hillary's track record of lying, obfuscating and withholding evidence for 2 years - all of which did come to light. Whitewater, unlike the current scooter libby trial, did have a prosecutable crime involved where some were charged and prosecuted for the actual crime, not just a 'process' crime of failing to remember some rather insignificant details (relative to the job) over a 2 year investigation. If you notice, libby is being prosecuted for claiming to have a bad memory and not being able to remember certain details while hilliary was never charged for her failure to 'remember' details - including why she didn't turn over subpoenaed evidence later found in her posession. That is to show that most people tend to get prosecuted for less than what hillary is known to have done, regardless of whether she was criminally involved in whitewater or not.
Besides, your estimates of whitewater being the most overinvestigated scandal in history rings empty compared to that of the libby one. It seems the prosecutor knew within very few weeks of starting, that there wasn't a crime as popularized by the press since the person at the center wasn't a covert agent at the time or within the time limits. Also, the prosecutor knew that the leaker was actually richard armitage, a slug from the bush 1 presidency who almost made sec. of the navy back then, despite rather weak allegations of involvement in the early golden triangle heroin trade by some in the world press. Since the target was cheney (to accomplish a repeat of the nixon era impeachment), the prosecutor, or more aptly for this case - the persecutor, continued after libby in the hopes of going after cheney - in the vein of the agnew attack. After all if one wants to get rid of bush due to his luke warm conservatism, one doesn't want the prospects of bush being replaced by cheney and with less than a 60 vote margin for the repubs, the dems could have significant control over a replacement vp.
I wasn't aware that those enemy combatants who had US citizenship captured in battle really needed a trial since they were caught in the act of waging war against US forces. I'm wondering if they were in fact still US citizens since they were waging war against the US as part of a foreign force to whom it is obvious they had given their alliegence to that foreign entity and de facto rejecting their US citizenship and rights.
I'm still trying to come to terms with exactly why this foreign operative surveillence effort has been called a domestic spying effort just because some of the suspects were located in the US and making/receiving foreign calls to known/suspected terrorists. Such efforts have been covertly going on since the 1960s, before communications satellites.
This enemy is quite a bit different from the nazis germans of wwii and even worse than the japanese soldiers, but not by much. While it's evident in hindsight that FDR's actions concerning japanese citizens was overly harsh, it's apparent at present that bush's actions to date are seriously deficient in the defense of the country, perhaps including a failing of dealing very harshly with a significant fraction of the muslim community.
As for bush's domestic spying efforts, I'm not worried about it since there is nothing about it that I know of which, when taken in context, is something new or extraordinary. It clearly isn't the criminal activity one finds in the case of democrat political operatives following and recording newt gingrich's telephone conversations and then disclosing them to democrat politicians and releasing it to the press - which has been a felony since the 1930s. Nor is it the equivalent of having over 500 FBI files of political appoin
Ethanol is really just an inefficient solar energy storage mechanism.
As far as your pessimism goes, it hardly compensates for your virtually naive optimism about government actually solving problems. After showing classical examples of gov. involvement in squandering your tax dollars with ADM, you then continue to believe that it can be rehabilitated to do what you think (and maybe can prove). Gov. works by issuing grants, which are prizes to those who write the best essay (proposal) and usually have the best 'pedigree' and many times, the best political hack(s) as sponsors who do so to bring in the pork. The politicians themselves are experts only at getting elected to office and seldom at the tasks involved in governance.
In general, they do not know or understand the differences between your approach and ADM's. They do understand ADM is a big operation that probably contributes to their efforts and maybe they play golf with some of the executives and perhaps employ a significant number of people in their state or district - and that you do none of those.
Also, as long as there is cheap oil available - even if the owners of it are selling it for much more to the oil companies, there is the probability that any effort to invest in new techniques and infrastructure will be sabotaged and the investment will be wasted. Usually the gougers will price things according to the maximum they can get without causing the risk of alternatives being implemented. Sometimes though they charge more, let the alternatives be built and then drop the price lower so that the alternatives are cannot compete at all. The latter runs the risk of losing future revenues while the former runs the risk of losing current revenues. The best way to deal with it is to counter with as cost competitive as possible solutions - which usually means similar.
One should wonder just how much of that excess profit winds up promoting terrorists versus how much winds up being used to propagandize people here in order to ban domestic production.
Whatever is the ultimate solution will prove itself first in niche markets where it can compete with the alternatives, perhaps long before more general usage becomes acceptable. It will also be whatever requires the minimum investment in infrastructure change and new infrastructure. Before this changeover, it will doubtlessly require technological innovations to improve costs and reliability. Finally, it will almost assuredly not be that which the gov. politicians and bureaucrats chose but rather something that has been delayed due to having to compete against a subsidized inferior gov. solution - like ethanol. Consequently, you should adjust your thinking accordingly, lest you miss the boat.
Hillary's expressed views don't matter. They are whatever she thinks will get her elected. While she apparently does have strongly held core values which she goes by, these are evidently not acceptable to over 50% of the US population and probably not acceptable to over 95% of the populace. She also appears to believe that the ends justify the means and that the truth is whatever promotes her cause.
It can best be summed up in the old adage, "never believe a liar".
Can you imagine Hillary's real views on this subject based on what we know about her and the former administration? In the Whitewater investigations under oath, she expressed virtually no knowledge of being involved in the formal legal aspects of it and didn't know what happened to her billing records. Those records were subsequently found laying around the private quarters of the White House two years later - and showed a somewhat different story - at least to the amount of time she billed to that client. Early on, in their administration, it was discovered that 500 FBI files (serious security concerns for the owners) were in the possession of Craig Livingstone, a former bar bouncer? and Clinton White House security person. These files primarily belonged to political opponents, primarily republicans. In fact, this might have explained many strange events in the kid glove treatments the Clintons have received over the years since then.
If you think you are really in favor of property rights, remember that guns are property and all gun laws that apply to law abiding citizens restrict property rights. If you think you're in favor of privacy, remember that gun registration destroys that privacy. If you favor either, you're in good company with Hillary Clinton, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler on the subjects of privacy and property. Those three have much more in common. How much remains to be seen.
All that means is the patent won't be worth going to court over. That is, if someone can prove that the key elements (claims in the back of the patent which are absolutely the only thing that the patent covers) were not original and perhaps already in use. If they were existing prior to patent submission in even in a signed and dated engineering lab book, then they are prior art.
Otherwise, the patent is only as good as the lawyers sueing in court to protect it.
Small developers usually don't patent due to the expense. Also, since the patent is only as good as the lawyers he can hire, it can be an expensive proposition to defend it. For software, it can often turn out that copyrights can provide protection from the most egregious and costly infringements and that is much simpler and was pretty much free although its scope is substantially less than a patent's could be.