Ken Fabian

Inevitably we do invoke prejudices - the bearded, tattooed bike rider who is part of an organised crime gang will make us wary of the bearded, tattooed bike riders that raise money for charities and never hurt anyone. We can be okay, even pleased with harsh police actions - or vigilante actions - against bearded, tattooed bike riders in general, on the basis that all share responsibility and it will be a lesson to the ones who are criminal.

We can be okay with that - even getting vicarious satisfaction from knowing police are targeting bearded, tattooed bike riders - but if we are bearded tattooed bike riders who never hurt anyone it is prejudicial and unjust.

I think it is one of humankinds most serious flaws that we can feel satisfaction and even enjoy violence so long as we think the victim deserves it. Thinking they deserve it doesn't require investigation or weighing evidence; just being told that someone is bad can be good enough. Or having similar dress, appearance, ethnicity, religious or political affiliation to someone deemed "bad" can be good enough. When retribution for criminal acts can be applied to people who just look like someone who committed criminal acts then retribution becomes a crime all of it's own.

I was thinking "don't millipedes have an odd number of legs?" But that is centipedes. I had also thought the number of segments didn't increase - also wrong. Once upon a time you would have had to search a library for a textbook (if they have the right ones) or consult with a museum to find out. And remembering was more significant. Now we can fail to remember and just look it up each time we want to know.

There are real feedbacks capable of continuing the warming after human emissions cease and determining what they might do is important. Whether this particular study has the number right or not the potential for natural Carbon sinks to turn into sources as a consequence of warming so far and carrying warming past a threshold into self sustaining is real, as are albedo changes from ice and snow cover. It would be good to know - and despite the extent of our knowing better but doing it anyway approach, the potential for science based understanding to inform policy is there.

My impression is there is an expectation (but not certainty) that a sudden cessation of human emissions now will result in warming stopping, that those feedbacks are not yet so strong as to carry on much further warming - beyond potential for a short lived "spike" from the sudden reduction of atmospheric aerosols that come from fossil fuel burning, moderated by a reduction in atmospheric CO2 (and warming potential) from ocean uptake.

Sure, we can model imaginary things, like (studiot) dams that have not been built or stars with planets of varying types and sizes, or global warming with varying emissions pathways that have not and may never happen - but these are built around fundamental understandings of the physical processes, informed and bounded by observable or experimental data.

5 hours ago, geordief said:

Can we have models without  a "modeled"?

Imaginary things or  imaginary physical processes could be modeled as well, in combination with real ones - what might happen if CO2 were not a greenhouse gas or how a Big Bang might propagate in a universe with different physical law for example - or with entirely imaginary physics, without any references to reality as we know it. Not sure what purpose the latter might serve - curiosity, sure, but they may give mathematical or other insights.

On 10/30/2020 at 7:05 AM, Endy0816 said:

Bought a strip off eBay. Trying to figure out if it being noisier than similar strips of metal is just my imagination or not. Any help or thoughts on the subject is appreciated.

Heat treating one and not the other to compare makes a kind of sense, however the characteristics of many "ordinary" metals vary greatly according to variations of heating and cooling. You may do better tracking down the specific characteristics of that specific metallic glass than attempting to get answers through experimentation.

Ah, yes. Magnets not batteries. Batteries to power the electromagnets. I should proof read what I write.

Probably battery powered, maybe with electro magnets that flip polarity in synch with the pendulum. Permanent batteries cannot be arranged in any way that results in perpetual swing of a pendulum.

You can buy solar laptop chargers, usually having some kind of battery included, that charge DC directly. I'm sure simple solar plus small "camping" inverter to local AC voltage/frequency is possible using standard plug in chargers. Having solar built in - back of fold out screen - would likely work too, but more for placing in sun when not in use, with more time like that than in use. It would not work so well during use.

We have no examples of other kinds of biology. Water, as well as the elements and precursor compounds terrestrial life rely upon, appears to be widespread through the known universe and on planets. Even as hypotheticals/theoreticals, other kinds of chemistry look problematic. We may be able to model possibilities and find something that could work to produce life, but so far as I know none look promising. We may find that even with water based/carbon based life there may only be limited ways self replicating complex biochemistry can arise, ie that alternatives to our RNA/DNA/protein based life as we know it may be very unlikely or even impossible.

23 hours ago, VenusPrincess said:

The global average temperature deviation (or anomaly) is used by climate scientists to justify their concern over man-made climate change

It has been useful to have a simple, single measure that shows global change but that global average is the tip of a very large iceberg. The last IPCC report - AR5 - ran to 2,000 pages, citing nearly 10,000 scientific studies. Claiming all concern over man made climate change is justified by one global average surface air temperature is not true.

Admittedly most Presidents or Prime Ministers will not have read any full IPCC reports, but Synthesis reports and Summaries for Policymakers are reasonably accessible and understandable. Also they can call upon science agencies and experts to help them understand - as well as confirm that the science that produced those reports is valid. They can also run checks for evidence of fraud or conspiracy - but the "worst" anyone has managed is a few phrases in emails taken out of context and the fact that there are people in the UN who are dedicated to reducing global inequality and poverty and they want to incorporate those ends into climate policy.

The use of global average surface temperatures may be more accident of history; a whole lot of local temperature records - minimums and maximums mostly - being in existence when climate change became a subject for study offered a way to find out if the world is warming (or cooling). At it's most basic it is a way to confirm or not that global warming is actually taking place. Whether viewed as a history of warming that needs explanation or viewed as real world confirmation of theoretical understanding of The Greenhouse Effect and how it should be expected to change global heat balance when CO2 levels change, it does give confirmation.

Dive into the data and variability across the world is there too ; it gets used in many different ways, including with respect to local and regional change.

2018-19 regional average temperature anomalies for example -

But I think of all measures of real world change that most closely shows the heat gain from man made climate change, this one is best -

Oh, the solar system is not a model; it is the real deal, and the planets besides Earth can be observed directly and be seen to orbit the Sun - or more correctly their centre of combined mass, the barycentre, which is inside the Sun but off centre.  Earth's orbit can be determined by it's relative motions compared to the stars around us and has been confirmed to orbit the combined Earth-Sun barycentre.

There will be enough oxygen and energy already present as a buffer in a body to run for ten seconds without breathing. You will need to catch your breath after. The oxygen you take in now takes time to reach hard working muscles but you have enough reserve to cope with that.

I had a good mathematics teacher for a year at high school and for a brief time calculus was a joy. I haven't used it much since and so, have mostly forgotten. I do recall deriving the equation for the area of a circle using calculus - I think it was a test question - and that it seemed to be seamless in it's logic. Made a Pi starting from square one!

I couldn't do it now but it was kind of reassuring. It may have contributed more to my trusting established knowledge rather than sparking great determination to personally confirm everything. I cannot work out the equation for area of a circle from first principles now but at the time I was all round impressed.

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I thought a significant part of the sea level rise was due to water expansion with increased temperature. Not sure where I read it but I'll look...

Wiki on Sea level rise has this 

" Between 1993 and 2018, thermal expansion of the oceans contributed 42% to sea level rise; the melting of temperate glaciers, 21%; Greenland, 15%; and Antarctica, 8%.^[3]:1576 Climate scientists expect the rate to further accelerate during the 21st century."

( mentions approx 3" rise between 1993 and 2017)

Currently sea level rise from thermal expansion is greater than that from ice sheet/glacier sources. However my understanding is the proportion from melting ice is expected to rise significantly. Between now and 2100 the rate of sea level rise is not much different between low emissions scenarios and high - mostly thermal expansion - but slows with low and accelerates due to ice sheet contributions with high emissions, with much higher rates of rise over the subsequent couple of centuries. There is also potential for ice sheet collapse that could result in surges in ice loss and sea level rise - and these resist reliable prediction.

It is all a bit too speculative or something for my liking. That some planets might be more likely than Earth for life - and for complex life - to develop seems a reasonable proposition. Knowing exactly what conditions those might be is going to be difficult, but even the assumption of milder, warmer, less extremes being "better" looks like overreaching.

I don't think we know what "better" is. Could not extreme conditions and variability be more - not less - significant to evolution?

Not knowing anything about it I thought fish  probably wouldn't have bone density problems in zero gee - but I was wrong. From studying fish raised on the ISS -

Quote

..investigators found increased volume and activity of osteoclasts and significant reduction of bone mineral density in the fish aboard the station. Using electron microscopes, investigators also observed abnormalities in osteoclast mitochondria.

Osteoclasts are a type of bone cell that triggers bone breakdown and re-absorption - and are essential to maintaining, repairing and remodeling bone. Microgravity appears to inappropriately activate osteoclasts.

I don't think there is going to be much difference between cetaceans and humans in how bones grow; many human bones aren't weight bearing and are equally "buoyed up" within the human body, as much as cetaceans would be. Weight bearing bones in the absence of weight can make do with the compressions generated by exercise but those osteoclast cells affect bone density in mice and human and almost certainly will in cetaceans as well.

Lots of subjects of scientific inquiry won't conflict with a lot of versions of religious faith. A sense of wonder that has religious aspect has been a significant motivation for scientific inquiry, often without leading to false conclusions despite the overlap. But there are those who's religious beliefs lead them to attempt to disprove the science that appears to conflict with their faith, sometimes honestly applying scientific methodology but often not. Those may well put their conclusion first and will dismiss the validity of science outright should that conflict look unresolvable. It should not be necessary to know what the author of scientific papers has for personal beliefs in order to judge the validity of what they publish.

On 9/12/2020 at 6:44 AM, Hello2 said:

What about the question: Can musclepower be used to improve energy-generation?

 

I'm not sure tree climbing machinery is a major user of energy. Using bicycles more conventionally isn't so much significant for direct energy generation as significant for avoided generation elsewhere, in this case motor vehicle energy use. It is genuinely significant in that regard. Tends to be good for the people using them, so long as car drivers don't run over them.

On 9/13/2020 at 2:30 AM, drumbo said:

Fossil are a dream, they are perfect. God must have put it here for us to use, how else can you explain its perfection?

Ancient dead stuff from the deep bowels of the Earth, that burns with a foul brimstone stench - and with poisonous fumes, that adds  about 100x more heat to the world at large when mixed in atmosphere than the "useful" energy produced. I would argue that is making the world more Hellish and the idea that we got it all as a gift from God - that it is a perfect and absolute Good, and comes with no Catch - is so wrong that it is hard to comprehend how religious leaders could fall for it. Temptation from below, not manna from above IMO.

Rather than "low" in toxic waste, it makes vast amounts of poisonous fly ash besides the CO2 that is our single biggest toxic waste stream, exceeding all other waste (5 times over). "Luckily" it is invisible and can be diluted in atmosphere... where it can go on to add that extra heat. According to an odd fellow with burning eyes and growths that looked like horns growing out of his head fossil fuels are so "perfect" they can solve most human suffering without any need for humans to be "good"; there will be so much wealth left over from Greed applied ruthlessly to an abundance of Fossil Fuels that enough trickles down that all humans are raised up. Well, it can if people weren't... so greedy. Can be used for great engines of war, for smiting enemies too.

A catch? Well, sure it adds some heat to the world, but not all the navvies with all the shovels in the world could dig up enough coal to cause measurable warming! Oh, you can also use it to make machines that can dig ten thousand shovel's worth at a go. No catch, Drumbo?

I expect complex engineering projects are not even possible, let alone done better by individual engineers. Teams are essential. Selection and management of that team will be crucial.

As an aside I think the gratuitous derision of camels, as being a "badly designed horse" makes for a good joke - for horse lovers. Meanwhile camels are superior (better "designed") to horses - for wild survival and as a beast of burden - in many circumstances.

On 9/11/2020 at 10:36 AM, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

would this double as a way to make forest fires less severe, by the fact that there are fewer trees available, per square kilometre, to catch fire in the first place?

It is not as simple as less trees equals less fire risk; mostly it is the grass and undergrowth and leaf litter that burns most readily in forest fires, not usually trees. Fires are extreme when forest canopy (trees) burns - and that is more likely when the intensity of lower level fires is enough to carry the fire to tree tops. Eliminating "ladders" of fuel from ground to canopies is often a priority for fire hazard reduction.

Taking out trees usually results in an increase in fuel, from the treetops - the branches and leaves that are not usually harvested - as well as increased growth of ground vegetation. Dense forest canopies can result in less ground level fuel and fire risk, depending on forest type. Local conditions vary greatly.

Hypothetically the tree tops could be harvested too, but boilers made to burn wood may not be suitable for burning leafy material, which may be better done through gasification (heating without burning, to produce flammable gases). They present harvesting problems compared to logs; little or no existing equipment or infrastructure compared to burning sawn or split wood or chips. And if there is insufficient demand for that kind of fuel - or the costs are too high - then subsidy and regulation would be needed to make it happen. Relying on forced labor may not be the best way to do things that are hard - it usually isn't efficient.

As a fuel that can replace large amounts of coal burning? I'm not sure it cannot be done at large enough scale to be a large part of our energy supply; there are better (competing) options as well as competing uses for wood - and the question as posed represents a transition, from dense forest to thinned, that stops when the intended outcome is reached. Permanently displacing fossil fuel use requires trees to regrow.

On 9/17/2020 at 5:30 AM, joigus said:

I saw a cartoon the other day suggesting that it's to do with science and scientists sounding arrogant in the ears of big swathes of the public. I'm not so sure about that, but there seems to be a communication gap.

People in positions of trust and responsibility in the US (and Australia where opinion like Trump's also runs deep through conservative politics, conservative commentary) got the same science based reports on climate as everyone else; they are not rejecting it because some scientists seemed arrogant or said things that were exaggerated or wrong, they are rejecting it because it is almost certainly true and they don't want it to be true - because being true demands an appropriate response. These are people in high places who mostly know better - who are expected and relied on to read the reports that governments asked and paid for and look past the arrogance of scientists who won't change the conclusions to suit the political leanings of the those in charge, who should be pleased at that obstinacy in refusing to alter "facts". But the lack of immediacy and of readily observable change puts election cycles and whole political careers between absence of appropriate action and bad climate outcomes. We are just getting some of those but even those are not necessarily clear and obvious within the variability of year to year weather. All making Doubt, Deny, Delay look like something that can be (and has been) done successfully.

I think the ordinary voter/citizen has been taking their lead from and being taken in by people they trust - but not so much of that is from direct communications by scientists. It is science as filtered and reported in mainstream media, with inexpert commentary overwhelming the kernel of content. Our leadership - political and business - has learned or perhaps always known that popular opinion about what is true and not true has more to do with persistent emotive messaging than science.

Large parts of the mainstream media that are the principle way people know about global warming are partisan political players in their own right as well as businesses that use energy and don't want to pay higher prices for low emissions alternatives, pay taxes and don't want to pay taxes no matter how essential to the nation they profess to love, who don't want regulation, just because. Commercial "news" media's business model is in influencing the choices people make for money, on behalf of other businesses mostly,  businesses that also don't like higher priced power or taxes or emissions regulation either, who may withdraw their business if the editorial policy appears to support things they don't like, like strong action on emissions.

The choices business operators make are not so much based on what the scientists say will happen over the long term as in how they think it will affect their bottom line in the short term - by the criteria they use it is not even an option to put what scientists say ahead of those; collectively they can use Lobbying, PR, Advertising, Strategic Donating, Post Political Payoffs, Tactical Lawfare, Tankthink to influence public opinion and government policy. Conservative, pro-business politicians who don't pay attention to what captains of industry and business groups say they want get replaced.

It seems much more likely there is an unknown non-biological process making Phosphine than unknown biological processes. But news programs I've seen are hyping the "could be life" story - some with inclusion of appropriate skepticism but mostly not.

"Feminist" is a broad category - in many cases it just means wanting things like equal opportunity of wages, legal rights, freedom from sexual harassment. It is not going to determine sexual preferences beyond being likely to make men who do not support such equal opportunity less compatible as life partners. I would not call men supporting such things "feminine".

On 9/5/2020 at 1:55 AM, MigL said:

Think about little towns that spring up when a mine opens up in Northern Canada; unless the exploitation is done remotely, people will need to be, and live, there.

Such settlements in wilderness have no expectation of becoming self sufficient. They import almost everything (apart from air and water) from the greater Canadian and global economy and don't even directly use the minerals they mine. Were that greater economy to vanish or be out of reach they would be in serious trouble, even with foreknowledge and prepperation; an ability to survive, maybe, because there are natural, if limited, food resources and ancient experience to draw on. Sustaining advanced technology and a lifestyle dependent on it? A lot harder. Such outposts can be steps on the way to self sufficient colonisation but are insufficient in themselves. They need stuff to sell to that greater economy.

Motivations do matter and I don't think making a "Planet B" for backup is a viable one; they need broad ranging commercial viability or else such colonies will, like mining outposts in wilderness, run down when the saleable resource runs out. I think "Planet B" thinking might be a longer term contingency consideration for any greater Earth (meteor) Defense type projects, the way it enters the thinking of military forces with deep bunkers - tacked on to a broader motivation that has substance - but I cannot see it being a primary objective. Elsewise we are talking about living in space being easy because we have achieved such advanced tech and wealth that living in space is easy, like jumping in the campervan for a road trip because we can, with no requirement to pay our way - in which case I wouldn't want to be stuck to Mars or any other colony planet. Visit maybe. We are way, way, way short of that.

11 hours ago, Airbrush said:

I am not suggesting generational craft.  Remember what Stephen Hawking said, that humanity has about 100 more years before our extinction.  So how do you want to spend the next 100 years?  Terraforming Mars, building Terminator robots, or exploring the solar system?  People going to other stars seems farther and farther away than ever.  Even sending high-speed probes to the nearest stars seems less likely than just being content to view evidence of life on other planets in the time we have left.

https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-humanity-only-has-100-years-left-on-earth-before-doomsday

 

I don't think Stephen Hawking was ever a reliable source on how long humanity has left on Earth, no matter his brilliance with respect to black holes and cosmology. I think the reality of moving to space is not anywhere even close to being a viable option - and without a healthy wealthy Earth economy, not likely to ever be one. Failing to go all out to fix our problems here will ensure failure to establish a reliable, colonial foothold in space; space colonisation is not an alternative to Earth, it depends absolutely on Earth. If it achieves true self sufficiency, that will be an emergent outcome of success as an enduring part of Earth's greater economy.

What I think with respect to our looming doom is we face the prospect of our civilisation - such as it is - failing us in the face of cumulative problems. Good governance looks thin on the ground to me - and large elements fiercely resists deep, long running foresight and planning.

Any collapse of what we see as civilisation won't be the end of humanity by any means, but it likely will put all grand space dreams on hold and make getting back to the wealth and prosperity we now enjoy much harder in any distant future - and what we have is IMO probably unsustainable and overly a product of and dependent on resource over-exploitation in the present at the cost of future resource availability. I am not sure that unrealistic optimism about space and abundant space resources helps with keeping our eyes on this road, hands on this wheel.

I am not optimistic either way - because I think it wasn't planning and foresight that got us the civilisation we have here on Earth but for getting space colonies on a sustainable footing the minimum population and economy and infrastructure needs to be very large to be able to reach reliable self sufficiency; self sufficiency in space will be very hard to achieve without those natural ecosystems to do so much stuff we depend and thrive on for free.

7 hours ago, MigL said:

How do you fix the problem of too many people, without giving them another place to live ?

I don't think space - even being more optimistic even than most optimists - will ever offer mass migration opportunities; mostly the idea seems to be a smallish number get to colonise space, to go on (we hope) to survive and thrive there and Earth's population gets to survive or not (we hope not) as the case may be. We are suppose to be vicariously comforted by this - enough to not resent paying for it. I remain unconvinced that this "some will survive" motivation can be sufficient to support the scales of construction and investment a viable space colonisation program needs. And we could (real possibility) see significant population decline here on Earth - whether we want it and plan it (still possible, over several generations), or not (possibly catastrophically).

Interstellar colonising would be much, much   harder than Mars - and I think Mars is still way beyond our capabilities. And Mars would be much harder than Asteroids. And those are still extremely hard. I would probably go for Asteroids and free flying space habitats over planets.