TheVat

Yep. That's why I listed shrinking of cryosphere first. Arctic ice does cover a lot of ocean most of the year. Max extent is historically around 6 million square miles. The minimum, iirc, is recorded around September 1, and that figure has been dropping.

Not that I can see. I have to wonder if the albedo drop is more than just from thinning low level clouds. Shrinking of cryosphere, increased diesel soot on snowfields and other pale surfaces, increased soot from wildfires, submergence of coastal lands, etc. This is definitely not in the category of good news. The only countering effect I've heard about is the replacement of forests with grasslands -- grasslands have a higher albedo than forest canopies. And that's not a good way to raise abedo, ecologically speaking.

In the immortal words of Roy Scheider, in Jaws, "you're going to need a bigger boat."

There's a possibility that anything harvesting hurricane force winds would need degrees of fortification that would render it economically impractical. My WAG is that underwater flaps (or similar) that harnessed the accompanying tidal surges for power would last longer and also do regular duty with regular tides. Given that hurricanes form far out to sea, I doubt that any practical mechanical system could arrest their development.

I haven't seen the last three seasons, so I've only ever seen that speech out of the show's context. The spouse and I have recently started catching up at season five, so I guess we'll find out what that's all about. It's funny, seeing just the clip alone, it was sort of inspiring and idealistic. (you've now got me burning with curiosity) Anyway, plus one, and I am now alerted to an ironic subtext.

I am reminded of the Matt Santos convention speech on The West Wing -- here's a snip: We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to this fantasy that there’s this perfect life and that our leaders should embody it. But if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plain than the rest of us, well we’re just asking to be deceived. Now it’s been suggested to me this week that I should try to buy your support with jobs, and the promise of access. It’s been suggested to me that party unity is more important than your democratic rights as delegates. That’s right: it’s not. And you have a decision to make. Don’t vote for us because you think we’re perfect. Don’t vote for us because of what we might be able to do for you only. Vote for the person who shares your ideals, your hopes, your dreams. Vote for the person who most embodies what you believe we need to keep our nation strong and free....

Obama's third term, then. I seem to recall a third of the electorate got pissed when he put his feet up on the desk.

Depends on the mass difference and distance between planet and moon. If the moon's mass is great enough that the barycenter is outside the moon's sphere then, as with Pluto and Charon, both bodies will be tidally locked to each other as they both orbit their common center of gravity which lies between them. The effect will override any tidal locking from the primary, the M star. I'm afraid I don't have the math handy on locating the barycenter. The question is if, unlike Pluto and Charon, a close-in planet could possibly be close enough to a dwarf star to disrupt the mutual lock between the planet and big moon. Seems unlikely, but we could use a second opinion.

Saw some complaint back there about people posting one or two liner comments. I think that's partially explained by some of us having exhaustively researched and discussed the issues around AGW, and being reluctant to keep "reinventing the wheel" in terms of discourse on a forum. IMHO, the time for chat is over, and it's time for everyone to look hard at their own carbon footprint (and methane footprint, if that's applicable) and promote green praxis. Population is going to grow for a while - that's "baked in," as @swansont noted - so it really comes down to accepting the obvious: mitigating our production of GHGs is of paramount importance, to reduce whatever climatic changes are coming (and are here) and buy us some time to prepare for the changes that are inevitable. As @Peterkin noted, and I may have mentioned earlier in this thread or a similar one, the population problem will only start to be resolved when women's rights are universally promoted and implemented. So, no, I'm not going to be rehashing Tyndall's experiment, or revisiting Arrhenius, or doing massive citation dumps on how human-produced GHGs and PM pollutants are warming the globe at a rate unprecedented in geological history. It's happening. Dust off your damned bicycle and start cranking. As some wit once said, "Cranks start revolutions."

Antivax = superstitious death cult. A brief take on the issue. When you have people who are unable to grasp why we no longer suffer (or rarely suffer) from typhus, polio, smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, pneumococcal, rubella, meningococcal, etc, then you are looking at minds in the powerful grip of a cult.

The caption for Archaea also seems erroneous, defining them as "similar to bacteria but lacking a nucleus." Erm, bacteria also lack a nucleus and are a domain of prokaryotes. Archaea have metabolic pathways that bacteria do not. I agree their mass is very tricky to gauge, given that they include extremophiles and are also among plankton.

I had to get my eyeglasses Rx changed after my Moderna shots. I think maybe it was trying to read the three pages of small print they handed me when I left. Or possibly the weeping when I didn't receive a lollipop.

It's amusing to contemplate a Drake Formula for the number of time travelers from the future we might encounter. Also Jinn objects... https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/the-philosophical-complications-of-time-travel-and-how-to-solve-them/

The least uncertainty might be with livestock, where herd sizes and poundage of marketed animals are closely tracked by most nations. Greater uncertainty would be with sampling methods applied to species that are small, widely spread and mixed in with other media, like bacteria, nematodes, fungi, etc. And such categories are more likely to have species not yet identified. And also marine species, because, well, the oceans are so vast and deep. Mollusks, for example, would seem to call for a lot of guesswork. Cool thread and graphics.

Canadians have a coin with a loon on it. I don't see how we can trust them.

Confucius era had wristwatches. I learn so much here. 🙂 Against all temptations to align with other nations, please remain British. There are some things you do better, and I'd hate to see that get watered down. The driving on the left side of the road, however, is terrifying. When I was over there, I had nightmares about being asked to drive, which mercifully never became reality. Your transit systems put ours to shame.

I can see some customer resistance to gas lines that carry hydrogen. But agree some kind of bridge is required going from NG furnaces to heat pumps, for many homeowners. What about converting NG furnaces to electrical resistance furnaces, as a sort of stepping stone? Basically just remove the burners and replace with heating coils. While the BTU cost would be higher than a heat pump, you would have just one utility for both heat and lights and therefore not have the fixed service charges from the gas company (or the safety issues that arise with leaks from pipes). There are also heat pumps, I think they're called "mini-split" systems, that can be installed outside and just go through the wall directly into a wall-mounted unit that heats one area. These are cheaper, and allow a gradual transition away from other heating systems, and don't require ductwork (which further enhances their efficiency). From my life experience, and that of others I know, getting entirely away from pipelines that carry flammable gases is something to be desired. You rarely hear about electron explosions, or people dying in their sleep from breathing electrons.

"Phi for All" is starting to make way more sense to me as a forum moniker. In the presence of such stunning punning virtuosity, it could cause my art to choke! Is it time to plantain other topic?

Are there any aspics of this topic we haven't covered? More depth can be found in collagen universities, perhaps.

The EDX analysis of high carbon content, the somewhat granular look, the interstitial O2, the diatomaceous stuff, all do seem to rule out the more exotic origins. When the term "fireball" is used it can generate confusion as that term is often used for objects heated atmospherically -- your account, @Bazil_SW, seems to suggest simply that it was on fire and may have been burning when it was ejected from its source. I wonder if a kiln stack was lined with some kind of sedimentary material (marine derived?) that was ejected in an explosion. While you would expect some public record of such a mishap, I'm not confident that all companies are scrupulous about reporting, or owning up to, embarrassing accidents. I see you were thinking along similar lines. I just don't see a cleaning operation sending material of that mass any distance (and I presume Basil would notice if he were living immediately adjacent to an industrial stack) or igniting it in this way. This all suggests to me something accidentally went BOOM.

https://www.sargentwelch.com/cms/contact_product_support I've never had much luck with identifying tech mystery objects unless I contact the company and ask for an archivist or technical librarian. I think it's a center of gravity experiment, as you do. Why Google Images fails on this is that it's too old as an active marketed item to have been uploaded, and not yet an interesting antique so a collector hasn't put it up on a hobby site or at auction.

I'm surprised a geosciences department at a university would not take an interest. Sounds like a great project for a professor to assign some graduate students to assist with. The photos/description of the pieces doesn't seem a good fit with remnants of an artificial satellite. Given the trajectory, the theory of volcanic ejecta from Iceland seems worth pursuing, and I would imagine a vulcanologist at someplace like U. of Hawaii-Manoa or Observatoire de Physique du Globe de Clermont-Ferrand would be equipped to do an analysis.

Grapes embedded in jello are okay, but I'd join in the condemnation of vegetables in jello. I've been subjected to celery slices in jello, which should be classed as a felony. Jello is perfect and complete just as it is. As Peterkin warns, just don't add proteases like bromelain because they'll break internal peptide bonds in the collagen. And who needs pineapple in there anyway? BTW, anyone noticed that pineapple can sting the throat a bit? That's a tiny bit of proteolysis going on, from the bromelain.

What on god's green earth are you blathering about?

More a film buff than TV SF. Films that really explore the deeper issues of, say, AI.... Her, Ex Machina, 2001, Moon, Blade Runner, Bicentennial Man, etc. I don't list the ones with really bad science (the kind that get NDeGT to fire up an angry blog) like Chappie or The Matrix. Like @Ken Fabian I find the science bloopers distracting. Not much TV AI stuff I'd really recommend, though I'd say both "Humans" and "Westworld" really get into the deeper questions of AI. ST has always amused with its spotty science and uneven acting, from Shatner's abdominal cramp emoting, to the reliable dullness of Jonathan Frakes. Funny, I'd never noticed the Enterprise orbiting sideways. Was never clear on why, with their teleportation technology, they'd need a sick bay. Just keep a data file of your healthy body in the transporter, then transfer the current brain into that when the body is damaged or sick. Also, make regular daily updates, "neural snapshots," of the brain, in case it's also damaged. You'd lose a few hours of memory at most.