Samm

Yes, "Younger Dryas", was a very significant event. The temperature changed significantly, because of a massive change in the ocean currents. However, that sort of drastic change is not occurring at the moment, except in the case of levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Second of all, it is unsure that the Little Ice Age was global, while we are sure that the current temperature rises are global. Do you dispute the fact that greenhouse gases trap heat? Yes, I understand that the climate is variable. However, many of the temperature reconstructions are local or confined to a small part of the world. The graph I have shown you depicts global temperature. Additionally, the same people do not use the same data, they use different data, and there are a number of different people actually building that reconstruction.

Okay, in all good measurements, you need to have a baseline. Of what skill level are the performers before they learn to play the composition? Are they complete novices, who haven't seen a musical instrument before, or are they proficient musicians who are just ignorant of the piece? Second of all, I believe that this measure is inflated by having a large orchestra. Teaching 2 violinists to play the same piece makes the piece more complex than teaching one violinist the same piece. So... I don't think this is a valid scale of complexity. In short, of course classical music is more complex using your scale, because they have far larger groups of people playing the music, even if they're playing the same piece. I'd consider the average skill level required of the performers to be a superior indicator of complexity. This assumes the piece is played by the intended number of musicians. This measures how hard a piece is to play, and indirectly how complex it is, and it is not affected by the size of the band/orchestra as much as your method.

Okay, I agree entirely with what you're saying there. However, I believe that the Dark Side of the Moon actually sold 45 million copies instead of 30 million copies.

I would disagree. Temperatures have been higher, inter-glacial periods, permian etc., but the rate of temperature increase is actually the issue. And I was making a comparison to the climate change we are seeing at the moment, when I said "relatively stable". Yeah, I would agree, if it can be shown. Are you suggesting that we cannot compare temperature records using proxies with direct thermometer records? Why? I understand that temperature proxies may not be as accurate as thermometer records, but a comparison still can be made. The tree ring data was omitted, because it was wrong from that point onwards. It's called the Divergence Problem and if you wish to illustrate a record of temperatures as best you can, you probably should remove the data that is known to be wrong. It's interesting to note, that the last few hundred years are actually squashed into a very small horizontal space, and that the temperature rises depicted in that graph are slow in comparison to the increases occurring at the moment. The reason the CO2 has increased dramatically and the temperature hasn't increased as rapidly, is because the oceans are actually absorbing much of the heat. I don't know, I'm not a climate scientist. I might be able to, but I'm not exactly sure. Okay. Fair enough.

However, you seemed to suggest it wasn't. But I'll have to let that slide, it probably was a misunderstanding. I see.

Lets say you do experiments based on light, assuming it travels in straight lines on the flat Earth. When you exit the magnetic field the same experiments would give different results, and that would be how to tell if the magnetic field was bending the light. Then you'd know that something was a little weird. In theory, you may be able to back-calculate, based on a coefficient of bendiness, the amount the light bends and hence explore the regions that were previously though inaccessible. I ask if the magnetic field is responsible for the Earth appearing spherical, why does it get stronger the further you are away from it? Spherical > Curved.

Yeah, I know, I'm just saying that if that's the case the only grounds you can claim for the Earth being flat seem to be fallacious. But anyway, it's enjoyable thinking about the number of natural laws that would have to be violated/modified to accommodate a flat earth. I don't imagine you would, unless you managed to step outside the magnetic field.

So, "truly popular", doesn't include an album that worldwide sold 30 million copies? Fair enough...

Well, I thought that before the industrial revolution, temperatures were relatively stable. Then when levels of atmospheric CO2 increased, temperatures started to rise, faster than ever before. The issue isn't the magnitude of temperature rise, it's the rate of temperature rise. 1 degree Celsius per 150 years is very quick in comparison to natural rates. I mean the graph you're show works on the scale of millions of years, while mine works on the scale of decades. In short, I don't believe this sort of rapid temperature rise has really ever occurred before. Here is a graph constructed from the instrumental record, the black line and the various results of numerous different studies using proxies, the other colours. So, yes the sudden temperature rise looks rather sudden. I'm saying that if it's just noise, and there is no underlying trend either way, it's not really evidence of anything. However, if it later becomes part of an underlying trend, I will not discount it as noise. Instead I'll consider it as noise+underlying trend. The real evidence is in the underlying trend.

The question is, how do you know the earth is flat, if that's the case?

Well, it really depends if it appears to be part of an underlying trend. If it is, it would be supportive of anthropogenic climate cooling, if it wasn't it wouldn't be. Speaking of underlying trends:

It appears as if 2010 is going to be the warmest year since temperature records began 130 years ago. NASA, NOAA and the British Metrology office seem to be predicting this according to this recent article/blog post in the New York Times. http://green.blogs.n...=nytimesscience At this current point in time, it looks as if it's becoming increasingly obvious that anthropogenic climate change is occurring.

I wouldn't really know. At the moment, I'd just be saying, the more energy absorbed, the better.

I think they support the latter. They'll say, the Earth accelerates upwards at a rate of 9.8m/s2. Now this is ridiculous considering that within about 31 million seconds, the Earth will be travelling at light speed. That equates to about a year, if I've done the maths right. I think they dismiss it as an optical illusion.

Well, I'd imagine it consumes a fair bit of energy. It's performing an endothermic reaction on quite a large scale in a way that produces very specific products. It's going to take a lot of controlling through various other chemicals, and the process itself is very complex, so I'd imagine it'd eat up a decent amount of energy.

I would dispute that last paragraph there, Pink Floyd's The Wall was, I believe one of the better selling double albums. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best_selling_albums#Best-selling_albums_by_country @Marat: Blanket statements about modern music being all poor is a little presumptious. It's not all repetitiuous mush, there are some very interesting rock songs, that seem to be original and for want of a better word, brilliant. Take, Pink Floyd's Echoes for example, yes there is repetition there, but it's not boring. It actually goes somewhere; it soars. And furthermore, go listen to The Host of Seraphim by Lisa Gerrard, just do it. If you want my opinion on classical music, I think it's overrated. Why is that period so special? Were people smarter then? Why can't we have musical geniuses arising in the present or the recent past? They didn't have the technology as we had; the range of sounds available to us now, is far greater. We now can achieve more in the present musically than we could in the past. Sure, plenty of it is rubbish, but I'm sure that plenty of Classical music back in the day was rubbish as well. We just don't hear that junk, because everybody left it behind. As for my preferred music, I enjoy Pink Floyd, Muse, Coldplay, The Dead Can Dance, Coldplay, The Beatles and Iron Maiden.

That looks like a really good website actually. Well, I don't think they're absorbing it as much as the blue and red light. But it appears as if they're still absorbing it. I believe this website (http://www.digikey.c...tests_LEDs.html) actually said this: Plants don't really get any benefit from infrared light. According the same site: Emphasis mine.

That's actually quite interesting. It's odd that different wavelengths of light make the plants grow in different ways.

Hi, I'm Samm. I'm from Australia, a secondary school student (we call it High School). I'm very interested in science, and have been looking for a while to join a forum that specialises in this sort of thing. Some of these posts are very interesting, and I learn quite a lot here.

Light intensity has a very large effect on the rate of photosynthesis. In most cases, the more light the faster photosynthesis occurs. However, at some point there's a limit that the rate of photosynthesis cannot increase above. This is because it's limited by other factors, such as the level of carbon dioxide in the air. It's interesting to note that the wavelength of the light also influences the rate of photosynthesis. Here is the absorption levels of two of the different forms of chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b in a solvent: The significance of this is that, among other things, chlorophyll's main purpose is to absorb the light energy necessary for photosynthesis. In short, the intensity and the wavelength of light both affect the rate of photosynthesis. Sources: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Chlorophyll http://en.wikipedia..../Photosynthesis