silverslith

If I was to say I had a good understanding of this I would be a liar. Humanity as a whole can't make that claim. It needs a lot of research, observation and scenario modelling before we will begin to make accurate predictions. Assuming people are interested in discussing this I'll start with a few diagrams and then explain some of the state of present knowledge as I see it. ocean: thermal incline, macrolayering, and main circulation system. The circulation diagram is wrong for the nth atlantic, as it should go clockwise.

I recommend talking about sane rational stuff on discussion pages like this. In a very stressfull patch right now with lots of monkey politics and domination games the like of which I have no respect for. The leftbrains tendancy to superimpose and prioritise cultural and personal belief over the rightbrains perfect observer appears to me an easy route to cognitive dissonance and madness. places like this are a refuge of rationality and to me the brains aha response in learning new things is the most effective remedy for stress and depression. Sometimes I have to treat human behaviour as a long term research project to deal with it at all.

Correction. Helene has gone extratropical a day earlier than predictions, and will hit Ireland as the second serious cyclone remnant storm system in a week within 48 hrs.

The ice is some 7km thick and WAS hanging over the edge of the continent by around 100km in 1000m thick shelves. In the last twenty years most of this overhang has been lost in accelerating melt. What happens when this Ice Skirt is fully gone and with it a major cooling system of a the worlds oceans is a serious concern. We may see rapid all-ocean warming with thermal expansion driving rapid sealevel rise ( I think claiming sealevel rise is the result of additional water freed up by melting glaciers is something of a whitewash aimed more at pacifying peoples concerns). This sort of thing happened cyclically about 100 times between 30000 and 5000 years ago with major instability in sea levels of up to 100m. Largely due to periodic melt and refreeze of the north atlantic ice sheet and its affect on the gulf stream. This mass of ice seems like it would depress the sthern continent by more than 0.5 km, though isostatic equilibrium of continents is achieved slowly. The most recent fossils would have been ground to dust by the constant spreading of the ice sheet. Dinosaur ones in hard deep rock may have survived. A major curiosity is the 15th centry map of a portugese sea captain which was "compiled from ancient maps" and shows the coastline of antarctica in amazingly accurate detail that was only recently mapped by satellite radar- as its supposed to have been hidden by all that Ice for sometime.

I saw a good documentary on this a couple of years ago. Evidence seeming to back it up is rock formations at equatorial locations at the right times that demonstrate full equatorial Glaciation was present at the time. The Theory was challenged for some time because no-one could figure out how the earth could escape the snowball scenario. High reflectivity globally could have made it permanent. The saving grace it seems was CO2 buildup from Vulcanism. Volc's had no problem busting through the ice sheet and without plants or free water to absorb the CO2 it built up a powerfull greenhouse effect over 15-20 million years, eventually causing a runaway thaw.

Actually this year was predicted by NOAA to be a major hurricane season. The mid atlantic and pacific activity backs this. Helene is now predicted to only lose hurricane strength a day before reaching Scotland. The Atlantic SST loop: http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/PS/TROP/DATA/RT/sst-atl-loop.html Is showing that in the last few days the Gulf of Mexico had over 80% of its surface above 30degrC. Last year only a few small patches with less than 5% of the total area reached this.

Definately an unusual belt of saharan dust so far this season. Its been restricting cyclones to mid atlantic and the pacific belt. Theres record SST's sustaining particularly in the GoM, possibly due to less cyclonic mixing than last year and if the upper level Saharan flow breaks then there is potential risk of a very large event yet this year.

I keep a close watch on hurricane activity and sea surface temperatures etc. The SST's this year are frightening with up to 50% of the gulf of m over 30degc even this far into autumn- something that didn't happen at all even last year. The SST Anomaly data this year is showing some very troubling hot spots in the north atlantic where the warm saline gulf stream cools and decends as compared with normalised data. The hurricanes this year have been largely suppressed in the caribean and gulf by sahara dust coming accross and capping their convection. Unlike last year the Atlantic has Cyclone sustaining SSTs, right across it at lattitudes up to 45degr nth, hence Gordon almost going from the bahamas to Ireland as a full hurricane. Ireland today, hurricane yesterday. It is possible that a more energetic atmosphere will limit the frequency of hurricanes as this warming trend accelerates- They don't handle vertical wind shear at all well. However with most of the atlantic a spawning ground from now on, we are going to see alot anyway and very likely they will hammer places in europe and north America that have considered themselves immune from full hurricanes. The increased coriolis effect as you go further north means that intensity will be higher further north for a given SST. All thats needed for a fully fledged, h2o vapour fueled convection cyclone is relatively still air and SST over 25degrC.

The main deepwater trench through cookstraight is about 30 by 100km, or 300,000 hectares Assuming you could get something like 1000x as much energy as for a wind turbine the same size it seems like a pretty valuble piece of real estate. No wonder the Maoris want to claim the seabed. If they were stacked 10 deep per hectare you'd have 1 billion wind turbines worth. Would that power the planet? Don't tell george. He'll claim its for a giant laser to bounce of the moon and destroy the pentagon and liberate it for US corperations.

Guess thats cause the tidal bulges on opposite sides of the planet lag by more than ninety degrees, therefore accelerating the moon. But what is the eventual effect on the rate the earths spin is slowing? (not enough to worry us i'm sure)

Nonsense. Epoxy Fibreglass lasts forever in seawater. well kiloyears anyway. You could probably use ferro concrete even. growth of slime on the surfaces is more an issue but solvable too. Seal tech is no issue either. Heard of boats?

The "theon" I believe he was called was going to release the winner and destroy the "less resourceful" captain and crew. It was kind of like a stray-cat fight in his yard to "him". Kirk earned his surprize by showing the evolved quality of mercy and the theon was "..going to be interested to follow the evolution of your species, Perhaps in a few thousand years humans may be worth talking to again.." Killing people to gain control of property or people is Psycho stuff whatever the scale of it. My hope is that we will evolve as the Theon hoped and the weapons of the future will be of symbolic battle as therapy for diagnosed despots.

From the sounds of it he should be heavily sedated until legally an adult, then allowed to burn down some building no-one wants, grotesqly mutilate some already dead animal, throw a cup of urine at the judge in the hearing that follows and be committed for perpetuity. Sorry, humour when confronted with the ugly extremes of the human animal is a hard to resist coping strategy. At least he's not the kind of sociopath or psychopath thats intelligent enough to hide his sadistic tendencies. They are the most dangerous to society. This guy would probably assimilate fine into some small provincial backwater where everyone would know to watch out for his "quirks". Lots of people like him in places like that.

Sure, its a centries old basement technology. The reformation of the oil into a transport fuel is the part that works best economically at large scale. Not to say you couldn't build a home system for crude-syngas-methanol production. You need to handle 50-100 atmospheres at high temperatures with a continuous flow system, and the right catalysts . Potentially this is easier at small scale. You can run any car on methanol or ethanol, the mixture settings need to change is all. Ethanol won't deliver any economic benefits until cheap high yield cellulose-ethanol is possible at industrial scale. This will require GE Extremeophile bacteria that can digest cellulose to ethanol at high acidity and temperature. Methanol is a much better fuel for fuel cells than H2 or Ethanol

I was joking with someone about statewar scrapheap challenge a few weeks ago. A couple hours later an old star trek rerun came on. The enterprize was chasing an alien starship that had scorched a human colony. This hyperevolved alien stopped the ships and transported Kirk and the lizard capn to a remote planet to settle their differences with and episode of Starship captain scrapheap challenge. Kirk won after recalling that the ancient humans used to mix sulpur, carbon and rocksalt to make primitive projectile weapons. Damn funny episode. Three cheers to the ubersense of the hyperevolved alien.

Too involved in commercialising my World Championships winning DH mtb designs for the last few years. I have suggested it to some members of parliament I know over the years. I do think that the risk of frightening the fishies would make it difficult to get through. Probably solvable with the Kaipara having a 10 mile wide mouth.

The Kaipara harbour in NZ is even better with 5 cubic km of water per tide at up to 6m/s. I've been keen on this idea for a decade. I think the speed would be low enough not to blend the fish stocks, you wouldn't want them put off breeding in harbours though.