Griffon

I was sort of joking - I assumed the OP was a bit of a joke. Wasn't it? Even so, oil will run out one day and we will have to make plastics, drugs and umpteen other things from some kind of replenishable resource. This is quite a good point to make to GW deniers. Even if they don't believe in GW, fossil fuels are just too valuable a resource to burn.

I thought fish were being fished to near extinction. Genetically modified bacteria is probably a better idea. The synthesis of plastics from CO2 in the atmosphere could solve global warming too. Good! That's that problem solved then.

I seem to recall that when people were making ultrashort pulsed dye lasers in the 1990s that as they got down to a few femtoseconds the output looked significantly "whiter". I guess this effect may not be so obvious with today's TiS lasers which work in the near infrared. Self focusing intense pulses in air to produce a continuum produces a decidedly white light of course.

I've been poking about on the internet again (as you do) and found a whole load of stuff by creationists about the problems with carbon 14 radiometric dating. Specifically they report (with some glee) that coal has been found to contain measurable amounts of carbon14 which it should not of course because it is about 300 million years old and dates from the carboniferous period. C14 has a half life of 5730 years and is only good to date objects to 50,000 years or so. Although I can find any number of references to this seemingly vital finding on the creationist sites, I can find almost no attempt to refute or explain this anomaly on serious science sites. This looks like a serious oversight to me. There seem to be some unsubstantiated references to the possibility of neutrons generated by uranium decay resulting in an anomalously high presence of C14. Anyone have any ideas about this apparent anomaly with C14 in coal?

Hello - I'm Griffon and I'm new (well you knew that didn't you). I'm looking forward to some interesting, stimulating discussion. P.S. Why doesn't my avatar show? Time delay? Oh well, I'll find out I suppose. Cheers.