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Probably will happen eventually but has officially ended at the moment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom–United_States_free_trade_agreement President's Trade Promotion Authority expiring is the main issue. Falls back to the House. There is movement to try and restart everything though, with an emphasis on negotiations with the UK. https://www.wispolitics.com/2022/u-s-rep-kind-releases-bipartisan-bicameral-trade-policy-recommendations-for-the-118th-congress

I was referring to MENSA. That's a club you choose to join, based on taking an IQ test. But I'm not interested in getting an IQ score either, actually. What would be the use of it? Everyone nowadays knows that IQ scores are a fairly poor predictor of people's capacity, in most spheres of activity. I've done OK in life - got to a good university and enjoyed my degree subject, had a reasonably fulfilling career, am able to understand and enjoy a lot of intellectual things. Nobody who knows me thinks I'm thick. That'll do for me.

QM is not mathematics. How a theory of mathematics can be applied to anything which is not mathematics?

The universe is essentially a large kidney bean and consciousness is the gas that arises from a god digesting the bean. Or as TS Eliot wrote, the river's tent is broken.

1. Given n=F(r)*q 2. Given n=G(q)*r 3. From 1 and 2, F(r)*q=G(q)*r 4. From 3, G(q)/q=F(r)/r 5. To hold for all q and r the two sides of the equation in 4 have to be constant. Let's call it, c 6. From 4 and 5, G(q)=c*q 7. From 2 and 6, n=c*q*r QED If any line is unclear, let me know.

Spend a lot of time in New York, have you?

I realised you were being sarky, but thought it was a rather profound point nonetheless. When I lived for a couple of years in Houston TX, it took me a while to find out why I felt I didn't fit in and what I thought was lacking. In the Netherlands, by contrast, I felt at home in about a month. It really all boiled down to history, or relative lack thereof. New World countries, like the Americas and Australasia have an admirable energy and sense of the possible that we in the Old World have long since given up on. But we do have all the riches of history instead, which give us a certain groundedness. The backlash against globalisation is creating a new and ugly nationalist politics on both sides of the Atlantic. But recent polls show the British are now realising Brexit, at least in the absurdly extreme, ideological form in which it has been enacted, was a mistake. I think we are past the high water mark of naïve nationalism. I'm not too worried by private firms in the NHS, really. GPs have always been private, and the continental healthcare model, which often involves profit-making hospitals being block-contracted to the national health system, does not fill me with terror. My analysis of the US Healthcare system, on the other hand, is it is a broken market because there are two parties on the buying side of the equation, one with no market power and the other with no incentive to drive a hard bargain. The insurers have little incentive to query the bills for drugs and treatment and shop around - they just pass the costs through to employers' healthcare plans. And employees have no choice but to pay the premiums. A national healthcare system that buys care centrally from providers, on the other hand, has huge purchasing power and can really drive a bargain (as drug companies know to their cost, when selling to the British NHS.)

I do think that the issue is largely structural due ongoing trends in the university and granting system, which is increasingly streamlined across countries, rather than one of science per se, as already mentioned. Sometimes more make things less focused and harder, rather than easier. I also see more papers that try to reinvent the wheel, which in some cases is down to limited knowledge of older lit (and connected quality drop in reviews).

If it were absorption within the atmosphere that energy would be added to the atmosphere. It isn't absorption. This appears to be the correct option. As I understand it gaseous Sulphur Dioxide is the precursor to droplets of sulphuric acid that are reflective to sunlight. Being initially gaseous probably makes it easier to get pushed high in the atmosphere by volcanoes and for the resulting droplets to linger there, up to 2 years and global in effect. Human sources ie from fossil fuel burning rarely make it that high and have residence times of a few days and is more regional in effect. From NASA - This source doesn't specify the altitude of the clouds, but sounds like it has a reflective cooling effect. Regarding the initial question(s) - First, we don't know how to get volcanoes to erupt on demand or continuously. There are proposals for deliberately adding sulphate aerosols to the stratosphere but with (usually) aircraft, not via volcanoes. Sulphate aerosols aren't dust. Not sure dust is such a highly significant factor - probably doesn't linger long enough. But, to echo MigL, massively increasing volcanic activity seems counterproductive. The cooling effect of aerosols depends on the rate you keep adding, whereas global warming is dependent on the accumulated total of CO2 (over the timescales that matter). It doesn't fix the cause, just masks the effects - and the consequences are more complex than simply reducing global warming, ie may induce significant unwanted regional climate changes. My view is that - given existing climate politics - anything gives the illusion that we can keep burning fossil fuels at high rates and avoid the climate consequences is unhelpful - even where those attempts are sincere. Whether intended as an adjunct to commitments to building an abundance of clean energy and reducing emissions it will be used by opponents - and the apathetic - to reduce those ambitions.