mistermack

Thanks. Actually, the effect of upwelling is pretty much accepted as fact. Pretty much all of the fisheries around the world are fed by natural upwelling, usually where the ocean current meets an obstruction like a land-mass, forcing colder nutrient-rich deep water upwards. Island areas like Hawaii stand out, they support a fishery in a vast empty ocean, so the principle can be studied. I remember seeing a chart of the world's productive fisheries, and it was all centered around land-masses, where upwellings occur naturally. Something like this : It's quite obvious even from this that there are vast areas of ocean that are desert. It's only lack of nutrient that keeps it that way. Even in the areas that have a fishery, the production is probably way below what it could be, if the nutrient level were to be enhanced. The natural upwellings are not likely to be as rich in nutrient as what a mechanical stirring of the ocean floor could produce. The interesting statistic in the text above is that 99% of the global commercial catch comes from within 200 miles of the coastline, proving that it's upwelling that creates fisheries. On the fuel side, you could design a ship that uses solar panels to power the pump, or floating wind turbines, or a combination of the two, designed to match local conditions.

I've mentioned this idea before, as a way of producing fish, but it could also fix huge quantities of carbon onto the ocean floor if done at scale. You have a specially designed ship stationed at a very non-productive part of the ocean. ( most of the world oceans are ocean desert ) The ship controls a robotic electrical pump, on the ocean floor. The pump stirrs up sediment, and pumps it to the surface through a thin (but large diameter) polythene tube. When the sediment meets the surface, you get a bloom of algae, which naturally happens whenerver water from the depths upwells. The algae are then the bottom of a food chain, that supports vast clouds of plankton. Besides being fish food, the plankton fix CO2 in their bodies which sinks to the ocean floor when they die, fixing CO2 for thousands of years in a natural way, with no possibility of it getting released in the future. It eventually becomes limestone rock after miliions of years. The money for the pumping could eventually come from fishing licences, taxing the catch that results from the proliferation of fish, in an area where previously there were none. So it could be self financing, once running. So a win-win situation, with carbon being stored and food being harvested from what used to be ocean desert. I realise that this will never happen because of politics and investment problems, but I'm pretty sure it would work. Maybe if the climate really does start giving trouble, it might come into the picture, when the politicians start to panic.

It can mean that. Many commercial greenhouse growers release CO2 in their greenhouses to increase productivity. It can also mean that some plants can survive in dryer areas. Plants have pores that they have to open to absorb the required amount of CO2 for growth. But open pores mean more evaporation, a loss that's necessary for the plant to get the required amount of CO2. If the CO2 levels are higher, they can open the pores less, and thus lose less water. It's been reported around the world that some marginal lands are getting greener as a result.

Back in the building boom days in Ireland of the 80s - 90s, they used to nickname an ostentatious new house as "Southfork" in a sarcastic way, after the ranch house in the "Dallas" soap opera. And they often still do.

I would say that the discovery of the finite speed of light was something sensational. And then the fact that time can run at different rates. And that we all evolved from a common ancestor and there's no need for a god. We're used to it all now, but it was all truly sensational at the time.

Bedbugs are fairly rare, but getting more common. If you have them, you will probably know about it. You will get blotchy itchy red patches on your skin, like a rash. And if you look carefully at sheets, you might see tiny flecks of blood, or small black specks of bug poo. They are very hard to get rid of, if you have genuine bed bugs. Just washing the blankets won't do it. They hide in tiny cracks in walls, in the seams of mattresses, basically any tiny crevice. And they can survive more than two months without a meal. I would make an effort to identify what you have before embarking on a washing campaign, you might be wasting your time, as they will probably be hiding elsewhere if you do have them. I have a friend who came on a camping holiday in Ireland with us. On the first night in his tent, he was nearly eaten alive in his sleeping bag, he was covered in bites all over. We thought it might be midges, but I couldn't imaging midges getting into his sleeping bag. I asked him where he had been keeping his sleeping bag, he said he kept it at his dad's house. Eventually we worked out that his dad's cat had been lying on it. It was cat fleas that had been eating him. I got some big strong bin-bags, and put the sleeping bag inside, and emptied a couple of tins of fly spray into it and sealed the neck closed and left it for hours. It did the trick, the next night, not one bite. So it's just a thought, does a cat or dog have acess to your bedroom? I would eliminate that first.

Not true. The force comes from below, via the surface of the Earth acting on the gas, and is constantly accelerating the gas relative to the inertial frame that it's in.

I can't argue the case, I don't know the theory. What I would guess though, is that the ordinary conditions no longer apply at that instant. After all, at the even horizon, the object would be travelling at or above the speed of light, relative to a distant observer, which would probably have some drastic effect on the calculations.

I'm sorry, I didn't notice that you said slowing of an object close to the event horizon. I've never heard of that, but I can't imagine that an object would slow. It's probably an optical illusion, as the light from the object stops coming outwards, and starts to reverse inwards. In the river picture, the light is like a salmon that can no longer make headway in the current. (I'm guessing)

I can give a couple of links that can answer that better than I could : https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0411060

Just to endorse that in a visual way, here is 10,000 metres, roughly the liveable limit, shown on Google Earth. (I love google earth) It's the yellow line starting in Manhattan going left to New Jersey. You can just make it out. And below, in proportion to more of the US.

It was more than it was worth.

Gas is an elastic medium, because of the motion and collisions of the molecules.

You don't know much about the EU then.

I gave you an example : From wiki : "There are eight recognised candidates for membership of the European Union: Turkey (since 1999), North Macedonia (2005), Montenegro (2010), Serbia (2012), Albania (2014), Moldova (2022), Ukraine (2022), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (2022). Kosovo (whose independence is not recognised by five EU member states) and Georgia formally submitted applications for membership in 2022 and are considered potential candidates by the European Union."[1][2]

If you are free floating, in the vicinity of the Sun, you accelerate towards it, because the inertial frame you are in is accelerating towards it.

I don't get the similarity. Inertial frames close to a massive body like the Sun accelerate towards it. If a photon passes through, it accelerates at the same rate. But only for a short time, because it's moving so fast. So it's only slightly deflected before it leaves the zone of high acceleration.

No, for me, spacetime curvature is how it is modelled. What it means for me is that the light is spending time in inertial space that is accelerating towards the Sun.

From what I've read, spacetime curvature doesn't explain gravity, it models it. It accurately portrays the predictable nature of gravity. That's not explaining it. Spacetime and curvature are concepts that enable scientists to plot something in two or three dimension, that happens in four. Spacetime curvature isn't something that exists, it's something that happens. When you plot positions of an object in a gravitiational field using time as an axis, you get a curve. The curve is in the representation, not in any physical thing. If you plot the motion of a body, against time, you get a curve. The curve is in the plotting. What exists in reality is a three dimensional motion of a body. And that's how I view gravity, as three dimensional space in motion. (Till I get convinced otherwise anyway)

Well, the logic of that argument is that large aggressive nations should be absorbing smaller nations right now, as we speak, before they get the chance to get nukes. If it's not happening, when the haven't got nukes, then your argument falls flat. You can point to Russia to try to bolster that argument, but there's no evidence that Russia is trying to absorb smaller nations. Crimea was only nominally Ukrainian. Nearly 100% of Crimeans would have called themselves Russian before they split back to Russia. The territory that Russia holds in Ukraine is not dissimilar, and the territories that Russia took control of in Georgia were the same. The people considered themselves Russians. In any case, small nations are willingly being absorbed into bigger ones, and queueing to get in. That's the case directly with the EU, and indirectly with the USA, who like to govern other countries by economic means, not an upfront takeover. And China have cottoned on, and are quietly doing the same thing to much of Africa.

You're still not getting it. Nobody is saying that there is no deterrent effect. The point is that it only has to fail ONCE to cause a catastrophe. It's a bit like taking a pill that restores hair loss, but can cause a fatal heart attack. You can take the pill, and show off your luxuriant hair if you like. It's a gamble. A smaller reward, gambled against a total catastrophe. You might be a winner, or not, like the guy using the tightrope over the grand canyon. The difference with nuclear, is that you're taking the wives and kids across the tightrope along with you.

I wouldn't class that as neutral to survival. We humans are unique in being habitually upright, so our throat is more accessible than that of our cousins. And we have a relatively longer neck. People instinctively hunch down when scared, burying their chin in their chest. Even little children do it, when unhappy or threatened, or even if you just tickle their chin. It could have been an important protection in the past. Not just from predators, be maybe from your own kind too.

They are both run by unstable deluded people for one thing, and that's enough on it's own. And the reason that I think they are less safe, is that a loony with a nuclear weapon is as much danger to themselves as anyone else. Dissent from within might spark off some drastic desperate actions. Another reason they are less safe is the obvious incentive for nervous neighbours to get their own cover, whether it be via an ally, or their own domestic bombs.

Safer without.