mistermack

It's probably a bit early, but I have a feeling that the Omicron wave has peaked in the UK. The reporting of cases and deaths has been a bit intermittent over the Christmas/New Year period, but it's seemingly back to normal now, and the new cases have apparently began to drop. Only a few days, but it's better than nothing. I would be really interested to know what's happened to Delta cases, since the Omicron virus became dominant. It would be great to know if the new variant suppresses the spread of the old one, or just adds to the total over the top. PS, glad you had a mild dose Beecee, and hope you don't get any lingering after-effects.

It's certainly pie-in-the-sky at the moment, there's no doubt about that. In the future though, (a long time in the future) it will surely be a more practical proposition. Mining the Moon or asteroids would be the only practical way that it could happen, and that's probably at least a hundred years away. Probably two hundred. You would think that whether it's via nuclear, or via renewables with energy storage, the global emissions of CO2 will be under control by then, so whatever the climate is doing, I can't imagine that space reflectors on that scale will ever be worth the effort and investment needed. For a tiny fraction of what it would cost, you could cut out all CO2 emissions worldwide with a mix of nuclear and renewables. Cars and trucks are going to be electric fairly soon anyway.

That sounds like a heck of a lot. Were they talking about a shield that could completely block out the Sun? To "correct" the climate, it would surely be only necessary to block a small proportion of the total sunlight. At a guess, less than one percent. In any case, it would be a risky thing to do, since in historical terms, we are overdue a major glaciation event.

I made some of these points last monday in my OP "Why is Omicron apparently less virulent?" Especially the one about more vaccinated people catching it, and skewing the figures because they get less sick. My Sister got Omicron about eleven days ago. She was the last person I expected to get it, because she is so careful. She is immune suppressed, because she takes arthritis drugs, so she was very wary but she still got it. She had the two plus booster vaccines, and basically just got a fairly heavy cold from it. But she is still testing positive, after eleven or twelve days, although the positive line is now quite feint. The UK deaths have gone up, but it's hard to say if that's due to Omicron, or the winter rise in cases. They could easily give out a breakdown of who is dying, from what variant, but they don't. Omicron hasn't been the dominant variant for very long, so it's reasonable to suppose that the current deaths are still mostly Delta cases. But that's a guess. It probably won't be too long before they can confirm either way. The outbreak in South Africa seems to have confirmed that Omicron is less virulent, but I'd still like to see the figures for people my age, before I start feeling confident.

The situation in the Arctic is not so bad currently either. Although it may be temporary, the sea ice has bounced back to the 2010 mean level. Although the overall trend might still be downwards, it's not in line with the doomsday forecasts that I've been reading for the last forty years. I can remember climate scientists predicting an ice-free north pole, by the turn of the millenium. And anybody who queried it got jumped on as a denier. This is the arctic ice extent today : Admittedly it will look worse next september at the end of summer, but it's still nothing like the disaster that's been constantly foretold.

Thanks, I'll check that out. I haven't used a backup program for a long time, but I can remember doing a system backup from one disk, and restoring it with one click to another. So much easier, if you want to change the hard disk. I think that that is on a rescue partition on the hard disk. If so, that wouldn't help you if your hard disk failed, or if, like me, you wanted to re-install on a SSD to up the boot speed etc. The older ones do have the key on a sticker, but you need the original install disk to use it. It could be of use if you are buying an upgrade though, I guess.

No, you said "Basically half would head to the earth." I thought it had already been established that that wouldn't work. The L1 point is what I'm talking about, and that's 1.5 million km away. But it was you who said :

That seems to be completely self-contradictory. You previously said that the radiation would be emitted perpendicular to the shield, you can't get any more preferred than that. In any case, if that really was the case, you would only need to tilt the shield a tiny amount, and the Earth radiation and the radiation from the shield would miss the Earth completely.

Read the last sentence of the OP

Thanks, I didn't know that. I used to have a little program that can extract the licence number from an operating system, but I never actually used it. I use windows 8.1 and I like it, so I'll have to make my mind up when it arrives, whether to change or just install 8.1 on it.

That PC failed completely. Won't boot or even re-install. Must be a motherboard or chip fault. It's rare, but it does happen. I've bought another, I'm just waiting for it to come. I will be using a backup progam on it though, because it's coming with a fresh licensed install of windows ten, but I don't think it will include the windows disk, so I'm going to create a system image as soon as I get it. I want to change the hard drive to SSD, so I should be able to duplicate the current OS onto it with an image.

It would be easier to change the brain, than the body. Whack some testosterone into you, or Oestrogen etc. Or "cure" yourself with prayer. It's a flippant thought today, but in the future, it will probably be possible to genuinely change sex inclination. Very controversial as far as ethics go though, but the choice will probably be there one day.

I hope this link works. Otherwise, just search Antarctic Ice Sheet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_ice_sheet#:~:text=Satellite measurements by NASA indicate a still increasing sheet thickness above the continent%2C outweighing the losses at the edge.[4]

Why is that? That would also be negligible.

"Satellite measurements by NASA indicate a still increasing sheet thickness above the continent, outweighing the losses at the edge."[ Wikipedia.

If the money is there, some doctor will give it a go. But there has to be a market, to develop the technology. Who is going to be paying? It's not likely that insurance companies or national health services would be prepared to fund that kind of thing. So you would need a steady supply of millionaire sex changers who are prepared to undergo such a drastic and dangerous procedure, for such a minor gain. Can't see it ever happening.

That's likely to be a neglible effect. Most of the solar energy would be reflected by the shield back towards the Sun, not absorbed. And the energy it does radiate would be heading in all directions, only a small portion would be heading towards the Earth depending on how far from the Earth the shield is positioned.

Guilty. I was brought up Catholic, and the Catholic church still doesn't encourage bible reading. They would rather tell you the bits that suit their own narrative than have you read it for yourself. That's why they killed people for translating it, years ago. Popes were very happy to apply capital punishment, back then.

But reciprocating in itself incurs no automatic energy loss. Imagine a spring in a vacuum holding a weight. Pull it down and release it, you have a simple reciprocating motion. But it's not losing energy because of the reciprocation. The only energy loss is due to heat produced in the metal of the spring, so it will finally stop going up and down. But the reciprocation itself doesn't consume energy. The loss of kinetic energy, as the weight stops, is transferred to the spring, or back to gravitational potential. In the engine, it's being transferred back to the flywheel, or the other pistons, as one piston stops. As stated above, the energy losses are in friction and gaseous drag. If the pistons and con rods were consuming energy as you suggest, they would overheat in no time.

Not true for the majority. Most people believe a bit, and follow the rules when it suits them.

In other words, do as I say, not as I do ? Sounds familiar. We have a Prime Minister who operates on that basis. And a heck of a lot of the clergy live by the same motto.

A bit like a painter smashing up his canvas, when he doesn't like what he painted. We are truly made in his image.

But how does that absorb energy? I've never heard that. The Wankel engine might be able to rev higher, and thus give a higher power output per unit weight, but I havn't heard that it's more efficient. From memory, they were pretty thirsty.

I found out today that God is MASSIVELY in favour of the death penalty. I looked up Onanism, (after a reference to masturbation) and it's a pretty good read. Judah had two sons, Er and Onan. God slew Er because he was wicked. Case closed. The death penalty is moral. Although of course, being God, he would KNOW without any doubt that Er was indeed guilty of being wicked. We mere mortals convict on REASONABLE certainty, so there is always that bit of uncertainty I guess. But in cases where there is no doubt at all, then the death penalty is moral, because God didn't just say so, he actually performed the execution himself. God then spoke to Er's younger brother, Onan, and told him to have sex with Er's widow. Onan did as he was told, but he pulled his willie out, before he came, and ejaculated on the ground. So God slew him as well. It seems he was a real fan of capital punishment. So Onan not only got killed, but he suffered the indignity of giving his name to masturbation, even though his crime was actually just pulling out. The story then follows Tamar, the widow of Er that Onan was supposed to get pregnant. She asked Judah if she could marry another of his sons, but he said no. So she dressed up as a prostitute, covered her face with a veil, and met up with Judah on his travels. Not knowing it was his daughter-in-law, Judah negotiated a price for sex with this "prostitute" , I think it was one goat, and Tamar got pregnant by him. Later, when it became obvious that Tamar was pregnant, Judah said that he would kill the man who got her pregnant, and Tamar produced the goat. So Judah realised that he had actually vowed to kill himself. It's all there in the good book. Lots of stuff that I didn't know about God. Particularly, how right wing he actually is when it comes to the death penalty. Truly, the Lord is a Republican !!

Thanks. I did measure the voltages and they were ok. But I didn't measure them under heavy load. The problem only showed itself on rebooting, and I guess that would be a period of heavy load, so I'll check out the voltages as it starts up. I have my doubts now though, because the pc has been running perfectly for a couple of days, booting properly over and over, and if it was the power supply, I would have expected it to give problems by now. The only difference this time is that I haven't updated the graphics driver so I'm leaning towards that as the problem. Maybe the card has developed a fault, that only shows itself with the updated drivers installed. I'll give it a bit longer to see if the problem re-appears without the graphics being updated. Or I could take the card out, and try using vga connection on the motherboard to connect the monitor. I can usually sort out pc problems pretty rapidly, but this one is the exception.