Jump to content

swansont

Moderators
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by swansont

  1. Quantifying the effect of population on CO2 and identifying causes is science, but once anyone starts talking about legislation it's pretty clearly a politics discussion.
  2. And advances in medicine conspire to increase the population as lifespans increase. Even if birth rates are at the current replacement level, the population will increase with these advances. One of the factors "baked in" to the system that I mentioned earlier. This is better discussed in the politics section of the board, rather than the science section. Your graph shows about 0.2ºC. It would support an extrapolation, that it should have been 0.5º warmer at the end of that span had the prevailing trends continued, but that's not a drop. I do recall a physics colloquium in grad school that discussed the effect of pollution on global warming. There were these neat satellite photos where you could see a line of clouds forming over the sea lanes where ships were putting soot into the air, which provided nucleation sites for water vapor. No other clouds in the area. So pollution definitely has an effect on cloud cover, but it's probably a good thing that we decided to clamp down on that pollution. Calling this dimming suggests the sun is at fault, and that's misleading. There is variation in solar activity which you can track with sunspot activity, but thats not the same thing.
  3. Einstein didn't start with c as a limit that can't be exceeded. He started with c an an invariant. c being a limit is a conclusion that follows later, because the solutions for v>c are imaginary numbers.
  4. If you haven't gotten your first example right, how would anyone have any confidence you've gotten anything else correct? Isn't it possible, or perhaps likely, you've made the same mistake?
  5. And how do we do this without raising taxes or cutting military spending, or increasing the deficit? because roughly half of the congressional population will oppose it (i.e. not be inspired) if any of those things happen. As for most of the rest of the list - optimistic, advocates for stronger social programs and rebuilding of infrastructure, speak out against authoritarianism and tyranny, oppose China and Russia, as I see it the current president checks of all of those, and somehow unity doesn't seem to be imminent. (IOW certain elements within US politics seems to be very much tribal and much less driven by policy and what is in the best interests of the people)
  6. We are not measuring the speed of light, or the speed of anything, though. We're measuring an acceleration. Even in SR, accelerations are not related by a simple multiplication by gamma (or its inverse), so why would you expect this to be true in a calculation of gravitational acceleration? You have naively assumed so, and concluded that G has to change, but I see no basis for this assumption, and no derivation that shows it to be the case.
  7. Those two conditions are not identical, so one cannot mean the other. I suspect the problem here is that you are applying SR to a condition where you have an accelerated frame of reference. The issue of length contraction in GR is more complicated, and you are assuming that the transformation between the two frames is the same as in SR. Is that a valid assumption?
  8. By time slowed you mean it takes longer according to that clock, right? The distant observer's clock runs faster than the one next to the tree. Also, it's not the weaker gravity, it's being higher up in the gravity well that causes time dilation. g could be constant and you would still have this effect.
  9. Are dandelions simple? Is there some simple genetic expression that tells you how big a dandelion will get? This may be a case where 10k people growing 200 dandelions is no better (or only marginally better) than 1 person doing it. As they say, it take a woman 9 months to produce a baby. 9 women together will not produce a baby in a month.
  10. I suggest you look at Mendel's experiment with peas. It was only a few generations to identify certain traits (including color and texture, IIRC) but when he moved on to something else he was stymied, because the genetics was more complicated. In peas the different traits are associated with single genes rather than combinations, and there was no "crossover" between the genes and multiple traits. (i.e. genes for x correlate to trait x, y with Y, and z with Z, but these are independent of each other. Not true in all subjects) So I imagine the answer is that it is going to depend on what crop.
  11. That's a tad strong "Backward time travel is another matter; we do not know whether it is allowed by the laws of physics" and "We physicists have been working hard since the late 1980s to understand whether the laws of physics allow backward time travel. We do not have a definitive answer yet" (he also equates negative mass, anti-gravitation exotic matter with the Casimir force without anything pointing to where this connection has been definitively made)
  12. Short of killing the first born male child in every household (or something similar), that rise was "baked in" to the system. As you've already conceded, it will at best take a couple of generations to bring growth to a halt. That's why growth projected to not flatten until ~2050 or later (depending on assumptions)
  13. You should use the search function on the site where you get apps for your device.
  14. Yes. In fact, as I’ve pointed out, the biggest CO2 producers already have low fertility rates. So you’re proposing a solution that’s already in progress, and complaining that the IPCC hasn’t recommended a course of action that’s already in place.
  15. Can you explain how this would occur, and what the timetable would be?
  16. There has been at least one member that registered another account after being banned, and was allowed to remain after discovery. Precisely because they changed their behavior. Some have contacted us up front and asked for a second chance some were denied, some were given another chance. Many sockpuppets are obvious because they don’t. Which is true in this case - these are pretty much the same arguments previously presented, with violations of the rules (persistent fallacies, arguing in bad faith) so I don’t see this as a case of having learned anything. The bigger picture is how much effort the staff are willing to expend after having dealt with numerous rules violations that led to the first banning. Bridges are often burned.
  17. You might not need to do work to compress it, but that would mean you expend more energy generating it. That bill still needs to be paid.
  18. His posting style got him banned the first time. There’s a good chance it would have happened again.
  19. If electricity is more expensive than natural gas, what is the economic incentive of moving to hydrogen, even at a 20% mix? Hydrogen isn't going to be cheaper than the electricity that generates it. How is your electricity generated?
  20. ! Moderator Note Moved to politics
  21. Back to the topic of the OP - these sci-fi shows tend not to depict realistic science/technology or exploration scenarios, so I have to wonder how they would generate excitement for that. It just seems like it would be a letdown to realize the parts that are made up aren’t possible in the foreseeable future or possibly ever.
  22. ! Moderator Note About wanting a link to your quote? Yes. We pay attention to plagiarism and copyright issues. Also credibility, since I doubt Ascension Glossary is considered a reliable science source.
  23. Terminator didn’t really talk about the dangers of AI. It used that as the plot device to launch an action film in a sci-fi setting.
  24. ! Moderator Note When you quote a passage you should cite your source. We can’t read your mind.

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.