John Cuthber

Are we confusing science with hogwash?

Only half of it is unsupportable. Wind farms do produce electricity. They get the energy to do this from the kinetic energy of the wind. To do so they must slow the wind down. However, the extent to which they slow it down is small ( probably immeasurable) and those current heat some bits of the earth and cool others.

Studentiot, Just out of curiosity, why do you think farmers stopped using "organic" methods. I think it was because the new techniques offered better yields and better quality. Why else would they have abandoned the old ways?

1 Simply wrong. We have had scrapie in sheep for ages- long before there was anything but organic farming. Also the transfer to cattle was due to a shift in regulations, not to conventional farming. It's also far from clear that organic farming would have blocked the use of an organic waste product ( from sheep) as an additive in fodder for cattle. Simply put, dead sheep are organic. 2 It's telling that you cite Italian children. The rest of the world has conventional farming, so why is the problem specific to Italy? Could there be some other issue- such as failure to follow the regulations on the use of hormones? Incidentally, did you know that similar problems occur in livestock fed on some sorts of clover? Soya also has high levels of phyto oestrogens. This issue isn't a problem for conventional farming, it's more general but was only recognised relatively recently. 3 Not really, but there is considerable evidence that the feminisation of fish is due to other products like bisphenol a and nonyl phenol which have nothing to do with organic farming and, as I have already pointed out, the pesticides used by organic farmers are also toxic and environmentally damaging. You are suggesting replacing one problem by another to "solve" a problem caused by something else. 4 So would any competent legal system. Corruption is a problem, but if organic farming got to be big enough it too would influence governments to legislate in its favour. I suspect some people would argue that it already has. And the same goes for 5

Similarly, if you slow down an air current which heats a surface (as happens at the poles) then that surface will get colder. I just verified this by switching off the fan heater. Now my feet are cold so I'm going to switch it back on. The wind just moves heat around. On average, it wouldn't get hotter or colder if the wind stopped. The changes (if they were big enough) might make life very difficult for us, but they wouldn't be global warming.

Never mind the linguistics, the simple answer is no. Evidence includes detention without any trial (or even decent evidence). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp And, perhaps more literally, the fact that more of their population are in prison that just about anywhere else. Or how about the need for a licence before you can buy a transformer in Texas. http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/internetforms/Forms/NAR-120.pdf Oh, I almost forgot. This isn't a list you want to be near the top of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Global_distribution As far as I can tell, only Americans think America is the land of the free.

No, classically, the electrical field and the magnetic field are both at right angles to each other and to the direction of propagation of the light.

Keep reading this bit until you do see how it contradicts itself. "god can do anything" is such an axiom. Can God set Himself a task that He can't accomplish? Because, if He can't do it then He can't do everything. On the other hand, if he can do it then that task shows that He can't do everything. The axiom you have chosen is paradoxical and, starting from a paradox is a pointless way to go about things.

This might clarify things a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity

It's a very bad idea to start with an axiom which contradicts itself or is inherently paradoxical. "god can do anything" is such an axiom. Can God set Himself a task that He can't accomplish? "It's not "broken" unless you disprove it. God wants free-will, but it also wants Noah to survive, so the answer is in ways we can't currently explain to make a ton of room and gather every species." Another answer is simply that it didn't happen, and , given that there's no actual evidence that it did... A major problem with the "God did it and logic doesn't apply to Him" response is that I for one look at it and think "Well, they would say that wouldn't they, if I were setting up a religion I'd also have to include things like that to get round the impossibilities."

"And I can assure you the that ½ in. By 3/8th. thick button magnets are strong enough that you can not pull the apart" The same would be true for a couple of bits of metal covered with epoxy cement, but I wouldn't use them as a bearing. What did you use as the bearing with that flywheel? Did you use magnetic bearings and if so how? (BTW, I'm not too fussy about Earnshaw's theorem. I have a small magnet floating in mid air and if you blow on it you can set it spinning. But it's horribly unstable and has almost no resistance to radial forces.)

Conductor in this case isn't the same as a lightning conductor. It doesn't draw heat towards it. It might help if you actually answered the question I asked.

OK, and now to spoil the show with a few facts. For a start, once again I'm declaring that I'm a chemist. The astute among you will realise that F+M is a viral disease, Salmonellosis is bacterial and CJD is a prion disease. None of these has anything to do with chemistry. BSE took off when the regulations were changed and permitted a reduction in the time/ temperature of cooking of sheep protein needed before you could legally feed it to cattle. Neither process was organic (or, arguable both were- it depends on your point of view. certainly it's not the use of artificial chemicals that made the difference) So it was nothing to do with organic farming. (it was a lot to do with a silly right wing government who thought that "all regulations are a bad thing"). I'd also like you to provide some evidence of some of your other claims, notably "Secondly a variation of the disease spread to some humans associated with these cattle who then died a horrible death." Because, as far as I recall, all the people had eaten meat "All were slaughtered, whether they had the disease or not." As I remember the policy was to slaughter all cattle on a farm where BSE was found. If that's right then this "That included the cows from blameless organic farms who did not practice this method of feeding." doesn't make sense. In any event, the government of the time certainly made mistakes. But they were not a lot to do with organic farming, and they were nothing to do with chemistry. Now, could you please explain why you seem to have picked on us for a set of political cock-ups about microbiology?

If you wanted a blanket on your bed to keep you warm, would you want it to be a good conductor, or a bad conductor, of heat?

I know wiki isn't God but according to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_bearing "It is difficult to build a magnetic bearing using permanent magnets due to the limitations described by Earnshaw's theorem, and techniques using diamagnetic materials are relatively undeveloped." so I rather doubt the bearing Amateur described would work at all. If it could cope with the axial load then I suspect that it would deal with the radial load about as well as a block of cheese.

No. That's pretty much the opposite of what I meant.

I'm going to declare an interest: I'm a chemist. Now, would someone like to explain why that means I don't have an accurate, valid and unbiased point of view about organic farming? As far as I am aware, organic farming doesn't solve any problems (except possibly salving the consciences of some affluent westerners). It swaps one set of problems for another set. For example, rather than use conventional fungicides which have been selected to have low human toxicity, an organic farmer has two choices to protect his crops from fungi: he can do nothing and just hope the fungi don't get much or he can use heavy-metal based chemicals (like Bordeaux mixture) which are toxic to humans, and to the environment and which are persistent. Of course if he just trusts to luck, there's an increased likelihood of the corps getting contaminated by fungi. Since some of the most toxic materials known to man are fungal metabolites the choice is essentially conventional farming with chemicals used that are tested and known not to be toxic to people (in context) or organic farming where you use very toxic chemicals, or risk the production of even more toxic ones. And, Studiot, saying "no disrespect" before tacitly calling us liars isn't acceptable. It seems not to have occurred to you that the answers look one sided simply because that's how the evidence piles up.

Yes, watch this guy not die

Obviously, I never did anything wrong in the lab, but I wonder if other labs have the same sort of gremlin: the sort that opens the stopcock on the separating funnel, just before you pour something into it. Is this particular sort of poltergeist activity common in labs? Is the same gremlin also responsible for waiting until you have finished cleaning a piece of kit before knocking it out of your hands and thus breaking it?

In the 16th c Australia had yet to be "discovered" by the white people of Western Europe.

Yes, anyone who knows that 1 it is a definitive property of gases that they spontaneously mix and also that 2 the purpose of the lungs is to get rid of a heavy gas (CO2) will realise that it's a myth.

Also, helium (liquid or gas) is an excellent conductor of heat.

I can't access it either, but I can read the last bit where it says they couldn't observe any IR absorption at all. Helium really shouldn't have any IR activity (nor visible nor microwave nor UV up to fairly high energy)

And, in doing so you ignored the fact that missing the word discussed out was rather more likely to be a slip of the pen (so to speak) than a change in policy. The irony being that you chose not to answer the question, nor to discuss the topic. It's also just plain wrong to say " He only wants confirmation of his own convictions." in response to an offer to "Agree? Disagree?" Did you only read the first half or something? Meanwhile, back somewhere near the topic. It's difficult to come to an absolute conclusion about this because of a number of factors. By far the biggest is that the term "broken" isn't defined, so here's my take on it. Firstly, we are all "broken". We all do things that have no real logical basis. We cannot generally explain why we prefer one piece of music over another- and yet we do generally have preferences. We follow hunches. Granted that we usually stop doing so if the evidence against them is strong enough, but it usually takes something pretty convincing. We really don't like changing our outlook. Since we are all broken the question is not an ad hom. It's a (not as clear as it could be) assertion that "People who deny climate change are, in that regard, slightly more broken (i.e. illogical) than the rest of us". Which is hardly even controversial these days. Incidentally, there's another reason why this (and the related thread on religion) might not be an ad hom. It's not a slur to tell the truth. To claim that it is an insult, you first need to prove that it's false (otherwise it's protected as free speech). It would worry me if the mods were to close this down without being able to show the falsehood of the assertion. A different bunch of mods might not see is as a an ad hom, simply because they saw it as clearly true. Closing it down would be their imposition of their beliefs on the forum and I'm not sure that's their role. It is the job of the mods to ensure that the rules are followed to a reasonable degree- for example that people don't post insults. However I don't see it as their role to say what is factually wrong (and therefore an insult) where that decision very much debatable. Happy to discuss this, but not in this thread. If anyone feels strongly about it, I'm sure they will start a new thread ( hopefully not including the phrase "People who ... are broken").

And the reason for not just washing them in the bath/ shower is...?