SkepticLance

Haezed said : We see here the inherent advantage of the critic over the those who act. If a person in authority takes decisive action, it is easy to point out how the status quo compares unfavorably to a hypothetical world where action had not been taken. But deciding NOT to invade is just as much a decisive action as its opposite. And deciding against war means with 100% certainty, even in foresight, that an awful lot of people are not going to die. I have never suggested that we should not take action. Just that invading another country as an act of war is almost always a mistake, and can be a dreadful mistake, as with Iraq. If you don't believe me, take a look at recent US history! There are many alternatives. We can support an alternative faction - just as Bush junior supported the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. We can apply sanctions. We can use covert action. We can introduce spies and even assassins. We can even ingratiate ourselves with the nation concerned to increase our powers of influence. To cure a cancer, we treat it with a scalpel, not a stick of dynamite.

Pangloss said : Didn't WW2 prove that it's possible to reach a point where war is the ONLY answer? Hard to argue with that. Let me re-phrase my earlier statement which undoubtedly was too absolute. War should be engaged in only as an absolute last resort. Where is war justified? A difficult question. One clear cut example is if your country is invaded. If my country was invaded, I would be on a cliff top with a rifle trying to take out the enemy, and I suspect lots more would be with me. What if an ally is invaded? eg. Kuwait. Then, by extention, you can justify action. Under the terms of a military alliance, if the ally is invaded, it is the same as if your own country is invaded, and you are justified in taking up arms. This is the justification of WWII. However, the war in Afghanistan was different. That is more like a criminal hides in a third country and we invade to get the criminal. Hard to justify. Pangloss also said : the purpose of the war in Afghanistan was not to stop terrorism, it was to put an end to one particular state's sponsorship of terrorism. In that regard it was 100% successfu Where do you draw the line? There are lots of countries in the world that have horrible leadership. Why not invade Myanmar? Their military dictators are doing terrible harm and are anti-American. Why not invade Zimbabwe and do away with that evil dictator Robert Mugabe? Why not invade the Sudan? That government sponsors the Janjaweed who are carrying out a campaign of genocide - doing far more humanitarian harm than 9/11 ever did. The list is long. Pangloss also said : Not really. I think it was pretty darn near negligible I do hope your definition of harm is not restricted only to Americans. The war in Afghanistan has carried a small casualty rate to Americans, but thousands of Afghanis have died.

Pangloss When it comes to dealing with terrorists, there are no easy answers, and no perfect solutions. All we can do is strive for actions that hurt as few people as possible, and hopefully put a bit of a crimp in the terrorists lives. Wars achieve maximum harm to innocents, and do not appear to confer much of an advantage in slowing terrorists. The war in Iraq has converted a nation that did not support Al Qaeda into a nation that is now the number 1 recruiting ground anywhere in the world. Literally hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims in Iraq now support Al Qaeda. The Afghanistan war kicked Al Qaeda ass for sure. However, the cost was enormous. The result to date is that Al Qaeda has now moved into the hill country overlapping Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is stronger than ever from increased recruitment. The Taliban has lost much of the country but is fighting back from the support base of a large number of the tribes. The real enemy was Al Qaeda, which has gained. The Taliban is much weaker, but far from dead. Thousands of people are dead who did not deserve to die.

Yes, invading Afghanistan was, indeed, a mistake. There is great historical back-up to this. The British Raj tried to invade Afghanistan and got their tails whipped, even though they were, at the time, the most powerful military force in the world. The Soviets tried to invade Afganistan and got their tails whipped. The USA was a bit smarter, and carried out its invasion as an ally of one of the Afghani factions. However, history is repeating itself. Afganistan is working up to whipping America's tail also. It was not needed. One point I made earlier was that the easiest war to win is one of punishment, not invasion. America could have made the Taliban suffer without putting a single American soldier on the ground. There are always alternatives. If Bush junior had considered the Al Qaeda to be the equivalent of the Mafia, and set out to carry out an international police action, and capture or kill its operatives, war would not have been needed. OK, it would have been difficult. But it would have caused far less damage to innocent people. 9/11 has been followed by terrible consequences. And by far the greatest consequences have come from Bush junior going to war. Iraq will (over 20 years) cost the USA two trillion dollars. And according to the Lancet, it has already cost 650,000 Iraqi lives. Osama is laughing into his beard. The twin towers attack has harmed the American economy a hundred times more than the mere damage of two aircraft crashing.

Haezed No-one is suggesting that 9/11 should have been left with no punitive action. However, there are many forms of response, and going to war is ALWAYS a mistake. Osama and his allies need to be stopped, or at least slowed down drastically. So lets use proper action targetted to them, and not attack whole nations.

To 1veedo. You and I do not think alike, clearly. I demand good empirical evidence before changing my ideas. You seem happy with a statement by someone from IPCC. You have not answered my query. If 30 years of slight greenhouse gas increase (1880 to 1910) give rise to significant cooling, and the following 30 years of equally slight greenhouse gas increase give substantial warming, how can you ascribe the majority of the warming influence to greenhouse gases. That makes no sense at all. However, at the same time, solar activity varied strongly, and in line with the cooling and warming. This does NOT support the 16 to 36% idea. This is NOT God of the Gaps! There is no gap. The explanation for the difference is solid and clear. You just do not want to accept it. In this case IPCC is God and 1veedo is his prophet. And anyone who questions the gospel of "GG is supreme" is committing blasphemy. I accept that after 1976, solar activity does not explain what is happening. Why are you not prepared to accept that, from 1910 to 1940, greenhouse gases do not explain what happened?

If a tethered cable is held taut by centrifugal action, the only waves able to move on that cable will be of small amplitude. Like a violin string held tight. Pluck it and you get a hum, not a whip. Leave that cable untethered at the bottom and waves can reach substantial amplitude.

ParanoiA said : Do you believe they won't try to use a nuclear weapon in the next 50 years Anything is possible. That possibility does not change the essential situation. That is, the correct action is not war. The biggest mistake Bush junior made was the Iraq war. It may be that my plan would also increase recruitment into Al Qaeda, but we know for sure that the attack on Iraq increased recruitment to an absolutely enormous degree. Once, Iraq had very little Al Qaeda presence. Today it is a hotbed of recruitment. Someone suggested, a bit tongue in cheek, that we drop food. Actually, there is a germ of a good idea there. I have always believed that winning hearts and minds is far better than dropping bombs. When a poor nation is possibly hostile, we are far better providing aid than fighting them. If the locals view of Americans and the west in general is formed by the sight of American doctors and nurses healing the sick, and American teachers educating the young, then the hostility evaporates. When it is an occupying force of soldiers, then the hostility grows, and grows rapidly.

The thought of an untethered space elevator ribbon, 36,000 km long (to the central geostationary point) fills me with trepidation. What you end up with is a 36,000 km long stock whip. Any movement anywhere on the ribbon ends up with a wave passing up and down that ribbon, just like the wave that runs down a whip when you crack it. An untethered cable would snap at the end with more energy than a billion stock whips.

Paranoia said : But, that still doesn't stop the increase in recruitment. Again...why do you think that increases in terrorism and recruitment means you shouldn't fight back? Its how you fight back that counts. Going to war is almost always a mistake. Certainly, if you attack a hostile and appreciable sized nation, even if significantly less powerful than you are, with the intention of occupation, the results are going to be disastrous. The United States has entered into a number of wars since WWII. Some against small nations. Three have 'succeeded' (Granada, Panama, and the 1st Gulf War, which was not a war of occupation). A whole bunch of others were disasters. Bay of Pigs. North Korea (in theory, the US is still at war). Vietnam (in which over 50,000 US soldiers died and over 2 million vietnamese). Somalia. And now Afghanistan and Iraq. The smart move is to avoid war at all costs, falling back on military action only as an absolute last resort. There are always alternatives. I have suggested one plan. Also, I was interested to note in the latest New Scientist, an article on group psychology, in which they said that one experiment showed that revealing video scenes of American families at family activities, and by telling them that public opinion in Iran was against aggressive action, was enough to drastically change, for the better, their views on terrorist actions against Americans. Haezed said : Very few deaths are actually caused by terrorism compared to auto accidents and we are over reacting to their rearrangement of our largest city's sky line and attempt to take out the capital. This may sound callous, but the above statement is absolutely correct. Terrorism is NOT a major problem. It ranks in importance with the problem of the Mafia. It is less important than car accidents, gang murders, wife beatings, rapes, muggings, etc etc. It is absolutely NOT worth the lives of thousands of soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. There is no way we can perform a miracle, and suddenly stop Al Qaeda recruitment. But there are a number of ways we can counter it using more subtle tactics.

ParanoiA said : Also, why do you think that increases in terrorism and recruitment means you shouldn't fight back? No one has replied to this point yet. My earlier comments about subterfuge, infiltration by agents, and surgical strikes I think covered this point. General rule : War is stupid! There are only four ways of winning a war. 1. The protagonists are supported by the defending nation. The invasion of France in WWII by the allies is an example. They were welcomed with open arms, and supported by the French people. 2. The defenders are utterly tiny compared to the protagonists. The invasion of Granada by the US fits this description. 3. The war is going to be long, and utterly destructive to all parties involved. WWII is an example, and so, possibly, is Iraq. These wars can be won with sufficient sacrifice and expense, both money and human lives, but most of the time are not worth it. WWII cost 50 million human lives. The Iraq war, so far, according to the Lancet, has cost 650,000 human lives. 4. If the war is one of punishment, not occupation. The first Gulf War, waged by Bush senior, is an example. No attempt is made to hold territory, but the 'enemy' is made to regret doing whatever it was that began hostilities. Neither the war is Afghanistan or Iraq is won. Both are still under way, with the defenders using guerilla tactics. Neither can be won without an enormous effort, enormous sacrifice, massive loss of life, and enormous financial expense. If Bush junior had a smidgen of sense, he would have launched wars of punishment, or no wars at all. Instead, he has been the instigator of events that carry an unbelievably high human cost. War was not needed. The subterfuge tactic would have done just as much damage to Al Qaeda without the cost.

Sisyphus is correct about the need to ground tether the cable. Just a comment about the other end. I suggested 78,000 kms length to avoid the need for a counterweight. With that much length, the cable itself acts as the counterweight. The advantage of that is that there is no obstacle to pass when accelerating a space vehicle along the length of the cable for launch into space. Also, due to leverage effects, the total mass needs to be much less. Of course the vehicle would have to let go of the cable some thousands of kms before the end to avoid repercussions from Newtons third. To me, the space elevator offers two advantage. 1. Lifting out of the gravity well. 2. Acceleration without the need for reaction mass to launch to a destination, such as the moon or Mars. With magnetic levitation methods, the vehicle could accelerate sufficiently along the 78,000 kms to need no further boost to reach Mars. It is also true that a high degree of acceleration is need to avoid radiation. If the vehicle carries people and moves slowly along the elevator's length, they will all be dead from the concentrated radiation in the Van Allen Belts long before they reach orbit. Thus, advanced magnetic levitation with strong acceleration is needed.

How would you label it? It is an international police action against some particularly nasty and violent criminals. One of the problems with treating it like a war is that wars tend to escalate. As in, World Trade Centre to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to Iraq .... How is it that a person who makes it to the White House has to be such a destructive idiot?

The best method of attacking Al Qaeda and its allies is by subterfuge. Introduce field agents to infiltrate their organisations, and feed back information. Once the relevent authorities have the right information, they can attack the criminals using small surgical strikes to achieve the maximum results. Having said that, I believe it is happening anyway. I suspect that Al Qaeda by now contains agents from the US, Britain, Mossad, India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. Perhaps, eventually, Al Qaeda will consist of nothing else.

There is a degree of truth in that pronoucement. I have always felt, myself, that even the word 'War' is misleading. You do not go to war against assorted small groups who hide from you. It is much more like a police action against organised crime (the Mafia) or against assorted criminal gangs. I do not see any difference, frankly. The use of the term 'War' was part of the justification for Bush junior attacking Iraq - an action that is totally unjustifiable if the correct terminology is used. Not sure what term to use to replace 'terror'. Criminal violence, perhaps?

Because they contain chlorophyll and carry out photosynthesis. As a general rule, plants will put chlorophyll into any part that receives sunlight, as long as other functions do not prohibit it. A tree cannot put chlorophyll into a stem or branches, since it needs enormous strength to support weight, and only hard tissues that do not pass sunlight can do it. However, a herbaceous plant needs only soft tissues that will pass sunlight, to support it. So it puts chlorophyll there.

As someone mentioned, carbon nanotubes are strong enough to form the space elevator. It would be a ribbon, wide enough so that if a minor piece of space junk flew through it, the hole would not break the ribbon. It would be 78,000 kms long. This permits it to be held taut by centrifugal force, with no counter-balancing weight at the end. This is important if we use it as a means of launching a vessel going to the moon or Mars etc. The vessel can accelerate right up the full length of the cable and be flicked off the end into space at an enormous velocity, using only electricity for acceleration. Assuming the space elevator is built about 100 years from now, we will have magnetic-elevation technology to carry a craft up the ribbon at enormous speed. After reaching the 100 km mark - a tiny part of the total length - it will be in almost-vacuum and micro-gravity, meaning that acceleration and velocity could be tremendous. The ribbon will be narrow at the extreme upper end, and very wide at the bottom. Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book based on this idea - "The Gates of Paradise" - and suggested at the end the ultimate outcome. A thousand elevators, all connected in space, in a thousand years, by a tubular city all round the Earth - Ring City.

Replication and mitosis are different processes. Replication involves a molecule (DNA), while mitosis involves whole chromosomes. The chromosome is a complex with both DNA molecules and protein molecules together. The key part, of course, is the DNA. It's a bit like photos in a photo album. You have paper, glue and photo. The key part is the photo. The paper and glue are just a means of holding it all together. To divide a chromosome, you begin with the key part - the DNA. When you have two copies, then the rest can divide. You copy the photo, then you get more glue and paper to hold the copy in the correct place.

1veedo Again you attempt to put words in my mouth. If you go back across this thread, you will find I do NOT claim that solar activity drives warming after 1976. In fact, I emphasize strongly that my statements apply only to the earlier period. Your statement below implies I am making a false claim. your study used some data retrieved very strangely after 1976 to make it look like solar irradiance was increasing after 1976, The bit I am mainly talking about is 1910 to 1940. If you check your own graph of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (AGG) increase, you will see that 1880 to 1910 (cooling) is little different to 1910 to 1940 (strong warming). Simple logic says that the warming and cooling cannot be both due to AGG increase since they are close to the same for both periods. So we look for an alternative cause, and there it is, on the graph you just posted. Since the AGG factor was pretty much the same for the cooling (1880 to 1910) and warming (1910 to 1940) period, then the added factor (solar activity) must have been pretty damn potent to cause such a different result. You said : You cannot change the fact, no matter what you say, that only 16% to 36% of the total increase in temperature from 1900 to 1950 was caused by changes in solar irradiance. For some reason you absolutely refuse to accept the data, but you cannot tip toe around this with red herrings. The reason we differ here is that you accept the 16 to 36% figure as data, which it is not. It is, in fact, the result of a calculation. As I pointed out on my last post, it is not possible to calculate solar forcings with reliability, since we do not even understand the actual mechanism by which they work. Then you quote a figure (16 to 36%) which is based on a highly questionable calculation, and call it data. I got news for you. Observing a correlation between sunspot activity and temperature is one thing. Quantifying it exactly is another.

To Bascule. Sorry. I tend to lump my debate opponents together. A bad habit. Your correction is accepted. 1veedo said : More specifically, the authors of the study actually used some dishonest methods to come up with the data. As I have said before, accusing reputable scientists of dishonesty is not a good debate tactic. It reflects most badly upon the person using that tactic. In addition, you would have to accuse a large number of people of being dishonest, since there are a number of studies that point out how solar activity (measured by sunspots) correlate with temperature change. I still do not understand why you feel obligated to attack the view that sunspot activity was a potent influencer of global temperature prior to 1976. It does not actually affect your main thesis - that anthropogenic greenhouse gases (AGGs) are important drivers of global warming today. I have already agreed with that view. 1veedo said : the sun does fit very well if we ignore after 1976, but the topic of discussion is how much the sun has influenced the temperature and not how closely it follows temperature visually. So although the sun did correlate with temperature, it did not cause the temperature to increase by any large extent compared to human activities. ?????? Do you realise how weak that argument is? There is a significant problem in that no-one really understands how changes in sunspot activity affect global temperature. A leading theory is that it operates via cosmic rays and cloud formation. However, sunspot activity also leads to high UV flux. Maybe that has an impact? Thus translating measured sunspot activity into solar forcings is something that cannot really be done. Once the mechanism is better understood, such a calculation may become more valid. We cannot even derive an equation from empirical data, since the whole business is multi-factorial, and separating the influence of the sun from other influences is not easy. If we cannot calculate solar forcings accurately, then we cannot compare them to AGG influence directly. However, we know that AGG influence over 1910 to 1940 was low (roughly equal to AGG influence from 1880 to 1910 when the world was cooling). Solar activity from 1910 to 1940 however, was increasing at a substantial rate.

Peak Oil Man Take a good look at Bascule's graph. In spite of everything he says about warmings between 1950 and 1976, there are, in fact, only two warmings of any significance. That is 1910 to 1940; and from 1976 to the present. The first of those two warmings is associated with a very small increase in greenhouse gases; only marginally greater than the CO2 increase that took place during the 1880 to 1910 cooling period. The second is, as I have always said, associated with substantial CO2 increase. But the 1910 to 1940 temperature increase cannot so easily be explained. However, the 1910 to 1940 warming is also associated with a substantial increase in sunspot activity. I cannot understand the insistence of Bascule and 1veedo that the cooling following 1940 had nothing to do with solar activity. The solar activity graph in my reference clearly shows a drop in sunspot influence exactly coinciding with that cooling. Nor does it make sense to blame it all on sulphate aerosol. That type of pollution was strong for a much longer period that that theory suggests. Sulphates may have had an influence, even a strong influence, but it makes no sense to blame it all on something that was part of the world's atmosphere for much longer than the effect it is supposed to cause. Incidentally, 1veedo might like to look at this graph and check the average temperature rise over the past 30 years. It is a lot less than 0.2 C per decade.

To Peak Oil Man I think you are falling into the same trap that 1veedo has succombed to. If you look at a graph of temperature versus CO2 that run to the present, you will see a good correlation. That is because the last 30 years is, indeed, a good correlation. My claim was that between 1900 and 1976, warming/cooling correlated better to solar activity. Of course it is not a correlation of 1. That is because many factors apply. However, it is closer (IMO by far) than the correlation to CO2. Your graph shows sunspot number, which is not quite as good as sunspot activity, which takes into account the size and energetics of the sunspots. If you do not believe me, print off your graph, cut out the relevent sections (1900 to 1976), and see which correlates better to temperature change - solar activity, or CO2. Better still, print off the graph in my reference, and do the same.

To Bascule, The phrase you quoted "most of the average temperature increases since the mid-20th century" is somewhat misleading. This is because the mid 20th century means 1950, and there was a net cooling from 1940 to 1976. The temperature increases from the mid 20th were, in fact, all from 1976 onwards. A more correct and less misleading statement would be "the temperature increases of the last quarter of the 20th". It is little tricks of language like the phrase above that are deliberately used by those with a political agenda to mislead.

1veedo On the graph you offered as a reference, if you remove the data after 1976, the correlation between CO2 and temperature becomes weak. If you want to see a good correlation for the 1900 to 1976 period, look at the graph in : http://web.dmi.dk/fsweb/solarterrestrial/sunclimate/welcome.shtml This graph shows solar activity versus temperature to 1976. The correlation is much closer.

1veedo is not, strictly speaking telling, the whole truth, and knows it, when saying : Humans are, however, the primary factor for the observed increase in temperatures and are almost entirely to blame. I know this because 1veedo has admitted on another thread that solar forcings are up to 36% responsible for the global warming that happened up to 1940. This is a clear admission that solar activity is an appreciable component of global warming. Thus, the words "almost entirely to blame" are not appropriate. 1veedo is not actually lying, but is stretching the truth towards his/her biased viewpoint. I have pointed out before that the pattern of warming and cooling from 1880 to 1976 correlates more closely to sunspot activity than to greenhouse gases. After 1976, it correlates more closely to greenhouse gas increase. This clearly shows that human activity is not the only significant driver of global warming, at least before 1976.