silverslith

Guys, Steel beam buildings almost always collapse in fires. 500c is plenty to soften the steel even before it starts to glow red at 600-700c. The heating does not need to be at all uniform because triangulated truss structures lose all their strength when alignment is lost. 250c is enough to fail these structures DUE to the uneven heating. Steel conducts heat badly so usually the thermal distortion of a beam when one side gets hotter than the other makes it bow out of column and fold under its load. When one corner drops all the stiffness in the rest of the structure goes too causing the concrete slabs to pancake, or the roof to fall in a factory or hanger. Wood beam buildings actually survive fires much better cause big beams just char not burn. Its quite possible that GW and Osama planned the whole thing. Its been a big boost to both their-mutually beneficial causes. I don't think they thought the towers would drop. The picture shown of the Pentagon "Impact" a few months ago made up my mind. I already had concerns about the relative sizes and damage only to a wing closed for renovations. That explosion was totally inconsistant with tonnes of kero impacting at over 500kmph. Symmetrical short duration bloom with no smoke!!! Was not an impact or kero. That plane probably never existed. The one that was shot down was the biggest scam. Engines do not detach and land 8 miles back along the flight path by themselves. I saw a govt spokesman say: " its perfectly consistant with the weather patterns of the day for that to have happened" when interviewed about this the day it happened. -what, the plane crashed, and an engine bounced into the air and was blown 8 miles back the way it had come by the weather? An air force pal told me they heard from their usaf contacts the day it happened, that they'd shot it down.

So what you guys are saying is that the oceans are a sink that absorb excess co2 as the earth warms until the period of the conveyer belt returning the co2 to the surface is reached (200-800 years) where the co2 will spike seeming to indicate that warming causes co2 rise when this doesn't logically follow? Great pictures of the tidal plants planned for the kaipara and Cook straight on TV the other night. between them ~1/3 of nz's needs. Just a drop in the bucket compared to the resource, 200Mw each. Eight tidal and wave farms in the works. Looks like Nuclear has missed the boat thank the gods that protect us from energy monopolies and irradiation.

I'm sure you are wrong about the geothermal percentage. Its contribution is equal to hydro dams in NZ. Much expansion is in progress. Kawerau for example. Its being touted as the best growth potential for the next few decades for electricity generation. It gets less press than hydro cause its so darn reliable. wrong about the tidal thing. The big potential is kinetic energy of big masses of water not dam technology relying on pressure differential of bodys at different levels. Do we do wind power by damming air? Nuclear is good for 6 years of current world energy consumption without the spectre of transmutation and is already too expensive when you look at the greenhouse gases and radiologic pollution from the mining and extraction industry, let alone the 100's of thousand years+ of serious waste containment issue. (have you seen all the companies on the web boasting about how they designed new packaging and remote transfer systems for waste thats containment has failed after 25 years!) The offshore wind turbines being planned in the nth sea are getting near the scale required. Water is 1000 times denser and flows are more predictable. The biggest problem with wind is the potential extremes.

Oh come on! geothermal and tidal power both have the potential to supply many times humans current energy consumption. Look at New Zealand- 20% of power from natural hydrothermal reservoirs, with the couutrys best systems-White Island for example with 500degC supercritical fields. and if you got into hot rock systems theres a 200km across magma bubble under the north Island with enough heat to power the planet for millions of years. Many other countries have just as much potential. Underwater reserves are probably 100 times this in NZ's economic zone. Tidal turbines are a new technology but there is projects planning to use these in cook strait (enough resource there to provide the globes energy needs) and the Kaipara harbour mouth (15 cubic km of water every six hours at up to 20kph). Nuclear has no expansion potential other than through extremely dangerous (~50000x more radioactive than conventional u235 reactors like chernobyl)Breeding of synthetic actinide fuel eg U238- plutonium239 and thorium232-U233(50000x as radioactive as natural U238/235). Actually breeding tech would result in constant reprocessing of fuel(certainly not technologically possible at present) for hundreds of years. with ever higher actinides with more and more serious radioactive consequences. Its very atrractive to big money because of barriers to entry for competition-potential energy monopoly. Any move to this transmutationtech will result in the multiplication of the unsafe stored radioactivity on our planet by thousands to millions of times. Wind turbines need much larger scale to present designs to contribute much. something like a lighter than air 500m wide model on a 2 km tether. They are beautiful elegant sculptures in 4 dimensions whatever the size. Its the profits made by the landowners that drives them in Germany. Much better than cows or sheep. The best Solar at present is by the biomass route. Excellent CO2 capture technology included.

other +ve feedbacks we've triggered: -release of methane from 50000 years of organic matter buildup in permafrost in siberia and nth canada primarily. ? how much effect is this going to have. -co2 now makes rainwater acidic enough to dissolve peat and soil organic matter and streams in pristine enviroments have measured 10x as much (methane producing) organic matter.? how much effect is this having. -methane hydrates, mostly around antarcticas continental shelf have 10x as much carbon as fossil reserves did and are very unstable, released as methane gas with temperature change or disturbance.(major objective and dissapointment due to this for big oil). Warmer more turbulent antarctic seas and earthquakes from reduced or changing ice load distribution? The most stable state of the earth is glacial periods with 90ppm co2. Great time to live with africa, india,sth america super indonesia-austalia, caribean and pacific island landmasses all with great climates. much more inhabitable land. Just not in europe or nth america. we're unlikely to head that way with 380ppm co2. most of the rise in the last 30 years from 2 centuries and climbing. Higher than for millions of years. We need to be concerned about how much carbon may enter the atmosphere by these systems and how fast. Life has buried 999/1000 of the earths carbon to achieve the climate we have with the warming sun. Humans need to get with the programme.

Darn! no-one wants to talk about it bunburryist! I'd be surprized if brains didn't use quantum effects. Why would they not?

you could well be right. The calving of a 70kmlong x 20km wide x 2km thick iceberg from floating shelves is not so spectacular cause its already floating. A chunk like this falling off a piece of land would be bigger than the volcanic island underwater landslides that are supposed to have made mega tsunami in the past. Oh well, I live at 2000 ft so why should I care.

Of course el nino for us in New Zealand means southerlies as highs stay west of us and polar lows fire up our east coast. A consistant weather pattern the last six months. Interspersed in recent 2 weeks by some record heat and humidity. Extreme temp fluctuations are expected in the temperate zones in a more energetic atmosphere.

Everyone is obsessed with who did it. Its happened lots before. We probably did do it this time but jumps between equilibrium positions have happened a lot before with the earths climate systems and what we can do about it is not a guilt issue. I am worried about atmos carbon levels at the highest level in tens of millions of years when the sun is now hotter by 25% than when we had 10degC hotter temps in the cretaceous. They had several% of co2 then though. Anyway, we should use geothermal and tidal power to turn the atmospheric carbon into useful hi performance building materials. build a ring and space elevators to speed the release of life spores into space. The yolk is almost consumed. if life does not hatch from the earth then venus is what we can expect for a habitat eventually.

Just a minor point. Refering to "melting Antarctic sea ice" is a bit disinformative. Sea Ice is only a few meters thick and the glacial fringes or Ice Shelves around antarctica that have almost disappeared in the last decade are a few km thick. Over 50 miles of over a mile thick ice melting back to the coast is kind of more serious than a bit of sea ice 1000 times thinner.

This is a very good point and I would love to talk about it. Though it seems you are right that others are scared to. The slow speed of nerve impulses delivered by chemicals causes big problems for me too. Quantum entanglement could provide a hypothesis for how the neurons behave like they are connected. Independant of space entangled particles could light up quantum computers in distant neurons. Perhaps the chemicals passed between neurons are delivering entangled electrons on their aromatic rings. Probably entanglement is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to quantum subspace communication! Ive read that there is an average of some 60 carbon nanotube structures in each brain cell and they could theoretically function as quantum computer bits. (quantum bits are 1 and 0 and not 1 and not 0 all at once until you resolve them with a question). Quantum computers can in theory solve simultaneous equations with as many variables as their bits by simultaneously looking at all possible combinations. Sounds suspiciously like the way the human brain works to me.

long term theres no problem. extinction of most of the life on earth will reduce carbon deposition on the ocean floor. the subducted sediments will produce less co2 from vulcanism in 20 million years or so and the atmosphere should recover.

Think about how cold polar air ends up around NZ and Australia. Weather systems are dragging it north at the same time they pull tropical air south. Hot air that melts ice which soaks up energy. Theres been a massive production of iceburgs up to 80km long and 2.5 km thick as the glacial ice shelves floating around antarctica collapse over the last decade blocks of ice over a km thick take a very long time to melt at any lattitude. years! Those shelves of ice several km thick are vanishing fast despite the flow of ice feeding them from the ice sheets sitting on land behind them accelerating rapidly. The main fear is that the west antarctic ice sheet will collapse when its no longer dammed by the shelves. Its as big as Mexico and cause its sitting on rock below sea level its unstable. Prime contender for the couple centuries of up to 1 foot a year sea level rise that happened 12000 years ago (with much less atmo co2) would be collapses like this, though the WAIS is supposedly worth only 6 meters or so. The east antarctic ice sheet is larger and worth 100m of sea but on land over sea level so not thought to be as vunerable. Ice shelves displace water so their loss doesn't raise sea level immediately but the ice rivers behind them have been measured changing speed with the tides alone 90km inland from the sea level coast. So they will deliver a lot more land ice to the sea. Thermal expansion of the oceans has contributed over 80% of sea rise in the last century but. Oceanic algae could save us yet. them blooming (in the northern oceans mainly), release a gas which seeds cloud formation in the southern hemisphere mainly. the cloud cover reflects light back into space. I don't think its a match for the CO2 twice what it should be and the methane release from peat dissolving in carbonic acid rainwater and the huge ex permafrost swamps. Even though the gulf stream has slowed the heating of northern parts is increasing and no-one knows what will happen to it when the nth polar cap goes. Fractured as it is after the quarter of it broke loose last year I find it hard to believe it'll stay in one piece any summer soon. The gulf stream is largely driven by prevailing surface winds so it could be happy adding a circum-nth-pole spiral driven by the polar lows to its rounds.

below emailed from a friend. This is just momentum based exploitation of wind shear with small light RC craft. Worth noting that albatrosses fly thousands of miles non-stop by exploiting the wind shear at sealevel. Are you familiar with Dynamic soaring? as used by seabirds? in the the last 5 years or so RC glider flyers have been setting speed records for RC gliders using this technique. The current world speed record being around 301MPH!!!!!!! Do a search on DSing and you should find a good explanation of how the glider guys are doing it. Essentially they are flying circuits on the leeward side of a slope, in doing so piecing a shear layer that divides turbulent wind on the lee and the prevailing wing on the windward side. If done correctly each time this shear layer is pierced the airspeed of the model is increased significantly. Check out http://www.slopeaddiction.com/thekids.html it's very impressive and fun to do.

I've seen 200 years as residence time for the current in the deep ocean. I don't think we should assume stability in upwelling and subduction. I apologise if I've been concentrating on pessimistic scenario's, but they do need consideration. Frankly a few centuries is still unacceptably short for major potential sealevel unstability caused directly by humans. The facts that sealevels have definately risen in the last 100 years and the thermal forcing has only hit an accelerating trend in the last 2 decades mean that the risk of breaking the stable climate equilibrium that has allowed our "civilisation" to develop is high. The climate would of course change very quickly if the ocean circulation system changes. I googled up those pic's a couple of days ago for this thread. the circulation one was from microsoft, the other two from a Navy training resource.

Dopamine, the anticipation neurotransmitter.

should we ignore the possibility that when the northern passage opens up the warm gulf stream may not be dammed, chilled and sunk in the north atlantic, but circle the north pole on the surface? Particularly after the ice cap breaks up. The upwelling in the pacific and indian ocean would likely continue so this could expand the surface mixed zone and pycnocline like an emptying bathtub in reverse. Or the current could stop altogether causing rapid freezing of the poles, glaciation in Europe and nth America, and much higher equatorial temperatures. The temperate zones would be hammered by constant storms as the atmosphere takes up the heat transfer duties between very extreme temp and humidity differentials This is said to have happened repeatedly 30000-5000 years ago.

Here's a chart of water density at different temps. The increase in density of water up to 4degrC is a damn lucky phenomenon as its a great buffering system at present. from that graph of temp/depth you can see that at least half of the oceans volume is in that range. between this and 80% as the deep ocean water surfaces south or nth of 60degr. Polar water temps are rising faster than elsewhere recently though. The gulf streams said to have slowed 30% and the atmosphere is likely to take up the heat distribution duties that are usually 80% gulf stream. This could expand the surface mixed zone -mixed by weather, and the pycnocline with transfer of water from the sub 4 degC to higher temps and altitude. Density of Water.doc

no the lower wing is not supporting any of the weight in the sailing scenario, actually downforce (at whatever angle) that the weight can contribute to. Its only neccesary contribution is the component of force at less than right angles to the wind experienced by the upper foil. I believe with currently available satellite info on winds at different altitudes that reliable schedules could be maintained. Remember that unequalled efficiency in powered flight at 500kph+ should be feasible with this system too. Think I explained how adequately above and no extra complexity is required except software. Even if flight time was a little unpredictable the elimination of serious ozone, greenhouse, and oceanic toxic load currently produced by jets is a biggy. Certainly even if cheap freight transportation was the first benefit then it would be very worthwhile. Remember this is likely much cheaper to build and maintain than jet airliners and the airport infrastucture is way less than stuff that lands at 200mph.

no, right angles to velocity difference is ideal, apparent wind taken into consideration. good efficiency to 10degr of up and downwind velocity dif is usual for high efficiency sailing machines.

the wing in the lower layer serves the same anti-slippage function as the keel of a sailboat or the wheels of a landyacht, or the skates of an Iceyacht. I'm an ex senior National champion in landyacht design and racing (20 years ago age 16) so I'm pretty experienced in the mechanics of sailing at 5 times windspeed with a crude cloth sail. Iceyachts achieve better. If the upper foil is in a 200kph+ jetstream and the lower in the troposphere then I wouldn't want to postulate that supersonic sailing is impossible.

lift/drag ratios of 50:1 are routinely achieved.

Sailing at 5 to 10 times windspeed is easily achieved. The key is to exploit different air layers at different velocities. My theoretical design is for two flying wings with a foil cable between. the upper one is non-loadcarrying and lighter than air. The lower one carries the cargo, winch machinery, batteries etc. The system powered flys by alternately winching in and paying out cable with efficiency in the high 90's(upper wing glides up, lower down). Sailing when different velocity air layers are available can be used to charge the batteries by using winch motors as dynamos. VTOL is easy with this design. The cargo/crew pod needs to rotate.

No-one seems to know a lot in this area. Its pretty recent discoveries that: -bodies of water of different density mix very badly. -the deep ocean zone has a very complex structure of different layers and intrusions of different salinity and temperature. (its not long been noticed that this can be resolved with geological sounding techniques). no surprize that papers don't agree. I've seen some very credible looking ones that turn out to be funded by oil lobbies. If like those they assume constant rates of upwelling then its no surprize that they conclude a simular contribution to sea level rise from thermal exp as ice melt and century timescales for major change. The assumption of no major variation in circulation patterns and upwelling is very dangerous IMO. what happens when all that cold low salinity icewater equalises temp with salty warmer layers above and below- major convection plumes and cyclone like mixing vortex's? much argument on this topic is called for!

bit of an interesting and probably feasible idea. Done a fair bit of design feasibility analysis on this over the last decade. Not much chance I could commercialise the technology in the forseeable future so happy to discuss in the public view and interest. IMO these could be safer, more reliable and possibly as fast as jet Airliners.