scalbers

The latest back and forth (plenty of it) can be tracked here: http://www.ecatnews.net/ There are now two companies trying to out do each other to commercialize this soon. We'll likely find out within the next year if this is more than a "potential" energy revolution.

Here are some links that help to tell the story of the acceleration of overall Antarctic ice sheet loss: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml http://www.springerlink.com/content/m874025907838v1m/ Even if oceans are playing a role, in the long run the oceans would be warming up as part of the global warming trend. Antarctic sea ice is paradoxically gradually increasing, at a rate much lower than the corresponding melt in the Arctic. Another recently published paper documents air temperatures have in fact risen overall in Antarctica over the past 50 years. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I think 2mm/yr of sea level rise is mostly from thermal expansion and 1mm/yr is from the melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

Antarctic ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate this decade as measured by the GRACE and IceSat satellites.

GRACE and IceSats satellites are documenting accelerating melting of Greenland and Iceland ice sheet this past decade. This may be contributing to an increase of the sea level rise rate to 3mm/yr (up from the 2mm/yr average in the 20th century).

For all odd numbers one can construct a Pythagorian triangle. Let A be odd. Then B = (A^2 / 2) - 0.5 And C = (A^2 / 2) + 0.5

Wikipedia has a nice summary of various proofs, including the one above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#Proofs

I recall the integer squares 5:12:13 and I see this can be constructed for every odd number: http://www.friesian.com/pythag.htm

There is a proposed DEMO plant to come on the heels of ITER. Also here is a powerpoint on a "fast track" to fusion power. http://www.journalday.org/activity/branches/South_West/Events/page_8460.html Here is the Wikipedia page on DEMO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

The answer is 5000 Gigatons of carbon as published here: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf

With some casual Google searching here is a sort of related paper: Remarks on the issue of time and complex numbers in canonical quantum gravity http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9607028 Also this one: Complex Numbers, Quantum Mechanics and the Beginning of Time http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9302002 Then we have this one: Complex angular momentum in black hole physics and quasinormal modes http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0212093

An extended La Nina can also influence the 5-year mean as is happening now. I saw Jim Hansen give a talk this week in Boulder and he showed an updated version of this graph to help make that case for the current "cooling": http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.E.lrg.gif

It's interesting to note that the 5-year mean is starting to dip now. However it had dipped also in the early 1980s and early 1990s, only to resume the upward trend shortly thereafter. The earlier dips were due more to volcanic eruptions. Perhaps the La Nina / Pacific Decadal Oscillation effect is contributing this time? It's true all that radiative forcing from CO2 should warm the air up eventually, now the energy is being diverted into the oceans - and they will be holding this energy for a long time.

Perhaps these cosmic rays are more local than we think. If they just come from within this galaxy they might be less affected by CMB photons (and also intergalactic magnetic fields)?

Sounds good, though I hope all those people around the world who aspire to have "American" standards of living will be patient enough to wait until after 2050.

The trend on population is in the right direction though I'd say it should go further. As standards of living rise and use of resources per person rise, the sustainable population of Earth may end up being less than what it is at present. So once the number levels off I think it should perhaps start to decrease.

I wonder how much water vapor even today's cars emit, compared to nuclear plants? At any rate, I'd imagine that most of the water vapor would quickly condense as clouds and rain and be less than the amount that naturally evaporates off the oceans. One exception I think is in Alaska for example in the winter where car emissions aren't well ventilated and can help create a local fog? Yes, fusion power continues to be intriguing.

Sounds using the sigma T^4 relationship that we would be OK for now, though just an order of magnitude or two from having an issue. Sources like wind, solar, and tidal would be better since they would just dissipate as heat anyway.

Yes there's a nice video at their website if you click on "Latest Video". http://www.almaobservatory.org/index.php

If a few percent of large species have already gone extinct that's significant to me and an ominous harbinger given the rate of increase of the power of humans to alter natural environments. It's alarming to me for example that the largest bird in North America (the condor) came very close to extinction. On the other hand it's more difficult to quantify the number of bacteria and such and how they go extinct. Looking more historically, I wonder why most of the large animals in North America went extinct around 10000 years ago. If this was human caused (as suggested above) this suggests caution with our present activities. The combination of climate change and habitat loss may have a synergistic effect more than either one alone would have.

Perhaps, though I wonder how the star would become a prolate spheroid in the first place?

Indeed a wonderful article in SciAm with some good evidence that naked singularities may be common with stellar collapse. I did wonder about how realistic the prolate spheroid (spindle) case was, otherwise it seemed fairly reasonable in their discussion. A rotating star would be an oblate spheroid, unless some sort of magnetic effect would squeeze it otherwise? Quite the term to contemplate: "quantum star", or should it be Planck star? What would a quantum star look like close up? I have long thought something would intervene to prevent an infinite collapse. I had heard previously of quark stars, though this obviously takes things to a new level. Just get out your telescope to see quantum gravity in action. A clarification that the SKA is a ground based continental scale telescope and it might take nearly 10 years to get the full results from it. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array#Description. The Square Kilometer array reminds me of the Allen or "One Hectare" array at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Telescope_Array.

Interesting to see Al Gore's Senate testimony last week (see C-SPAN website for example). He indirectly mentions TP in saying that soil carbon sequestration is promising but not yet verifiable enough for full inclusion in the Copenhagen treaty negotiations.

In the new Susan Soloman et. al. paper, CO2 enhancement after 1000 years is 40% of the present value (instead of 20% I had previously thought). Warming stays about constant for 1000+ years, even if ALL emissions stop today. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html Considering that current CO2 levels are already disruptive on things like Arctic Ice I'd suggest the target CO2 level should be a value of less than today's. Emissions cuts should thus be very deep, roughly 80-90% globally by 2050 and 90-95% in the U.S.? Cuts should really be as close as we can get to 100% as soon as practically possible. Only environmentally reasonable solution I see is finding ways to increase soil uptake and things like that.

I would suggest a slightly more nuanced answer about grassland and methane. For grassland, for those buffalo that are grazing on land that was naturally grassland to begin with it seems to be relatively benign to the environment. The US clearly had millions (I think ~100 million) of buffalo grazing sustainably and naturally on grassland in its past. So the type of grassland ecosystem would be a factor I'd say. For methane, it is many times more potent than CO2, however it lasts only about 8-12 years in the atmosphere. CO2 lasts a fair amount longer, some of it for many thousands of years, so in the long run in terms of reversibility I would suggest CO2 may have more concern. This depends perhaps more clearly on the relative amounts of CO2 and methane being discussed, rather than simply the share of emissions of each species. At any rate, what is the methane production of grass-fed vs corn fed? Perhaps its true that even 100 million buffalo thundering around on the plains would be insufficient to meet the demand for meat?

Yes, apparently the main item for CO2 emissions is that buffalo/bison are usually grass-fed and this is carbon neutral compared with the energy intensive grain production for most cattle. Transportation is less by comparison. Methane may be a factor, though it has a shorter lifetime than CO2 in the atmosphere. The other main factor is land use. Grass-fed does take more land though at least it seems like a more "natural" use of the land. Yet whether there's enough grass for everyone to eat buffalo is uncertain. So we need fewer people on the Earth, yet it is less CO2 intensive to eat grass-fed buffalo, even if it is transported a bit. Here is an NPR interview that gives plenty to chew on... http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=08-P13-00006&segmentID=4