Mr Skeptic

And yet my prediction is based on experts' opinion, and on the equivalent of billions upon billions of years of observation. I didn't put a time frame on my prediction. Within less than 7.5 billion years, the sun will turn red giant and nearly engulf the earth. Which would cause warming by thousands of degrees, as par my prediction. This is predicted by the models, though you would never have been able to predict it from projections from the past. I do know that you did some calculations, but for some reason I trust the opinion of experts who spent years studying the question more than yours. Yes, the models are really far from perfect. But long term trends are unlikely to be much better, especially when the conditions are changing so rapidly. You don't think that climatologists have ignored the past long term trends when building their models, do you? Remember, models are simply built from past trends. Only in some circumstances. For example, if you tried to predict the future oil prices based only on past trends while ignoring supply, you'd probably underpredict it. If you'd like, I can do the calculations for a linear increase in oil prices based on the past 35 years

What increased violence? Back in the good old days, people used to pay to watch people fight to the death in the colosseum.

Well, I predict that the earth will be warm by several thousand degrees. I mean, why listen to people who spent a good portion of their lives studying climate and who have incredible resources, why not believe a number I might or might not have pulled out of my ass?

Perhaps because a few people in the religion vehemently attack science, most people in the religion pay significantly less attention to science because of their beleifs, and only a few religious people (yourself included) could be considered friends of science. Religion has historically, is currently, and will for the forseable future attack science to some degree, because occasionally science and religion overlap. Others who attack science, including people like global warming deniers and some politicians are also frequent targets from the scientific community, no surprise there either.

No good deed goes unpunished. Anyhow, it's quite understandable if no amount of discussion with random people on an internet forum would change your mind about that kind of subject.

It's not really about complexity though. There was a fancy name for a property, which meant something like "unnatural." For example, a perfect sphere of ultrapure sodium would be extremely good evidence that it was made by some process other than nature, even though it is simple in the extreme. Much better than a vaguely arrowhead shaped rock in any case. A pile of mud, on the other hand, is incredibly complex (eg to describe the shape and position of every particle in it), but very "natural". However, since ID is all about proving that living things were ID'ed, and living things just happen to be complex, they chose the name irreducible complexity. All faith is based on some kind of evidence though. It just turns out that personal experiences and stories aggregated and passed down through many generations (stories, myths, fairy tales) aren't as reliable as repeatable, objective evidence (science). And of course religion had some use in bringing people in a group together, as well as for altering their behavior if only slightly. Then your question is just trolling... but its an interesting subject. Which is pretty much a prerequisite for even trying to understand it... But that need not be the case. I'd say that the fundamental particles are irreducible, though not complex. Break down an electron for me, make my day!

Maybe so, but I can think of a few people who can't seriously be described as being a "decent person." If they occasionally made a great post and have been around long enough, they would accumulate rep points, even if the vast majority of what they post is stuff that makes crap look good (at least crap is good fertilizer!).

Some radioisotopes, like carbon-14, are made by other methods (in the case of C-14, cosmic rays + nitrogen).

Looks like the question is about the solubility of oxygen in water at atmospheric concentration and pressure (as opposed to for pure oxygen).

Well, that would work (unlike drilling through the earth, which would have trouble with pressure and the different spinning rates of the earth and its core), but of course it would be expensive. I'd say it would have more use than just passenger entertainment or transportation, though. There are a few manufacturing techniques that could use zero gravity too. Dunno if it would be more cost effective than just going to space though.

To Vishal: It seems to me that you'd have to use math to describe anything in a qualitative way. If something can be described, but not by current math, then a new branch of math is formed to describe that. Math and logic are just formalized thought. Any thought you have could theoretically be described mathematically, even if we need to build a computer model of your brain to describe it. Suggesting that something cannot be described mathematically is suggesting it can't be described.

To lucaspa: I've read elsewhere how important agriculture was to the deveolpment of human society. But the basics of agriculture are not that complicated -- put the seed in the ground and wait. Other primates are quite smart too. Would it be possible to teach a monkey or ape agriculture? What might result of that?

Yes. And apparently it happens faster the smaller the black hole is (cause the distortion in spacetime is sharper or something).

I'd venture to say that some things really do have intrinsic value ... usable energy, materials, computational capabilities, etc ... all have great value to all living things, even ones that can't understand what these are. So I'd say they have intrinsic value in some vague sort of way.

As I understand it, black hole evaporation is due to virtual particle pairs (mostly photons) appearing just outside the event horizon. If one of these is sucked into the black hole, it cannot annihilate with its pair, and also that the pair has gained enough energy to become real at the expense of the gravitational potential energy of the black hole. So the black hole has lost some energy to things outside its event horizon.

Here's how I would do it. First, assume that the area in question is the minimum size, so that its area would be [math]A = \pi r^2 = \pi 37^2[/math]. The power of the air flow per turbine would be [math]Power = 1/2 * 1 kg/m^3 * A * v * v^2 = 2*99/66 MW[/math] (to generate 99MW at 50% efficiency with 66 turbines), so then [math]v = (\frac{4*99000000}{66 * \pi 37^2})^{1/3} m/s = 11.17 m/s = 40.2 km/hour [/math]. I'm ignoring that the turbine has 3 blades since we know its efficiency. Overall, a very nice, fun, practical, and eco-friendly math problem.

True enough. But iNow is claiming that god and unicorn are interchangeable because they are both imaginary. I am simply pointing out to him that they are different, even if neither of them exists. A better analogy would be lightning or a dog fart creating a table from a tree. There is evidence of lightning destroying trees, so that is much more probable than a dog fart doing it. No, my analogy is correct. A creator god is by definition able to create whatever he is supposed to have created, whereas a unicorn...isn't. So claiming a unicorn created the world involves both bad logic and bad premise, whereas claiming god created the world involves only a bad premise. In a universe in which gods and unicorns existed, it would still be wrong to say that a unicorn created the world. --- Anyhow, I feel I have explained that well enough, won't continue on this subject.

No... If you invent your own imaginary being, then you can give it arbitrary powers. However, the imaginary beings that were already invented have more specific powers. If you go around saying that unicorns are omnipotent, then you shouldn't wonder why people think you're a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

All that *waves vaguely at the last couple dozen posts about lifestyle* is why I think that a carbon tax is the best solution. Make the people pay for their pollution, and they will magically start cutting back on their own, in whatever way they choose. No need to regulate them or shame them into changing their lifestyle, they will do it on their own. If the tax was included foreign pollution as well, it would allow the nation to pressure their trading partners to cut down on pollution. A green subsidy might also be useful to encourage or help people with the more expensive things like electric or hybrid vehicles.

iNow, when you get around to proving that gods and unicorns don't exist, let me know. In any case, in saying that a unicorn (which might not exists) can do stuff like create the earth, you are making two mistakes: invalid argument, in that unicorns as described in folklore do not have such power and so would be unable to do something like create the earth, and secondly, a potentially invalid premise. Whereas someone who says an omnipotent being created the earth has a valid argument, even if is not sound (the premise might not be true).

I do hope that by "unborn" you mean well before the third trimester -- before the brain has developed much.

Well, for one thing, unicorns are horselike one-horned creatures that have a few magical properties but can be hunted, etc. God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent (where omni means very but not necessarily all) and cares about people's personal lives. Hence, gods would be able to do things that unicorns can't, and anyone who says different would rightly be called a fool. Given the premise that unicorns and gods exist, they would be different entities with different abilities. What you're saying makes just as much sense as me saying that it would make just as much sense to say that a tree was destroyed by a chihuahua's fart instead of by lightning, in as much as they are both real things. -- I do agree with you that purple unicorn farts are just as infalsifiable as god though.

Well, considering how many species are going exinct and how many more will go extinct due to current human activities (habitat destruction, poaching, pollution, global warming, ...), it seems that to preserve the earth's current genetic diversity we will need to actively go and collect samples before they go exinct. Not just for the warm fuzzy feeling, either -- the diversity represents evolution's work over billions of years, and the value of this data to GM is tremendous. I know that you were talking about crops, and those are the most important to retain. However, there are already many seed bank projects aimed at preserving their diversity, if not in the wild at least in the lab.

You could always use the google calculator. I am so lazy nowadays.

Yes. Compare to having just an incredibly thin window on your car, it will still heat up far more rapidly than if the windows were open. The essence of the green house effect is that energy goes in more easily than it comes out. In an actual green house or your car, most of the effect is by trapping the hot air. In the atmosphere, the effect is due to absorbing infrared light. Though the atmosphere is transparent to much of the light emitted by the sun, parts of the atmosphere (called green house gases) are more opaque to infrared (which is emitted by warm objects). So energy goes in as higher energy light, but does not as easily get emitted as lower temperature infrared radiation.