Greg Boyles

Paint is effectively a clear lacquer with pigment added. If the smooth surface of the lacquer is broken by large pigment particles then the light is scattered from the surface rather than reflected. Analogy.......pebble concrete as opposed to smooth surfaced concrete.

Perhaps consciousness is absolute, i.e. either you are conscious or you are not. But there are clearly varying levels of cognition among different animals. I wonder if an insect is conscious. It clearly seeks to escape from a predator that wants to eat it. Does that mean it is self aware and fears death? Compare it to an earth worm that doesn't appear have the same imperative to escape from a predator. I guess the question is if the worm is self aware and fears death but, when exposed at the soil surface, lacks the necessary sesnses to detect the presence of a predator, e.g. a bird.

Drill, sanding disk (80 grit), piece of aluminium frame or tube and patience. Or shredded aluminium foil might work just as well as powder.

I assume that it is theoretically possible to seperate alloys via fractional distillation. I believe differential electrolysis would work as well. For example, if you made an anode out of a lump of brass then I assume the zinc would ionize preferentially into solution and the copper would precipitate and possibly corrode depending on the electrolyte.

I don't think you can seperate any mixture of elements or componds based on melting point. The mixture has a composite of physical properties of the two subtsances forming the mixture, of which melting point is one. When heated the mixture melts at the composite melting point and not differentially. It might be possible to fractionally distill the alloy as is done with oil based hydrocarbons but the temperatures required would make such a process economically unviable. Might be more practical to use such methods as differential dissolution in acids, e.g. seperating zinc and copper in brass with sulfuric acid. Or perhaps differential electrolysis. But neither would be economically viable on a large scale I suspect. It would be more viable to standardise and regulate alloys as much as possible and then recycle them differentially. Same with plastics.

I don't knowe about that. Plant tissue is composed of, in large part, by cellulose. Soil contains large amounts of decaying plant tissue and therefore cellulose. Cellulose is composed of glucose and is broken down by a plethora of bacteria and fungi. So there must be some glucose present in soils. Perhaps because soil contains so many bacteria and fungi, any glucose that is realeased from cellulose is immediately consumed and hence measurable soil glucose is always low at any one point in time. When I was doing microbiology one of the key taxonomic characteristics of many bacteria and fungi (not only the medically significant species) was which disaccharides and monosaccharides they were capable of metabolising. They wouldn't have evolved such metabolism if sugars in general were not available in soils etc.

What is the nature of its toxicity?

I.E. The pigment particle size.

That's what I would have thought, i.e. that ATP is not stable in the extracellular environment. My understanding is that ATP/ADP is purely an intracellular energy currency and that glucose is the extracelllar energy currency.

Rain forest is not just defined by rainfall. It is also defined by the type of vegetation. Wet Sclerophyll Forest and Rain Forest have the same or similar rainfall, but they both have very different vegetation. Google EVC / Ecological Vegetation Class.

If Australia, Canada and the US were sealed off from the rest of the world and had to sustain their current consumption from their own resources then they would all be grossly over populated. They would either have to dramatically reduce their numbers or else dramatically reduce individual consumption. The only way they are able to sustain their current population levels/consumption is by taking resources from developing countries for a pittance. I don't comprehend how you cannot see that human population levels is the primary problem. For every other animal species on Earth, numbers are determined by available resources. They build up while suffcient resources are available and crash when the population grows too large and exhausts those resources - precisely what we are in the process of doing to ourselves at present. Why is it that you think those same ecological rules do not apply to our species?

The problem is your perception of importance and success. Your perception of the importance and success of human beings is based on christian values and not evolutionary fact. If the total number of individuals of an animal species, or group of smilar animal species, is what is important then insects would be far more important than humans. The total biomass of insects hugely exceeds the total biomass of humans. We could reasonably conclude that insects are the dominant form of life on Earth. Or what about evolutionary longevity of a species or group of related species, is that not an evolutionary indication of succes and importance? Again insects would win hands down. They have existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years and survived multiple mass extinction events and ice ages etc. Humans and our ancestors have existed for not much more than a million years. And how likely is it that we will continue existing for another million years given what we are doing to our own nest?

Then perhaps we might be forced to consider genetically engineering some sort of biological vector that temporarily infects folks and causes a prolonged period of infertility (several months). I am not suggesting permanent sterilisation here. Perhaps some cold virus strains that do not have any lasting impact on human populations. Multiplied across 7 billion humans, several months of infertility when infected by the genetically modified cold virus, would have to significantly reduce average fertility. Unless the genetically modified strains can mutate to form yet a new strain that can re-infect the population, you would have to continually modify new strains to have any lasting effect on global fertility - a bit of a fail safe mechanism.

Paints with large pigment particle sizes have a matt finish while paints with a very small pigment particle size have a glossy finish. If you have a matt finish that you want to make glossy then simply spray a clear varnish over the top of it.

What makes you think that the bottles water companies do any of this stuff to their product. My wife worked for a water filter company in Australia and one of their clients was one of the bottled water companies. All they do is attach a stock standard water filter to their tap and fill the bottles. I think you are allowing yourself to be sucked in by the marketing nonsense from the bottled water companies.

The west is absolutely responsible for excessively high populations in the developing world because we choose to interfere with the ecological balance of those human populations by providing foreign and medical aid in times famine and plague and thus interfering in mother nature's means of re-dressing human population/resource imbalances. Therefore we have a responsibility to help the developing world to reduce its fertility and population. But the developing world also has an expectation that the west will help them to become as wealthy as we are. This is an entirely resonable expectation however the simple fact is that there are to many of them - The Earth cannot sustain a world of rich countries particularly when the population of the developign world is increasing rapidly. Given this the developing world must accept that they must accept their part of human global responsbility and accept fertility and population reduction as a pre-condition for increasing their collective standard of living. I understand what you are saying swansont. But even 'actual physical effects of overpopulation' is political by nature because not everyone accepts that those physical effects and population levels are linked in any way. It is almost impossible to avoid getting into debates of a political nature on these issues. Been there and done this before on other forums. I presume that is partly why you have seperated the subject of climate change into a sub-forum of earth science. I must say that you are the most impartial moderator I have come across when it comes to this subject. Most are fully partisan against any notion of the number of humans being the main problem with climate change and environmental degredation.

Noted moderator. But population is a legitimate aspect of climate change and politics is built into both issues.

Unfortunately it is education that allows humans to rise above instictual behaviour to some extent and be more than rabbits. In the developing world education standard are low and hence they lack the capacity to connect their high fertility with their impoverishment. When the west offers them foreign aid, our higher education standards should mean that we are capable of seeing that if we prevent deaths then we must compensate by preventing birthsif we are to improve their circumstances on lasting basis.

That is debatable in Australia at present. Bureau of statistics figures show that, if immigration was frozen, Australia's population would still increase to 26 million or so if current fertility trends were maintained. No doubt true but the fact remains that the Earth cannot sustain a world or rich countries. It is pretty clearl that the global ecosystem is severely stressed already and raising the third world to our standard of living in order to reduce their fertility may be the straw that breaks the camels back. You must concede that it is possible that it may just not feasible to reduce third world ferility by this means and that they mzy have to cooperate in reducing their fertility and their population before they can expect to enjoy our living standards. If the west has to give up its wasteful consumption then the third world must give up its excessive fertility. The the idea that economic well being is dependant in large populations is a fallacy. Reducing third world population will improve their individual living standard, not make it worse. The same amount of wealth and food spread shared among less people. Sounds like a climate denier demanding evidence that anthropogenic CO2 causes climate change. Except that scientific consensus and clear evidence is never enough to satisfy them. They will always cherry pick that data which suports their mind set. There is abundant archeological and historical evidence that past civilisations went through INCREASED political instability and war etc when their populations exceeded their food supplies - Rapanui of Easter Island, Maori of New Zealand, Mayans, Rome and many others. Blah blah blah. Many third world woman would disagree with you that giving them a choice on how many children they have is an 'afront to humanity'. Funny how it is nearly always sactimonious males that make comments like these! Blah blah blah. I don't believe that I made any mention of sterilisation. And if they are starving then I don't think they would have any complaints about being administered a long acting subcutaneous contraceptive anyway. We = western countries => generally below replacement level fertility They = developing countries => generally average fertility well above 2 children per couple. But, given that western consumption is so high, we may also have to consider reducing our populations if we are no prepared to reduce our consumption and our living standards.

I am proposing population reduction by: 1) Not encouraging westerners to have more children that they otherwise would through baby bonuses etc and by restricting welfare to the first two children only. 2) By simply facilitating woman in the third world to make similar choices to western woman in not being pregnant and raising children for the majority of their lives through provision of free contraception and family planning services as an integral part of foreign aid, i.e. for every life save at least one preganancy should be prevented. And yet another irrational reponse re my parents having me. The other one is that I should not have had any children myself. If my parents chose not to have me then I wouldn't be here to complain about the fact, so arguments about humans that will never come into existence due to the use of contraception are just plain silly and childish! And if everyone one on Earth stopped at two children or were faciltated to do so then we would not be having this debate. 99.9% of the scientific community disagrees with you. I would prefer to place my faith in science and the scientific community rather than your say so on this matter. A couple of hundred year ago people like you were just as convinced that the earth was flat and that the earth was the centre of the universe etc.

I live in Epping on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I am a former medical scientist and windows/C++ programmer I am currently running a small landscaping business as well as working casually in the conservation sector (weed control and revegetation etc). My landscaping business is closely aligned with my work in conservation sector. BSc University of Melbourne Graduate Diploma in Computer Science Latrobe University I suppose you could say that I am slowly gaining a partial botany degree, bit by bit, through my current occupation. I am extremely frustrated that over population is not being discussed as an environmental and climate change issue. Although this has recently changed in Australia thanks to Dick Smith, Kelvin Thompson, Bob Carr, Tim Flannery and several other prominent Australians.

Humans are clearly not the sole cause of current climate change. Indeed climate shifts have been a part of Earth's history for hundreds of millions of years. But its is abundantly clear that we are having some effect on the natural climate cycle. And it is unlikely to be compatible with our current civilisation or our current numbers.

Why is it that the first reaction of you anthropocentrists is for advocates of population reduction to top themself? You are just being irrational! I have suggested fertility reduction not culling or sterilisation! "Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims" Martin Luther King Jr, 1966

Climate change is just one of the many symptoms of human over population. Political instability, war and genocide are other symptoms. And climate change will exascerbate theses symptoms. Why aren't we collectively addressing over population and including population and fertility reduction in the mix of actions to reduce CO2 emissions?