JohnB

The first thing to check would be Kepler 22bs spectrum and look for oxygen lines. Since oxygen is volatile and combines easily with other molecules it would have to be constantly replentished to be present in the "free" state in the planets atmosphere. This would imply some form of photosynthesis and probable life. (As we can understand the term) As to getting there, not in the near future. Using private companies to get to orbit is a difference in kind, but technically nothing really new. To break the "Relativity Barrier", if it can be broken, is going to require a whole new type of physics that we can't even imagine right now. And even if a wonderful Stardrive was invented tomorrow we would be far too busy exploring the hundreds of stars with 100 light years to really bother with one 600 LY away. It would be on the list, but not as a high priority. The first three trips would be Alpha Centauri, then Barnards Star and then Sirius, for the logical reason that they are the closest. Then we would work outward from there. What I do find stunning and isn't mentioned in the original article is that the Kepler satellite has so far found 2,326 possible planets with 139 of them potentially habitable. It's looking like planets are very common indeed. Another article here.

Who cares? How much is he selling them for???

Also interesting is that it is perception, not neccessarily reality. If a nation has been corrupt for generations, even if the government cleans up its act it will be percieved as corrupt for quite some time afterwards.

Yes friends, you too can survive the coming catastrophe/zombie apocalypse in style in your invisible mystic mayan power cloak. http://soul2soultreasures.com/mayan_cloak/ I've got mine.

I really don't see how this works. When I look at naked women I find the blood drains from the brain to other parts of the body. Surely this leads to oxygen starvation for the brain thereby lowering brain function?

Amazing workmanship. I didn't see any ignition equipment so I presume it's compression ignition. But wow.

Add another male. I'm not sure the Anthropomorphism was of great interest to me, but I'm now really wondering how many males are buying costumes to dress up their cat or dog.

Two quick points. 1. That 98% (or more usually 97%) isn't out of 20,000. It came from an online questionairre and is actually 75 out of 77 people that were classified as "Climate Scientists". The silly thing is that it should have been 100% considering the vagueness of the questions. Heck, even I would have answered yes to them, so it proves little. 2. The Sun has changed in output. While TSI hasn't changed , since we've had the satellites up there to measure the content of the radiation changes. One of the principles of the Greenhouse Effect is that incoming short wave radiation (UV) is "converted" to long wave radiation (IR) at the surface. So what happens when the Sun produces more UV radiation? More of it reaches the surface and is converted to IR or "heat" and warms the planet even if CO2 remains unchanged. This means that just using TSI compared to temps doesn't show the entire picture, you need to look at the wavelengths involved. For example Measurement of Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance points out; It has to be remembered that we are talking a total change in energy of only .8% since 1850 or thereabouts. If UV goes up by 2%, how much of that will finish up as heat in the atmosphere? Pity the full article is behind a paywall. I don't mind paying, but I think 25 Euros is a bit steep for a 4 year old pdf file.

Rebound assumes some sort of preferred state to rebound to. If there is any evidence of preferred states it is between Ice Ages and slightly warmer than today. The long term record (400,000 years) shows numerous spikes and drops now termed Dansgaard–Oeschger events. But the drop is after the rise. The records show a precipitous rise in temps followed by the precipitous drop, this wouldn't be the case if the fluctuations were caused by "rebound" of some sort. Nor am I writing off the YD either. An impact event has been put forward as the cause but the evidence is slim and the temps don't really match the profile of an impact. An impact will throw up crud and cool the planet very quickly. However it doesn't stay up there very long, best estimates are 20 years or so. This being the case, we should have seen a sharp drop followed by a steady rise back to the previous temps. Even if it took 500 years for the crud to leave, the steady increase in temps should show up. What we do see is a sharp drop followed by full blown Ice Age conditions for 1,000 years and then temps rising as fast as they dropped. Meteoric dust could only explain this if we assume it stayed in the atmosphere for 950 years and then all of it was cleaned out in a 50 year period. This simply doesn't make sense. It's not that impacts don't explain the drops, they obviously can. But most of those drops occurred just after a rapid rise in temps. It is beyond possibility that every time the planet tried to lift itself out of the Ice Age a meteor arrived at exactly the right time to smack it down again. Hence the sharp rises and falls must be due to some form of "normal" forcings and not due to random events like impacts.

I'm not sure that would work too well. A resource company would have drilling rigs and mines all over the planet with only admin and sales in the US. I think you'd have to look at it industry by industry.

This question, while it had a genesis in reading about climate change isn't about climate per se. When we read about meteoric impacts we tend to think of them as occurring on land or in the water. I've read no end of articles about the ejecta and ash from a land impact and we've had big budget movies about water impacts. Giant waves, the whole bit, we all know what will happen if a big enough rock hits the water. So what happens when it hits ice? 20,000 years ago much of North America and EurAsia was covered with a couple of miles of ice. A meteorite large enough to bury itself a mile underground hitting so much ice wouldn't even make it to the dirt. It would make a big hole in the ice and most of the ejecta would be ice fragments. Would we be able to even detect that such an event had occurred? The only material available to form an ash layer would have to come from the impactor itself. Presumably most of the material would settle relatively near to the crater, but that is also on top of the ice. When the Ice Age ended and the sheets melt, all that material will get washed to the sea. (At least I would think so) So, what happens when a "city killer" hits an ice sheet 2 miles thick?

I'm sorry, but I can't let that stand unchallenged. The ice core records do indeed show precipitous drops in temperature over the the last 400,000 years but they show just as many precipitous rises in temperature. We attribute the drops to the Milancovich cycles because those cycles explain most of both the warming and cooling that we see in the records. To introduce impactors as an explanation for even a moderate percentage of the coolings leaves the associated rises in temps unaccounted for. While it is reasonable to assume impactors, the available evidence is that they were in general small (i.e. not dinosaur killers) and that their effect was either local or if global not of a long enough duration to show up in the record. Impactors large enough to effect global climate on a long term scale would have created enough ejecta to leave evidence in the sedimentary layers and the ice. There is no ash layer, ergo there were no large impactors that caused climate change.

It wasn't a fake, they did go, as these pics recently released to the Register show; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/09/apollo_17/ Finally the truth has come out; One might normally wonder why pizza and not McDonalds, but a bit of research will show that McDonalds were already well on their way to planetary hegemony at this time. Having secured footholds in most western nations and confident of the collapse of the Soviet Union by 2000, McDonalds thought that their future global domination was assured. This would have led to intense lobbying of Washington by "Big Pizza" in an emergency attempt to curtail McDonalds ability to spread beyond Earth and gain economic domination of the Solar system. That this scheme was at least partially successful is demonstrated by the complete lack of McDonalds franchises on Luna. Unfortunately these attempts were in part thwarted by "Big Burger" and "Big Wal" as these leaked photos from the Mars Rover show; However it is possible that even these two great consortiums were "pipped at the post" as it were by a newcomer in the race for Galactic Domination; The truth is out there, you only have to want to believe. Some more funny mars pics are here.

Maybe they need to look to the past for a suitable candidate? Someone superior to the current crop?

After that gem, I got nothing.

Just the banks and corporations? Or the government that enabled them as well? Banks etc couldn't have done what they have without the inplicit and explicit consent of Washington. Even if they worked together on the TP point 9 about lobbyists, the effects would be widespread.

iNow, I'd have to argue that this point from SkS is simply wrong. Milankovich cycles govern long term trends and Scafetta has shown (although how correctly I'm not sure) that there are a variety of different length cycles effecting the climate. “Empirical evidence for a celestial origin of the climate oscillations and its implications”. Surely one would have to say that if cycles are identified with periods between 5 and 100,000 years then climate is inherently cyclic. That being the case the rest of John Cooks argument is moot. I would think his argument correct concerning some mythical pendulum and variation about some fantasy normal is correct, but that is not the argument made. Short term cyclic variations on a trend are still cyclic if the long term trend is cyclic itself in nature. His argument would also seem to require a zero response time for feedback mechanisms which is impossible. If feedbacks lag the change in forcing then they will always tend to overshoot the "equilibrium" point because that point is always changing.

Hi Robp, This site might give you a hand. http://twinkle_toes_engineering.home.comcast.net/~twinkle_toes_engineering/globalwarming_physics.htm It uses this pic from Wiki to show the absorbtion patterns. Climate science is a very wide field and narrowing the search parameters can be a great help. In the case of your specific question a search on "CO2 absorbtion spectrum" will give better results than just "CO2 absorbtion" as it will target the physics rather than just general information.

I see point 8 differently. Rather than referring to their work, it refers to their opportunities. Both sides strike me as basically saying "The rules are slanted to favour the big corps and this is stifling the little guy who wants to get ahead." They're just saying it in their own different ways. To the OWS guys it's "oppression" of the majority, whereas to the TP the rules hold the little guy down and support the big guys. They might see some of the answers somewhat differently but they both see the initial problem as the same. "The rules are set up to favour the big corps and not the majority of people." Similarly it seems both sides see a problem in the lack of corporate responsibility, it's their answer that differs. OWS would increase corp responsibility by increasing the legal framework and make companies responsible to the Law. TP would do it by dumping bailouts and making companies responsible to the market. One answer is "If you stuff up you go to jail" while the other is "If you stuff up you're on your own. (And might go to jail as well.) Like I said, the two movements see the same problems, if they could agree on the solution life would get very interesting for some people very quickly. The moderates from both camps combined would almost certainly have the numbers to form a very viable third party.

Do you mean the world map or the mental picture? Either way you're welcome. Re the presentation. Do you have it stored somewhere as a PPT or similar? I'd love to read it. Either that or get it filmed and post it on youtube, I'm sure it would be worth watching. (Back to reading now)

Is it just the view from afar or do the "Occupy" people and the "Tea Party" seem to have a fair few things in common? (Ignoring the extremists of course) Both seem to be against large bailouts, too large government, lack of response to the people by the political partys. They both appear to see the same things wrong with the system but are simply describing the problems in the appropriate left or right wing vernacular. Could be interesting if the two groups decide to fight side by side on the things they agree on.

300? Have you considered a short "Hunting Season" to cull the numbers? Interesting. Our numbers have increased since Federation but the reason has stayed the same. Since some States have many more people than others if there was direct proportional representation then New South Wales and Victoria would pretty much rule the country. By giving each State an equal number of Senators we try to avoid dominance by any particular region. Where a Rep in the Lower House tries to make sure that his personal constituents aren't disadvantaged by new laws a Senator fights for his region. To put it into a Greek perspective, just say that there was a chunk of the budget going towards upgrading highways. The Senators from South Aegean would be arguing that it should include port facilities as their area is mostly islands and therefore doesn't have highways. But how did you get 300 of the sods? I would think that 4 from each Periphery would be plenty. (You haven't been allowing them to breed, have you? )

When did you change the message next to the rep buttons? I thought you might like to read this by Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu from last year. His bio at Wiki shows him to be a heavyweight in Arctic and climate research. It is a 57 meg pdf but is well worth the read especially since he goes through a lot of reconstructions going back a few thousand years and looks at temp trends from that perspective. Personally I would think that someone who makes the ISI list of "Worlds Most Cited Authors" might know a thing or two about his field. (Although I know John Cook disagrees.)

iNow, Hmmm, could be. I'm looking at things from the POV of increase in damage. After Katrina Dr Trenberth made some comments about it being stronger due to AGW and that therefore there was a non zero factor for "A" in there. Technically and strictly factually he was correct. If you accept that warming can increase the power of hurricanes and that humans are responsible for at least some of the warming, then humans must be responsible for at least some of the increase in power. But how big is the increase? Most estimates (or comments by climatologists) I've seen put the increase at 1% or so. Let's say this is true and all of the increase was due to human actions. Katrina hit with a windspeed of 175 mph, so without warming it would have had a windspeed of 173.25 mph. Would this really have made a difference? Nobody seems to be suggesting that we are going to need a new "Category 6" reference and all the estimates I've seen put future increases at less than 5% as an increase in force. Is this really noticable? Is there an effective difference between 100 mph winds and 105 mph winds? Both are going to flatten whatever they hit. But you're dodging the question. How much money would we have to spend to knock 2 inches off the sea level rise by 2100? Is that cost greater or lesser than building the sea walls 2 inches higher? How much money to knock 3 mph off the top of the windspeed of a hurricane? Unless mitigation is going to have a large effect, the difference for the money spent won't be noticable. If the difference isn't noticable, why spend the money? To me it's like the road toll. Oz figures show that vehicular defects are responsible for 1% of road deaths and drunks are responsible for 40%. If you have $10 miilion to spend do you spend it getting clunkers off the road or drunks? Infrastructure, land degradation, rising salinity, pollution in general, dealing with these will I believe bring a much greater ROI than spending to reduce the windspeed of hurricanes by 3 mph in 70 years time. You mentioned ROI for mitigation spending. What do you think those ROIs would be? (Not a loaded question) Swansont, No, once I exclude those that use dodgy proxies and "novel" statistical techniqes (that the statisticians say are wrong, BTW) I'm left with reconstructions that still show warming but it is no longer "unprecedented". There is a difference. Only if the warming is "unprecedented" could we assume that it will be hard to adapt. If the warming is something that earlier societies have easily survived, then we have little to fear. Solar and wind get the same R&D tax breaks as other industries, sometimes more. The infrastructure that some are counting as "subsidies" for coal etc also apply to wind and solar, boots, books and clothing. Yet they still can't compete without extra subsidies on top of that. Out of curiousity, since wind generators have been going up since the 70s on a large scale and have been sold commercially for nearly 80 years, just when will it stop being an "emerging" technology in need of help? An interesting point in regard to solar as well. I don't know if other places have had the same problem or simply haven't had it yet. The idea of putting panels on homes to feed back into the grid is thought to be a great idea and at first glance it is. Queensland, being the "Sunshine State" as it is has been actively encouraging this for a while now, but we are starting to have some unexpected problems. The intrinsic design of the power grid is to take power from central generators and distribute it to the end users, it was never designed to have the power go the other way. With the large uptake of solar in some areas we are experiencing local degradation of the grid due to power going "the wrong way" as it were. Our generating authorities are recommending a ban on new solar grid feeds in certain areas and a rethink on the idea in general as it is likely we will have to totally rebuild the grid if the practice gets too widespread. An electrical engineer would probably have a better idea on this but it's apparently like water. The water grid is designed to have the water flow from reservoir to household, not from household to reservoir. Obviously this doesn't effect big solar plants, just the household ones that feed into the grid from the users end. this could be an unexpected cost for an increase in solar power. TBH I'm far less opposed to solar as I am to wind. We have a spare 500,000 square miles that we could cover with solar panels out in the middle of this country and I say "Go for it". I'm very adverse to the amount of land we would have to clear for a large number of wind farms, not to mention the fact that they are bird mincers and bloody ugly. (The gearboxes don't seem to last as long as advertised either.) I'd actually prefer some sort of nukes, but our "Greens" would die of apopelexy first.

Deleting documents or requesting others to delete documents that are subject to an FOI request is an illegal act, like it or lump it. The only reason that Phil Jones wasn't charged was the relevent legislation had a requirement that for charges to be laid discovery must occur within 6 months of the act. As the 6 month period had passed no charges could be laid. Both the Britisn and Scottish Parliments are modifying the law so that this loophole is closed in the future. I put it to you that when the actions of a person result in new laws those actions are not viewed as "legal" or "acceptable" by Parliments or the general public at large. I also put it to you that it doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to know that destruction of documents subject to an FOI request is a very big no no in Western nations. This is basic stuff here, not some fine point of law. To his credit Dr Mann did not delete any emails on the subject and was able to produce a zip archive to the Investigating Committee containing the emails. In testimony to the committee (although where to find that now is a good question) he stated that he thought the request was a bit "off" so to speak and expressed concern about the request. However he did forward the request to "Gene". Given those as the facts it is very hard to understand how the Committee found "that there exists no credible evidence that Dr. Mann had ever engaged in, or participated in, directly or indirectly, any actions with intent to delete, conceal or otherwise destroy emails, information and/or data related to AR4, as suggested by Dr. Phil Jones." If forwarding the request to delete isn't an action, at least indirectly, with "intent to delete" I really don't know what is. Swansont, the problem I and others have with the investigations is that they "smell", to say the least. It's not so much the findings as the way they were arrived at that is a cause for concern. Consider if a criminal investigation was held the same way. Exactly how balanced or open or fair would you consider a judicial investigation where the judge was a friend of the defendant, as are the jury and prosecutor and only friends of the defendant were interviewed as part of the investigation? The reasoning behind some of the investigations is "dubious" to say the least. From a Penn State inquiry; There are similar comments elsewhere in the report. I find this an absolutely bizarre bit of circular reasoning. "Naughty" actions are "impossible" if you are successful, Dr Mann is successful and therefore cannot have been naughty. I would point out the Bernie Madoff was quite good at getting money too and was also quite respected in his (extremely competitive) field, for that matter so was Richard Nixon. Clive Crook, who is a "warmist" BTW wrote this article for the Financial Times about the investigations. Similarly I'm not too sure that right now is a good time to be arguing for Penn States ability to conduct thorough internal investigations. It is worthwhle noting that none of the British inquiries actually asked the simple question "Did you delete any emails?" One would think that if such things were the topic of the investigation then that question would be asked. For my part, and I do want to make this perfectly, crystal clear. I do not believe that Dr Mann or any others have engaged in professional misconduct by using false data or that type of thing. I think that there is a lot of confirmational bias going on and conflicting data might be being ignored on that basis. (Along the lines of since it conflicts, it must be wrong and shouldn't be used) I think that there have been very poor statistical techniques being used and I'm concerned that "new" and "novel" statistical techniques are turning up in the climate literature after being reviewed by climate scientists and not competent statisticians. Any "wrongdoings" are the result of confirmation bias, gatekeeping and perhaps "noble cause corruption" and are not the result of any wilful attempt to mislead, commit fraud, etc. There has been quite a bit over the years about the FOI things with many on the "establishment" side saying that there was no need for the requests as the data was already "publicly available", the Section 6 defence used by UEA to refuse an FOI request and that FOI requests have been done for the purpose of "harrassing" or otherwise. I'd like to quote from the Information Commissioners ruling on this as to just how "publicly available" the data is; Please note Paragraph 31. "Publicly available" (according to UEA) is a four stage process, each stage involving a different computer program to carry out. The Commissioner disagrees. Remember this the next time you read that nasty "deniers" are making FOI requests for data that is "publicly available". The devil, as always, is in the details.