The Urge to Explore

"John Schilling" wrote in message
...
In article , Mike
Schilling
says...

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 22:19:03 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Mike
Schilling" made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

[Villainy of James Watt]

Odd that the title of this is "Bill Moyers Smears a Better Man Than
Himself". I can't recall when Moyers was indicted on 18 counts of
felony perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand jury
and had to plea-bargain his way out of it.

Regardless, it's an urban legend, as you pointed out. Who is the
better man is subjective, depending on what criteria one wants to use.

Sure, comitting felonies

He wasn't convicted.

Nor tried; he accepted a plea bargain.


This is the part where Keith Lynch informs us all that James Watt was a
Good and Decent Man, innocent of any wrongdoing, who was railroaded by
an Evil District Attorney out to rack up another conviction on his
scoreboard no matter the cost.


If you can document that Watt was represented by a public defender, I'll
listen as you develop this argument further.

"horseshoe7" writes:

wrote:



We alter? We have no real reason to believe we ARE altering the climate.
So far what we're seeing is within natural variation.

Glaciers which have been in place for thousands of years
are melting, worldwide.

Yes, we are in an inter-glacial period - that is what glaciers do
during an inter-glacial period - melt.


We have been in the interglacial for thousands of years
now. Suddenly, glaciers across the planet which have
survived five to eleven thousand years are melting,
and melting significantly. Glaciers which withstood
the Medieval warming, and the Holocene thermal maximum.

As to interglacials, do a little reading on them. You seem
to have no real idea as to what they are.

CO2 levels are higher than they
have been for millions of years.

... and the playing of the game of baseball hasn't happenned in
millions of years - therefore, playing BASEBALL leads to glaciers
melting AND global warming.

The parallel you are attempting to draw is false.

We know the optical properties of CO2. Well, most of
us know something about them - you apparently choose
ignorance.

Given their properties, it is not a case of confusing
correlation with causation - we have a causative agent.
The equations of radiative transfer (ever looked at them?)
can be used to estimate the effect of the extra CO2 and this
estimate is in line with what is actually happening.

We've no evidence of
natural variation happening this rapidly, other than
asteroid impact or ice age oscillations.

So, we better start to panic - and I mean RIGHT NOW!

Did I say panic?

To imply that I did would be deeply dishonest. You aren't
dishonest, are you?

--
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University

(Wayne Throop) writes:

:: We have no real reason to believe we ARE altering the climate.

:
: Glaciers which have been in place for thousands of years are melting,
: worldwide. CO2 levels are higher than they have been for millions of
: years. We've no evidence of natural variation happening this rapidly,
: other than asteroid impact or ice age oscillations.

I thought it was demonstrated by isotopic analysis that lots of the
CO2 increase was from burning fossil fuels? Am I misremembering?

No, you are remembering correctly.

The C13/C12 ratio in fossil fuels is lower that that of the
atmosphere, so if the excess CO2 is due to fossil fuel
burning the atmospheric C13/C12 ratio should be falling

And in fact since 1850 the ratio has fallen vastly more than
changes typical of natural variability - five times as much
as it fell at the end of the last ice age, for example.

The decline starts about 1850.

I would think you could make a similar argument with
C-14,as fossil fuels should be virtually free of this,
but C-14 is naturally more variable than C-13 and that
may be why this line of argument is not seen as much.

--
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University

In article , Henry Spencer says...

In article . com,
wrote:
Hm. Am I misunderstanding? "In the sci-fi groups, [we assume fusion
will someday work] because hardly any of the stories we read are about
technology that doesn't ever make it". Well. Like I said... "huh"?

I mean, in the stories the funky inventions work. The ones where a
fortune is spent trying to build something that eventually we just have
to get by without are quite rare...

Actually, the most egregious examples of that are in non-SF novels by
people like Tom Clancy, who have bought into the Pentagon press releases
hook, line, and sinker. Hardly anything in all that high-tech military
hardware ever fails except when it must fail for the sake of the plot.


While there are people *like* Tom Clancy who are guilty of this, I do not
think it is fair to suggest that Tom Clancy himself is one of them.

Modern American military hardware, even the high-tech variety, is in fact
very reliable. Wasn't always the case, but it is for the most part the
press critics of the Pentagon rather than the press officers of the Pentagon
who have lost touch with the evolving reality. Systems that used to fail
more often than not, have been replaced by those that mostly don't.

And if "mostly work" isn't the same as "never fails", Clancy is one of
the few authors who shows the failures. Especially in "Red Storm Rising",
the Clancy novel with the highest density of military technology in action,
there are breakdowns across the board, for no reason other than to capture
the feel of a war in progress. His other works mostly have a narrower
focus, we only see the plot-critical technologies so when they fail it
is easy to dismiss it as "necessary for the plot".

But Clancy pretty clearly understands that the "high-tech military hardware"
sometimes does fail. And I hope you understand that it usually does not.


--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
* for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *

In article .com,
wrote:
I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured,
apart from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several
confrontations.

I recall reading a story (not sure by who or where; possibly in
an Analog Annual) where the US started getting some weird weather,
and discovered that the Soviet Union was covertly doing it.

The U.S. figured out how they were doing it, and rather than
raise a public issue, decided to just as covertly respond in
kind. Not having the experience of slowly ramping the output
of the gizmotron (?) up the point where there were some effects,
they cranked it up to what seemed like a reasonable power level.

This turned out to be somewhat excessive. Things went very
badly for the Soviet Union. I think I recall a line something
like "The Soviets have stopped firing bogon waves at us. I
wonder why?" "Uh... I don't think they *can* any more."

(That's what makes me suspect that Analog was involved. John
Campbell was somewhat more likely to take sides in the Cold War
than most other editors. Not that that's a bad thing...)

--
Infamy is like a pair of tight leather pants in | Mike Van Pelt
the Amazon. It might LOOK cool, but after just | mvp at calweb.com
a couple of hours it chafes, and that's just | KE6BVH
the start of your problems. -- Howard Tayler

wrote in message
oups.com...
horseshoe7 wrote:

GLOBAL WARMING WARS!

Aha, James Bond already did When Solar Mirrors Go Bad. Twice; _The Man
With The Golden Gun_ (ground-based, initially), and _Die Another Day_
(orbital death ray, subdivision "non-polluting". [If you don't count
launch.)

I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured, apart
from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several
confrontations.

John Dalmas' The President's General, IIRC, had some sort of weather war
between the US and USSR.

--
'Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.
He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see'
-the beatles

In article ,
Chad Irby said:

The big thing is the reaction when you tell them the punch line.
If they laugh, it's okay, but if they get all incensed and angry
(like, for example, some folks in this thread), they've got
"issues."

Issues like not liking to be the brunt of jokes? Yup, I've got those.

It's not a joke per se, it's a test of whether or not someone
*really* believes in the precautionary principle.

You're assuming that everyone who reacts badly to this stunt does so
for exactly the same reason. That strikes me as very foolish.

--
William December Starr

In article ,
(Mike Van Pelt) said:

"Ha ha, I tried to fool somebody and I succeeded! Boy, what
a fool he is!"

But it's a "deception" that can only work on someone who is
absolutely innocent of any knowledge of chemistry.

That's not true.

When such a person presumes to be dictating rules to protect the
public from chemical hazards, without bothering to do the
slightest due diligence to at least be informed by someone who has
a clue before they start coming up with these rules, they need to
be made as big and as public a fool of as is possible. Pour
encourager les autres.

That's true. Let's from now on limit the application of this stunt
to persons who are in such positions.

--
William December Starr

wrote:

I would think you could make a similar argument with
C-14,as fossil fuels should be virtually free of this,
but C-14 is naturally more variable than C-13 and that
may be why this line of argument is not seen as much.

There's also the large spike in C-14 from atmospheric testing
of thermonuclear weapons.

Paul

Mike Van Pelt wrote:
In article .com,
wrote:

I don't recall if climate change as a weapon was ever featured,
apart from the incidentality of nuclear winter in any of several
confrontations.


I recall reading a story (not sure by who or where; possibly in
an Analog Annual) where the US started getting some weird weather,
and discovered that the Soviet Union was covertly doing it.

The U.S. figured out how they were doing it, and rather than
raise a public issue, decided to just as covertly respond in
kind. Not having the experience of slowly ramping the output
of the gizmotron (?) up the point where there were some effects,
they cranked it up to what seemed like a reasonable power level.

This turned out to be somewhat excessive. Things went very
badly for the Soviet Union. I think I recall a line something
like "The Soviets have stopped firing bogon waves at us. I
wonder why?" "Uh... I don't think they *can* any more."

(That's what makes me suspect that Analog was involved. John
Campbell was somewhat more likely to take sides in the Cold War
than most other editors. Not that that's a bad thing...)

Vague recollection that the title was "Weather Wars", but no idea when
it was published, save that it has been since 1972 when my subscription
began...

Jim