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This picture is on the Wikipedia "petrified wood" page, saying it's from the Petrified Forest National Park.
In which case it's certainly not White Oak. Of the 9 identified species present in fossil form in the park, all are extinct. The fossils were formed some 225 million years ago, while oaks don't exist in the fossil record until the Paleogene, ~50 million years ago. Angiosperms won't even exist for another 75 million years.
Also the bark morphology looks much more like a conifer - something cedar-esque.
I don't suppose you've spent much time in the desert, have you?
Many deserts, including the Sahara can drop to about and often below freezing at night. This is often deceptive and contradictory to what most people think, but it gets cold. Similar regions and climates, which match Sanghelios get really hot, but also really cold as well. You've got a variety of factors to consider, including wind too.
Sanghelios is not a tropical climate, where the average temperature is like 80+ year around. It's a wide and varied world with a range of climates. Halopedia cites surface temperatures averaging from 23 degrees Fahrenheit - 204 degrees Fahrenheit.
That said, the Grunts aren't necessarily fond of their home world's climate, nor do they really quite thrive in it. The warmth and safety that a fire would offer would be welcome when your life is a struggle against freezing the death everyday back at home.
Edit: No idea why I'm being down voted, I'm not saying anything wrong or untrue heh.
Well, lets get to work then
Information on perchlorates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchlorate
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-future-issues-perchlorate-poses-colonizing.html
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/152738/
So, on Earth bacteria eats perchlorates(henceforth refered to as PER), suggesting one way to go might be introducing bacteria in the enviroment.
Secondly, perchlorates are highly reactive, and the absence of a water cycle on Mars, as well as it's stale, unchanging geology, seems to be the primary reason why PER can exist in such quantities on the surface.
This to me suggests the following ways to deal with the problem:
Anybody entering and leaving a habitat go through a decontamination procedure involving dusting off with high pressure gas, martian CO2 to save oxygen.
Pressure suites are then blasted with steam, to neutralize PER. Reducing agents or PER-consuming bacteria are added to the steam to more fully neutralize the PER.
Pressure suites are stored in a room in the immidiate vincinity to airlocks, nobody walks around in the habitat in a suit that has been used outside.
Introduce a water cycle on Mars, and let the water and subsurface rock, plus introduced bacteria, neutralize the PER on a long term basis.
If the great flood happened, how do you explain that the pyramids that were built before the flood show no signs of ever being underwater?
Also if everyone except Noah and his family died, how is it possible that there is no interruption in Chinese writings that we are able to trace to dates before the flood?
EDIT: Also, 8 people are no way a Minimum Viable Population to re-populate the earth
True, but manufacturing solar panels requires huge amounts of energy, which currently comes from fossil fuels. Estimates for the Energy Return Over Energy Invested (EROI) for solar panels vary, and there are many solar technologies, but it is safe to say that a solar panel takes several years to repay the energy invested in creating it.
I couldn't find any information on what the average lifespan is, but I think a Tardigrade (AKA water bear) is an animal that could theoretically live for 1,000 years. Apparently they can enter a latent state where they cease to physically age; The website I linked to has said that one was revived after 120 years of being in a latent state. Hopefully someone more educated on the topic than me can shed some light on the feasibility of such a long lifespan for this creature
It is over-reached, in a profoundly useless way. Our water and air are not clean, and we're steadily ruining the most important aquifers in the country.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion
The founders of the country intended these to be states rights/peoples rights issues, knowing full well that rulemaking like this on the federal level would undoubtedly bring tyranny and nothing of actual value. While you guys sit here bickering about "regulation."
The Supreme Court is not liberal/conservative. It's originalist/expansionist.
No, the earth would have been either mostly or completely molten at the time of the impact. Remember that the planet was only a 100 million years old at the time. The collision may have added additional heat to the planet, though I am unsure of the scale of this. We have found precambrian rocks dated at 4 billion years so we know that there must have been a solid crust at that point. Today most of the heat in the earth's crust is generated by the decay of radioactive elements, while the mantle gets it's heat through heat transfer from the core. In the crust uranium, thorium and potassium are the main heat generating elements. The heat from the core is generated by the density of the core and slowly decrases as heat is transfered through the earth until it reaches the surface, however the cooling is countered by the radioactive decay of elements. It is theorized that this heat and the subsequent melting of the mantle is the cause for plate tectonics, although there are conflicting opinions about this. Here's a very interesting Wikipedia article on the heat budget of the earth and also a short introduction to the formation of the earth's crust.
I recall learning about this in my ecology classes but didn't recall offhand what the numbers were so I did some searching. It appears that between 50 and 500 individuals would be needed for a successful population. 50 individuals would prevent inbreeding while 500 would ensure genetic variability. The site I linked just gives a brief overview of minimum viable population sizes but has citations if you want to read further. As for the male to female ratio I'm assuming an equal ratio but am unaware if this is the case.
Deserts are not always sunny, especially near the coast. Some parts of the driest deserts in the world are often enveloped by fog.
The Baltic Sea is essentially a very large fjord (a dilution basin type), it experiences limited, intermittent water exchange with the North Sea.
A shallow and narrow connection with the North Sea means that water remains in the Baltic Sea for about 30 years. These two factors combine to make the Baltic Sea one of the largest brackish water bodies in the world. (source)
So I did a little digging, and I found the answer! Wikipedia pointed out that the island is a research station, so I started looking through papers, eventually finding this diagram in this article.
The northernmost star in that diagram matches the location of the ring seen on the map, so I focused on Phylica arborea.
This WWF article held the answer: > The "Grand Bois" has been fenced and bordered by introduced cypresses as protection from the cattle. A few isolated Phylica trees subsist outside of this area either in protected zones or in areas inaccessible to the cattle.
http://www.eoearth.org/files/113401_113500/113483/EarthCrustLayers.gif
The real Earth's crust isn't terribly thick either. It only parallels real life, as most video games do. I guess everything between the mantle and the core is supposed to be the Nether.
> That's going to happen because of cars being all over the place no matter what.
No, gas engines emit about 1/20 the NOx per gallon burned as diesels. That's why EPA and CARB set these requirements on diesel engines to reduce NOx.
> It's a California emissions requirement.
This is a national requirement implemented by EPA. CARB also has similar requirements that apply only to California, but the real story here is that VW lied to consumers across the country.
> Many states don't even bother with diesel emissions.
These emissions are regulated at the federal level on engine manufacturers. States can choose to implement stricter regulations (like California), but most choose to simply go with the federal limits. This is actually a good thing since it's very difficult for engine manufacturers to have to make different models for different states.
> Besides, gas emissions are smaller and weigh less, so they persist in the air longer and go deeper into your lungs. Diesel emissions are larger and heavier, so they sink faster and don't go as deep into your lungs.
NOx is NOx, regardless of the type of fuel that created it. EPA regulates 6 common air pollutants, of which NOx is only one. Gas and diesel engines produce different amounts of the 6 pollutants per gallon burned and thus each type of engine has regulations specific to the pollutants that each type of engine produces. Besides NOx, diesel engines also produce more particulates (soot), and EPA also has regulations specific to diesel engines to control this. The particulate emissions might be what you are thinking of when you say that diesel emissions are "heavier." The relative density of the emissions has nothing to do with how long they persist as a pollutant or how much they impact human health.
What if you are wrong?
As an example, the London Smog Disaster is a very important lesson in why coal emissions are managed. With over 12,000 deaths accounted for in a single winter, including infants, do you feel any one industry have the right to decide how they will manage emissions? Technology and industry both failed, and here is the result:
Quote: > It was later determined that only two-thirds of the original 4,000 dead were over 65 years of age. Deaths in the middle-age range of 45 to 64 years experienced death rates three times greater than normal during the event. Infants were also highly-susceptible to the pollution-laden smog and infant mortality doubled during the week of December 5, 1952.
What about chemical disasters like the Union Carbide Bhopal cyanide poisoning disaster, killing thousands of families in horrible deaths in their sleep? By moving their corporate operations to a de-regulated developing nation, Union Carbide reduced "costs" with the following results:
Quote: >A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
What if you are wrong?
El Nino/La Nina is a global weather oscillation which I'm sure you already know about. It causes changes in air pressure and sea surface temperature across the Pacific, as well as changes in the trade winds which travel West around the equator.
When El Nino occurs, it becomes very wet in South American areas where it would usually be dry, and very dry in areas like Indonesia where it should be wet. This, of course, has effects such as mud-slides, droughts, hurricanes etc.
When La Nina occurs, there is extreme weather in areas which get heavy weather anyway, such as the monsoon getting much heavier.
There has been a link between increases in GHG since 1978
(a nice link to an NOAA graph on it: http://www.eoearth.org/files/113201_113300/113293/620px-Aggi_2009.fig2.png)
and an increase in the El Nino/La Nina southern oscillation
(here's a diagram with the red being the length and severity, i.e. how extreme they are, of El Nino events, and the blue being the counter part La Nina events: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/ts.gif)
There is obviously the aspect of over reported statistics, and more sensitive meteorlogical tools, but sediment data is undeniable. Since El Nino has much more far reaching effects than solely the Pacific (sea surface temperature rise of up to 5C in the Indian Ocean during the large 1998 El Nino event, for example.)
I'll leave it up to you to draw a relationship between the 2 increases. If you have access to scientific journals, Trenberth and Hoar (1996; 1997), Timmerman (2010) and others draw conclusions from modelling data which uses past warm period (such as the Eocene) sediments to look at El Nino events. One of them (can't remember which exactly) relates it to the increase in sulphate aerosols from burning fossil fuels.
TL;DR: Increasing green house gases cause an increase in frequency and extremity of El Nino events, causing a consequent increase in 'freak' weather.
edit: TL;DR
Careful, your statement / wording comes across as slightly misleading. Some quick terminology; ice ages are periods of time in which an ice sheet is present at the poles. A glacial period is a period of time in which temperatures permit the growth and advance of glaciers, while an interglacial is a period of time when global temperatures force a period of glacial retreat. On top of those, there are stadials (periods of colder temperatures that typically last for a thousand years or less) and interstadials (periods of warmer temperatures that typically last for less than ten thousand years). The Younger Dryas is also known as the Younger Dryas Stadial - a period of cold within the current interglacial (the Holocene interglacial or Marine Isotope Stage 1). We are currently in an ice age that begain ~2.6 million years ago, and marks the boundary between the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene.
Noting the above, and your statement: >It would appear that the side effect of global warming and high CO2 levels is actually an ice age.
We clarify, and simplify, as follows: It would appear that the side effect of global warming and high CO2 levels is actually a destabilization of ice sheets, and in particular the Greenland ice sheet (GIS). This is theorized to result in an increased freshwater input which in turn weakens the AMOC, resulting in a stadial.
Ihan kivaa mutuilua, mutta väärin meni, tuulivoimalasta saadaan sen elinaikana n. 20 kertaa sen verran energiaa ulos kuin rakentamiseen, ylläpitoon ja käytöstä poistamiseen on käytetty.
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/152560/
Cedars are hardly Texas wide, and are in fact very geographically relevant to Austin. Cedars exist primarily in the Hill Country, in which Austin sits.
In that light, the article was pertinent to Austin for at least three reasons:
financial assistance could result in increased removal of cedars which would have a direct impact on the groundwater situation in Central Texas and Austin. The aquifer mentioned in the article is huge, covered in cedars, and <strong>includes the Austin area</strong>
financial assistance could result in increased removal of cedars which would have a direct impact on amount of cedar pollen in the Austin area
a lot of people living in Austin also own land out in the Hill Country. This article applies directly to these Austinites, and they'd be extremely interested about financial assistance for clearing cedar.
Your idea is valid and they are called 'streamers;' charges rising from the earth to connect with the lightning strike, they have been captured on camera. Often multiple streamers will reach upwards, but only one will connect with and create the lightning shaft, but at this moment the other failed steamers can be seen.
I cannot answer this question, but it is probably best explained by local topography rather than with principles that describe general, world wide trends in climate. So I would recommend looking specifically at what causes the climates of:
Agree with this. Also, the Industrial Revolution coincides with rampant overpopulation of the planet.
>Until modern times, the growth of our numbers was slow and variable. A pronounced expansion began with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, about two centuries ago. Whereas tens of thousands of years passed before our species reached the one billion mark, around 1800 AD, it took only 123, 33, 14, 13, 12 and 13 years to add each succeeding billion. This accelerating rate of increase is what is meant by the term population explosion. Around year 1963, population growth reached a maximal rate of about 2.2% per year—perhaps a thousand times faster than expansion in prehistoric times. (1)
> Higher ocean levels -> oceans percentage of earth's surface area increases -> more infrared light from sun reflected/refracted back into space -> lower average temperatures.
It's actually the opposite - ocean surfaces tend to have the lowest reflectivity (albedo), and replacing land (or more importantly, ice) surfaces with water surfaces will actually help the Earth absorb more incoming solar radiation.
upvote for knowing about our python issue!
however, this is most certainly not the everglades / south fl. we don't have that kind of foliage or trails. the everglades look like this and nobody mountain bikes in them. also, the guys "handling" the snake look like (pardon my ignorance) south pacific / vietnamese folk.
States do this because the revenue from payroll taxes and other economic activity add to the state's bottom line. Tax subsidies do not cost the state anything. If these subsidies were not available the film would have been made in another state and Michigan would not received any of the payroll etc.
Now some argue that there are costs of subsides. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Tax_subsidies
But it isn't like the state wrote a check, which is what a lot of people seem to think.
P.S. Michael Moore is a big fatty loser.
A large percentage of water evaporated from the oceans simply returns as rain. I suspect that it is always raining somewhere. The average residence time for atmospheric vapor is only 9 days. The wiki article on the water cycle is quite a good summary. This site is also informative.
If none of those individuals have any major (and little to no minor) genetic issues, and all matings for the next several generations are carefully planned, then yes, it is (technically) possible. That said, most studies and simulations presume that 1) the starting population is not free of all major genetic defects, and 2) the members of the community will not mate according to pre-set eugenics plans for several generations. Given these two points, most studies suggest a minimum of a few hundred (semi-)random humans for a stable population that is (mostly) free of any negative consequences due to the bottle neck. You can get by (without the eugenic planning, but with some occasional genetic consequences, ie: more stillbirths, higher incidence of occasional birth abnormalities, etc for many generations) with a starting population of only a few tens of humans, but it is not suggested. Here are a couple human examples, in which less than 30 humans on an island resulted in a surviving population ~200 years later.
.
Per this site, the maximum (and somewhat controversial) number for any species (reptile, mammal, bird, etc), beyond which the benefits of a large population size toward genetic diversity has diminishing returns, is about 5000. This results in a better than 50% chance of survival for the species over 10 million years. Note that the minimum often quoted for humans (of a few hundred) is in regards to better than 90% chance of species survival over 100, 200, or 1000 years (depending on the study, although 40 generations is being used more often in recent years). For the two islands above, their chances of success were less than 90%, but they beat the odds. This article gives some interesting information on the matter.
Did you even bother researching this before commenting?
>The term horsepower was coined by James Watt (1736-1819), the Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer renowned for his improvements of the steam engine. In the early 1780s, Watt and his partner Matthew Boulton set out to sell their steam engines to the breweries of London, calculating that they would be likely customers because brewing was such an energy-intensive process. In order to convince the breweries of the advantages of the steam engine, Watt needed a method to compare their capabilities relative to horses, the power source they were seeking to replace. The typical brewery horse, attached to a mill that ground the mash for making beer, walked in an endless circle with a 24-foot diameter, pulled with a force of 180 pounds, and traveled at a speed of 180.96 feet per minute. Watt multiplied the speed times the force and came up with 32,580 ft-lbs/minute. That was rounded off to 33,000 ft-lbs/minute, the figure used today. http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153556/
We've used about ~7x10^17 Calories (kcal), or 2.929×10^15 MJ of fossil fuels. (Source)
If we were able to convert it all to JP-7 with a Heating value of 43.5 MJ/kg (Mil-Spec Source), we'd have 6.733x10^13 kg or 1.484x10^14 lbs of fuel for the Blackbird.
At Mach 3.15, the SR-71 burns 36000 lbs/hr (Source), giving us about 470,000 years of flight.
At 2200 mph, that'd be 9.072 trillion miles, or 1.146 billion trips around the earth.
Edit: Fuel burn was off by a factor of 10.
That's pretty much entirely the point of it though, the whole world is capitalist because capitalism is the best system for burning through resources. It's probably just a manifestation of the maximum power principle on a societal level. It's also why we're probably going to burn and mine everything we can, until the consequences stop us from continuing to burn and mine things.
Buenas tardes. Aunque en el vídeo está muy bien explicado, me gustaría aportar mi granito de arena proporcionando un poco más de información desde una perspectiva histórica.
Para empezar soy -entre otras cosas- agricultor, y durante años los productos nacionales se han ido devaluando paulatinamente por la importación de productos provenientes de EEUU. Esto hasta tal punto que muchos pequeños agricultores sobreviven gracias a las ayudas europeas.
Crear un mercado único con EEUU sería un tremendo error, porque EEUU es una gigantesca máquina de producción con la que no podemos competir. Para entender esto, hay que remontarse a la crisis del 'Dust Bowl' en los años 30 y su papel en la Gran Depresión: grandes extensiones de cultivo se perdieron por las tormentas de polvo, muchos agricultores fueron a la ruina y se tuvieron que importar toneladas de materia prima de otros países. Para evitar otro desastre semejante, el entonces presidente Roosevelt, creó una ley (vigente hasta hoy) para estimular la producción, que garantiza que todo el excedente producido será comprado por el estado. Por este motivo en EEUU hay tanta sobreproducción y tanta inversión en avances tecnológicos, de patentes, etc. porque se produzca lo que se produzca, no hay pérdidas. Todo esto a costa de la destrucción del medio ambiente, por supuesto (véase el concepto 'The treadmill of production').
En resumen, para poder competir con EEUU deberíamos adoptar un modelo de sobreproducción. Como apuntan en el vídeo, pequeñas y medianas empresas quebrarían y se agravaría el desastre ecológico.
> I believe humans will act in what they perceive to be their best interest
There's actually a lot of work in biology that has a different take on this if you're interested in reading a bit.
>Altruistic traits are traits that reduce the fitness (survival or reproduction) of the individual with the trait (known as the “actor”) while increasing the fitness of other individuals (known as the “recipients”).
The average human's carbon footprint is about 4 tons per year. A tree can sequester 1 ton of carbon dioxide by the time it reaches 40 years old. That means that over that period of 40 years, it sequestered an average of 0.025 tons of carbon dioxide per year. At that rate, it would take 160 trees to offset a 4 ton carbon footprint. There being 52 weeks in a year, that means that every human would have to plant at least 3 trees per week on average to offset their average carbon footprint.
*Rocks from almost every age exposed Archean to present.
*Pilbara ancient landscapes. (Hamersley Range)
*Hypersaline Shark's bay (grades from 40 ppt to 450 parts per thousand) with its stromatolites and other marine features http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/155995/
*Some really significant meteorite craters
*Greenstone belts (metamorphosed mafic/ultra mafic volcanic sequences).
*On a professional level there is a lot of geological scientific research, O&G, geothermal, and mining operation activity that occurs in parts of Western Australia while preserving sites for future learning opportunities. http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/7818.aspx
That's funny:
China: 27% of global emissions / 18.9% of global population = 1.429
USA: 14% of global emissions / 4.43% of global population = 3.160
Why so defensive over me simply stating that per head, the US still outstrips those evil polluting Chinese. I've no problem with them doing the exact same things as the western world has already done, for longer too.
To criticise them for growth and raising living standards whilst exploiting them for cheap electronics and other goods is just hilariously hypocritical to me. Why are you so against them developing and growing their economy?
Let's not forget 'concern for the environment' such as the US not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol
> As structured in the negotiations completed in 1997, this treaty would commit the United States — if it were to ratify the Protocol — to a target of reducing greenhouse gases by 7% below 1990 levels during a “commitment period” between 2008-2012
7% below 1990 levels of 4,193 million tons, 2011 = 5,333 million tons
I mean, it's not like the US didn't have the technology 15 years ago to start achieving those goals... right?
> Furthermore, the desire for independence doesn't seem to be driven at all by the philosophy of bioregionalism.
I don't think this is a fair criticism at all.
Does it need to be driven by bioregionalism? No. Not that it matters, and I'm certainly no expert, but from my understanding Scotland does have a different ecosystem.
More importantly, Scotland has different culture and values from England. Not surprising considering it's essentially a conquered nation. One of the major arguments for Scottish independence, as I understand it, is that the Scots are losing the progressive programs (like healthcare and welfare) that are a part of their values, because England is increasingly moving away from that.
I'm not really addressing anything of the capitalism argument, just this, because I think you may have overlooked something important in why Scotland is seeking independence.
Here is an article about aquifer depletion. It is not a problem in the west only. I recently watched a documentary which described some of the problems developing in India and Saudi Arabia, I might have confused the Saudi Arabia for Afica.
Also if you look at where a majority of US cities are you will find they are near a river or ocean.
edit: spelling.
>All I was saying is that the LAND of Africa, BY ITS NATURE, is not a nice place to live.
That's... objectively false. Outside the Sahara and Kalahari, Africa is extremely diverse in both flora and fauna. Citing the Sahara and Kalahari Deserts to argue Africa's climate is awful is like saying Russia's climate is awful due to the harsh tundra climates. Both Russia and Africa are huge areas with great diversity. In the north, the Saharah; in the south, penguins.
If Africa's climate is sooooo awful, why did humans evolve there? I rest my case.
HANPP, the “human appropriation of net primary production,” is an aggregated indicator that reflects both the amount of area used by humans and the intensity of land use. NPP is the net amount of biomass produced each year by plants; it is a major indicator for trophic energy flows in ecosystems. HANPP measures to what extent land conversion and biomass harvest alter the availability of NPP (biomass) in ecosystems. It is a prominent measure of the “scale” of human activities compared to natural processes (i.e. of the “physical size of the economy relative to the containing ecosystem;” Daly, 2006). As human harvest of biomass is a major component of HANPP, it is also closely related to socio-economic metabolism as measured by material flow accounts. Source.
The sun emits 6.3E6 W/m^2 of electromagnetic radiation from its surface. The surface area of the sun is 6.088E12 km^2, or 6.088E18 m^2. Multiplying these gives roughly 3.6E25 W, or Joules of energy per second. Using the old E=mc^2, this comes out to roughly 4E9 kg of mass (four billion kilograms).
Oooh! Dang, I was off by a little bit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)#106_to_1011_kg). I guess the lesson is...wikipedia is much faster than calculating.
> How do you measure landscape diversity?
I could go on all day about that, but generally you use plant communities as the primary basis for division of ecoregions. They are highly affected by climate, topography, geology, and a whole slew of other factors. These will affect the animal communities, which allow you to further divide these regions. Both of these communities (or rather community at this point) are affected by climate and geography, which can divide your regions even smaller. Any way you measure it, the United States comes out as more diverse than Europe.
~~As far as I can find, Europe has ~30 ecoregions, while the United States has ~90. These numbers will vary slightly depending on what criteria are used to define them (I got those from WWF ecoregions as listed on Wikipedia).~~
EDIT: This list gives North America (Nearctic realm) 118/867 ecoregions, and Europe, northern Africa, and central and northern Asia combined (Palearctic realm) 195/867. The majority of that 195 is not from Europe. Wikipedia has a similar list but it isn't numbered and would be a bitch to count.
EDIT 2: This WWF list breaks it down nicely. You can easily compare Palearctic to Nearctic in each type and then look what countries have the specific ecoregions. Much of the Palearctic diversity comes from Asia.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/151412/
CAFOs are not even more efficient than small and medium sized farms. Factory farms and their obscene cruelty and pollution would not exist without the corrupt ag lobby and corporate subsidies.
Strangely enough, /u/holysausage 's intuition may be right ;)
The linked article is actually pretty crappy and not very scientifically sound.
The 160 number actually comes from the recommended size for a human space-colonizing population, which is not exactly relevant. The closest thing to a citation for the 160 number is: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936-magic-number-for-space-pioneers-calculated/
There's also reference to a 50/500 rule, where you need a population of 50 for short term survival, and 500 for long term health:
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154633/ > Franklin proposed the 50/500 rule used by conservation practitioners, whereby an Ne of 50 is required to prevent an unacceptable rate of inbreeding, while a long-term Ne of 500 is required to ensure overall genetic variability. Given that the average Ne /N ratio is roughly 0.10 these rules of thumb translate to census sizes of 500 to 50,000 individuals.
I think living 20 minutes away is close enough; I just don't live on one of the mountains, but I can see them from my front porch and we go hiking there regularly and visit the local ski lodge during winter. And as far as I can see, what you are saying is not true. Here is the Köppen climate map of North America:
Dwc, Dwd, Dfc, and Dfd are all of the subarctic classifications and, as you can see, none of these are present in any part of California. This page helps explain what the different colors on the map mean:
Taiwan did have oil under Taiwan. That's the original reason why there is the oil refinery in Taoyuan (you see it east of hwy 1 near the airport exit). But it's mostly gone now.
http://thediplomat.com/2011/04/taiwans-energy-security-battle/
Your "asshole ant" comment may be wrong. The ants are related, in sacrificing itself the ant does in fact continue some of its genetic information through kin (as a side note, in some species of ants the workers are actually sterile anyway). If the colonies were made up of nothing but "asshole ants", not saying that that is actually a thing but we'll run with it, then none would sacrifice themselves and the colony would run to ruin. If it were made up of nothing but "noble sacrifice ants" the colony would become depleted. So, a balance is needed for the group to survive. This is all hypothetically speaking, of course, see this about altruism and kin selection: http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150012/.
Abundance isn't really relevant. Availability is though, and it is readily available to the point where they aren't even bothering to recover it from lead or gold deposites (or the minor amount in coal).
There's decent scientific consensus that animal agriculture is less sustainable and worse for the environment. In addition to what I linked above, this gives a good list of sources.
I don't know how you figure vegetable production is far harsher on the land. Even if that were true, we are producing vast quantities of crops for livestock, so it's not so clear that animal agriculture would better in that sense anyway. But also, livestock and overgrazing results in reduction of species richness, loss of biodiversity, desertification, loss of native topsoil and increases in surface runoff (Source).
As to economics, industries change and die over the years. There were once a lot of jobs and money invested in slavery too.
> you have to remember that our domesticated cows don't even actually exist outside of our farms.
Sure...but I don't know why that matters.
> I'll stop commenting because clearly you're not allowed to have different opinions here, but it was a good discussion.
Sorry you've been downvoted! As a vegan, I've been on the receiving end of that many a time. Such is reddit I suppose.
That's a complex question. Our actions now to mitigate climate change will definitely have an effect, but the response time of the earth system is by no means instantaneous.
For example, take large scale ocean circulation, known as the meridional overturning circulation. Ocean waters are only "feel" the atmosphere when they are in the surface mixed layer, and some waters in this circulation pattern may not surface for around 1000 years. So the extra heat the ocean is absorbing now cannot instantly be undone, although our actions still have consequences for the future.
How do you define "more caring"? I can think of examples of r-types who show altruism. When I was in school, prairie dogs were the textbook example. And insects show remarkable complexity and careful design in things like anthills.
Excess CO2 in the grow environment allows the plant stomata to close up making the plant hold on to water easier and less susceptible to higher temps drying them out. They close up cause they don't have to allow a large volume of air in to extract CO2 from as there is higher concentration of CO2 present.
I'll have to find the video of it, but there's a similar problem with evolution of a single species where there are multiple different means of being "successful." The video used the example of a seagull population where some are fishers and some are "pirates." The way it goes is only so many can be the pirates before there aren't enough fishers for them all to be successful, so the population hangs around a range of pseudo-stable ratio of pirates and fishers.
Applied to your question, becoming a parasite can be unstable for the pair of populations. If species A starts harming species B beyond B's capacity, A's population eventually drops because they can't be sustained by the waning population of B (this similarly happens with prey/predator relationships).
At least that's how I understand it :/
I started addressing this in the chain below, but instead I'm just going to go through these one by one with you, /u/joecooool418.
1) While it might take roughly 20% more crude to make a gallon of diesel as compared to various grades of gasoline, your argument is moot because if diesel fuel wasn't made from that portion of the crude, it would be waste. Meaning when you refine crude, a portion is gasoline and another portion is diesel, just like jet fuel is another portion. See here:
http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=oil_refining
2) Diesels are still dirtier than the average gas-powered car. But diesel yields more energy per gallon and diesel engines are still more efficient than their gas-powered cousins.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/160424/
You can't simply compare apples to oranges here. Duration of driving times, conditions and applications play a major role in pollution.
3) Don't discount emissions from gas-powered vehicles here; emissions from gasoline powered engines are deadly as well.
4) New fuels are being synthesized using CO2, which would have been a big advancement for diesel technology... unfortunately, Audi was helming this development and it's likely to have a major setback.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/04/150428-audi-ediesel-made-from-water-air/
For information in regards to the Atlantic ocean, and essentially AMOC, at least within the Pleistocene, I would recommend looking at Heinrich (blue) and Dansgaard-Oeschger events (red) (timeline). We see a succession of rapid warming, followed by gradual, step-wise cooling. Speculatively speaking this could be abrupt climate change due to catastrophic collapse of the North American ice-sheets (during rapid warming phase), followed by the slow and gradual rebuilding of those ice-sheet (step-wise cooling).
In reference to the following: >...If "they" say there is an Ice Age going on in the whole world, people will believe it...
For clarity, we are currently in an ice-age that began ~2.6Ma.
Most desert birds tend to be of the burrowing variety, or nest places like cliff faces or inside cactus. There is not a lot of free material for weavers, so you don't see a lot of ground nests(even though the way nests are done right now is silly all around...).
I think he means most retarded; heat is the lowest form of energy. You can make heat from wood, or rocks (oh sorry, minerals), or sunlight or whatever. But you can't run your computer or traffic lights or elevators using those fuel sources. Plus, coal or natural gas are burned at an inefficiency to create electricity, and then transported at an inefficiency to a household or business. Using it to generate heat via resistor is stupid, and we pay a massive price premium for a heat unit of electricity vs a heat unit of natural gas.
Unfortunately humanity loses one point :(, this is a well-documented and researched subject. I read an article 2-3 years ago, maybe more, that talked about the effect that evapotranspiration from the treetops of the Amazon upon the local and global climate, mainly the added effect of the trees siphoning off the groundwater from the groundwater flow out of the Amazon basin. It'll take me more time to find that exact article but I did stumble across this article written in 2007 and last updated 2 years ago that specifically mentions drought as being one of the effects of widespread deforestation in the Amazon. Give me a sec and I'll find the article I was looking for. Either way, this is really well documented, I wouldn't be surprised if there are scholarly articles going back to the seventies that predict this happening.
EDIT: this isn't the one I was thinking of but it says essentially the same thing
This probably isn't the ENTIRE answer, but - the Japanese halted their territorial conquest around Malaya and Singapore, geographically speaking.
"Important natural resources historically exploited in Malaysia include petroleum, timber, copper, iron ore, natural gas, bauxite." - http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154385/
Now this article IS much more recent than that, but the petroleum and metal ores have always been a source of economy in my country since colonization. Britain also began a slew of rubber/latex production during their occupation, something which the Japanese were more than happy to take over.
I figured that since they halted their conquest here, they kinda got what they needed.... for a time.
It is known.
"Excessive amounts of animal waste can also contaminate other agricultural goods. E. coli is far more prevalent in CAFOs than in small farms. During the fall of 2006, agricultural runoff containing animal waste infiltrated water systems, and the infected water was sprayed on spinach. This resulted in an outbreak of Escherichia coli (E. coli), causing nearly 200 illnesses and 2 deaths.[11]"
There's a remarkable site near Djanet in the central Sahara, called Tasili. This is a raised massif in the middle of the sand sea, where fossil water allows plants to grow. It has cave paintings that are suppsoed to go back 8000 years. What is striking si that the early ones are finely done, showing giraffes and crocodiles, naked young men with bows followed by hunting dogs and so on. Then you get a phase of (large) gods holding up their arms as if in anguish. Finally, crude scribbles show camels. The start of the Holocene, in cartoon form. Well worth a visit - you can fly into Djanet. (In Algeria.)
The answer to this will vary depending on the population, but a general rule of thumb in conservation biology is called the 50/500 rule.
50 members are needed in a population to prevent significant fitness loss due to inbreeding. However, this number is only useful in the short term and is not evolutionary viable, the population will not have a high enough mutation rate to combat diversity lost to genetic drift. In the long term, this lack of diversity may not allow the population to adapt.
For a population to succeed in the long term it needs around 500 individuals. This brings the mutation rate up and drops the rate of genetic drift enough that the population is more likely to increase or maintain diversity rather than decrease.
>Its on par with the amazon
I don't think this is true. this claims that there are about 340 bird species in the Californian floristic province (which looks like it includes some of San Diego). The Amazon, on the other hand, contains ~1,300 species.
As for plants, to date there are at least 40,000 classified plant species in the Amazon. This is compared to the around 4k plant species that exist in the Californian floristic province.
Of course, this isn't to say that the area around San Diego isn't diverse--it just doesn't come close to the Amazon, the most biodiverse place on the planet.
The ship itself was single hulled. My understanding is that the captain was asleep (drunk?), and the third mate was at the helm, when she went aground on Bligh Reef. There was no pilot. There were no escort tugs. They were undermanned, with everyone taking 12 hour shifts. They left the shipping lanes in order to avoid icebergs. The radar was broken, there was limited visibility (fog), and the position and bearing weren't well known.
At that time, there was no knowledge of what to do in a spill. They went through every boom on the market to find one that would work. They essentially used the Valdez as a chance to experiment with different forms of recovery.
>There have been numerous reports to say that in anything more than a bump, the double hull doesn't protect from a serious rupture.
Any links?
Firstly you can't use glacier extent as an analogy to climate. Ablation from glaciers is determined, at least in part, by temperature in the summer months, that is true. However, accumulation in the winter is determined by precipitation, and there is little or no correlation between precip and temperature, in fact if anything precip increases as temp increases, so this helps to counteract the increased melt in summer.
This chart puts it another way, it shows the sensitivity of ice masses to change in climate (lilac) and their ability to contribute to sea level (blue), so greenland, for example, isn't very sensitive, but contains a lot of water.
Greenland by the way, has, in the last few years experienced increased melt rates, this is another figure showing how the area of the ice sheet that experiences any melt in summer is increasing, this is the reason why things are getting a bit worrying.
If you look back in time to the points when ice sheets were much smaller than they are today, then sea level was higher, as you can see in smectite's post.
Hope that helps, I am actually a glaciologist, so any questions, fire away.
The scientific term for this is "minimum viable population". This is the number of individuals you need for a species to have a 95% probability of surviving over the next >100 years.
Estimates for human MVP vary, but some studies suggest you need at least 50 healthy, breedable individuals to avoid inbreeding, 500-5000 to ensure evolutionary potential, and 12-1000 to overcome the impact of deleterious mutations. From this, there's the 50/500 rule which basically says that you need to start with 50 individuals and grow that to 500 quickly and sustain that level for long-term survival.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Minimum_viable_population_size?topic=58074
> The ignorance is... stunning. Let's have a little fun: Explain what other 'forms' can the 280 zetajoules locked in the ocean take? Just a few examples will do.
Your "tell" is showing...
Well first let's understand that when you apply radiative energy to an item with low thermal conductivity and is large enough that there is attenuation in the energy (like the ocean) it doesn't heat uniformly. The surface heats faster than the deep oceans. In fact we SEE this in actual measurements! Shocking, that experimental observations back up what we know about the universal laws of physics!
So, given that sunlight only penetrates 500m deep, and the oceans cover 65.7% of the surface of the earth, 335,258,000 km^2 this changes the value you used for mass (total ocean mass) down about a factor of about 10^4. While that's closer than the naive assumption you made of instant heating throughout the entire ocean body at once, we could probably add complexity by also including other "forms" radiant energy can take besides "locked in the ocean" heat ... reflection, photosynthesis, melting, chemical bond breaking, etc ....
Science!!!!
Robert Ayres kind of nails this in his analysis of energy's relationship to economic growth. The service economy runs on top of the extractive economy which runs on top of the biophysical flows and stocks of the earth. Shifts to the service economy in most cases are simply displacements of extractive inputs and outputs from one place to another. For the most part the internet simply allows this to move faster and to coordinate at larger scales than before.
This also gets back to Howard Odum's fundamental concept of maximum power. Any population of organisms will organize themselves to maximize the rate of resource use not for efficiency but for power. If a system can run faster it will simply because it makes evolutionary sense for us to have a hyperbolic discount rate. In the absence of institutions that have coevolved with biophysical limits we'll run the machines as fast as possible until they break. The internet largely just helps with that process.
You've repeated yourself but neglected to provide any support. Unfortunately, no rational reader is going to find those statements credible without a reference. I challenge you to find a single publication claiming that palm oil causes more deforestation than animal agriculture, given that roughly 1/3 of the arable land on Earth is used to graze livestock or grow livestock feed. Worldwide desertification due to crop growth means that this number will increase even if the demand for resource-intensive products were to remain static (which it won't).
You are correct that my reference is over 10 years old. However, the demand for cattle (and thus rainforest land) has only increased since that time due to the increasing population. Of course the demand for palm oil has also increased, but not to the same extent. Bear in mind that not everyone in the world uses a significant amount of palm oil (not even everyone in the first world), but the vast majority of the developped world consumes more animal products than is necessary for their health.
Finally, being able to trace your food sources implies nothing about how resource-intensive those foods are.
I am happy to provide other relevant citations upon request.
>Yet it is.
According to this site, those numbers are false. And your source admits to not including data.
>Which no one really pays for one.
Do you really think that the other countries listed pay max rate as well?
>which means US has overall a lower tax rate than that of the European Union and Canada.
Yes lower, I never said it wasn't lower. I'm saying that it's not that far off. It's comparable, especially when you consider what the US lacks in terms of healthcare.
I think so. You've seen West, Bettencourt, Brown's work on city scaling i think. It would be fairly trivial to take that model and just plug in different energy levels (ie. total net solar energy flows vs. total net fossil fuel stocks) to figure out carrying capacity of different energy stocks or flows.
most like something like that has already been done. there's a bit of a cottage industry right now in scaling research.
eg. http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/1/19.full
have you come across Odum's work on maximum power? it relates to that concept of efficiency not being an evolutionary goal
Ah, you don't have a subscription to http://pubs.acs.org. Sorry, let me give you another one.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/156270/
Edit: This might help explain why you are incorrect.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chlorofluorocarbons-cfcs/
If you live in the USA I have some very bad news for you.
The USA will be one of the hardest hit countries in the developed world , you will lose new york city and the entire eastern seaboard. And Florida will be unrecognizable , and a lot of the gulf states will be hit extremely hard.
http://www.eoearth.org/files/310301_310400/310379/global-sea-level-rise-risks.png
If you're looking for plants for Sydney, "temperate" is the wrong people to be talking to, because, while "temperate" may be used colloquially to mean "moderate and mild", in gardening and botanic terms, "temperate zone" means simply "no extremes of climate", i.e. not the tropics, not the Sahara, and not Antarctica.
And thus climates and geographic areas as disparate as Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, St. Louis, Dallas, Atlanta, and Boston are considered "temperate", and each zone has landscaping that grows well there but not necessarily in any of the others.
Sydney's Koppen climate classification is either Cfa or Cfb, according to who you ask.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/162272/
So, you'd want to be looking for things that grow well in the areas on the map.
Cfb is basically England, the Pacific Northwest, and western Europe, Cfa is basically the U.S. south--Atlanta, Tampa, New Orleans.
What bugs me about Zehner is that he says, on the one hand, that solar, wind, etc., won't "save us" (though he's somewhat vague on what "save" means), but seems to imply that something else will (I get the general sense it's conservation / efficiency).
Problem with that route is that the Jevons paradox seems to gum this up to holy hell. My read is that the Darwin-Lotka Energy Law / Maximum Power Principle (more generally at /r/dredmorbius). If this is a general principle of dissipative systems, then individual self-election to reduce total resource consumption is probably not positively adaptive. You need a global policy as well. And greater efficiency itself is typically arrived at through greater overall energy throughput.
Zehner's message is quite confused and frustrating on multiple levels.
Simply put yes, our atmosphere is finite.
Here is a picture to illustrate our general atmosphere
http://www.eoearth.org/files/187001_187100/187002/atmtempprofile.png
Our atmosphere does in fact have a finite amount of space. Imagine that the earth was a golf ball inside of a tennis ball and the tennis ball is the atmosphere. Using dimensional calculus we could arrive to the conclusion that the atmosphere is finite. Here are a few sources that can go into much greater detail.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/AtmosphericSciences.html
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=volume+of+atmosphere&lk=4&num=1
As for displacement I am not entirely sure...I do know that it is gravity that keep the atmosphere here. Understanding that gravity is what holds the atmosphere in place we can hypothesize that the greater a systems gravity (take the Earth), the "larger" the atmosphere. Again I am not sure about that and the only case I can imagine where it becomes relevant is if an object, say meteorite, comes through the atmosphere.
I imagine there is a point where if an object large enough were to hit Earth there would be atmospheric changes. I am geology undergrad, and the largest object that we know that has ever struck Earth was a proto-planet roughly the size of the Mars and today we call it the Moon. The Earth didn't have an atmosphere at the time of the strike but I imagine that if it did there could be a "lose" of atmosphere before the object struck the Earth.
except that efficiency is the wrong metric. humans and all biological systems don't optimize for efficiency; the optimize for power. you can think of power as the rate of work per unit time. the faster the system runs the more losses it creates to entropy. in a competitive system the agents will optimize to run faster and thereby create more and more losses.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154526/
even your other end of the spectrum seems off. sustainable footprint analysis puts the footprint per capita at 1.5 ha/person. only in the developing world are we getting those kinds of numbers. it doesn't follow that you can overshoot that metric 3 times over and still think you can have a stable global population. even less so if you consider odum's maximum power arguement where the global population is optimizing to use the remaining resources at the fastest possible rate. consider for example [tim jackson's argument that we would have to make a 130x improvement in $dollar/GDP per pound carbon to stabilize C02 at a safe level if population and growth continues at trend).
Madagascar would be awesome, the nature and animal shots would be great and really unique. I don't know if this is the reason, but Madagascar is recognized as a biodiversity hot spot. Essentially, because Madagascar is an isolated land mass, there are many plants and animals in the ecosystem that are endemic to the area and cannot be found anywhere else. Also, the concentration of endemic species to the land mass of the ecosystem is much higher than the typical environment, which makes it a hot spot. Because it is recognized as a hot spot, it is a protected area.
Additionally, Madagascar already has internal deforestation problems, which jeopardizes the hot spot, and I believe that Burnett and co wouldn't have much luck getting permission to clear jungle space for a game show.
If you want to know more about biodiversity hot spots here is a link: http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150623/
Similar cause, different ocean. In the North Atlantic, deep water is produced as warm, salty water cools and since, please see AMOC.
This article deals with freshening the surface water in Antarctica.
There actually is quite a bit of moisture in the atmosphere.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/150299/
http://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/2012-state-climate-humidity
I'd say (not being a meteorologist) there is enough average humidity for the Ice King to accomplish most of the things we see him do.
Perhaps the Ice Crown uses electromagnetic fields somehow? Sort of a microwave in reverse? This might also explain Ice King's unfortunate insanity, since the crown would need to be throwing out a HUGE amount of EM right next to his head.
Of course, the crown still needs a mechanism to move huge volumes of water around. The answer must be graviton manipulation, which also explains the Ice King's flying ability.
That still leaves age manipulation. I just... I don't even... nanobots?
There is (probably - this is a bit debated in the literature) minimum population sizes required for species to persist. The specific population is very much debated and depends on a lot of different factors.
The basic phenomenon is part of what's called the Allee effect, where for a population of a species to grow, there needs to be some minimum population density.
There's lots and lots of research that's gone into trying to assess viable population sizes. A quick search showed me estimates of 100-10,000 individuals, other ranges were 50-5000 and 12-1000, all for different kinds of viability and different generation times.
It's complicated, and something conservation biologists are actively working toward. Let me know if you want specific citations - I got a lot of this from an overview here but also found a couple of good journal articles you might like.
He is definitely wrong about processing. There is still a difference between the oils cited by the article, though. Crude oil is actually a mixture of hydrocarbons of different weights, and the crude will act differently depending on which hydrocarbons are more numerous in the particular mixture. This one had an API gravity less than 10, meaning it was mostly heavier hydrocarbons, so it (edit: mostly) sank. According to this site http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbedc57896bb431f693ce1/ Exxon-Valdez had an API gravity of 27, so it floated.
I tried to find a graph but I'm useless on my phone. Basically in 20 years we will have a new type of technology, which at the moment is worse than current silicon processors, but some breakthrough will make it cheaper/more powerful and it will become the mainstream technology used. This will bring a large increase in power with it.
I found a picture that somewhat shows my thoughts, http://www.eoearth.org/files/113201_113300/113251/310px-LCurveDram_sold.jpg
Sorry for the terrible formatting.
Or, instead of posting baseless assumptions, you can read the actual research on the subject. Wind Turbines produce about 20 times more energy than it costs to produce and operate them.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_return_on_investment_%28EROI%29_for_wind_energy
>This article reviews 119 wind turbines from 50 different analyses, ranging in publication date from 1977 to 2006. This survey shows average Energy Return On Investment for all studies (operational and conceptual) of 25.2 (n=114; std. dev=22.3). The average EROI for just the operational studies is 19.8 (n=60; std. dev=13.7). This places wind energy in a favorable position relative to conventional power generation technologies in terms of EROI.
Also, yeah, I'm curious as to how the truck drivers navigate with those things too.
It's alright...one quick search and I learned what HDI stands for. This was a decent explanation: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Human_Development_Index It's affect on irreligiosity makes a lot of sense.
>Just wow at your points, really. What 1st hand accounts? you want to believe those prisoners who were fighting AGAINST you?
I believe the prisoners, the prisoners paperwork, and the questioning of the pakistani mule.
>What fucking responsibility are you talking about? I did not vote for zardari and I am not going to sit here and take shit from you for the mess he made in that country.
I didn't vote for George Bush but I take responsibility for the mistakes he made on behalf of this country. I may not have voted for him but I also didn't convince enough people to not vote for him.
>You're comparing a population of a country to the few homeless and FUCKING AMISH?!
You are saying that your entire country is without those things. It's not. You are lying. Tens of thousands of our citizens live without those things too.
Here is the energy profile for Pakistan. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Energy_profile_of_Pakistan
>No one invited the Taliban into Pakistan, they don't even fucking need to be in Pakistan because YOU guys lost the war a long time ago.
We won the war. We drove the extremist douchebags into an even shittier country. Yours.
>That last one - "1.2 billion versus 111 million". The populations of countries do not fight against each other in a war smart ass. When and IF the day comes, we'll know.
If India conscripts 1 in 10 they will have a bigger Army than your entire population. Plus they'll have their western friends selling them arms. China is not the friend Pakistan believes they are.
Also just to toss this into the discussion -
- http://www.eoearth.org/article/Aquifer_depletion -
Heavy metal isn't exactly how I'd describe either of those, but, meh.
At any rate, it's doubtful this has anything to do with chemical bonds, as both NaCl and KCl dissociate in water. What's a better question is, 'why doesn't K taste as salty as Na?'
I could offer a guess based on how Na+ and K+ are used in people, but it wouldn't be much more than a guess.
With respect to thorium reserves, found this
>Most coal contains uranium and thorium, as well as potassium-40, lead-210, and radium-226. The total levels are generally about the same as in other rocks of the Earth's crust. Most emerge from a power plant in the light flyash, which is fused and chemically stable. Some 99% of flyash is typically retained in a modern power station (only 90% in some older ones), and this is buried in an ash dam. Some is sold for making concrete.
>The amounts of radionuclides involved are noteworthy. In Victoria, Australia, 65 million tonnes of brown coal is burned annually for electricity production. This contains about 1.6 ppm uranium (U) and 3.0-3.5 ppm thorium (Th), hence about 100 tonnes of uranium and 200 tonnes of thorium is buried in landfills each year in the Latrobe Valley. Australia exports 235 Mt/yr of coal with 1 to 2 ppm U and about 3.5 ppm Th (Dale & Lavrencic 1993) in it, hence up to 400 tonnes of uranium and about 800 tonnes of thorium could conceivably be added to published export figures.
>Other coals are quoted as ranging up to 25 ppm U and 80 ppm Th. In the USA, ash from coal-fired power plants contains on average 1.3 ppm of uranium and 3.2 ppm of thorium, giving rise to 1200 tonnes of uranium and 3000 tonnes of thorium in ash each year (for 955 million tonnes of coal used for power generation). Applying these concentration figures to world coal consumption for power generation (7800 Mt/yr) gives 10,000 tonnes of uranium and 25,000 tonnes of thorium per year.
While it's usually discussed in relation to environmental issues, the treadmill of production is relevant here. Basically it says that it's not the producers or the consumers that are solely at fault, but both. Each drives the faults of the other.
CFCs don't readily break down normally, but there is lots of UV radiation and high energy cosmic rays that can break it down when it does get up high. Once broken down, a single Chlorine atom can break down 100,000 ozone molecules
And for why the hole is over Antarctica, it seems to be because of the unique climate that is very cold and dry, and a type of cloud that makes things worse.
I meant that because all the big-tusked elephants were killed before they can breed current elephants simply don't grow them as large as they used to. The genes for big tusks are dying out.
But there are many more examples. How about antibiotic resistant viruses? Peppered moths in Industrialized England? http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/176564/
It is sensationalism. Birth rates decline as population density increases in animal species. This is because of factors such as limited resources. Europe has simply over-shot their capacity to support the current population and is adjusting accordingly (i.e. the average couple can't afford or support more than one child, so they don't have more than one child).
"In logistic growth, birth and death rates are density dependent; as populations increase in size the per capita birth rate decreases (due to increased competition for resources) and the per capita death rate increases due to increased competition for resources, the increased spread of disease or an increase in predation that arises when predators are attracted to areas of high population sizes."
Population doesn't scale linearly with acquisition of resources, although it does scale linearly with consumption of resources. There are also fixed resources, like land, that do not change according to population growth. A declining population means more resources per person.
Bringing in migrants is going to keep the population at unsustainable levels (or boost it higher), supplant the existing culture and further increase the magnitude of the discrepancy between resource acquisition and consumption, since the migrants are going to consume but be far less likely to significantly contribute to acquisition.
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/153556/
" Watt needed a method to compare their capabilities relative to horses, the power source they were seeking to replace. The typical brewery horse, attached to a mill that ground the mash for making beer, walked in an endless circle with a 24-foot diameter, pulled with a force of 180 pounds, and traveled at a speed of 180.96 feet per minute. Watt multiplied the speed times the force and came up with 32,580 ft-lbs/minute. That was rounded off to 33,000 ft-lbs/minute, the figure used today. "
Yeah, that is the average. Your 11 horsepower horse is an anomaly. Anomaly doesn't change the average meaningfully.
"So, you are an "ice age denier"?"
I just love how ridiculous this statement is. pkrhed has learned that was an ice age and the ice has been melting so obviously it's getting warmer so don't worry about climate change. Apparently according to pkrhed no scientists anywhere in the world must have thought about the ice ages when considering the science of climate change.
pkrhed learned about this huge secret and now he is sharing it with the world. He can even spot an ice age denier WOO HOO!
Unfortunately for pkrhed he was not smart enough to look into the science of ice ages and he has now acted the fool for the world to see.
Here you go pkrhed, this is how science really works
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154612/
"Milankovitch cycles refer to long term variations in the orbit of the Earth which result in changes in climate over periods hundred of thousands of years and are related to ice age cycles."
Am I an ice age denier?
> that fed on grasses
ferns and cycads etc grass hadn't evolved at that point, otherwise good post :)
- edit: There is some partial evidence of early grasses being around it seems at the very end of the Cretaceous but it seems to be 40 million years ago is the age they became widespread.
> It's fine if you disagree but don't make up stuff.
It's not that they can't form other places, its the dry surface enviroment, like in the atacama, that makes it possible for them to stay without being eaten by bacteria, or coming in contact with minerals that can reduce them.
I think this paper mentiones it: http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/152738/
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/156352/ Focus on the 3rd diagram
Only 10% of water from precipitation on land with natural ground cover results in surface runoff. The rest is absorbed by the soil, held together by tree roots, until saturation of the soil occurs. This is just the first step, reforestation. Basically, we're experiencing flooding because our mountains have been drastically logged over the decades, resulting in severely less holding capacity for water by the soil in upland areas. This has also led to the siltation of rivers, creeks and streams, which ultimately lead to the sea- the drainage path, if you will. So desilting or dredging all has to be done.
And you're right geography does play a part, certainly environmental and physical geography. If your house is located right smack in the Candaba Swamp/Wetlands in Pampanga, why should be you be surprised if your house is inundated regularly?
Mainly these graphs.
http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869Z/CHEM869ZLinks/www.curvefit.com/introduction89.htm
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/151784/
As far as drugs it's not really my field but Methotrexate or most cancer drugs should have a pretty sharp change when it comes to danger.