The article doesn't really point out the remarkable part about this, which is that it's a privately funded satellite. This really shows a change in the space economy.

Granted the barriers to entry have been lowered somewhat... But privately owned satellites have been around since the first commercial telecommunications birds back in the 1960's.

While true, it kind of misses my (perhaps poorly and incompletely expressed) point. Information (such as how to use the slide rule in your example) is nice - but you still need the technology to produce the slide rule (or flint knapped spearpoint). Information is great for winning trivia contests, but survival depends on technology.

They should go further with this. HVAC controls would be a good start.

Sorry for derailing this, but how many people still know the "ancient arts"? You know, the stuff that we used to need before technology took over?

 
The "ancient arts" are technology as well. It's all technology at least as far back as the first knapped flint spearpoint.

I love my ICE vehicles but I accept that the future is electric.

How about working on methods of actually delivering the amount of power required to consumers before arbitrarily mandating the vehicles themselves, though? Have a viable plan to actually produce that power and build out charging infrastructure to make long journeys less of a hassle for current EV owners. You'll decrease consumers' resistance to EVs at the same time you're preparing for the volume we'll eventually see. Meanwhile, you're giving battery technology time to improve as well which will make a huge difference.

Because it's not politically sexy, that's why.

Here's that first sentence with them...

They've known for a while now, and been talking about it for well over a year.

They've known for a while now, and been talking about it for well over a year.

On Jan 1 2020 a new IMO (International Maratime Organization) regulation went into effect. The shipping industry drastically lowered the sulfur content of its fuels and the SOx content of ship exhaust plumes dropped by about 77%. (Other aspects of the fuel change also reduced some particulate pollution, too.)

The COVID sequestration also reduced shipping (and cloud-seeding exhaust from it), along with aircraft contrails and upper-atmosphere dust, and dust-generating industrial processes and transportation activity, which (like volcanic dust) also reflect sunlight over the ocean and lower temperatures.

I've seen claims that the reduction in ship exhaust plumes, alone, are enough to account for ALL the sea temperature rise since 2020, and that with the low-sulfur fuel in continued use the bulk of that excess heating will continue even as activity ramps up post-COVID.

Regarding the "hockey stick" graph. (Taking absolutely no position on whether Mann was honest or not, competent or not, etc.)

I was under the impression that the Hockey Stick graph had been shown to be defective as an indicator of warming, primarily because it took tree ring data as one of its proxies for temperature, but carbon dioxide concentration increases alone have been shown to substantially promote tree growth even in the absence of temperature increases. So how much of the sudden rise in the graph is from temperature increase (if any) and how much just from increased CO2 levels is unknown.

But I don't have any links to reliable scholarly articles examining this issue. Do any of you?

In the U.S. regulation is often driven by existing industries buying politicians to raise the barriers to entry and box out competition. In the E.U. regulation is driven by trying to protect and benefit citizens, probably to an excessive degree.

No one is getting it totally right, but at least the government of the EU is attempting to serve the people it's supposed to be serving - citizens. I'm not inclined to lean towards more regulations but given the choice between the two? I'll take a government that serves citizens over corporations.

I appreciate the need to increase confidence in our election systems after the 2020 debacle, but, "confident that voting systems and other election infrastructure are well-defended"? What in the entire history of electronic voting machines would lead someone to say something like that?

I've spent a lot of time discussing things online since the dial up BBS days. The biggest change I have observed as the unwashed masses have gotten involved in the discussion is the unwillingness to learn anything new or see nuance within issues. The foundation of social media is the little dopamine hit people get from being right, or performing outrage, and that's really all most people are after.

There is no question I can be wordy, but I had someone tell me I "wrote a book" after I posted three short sentences in response to an article.

I've seen people post charts that demonstrate something is happening as evidence that it isn't happening.

If reputable sites and cross checking won't give them the answer they are looking for, a single reference from a *.wordpress.com site will do even if it is demonstrably incorrect.

None of the big issues we face today are simple. They require nuanced solutions that take in to account many complex factors and borrow from multiple political ideologies. That doesn't give people the dopamine hit they want, though, and it doesn't serve the interests of the political class.

Large nonprofit hospital systems also sink money into real estate, especially in the form of buying more hospitals. This has a double benefit because as they gain control of more facilities in the region, the more they can strong arm payers into higher fees.

"changing perceptions" through marketing? that sounds like an arms race with the other side. Long time ago we thought the right way to change perceptions was through good education and development of critical thinking skills.

Where did it all go wrong :)

It all went wrong when each sides of the discussion concluded that scientific papers supporting the other side were marketing fake-news, trying to gaslight them into supporting a scam to let the opposing side acquire money and/or power, rather than actual science.

Warmists think evidence against any aspect of their side's story is akin to smoking research sponsored by tobacco companies. Skeptics think any evidence for a global warming story has been corrupted, ala early drug war research on psychedelic drugs, to feed government power grabs and attempts to put rent-seeking taxes on commerce (e.g. Gore's carbon-credit exchange).

Now neither side believes academic papers on the subject. We'll just have to wait and see what the climate does.

Following this paper's prescription, of course, would just put the nail in the coffin on any remaining hope of convincing the population to pay attention to the sort of propaganda it prescribes. (Assuming the very existence of the paper hasn't already done that.)

Flight time is about 20 years. (Proxima is about 4 light years away and the swarm is averaging about 1/5th lightspeed.) I suspect even some of us boomers can hang in here that long - even if life-extension treatments don't become available.

Oops. Maybe not. They're talking about 75 years before getting around to a launch.