There is far more "fiddling" done just to produce the satellite temperature data than there is to produce the surface temperature data. In the first place satellites don't measure temperature directly. Instead they measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules which serve as a proxy for temperatures in blobs of the atmosphere above the surface. They have to be adjusted for things like orbital decay, estimated sensor drift, changes in the time of observation and to account for things like clouds and high elevations (the Himalayas). Only then can they derive a temperature from the satellites.

That may be true in the sense that you can't instantaneously measure the temperature of every square Planck length of area on the surface of the Earth. But by choosing a representative sample of stations around the world and consistently deriving an average temperature you can get an idea of how temperature is changing over time which is what we really care about.

Hmmm, maybe not Benford. Nothing in his bibliography strikes a resonant tone. I'll have to fish it off the shelf (I remember feeling somewhat conflicted between the writer's reputation and my lack of engagement with the characters, scenario and underlying re-building of the laws of physics. So I don't think I've sent it off to the second-hand-bookshop in the street.)

Maybe so but that reboot process is going to take a while and be unpleasant for everybody (except maybe masochists). It might also mean a significant drop in world population.

Well, there have been science fiction stories about intelligent beings existing in/as plasma. Maybe we can figure that out.

I wonder how many comets it kicked out of the cloud and have cause some ruckus here on Terra.

Why do you think any comets etc that were perturbed have already arrived?

There's nothing to prevent (say) a 10km body from having been perturbed 70,000 years ago, into an orbit that brings it into close proximity to Quaor in 10 years time, which then perturbs it into the inner Solar System on a couple of hundred year drop into a field in Oklahoma.

The debris could still be arriving here in several million years.

Oh so that's why everyone in Europe and half of Asia are dead

From Kaos' figures (which I am taking as unadulterated bullshit) he's talking about killing pretty much everyone outside of Africa and South America.

The boy has the "thousand yard stare" : back away from him, while feeling around for useful tools like a clue-by-four. His original case may have had some merit, but by his deranged mumblings, he's tainted it by association.

There's even a few places here in Ontario where radon venting is mandatory in your house, most of the southern part of the province has 50-800m of limestone over the bedrock and that's not enough to prevent seepage.

I'd look at that as a geologist and think - there's a good chance that the limestones would help to concentrate the seepage of radon from the basement into particular areas.

True. Lead poisoning is well understood, and has been for thousands of years.

Hundreds, I'd live with. Thousands? Citation required, I think.

Yes, I did grow up in a house with lead piping. Which is why, to this day, I run the tap for a good 30 seconds before taking water to drink or cook with. There were coping strategies that evolved in the last few centuries when people did understand "lead" as an element (and so "lead poisoning" as a concept distinct from "arsenic poisoning" and "belladonna poisoning") which the Romans didn't seem to have.

I'm trying to remember when the hypothesis that lead poisoning is what did in the Romans originated. I think it's relatively recent - Gibbon in his "Decline & Fall" blamed the de-balling effect of Christianity for the decline and fall, and he was one of the first to try to come up with an overarching explanation. That would put the "lead poisoning" theory at being at most a couple of centuries old, as a disagreement with Gibbon.

Since natural uranium has a half life measured in billions of years, the only way it could kill you in five minutes is if a significantly large chunk of it fell on your head from a great height....

Video or it didn't happen.

Actually, since I'm sharing an office this month with the safety officer and a lifting-slinging-cranes instructor, I've seen more than enough "this is why you wear a hard hat and you still don't get anywhere near (30degree fall angle) of a suspended load" videos this week. the polite ones illustrate using a watermelon in place of a human head. The ones from surveillance cameras are kill porn.

A hard hat is good to around 1kg mass falling through 1m. Anything much more the hat may reduce injury, but there's still a good chance of serious injury or death.

A few days ago, someone had put a half-kilo water bottle on a ledge on a basket load for tubulars. When it was being boomed out over to the cargo boat, it fell from about 20m height - equivalent to about 10kilos through 1m or 1kilo through 10m. Well into serious injury territory.

Sorry, but I work with these dudes and Dropped Objects are a day-to-day conversation , meeting and email subject here.

Are you talking about what I was talking about? I was talking about an electric motor, not a fuel-driven one.

What sort of claim is that? Since when do oxygen masks need 20kPa to function? And secondly, if there's "problematic loading on the capsules" from too much pressure on the pressure-compromised capsule, then your pressure is also way too high inside. Which means that you've repressurized the tube way too much. So the solution is: Don't do that!

Branching at full speed is probably not possible with the Hyperloop as designed; the skis are curved to match the diameter of the tube, with a ~1mm clearance with the tube surface, so there is no passive tube design that could accommodate a "switch". In order to continue from Section A to either Section B or Section C, you'd have to make an intermediate length of tube several hundred meters long that could be physically moved at one end from B to C, with sub-millimeter precision

Wait, meaning that while it's technically possible, but it'd be really tricky to accomplish? Gee, I wish I had written something like "Branching would be really tricky, but there's no physical barriers" at the top of my post ;)

The reason is threefold: drag continues to increase at higher speeds regardless of the speed of sound

Drag is reduced in the first place by using hydrogen even at a given pressure. And you can use 1/4th the pressure and still maintain lift because you're moving four times as fast. And given how few reboosts are needed from LA to SF in the base case, a few more per unit distance hardly seems limiting.

If you consider that the steel Hyperloop pipe draped across 30m-spaced pylons will approximate a vertical sine wave, then at 700mph the allowable sag is only about 5cm

Irrelevant because earthquakes impose far more deflection that you have to be able to counter (and that the proposal calls for countering) than a craft moving past.

Mechanical braking from 1500mph in the event of an emergency is also a non-starter

What, you're picturing drum brakes or something? You're moving at high speeds in a giant steel tube. Magnetic braking couldn't possibly be easier.

a 700mph capsule will incur about 2g's of aerobraking deceleration

Where are you getting this from? Even if the tube was instantly full pressure (which it wouldn't be), a streamlined shape will not experience 2Gs at 700mph, any more than a passenger jet losing full engine power does. And anyway, 10g horizontal is not fatal even if that was the case. The average untrained individual, properly restrained, can tolerate 10g for a minute without even loss of cognitive function.

Not only that, but if your craft is travelling four times as fast, you're sweeping through four times as much gas per unit time to compress under the skis.

Hydrogen has all sorts of advantages. And the very low pressures prevent most of the negatives. The only one that I don't know about and would require testing would be what sort of reaction would one see as a craft moves past, with any residual oxygen. If I had to guess, I'd guess that you will get some combustion, but the craft moves past so fast and the mixture will decompress so fast, I would think the rate would be quite limited.

First off, if servicing that requires full de/repressurization is some sort of frequent event, then the whole concept is doomed for reasons entirely unrelated to anything in this discussion. Secondly, 1/5 ton of hydrogen at industrial rates is about $200. Whoop-di-doodle-doo. And the advantage is being able to travel at mach freaking 4, not about the reduction of drag at a given speed (which is, FYI, true also).