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Comment Re:Science is not consensus (Score 1) 649

AGW is about as solid as estimating the results of a chemical reaction in an uncontrolled environment where you know only some of the reactants involved.

What you give implies a warming trend, but trying to account for everything which affects surface temperature to the point where you can give a meaningful number leads to error bars which include both deep freeze and boiling water (although I admittedly recalculated those over ten years ago, I am not aware of any major developments which would warrant redoing that.)

I understand it is the best we can currently do, but our best does not yield an answer most people would consider meaningful.

An honest answer would be something like "What we know implies a warming trend, but we are incapable of putting a number to it at this time." Claiming the kind of certainty the IPCC does is very dishonest, which annoys me enough to be willing to argue it.

And to answer your question:

The energy goes back to space, but this is delayed more than it normally would be if it is absorbed by a CO2 molecule.

The energy absorbed by a CO2 molecule will be emitted as a photon after an average of about ten microseconds (collision rate and therefore pressure will affect this.) The wavelength of the photon depends upon temperature, but due to the very limited absorption spectrum of CO2 it is unlikely to be absorbed by another CO2 molecule. H2O is however far more likely to absorb the photon, and we have a lot more of it in the atmosphere. The potential problem comes about from the interaction of both CO2 and H2O (a very small increase from CO2 amplifying a much larger effect from H2O.)

The reason increasing CO2 has a noticeable effect is due to its small concentration in the atmosphere, as it will not yet absorb the wavelengths it can to extinction.

As concentration increases it becomes "less bad" to increase it further. It should be kept in mind that increasing CO2 concentration will give a logarithmic falloff in absorbed energy. If you increase the concentration of a gas by 1000x, you will get about a 7x increase in absorbed energy.

In short:

We probably will see some warming, but are very unlikely to see a runaway greenhouse effect. A potential future problem which bears some watching is being pitched as a doomsday scenario, and I would consider this is a good example of the phrase "making a mountain out of a molehill."

Comment Re:A minority view? (Score 1) 649

Aside from physics being a branch of science covering a large number of theories, and evolution being one theory within the branch of science we call biology?

It is difficult to compare them directly for this reason.

Physics tends to make predictions which are then tested, and I tend to dislike physical theories which cannot make predictions we can verify to a high degree of confidence. Evolution has some limited experimentation behind it, but the time scales involved do not allow much in the way of testing this (mostly it is fruit flies and other short lifespan organisms, which is very limited.)

I do not think evolution comes even close to the kind of confidence you need to claim a result in physics (usually considered 95% with carefully controlled statistics to back it), but it is still by far the best explanation we have for how organisms on this planet came to the state they are in. Physics is a much harder science than biology.

The person you replied to may be claiming his "feels" and some writings from some random long dead guys as evidence, but is not entirely wrong about evolution having a lot less evidence to it than some of the more well tested theories in physics (although there are also a few real crackpot theories which get thrown around from time to time in physics.)

Then again religion is not science, and has no place in a science class (even though some people treat religion as science, or science as religion.)

Comment Re:Laser Sintering (Score 1) 104

If it is large enough, why not move the laser instead?

You may even be able to do this by reflection without moving more than a very small surface which reflects the correct wavelength. This does not seem like an problem which cannot be solved.

My first thought as to what would stop it is the amount of energy required, as lasers are not very efficient, and melting (or sintering) large objects may take enough energy that the losses involved in transferring energy through a laser may make it inefficient compared to direct heating.

Comment Re:Why would a prospective CS major take the AP te (Score 1) 293

In my case I had 6 AP credits with a score of 4 or 5 (including CS), the college said "choose two". They were also kind enough to clarify that classes that could be tested out of also counted towards this limit.

I could see not taking it for courses in your major, but they seemed not to want students skipping anything if they could prevent it. I suppose they wanted to make money from the classes, but not accepting them makes the entire AP thing a waste of time.

Comment Re:I suppose that explains (Score 1) 293

He may have meant checking ZF or something, but I am guessing not.

In any case smaller data size does take less time to process for many instructions, for instance a 32 bit DIV is faster than doing so on 64-bits, even on a 64-bit processor (it takes about a third the time.)

  If you are packing bits it can also save time in transferring from memory (although you need enough bits to make it worthwhile.)

Comment Re:Eat healthy anyone? (Score 1) 625

Carbohydrates are not digested at a rate even close to sugar.

Runners will commonly eat a lot of carbohydrates over the couple of days leading up to a race for this reason. It provides long term energy which can be used somewhat rapidly if necessary. I do not get a sugar high when carb loading.

Something like white bread may be different, but I barely consider that food. If the carbohydrates you are eating are sweetened with a ton of fructose that could cause you problems as well.

They do provide a lot of energy for the amount you eat, which is highly useful unless you have problems regulating your calorie intake. If your goal is to eat as much as possible they are probably not a good choice.

Meat only diets are very bad for you, you may want to get your cholesterol checked if you have been on one for a while.

Comment Re:IDIOT (Score 1) 625

You will not metabolize carbon dioxide from the air, and nitrogen is inert.

Breathing converts oxygen and carbon into carbon dioxide, therefore breathing should actually make you lose weight.

Water may add to weight, but you will keep to a fairly narrow range of water content if you want to survive.

Comment Re:This reminds me of a great Simpsons episode (Score 1) 625

It is that simple, humans are not overunity devices.

How you go about accomplishing it can get complex, various feedback effects complicate what you expend or gain energy wise, and you still need certain substances in your diet in enough quantity to avoid nutritional deficiencies, but you will lose weight if you gain less energy from food than you expend.

Comment Re:This reminds me of a great Simpsons episode (Score 1) 625

Eating as you did in your 20s when you are in your 40s is highly inadvisable. You want to tailor your consumption to match current energy expenditure, not what you were expending 20 years ago.

As you age your dietary needs will change, but you can still find a balance. Energy expenditure through exercise should not change much if it is consistent, but the amount of energy needed for other functions will. If nothing else your cell division rate drops as you age, and eventually goes to nearly zero.

This means you should no longer be eating enough to cover that energy expenditure, as you are no longer expending it. This is going to be less noticeable if you get substantial exercise, as it is a smaller fraction of your energy use.

Short of extremely rare hormone disorders or crippling physical debilities you should be able to control your weight without too much effort, even as you get older.

Comment Re:War of government against people? (Score 1) 875

Hand grenades, Machine guns, C4, RPGs: Yes

Small Pox, Nuclear missiles: No (and I would rather governments did not have these either, although depending upon how you read it this may actually require an amendment to make the restriction constitutional... which would be a good idea if we were to start allowing everything else.)

I would also say we should be allowed to own tanks, fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and conventional missiles (assuming a private citizen can afford any of those.)

My reading of the second amendment is that the primary thing it does is tell us the form of military we are to have. This would be a militia, not a standing army.

Keep in mind that private citizens owned cannon when that was written. I do believe it allows a private citizen in the US to own military hardware, and it is very much infringed right now.

Comment Re:War of government against people? (Score 1) 875

The problem with lead in gasoline is that you combust it, and the lead gets into the air. Once in the air it can not only be inhaled, but can accumulate in various animals and plants which we eat.

Lead paint mostly stays where it is unless it chips or flakes and someone eats it. In the US you are required to sign a waiver before moving in if the residence contains lead paint. It is mostly safe if there are no children present, or the paint is in good condition.

Comment Re:War of government against people? (Score 1) 875

The mere fact that uncontrolled influences are present makes what the op wrote fail as a disproof, it does not actually matter what they are. If you cannot control all factors such that a single example blows the argument, disproof by counterexample does not work. This makes it mostly useful in math, and less so in the real world.

As the saying goes, correlation is not causation. A lot of people have real difficulty with this, especially when the correlation supports the argument they are trying to make, but it remains true regardless.

You could say the available information provides evidence that gun ownership does not cause increased crime, which would be true. It is however very much possible that it does increase violent crime, and something else is responsible for the decline.

If you need a list of possible influences we can go with better education, reduced environmental contaminants (someone mentioned lead specifically), the rise of easy access to information (the internet), deterrent through harsher penalties (which I do not personally believe helps), economic conditions, etc.

There are rather a lot of things which would influence the crime rate and are not accounted for in a simple crime vs gun ownership chart. In this case nobody will be proving or disproving it either way, it is simply too messy to be subject to this kind of analysis.

The reason so many people are coming down on Jane's post is that it redirects the argument in a very misguided (or underhanded) way. A logical process is given with an example where it works correctly, then applied to a situation where it does not.

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