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Comment Re:that's not what determines viewing distance (Score 1) 304

Ideally, the screen would cover your full angle of vision. Yes, this means that if you want to look at all the details, your eyes will have to move. The same thing happens in real life, so it's not a problem. What needs to happen though, is that film makers adjust their camera focal lengths accordingly, so that the size of objects in the media correspond to their real life size so that your eyes and head don't need to make more movements than they would in real life if you were standing there in the scene.

Comment Re:Nitrogen asphyxiation (Score 1) 483

In the case of suicide, people sometimes don't have access to the right materials, don't know the proper way to handle them, and may also have (subconscious) doubts about suicide. I'm sure if somebody is strapped down, the mask is applied properly, and you leave it on for a few minutes after the heart has stopped, nobody's going to survive.

Comment Re:Where did you get that fact from? (Score 1) 136

There could still be a lot of plastic in the Arctic of course. Some currents are more likely to collect the plastic in one area, and it's plausible something like that is happening in the Arctic. But adding the "trapped in ice" doesn't really make sense, if there's a constant exchange between water and ice, and each having the same concentration of plastic.

Comment Re:CO2 and climate: my take (Score 1) 323

You can model the effect of aerosols, but you can't predict when the next volcano erupts, or how much Chinese coal plants will generate in the next decade. I don't know if "negligible" is the right word. It is true that the influence of the sun is rather small, but it's still there. Of course, the output of the sun has diminished since the 80's, so you can't use it to explain the warming.

Comment Re:CO2 and climate: my take (Score 1) 323

For starters, the models can't predict the influence of aerosols, the sun, or ENSO cycles. 1998 was a peak El-Nino year, with a record heat, so this skews the results for the interval starting at 1998. It is instructive to look at the temperature data, but compensate it for those three factors. The result shows an unmistakable trend, that has not paused at all: http://tamino.files.wordpress....

Comment Re:Where does 7 feet of water come from? (Score 3, Interesting) 323

I found the following numbers: volume = 1.3 billion km^3, expansion coefficient = 250 ppm/K, heat capacity = 3.993 kJ/kg/K. Average depth = 3.68 km. So, to get a rise of 7 feet, a temperature rise of 2.32 K is required, which requires 1.3E21 * 3993 * 2.32 = 1.2E25 J total, or 1.4E23 per year. That's quite a bit less, but still a lot of heat. But of course, not all of the 7 feet rise will be due to thermal expansion. Over the last couple of years, about 75% of the rise in sea level was due to melting ice, and only 25% due to thermal expansion.

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