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Comment Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score 2) 343

I recently read that at the same time light bulbs have gotten more efficient, total lighting power expenditure has gone up! Evidently, it's a combination of people using a lot more light when lighting gets cheaper to operate, and more ligthing being installed in general.

I can imagine if we start offsetting global warming we will produce more of its anthropogenic causes.

Comment All hail the multi-verse. (Score 1) 199

I wonder, if they framed this research another way, if it could solve the question of whether or not the universe is a simulation.

Enough with your silly dichotomies! it's both. In multi-verse theory, there must be some realities in which our universe is a simulation, and ones in which it is not a simulation.

Comment Re:So why use trees? (Score 3, Insightful) 112

algae has many great aspect. It's achilles heels are 1) separation is very expensive 2) it's hard to get enough C02 into the water to do this at scale 3) it can get infected easily 3) inhomgenous growth requires active stiring or other tricks to bring a pond to harvest all at the same time 4) it's not that fast to grow-- poplars and switch grass are more efficient bio mass producers. Ethanol can be made from waste products too.

The upside of algae is that were starting to learn how to use some of it's byproducts and this offsets the costs. and incremental progress is being made on all these aspects. We haven't been growing algae as long as plants so there's potential headroom to grow. It can grow in seawater. lipids are better fuel than alchohol. And finally it's potentially less energetically expensive to sperarate lipids from water than alchohol from water. That step accounts for something like 1/3 of the cost of ethanol.

Comment I don't print my own photos (Score 1) 400

You have to be nuts or in an impossible hurry to print casual keepsake photographs with your inkjet printer on photopaper when you can get infinitely nicer one for pennies from Winkflash or Apple or whatever.

I'm sure the same will be true of 3D printing, hobbyists and pros will print their own. The rest of us will go down to Kinkos and pick up our completed part.

Comment 440 pounds of lithium batteries on flight (Score 2) 491

There were 440 pounds of batteries on one of the cargo items. Fire seems plausible and might explain the alleged radar track to 40k feet. Alternatively other 777 have reported a fuselage cracking problem around the satellite antenna. Decompression from that could explain the dive to below 12000 feet , the loss of some communication ( if the Ping channel a different antenna?) and perhaps incapacitation of the pilots. But this seems less likely.

The most interesting thing about the Inmarsat anaylisis is that it relies on the dubious and odd radar track of the Malaysians that showed turns at VAMPI GIVAL AND IGREX. My theory was that these were mistaken reads miss attributed from SIA 86 another 777 at the same place and time. The Inmarsat people seem to say that the north south symmetry is broken by using that flight path. Yet this path makes no logical sense for an accident. It would have to be volition and shows control .

I'm inclined to go with accident still and thus don't believe that flight path. I thus don't believe the Inmarsat analysis that relies on that. But I do believe their conclusion that it went south.

The perfect correlation with similar flights they report is however a large fly in my ointment. It a remarkable coincidence this flight was so perfectly aligned with the satellites orbital track that it created this north south Doppler symmetry!

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