Yea, Cloud!

They don't mention the drop in oxygen didn't cause the water at 1000 meters to be as low as the naturally occurring drop in oxygen as you come up from 1000 meters to the surface.

The fun part will be tracking these oil plumes / clouds. They won't be able to in two months time. They'll claim they can, naturally. But the thing about a true cloud is that it has adiabatic properties that formed it. Mixing will take care of this in short order.

If you want a solar story that adds a bit more mystery to the rehash of the current solar tale in the linked article, google up Livingston and Penn about the observations that the sunspot frequency is diminishing. In the past, the solar flux would match up to the sunspot number closely. Beginning some twenty some odd years ago, this century long curve matching parted ways. To sum up the mystery, in ten years time, solar cycles will continue. It's just there won't be any more sunspots. (a little hyperbole, but not as much as you think)

There's a few docs online from one of the oil field "auditors" (the ones that value reserves and help measure risk, advise on investing and so are familiar with the science) and it looks to me from those reports that there's a good chance that everyone knows why the well blew out. The BOPs failing is a separate subject. A BOP are like airbags in a car. They help mitigate the damage, and the BOPs didn't. What it looks like is that the cement job failed, and the design of the pipe in the hole didn't allow for a casing hanger. Start with this document: http://www.tudorpickering.com/pdfs/tph.well.slides.pdf Look at Schematic #3. You'll see the 7" x 9 7/8" (tapered) casing is run to surface, through the 9 7/8" lnr (not run to surface) There is a space and the possibility that the blowout happened from poor cement across the oil/gas formation and then between the 7" and 9 7/8" liner. It would have a free run all the way up to the base of the BOP. This also implies the 7" x 9 7/8" casing is still viable and still has cement plugs in place. If all true, then it also means that this well would have blown out with heavy mud in the casing. For the heavy mud to get down in a large 9 7/8" space with the oil flowing is one thing, as it's being engineered for. For that same heavy mud to get into a much smaller space , the space between the 9 7/8" pipe and the 16" casing (again, look at the red line/arrows in the diagram) with the oil and gas "jetting out" is going to be much tougher. What may happen is the heavy mud goes in, and gets rejected out, and _then_ the call goes out to put in the junk, stopping up the flow partially, and then trying more heavy mud. They've got plenty of mud, so they say, so they'll try this to see what happens.

Leave the Nanny State alone long enough, and they'll all turn into Daleks!

When did Seldon predict Iran gets the bomb? I don't think I want to know how high the power levels end up going...

All one has to do is to retrieve EVERY SINGLE TEMPERATURE RECORD AVAILABLE and then figure out which ones were selected.

There's little prejudice in that, is there?

What's being alleged is a selection based on a criteria that can't be easily explained away.

I would have thought this would be modded up a bit, seeing as this was the code that made what they were doing fraudulent.

Oh, wait. This is Slashdot. What was I thinking?

For those who want a summary of some of the emails, go read http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html
Where you can read that the person most responsible for the famous Hockey Stick graph discusses how to destroy a journal that has published skeptic papers.
Yes, it's a political thing that has corrupted the scientific process. Who would'a figured?

Forgetting for the moment that the recently hacked and released emails from one section of the warming folks illustrates the political nature of the "butcher's thumb on the scale"...

I believe the claim of "6deg of warming" is _STILL_ based on a projection of "runaway" conditions unrelated to mankind's emission increases.

I personally haven't gone in and checked these latest claims, but most claims above 3deg warming haven't stood up to serious challenges.
This is why they're seriously considered in the IPCC reports.

I seriously doubt the study linked to at the top of the thread has uncovered any new information or model that wasn't already considered by the IPCC for their AR4.

I suppose this would make Sally Sparrow as the program feature everyone using once during the beta testing, but left out of the final RTM version.

God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

[Lyrics are now contradictory]

If you could assure your investors and insurers that you'd never be at risk for severe storm damage, I could see flying a kite at that altitude.
Once. You might keep it up there for three months, maybe six. And then a storm comes along with a change in wind direction that exceeds your tolerances, and you have wounded duck hurtling down to knock some heads. The conditions that would disrupt your kite and potentially bring it down would be the same conditions you would NOT allow an inflated balloon to be in, the only thing that would keep it from reaching terminal velocity.
You might be able to launch a balloon that runs above everything, to say 45,000', but I doubt the amount of lift that would provide -- perhaps someone can run the numbers.
You could call the first one launched "The Sword Of Damocles"!
NIMBY turns into NAMH (Not Above My Head)

OMG! You just totally screwed over the Sooper Sekret security arrangements of the Secret Service! Now everybody knoas!

even a caveman could do it! /my karma, watch it go down.