Talk-Polywell.org

Minor nitpick: that's not 300 times slower, but one 300th of the speed.

Care to elucidate? I care to be elucidated. I know I over-simplified the rate of decrease of CO2. It would probably be e^-x, so that would make 1 century put the levels around 37% of what they are now (neglecting the rate at which nature puts CO2 into the atmosphere). Ignoring the timing and the exa...

[foreword: Take the following with a pinch of salt: lots of assumptions and simplifications.] I just ran some very quick numbers (BOE, or more accurately, python), and going by that 30000 million tonnes (per year?), us humans are pumping about 6ppm/year into the atmosphere: >>> 30000e6/(6370000**2*3...

Ah, well, yeah, that's true. Depends on who "we" is, I guess: us here in the forum (probably won't know), or us humans (any time soon).

However, that's just covering my ass. I was sloppy.

First, are aqueous solutions actually required, or is that just the prevalent assumption? Second, amino acids have been found in nebulae. Might it be possible for certain amino acids (or more likely proteins) to "collect" water molecules they bump into, forming their own local supplies of aqueous so...

That sounds like double-speak for "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".

I just had another thought: while many deserts can be attributed to man's activities, might their rapid (?) spread be due to low CO2 levels not allowing plants to grow fast enough to "overpower" the spread?

However, there is the problem with lack of "food" for plants in the sand.

Looking at the CO2 levels in that chart, I got to wondering how uncomfortable humans would be in that 7000ppm period. It turns out, most of us wouldn't even notice (some of the more sensitive people might get a little sleepy, though). Wikipedeia Inspectapedia On a side note, I recently realized that...

MSimon: one interesting thing I noticed: that upper "rail" seems to have dropped about 250 million years go. I don't remember my geological history, but might that be around when Pangaea broke up?

[edit]Fix missing "million" pointed out by MSimon.

What rancor and vitriol? All I've seen is quite civilized discussions, which is rather impressive considering the inflammability of the topics being discussed. It seems to me that the only people complaining about the politics are those whose arguments never survive the first counter-argument. It mi...

I use the "new posts" feature and I would be quite miffed in any section was removed from it. General enhances what would otherwise be a mostly boring site: the site would be interesting only when News comes in, and that's pretty rarely.

Nah, Hansen is old hat ("father of AGW"). He's not in the pockets of anyone as far as I understand, [maniacal laughter elided] You are hilarious. We need to be able to use our own resources for energy, so I could care less if we got rid of fossil on other grounds. (bolding added) He's also rather s...

I do think you should look at the IR absorption profile of CO2 in your handy Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, dear sir. High school science teachers (the fun kind) can put up an IR camera with a candle on the other side of a glass container, full of oxygen and nitrogen, and show that when CO2 is ...

Yes, Queensland is typically very hot. Its "winter" is summer as far as I'm concerned. However, this winter (Jun-Sep), it was actually cold. Three years ago, there was an extreme cold snap (<10°C) in November or December (I don't remember just when, now). Probably my only summer in Brisbane that I a...

Josh: my parents live in Australia (Queensland), and they were commenting on the unusually cold winter this year. They've been living there for 22 years and my mom grew up there. I haven't heard any comments about the summer (ie, now), though. As for the fires: they are nothing new. I heard plenty o...