Green Baron

It's been a while but apparently someone is still working on it. https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04600 tldr: the hypothesis introduces ringed planets as sources for the anomalous light curves.

Nice example. grmblgrmbltherearealwaysafewmockingbirdswhithoutunderstandinggrmblgrmbl

And the animals (i mean vertebrates) we find are those that were the most abundant top successful super duper cracks, and biased to the big ones. Those myriads of nature's tries that survived maybe a few hundred thousand years (still longer than us ;-)) or didn't have a large number and where put aside quickly as insufficiently fit are gone forever. Smaller specimen sometimes bring bigger leaps forward as they remind us that there was more than big fat dinos.

@Scotius, there is enough data at hand to (at least roughly) reconstruct past habitats and habitants. Palaeontology (P.) is more than just bones, though bones are mostly used to infer the phylogenetic tree. And indeed, many questions remain open, even regarding methodology. P. is embedded in the geosciences with all their possibilities and they are vast. It is no problem to reconstruct past biocoenosises (besides bones) through sediment analysis, dating, isotopy, .... For example the conditions at time of deposit, flow direction and intensity (precipitation), environmental temperature, origin of the sediment and path it took, contents of the sediment like imprints of "biology", plants, seeds, etc. pp. allow, if present and thoroughly enough studied, quite an exact reconstruction. It is mostly details that are missing or questioned. Like colours, feathers or not, kinship, ... As to bones and phylogeny, yep, problems are obvious. But once you have studied several skeletons and the morphology and functionality you quickly get an impression of how the vertebrate skeleton works. It is not that every time the "wheel" is reinvented, the basal "blueprint" (head, torso, extremities, etc.) is "only" adapted but the schemes are the same. Once you've seen different mammal tibiae for example you will most probably always recognize one, even if you don't know which animal it is from (reptiles and amphibians can be different have their own betraying traits). So certain structures can be quite typical for certain animals and used to identifying them. Problem is that similar "requirements" lead to similar "solutions", meaning that a part of a skeleton might look similar to that of another animal because they filled a similar niche, but yet they lived 50 million years apart or on different halves of the globe (at that time). And that doesn't really make the lives of the P.sts easier. I am not a specialist, i once (early 2000s) had to pass the examinations concerning the subject (and did so :-)). But of course things have changed since then and i have only very little practical experience. Should you (or anybody on earth :-)) ever have the chance to visit one of those: http://www.senckenberg.de/root/index.php?page_id=71&PHPSESSID=ap09jesv2p253jlopaoaqtenv7 http://www.naturkundemuseum-bw.de/intl/englisch/museum-am-loewentor https://naturalhistory.si.edu/ https://www.fieldmuseum.org/ do so ! :-)

Saurischia ("a pelvis like a reptile lizard") is the group, besides the Ornithischia ("a pelvis like a bird") under the clade of the Dinosauria that are assumed to be the ancestors of the birds. And T. rex is in the right branch that leads to the birds, guess which ? :-) Funnily those with a pelvis like a reptile lizard, the Saurischia are the birdy ones. Cladistic, with all it's dis- and advantages, is the classification technique. Sometimes (as in the case above) an index of a bone is used as a classification criteria. So all this is valid until it is replaced. And, psst, Sauropods belong to the Saurischia, or am i wrogn ? Edit: changed reptile to lizard to avoid action ;-)

Well, the cyclones' track follows the large scale circulation pattern, it won't "enter" a high pressure, it is influenced by coriolis force, these things. "Large scale synoptic" might be search criterion ...

The best information i know of is indeed from the American weather service's hurricane site. Here the link again: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/ For details, click "Analyses & Forecasts/Marine Products" and choose the area. So, right now and for the next 120 hours (5 days) it is moving westerly, further intensifying to a major hurricane. It was categorised 3 earlier today. It moves towards the Lesser Antilles (not the US coast according to the NOAA). Pls. keep in mind that a five day forecasts may have uncertainties to the course and strength of the storm.

Overworked: Avemetatarsalia aren't birds (Aves). Dinosaur aren't Aves either, but can together with others be combined into a clade Avemetatarsalia/Ornithodira/All-Birds based on common skeletal traits. "Bird-like skin" and "reptile-like skin" has a connotation to feathers and scales and with this connotation one can name a skin "reptile-like" or "bird-like". No problem here, or ? As to feather or scale, if you have info about feathers on T. rex then by all means don't hesitate. The article concludes that the fossil remains of these animals show "scaly, reptilian like" skin (leaving space for possible feathers on the spine) and suggests an explanation why. Climate is excluded as a cause. Because others, some of them 10s of millions of years earlier, show feathers doesn't automatically mean T. rex had them too. Clades are arbitrary, based on fossil traits and don't necessarily reflect biological relations. Similar features can have simple functional causes and so totally unrelated species can be sorted under the same clade. I am still hesitating to spend the 25 bucks for the whole article i must admit. Let's not forget, feathered dinosaurs are existent, but rare.

"TREY the Explainer - YouTube Explain Everything...and more! This is a channel of Science, Evidence, and Truth." "Truth" always makes me anxious :-) The guy seems not to be an insider, just someone who collects data from the internet and forms videos from it. It is of course very easy to extract points from works that interpret clues and find something that doesn't fit. But we have no living T. rex and must live with the sparse evidences at hand. Nevertheless, the work was accepted, discussed, put together with others and the overall consensus is ... scales to the Tyrants. Reptiles rather than birds. Until further notice, of course. We must stay flexible :-) This page http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/five-things-we-dont-know-about-tyrannosaurus-rex-180951072/ shows the view of two years earlier. If you don't want to be confused by rapidly changing data and views then this book should have a place on the shelf. It is a nice foundation and overview of what the title says.

Not quite up to date The classical view but interesting in this context: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/endothermy.html http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/ectothermy.html http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/summarythermy.html Well, nice to read :-): https://www.nap.edu/read/11630/chapter/9 .... and a long list of discussion towards the one or the other. So there's a conundrum of arguments for and against the one and the other, time to invent something in between, like mesod..thermy :-)

We don't. Because they most probably weren't. They weren't really warm-blooded like mammals either. But of course able to regulate their body temperature. A hunter has to and their occupied too many niches to be just like today's lazy lizards. I don't find the references and have spent more than enough time here today. Kindly ask to search yourselves :-) Dinosaurs, body temperature, regulation, warm-blooded ...

T-Rex was covered in scales. Sorry :-) http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/13/6/20170092 Feathers were apparently sorted out at the base of the genus.

You're on the Lesser Antilles ? It may be too early to dig in, it is still a week or so away and much can happen in the meantime ... i hope you get away ... " ... 'cause there ain't nowhere to hide waitin' for the hurricane" humdidum For those interested: this is what a marine weather forecast including a hurricane warning looks like: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/MIAHSFAT2.shtml Spanish is the same but the language is worse ... :-)

Climate science does not do such a thing. If a scientist does then he/she deserves the above quotation marks. Any serious publication names uncertainties and makes clear where it hypothesises, how data was collected and processed and cites correctly knowledge it is based upon. Maybe not always right in the abstract cause these are meant to be the core statements and nothing more. Journals, and that is besides the peer review process their greatest advantage, have strict specifications and rules on the form of a submission, how to cite, etc. pp.. This latest paper i read in ice sheets even mentions the hypothesis in the abstract: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7661/full/nature22996.html?foxtrotcallback=true Edit: black sheep are existent, but rare.

In principle i aim at nobody :-) It was a reply on the claim that polar bear population has doubled in the past, it has indeed halved since the 1980s and predictions are that the population will be down to a few refuges by the 2080 and extinct in Canada earlier. Canada wants to please the Inuit because they hunt polar bears, so it is mere politics by the country not to put the endangered species on "endangered" status. There was an USGS (your own countries geological survey) study, if you're interested you can find it. The wikipedia article doesn't seem to be that bad ... i don't trust wikipedia too much, you know :-). I don not want to discuss the role of climate research and what is a "soft" and what is a "hard" science, that'll quickly lead on forbidden ground here and is in itself "soft" enough to leave room for too much personal interpretation, including sorting out "unconvenient" stuff as being "too soft". That doesn't bring us forward and keeps us turning in circles :-) I would like to stick to publications and keep personal feelings aside. That includes documentation of current stati (statuses ?), development over the past, and also predictions for the future. The latter has shown to be extremely difficult but possible. Also it is becoming clearer that past predictions indeed were too conservative. 20 years ago, it was not assumed that Greenland or the Arctic could be completely free of ice in a foreseeable future, now it indeed seems as exactly this may happen rather sooner than later. Satellites do fail as well, for example due to calibration errors, as has been the case with tracing sea level rise and the Antarctic ice shield growth. For sea level rise the models indeed had been better than satellite observations that were masked by volcanic ash and calibration errors. I can't find the papers now, but if you search you may be lucky. It is now clear that sea level rise, in unison with ice melting, is indeed faster than predicted and accelerating. NOAA has popular science excerpts on it. As to precision: well, single measurements may have higher tolerances, but over time and many measurements the tolerances correct themselves out. If you have many measurements A and many B then the difference between the median of A and B will be very exact, much more than a single A and B where the one could be biased to lower and the other to higher values. To the weather: it is not the rise by 10-20 inches, it is the occurrence of events that carry much more energy than the past average (hurricanes, taifuns, monsoons, ...) that endanger property and lives and Harvey fits right in. That is not a new insight. The curve is shiftet to the right, with extremes reaching farer out of the bell shape. More. It is not a joke, denialism (that called so ?) is futile :-/ Edit: you guys cost time, i hope you value that ! Have a nice one :-)

That is weak argument and has nothing to do with the modeling of a possible future development. Nobody says the models are correct, but everybody is working hard to get data that suits for evaluation. And if i browse through the papers i see a constant development over the past 20 years that science is getting better, even emancipating from former influence at least in Europe and China. There is consensus and controversy and the people that discuss actually know what they are doing. I mean, you seem interested but also seem to have a pre-fabricated opinion. Maybe you should actually dive into publications on the subject, not from the news magazines but from AGU, EGU, USGS and other national services, Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience, Elsevier-Journals. There's where actual science takes place and is published. You don't need +grades for melting. Dust on ice lowers albedo enabling the sun to melt the surface, local weather effects like foehn rise surface temperatures locally by 10-15 degrees C and the very dry air leads to sublimation (solid to gaseous without liquid in between). Increased movement of masses melts ground ice .... etc. Some of these effects are actually self-amplifying, positive feedbacks. Ground melting leads to higher movement speeds, surface thawing to higher environmental temp. as more soil is exposed, moisture and temp. differences drives local pressure and winds, could amplify the foehn. The water is carried in streams that quickly erode the ice surface ... and so on. Yeah, such thing make climate change deniers rejoice. But it was simply a local anomaly. Overall Greenland this year is as warm as never before and melting is accelerating, due to retreat in sea ice, surface melting, accelerated ice movement and insolation. Ursus maritimus. Endangered independently from Canada's politics. Won't make it long the (sub-)species because it's niche, the habitat is dwindling. Say goodbye. I said Subspecies because they interbreed with the great brown bear. Question: why do you scoff at scientists that way ? Are you a biologist that does related research ? Just a question so i know whom i'm battling with :-) From controversy can come new insight ... Cheers, and no offense meant, only trying to reason.

For fire fighting and environmental things (BRIF brigade de incendios forestales). A Kamov (crashed last year while in several days long service, nobody hurt), was replaced but i don't know with what ... i must admit i don't know the other types. But typing "helicopteros la palma" shows a few videos on youtube. Ah: i found this: Sokol, sounds Russian, Bell 212, 412 ... ... i think they can't afford sexy Airbus industries curls ... :-)

Oops, the helicopters where flying yesterday here. Now it is partly cloudy and the sky above is deep blue. Might mount the telescope tonight :-)

They are getting better. Right now it seems as if predictions have been too conservative ... Yeah. Through observation :-) That is not possible. GR is a relatively easy thing compared to planetary dynamics. All the climate and even weather models are simplifications. You can't even predict tehe occurance of a single thunderstorm, but you can name probabilities depending on terrain, temperature, moisture, etc. "Exogene dynamics"(*) never becomes as firm a theory as GR, but it consists of a huge number of theories and hypothesisses and observations. And people that discuss their findings. And that is the is a basic difference: GR can be described mathematically, climate not, or only very coarsely. It simply is too complicated. Sure. And it'll be more and more of a bad time over time. I am not a prophet, i only read the papers. Well, there are of course worldwide standards as how and were to take data and how to calibrate it. You can trust official measurements roughly when they were taken ~1950. True. But we can compare them sometimes. I had read the case of temp. measurements from a monastery over 200 years, where the monks wrote exactly when they took data and what was the weather, the ground, the sun insolation, etc. Well, you can securely assume that meteorologists know that and account for it ;-) Edit: but it indeed was a problem in the past and shoudn't be trusted unquestioned if long term (100s of years) charts are being looked at. (*)Edit: that's a German word. It means the part of geoscience that deals with the earths surface and above. Very roughly.

That's actually based on outdated information based on a nasa publication that was based on satellite observation. The mass gain was in the past and might be partly attributed to erroneous data, the study was controversely discussed. The ice loss in the Antarctic in the last few years is indeed dramatic and accelerating, both marine and land ice, from warmer water and warmer winds, foehn effects, etc. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7661/full/nature22996.html?foxtrotcallback=true https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v7/n8/full/nclimate3335.html Nasa itself is steering back, just not as loud as they could be: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/ I don't want to fight with you guys ;-)

The text is about OIS-5e, when it was indeed, as we said 15 years ago, a little warmer than 15 years ago, but i haven't heard that word again since then. Direct comparisons of absolute temperatures are not trivial and often very much misleading, i don't go into detail. See level rise back then didn't endanger human existence as humans depended mostly on hunting and had no immobile property and population was extremely thin. And, btw. depending on how far you move back and with what speed you'll get a nice movie about changing landmasses, sea rise and fall, ice shield build-up and melting ... thrilling :-) Problem today is more and more people are directly affected. The added energy in atmosphere and oceans do have an influence on climate and weather patterns. It is very difficult to quantify but tried and they are getting better. And it is totally in conformity with the models to say that single events may be much stronger and carry much more energy and thus may destroy much more of our beloved property (at times including the proprietaries) than it was the case before, regardless of time scale. A little outdated already: https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ And you'll find a lot of information on the impact of predicted effects.

*Sadly shaking the head* The patterns themselves change as well as their intensities. Connection to Arctic warming and meanwhile Antarctic as well (ice shelf breakups and melting of terrestrial glaciers), ocean temperatures, circulation patterns (like monsoons) has been sufficiently observed over the past decades. As an entry: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page6.php A few weeks ago there was an interesting article in Nature about Antarctic glacier melting (land glaciers, not ocean ice breakup). It is being observed that changes in ice covered surface might well come faster than expected.

Yes. Monsoons are a seasonal occurrence. The change in surface temperature between the Asian landmass and the ocean causes it.

An exceptionally intense monsoon in Asia flooded parts of Bangladesh, Nepal and India, killing more than 1500 and effecting more than 16 million, according to the Red Cross. Food shortage and polluted water endanger more. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/30/mumbai-paralysed-by-floods-as-india-and-region-hit-by-worst-monsoon-rains-in-years Just pasted the first link found ...

Hurricane season on the Atlantic has begun (usually ~August - October). In any case the Atlantic is pretty warm this year, almost 30° off the African coast. Should atmospheric currents support further development of these things then they might arrive as pretty nasty hurricanes on the other side. How a specific disturbance develops must be seen. Some just dissolve, some turn north over colder water, and some collect more energy while crossing the pond. All in all a warmer atmosphere can of course store much more energy and correlates nicely with the number of hurricanes / taifuns in the last years. But how a single one develops and where it goes depends also on specific factors, as has been with Harvey. The NOAA has pretty nice and (still) unbiased information, but in the moment shows nothing new in the gulf of Mexico ... ?