JoeSchmuckatelli

Lets Gooooo!

How do volcanoes affect the weather and what's going on with the Tongan eruption? - ABC News

Gary Hudson?

Coral reefs: Pristine community discovered in deep water off the coast of Tahiti | New Scientist That's kind of my story, above. Even in the 'simple and obvious' category, changing ways is bloody hard.

It all depends on proximity. FM 8-9 Part I/Chptr 3 Effects of Nuclear Explosions (fas.org) jcssp.2012.1520.1530.pdf (thescipub.com) NAE Website - A Nuclear Explosion in a City or an Attack on a Nuclear Reactor

Look - you are on to something, and not wrong. Not at all. I'm not trying to dissuade you, by any means. ... I was thinking about this as I drove to the tire place. Another personal story/analogy to kind of frame the issue: From the time I was 18 'til about 38, I lived an incredibly active lifestyle. I was the guy who in my late 20s and most of my 30s could spend 10 days living in 'the field' hiking an average of 10 - 25 km per day with 40-60 pounds of gear, interspersed with periods of intense cardio or just waiting for the next event, sleeping rough (when we slept) in all weather from snow and ice on the coast to high desert and heat depending on time of year and place of event. Come back in for a single day of recovery, laundry and gear-cleaning and then spend the next week doing 'normal' stuff like running 3-12 miles per day, 3 days out of a week and giving/taking classes or doing paperwork, planning, maintenance, etc. and getting ready for the next 'Field' op. Food was fuel, and we ate a LOT of it. During my off hours, I ate or drank whatever I wanted, including alcohol to whatever extent I wanted. This was my life for most of the first two decades of adulthood. Fast forward to me in my 50s. I've transitioned from that early active life, and for the last 10 years have led a comparatively sedentary existence. I benefit from all that early, strenuous activity - but my habits formed then still affect me today. I eat. A lot. My 'instinct' when it comes to food is to stock up on as much fuel as I can, every time I sit down to eat - because (back then) there were times I never knew when I was going to either need the fuel - or if I would have a chance to fuel. (During one notable op, I had to go three days without eating anything, despite covering an estimated 53 klicks in 40 degree weather and only sleeping one night of the three... that kind of stuff takes a toll). You've probably guessed this - but the habits I had during those decades, while good for me (and necessary) at the time have taken a toll on my old body. I allowed myself to get overweight and for the life of me can't lose it. Rather than looking like a fit, 6-7" football receiver, I look like an old lineman gone to seed. Mind you - I'm educated and like to cook. So I go to the expensive 'Fresh' grocery and try to buy organic foods and make healthy meals. That requires mindfulness and a lot of effort and, yes, education, and time. I've also got teenagers living in the house. They just want fuel. Easy food, nothing fancy, and they certainly don't want to wait, and they want a lot of it. So mealtimes in my house is a competition between what my wife and I need and want, and what they crave and need. Then there's the 'little bit of leftovers' issue: not enough to save, but I'm full ... yet why waste it - so just let 'Dad' finish it off... Mind you, I'm educated, I know what I 'should' do - and acknowledge what I actually do. When I 'get it all right' I feel pretty good - but it's also a luxury... of time and money and mental effort. (I also have a full kitchen with high-quality pots and pans that make it easier to prepare fresh, organic foods; something I did not have or enjoy in my youth). ... I live in a 'normal' American city where quite often the subject of poverty and food scarcity and food quality comes up for those living in the urban parts of town. We've also got a 'lower middle class / poor' suburban part of the city where they talk about 'the obesity epidemic' and 'kids not eating during the weekend'... and the news shows people on food stamps buying nothing but easy-to-make processed foods with tons of preservatives in it (mind you, their store does not have an organic section and the selection of fresh foods is slim). They'll follow a family back home and entertain us by watching these poor slobs microwave crap and slop goo from cans into pans to feed their kids... and then lament how fat everyone is, even when little Johnny might have one or two weekends where if he's not on subsidized school meal plans he won't have anything to eat. ... Education tells me that little Johnny and my kids and I need to, for our own respective health and well-being, eat fresh farm-to-table foods that don't come out of cans or packages full of pseudo-hormone containing plastics, fire retardant chemical preservatives or other crap. Do you know how hard that is? How much time, and mindfulness and effort it takes to 'live a normal life' and also 'buy and prepare and cook healthy' meals? It's not easy. I can do it, given the privilege of my education and financial success... but the single mother who takes a bus from job to job? And even though I can do it, and know I should do it, and try to do it... quite often it's a bucket of beer cheese, a box of Triskets and a football game with several beers that ends up being my 'meal.' (While the kids scrounge up their own crap and stare at their own devices). ... So this story / analogy is to highlight that something as personal and immediate and real as my own health, the health of my children and the health of my community - ends up being nigh-unto-impossible to 'solve'. How much less immediate, with far less obvious solutions is 'climate change' or 'ocean acidification' to the average person? I would never accuse them of 'not caring'... but there's a lot of people with both more pressing, immediate needs and frankly, habits they don't know how to change. ...

My turn for an analogy: I'm a smart guy. I love science and space. I routinely come here and ask what must seem like incredibly dense questions to those who have studied physics and have the maths to understand cosmology (I can only guess what @K^2 thinks every time I ask an outlandish question about gravity, relativity, etc). So... theoretically, if I cared I could go back to school, try to figure out where my disconnect was in Algebra and Geometry and resolve that to give me a chance at cracking Calculus and then move on to Physics and Astronomy to follow my passion. But that stuff is hard, man... and I've got a lot on my plate. -- Were someone to make the argument that 'I don't care' about science, or physics or cosmology, they'd be dramatically wrong. The answer to 'why' I haven't gone back to do the research and learn the maths isn't 'don't care' its 'don't have time or capacity' given all my other requirements of daily life. ... Contrast this with someone with less education and lower wattage. They don't 'not care' simply because they haven't done the research. They have massively over-competing needs that fill their daily lives. Usually immediate needs that require much more attention than the diffuse possibility of future harm because of the habits of 7 billion people and decades of incremental growth and trillions of dollars worth of legacy technology still powering all of it. (Would love to answer more - but I have to go get my wife's tires changed)

Couple of questions: The part where the two wind turbines are on fire at the same time - do they explain what happened to cause it? Also, the 'use a flying torch drone' was ingenious; was it jury-rigged just for that one 'clean up'? Also - the 'standing wave in the canal' where is that? I've not seen anything quite as dramatic showing wave action and water. (The unluckiest rabbit in the world was funny) Don't know if you RU folks are old enough to remember the Cold-War... but we had regular 'duck and cover' drills in LA when I was a kid. It was always interesting to see how little the rest of the world appreciated the US/USSR games of the time.

Agree. It is interesting to me that (in the area of forestry management) - I'll read articles and watch programs showing that researchers are learning from the First People's experience with controlled burns and other management practices (these are often Canadian-driven programs - with US understanding being a lot more fragmented and less coherent). They regularly comment on forest diversity - much of which has diminished, detrimentally, in the last 100 years or so and the difference between old-growth forests and those recovered from extensive logging. Mostly these are fairly simple, common-sense recommendations that, if enacted, could make the forests more productive, safer and economically viable than present. Then, despite all of this, (and now, shifting to the US context) you find the administrative and regulatory environments, along with land-use laws, water rights and local traditions effectively make change impossible. (also, to some, any fire = bad) ... There is a real problem with our approach to this - carbon offsets is just a way to continue polluting, while mouthing about doing something beneficial. I'd much rather see policies enacted that put the costs on the polluters (yes, even on me) making cleaning up the source a key part of the equation, rather than enabling 'technologies' that purport to scrub CO2, methane and other GH gasses from the atmosphere. Seeding the ocean or clouds or whatever isn't solving the problem - and as you point out with our past and continued 'fire suppression solution' can have longer-term negative impacts that aren't recognized at the start of the campaign.

That makes me more anxious.

If you gave up better opportunities, yes. Think about all the lawyers making less than starting teacher salary to do criminal defense work. Believe it or not, those folks make Constitutional Law that protects all of Americans' rights (I know the guy who argued 'Batson'). So yeah, merely because you gain some benefit (pay) does not eliminate the doing of good works. Reasoned self interest - is still an interest. I really think you should revisit @MKI's earlier point about people not grasping yet what to do about it, in a way that does not cause greater harm. This, too, is salient: ... There is too much good that has come out of our rapid advance from the 1850s. The costs are becoming apparent - but don't seem high enough yet that we must revert to 1800s levels of industry. Think about modern medicine, modern sanitation, the quality of life of billions... all of those are good things - and yet the cost. I think the key point is 'change'. We are anticipating climate change. Not, exactly, disaster. We don't yet know the costs of that change... but we also don't know whether that change also presents new opportunities. Like MKI - I think it foolish to rush into 'solutions' when we are still discovering the parameters of the problem.

Sidebar:

Very French

TU much bomb pr0n

The pattern is open for the next several months... so why not?

My son stumped me and my dad (who carried one for several years) with this!

Why is the guy from Duluth standing next to the rocket?

Why the soccer ball shape?

No one wants to be frozen with 'that' look on their face!

So at worst we should expect 89% of advertised performance? *8.9 to 89% fainter stars than Hubble can see

Some sort of car and several port-a-potties just got iced! Hope they cleared the Johns before that happened...

Or it would just run over the first responder

And yet the USMC is eliminating artillery in favor of rockets.

Soft Russian Kitties. You guys love them too much. My cats always had to bring me treats - like lizards, snakes, birds and rodents, all to prove her love!

A problem that has been around since 'Wings' - the challenge is to communicate speed to the audience, who in the main, care more about story than technical truth. (from some guy's sermon page, quoted for ease)