JoeSchmuckatelli

FWIW: US is still playing 'catch up' to RU artillery development. Another question: if no one is left after the long range artillery shell arrives, did it make a sound?

Ah - I understand your argument now. Yeah, water crisis is no joke. I used to live a county over from this place: https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/05/lake-oroville-reaches-all-time-low-level-hydroelectric-plant-will-shut-down-for-first-time-ever/amp/ The changing rainfall is probably one of the most persuasive arguments for action. Some places, like Italy and the Middle East (in articles linked several posts above) are getting deluged while others are seeing long term droughts. In other news, this: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/11/world/climate-change-attribution-gap/index.html (Research focuses on the wealthy / Northern Hemisphere countries and is missing data & repercussions from the less developed parts of the world)

Ouch. Gotta love that Musk replied and in such a fashion.

Hah! - you are correct: whiskey and football! Edit -- if anyone missed it, the Colts/Ravens game was fantastic. I dunno... many models predict quite a bit of fresh dihydrogen monoxide in unexpected places; likely those least able to accept it in high quantities and short timeframes... although in extremis, the hippos may once again squish about in the Sahara.

@FleshJeb points out that the rate of change seen in recent years is not only dramatic but also dangerous. I'll not quibble with this - because I agree with him that if the predicted rate of change is correct - the real cost is unimaginably brutal. I'll also tie this in with my arguments in another thread that I'm confident that we as a species should survive our worst human-caused calamity - with the acknowledgement that society as we know it won't. Like him - I abhor people who welcome such a potential future. There is a reason why I quibble with some of the interpretation of the data. I've explained in previous pages that I perceive a danger in overselling. But there is another problem: the canonization of the impression that the worst is already happening and inevitable. (That interpretation may be true - but it also may not be... And thus is worthy of discussion.) While this article does not mention Anthropomorphic Climate Change - it does speak about what happens in popular / large fields of science: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/41/e2021636118 "a deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to ossification of Canon" My point here being - this is a topic worthy of discussion, one with an extant risk of canonization and the concurrent risk of labeling dissenters as heretical. I continue to hope we can get past that and discuss the data as well as differing interpretations.

I get that - but the 'zero' I'm talking about is the one that people are using within the Climate Change argument; it appears to be the average line drawn to make arguments about what will or won't happen if temperature varies from that line... i.e. what is called 'normal'. Example: The recession of mountain glaciers, has been used to provide qualitative support to the rise in global temperatures since the late 19th century. Grin - my 'fairly obvious bias' should be that the arguments made need to be factual in order to not create resistance to facts. I've nowhere suggested that humans should be free to continue wanton pollution of our environment. But, again, when someone says 'humans are the primary cause of global warming since the start of the industrial revolution (or 1850s, etc.)' I have to quibble.

A quick visit to another Wiki page shows a temperature track based upon Greenland ice cores that roughly correlates to the 'climactic optimum' chart - but lacks a 'zero' line. If you were to draw a line for 'zero' - where would it be? If you put it along the last 500 years... there's a whole lot of the Holocene above the zero. If you roughly average from the period before the 8.2 cold event and today... the last 500 years is quite a bit below the zero. You can do this with MS Paint or some other program pretty easily

Well - unfortunately, it doesn't really speak to the 'what zero' problem I raise above. Take for instance this: PowerPoint Presentation (ipcc.ch) It's the Regional Fact Sheet for Africa. The first 'alarm' reads: Thus - it's focusing on how Now differs from the coldest period in modern history - the Little Ice Age - and then proceeds to make predictions from there. I'll acknowledge that the "Little Ice Age" has been viewed as a regional event - or rather, more correctly, it happened to different regions at different times. The Little Ice Age Wasn’t Global, but Current Climate Change Is - Eos But I think it fair to say that the period leading up to 1850 was generally cooler throughout the world than it had been during, say the Medieval Warm Period - which if the one chart above is to be believed - was actually cooler than the 'climactic optimum' of 8,000 to 4,000 years ago. (I'm also not certain that characterization is correct/fair, either -- was it really optimum?) Thus setting an acknowledged 'cold' period as the 'zero' is a fraught metric. While it ties in with the rise of industrialization, it gives a false (to me) sense of how the industrial revolution has or may be affecting climate. Co-occurrence is not evidence of co-relation much less causality. (I feel it proper to remind readers that I'm hardly a proponent of allowing rampant pollution to continue, and in fact am a huge fan of our efforts to solve our various energy needs through less-to-non polluting means). The thing is - the IPCC report is a collective effort to convince lawmakers that climactic change is happening, that our industrial and commercial pollution is contributing to that and that actions need to be taken (through legislation or regulation) to stop and mitigate the harm we are causing to our environment. It is a political document, with a purpose. To that end, people want to present information in the most alarming way possible in order to get leaders off their duffs and actually do something. Problem is - if they're using a particularly cold time as the zero... that's neither fair nor accurate. It exposes the valuable efforts to rein in pollution to criticism that human activity is not the only process at work and that they're being alarmist (the dog-whistle of industry to avoid anti-pollution measures). It would be false to say that human activity caused the Little Ice Age period, wouldn't it? Thus stating that human activity since that time is the sole cause of warming is likely incorrect as well.

That whole thing weirds me out

80,000 feet (at least) That thing can get up there... and stay

Money has to come from somewhere. As does the education. An argument can be made that having 'people who look like me' doing space will inspire people in parts of the world where 'doing space' was seen as something done only by other people.

Groan. Anyone think landing that WB-57F in a crosswind looks... fraught?

https://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/helicopter6.htm

The purpose of the counter rotating blades is to effectively zero out the torque. The motor spinning one blade alone would actually result the body of the drone spinning counter to the blade (to the observer each part - the blade and the body would spin in opposite directions) and thus be uncontrollable. By having two blades spinning in opposite directions, they allow the body of the drone to be stable. Lift is determined by the pitch of the blades - each blade can be rotated on its axis to control how much it bites into the air, and then direction is determined by tilting the rotor in the direction of desired travel

https://www.space.com/mars-rover-perseverance-confirms-lake-delta-jezero-crater

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/photos-nasa-perseverance-rover-ancient-flash-floods-mars/ Flash flooding

Right - and completely talking past 'who qualifies as an Astronaut'. Is it 'anyone who touched space' or a professional designation?

So - acknowledging the problems of citing to Wikipedia (it's so easy, tho!) - one of the things I notice about the charts are the different zero lines. *. In the 'Holocene Temperature Variations' chart the last 2,000 years are well below the zero. *. In the 'Global Average Temperature Change' chart, the zero line is set to the Little Ice Age. So I'm not sure we are getting a like presentation of data - even if the top chart puts a 2016 pointer on the right side of the chart showing current Temps elevated quite a bit above the 'optimum'.

Cool stuff. Getting more players in the arena is a good thing!

A very little talked about time when the world was warmer: "The Atlantic in palaeoclimatology was the warmest and moistest Blytt–Sernander period, pollen zone and chronozone of Holocene northern Europe. The climate was generally warmer than today. It was preceded by the Boreal, with a climate similar to today's, and was followed by the Subboreal, a transition to the modern. Because it was the warmest period of the Holocene, the Atlantic is often referenced more directly as the Holocene climatic optimum, or just climatic optimum The Atlantic was a time of rising temperature and marine transgression on the islands of Denmark and elsewhere. The sea rose to 3 m above its present level by the end of the period. The oysters found there required lower salinity. Tides of up to 1 m were present. Inland, lake levels in all north Europe were generally higher, with fluctuations. ... The temperature rise had the effect of extending southern climates northward in a relatively short period" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_(period) Denmark was an archipelago

Yeppers!

Some truth to this - I grew up in SoCal where the weather is always almost perfect. My first experience in North Cackalaky was a very hot and humid summer where my body learned to sweat for the first time. Barracks was a concrete block squad bay with two loud industrial fans at either end. Sleep in sweltering heat was elusive. We learned to adapt. The final month - we got to move into brand new 3-bed BEQ rooms - with (*gasp*) air conditioning. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven People will do things to find comfort

Main limit is that it requires absolute asymmetric power to be employed. In a peer or near-peer environment, it is exquisitely vulnerable. But yes, in the fire support role, it is excellent. One of the interesting developments of American adventures of the past decade has been work on less lethal and constrained collateral damage weapons - beyond the 'guided' warheads debuted in the early 90s (which tremendously reduced civilian casualties - and raised the bar on what is considered acceptable in combat). Another interesting development is explosive-less bombs https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/06/17/knife-filled-ninja-bomb-kills-al-qaeda-terrorists-in-syria/amp/