Posts by skerns0301 6 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Nov 2012
The fact that Pluto has a techtonily active crust (Mercury and Mars don't) should rank Pluto above them on the planet list--the simple fact is Mark Brown was grasping at what ever straws he could find to gain his " Andy Warhol" fifteen minutes of fame-- the Earth at Pluto's distance would not have "cleared it's orbit"--Jupiter hasn't-- and with five moons and a tectonically active crust Pluto is most certainly a planet
Stan
Walmart owns a fleet of about twelve huge ships--they ply to America loaded to their Plimsoll line--going back to china all they have is water in the hold so they don't capsize. China is (sort of) doing ok--with our money--take that money away and they would sink so fast people would still be talking about it a thousand years from now--so, lets make that happen. Here's how, start ratcheting in a tax on outsourcing--1% the first year, 2% the second--etc--and keep it up until outsourcing is at about the level it was at in 1990. This would put 20 million American back to work, they would pay taxes, and our economy would be booming--yes, "stuff" would cost a bit more--but our economy would be so stimulated that we would easily absorb it (and with our robust economy our rich would become even richer). As for China, well, who'd miss them? What good have they done for you lately, and the weight of their billion plus people would drag them down, well, almost like something falling into a black hole. On the other hand we can continue to export our capital, have tens of millions of Americans jobless, and energy prices going through the roof (because all that capital we ship abroad stimulates those economies to compete with us for a very finite amount of fossil fuel). The bottom line being there simply isn't enough energy available in the world for the billions of third worlders to live like Americans--but if we don't quit stimulating their economies we'll soon be living like they do--this is a choice we have to make.
Stan
The ability to send data is huge--but our ability to receive it is pretty limited--with radio the rate is slower--but we have huge dishes to receive it when it gets here (and radio and laser travel at the same speed)--there would be no practical way to justify the weight involved in sending a laser powerful enough to overcome the small size of our receivers--but for close by I'm sure it will be useful--but it will never go to Pluto.
Stan
What the writer either leaves out or doesn't know is that most of the land beneath Greenland's ice cap has been depressed below sealeval--and as ice has about 110% the volume of the same amount of liquid water, were Greenland's ice cap (or Antartica's for that matter--Anatartica is also mostly depressed below sea leval) to melt the volume formerly occupied by ice would then be ocupied by water--10% less volume--and sea level would actually fall.--you can't just take "The volume of Greenland's ices cap", convert it to water and add it to the ocean we alread have.
Stan
At the dawn of the Middle Ages we find Vikings living in Greeland, farming to live. About 1400 it got so cold they all died. It is still too cold to live by farming in Greenland--but what has been termed the "Little Ice Age" has been retreating since the mid 1800's--and you are about to say "Because of all that carbon dioxide given off by the Industrial Revolution"--but remember it still isn't warm enough to farm in Greenland--and also know that the Earth herself is a huge producer of carbon dioxide--of all the carbon dioxide produced every year, that that comes from humans is less than 3%. Were we to do our utmost to limit our carbon dioxide production maybe, just maybe, we could cut back 10%--I doubt it--but the point is that would be 10% of "Less than 3%"--it couldn't even be measured. Now a real eye opener. Water vapor is ten times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide-but because there is so much more of it, it exerts 640 times the affect on what ever global warming may be happening as carbon dioxide--have you ever even heard a talking head mention water vapor as a contributer to global warming??--Oh yes, and what about the fact that our space probes show that warming is occuring on both Mars and Jupiter--do you suppose that, just maybe, the Sun might be the source we are looking for?
Stan
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