121–130 of 176 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might test the BRIC alliances. Russia and Brazil probably won't agree on this one.
What BRIC alliances? BRIC countries are just clumped together for being developing economies that are going through similar experiences, but it is far from being a political-economic group. Quite the opposite, actually.
The Maunder minimum argument has been around awhile. A useful counterbalance from NASA 2008: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/ -------------------------- "Solar irradiance: The solar output remains low (Fig. 4), at the lowest level in the period since satellite measurements began in the late 1970s, and the time since the prior solar minimum is already 12 years, two years longer than the prior two cycles. This h…
> if a Maunder minimum does somehow manage to give us a couple extra decades [...] that's a godsend. Maybe not. Suppose the actual effect is to give those who say climate change isn't real, or doesn't matter, enough extra rhetorical ammunition (THE EARTH IS COOLING!!!11!) to prevent anything actually being done to get our house in order. That would be ... not so good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
umm...you did notice that the article was talking about temperature variations caused by the GIANT NUCLEAR EXPLOSION AT THE CENTER OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM THAT PROVIDES ALL OF OUR HEAT AND LIGHT....right? or are you suggesting that our pesky first-world lifestyles are somehow causing a decrease in sunspots.
No it means our lifestyles are reducing the earth's natural shielding and buffer from extreme changes. Earth is recovering more slowly and dealing more poorly with what is being thrown at it. We have billions fewer trees around the world than we did even just a few hundred years ago.
If anything, the changes to the environment that we have caused since the industrial revolution could help reduce the effects so that we are less affected than when the same thing happened a few hundred years ago. Or maybe the changes we've made is too insignificant in comparison and has no impact. Either way, this mini ice age they are predicting is in no way because of any changes we've caused.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What BRIC alliances? BRIC countries are just clumped together for being developing economies that are going through similar experiences, but it is far from being a political-economic group. Quite the opposite, actually.
There has been an annual BRICS summit attended by the leaders on the 5 nations since 2009. Clearly it's a bit more than a clever media acronym.
"BRIC" is no NATO, or anything that resembles some formal structure. The "BRIC" countries are getting into multi-lateral agreements, yes, but there is no "BRIC" organization. While the summit is used to conduct agreements between Russia and China, or Brazil/China/India, there is no "BRIC alliance".
The connection between solar activity and terrestrial climate is an area of on-going research.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The difference being that there is nobody living on a planet like say, Mars. Stop right there. You don't know that there isn't anyone living there. We've sent a couple rovers, dug down a few inches, and looked at it from telescopes. There are millions of dollars poured into the search for life on Mars every year, as there should be. But we don't know very much yet! I am totally in favour of terraforming and coloniz…
I am in favor of doing with Mars as we wish. When Western Civilization had "first contact" with various "alien"[1] native societies around the world, most of the impact flowed from civilization to the "aliens". Civilization continued on and most of the alien societies became footnotes in history. Might makes right, and unless the Martian bacteria are crafting starships in their caves, I think we should take samples f…
Ned was right, winter is coming.
Is the movie out yet? I am still not sure if I want to continue reading the series. It was so depressing.
Man, I really really wanted to love that whole book series. The characterization was fantastic, the settings were detailed and rich, the story telling was great ...
But, sometime part-way through A Feast For Crows, I just couldn't stand reading it any more. The violence seemed too unnecessary; the destruction of characters that had been so carefully built had started to turn into an expectation -- "I wonder how he's going to later make this interesting new character suffer? Will he maim them? Murder them? Destroy them psychologically?" For me, in that volume, it somehow went from being a great story with difficult events to a really ugly story that just wasn't worth reading anymore. I no longer cared about the characters because, y'know, they were gonna die anyway. Or worse.
Now I'm starting to hear from people who are watching the HBO series but who never read the books, and they're talking about how they really love this character or that character, and every time inside I get this massive troll face on and think, "Heh ... just you wait and see what happens to that one."
I sold my copy of the set to a used bookstore. I hear there's another one out now, but I have very little desire, or curiosity, towards it.
For those who don't have time to read the article, "mini Ice Age" literally means that winter will last longer, and be more prevalent at lower altitudes/latitudes. Mildly sensational, but an interesting read.