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Can You Start a Fire with a Sandwich Bag?

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

charliem says...

Interestingly with my global journal access through academia, not anywhere is the article I linked shown as peer reviewed media accessible through the common university publications...must just be a nature journal thing to want to rort people for money no matter what their affiliation.

At first glance, I read this article to mean that the area is a sink in so far as it contains a large quantity of methane, and its 'consumption' or 'uptake' rates are shown in negative values...indicating a release of the gas.

In checking peer reviewed articles through my academic channels, I come across many that are saying pretty much the same deal, heres a tl;dr from just one of them;

"Permafrost covers 20% of the earth's land surface.
One third to one half of permafrost, a rich source of methane, is now within 1.0° C to 1.5° C of thawing.
At predicted rates of thaw, by 2100 permafrost will boost methane released into the atmosphere 20% to 40% beyond what would be produced by all other natural and man-made sources.
Methane in the atmosphere has 25 times the heating power of carbon dioxide.
As a result, the earth's mean annual temperature could rise by an additional 0.32° C, further upsetting weather patterns and sea level."

Source: Methane: A MENACE SURFACES. By: Anthony, Katey Walter, Scientific American, 00368733, Dec2009, Vol. 301, Issue 6

bcglorf said:

Wait, wait, wait

@charliem,

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this as I can't get to the full body of the article you linked for methane, but here's the concluding statement from the abstract:
We conclude that the ice-free area of northeast Greenland acts as a net sink of atmospheric methane, and suggest that this sink will probably be enhanced under future warmer climatic conditions.

Now, unless there is a huge nuanced wording that I'm missing, sinks in this context are things that absorb something. A methane sink is something that absorbs methane. More over, if the sink is enhanced by warming, that means it will absorb MORE methane the warmer it gets. So it's actually the opposite of your claim and is actually a negative feedback mechanism as methane is a greenhouse gas and removing it as things warmers and releasing it as things cool is the definition of a negative feedback.

Is Climate Change Just A Lot Of Hot Air?

charliem says...

See, this is why it needs to be shown the rise in joules, and a total energy rise in the entire planetary system, not just some arbitrary surface temperature rise....because people like you (no insult intended here) genuinely see the small relative figure and think...eh its no big deal.

Its a huge deal.

We are losing gigantic chunks of the otherwise permanent ice shelf in south and north arctic areas.

With those gone, we have otherwise what would have been massive mirrors, which reflect light...now acting as big old heating blankets (the water is effectively a black body to sunlight, absorbs it like no other..).

That right there is called a positive feedback loop. You start with something small, and within no time (geologically speaking), its in runaway growth.

The frozen tundra in greenland is home to enormous pockets of trapped methane....not for much longer. (source: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n1/abs/ngeo2305.html)

Methane's impact on global warming (i.e. energy RETENTION within our planetary weather system) is 25 times greater than an equivalent amount of C02. (source: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html).

Further to this video, when you heat up the ocean systems beyond a certain threshold, the natrual pumping systems which circulate warm surface water to the deeper parts of the ocean for cooling, just flat out stop working. (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19895974), leading to the slow heat-death of a vast swath of temperatue sensitive biomes....which, when they are active and growing healthily, actually contribute to c02 depletion (carbon based lifeforms 'use up' carbon to be 'made').

...I could go on, but you see....even just a cursory glance at some of the 'smaller' impacts is pretty compelling enough to consider the phrase 'no big deal' a bit of a misnomer.

Do your research....it is catastrophic, and it is likely to happen in your lifetime (if you are under 30 atm).

Your grandchildren and great grandchildren will be living in a drastically different global environment.

No biggie though, cause we got electric cars coming online in the next 30 years or so

Are crows the ultimate problem solvers?

You Probably Don't Need to Be on that Gluten-free Diet

charliem says...

These people are admitting themselves to doctors and hospitals because they are causing more harm than good.

Thats your taxpayer dollars hard at work.

Who cares? The taxpayers should care....a healthy society is a healthy economy.......econ 101 baby.

bremnet said:

Don't hate the video, but what's the motivation? Who cares whether people choose or demand gluten free products or whether they actually need them? It's there choice, and the determination of whether it's right or wrong is theirs alone to make for whatever reason. Why does GM offer 57 different models of cars?... because the consumer demands it. Econ 101 baby.

The Man Who Turned Paper Into Pixels

20 Misconceptions About Sex (mental_floss)

Skype Translator: Breaking down language barriers

charliem says...

Ill believe it when I see it. Google translate has a bloody hard time doing proper semantical and contextual translation, which leaves you with a conversation as if you're talking to a 4 year old.....not holding my breath on this one.

What We Know From The Deepest Hole On The Earth

How does YouTube work and why do videos buffer?

charliem says...

Ok, lets say you want to buffer the whole video...cool, youve just used up say, 10mb of bandwidth to buffer a video.

You get 600kb through it, and decide....nah, boring. Close the video.

You have just wasted 94% of the bandwidth delivered to you. Well played sir.

Multiply this by how many people dont finish a video through to its end? Thats a lot of wasted bandwidth.

Quantum Computing Explained

charliem says...

I still dont understand how you can calculate something using qbits, have them compute a problem (without you observing them doing it), and observe the result...AND have faith that the result when you observe it is accurate..

How would you know when to observe it?
How can a calculative function arise from quantum, unobserved, randomness?

It seems batshit crazy to me.

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Everything You Need To Know About Digital Audio Signals

charliem says...

Great video, but id like to see him expand this into digital modulation, ala QPSK / QAM, and how we use it to deliver data streams of whatever the hell we want.

He didnt focus enough on fundemental frequency noise products either, carrier tripple beat / second+ order distortions. Pretty important because a single band can cause noise in heaps of places across the spectrum.

....I work in telecoms, this audio video seems like fundementals to me

Numberphile - The Maths Behind Zeno's Paradoxes

charliem says...

Ah...hes explaining it by saying .99 recurring = 1. Thats fair enough I guess, but the paradox is purely a thought experiment. It doesnt hold up in real world.

Numberphile - The Maths Behind Zeno's Paradoxes

charliem says...

Before finishing the video...its simple.
You are not describing an infinite process when your hands are ACTUALLY clapping. The thought-experiment describes an asymptote, in real world when you clap its dead clear that its not asymptotic, so they are not the same thing.

....lets see how I did



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