I’ve always thought it was a horrific decision, but not at all because of the immediate effects or massive death and destruction they caused in Japan….they fucked around and found out and deserved everything they got (and I was unaware the Russian Manchurian offensive timing, but it’s even more reason to not drop a second bomb or even a first if we knew it was coming).

I think it was horrific because we had no idea what the long term effects of even minimal fallout might be, and in fall/winter the jet stream runs from Japan directly to the highly populated West coast (which we knew well thanks to balloon bombs), so some portion of the fallout was guaranteed to fall on millions of US citizens. We lucked out that it wasn’t deadly a year later, and didn’t cause horrible birth defects with near zero exposure…we had no concrete idea at the time though just guesses, and still don’t have a clear idea of how much it contributed to higher cancer rates in the US.

Keep in mind, we had no idea what discussions the Japanese were having amongst themselves , so no idea how effective our bombs nor the Manchurian offensive were at persuading them to surrender. Hindsight is 2020, but at the time we were flying blind.

The uncertain risk there of possibly killing millions of ourselves or gimping or sterilizing or even Cronenberging entire future generations for the comparatively minimal convenience of not using conventional bombs, to me, is no where near worth it. There were just too many unanswered questions about too many factors. I’m sure the soldiers fighting at the time would feel differently.

*promote the history lesson, learned some new stuff!

Your video, Jet Stream Migration And Climate Change, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Now, explain the jet streams.

@Fletch I humbly suggest keeping radioactive materials in large quantities out of the jet stream, plus they have lots of goodies in there once we are smart enough to extract them (and with new laser technology like the Silex Process, that might be really soon!)...but I am totally for a space elevator, lets start tomorrow afternoon, I have it off.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

Not to be ignorant, but I would have thought scientists would have discovered this earlier. Is this the first recorded time that this has been done? I mean, obviously I wouldn't connect jet steams of water with Saturn, but it seems like somewhere someone would have tested this before.
This brings up some other interesting topics. Saturn is referred to as a "gas giant," but would the gasses have the same pattern as water? Also, this pattern is 2 dimensional, essentially on a flat surface. The haxagon on Saturn is probably curved, so I wonder how it is formed. Probably a similar concept, with the center gas rotating faster than the outter gas. But I am a noob in highschool, so I have no idea. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.

Gas is a fluid...water is a fluid. The both fit into fluid-dynamics so they should follow the same pattern. It will work in 3 dimensions as long as you have ring of slower moving fluid with a circle of quicker moving fluid inside of it, I'd imagine. Just so long as there isn't anything going on above or below the pattern that would disrupt the "jet stream".

Oh and about it being "curved"...who knows. Saturn's might be a planar cross-section. Another possibility is it IS curved but the size of the phenomenon compared to its curvature makes the curvature negligible.

Ion rockets (they aren't really rockets, they are called ion thrusters) as they stand do not generate that much thrust. This is vastly different than an ion drive. The only function the magnetic field has in this drive is to focus what is a very traditional "jet stream" of superheated plasma out the tail. A ion drive uses the magnetic field to "push" off ions...very different concepts. The ion drive is great because the amount of fuel is needs is so minute...but thrust is also fairly pitiful.

(upon further reading, the best ion drive is about x2 less powerful than this particular drive. This particular drive is running at 59% efficiency. They have plans for a slightly larger rocket that is about 80% or so efficiency, which brings them up to about what a normal rocket efficiency is.)

why is he hedging the bets on whether the data is in?

IT'S IN.

by the time we get to 9f degrees warmer, entire countries will disappear, most of the largest cities in the world will be uninhabitable, and our fragile modern civilization, dependent on transport, energy and natural resources, will break down completely. if we are lucky, humans will be living in medieval conditions in the few temperate places left on earth, trying to survive the constant weather super-disasters caused by the massive increase in atmospheric energy.

if we are NOT lucky, we will set off feedback loops: changing albedo, jet stream reversals, melting and decomposing permafrost, decreasing co2 absorption by plankton as the acidity of the ocean causes plankton co2 absorption to decrease (these effects have already been seen - plus who knows what might happen that we haven't even thought of). these could push the earth into a permanent greenhouse environment like jupiter, with surface temperatures of 900 degrees.

but god forbid a journalist should ruffle anyone's feathers. better play it safe

Max, thats one part of the what if equation. In the above renderings, chances are the ring is a solid mask effect and not actually rendered particles. The pictures from space show almost dark night in the shadow of the rings. In reality, it might not get that dark...

That being said, the rings would cast a gigantic shadow over a section of the earth on a day by day bases. While it wouldn't be a frozen tundra, it most certainly would create enough change in temperature to change the current jet streams dramatically. Not only air temperatures, but water temperatures as well. The hot and cold areas on the planet would most certainly be different, and if the rings reflected light heated up other parts of the globe, I would imagine our weather patterns would be quite violent.

Then there is the physical side of things, I am sure rocks from the ring fall into the atmosphere on a constant bases.

As I understand it, the decision to switch to fire-bombing came about because of the complete and utter ineffectiveness of high altitude bombing. They started out trying to bomb legitimate military targets like munitions factories and realized that the high altitude bombs simply weren't precise enough to hit the targets due to severe cross-winds. The decision then came to fly lower and drop a napalm payload that, even if it missed the intended target, would start a fire that would likely consume the target anyway. Unfortunately the fires, once started, continued to burn indiscriminately.

The argument has also been made that since the Japanese civilians basically supplied the manpower for the Japanese armies and the workforce for the War Machine itself that technically they were valid military targets.

It should also be noted that the Japanese tried to firebomb the U.S. by using high altitude balloons filled with napalm that floated on the jet stream to the West Coast (do a google search for FUGO balloon bombs). Fortunately, only a few of the balloons released actually landed on U.S. shores. At the time, the government covered it up because the idea that the U.S. mainland was vulnerable to attack was simply to terrifying a prospect to consider.