Your video, Why this observatory fires lasers at satellites..., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, The wondrous life and death of Arecibo Observatory, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Arecibo Observatory:Views during the collapse & pre-collapse, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

*promote due to Arecibo Observatory's collapse -- https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/12/03/2112258/drone-footage-shows-the-shocking-collapse-of-the-arecibo-observatory

Also, Contact movie used it.

Love the use of Zoetropes for the video. Well done.


Lyrics..

Check the locks and leave the keys
Mouldy bath masked with Febreeze
Something's dead behind the refrigerator
Some poor fuck will deal with it later

I’ve spent the last ten weeks
Squeezing out the sponge of friendships, plugging leaks
I've talked until there's no more to say
I’m going away
I'm leaving LA
I'm leaving LA

And the tourists say
"Please give me the directions to the Hollywood sign
I always dreamt of coming here to see the Hollywood sign"
But on their way back down we'll ask
"Did you have a good time?"
They'll say "it's just some fuckin' letters on a hill"

I wander through the Bronson Caves
One more OK coffee at the Oaks Gourmet
I'll watch the players at the UCB
Trying to improvise their way out of ennui

Walking trails in the creeping dark
Up to the observatory in Griffith Park
There’s too much light for stars anyway
I’m getting out of this place
I'm leaving LA
I’m leaving LA

And the studio executives who never made a thing
Blaming other for their failures, taking credit for their wins
Wiping the blood of dumb artists from their chins
Singing, "kid you oughtn't take it personally"

On Hollywood and Vine a dime-store Spider-Man
Shouting at a stoned Emma Stone, dressed à la La La Land
And in the distance, in both its glorious dimensions
The sign projects its shadow on the hill

Rushing by machine-gunned cops at LAX
Malfunctioning departure board says we're boarding next
Belt off, shoes off, jacket off, hat
Don't need the attitude, but I quite enjoy the subsequent pat-down
And I’m sat down
As the A380 engine roars
Pushed backwards as this tube of monkeys rumbles forwards

I'm looking forward to another twenty hours on a plane
Nothing but shit films and my brain
I've been going slowly insane
I've seen your sport and I don't wanna play
I'm getting out of this place
I'm getting out of this place
I'm leaving LA

And the actors at Gratitude drinking undrinkable juice
And the agents taking ten percent in their sneakers and suits
And the writers in their Teslas trying to punch up Act One
Driving home on the 101 in the relentless fucking sun
And the needy and the greedy and the hopeless and horny
And the deals done on treadmills at ten to six in the morning
And the Captain's on the PA saying "look for the sign!"
But I find it's just some fuckin' letters on a hill
Just some really ugly letters
On a pretty ugly hill

I'm leaving LA
I'm leaving 'ell

Vimeo description:
Atmospheric refraction plays with the light of any object near the horizon. Here stars, startrails and the sun, filmed in timelapse photography from two major observatories in Chile, display immense distortion above inversion layers in the outskirts of the Atacama desert, Chile. The moon scene is filmed near Boston at the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The mirage is an optical phenomenon in which light rays are refracted and bent in the atmosphere and produce distorted or multiple images of the object.

Your video, 100+ MPH Winds 2016/05/16 From Mount Washington Observatory, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 14 Badge!

This seems pretty naive to me. Isis has killed thousands of people, according to a CNN report:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/07/isis-s-gruesome-muslim-death-toll.html

According to the syrian observatory for human rights, Isis has murdered 3200 people in Syria alone. Other reports place the death toll in Iraq at 7000 people.

They have millions of dollars at their disposal, they are allied with Boko Haram, and they not just in Iraq and Syria but all over North Africa.

To say they are weak is naive..weak organizations don't have millions of dollars, territory all over the middle east and murder thousands of people.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

observatories give me a boner. *promote

The solar flares are very cool. I suggest watching in HD and full screen for maximum awesomeness.

Also from YT description:

The surface of the sun from October 14th to 30th, 2014, showing sunspot AR 2192, the largest sunspot of the last two solar cycles (22 years). During this time sunspot AR 2191 produced six X-class and four M-class solar flares. The animation shows the sun in the ultraviolet 304 ångström wavelength, and plays at a rate of 52.5 minutes per second. It is composed of more than 17,000 images, 72 GB of data produced by the solar dynamics observatory (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/) + (http://www.helioviewer.org/). This animation has be rendered in 4K, and resized to the Youtube maximum resolution of 3840×2160. The animation has been rotated 180 degrees so that south is 'up'. The audio is the "heartbeat" of the sun, processed from SOHO HMI data by Alexander G. Kosovichev. Image processing and animation by James Tyrwhitt-Drake.

(Reuters) - About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest).

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks against his forces, but the size of the blast, which occurred on Monday, was unusual.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast took place outside the town of Ma'arat al-Nu'man in the northwestern Idlib province.

At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tons of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint, the group said.

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

from the YT description:

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.

It's not that there is a 'war' on... it's that there are a bunch of non-scientists walking around saying they're 'creation scientists'.

Many creation scientists have advanced degrees and have published many papers. Why aren't they scientists? What makes a scientist a scientist?

You're absolutely correct, there is no research being done on 'young Universe'... but there is also no science being done to prove 'old Universe'. Science is done by taking small bits of knowledge that have little gaps, and filling those gaps in. We didn't figure out the half-life of Rubidium in order to prove the age of the earth, we figured out the half-life of Rubidium to figure out the half-life of Rubidium. Some other scientists had taken measurements of the natural occurrence of elements and their isotopes in various parts of the world. And then more scientists apply the knowledge acquired in both fields and try to find out what it tells us.

There was a very concerted effort, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries to come up with evidence for an old age of the Earth to support the ideas of uniformitarian geology and macro evolution. There was an ideological war going on, just as there is today, between those secular scientists who wanted to establish their own secular idea of origins to undercut the account of biblical creation. Up until that point, all geologists were flood geologists. Now a days, you're right, they are resting on their laurels, because as I said it has become conventional wisdom, which is not science but philosophy.

I agree, you absolutely should question scientists with an agenda, but I've NEVER heard a non-christian suggest that there is scientific evidence for the earth being younger than 4-5 billion years old.

I grew up in a secular home with a great love for science, and I very activiely pursued studies in astronomy and biology. In all of my studies, I never heard so much as a peep about the controversy. There is an information filter on this subject, and it had kept me in the dark about the whole thing most of my life.

You want to cast doubt on scientists by saying that there are millions of dollars and reputations on the line, but this reasoning is more destructive if you aim it at the young-earthers: Their religion has made explicit claims as to time-spans that occurred 'in the beginning'... their religious leaders have made explicit claims as to the literalness of the Bible. And most church leaders have been explicit that other denominations of Christians may not be allowed into heaven... So you have a large group of individuals who are not only risking their reputation, but what they believe is their eternal soul, on something that they didn't discover, but have worked backward to find evidence to prove that their book is correct.

None of this has anything to do with the question of salvation. The conflict you're seeing is coming from a liberal movement within the church which tends to embrace secular values and rejects traditional interpretation of scripture. As numbers go, it is a small amount of people. As a recent survey shows, the majority of Americans (ie 46 percent) believe in creationism:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html

These views get overreprented in the media by liberals sympathic to their causes. It gets presented in such a way that it looks like it is the majority view when it is actually the minority view.

As far as what Creation scientists have to lose..not much. They already lost much of what they had to lose by becoming a creation scientist in the first place.

Young-earthers each, individually, have much more to lose than scientists. And let's be clear... religions have enough money to staff up scientific R&D labs and fund their own research if they wanted. In fact, the Vatican DOES have it's own, world-renowned observatory. So, how old does this Priest thing the Universe is?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OwWqrXGtrRs#!

I don't agree with the catholic church on practically anything, let alone this.

So, to be clear, it's not Scientists vs. Christians. It's Scientists AND Christians vs. People Who Don't Trust Science.

It's actually the wisdom of God versus the wisdom of man.

And I expect this. Christians have long fought against persecution, and it thrived while it was being persecuted. Now that it's the dominant religion, many of the teachings have lost their luster. Members who believe that the Bible has something personal to say to them will pick up on the persecution aspect, which was intended to help those in the year 200AD... not 2012. So they make up bogey-men and pick a fight with anyone who says something that isn't explicitly allowed in the Bible (and is convenient for them)... hence the anti-Gay-Marriage protests, but no anti-shellfish protests.

Over 200 thousand Christians are martyred every year for their faith, all over the world.

You're a product of your environment, shinyblurry... you're as predictable as Islam producing suicide bombers... and just as pathetic in your misunderstanding of the Universe.

All I'll say to this is that ad hominem attacks reveal more about your character than they do mine.