Mail 684 Thursday, July 21, 2011

· News on climate and models

· Police State ability or counter terrorism capability?

· Dengue Fever?

· A Chinese scam: alert Steve Jobs

· We got prizes?

· Pluto Has Another Moon

There is a variety of mail on matters related to climate modeling and global warming’

Enormous Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica

Jerry: You’ve been suggesting that underwater volcanoes might have some effect in the warming of the earth, if there is any way to measure the warming of the earh.

Enormous Underwater Volcanoes Discovered Near Antarctica <http://shar.es/HyJU5>

Source: popularmechanics.com

A British expedition finds more than a dozen underwater volcanoes, some of which are two miles high, near Antarctica. The remote area is home to hydrothermal vents and unusual, previously unknown animal species. <http://shar.es/HyJU5>

Russ

==

Earths Internal Heat

I have read on your website about the amount of heat coming from the interior of the earth. A recent post on Watts Up With This speaks to this subject: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/21/20-trillion-watts-is-not-even-trenberths-missing-heat/#more-43819

Take care

Don

Don Horne

==

Heat from the Earth

Dr. Pournelle,

As usual, I much enjoy your blog. I have seen you wonder aloud how much heat comes from volcanoes under the oceans. This doesn’t quite address that problem, but gives a more general answer.

Adrian Ashfield

"The researchers found the decay of radioactive isotopes uranium-238 and thorium-232 together contributed 20 trillion watts to the amount of heat Earth radiates into space, about six times as much power as the United States consumes. U.S. power consumption in 2005 averaged about 3.34 trillion watts.

As huge as this value is, it only represents about half of the total heat leaving the planet. The researchers suggest the remainder of the heat comes from the cooling of the Earth since its birth."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43786480/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Adrian Ashfield

==

And Dr. Spencer believes the evidence is overwhelming that the AGW theory is not credible:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/

I remain concerned about unrestricted increases in the amounts of CO2; enough so that I strongly recommend research and development into ways to remove it, probably by biological means, if the need becomes great. I don’t like open end experiments. That does not mean that we ought to bankrupt the United States reducing our CO2 emissions because even if ours were driven to zero the atmospheric CO2 would continue to increase as China and India develop. If CO2 is a threat, it will have to be dealt with, but Kyoto and carbon taxes and all that won’t do it; and without wealth we won’t be able to do anything else either.

Police State News

Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. The so-called "biometric" technology, which seems to take a page from TV shows like "MI-5" or "CSI," could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field. However, its use has set off alarms with some who are concerned about possible civil liberties and privacy issues. The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, is made by BI2 Technologies in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-crime-identification-iris-idUSTRE76J4A120110720

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

I am a conservative, not an anarchist. I do not always fear when law enforcement gains new technical abilities. I don’t worry about that as much as I do about our inability to recognize a threat when we see one.

Our northern neighbor…

http://takimag.com/article/menstruating_at_the_mosqueteria/print

"As they might say on The Simpsons, the Toronto District School Board turned into the Taliban so slowly, I hardly noticed."

‘…even the Toronto District School Board didn’t notice, or else it would have been forced to charge itself with violating its own policy against “gender-based discrimination.” <http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/viewitem.asp?siteid=15&menuid=5016&pageid=4375> ‘

"Who are the appointed “menstruation inspectors”? The teachers? The imams? The boys who’d formerly played hooky?"

"Belligerent Muslims come as no surprise. It’s their infidel enablers and defenders that have me confused (again). "

Charles Brumbelow

The question is, can the West win a cultural war? Do we have enough faith in our own culture even to recognize that we may be in danger?

This is bad.  This mosquito fits the profiles for a dengue fever mosquito — based on my memory of places I went that had that disease.

  The Asian Tiger mosquito made its way as far West as Arizona and as far north as New York!

<.>

The Asian tiger mosquito, named for its distinctive black-and-white striped body, is a relatively new species to the U.S. that is more vicious, harder to kill and, unlike most native mosquitoes, bites during the daytime. It also prefers large cities over rural or marshy areas—thus earning the nickname among entomologists as "the urban mosquito."

</>

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303795304576454312427933764.html

The dengue fever mosquitoes bite in the daytime and these mosquitoes are more common in urban environments or places where many people gather on certain islands.

——–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

 

‘ . . . the set-up of the stores was so convincing that the employees themselves seemed to believe they worked for Apple.’

<http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Entire-Apple-stores-being-apf-403861469.html?x=0&.v=10>

Roland Dobbins

An amazing story, actually.

Globalization for you.

http://birdabroad.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/are-you-listening-steve-jobs/

Being the curious types that we are, we struck up some conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple. I tried to imagine the training that they went to when they were hired, in which they were pitched some big speech about how they were working for this innovative, global company – when really they’re just filling the pockets of some shyster living in a prefab mansion outside the city by standing around a fake store disinterestedly selling what may or may not be actual Apple products that fell off the back of a truck somewhere.

Prizes…we got prizes…
Importance: High

I was reminded of your exposition of “an instant space program” stimulated by prizes in your recent interview with Glenn Reynolds when I read the story below. Apparently prizes for technology development are good for shit…so why not space travel? Hmmm…maybe that is not a compelling argument…on the other hand, this will likely fertilize many Windows jokes…

Chris Christopher

 

BILL GATES SEEKS TO REINVENT THE TOILET

By Zoe Fox

Mashable

July 19, 2011

http://mashable.com/2011/07/19/bill-gates-reinvent-toilet/

The man who revolutionized the personal computer is putting his efforts — and foundation — to revolutionizing toilets. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said he will dedicate $42 million towards reinventing the toilet.

Water hygiene and safe waste disposal are two of the biggest causes of infant mortality in the developing countries. Gates and his foundation hope to create inexpensive toilets to vastly improve the living conditions of millions of people. It may seem like a silly subject but it’s one that could save lives around the world.

“No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet,” said Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the president of the Global Development Program at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas.”

The initiative was launched by Burwell on Tuesday in Kigali, Rwanda.

Part of the foundation’s plan is the Reinventing the Toilet Challenge http://nhne-pulse.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/wsh-reinvent-the-toilet-challenge.pdf which funds research at eight universities around the world to develop a toilet that will turn waste into energy, clean water or nutrients. The solution must be a stand-alone unit without piped-in water, a sewer connection or outside electricity. The foundation partnered with USAID to fix water sanitation as part of the UN’s 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

Today, 40% of the world’s population does not have access to flush toilets. One billion people defecate in the open. Each year, 1.5 million children die each year from diarrhea, many of which are preventable with improved sanitation.

The foundation is prioritizing convenience and affordability in the solutions it considers. The toilets must be easy to install and cost no more than $0.05 a day to maintain.

Parkes Radio Telescope, Shuttle & ISS

Jerry,

Today’s APOD has the Australian Parkes radio telescope with Atlantis and ISS streaking overhead. The telescope was featured in the delightful "little" film, "The Dish."

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110721.html>

"The Parkes 64 meter radio telescope is known for its contribution to human spaceflight, famously supplying television images from the Moon to denizens of planet Earth during Apollo 11. The enormous, steerable, single dish looms in the foreground of this early evening skyscape. Above it, the starry skies of New South Wales, Australia include familiar southerly constellations Vela, Puppis, and Hydra along with a sight that will never be seen again. Still glinting in sunlight and streaking right to left just below the radio telescope’s focus cabin, the space shuttle orbiter Atlantis has just undocked with the International Space Station for the final time. The space station itself follows arcing from the lower right corner of the frame, about two minutes behind Atlantis in low Earth orbit…"

3d

Dr. Pournelle,

Jay Leno has been using a 3d printer for two years to fabricate parts for collector cars–the finished copy

goes to a machinist, who then can have an exact model while machining the new part.

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/search/?tag=3D printer

jomath

Hubble Spies Another Moon of Pluto

Jerry,

I just saw this release on the New Horizons website. Note the PI for New Horizons calls Pluto a planet–right on! To me Pluto will always be a planet; I remain a fuddy-duddy.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

Headline on New Horizons website:

<http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20110720.php>

"Fourth Moon Adds to Pluto’s Appeal

July 20, 2011

"Could this planet get any more interesting?" says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder Colo. "We already know that when New Horizons provides the first close-up look at Pluto in July 2015, we’ll see planetary wonders we never could have expected. Yet this discovery gives us another hint of what awaits us in the Pluto system, and we’re already thinking about how we want to study this new moon with New Horizons. What a bonus for planetary science and for New Horizons!"

A Hubble Space Telescope observing team led by Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif., and Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, detected the new moon in five sets of Hubble Space Telescope images taken over the past two months. Astronomers are still trying to better peg orbital details on the object, designated "S/2011 P1" or "P4" until it receives a permanent name. They’ve put its diameter at between 8 and 21 miles (13 to 34 kilometers) and estimate that it travels on a circular, equatorial orbit nearly 37,000 miles (about 59,000 kilometers) from Pluto – placing the new moon between the orbits of the moons Nix and Hydra….

In a Box Offset:

…P4 is the smallest moon discovered around Pluto. By comparison, Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, is 648 miles (1,024 kilometers) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 kilometers). On the anniversary of the first landing of men on our moon, New Horizons mission team scientists have announced the discovery of a fourth moon around Pluto…

P4 on Jun 28, 2011 & July 3, 2011:

<http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/pictures/20110720_01_lg.jpg>

Pluto is a planet. Clyde Tombaugh told me so personally.