User talk:Ophion/archives

July 2006 - August 2006

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Thanks

Thanks for reading it, thanks for caring, and most of all, thanks for responding. Before I say anything more, I would ask "how much other research and experience do you have in the field of paleoclimatology?" By "other" I mean, other than what was served to you on a silver platter—what you heard, or saw on the news, read in a newspaper, etc.. By "other," I mean hours reading journal articles, books, personally discussing topics with experts, and people that live in the field. I ask it seriously, and not in a mean way, because I have no knowledge of you yet. I can tell you that I have. My expertise of the subject has been laughed at many times before, but I do these things, I love paleoclimatology (although it pales in comparison to physics). I read the journal articles, books, and personally discuss topics with the experts for hours on a daily basis. I love it because once I found out how mindnumbingly complex the issue at hand is, I just had to know more and more. If you noticed I said "global warming and all its extremities." Obviously, I couldn't have put much of a factual backing in the few paragraphs, because that would have to require many many refutations. Refutations cost time, money, and space. Which I have all I want because I am fourteen years old and live in the United States, but they require space. You have to very specifically address the issue, then present facts, then a conclusion. Space. If you are further inquisitive, respond back. Noting your "buffer," you don't have to worry, although I feel somewhat strongly about this, I'm not crazy, or blind. Also consider joining Wikisocial, a site started by my friend Chris and I, for precisely this type of discussion. I am User:Mac_Davis. May I ask what page you were at when you clicked my name at? The Reference Desk? — [Mac Davis] (talk)

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This is going to be a long one. Ah, that the Wikipediaholic list... how far have I fell? I keep having to retake the test to keep my name on there because the test's possible points have been continuously climbing since it was created. Why did I dig into it? Collecting some very special experiences, and philosophizing, as I tend to do often, I found that the news media is not a reliable source of science-related information, for reasons hit in "Scaremongering," and that you will probably hear from me :). Everything almost every citizen knows about AGW (anthropogenic global warming hypothesis), came from the news media. Whether it be 60 Minutes, or the newspaper, or some tv show about melting glaciers.

I find a huge variety of topics interesting too... seems like all of them (hee hee), and try and study all of them. Sometimes people kind of look almost disgusted, then ask "why do you know this?" I like to learn. I want to stick everything in my head. Some facts about percentage of HIV cases from anal sex with an HIV-positive, are not well received, however I am not dumb enough not to know what is and isn't "socially acceptable." I've found anything most people don't know about sex, or drugs, or explosives, etc.. tend to be frowned upon. I can't read a page like masturbation when other people are around. People are weary when I am reading a page on synthesizing Tetramminecopper(II) chlorate. Anything regarding sexual appetite after ingesting methamphetamines, or even what the environment of a clandenstine meth lab feels like should not be said. I've lost the taste for pure trivia, because nothing connects. That is why I like paleoclimatology, mathematics, and physics. The more you learn, the more things connect. You can learn three completely different branches, and pull from each, to make something connect. I love that. Regardless of any scaremongering, I so far conclude, there not be sufficient evidence for anybody to rule in its favor. (Oh, boy, this is a tough one to be explaining this). Climate change is existent. After all, the world is change (I'll get an essay for this up tonight... which is here). Presumptuous countering? Possibly, but I really don't like debates, I prefer discussions where participants have a free and open mind, take facts, and try to find truth. That is one of the reasons why I decided to dig into it. What goes on non-scientifically (and sadly sometimes, scientifically), what conclusions may be reached, even if opinion of the majority, isn't always right. I started from the bottom, the journals. I love them because they have the least amount of bias possible (differing amounts in different fields, locations, and time periods). I hate bias. In journals, nothing they say is "made-up," or close to, and there is not persuasion active (if you caught it there is a small caveat here, but we can ignore it, no?). Demagogy is something you want in your arsenal, but not in another's. I think the world would be better off without them, but that is drastically utopian.

How did I get into paleoclimatology?

I read into it a little bit, and found out something that was said was totally false, I read more and more, more things were not true, more things were hotly debated, not having a consensus, more things had little or no evidence as backing. I decided to get to the root, and work my way up. That's it in on little sentence.

Physics

This is one interpretation, and is wrong. I think it is currently in a state of being considered defunct, and probably will be for a while. This is one interpretation, that sounds crazy to start with. I'm not sure where you are, with quantum physics, but this is how it is. I have The Elegant Universe, but I never read it, it was kind of boring for me because I knew the stuff in it already. Nonfiction books are not as sweet if you already know it. Sorry if that sounds like bragging. Anyway, this is how it is:

Randomness. In the quantum world, everything is random. That's not quite the whole story.

It is quite a subtle issue and people are still debating what randomness is. Part of the answer is rather simple: randomness is ignorance. When we assign probabilities to events (that's what a wavefunction is), it is because we don't know them precisely. Randomness is the essential aspect of a signal if you're on the receiving end: you will get one of different possible messages, but you don't know which one. This makes the "signal", before you received it, a "random quantity." Here is the ignorance: the emitter DID know, and for the emitter, the signal is of course NOT random. You can get quite far already with the view that randomness describes ignorance. However, the question remains: is all randomness, simply reducible to ignorance? Are there other forms of randomness in nature? (irreducible randomness). Here, one should make a clear distinction between ubiquitous concepts of determinism, causality, and free will.

Determinism means that there is some causal structure (each event has its own past and future), and that, given all there is to know about an events past, the laws of nature determine uniquely what happens at said event. In other words, there is no "freedom of any choice" anymore.

However, there is a difference between determinism and randomness. Determinism has something to do with "predicting the future", while randomness has a priori no link with any causal or temporal flow. Randomness applies as well to the past as to the future. Randomness means "one out of many". You have one corpse, and 6 potential murderers. Who did it, is random, until you find more evidence. The outcome of a football game is random (even if the game is over), until you learn about it (by watching the video or hearing it on the radio or something). This where we find this interpretation of quantum theory to be invalid. Conscious collapse? Dipping into metaphysics, religion, and philosophy, somebody actually started thinking that your mind creates the world around you?

Going into a bit more detail on what we find that these instances of psuedo-randomidity, can you think of any?

1. The assignment of your telephone number or zip code.
2. Any computer algothirm made to create random numbers.
3. The falling of a sharpened pencil stood up on its point.
4. The flipping of a coin.
5. Your thoughts.

When we toss a coin, the outcome is said to be random, with a 50/50 chance of either outcome. This is wrong. The closed environment is a chaotic system; the outcome of the toss is entirley determined by the initial variables that go into the "flick" and that these variables are essentially deterministic, however extremley chaotic. If you wanted to try and predict, you would have to take into account normally negligible variables. Equations like E=mc² can be so short and simple, because it is an approximation—obviously, not all factors are thrown into the equation. In high school physics, you always ignore drag. Do the answers come out right? According to the teacher and the book, but if you did the same ones in a real environment, with drag, the projectile would not land the same place, depending on the situation, it could be micrometers, or miles away. If you stood a pencil up on its point, and let go, there is no telling where it might go! Actually there is, if you could bring in every single variable into a master equation, you could find out exactly where the pencil would land. You would have to know exactly where your fingers where, how much angular momentum you placed on the object when you released. You would have to create a three-dimensinal map of the table surface. You would have to acquire a four-dimensional map of temperature variation, air pressure, humidity, molecular kinetic energy, etc.. That's why it is called chaos. Chaos can be seen as a spectrum. Near-randomness, meaning a near-infinite amount of variables, is at the top, whereas something with one variable, would be at the bottom. If you wanted to determine of Aristotle was mortal, than all you would need as information would be "all humans are mortal" and "Aristotle was a human." If you didn't know what the hell an Aristotle was, it would be random, because you have no information. If you knew that Aristotle was from Greece, that would mean there is a significantly smaller probability that Aristotle is human, because there much more possibilities of different things being in Greece than there are people in Greece.

Probability as a way of describing situation where we lack complete information. We may have some, but the best we can do now is to approximate it to having none, because we don't have enough compared to what we need. In the quantum world, we rely on a lack of information to predict and test things.

Relatedly:

Possible outcomes of flipping two coins

Two heads

Two tails

One of each

There are three outcomes. What is the probability of producing two heads?

Pulling from the article on Satyendra Nathan Bose: While at the University of Dhaka, Bose wrote a short article called Planck's Law and the Hypothesis of Light Quanta, describing the photoelectric effect and based on a lecture he had given on the ultraviolet catastrophe. During this lecture, in which he had intended to show his students that theory predicted results not in accordance with experimental results, Bose made an embarrassing statistical error which gave a prediction that agreed with observations, a contradiction.

What are the possibilities of flipping two coins? Two heads/Two tails/One of each. But aren't the coins distinct? Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-fourth, not one-third. The error was a simple mistake that would appear obviously wrong to anyone with a basic understanding of statistics, and similar to arguing that flipping two fair coins will produce two heads one-third of the time. However, it produced correct results, and Bose realized it might not be a mistake at all.

Outcome probabilities

		Coin 1
		Head	Tail
Coin 2	Head	HH	HT
	Tail	TH	TT

Since the coins are distinct, there are two outcomes which produce a head and a tail. The probability of two heads is one-fourth.

Physics journals refused to publish Bose's paper. It was their contention that he had presented to them a simple mistake, and Bose's findings were ignored. He wrote to Albert Einstein, who immediately agreed with him and loved the idea. Physicists stopped laughing when Einstein sent Zeitschrift für Physik to accompany Bose's, which were both published in 1924.

Also, one more thing digressing a bit. Richard Feynman, once quite beautifully showed probability to work fine in the macro world. Imagine standing up in your bedroom next to your bed holding a bowling ball. Now drop it. What will it do? In a quantum physical sense, the best we can say is "Uhhh, we don't know." It might not even move, it might disappear and reappear on the moon (quantum tunneling). Maybe it is somehow mysteriously connected to another bowling ball, and does the opposite movements as it's partner (quantum entanglement/quantum teleportation, perhaps the bowling ball doesn't actually exist (holographic theory). What Feynman did, was add up every single possible thing it could do, and show that the most probable outcome was to fall and hit the ground. I think I read that in one of Michio Kaku's books (btw he is the featured person of the week on Portal:Science).

I'm sorry that I forgot where I was going with it somewhere in the middle, but there is a lot of info there, not only about the subject, but about other things, as well as me. Hope I said something relevant. May I ask "how old are you?" Judging from your end of the conversation, and user page, I would say you are somewhere between 15-26. — [Mac Davis] (talk)

Next topic

Why not give out your age? Well I suppose the answer would end up giving your age. If you are young, I am glad to say that bastardization on Wikipedia is nonexistant. There are tons of users that are my age. Now on any other site, I have found anonymity is the best policy. Many places I would you know, be laughed at, scorned, shunned, for being fourteen, or what I say not taken as seriously as somebody how was 40 said it.

• Ilyanep
• Sergeant Snopake
• Ejfox
• User:CaliforniaKid
• User:Ccool2ax

As for internet predators, they are just a moral panic brought on by processes found in my little bit about scaremongering (literally 'fear-selling' or 'fear-holding'). Those are two possible reasons. Mostly, don't worry about it. Respectfully? Great, that means I know you'll be nice to me. I have no worries about myself.

You say we could be doing something better than change the environment. You see, changing the environment is usually a side effect of doing something better. If you want to supply electricity to millions of people, you build the Aswan High Dam, if you want a home for your family, you cut down trees and build a log cabin. If you want to fly a plane, you have to disrupt air currents and cloud formations. Unless "we could be doing something better" means that you think possibly a global warming is a positive thing. Humans generally have been doing better with heat [1].

“Hmm... The Royal Society sure has a bee in its collective bonnet over anthropogenic greenhouse emissions lately.

Check out the Ordovician Mass Extinction. Note that fauna of the period included large diversity of corals, bryozoans, bivalves and gastropods (we know most about these because shells and skeletal remains fossilise best). In fact, reef builders took something of a hiding in Earth's second-most devastating mass extinction event.

Why is this significant? Well, all these shelled and reef building critters were apparently doing fine when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were an order of magnitude greater than current and anticipated levels. If these creatures, many of whose descendants are current denizens of the seas, managed to fashion calcium carbonate shells and skeletons then it would appear that atmospheric CO2 levels are not a major determinant of the success of these marine creatures. Why would apparently insignificant levels be a problem now?”|Steven Milloy|July 1, 2005 in response to The Royal Society, 2005. Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Policy document 12/05, June 2005, online [2]

— [Mac Davis] (talk)

More about the environment and such

Ok, Mac, you've really got me thinking about all this more critically than I ever have.

That is fantastic. If you are thinking (rationally), you can't go wrong.

I follow what you're saying so far, and it all makes sense. Two things, though: 1. Humans are overpopulating the world. As far as I know, we are the only species (besides microscopic organisms and insects like ants) whose population has soared to the current level, and we are the only species to have such widespread distribution across the earth. Whether for better or worse or neither, we have dramatically altered the landscape and the ecology in our bounds and redistributed elements and compounds that living things barely make use of, if at all, but with which they must now deal (and metabolize). To me, it seems that mankind is in a situation where it cannot help but have some kind of impact on the world it inhabits. Again, as I don't know the facts, I can't say whether it's a positive or negative one, but am I justified in saying what I just said?

Thanks, this would be fun to write a short essay about (although sometimes they do end up getting long). Did you read User:Mac_Davis/Yellowstone?

Humans are overpopulating the world?

Is the statement "Humans are overpopulating the world" justified? I am skeptical, as I always am. Yes, because tons of people did say that a few years ago. Although where are the facts to back it up?

I wrote this for my history class one time.

Thomas Malthus’s writings on population shaped economic thinking for generations. Malthus grimly predicted that population would outpace the food supply, leading to a decrease in food per person. This prediction was based on the idea that population, if unchecked, increases at a theoretical exponential rate (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc.), whereas food supply would grow theoretically at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 etc.). Resulting decrease in the food/person ratio would eventually lead to not happy times for the human race. Today this scenario is called a Malthusian catastrophe. According the Malthus, the catastrophe can only be prevented by “misery.” What he means by this is intentional self-restraint or vices. Malthus favored moral restraints, including late marriages and sexual abstinence, but only for the working and poor classes. Thus, the lower social classes take a great deal of responsibility for the ills of society. Of the vices, he leaned toward contraception and abortion, as being the best, also, mainly for working and poor classes.

The influence of Malthus’s hypothesis was readily accepted during the 1800s. Previously, high fertility had been considered an economic plus because it increased the amount of available workers into the nation’s economy. However, Malthus looked at it from a different perspective, and convinced most economists that even though the higher fertility might increase the gross output, it tended to reduce output per capita.

Concerns about Malthus's theory also helped promote the idea of a national population Census in the UK, influenced the Whig party’s beliefs, and Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species had a section oh Malthusian catastrophe.

Recent research and significant empirical evidence have showed Malthus to be wrong. The population has continued to grow, yet the prices of resources and foods relative to wages has decreased, indicating the supply of food (and resources) has grown relative to population size. Malthusian hypothesis also makes several incorrect assumptions nobody caught for centuries.

First, population growth is almost never exponential. It is influenced by too many factors and variables that no model can describe. Actual demographics since Malthus's time show that population growth rates flatten and then grow negatively, as a function of wealth. Malthus lived in the time when England went through a geometric growth before birth rates flattened, and he failed to study the large populations in Asia which existed over multiple millennia where such flattening of birth rates has been evident.

Malthus also could not have known that agriculture was already undergoing a radical modernization that would change it from a arithmetic growth rate to an exponential—the Green Revolution. Second, he did not fully understand the additional leeway built into the agricultural system—while most people (even the poor), ate a high meat diet, a vegetarian diet can feed more people per farmed area than a carnivorous diet. Third, he failed to realize the extent that 'misery', in the form of war, disease, violent crime, and pollution, can prevent excessive population growth before it reaches the crisis levels that would result in the famine deaths he predicted.

If things would have kept going in exactly the same way as they had been, Malthusian catastrophes may have been common. However, things never keep going exactly how they have been. Things change. Just as individual species are at this very moment, rising, falling, exploding, bottlenecking, taking over, and being pushed back, natural conditions on the Earth, and outside the Earth change. Each change will somehow offset any and all models that do not take into account the infinite factors, variables, and changes.

Alluding to chaos theory, I end with the same thing I have already told you. About every few decades somebody resurrects the hypothesis, with the last big scare being The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. If he had watched his facts (which he most definitely did), he would have known that population increase had already been dropping for decades before he published the book. Pretty graph

Ehrlich, a butterfly specialist, began his spectacular doomsaying career back in 1968 (publishing date marked in the graph) with his best-selling book. Among his predictions then and since:

"The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death." (1968)

"Smog disasters" in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)

"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." (1969)

"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)

Today: 1) Food production is well ahead of population growth obesity is a major issue for millions in the United States, 2) the air in New York and L.A. is cleaner than it has been in decades, 3)England is still here, and 4) there are no key minerals facing depletion. Almost all of them, along with raw materials in general, are far cheaper now relative either to the Consumer Price Index or wages.

But have Ehrlich's preposterous predictions hurt his reputation? Far from it - they've made him both celebrated and rich.

In 1990 - he published The Population Explosion, which received the MacArthur Foundation's famous "genius award" with a $345,000 check, and split a Swedish Royal Academy of Science prize worth $120,000.

Ehrlich had a column for a few years in the Atlantic Monthly: "Since natural resources are finite, increased consumption must inevitably lead to depletion and scarcity." Of course, right?

Environmental depletion and Hubbert's Peak oil

Look at copper. As it became scarcer, industry used new technology to switch to equal or even superior materials. Copper phone wiring went the way of the dodo, replaced by glass fiber optics that are dirt-cheap and made out of a raw material even Ehrlich doesn't fear for - sand. They are also vastly superior in the number and quality of transmissions they can carry.

Oil? Right now its the one we hear about. Every day. Last week it was popular what Iran said to try and scare the US government. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (I believe) said that oil prices will be over $100 soon. Some reports said $200, but that's just the news media.

It has falisfiablity, that is good. However not much—the only thing that can invalidate peak oil would be confirmation that oil is abiotic in origin, with a generation rate that could replenish reservoirs over a human time scale. The Russians, and some in the West (notably Tommy Gold), have argued for this, but they find few supporters amongst most petroleum geologists.

The underlying concept has been hijacked by alarmists, conspiracy nuts, and those who take a psychotic delight in envisaging the end of civilisation as we know it. That does not invalidate the underlying concept, which is nothing less than the application of common sense.

The theory was originally proposed in relation to the US. The 'experts' decried it. Production in the US peaked as predicted by the theory. That is quite good validation, in my view. Although there is a problem. Theory and experiment do not match up. See graph comparison.

Predicted for United States (credit: Hubbard's original paper)

What happened for United States (credit: Dept. of Energy)

The problem is that having been usurped by doom and gloom merchants the worst case scenario is painted. Equally, sensible lobbyists will note that since we are uncertain of just when production will peak it would be prudent to look towards the worst case situation.

I'm not saying peak oil isn't real. The US already hit peak oil in 1971. Like the Malthusian catastrophe, I'm saying peak oil is not anything you should be worried about. USGS, probably the top authority currently, finds that peak oil may not be hit for 50-100 years.

Decreasing crop yields

But on and on Ehrlich goes. "Human-induced land degradation," he says, "affects about 40% of the planet's vegetated land surface," and is "accelerating nearly everywhere, reducing crop yields."

Reducing? Our silos runneth over, as yields continue to increase all over the world. For example, corn is now the world's most important crop. According to a 1997 article, we now harvest about 50% more corn per acre than 30 years ago. And, says Hudson Institute analyst Dennis Avery, crop yields can be raised from the current world average of around 1.2 tons per acre to six to nine tons. Advances in genetics since 1997, have skyrocketed crop yields.

Alternative fuels

Like pretty much every other physicist in the world, I push the most for nuclear fusion funding. This is one of those "investments," like health care, that I don't think we put as much funding into as we should, because there are not immediate, but future benefits. The thing wrong with alternative fuels. There is a lot of things wrong. Things differ as per theorized energy source, but mostly it is ignorance that leads us to believe they are actually better.

Break even

This is what it is all about in the energy business. You need to have to gain more useable energy than you lost. The further we persevere into the future, the more energy we need to use, and we have progressed greatly. We have gone from manpower, to animal-power, to biomass, to chemical burning (all of them could actually be placed into chemical burning). We can simplify energy spent to money spent—linear relationship I think. Right now, every single possible alternative fuel source is very to extremely expensive, and much much more energy is spent than gained on these "fuel" sources. With more funding, it will change, but we need to decide which gets the most, if any, and how much.

We cannot use a fuel source if we have to make it. If you read science fiction, or are/were exposed to it (Greene probably mentioned it a million times), antimatter is a suggested fuel source. This will never work, unless sometime in the far future when we are intergalactic travelers, we find some areas of the universe where in the interstellar dust there are antimatter atoms, or anything made of antimatter that we find.

Problems

I'll hit a few thought-of fuels. Hydrogen: It will never work. Everything you see about it is just imagination. Sorry, but imagination doesn't work that well if you want to run the world on it.

Production

The actual environmental impacts associated with hydrogen production can be compared with alternatives, taking into account not only the emissions and efficiency of the hydrogen production process but also the efficiency of the hydrogen conversion to electricity in a fuel cell. Moreover, every 'green' source produces rather low-intensity energy (which can be scaled up, but at an efficiency cost), not the prodigious amounts of energy required for extracting significant amounts of hydrogen, like high-temperature electrolysis.

There is concern about the energy-consuming process of manufacturing the hydrogen. Manufacturing hydrogen requires a hydrogen carrier such as a fossil fuel or water. The former consumes the fossil resource and produces carbon dioxide, while electrolyzing water requires electricity, which is mostly generated at present using conventional fuels (fossil fuel or nuclear power). While alternative energy sources like wind and solar power could also be used, they are still more expensive given current prices of fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and are low-intensity. In this regard, hydrogen fuel itself cannot be called truly independent of fossil fuels (or completely non-polluting), unless a totally nuclear or renewable energy option were considered.

The energy that must be utilized per kilogram to produce, transport and deliver hyrogen (i.e., is well-to-tank energy use) is approximately 50 megajoules. Subtracting this energy from the enthalpy of one kilogram of hydrogen, which is 141 megajoules, and dividing by the enthalpy, yields a thermal energy efficiency of roughly sixty percent (Kreith, 2004). Gasoline, by comparison, requires less energy input, per gallon, at the refinery, and comparatively little energy is required to transport it and store it owing to its high energy density per gallon at ambient temperatures. Well-to-tank, the supply chain for gasoline is roughly 80 percent efficient (Wang, 2002).

Storage

Hydrogen gas at has an extremely poor energy density per volume. As a result, if it is to be stored and used as fuel onboard the vehicle, molecular hydrogen must be pressurized or liquefied to provide sufficient driving range. Even then, liquid hydrogen has a volume over 3 times greater than liquified gasoline, and it's energy density is 4 times less. Liquid hydrogen is cryogenic and boils at -423.188 °F. Cryogenic storage cuts weight but requires large liquification energies. The liquefaction process, involving pressurizing and cooling steps, is very energy intensive. The liquefied hydrogen has lower energy density per volume than gasoline by approximately a factor of four. Storage tanks must also be well insulated to minimize boil off. Ice may form around the tank and help corrode it further if the insulation fails. Insulation for liquid hydrogen tanks is usually expensive and delicate.

The mass of the tanks needed for compressed hydrogen reduces the fuel economy of the vehicle. Hydrogen also, when stored causes hydrogen embrittlement. That sucks.

Hydrogen use would require the alteration of industry and transport on a scale never seen before in history. For example, the distributing hydrogen fuel for vehicles will require an entirely new infrastructure which, just in the U.S., would cost trillions. See The Hype about Hydrogen.

Sum of all

Generally in order of worst idea to best.

1. Biomass burning: The burning of wood or dung as people in pristine, natural Third World garden spots do, but that doesn't do much for the trees or the air quality, and greatens GHG emissions.
2. Hydrogen is the one I know a little about, already said.
3. Hydroelectric dams: It would take about 2,600 square miles of deep enough water to supply enough power for Maryland. The fish don't appreciate it.
4. Wind power: Extremely loud. Requires about 400 square miles for only Maryland. Slaughters birds more efficiently than a human hunter could. A wind farm in Norway's Smøla islands is reported to have destroyed a colony of sea eagles according to the British Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. A six-week study in 2004 estimated that over 2200 bats were killed by 63 turbines at two sites in the Eastern US. (I think I'll start adding references). This study suggests some site locations may be particularly hazardous to local bat populations, and that more research is urgently needed. Migratory bat species appear to be particularly at risk, especially during key movement periods (spring and more importantly in fall). Lasiurines such as the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus), and red bat (Lasiurus borealis) along with semi-migratory silver-haired bats (Lasionycteris noctivagans) appear to be most vulnerable at North American sites. Almost nothing is known about current populations of these species and the impact on bat numbers as a result of mortality at windpower locations.
5. Solar power: Even assuming the sun is out, it's too expensive. I would put it as second best bet though if you had to pick from one of these.
6. Ethanol and diesel-type biofuels: In development, I favor solar power and this. Right now it is in a somewhat similar state as solar power. This does not require a complete reworking of our energy system and totally new-built infrastructure.

Electricity: Where the hell do you think we get the electricity from? Either fossil fuels or these ways.

Wrap up

There really isn't an "environmentally sensitive" way to get energy. You have to take from the environment to get usable energy, you cannot create a fuel source to use because that is spending more energy than you are gaining. Mr. Ehrlich wrote: "No way of mobilizing energy is free of environmentally damaging side effects, and the uses to which energy from any source is put usually have negative environmental effects as well."

Scientific magazines

Finally, I have to say: you say that journals are the best sources of unbiased (or the least-biased, anyway) information. How would you rate magazines like Discover and Scientific American on the basis of bias, reliability, and factual accuracy?

Discover and SciAm fall in exactly the same spot. Bias: More than journals, less than all other forms of media. You will never catch them contradicting themselves with two conflicting articles, and defintiely no neutral or evan bias on global warming or anything "green." Reliability/Factual accuracy: Reliability and factual accuracy to be the same, no? If you read the articles, as far as I know, these two are not total liars. These two are popularized, and tailored to the common science-minded American.

Thanks, — [Mac Davis] (talk)

August 2006 - December 2006

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Sorry I write so much. :) — [Mac Davis] (talk) (Desk|Help me improve)

Thanks Ophion, after discovering the truth behind the recycling scandal, and learning a bit more about other things, I have achieved having a little bit more confidence, and more of a lack of respect for environmentalism in general. I have it my goal to write a master essay concerning this. I have no idea how long it will be. I already have 50 pages to work with. This is gonna be so much fun. Perhaps I should do it in wiki format? Eh? — [Mac Davis] (talk) (Desk|Help me improve)

Ophion, have you decided not to respond to me? — [Mac Davis] (talk) (Desk|Help me improve)

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Holy Name School

There is no article for Holy Name Church in Birmingham, Michigan. Therefore, the link at Holy Name School should be a red link. The Holy Name Church article is a disambiguation page and not an article on the church. It contains a red linked entry for the church as well. Red links encourage people to create articles. Blue links that don't provide the expected information confuse readers. Someone clicking on the Holy Name Church link at Holy Name School is going to expect to see an article on the church and not a list of possible choices that they have to figure out which one is the correct one. And when they do figure it out, they're going to find out it's a red link and there's no article. Let's not put them through that. -- JLaTondre 12:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Linda Wichers

The article Linda Wichers has been speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This was done because the article seemed to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it did not indicate how or why the subject is notable, that is, why an article about that subject should be included in Wikipedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert notability may be deleted at any time. If you can indicate why the subject is really notable, you are free to re-create the article, making sure to cite any verifiable sources.

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Commons Picture of the Year 2006

I assert that I have voted for picture 9 Ophion 03:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Image:Hubbert-fig-20.png

Hello, Ophion. An automated process has found and removed an image or media file tagged as nonfree media, and thus is being used under fair use that was in your userspace. The image (Image:Hubbert-fig-20.png) was found at the following location: User talk:Ophion/archives. This image or media was attempted to be removed per criterion number 9 of our non-free content policy. The image or media was replaced with Image:NonFreeImageRemoved.svg , so your formatting of your userpage should be fine. Please find a free image or media to replace it with, and or remove the image from your userspace. User:Gnome (Bot)-talk 04:49, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

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Image copyright problem with Image:Karen-armstrong.jpg

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Orphaned non-free image (Image:Karen-armstrong.jpg)

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Striking your vote

Hello Ophion,

Thank you for your interest in the Wikimedia Board Election. The Election Committee regretfully informs you that your previous vote was received in error and will be struck according to the election rules, described below.

The Election Committee regretfully announces today that we will have to remove approximately 220 votes submitted. These votes were cast by people not entitled to vote. The election rules state that users must have at least 400 edits by June 1 to be eligible to vote.

The voter lists we sent to Software in the Public Interest (our third party election partner) initially were wrong, and one of your account was eventually included to our initial list. There was a bug in the edit counting program and the sent list contained every account with 201 or more edits, instead of 400 or more edits. So large numbers of people were qualified according to the software who shouldn't be. The bug has been fixed and an amended list was sent to SPI already.

Our first (and wrong) list contains 80,458 accounts as qualified. The proper number of qualified voters in the SPI list is now 52,750. As of the morning of July 4 (UTC), there are 2,773 unique voters and 220 people, including you, have voted who are not qualified based upon this identified error.

In accordance with voting regulations the Election Committee will strike those approximately 220 votes due to lack of voting eligibility. The list of struck votes is available at https://wikimedia.spi-inc.org/index.php/List_of_struck_votes.

We are aware of the possibility that some of the people affected may have other accounts with more than 400 edits, and hence may still be eligible to vote. We encourage you to consider voting again from another account, if you have one. If you have no other account eligible to vote, we hope you reach the criteria in the next Election, and expect to see your participation to the future Elections.

Your comments, questions or messages to the Committee would be appreciated, you can make them at m:Talk:Board elections/2007/en. Other language versions are available at m:Translation requests/Eleccom mail, 07-05.

Again, we would like to deeply apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,
Kizu Naoko
Philippe
Jon Harald Søby
Newyorkbrad
Tim Starling

For Wikimedia Board Election Steering Committee

Redirect of Peabody's

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==Ardalambion==

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I would like to thank Mac Davis for the inspiration on the infobox-format as a link to this page.