[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kazan
oh Kara - implying that i cannot 'see the writing on the wall' (dinosaur comment) is rather insulting, and you intended it to be


as for "taking this seriously" - there is a difference between taking the threat of humanity seriously, and advising caution on jumping to conclusions on a specific theory

Your first comment on the global warming issue was to claim that the science was bunk and that the scientists are being over reactionary. You then post a link to a quote claiming that humans aren't responsible for global warming.

Besides if you really do believe that there is no strong evidence for humans causing global warming why are you suggesting that we cut down CO2 production?

How can you then claim that you see the writing on the wall? You basically claimed that humans aren't causing global warming. Have you changed your mind on that matter?

[Rictor]

Liberator, I don't think this is an everything or nothing situation. We don't necessarily have to stop using all fossil fuels over-night. If over the next several years, a certain percentage of energy consumption can be switched to renewable sources, thats good and worth investing in. AAll I'm saying is that there is a lot that could be done but isn't.

Hybrid gas/electric cars, electric cars and other ways of propulsion, they're a great thing, and if implemented on any large scale could be a big step towards cutting down hazardous emissions. But the problem is that oil being the single most profitable industry in the world, there are of very powerful people who are not too keen on seeing hybrid cars becoming mainstream.

I believe that the best way to get some of these things off the ground, due to the sheer scale of the undertaking, is by cooperation between the government and citizens. A government initiative, like Bush's broadband plan only for energy, could make it much easier to implement certain renewable energy measures. For example, becuase solar cells are a bit costly to install, split the cost between the person and the government. If I knew that the government would pay 40% of the cost, I'de be more willing to consider putting up solar cells. A no brainer would be to enforce fuel efficiency standards on the major car manufacturers. Its just standard practice, every administration for decades has been doing it.

I'm just listing stuff off the top of my head here, but you get the idea. If either the government or the citizen has to pay the entire cost, either will be reluctant to do it. But if you split the costs, that might nudge people to take up renewable energy. Its not like Uncle Sam can't afford it.

[aldo_14]

Why not use the Sahara, etc, desert for wind farms / solar farms on a global scale?

[an0n]

The sand ****s the turbines up and burries the panels.

I don't get why they don't just build like a million nuclear power plants.

By the time the toxic waste gets to be a real problem we'll have advanced enough to be able to just shoot it off towards the Sun.

[Bobboau]

has anyone here looked into the Thermal Conversion Process developed by Changeing World Technologies? aparently they have a test plant sucesfuly proccessing meat house waste into fuel, and are about to open a production facility this fall. and the great thing about it is it turns an oil economy green, no more additional CO2 would be pumped into the atmosphere (all fuel produced by the proces is made from carbon removed from the atmosphere by plants wich were then subsquently eaten by animals wich were then slaughtered and there unused remains procesed into fuel, it's essentaly solar power converted into oil)

best thing of all it stands to make the oil companies (the ones that invest in it) fantasticly rich, so they'll actualy develop it rather than try to burry it.

http://www.changingworldtech.com/techfr.htm

[Ghostavo]

We could always try nuclear fusion instead of nuclear fission... now to get that cold fusion issue...

[Kazan]

"cold fusion" = bull****

however real fusion is a distinct possibility

[Knight Templar]

Originally posted by Kazan
"cold fusion" = bull****

however real fusion is a distinct possibility

How's that?

[an0n]

Because cold-fusion defies the laws of physics and normal-fusion is in the testing stages.

[Kazan]

because cold-fusion defies the laws of physics and was a hoax

and they can create stable microfusion by sonoluminescence

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Kazan
because cold-fusion defies the laws of physics and was a hoax

Cold fusion wasn't really a hoax. A hoax implies that the people behind it knew it wasn't true. What we had here was a case of glory seeking stupidity

What happened apparently was that a couple of physical chemists did an experiment involving hydrogen adsorbed onto metal surfaces and claimed that they had got some energy reading higher than would be possible through any normal chemical reaction.

Instead of checking their instruments careful, repeating the experiments and publishing in a peer reviewed journal like any sensible scientist would they instead decided to leap at the nobel prize by calling a press conferance announcing that they had discovered cold fusion.

Basically after a few months when no other scientist including those who originally carried out the experiment could repeat it the research was considered to be nonsense and is now ignored by the scientific community. Last I heard one of the scientists was still committing career suicide trying to repeat the experiment.

Basically the Cold Fusion scientists deserve their position on the list of scientists who destroyed their career by publishing very poor research (Although they go below the idiot who published "The Memory of Water" paper in Nature with a flaw in it so large that I saw it the second I heard how the experiment was done).

[Ghostavo]

http://www.twm.co.nz/water.html
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993817

This?

How the **** can water retain memory if it's molecules are constantly moving (if no substance is present to "guide" them)?

[karajorma]

The second one mentions Jacques Benveniste who is the guy I was on about.

For the sake of fun I'll describe the experiment and lets see if anyone can spot the flaw before I get to it I'm going from memory but I think I've got the basics down.

He was studying allergic reactions. The chemical that caused the allergic reaction was made into a solution in water. When added to the blood cells and cell that reacted would turn bluish. A researcher would then stare at a slide under a microscope and manually count the cells that turned blue.

What the researchers found was that when they diluted the solution down to a level where it should have no effect and repeated the experiment with new cells they found that some of the cells still turned blue. They continued to dilute the solution and repeat the experiment, eventually getting it down to a level where the odds were good that there wasn't even a single molecule  of the chemical in the solution but still the cells would always be blue.

Jacques thought that this might be proof that water was somehow "remembering" the chemical that had been present in the solution and designed an experiment to prove it.

One set of cells were given water while another set of cells were given a highly diluted solution that was so diluted that it should have no more of an effect than plain water. The researcher again sat down at the microscope and counted the number of stained cells from the water sample and then from the diluted sample.

The result was that the highly diluted sample always had a much higher number of blue cells than the water sample even though there was very little chance of there actually being any of the allergen in it.

A paper on the subject was written up and submitted to Nature who hated it. They said that since this was an amazing claim they would only publish it if they were allowed to send their own experts there to verify the experiment. The paper was published and then the experts went in (James Randi a famous debunker was also sent along).

This time the experts insisted that the researcher who counted the cells didn't know which was the dilute sample and which was the water sample. At this point the bottom fell out of the entire experiment and Jacques dream of a nobel prize failed completely.

What had of course been happening was that if a cell looked a little blue the researchers were counting it for the dilute sample and discarding it for the water sample. As soon as the person doing the counting didn't know which sample was which the reults were more accurate.

What amazed me is that a man who was considered on the track to a nobel prize didn't even consider doing a double (or even single) blind test on something this important.

EDIT : Here's a link to the BBC Horizon  programme on the subject.

It mentions that there is a 1 Million pound prize for anyone who can prove that homeopathy (i.e memory of water) works under lab conditions

2nd Edit : Hopefully some more clarity added

[Ghostavo]

Originally posted by karajorma
What the researchers found was that when they diluted the solution down to a level where it should have no effect they found that some of the cells still had a bluish colour to them.
(...)
One set of cells were given water while another set of cells were given a highly diluted solution that should have had the same effect as water. The researcher again sat down at the microscope and counted the number of stained cells from the water sample and then from the diluted sample.

The result was that the diluted sample always had a much higher number of blue cells than the water sample.

Everything is wrong?
In the first quote they were still blue because of the effects of the previous samples...

On the second, of course a much diluted sample is going to get larger amounts of blue cells compared to a sample of pure water!

[Rictor]

*Stares around in utter confusion*

This is all way over my head. Though the thing Bob. linked to sounds pretty original. I think the way to shake off our dependence of fossil fuels and make energy production more eco friendly is using a vareity of sources, not just one.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Ghostavo




Everything is wrong?
In the first quote they were still blue because of the effects of the previous samples...

On the second, of course a much diluted sample is going to get larger amounts of blue cells compared to a sample of pure water!

RE1: I think that means new cells were tested with the dilute - still blue, I think, means the reaction still occurred.
RE2: The sample was diluted to a point where it should have been ineffectual - i.e. any effect would have had to have been from the water retaining a 'memory' of its previous, less dilute state (or something)

The experiment was biased by the experimentors foreknowledge of what each sample was, and what result they expected..

[Ghostavo]

Oh... sorry

[karajorma]

Yeah. Aldo has got it in one

Editing the original post to make it a little clearer

Originally posted by Rictor
*Stares around in utter confusion*

This is all way over my head.

Sorry to hear that Rictor. I tried to explain it in terms a non scientist would understand. Let me try explaining it in simpler terms.

Suppose I have a glass of poison (not a hugely nasty one but one that makes you ill).  

I give 10 volunteers a cup of water from a 10 litre tank of water. I then take 1 drop of the poison and add it to the tank and stir it. There is not supposed to be enough poison in the tank to make anyone ill now as it's too dilute. I then give another 10 volunteers a drink from the tank telling them I poisoned it.

I wait and see who gets ill. Would you be surprised if the number of people who drunk from the tainted tank was higher? Of course not. We can guess that there would be a reversed placebo effect and people would go "oh no. The water was poisoned. I feel ill" I could probably have the same effect even if I didn't add the poison but just told the volunteers I did.

What this scientist did was to publish a paper saying more people who drunk from the poisoned tank got ill so the water in the tank must somehow be amplifying the effect of the poison by some previously unknown chemical ability of water.  

Of course that isn't true, a fact you can easily prove by repeating the test but not telling anyone who drunk the tainted water.  


Hope that was simple enough to follow

[Ace]

Originally posted by Nico



You have a country as big as a continent, and you're telling us there's no room for some eol... dunno how you say in english ?
I wonder how they did in Holland

Best. Reply. Ever.