Letters to the Editor
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Barnardsstar
And Dyson did offer up the theoretical Dyson sphere once upon a time: a system of satellites meant to capture the entire energy output of a star.
That's not a Dyson sphere. A Dyson sphere is a sphere that encloses a star. A Dyson sphere isn't possible. Can you explain why?
As much as his ability to "do the math" is impressive, I applaud his imagination.
I'm not impressed. Shuffling algebraic equations around, as I've pointed out, is the mathematical equivalent of working a jigsaw puzzle - without looking at the picture the puzzle represents. So it's not physics, either. It's Tinkertoys.
You're sucking up to a flim-flam. Don't do that to yourself.
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Mr. Dyson, you can go to hell.
How many individual animals, and entire species, are now suffering and dying, and will suffer and die in the future, due to climate change? It's not as if these animals simply go *poof* and disappear. They die of thirst, they starve to death, they drown. Their deaths, due to humanity's selfishness, are miserable.
You can fantasize about tinkering in your lab all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that while you mentally masturbate at all the nifty things you can conjure up, the natural world needlessly cries out in pain. No doubt in the future, your new lab creations will suffer and die due to the arrogance and indifference of men just like you.
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Polar bears evolved from grizzlies...
Almost all the species that have inhabited Earth are extinct. There is nothing unique about the present assemblage of critters and bushes that must be preserved for all time, even if we could. The world changes and things evolve. A long time ago blue-green algae oxygenated the planet and forced all those sulfide-loving bacteria to hide where the O2 would not kill them.
It appears that most Salon readers live on the coast, which might be a very bad place to be if global warming melts enough ice. Their selfishness would deny those who benefit from global warming from enjoying its benefits. As Dyson correctly points out the fossil fuel era will effectively end in 50 years. All the Earth lovers who think nothing of burning vast amounts of fossil fuel on plane trips to cultural places will have to give up their jaunting about the planet. Anyone writing to this list bemoaning global warming who has flown anywhere in the last year is a hypocrite.
We cannot sustain our present profligate ways with energy based on what the sun puts on each square meter of surface. Fossil fuel is collection of molecules that took many millenia of solar energy to produce, besides the geologic time to convert them into their present form.
However, liquid hydrogen is a nifty fuel for jet aircraft, and we can produce lots of it with nuclear power, for which there is plenty of uranium and thorium in the planet to keep us going for longer than we have been around to date. So, world travelers, if you jaunt about on a nuclear-hydrogen jet it will be OK.
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Polar Bears & Mr. Dyson
Mr. Dyson claims that Polar Bears are doing well. The link in the article sends you to an article in Salon on Bjorn Lomborg. I don't know if this is the basis of Mr. Dyson's belief but if so , it is a very shaky foundation. According Polar Bears International, there is no international census of Polar Bear population. The most studied population is the one in Western Hudson's Bay. That population has declined by 22% since 1980. This decline is directly linked to an earlier breakup of the ice in Hudson's Bay. The basis for Mr. Lomborg's assumption that the bears are doing ok would appear to be reports by Eskimos of increased bear presence on land. While it is possible that this is a result of increased numbers, it is also possible that the bears are spending more time on land because they can't find food at sea and are searching for it on land.
It is unfortunately characteristic of global warming skeptics that they seize on single pieces of evidence that support their claims, and ignore the rest. This is the case in Mr. Bjorn and that of Mr. Dyson.
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mushy headed lawyers
Mack. I referred to "Mushy headed physicists " not ALL physicists (lawyered!). I've met a few mushy headed biologists too. In any case, you adress my name calling but not my main point: That Dyson thinks the himan genoime is sacred and untoucahble but that all other genomes are fair game. That's Mushy headed. If you read my letter carefully (I thought lawyers were good at that kind of thing, maybe you're some kind of bitter tax attorney who took physics 101 at a community college while struggling through an associates degree), that was the only point I argued with. For all you know, I might agree with everything else he says. I don't BTW. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go beat the tofu out of my sack cloth befdore attending my uppity liberal arts coffee house poetry reading meeting.
All lawyers are jerks.
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@curmudgeon2
It appears that most Salon readers live on the coast, which might be a very bad place to be if global warming melts enough ice.
Don't be ridiculous. A huge fraction of the population lives near the coasts, all over the world. I seem to recall the figure of 50% within 50 miles. This settlement pattern isn't strange, because of proximity to resources and trade routes.
Their selfishness would deny those who benefit from global warming from enjoying its benefits.
Have you ever been to the Salton Sea? Now there's a place where you can see first-hand what happens when the water level rises, oh, ten or twenty feet and submerges twentieth-century industrial constructions. This water-level rise was not due to global warming, but to another kind of sorcerer's-apprentice situation where some folks opened a waterway for irrigation purposes but were then unable to close it up again.
You can see the top of a "Phillips 66" gas station, well, actually, just the sign at the top of the pole, and it even with a limited imagination you can get a pretty good idea of what kind of recreational wonderland is down there. That's a tiny town in the desert, now imagine the same thing up and down all coasts around the world. Imagine "oceanfront property" where you can't exactly surf, because of all the jagged, ruined, toxic crap at the shoreline.
Anyone writing to this list bemoaning global warming who has flown anywhere in the last year is a hypocrite.
At the present time, we can choose between unsustainably polluting travel on the one hand, or no travel at all, on the other. It's not as if by not taking an airplane, or by sitting in one place and not moving at all I can make any material difference in how much greenhouse gas is emitted by the current incarnation of our economic/industrial machine. And although I'm sure you'd like everyone who disagrees with you to wear a hair shirt and go live in a Unabomber shack in the woods, that's not going to happen.