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Passings...
- Thread starter thehangingtree
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If anyone is interested.
I would say only two things. One is that experiments have been done which call into question whether CO2 can just go up indefinitely and still be good for plants.Freeman Dyson Takes on the Climate Establishment
Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson has been roundly criticized for insisting global warming is not an urgent problem, with many climate scientists dismissing him as woefully ill-informed. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Dyson explains his iconoclastic views and why he believes they...e360.yale.edu
The second is that there are very definitely industrial interests who are pushing money at people who say these kinds of things (not at Dyson--there is no evidence of that) and those folks don't care whether they are right or not. To say that people who worry about climate change are biased and greedy and those who do not have no vested interest in denying its effects is naive at best and dishonest at worst.
If you google "earth overdue for an ice age" you get
showing various schools of thought, which aren't greed or denialism generated, that posit we’re overdue for an ice age. Dyson was one of those.
But as far as I know no one knows if the warming and cooling trends will balance each other out in a way that doesn’t produce about 1-2 billion climate refugees by 2050.
isn't that a vacuum cleaner?
That Dyson does balls rather than spheres
Dyson Australia | Official Website
Shop Dyson vacuum cleaners, air purifiers, hair care and hand dryers for your home and for business. Get support for your Dyson Machines and buy genuine replacement parts.
Don’t mention that Dyson.. he rejected my idea for a commercial: “Dyson: our vacuum cleaners really suck!”
It's true, they do work.
Airfix, Bob Shaw, that's what I love about this place, so often a trip down memory lane
Ringworld is huge, humongous, gigantic almost past understanding. Imagine how much bigger a dyson sphere would be, unimaginable.
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
Somebody needs to remind Twitter of this fact. Sadly you can get your account canned for even suggesting this
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
I think the often-used example is that a Dyson sphere capable of maintaining an Earth-type environment around a sun-like star would have a diameter in keeping with the Earth's orbit and its internal surface area would be equivalent to over 250 million Earth-size planets. That's not only a feat of engineering construction beyond probably the most advanced civilisations that could ever exist, but it would also constitute such an enormous mass that its own gravity would suck in any other bodies in the solar system possibly including the star itself, resulting in collisions that would certainly destroy the structure. Also, it is difficult to imagine where all the material for such a body could be mined from, as even the largest planets combined wouldn't account for a tiny proportion of what would be required, and the larger planets are mostly just gas and dust rather than solid material anyway.
The payoff of course would be that the entire inner surface area would get 100% of the star's energy all the time.
None of which diminishes what an astonishingly visionary concept it is. The world needs more people with the kind of free-thinking imagination that Dyson was rightly famed for.
Sadly the world is becoming less imaginative and more stupid, as the uneducated masses reproduce so much faster and more often than the gifted people, such that intelligence and innovation are being bred out of the species
M
montycrusto
Guest
The last line of "Orbitsville" is very interesting.. (spoiler alert).. After human beings discover this huge and inexplicable artefact, they rapidly start shipping everyone over from Earth to ease the population pressure.. millions upon millions enter the sphere and are absorbed, virtually disappearing in its near limitless space. The last line of the book is "Orbitsville had fulfilled its purpose".
A woman whose biographies, and personality, I've much admired;
Fiona MacCarthy
amp.theguardian.com
Fiona MacCarthy
Fiona MacCarthy obituary | Books | The Guardian
Writer best known for her biographies of Eric Gill and William Morris
amp.theguardian.com
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That’s quite disquieting, Monty.
M
montycrusto
Guest
then he ruined it by writing a sequel but let’s not go there
Well the devil behind Christ and newly liberated Eve looks like he's practising limbo,
without needing a bar.
then he ruined it by writing a sequel but let’s not go there
Sorry to stir up bad memories, Monty.
poem21045
Tribunus Plebis
JC and Eve just finished their pass. It was tough getting that flag under; everybody there said it was a miracle He did it.
I've digitally enhanced the limbo pole that Brueghel decided was too tacky to include.
Migoz2
Senator
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1920-2020). Peruvian diplomat, who was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1982 to 1991.
It already seems so long ago that he was in charge. And sometimes, I have the impression that the influence of the UN SG has been waning the last 10-15 years.
It already seems so long ago that he was in charge. And sometimes, I have the impression that the influence of the UN SG has been waning the last 10-15 years.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Playing chess with Death : you can gain time, but never win!
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
Max Von Sydow was one of the last of a generation of truly great actors capable of turning their hand to any role. One of my favourites (Though nowhere near his best) was his wonderfully understated performance as Ming The Merciless in the flawed but fun movie version of Flash Gordon (1980) in which he was clearly relishing the classic villainous role, as many character actors seem to do. I guess playing an evil character gives an actor a much broader range than being the good guy who is always constrained by the need to always be seen to be doing the right thing.
RIP Max. You were truly one of the greatest...
RIP Max. You were truly one of the greatest...