Posts by memory.of.a.dream

Let's NUKE MARS to make it more like home says Elon Musk

Re: The old terraforming question.

@Dodgy Geezer

Please tell me what current technology is capable of driving an asteroid (intact nonetheless) into a planet's core? And where would you get enough iron mass to jump-start the core?

The asteroid belt doesn't contain nearly enough mass. You'll have to look at the kuiper belt.

For oceans You'll have to take comets down from the Oort cloud (THE BLOODY OORT CLOUD!!!)

Not even voyager has reached the Oort cloud and it's been going for almost 40 years.

And even if you manage to drive literary thousands of asteroids in Mars's core intact, where do you get the energy to heat it all up? Nukes, like they did in "The Core"? I'm pretty sure that's not going to work the way it did in the film.

Then you want to stabilize the planet? For that you need a moon. You would literary have to take one from... Jupiter I guess cause it's the closest planet with a big enough and usable moon(you can't use Earth's because that's needed here).

You would have to take the moon out of Jupiter orbit, fly it to Mars, basically a controlled fall, then stop it just enough to get it into the correct orbit around the planet.

And then you say this all can be done with current technology?

WTF!

Two years away is a bit optimistic don't you think? Given his track record I doubt he'll be able to even...

Wait! back up! did he say NUKE MARS?!! WTF!

If this is the way he approaches the problem I hope he never makes it there.

Arctic summer ice cover is 31st highest ever recorded

Min/Max arctic ice extent in million kilometers

year , min , max

1979 , 7.935 , 16.588

1980 , 7.544 , 16.295

1981 , 6.919 , 15.666

1982 , 7.171 , 16.293

1983 , 7.228 , 16.325

1984 , 6.426 , 15.784

1985 , 6.492 , 16.105

1986 , 7.167 , 16.127

1987 , 6.963 , 16.281

1988 , 7.126 , 16.274

1989 , 6.909 , 15.701

1990 , 6.036 , 16.177

1991 , 6.302 , 15.601

1992 , 7.209 , 15.558

1993 , 6.185 , 15.987

1994 , 6.961 , 15.724

1995 , 6.004 , 15.335

1996 , 7.191 , 15.426

1997 , 6.627 , 15.634

1998 , 6.352 , 15.999

1999 , 5.757 , 15.582

2000 , 5.978 , 15.439

2001 , 6.603 , 15.671

2002 , 5.638 , 15.571

2003 , 6.007 , 15.595

2004 , 5.794 , 15.216

2005 , 5.319 , 14.952

2006 , 5.774 , 14.683

2007 , 4.154 , 14.765

2008 , 4.586 , 15.288

2009 , 5.120 , 15.136

2010 , 4.615 , 15.264

2011 , 4.344 , 14.667

2012 , 3.387 , 15.289

2013 , 5.055 , 15.167

2014 , 5.028 , 14.964

2015 , 4.413 , 14.536

taken from: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

Draw your own conclusions. I know I have.

Strange conclusions

I see a few problems with this article.

1. The raw arctic and antarctic sea ice data are present here

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

a careful look over the charts shows a clear and highly accurate although not quite precise downwards trend.

The trend for the arctic seems downwards and accelerating, the trend for the antarctic(sea ice) is somewhat upwards and steady.

35 samples is quite sufficient to determine a trend. In biotech we often use as little as 5 samples to determine a trend within a 10% margin of error, although the trends are usually more clear then this.

2. You mentioned the antarctic sea ice extent being larger in current years.

this could be the cause of two things: either there is more ice in the antarctic or more ice from the antarctic mainland is flowing into the ocean (this would mean ice is melting faster and would be an indicator of the antarctic warming, not cooling)

interestingly enough only data about the sea ice around Antarctica is available anywhere. Why isn't anyone measuring the ground ice? Or if they are, why isn't the data public?

3. "And it's the thirty-first highest on record, which isn't that odd as there have only been reliable records for thirty-five years"

What kind of BS is this? This is just like the guy who looses the race but says I wasn't among the last, I was in the top 31,... out of 35.

4. "If the AMO does turn cold, it's at least possible that the arctic ice recovery seen over the last couple of years will continue."

Recovery compared to what? the 2012 anomaly? You don't have to bee a scientist to see that that was a fluke. I see no indication of long term recovery in the data.

I encourage anyone to look at the data and draw their own conclusions. I have a feeling that the person who wrote this didn't bother to do so.