Saturday, April 09, 2011
Whether climate change is man made or not is irrelevant.
Whether climate change is man made or not is irrelevant.
It really annoys me that people argue about the historical issue as to who is responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases.
Its like suggesting that if a comet is fast approaching the earth, that we should check if we brought this impending catastrophe on ourselves or not.
If things look dangerous, we should do things to avert the problems that will occur. It is irrelevant as to who or what is to blame. That is news media stuff. It is only relevant to consider the things that we might do.
If the climate is changing so fast that it threatens bio-diversity, then we should do something to maintain that diversity. End of argument.
If the sun is warming up so fast that we are threatened, then we should do something. Or if we don't we deserve what we get.
Martin
It really annoys me that people argue about the historical issue as to who is responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases.
Its like suggesting that if a comet is fast approaching the earth, that we should check if we brought this impending catastrophe on ourselves or not.
If things look dangerous, we should do things to avert the problems that will occur. It is irrelevant as to who or what is to blame. That is news media stuff. It is only relevant to consider the things that we might do.
If the climate is changing so fast that it threatens bio-diversity, then we should do something to maintain that diversity. End of argument.
If the sun is warming up so fast that we are threatened, then we should do something. Or if we don't we deserve what we get.
Martin
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Sun spot or planet?
Sun spot or planet?
I wonder if people might confuse sun spots with planets, when using some of the methods for detecting extraterrestrial solar systems.
Would you have to depend on there being more than one sun spot to tell the difference? ie only one planet per orbit.
Or would you assume that the closest 'planet' is a sun spot?
Is there an evolutionary theorem, that the rotation of a sun is always faster than that of all its planets? seems obvious, but not sure how you would prove it. I leave it as an exercise.
MartinW
I wonder if people might confuse sun spots with planets, when using some of the methods for detecting extraterrestrial solar systems.
Would you have to depend on there being more than one sun spot to tell the difference? ie only one planet per orbit.
Or would you assume that the closest 'planet' is a sun spot?
Is there an evolutionary theorem, that the rotation of a sun is always faster than that of all its planets? seems obvious, but not sure how you would prove it. I leave it as an exercise.
MartinW
All mature suns have planets surely. Why the fuss?
All mature suns have planets surely. Why the fuss?
We are starting to detect planets around suns. People seem to be surprised.
Of course it is quite difficult to make these observations, and we know that we will not detect them all, since most of these methods depend on the plane of the orbit being near the observer.
But surely we should not be surprised. Indeed I would have guessed that all suns have planets or planets forming. All the things that we have observed before in the universe has basically been spinning and whirling stuff around which condenses in some way, be they galaxies, suns, planets or whatever. That's just what matter does in space. Or another way of seeing this is that there seems to he plenty of angular momentum around the place.
We should rather be very surprised if we found any suns without planets, and this would be much harder to convincingly find.
Are we still bugged with 'chosen' status?
martinW
We are starting to detect planets around suns. People seem to be surprised.
Of course it is quite difficult to make these observations, and we know that we will not detect them all, since most of these methods depend on the plane of the orbit being near the observer.
But surely we should not be surprised. Indeed I would have guessed that all suns have planets or planets forming. All the things that we have observed before in the universe has basically been spinning and whirling stuff around which condenses in some way, be they galaxies, suns, planets or whatever. That's just what matter does in space. Or another way of seeing this is that there seems to he plenty of angular momentum around the place.
We should rather be very surprised if we found any suns without planets, and this would be much harder to convincingly find.
Are we still bugged with 'chosen' status?
martinW
