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Jonnymac

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Newbury, Berks
  • Interests
    Science and Nature, in general. Always had a love for all things green. <br /><br />I'm a keen bowler (10 pin), into keeping fit - going to the gym, riding bike etc. I like films, reading, surfing the net (quenches my thirst for knowledge and fuels the curious mind!) <br /><br />I will be taking up Ale drinking this summer.

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  1. Option 2! It's the closest to 'I don't know who's science to believe'. I'm of the opinion (as many appear to be) that regardless of mans impact we all have a duty to keep our planet clean. There aint many other earths, in the near vicinity, that we can move to; so we'd best look after this one. J
  2. needs to be careful - don't wanna trip over those shoe laces. :ph34r:
  3. Global emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing three times faster than scientists previously thought, with the bulk of the rise coming from developing countries, an authoritative study has found. The increase in emissions of the gases responsible for global warming suggests that the effects of climate change to come in this century could be even worse than United Nations scientists have predicted. The report, by leading universities and institutes on both sides of the Atlantic, will create renewed pressure on G8 leaders who are meeting this week in Heiligendamm, on Germany's Baltic coast. Top of the agenda are proposals by Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, to halve global emissions by 2050. There were violent clashes at the weekend in the nearby city of Rostock between police and protesters during a march by tens of thousands demonstrating about the summit. The latest study was written by scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, as well as institutes in France and Australia. It shows that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by three per cent a year this decade, compared to a 1.1 per cent a year rise in the 1990s. Three quarters of this rise came from developing countries, with a particularly rapid increase in China. The rise is much faster than even the most fossil-fuel intensive scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during the 1990s. It suggests that IPCC reports this year predicting reduced harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting glaciers and the loss of species may actually be understated. It also comes after the International Energy Agency warned recently that China was likely to overtake the United States as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases by 2010, rather than a decade later as previously assumed. Both China and India are resisting any move that could curb their growth. Meanwhile, President George W Bush indicated last week that he did not favour the European Union's proposed approach of trying to limit the temperature rise to below two degrees centigrade. He still opposes the use of "cap and trade" financial mechanisms, which Europeans believe are the only way of transferring clean technologies to the developing world. However, he has indicated a willingness to "lead" talks to devise a post-Kyoto treaty that would include the world's top 15 polluters by the time he leaves office in early 2009. A report by leading aid charities, including Oxfam and Christian Aid, will say today that between one billion and four billion people are likely to suffer from drought and 250 million run short of food if average temperatures rise by more than two degrees. Antonio Hill, of Oxfam, said: "G8 counties face two obligations in this year's summit - to keep global warming below two degrees and to start helping poor countries to cope with harm already caused." Source
  4. I walk and cycle, depending on the weather but it's only a mile. If I drive it's 2 miles and takes 5 minutes longer with all the traffic. J
  5. Truely awseome! Maybe I'll get some of me own when i can save enough dollars!
  6. Hi, all I don't post often - bit of a lurker, but this really caught my attention - real Sci-Fi stuff. CHICAGO (AFP) - Harry Potter fans take note: scientists have finally come up with a workable design for an invisibility cloak. (Advertisement) Physicists figured out the complex mathematical equations for making objects invisible by bending light around them last year. A group of engineers at Purdue University in Indiana have now used those calculations to design a relatively simple device that ought to be able to - one day soon - make objects as big as an airplane simply disappear. The design calls for tiny metal needles to be fitted into a hairbrush-shaped cone at angles and lengths that would force light to pass around the cloak. This would make everything inside the cone appear to vanish because the light would no longer reflect off it. "It looks pretty much like fiction, I do realize, but it's completely in agreement with the laws of physics," said lead researcher Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue. "Ideally, if we make it real it would work exactly like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak," he said. "It's not going to be heavy because there's going to be very little metal in it." The still-theoretical design will be published this month in the journal Nature Photonics. Shaleav said he needs to secure funding to build the device and expects it would take two to three years to come up with a working prototype. The major limitation is that the current design can only bend the light of a single wave-length at a time, and does not work with the entire frequency range of the visible spectrum. "How to create a design that works for all colors of visible light at the same time will be a big technical challenge, but we believe it's possible," Shalaev said. "In principal it's doable." Even blocking a single frequency can lead to useful applications, Shaleav said. The cloak could shield soldiers from night-vision goggles which use only one wavelength of light. It could also be used to hide objects from "laser designators" used by the military to illuminate a target, he said. Other researchers have managed to clock objects from the microwave range of the spectrum, which are much larger than the wavelengths of visible light. This new design is the first for cloaking objects of any size in the range of light visible to humans. It works by using tiny needles to alter the "index of refraction" around the cone. Every material has its own refractive index which determines how light bends and slows down as it passes from that material into another. It's commonly described as the bent-stick-in-water effect, which occurs when a stick placed in a glass of water looks bent when seen from outside the glass. Natural materials typically have a refractive index greater than one. But the tiny metal needles layered inside the cone work to gradually alter the index from zero at the inner surface of the cloak, to one at the outer surface of the cloak. This guides, or bends, light around the cloaked object. The technology for making the tiny needles is already used to make nanotech devices. The needles in the theoretical design are about as wide as 10 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, and as long as hundreds of nanometers. A single nanometer is roughly the size of 20 hydrogen atoms strung together Source
  7. Hi, Magpie I think your spot on. I'm sick of being fed lies about one thing or another. I WILL be making efforts to find out the infomation for myself. The difficulty is seperating the facts from the drivel. I would just like to add that whether GW is caused/accelerated by the human race or not - we all still have a duty to keep the planet clean, continue searching for clean renewable energy sources and stop raping the planet of it's resources.. My concern is that we will switch off from the whole GW thing and become complacent with regards to looking after our beautiful planet. J
  8. Hi, all My first post I think. Prolly not a good idea to start with such an emotive subject but hey - I am!! I'm something of a climate layman - interested but haven't really gotten into the science behind it. Personally I'm sick of the media trying to scare the s**t out of me over global warming. It would be nice too actually receive some unbiased/subjective information on the subject and not feel like we're all being lied to for financial/political gain. Not sure what my thoughts are at the mo. Just feel like it's yet another political scare tactic - a population living in fear is easier to control! Cheers Jonno
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