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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday November 20 2014, @04:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the carbon-nation dept.

There are some really neat looking videos on the NASA website showing how carbon dioxide moves throughout the earth's atmosphere.

Scientists have made ground-based measurements of carbon dioxide for decades and in July NASA launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite to make global, space-based carbon observations. But the simulation — the product of a new computer model that is among the highest-resolution ever created — is the first to show in such fine detail how carbon dioxide actually moves through the atmosphere.

The main article has a video that shows a world wide view over the year 2006. It runs about 3 minutes. Close-ups on a month's time scale can be found here and each of the 3 videos run about 30 seconds.

The main article mentions that CO2 concentrations reached 400 ppm (parts per million) for the first time in the Spring of 2014. Before the industrial revolution, it was about 270 ppm. The sub article mentions that the videos show 375 (dark blue) to 395 (light purple) ppm.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 20 2014, @08:22PM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Thursday November 20 2014, @08:22PM (#118234) Homepage
    Do you believe in a deity that can violate the laws of physics?
    If you do - then it is inconsistent with science.
    If you don't - then your deity is inconsistent with the omnipotent one that the Abrahamic religions believe in.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
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  • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday November 20 2014, @08:52PM

    by Leebert (3511) on Thursday November 20 2014, @08:52PM (#118244)

    Do you believe in a deity that can violate the laws of physics?

    Yes.

    If you do - then it is inconsistent with science.

    How so? If, for a moment, you accept the existence of God as an premise, what would be the problem with believing that the creator of the universe could violate the constraints of the universe?

    And, unless you know something I don't, the existence of God is not falsifiable, so as long as I'm claiming faith and not science for the existence of God, there's nothing inconsistent with science there, either.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday November 20 2014, @10:07PM

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Thursday November 20 2014, @10:07PM (#118271) Homepage
      If they're changable and violable on a whim, then the laws of physics are no longer the laws of physics.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by Leebert on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:52AM

        by Leebert (3511) on Thursday December 11 2014, @03:52AM (#124950)

        Missed the fact that you replied...

        If they're changable and violable on a whim, then the laws of physics are no longer the laws of physics.

        Sure they are. They're not changeable on a whim by anyone except the entity that created them. Who, as far as we can tell, never changes them.

        Wikipedia has an interesting Stephen Hawking quote:

        Hawking has stated that he is "not religious in the normal sense" and he believes that "the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws."

        Better said than I could have. Which is something I'd expect from a real scientist. :)

  • (Score: 1) by NotSanguine on Friday November 21 2014, @03:50AM

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Friday November 21 2014, @03:50AM (#118382) Homepage Journal

    Do you believe in a deity that can violate the laws of physics?

    Personally, I do not. However, that "belief" is not science, as the premise isn't falsifiable. Which puts that squarely into the arena of metaphysics.

    Do we live in a multiverse (as posited by M-theory?), that too isn't falsifiable (at least as far as I'm aware -- please correct me if that's not so). Which makes *that* metaphysics too.

    If you do - then it is inconsistent with science.

    I'd say that it isn't inconsistent with science per se, but rather it's outside the arena that science operates.

    For example, if we accept M-Theory to be true, the vast majority of the multiverse likely has different physical laws. As such, how can we know if there is/was/will be (as time may not be relevant either) some intelligent force that caused our little piece of the muiltiverse to come into being?

    We can argue about this ad infinitum, but since there's no way to falsify any of these propositions, science isn't equipped to address them.

    If you don't - then your deity is inconsistent with the omnipotent one that the Abrahamic religions believe in.

    Your point is a good one, and I agree with you. However, given our current understanding of our universe, we can't perform an experiment or an analysis to even give odds as to the truth or falsity of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent force/being/sky daddy/whatever.

    What (current) science can say with some confidence is that there is no evidence to suggest the existence of anything that can alter/nullify/violate the physical laws we have observed and/or deduced.

    Feel free to disagree with any or all of this. But (current) science cannot provide evidence for, or refute, any of it.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday November 21 2014, @08:35AM

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Friday November 21 2014, @08:35AM (#118417) Homepage
      > science cannot provide evidence for, or refute, any of it.

      No, but an omnipotent deity can ruin all of science - right to the core - making it utterly useless. Science coexisting with an omnipotent god is like talking about who will die in the next episode of a TV fiction which hasn't been aired (or written) yet. OK, much of the internet seems to like doing that, but it achieves nothing, and certainly doesn't advance the plot.

      That is why the (non-)existence of one is the thing that I wish people would address. God nullifies all science.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves