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wafflehead

The Environment

Volcanoes: The Real Eco-Villains?

By the Editors of E - The Environmental Magazine Posted on 1.26.2009 23 Comments
Dear EarthTalk: Could it really be true that a single large volcanic eruption launches more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the amount generated by all of humanity over history? -- Steve Schlemmer, London, England This argument that human-caused carbon emissions are merely a drop in the bucket compared to greenhouse gases generated by volcanoes has been making its way around the rumor mill for years. And while it may sound plausible, the science just doesn't back it up.

2.5.2009 at 07:57pm - Comment by wafflehead

uuuummmmmmmm.......ok, so supposing that the volcanoes do put out that much greenhouse gasses.....well......what are we supposed to do about it? put a little cap on the volcanoes to keep it from doing it again? dont think so....ya know? i dont see that working out to well....so horray, it does it! whatcha gonna do? well.....if anybody comes up with a way to keep thoose things from going off....let me know, ok?
Technology

Stealth Reborn

By Dawn Stover Posted on 1.9.2009 13 Comments
The B-2 stealth bomber, assisted by midair refuelings, can fly a 44-hour mission to the other side of the world, take out targets using laser-guided smart munitions, then sneak out of enemy territory undetected. Yet it runs on Intel 286 processors -- state of the art in 1982, but these days, not so much.

2.5.2009 at 07:49pm - Comment by wafflehead

barnard- first, learn how to spell. second, there is NOTHING that is bullet or missle proof. third, that idea is absoulutly pointless. that INCREASSES the chance for loss of life for pilot and crew. fourth, the movie was FAKE and for the most part, inaccurate. good movie, bad relations to reality.
Technology

Stealth Reborn

By Dawn Stover Posted on 1.9.2009 13 Comments
The B-2 stealth bomber, assisted by midair refuelings, can fly a 44-hour mission to the other side of the world, take out targets using laser-guided smart munitions, then sneak out of enemy territory undetected. Yet it runs on Intel 286 processors -- state of the art in 1982, but these days, not so much.

1.10.2009 at 01:34pm - Comment by wafflehead

Possibly, but making it fly would be difficult, and it would end up very thick so it could hold a pilot and weapons and engines, so a flat triangle plane would be impractical to the best of my knowledge, but maby it would work if it went along the lines of other flying wing projects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flying_wing_aircraft ----------------------------------------------------------- The general idea of this new stealth bomber is great, but there is one aspect of this project i do not agree with, and that is the lack of a pilot. true, it would make it so if the aircraft were to be shot down somehow, there would be no pilot to loose his life. however, no computer has the ability that humans have to judge and reevaluate a situation. the movie Stealth should be an excelent example of the possibilities of such an aircraft, espically in the part where it drops the bomb on the russian nukes that the terrorists have and then the wind blows all the fallout over a nearby village and kills all the villagers. (yes, i know it "learns" and becomes one of the "good guys" in the end, but you get my point)((if you havent seen this movie yet, go do so, its well worth it)) so thats pretty much the only problem. no matter what, without the human element, theese types of things will never be able to replace a humans judgement and thought process. this is one of the reasons i hate growing up in this time period, everybody is getting lazy or scared and relying on machines and all theese artificial things to do all their work....well someday thats going to come back and bite us in the ass..(do the terminator movies ring a bell?)...i just hope i'm not around to see it when our technology destroys us.
Technology

Why the Fighter Plane Failed

By Posted on 12.10.2008 27 Comments
An explosion shook the San Diego neighborhood of University City yesterday afternoon when a U.S. Navy fighter jet crashed into a house. The pilot of the plane safely ejected, but a mother, child, and grandmother died when the plane hit their home, and another child is still missing.

1.4.2009 at 04:50pm - Comment by wafflehead

RedFoxOne, what is your problem? do you have any idea how bad that pilot must feel? i dont possibly see what is "ballless" about ejecting, and nobody would be more helpfull in uncovering what went wrong then the pilot! so get off of it you communist looser. 10USMC75, if you look at maps or google earth, you would see that university city is almost to the airbase, and if you have google earth, use the ruler tool that measures the distance, and you will find that from the intersection of Genesee Ave. and Governor drive to the very end of the runway is only around 2.42 miles. so shut the f*** up about what he should have done, you dont get a whole lot of time up there to make decisions, and his just dident work out the way it was supposed to, and that isint his fault. oh, and marine pilots being "pretty boys", i would love to see you say that to a marines face, i bet you couldent. in fact, i dont think you would even have the guts to look one in the eyes....beacuse marines are REAL men, who defend us and our country, but if it came down to it, i bet you couldent even look that pilot in the face much less call him a pretty boy. USMC, SEMPER-FI JohnAltura, your a communist also. go back to cuba or wherever it is you people come from.
The Environment

Deserts in the Ocean

By the Editors of E - The Environmental Magazine Posted on 10.13.2008 15 Comments
Dear EarthTalk: What are these "ocean deserts" I've been hearing about? Also didn't I read that there was a huge mass of plastic bottles floating around somewhere on the ocean surface? -- Wally Mattson, Eugene, OR

1.4.2009 at 03:46pm - Comment by wafflehead

I went to cancun, in mexico...and was amazed at the ammounts of trash....the beach was covered in quite literally everything imaginable.... from needles to shoes.....beacuse of all the trash dumped into the oceans...also, some friends i had in texas told me about a very large barge that would leave around once a week loaded down with barrels, and return empty from dumping them into the gulf......well it turns out thoose barrels were loaded with radioactive waste and biohazardous materials......
The Environment

Florida to Make Gas from Trash

By Jaya Jiwatram Posted on 11.18.2008 12 Comments
Trash is a stinky topic. With 130 million tons of it hitting landfills annually, it is the nation's largest human-caused producer of methane gas. And now, residents in Florida's St. Lucie County are turning that stench to gold. Or at least to gas. The county has paired up with Atlanta-based company Geoplasma to implement a plasma gasification plant.

1.4.2009 at 03:36pm - Comment by wafflehead

I live in asheville, N.C, and our landfill has the whole set of pipes for the methane and all, and they burn it out with the tower, well, couldent they somehow like, use the heat to make steam and turn a turbine to create electricity or something like that? or is that nice big torch up there only good for burning off the methane? theres got to be some way to harness that and use it , right? cause that thing is going all the time, and it dosent do anything but look like a big candle on the top of a large, smelly, ugly cake.......
Bahrain World Trade Center

By Posted on 10.28.2008 Comments
The first skyscraper to integrate large-scale wind turbines suspends three 1,200-megawatt units between its matching 787-foot office towers. The turbines, which were completed in April, supply 15 percent of the electricity for the two buildings—roughly the same amount used by 300 homes. To maximize energy output, the tapered towers funnel wind between them, creating a negative pressure zone behind the buildings that draws more air through the gap.

12.23.2008 at 10:19am - Comment by wafflehead

What IF like, the wind happened to be blowing incredibly fast, and the turbines couldent take the stress, would it be possible at all for them to get riped off and go spinning into the towers? (somewhat like in The flight of the phoenix, where they loose the prop and it goes shreding into the fusealage...?) "it rips the propeller off and slices into the body of the plane like a buzz saw." http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/Flight-Phoenix.html Anywhere near possible?
Technology

If The Sun Went Out, How Long Would Life On Earth Survive?

By Holly Otterbein Posted on 10.20.2008 18 Comments
If you put a steamy cup of coffee in the refrigerator, it wouldn’t immediately turn cold. Likewise, if the sun simply “turned off” (which is actually physically impossible), the Earth would stay warm—at least compared with the space surrounding it—for a few million years. But we surface dwellers would feel the chill much sooner than that.

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10.22.2008 at 05:08pm - Comment by wafflehead

well, warm ocean bottom or not, it would still SUCK if the sun went out...but thats just me...
The Environment

The Turtle Trainer

By Posted on 10.17.2008 3 Comments
Word spread quickly that Todd Jones, a young doctoral candidate in zoology, had something fantastic in the blue tanks of his lab at the University of British Columbia. The attraction was juvenile leatherback sea turtles, about the size of garbage-can lids. Why the attention?

10.22.2008 at 04:33pm - Comment by wafflehead

hoo ya fer turtles!!
The Environment

A Better CO2 Scrubber

By Molika Ashford Posted on 10.1.2008 11 Comments
Around half of our CO2 emissions aren’t from big power plants, or even small power plants, according to researchers from the University of Calgary. They’re from diffuse sources, like car exhaust, home heating and airplanes, which can’t be easily sucked up at the source. Led by climate scientist David Keith, the Calgary group is working on technology that could soak those “diffuse emissions” right out of the air. Their system is a kind of air scrubbing tower, which takes air and reacts the CO2 out of it by exposing it, in this case, to sodium hydroxide. Then the stuff goes through a few chemical intermediaries eventually leaving separated CO2 that can be piped away, and more hydroxide to feed back into the scrubber.

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10.6.2008 at 05:14pm - Comment by wafflehead

well, they could pipe it away and we could reuse it for things...what? i dont know......although i have been looking for a cheaper way to fill my paintball gun with CO2....practical?