AlanS

Stop being selfish. I think we ALL want that. The question is whether she will actually heed that or continue to futilely pursue her "quest" and annoy everyone further. Unfortunately, I suspect the latter. Her psychological profile is a narcissist with a borderline personality disorder. She will persist as long as she has enablers around her. This typically starts with parents in childhood. Only when the damage from her efforts cause her supporters to withdraw will she stop. Then she likely will move on to find other "enablers" and perhaps a new cause. You don't want to be her neighbor.

I actually live very close to Google HQ and have had these cars driving right by my place for several years. Several drive by an hours (the smaller ones have a unique sound) and one time I pulled up to a corner. It was me in my convertible, and a Google car at each of the other corners. Those cars are very reliable and their path is very predictable, so I honestly look forward to have more of them on the road and less unpredictable humans behind the wheel.

I recently lost my digital altimeter an Altimaster Neptune 2. It's not coming back, so I need to get a new digital altimeter. Usually I take a year doing my own research and then procrastinate for a decade before purchasing something. This time though I need a replacement quick and would like to hear what other skydivers recommend. Here is my wish-list... Simple to use both in free-fall and under canopy. It has a backlight for night jump. Is accurate for HALO jumps up to 30,000+ feet. Easy to put on forearm which seems a better place to check altitude when tracking away. Optional. Stores parameters about jumps... top-speed, start and deployment altitude, free-fall time, etc... Any thought or recommendations? Should I just go with the latest Altimaster Neptune, or are there other options?

This is the data from CO2 measurements in Hawaii. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/full.html This is the rate of increase. Right now we are increase CO2 at 3 ppm per year. # year - mean - increase/yr 1960 - 316.91 0.54 1965 - 320.04 1.02 1970 - 325.68 1.06 1975 - 331.08 1.13 1980 - 338.68 1.73 1985 - 346.04 1.25 1990 - 354.35 1.19 1995 - 360.80 1.99 2000 - 369.52 1.62 2005 - 379.80 2.52 2010 - 389.85 2.42 2015 - 400.83 3.05

Good to hear, DrSher. Once you have some experience with it, I'd like to know hear what you think about it.

To understand climate change we really need to look at this graph. http://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/ It shows the amount of CO2 in that atmosphere as recovered in air bubble in the ice sheets, and more recently (since 1950) with direct measurements from the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. What we see from this data, is when the CO2 levels were around 180 ppm. The Earth was deep in the ice age, when it was in the 275 -300 ppm range we were in the the type of climate we have today. Changes happen over a very long time period, but CO2 level and temperature correlate in our climate history. In the past to change the CO2 levels naturally by 100 ppm took 20,000 to 100,000 years, and notice that the decreases are much slower than the increases. So it is easier to increase CO2 naturally than decrease it. Now look at the right-side of the chart, that is not a mistake that spike is between 1950 and now. We have increased CO2 levels about 100 ppm in a little over 50 years, it now stands at 403 ppm and the rate is only increasing. If we do nothing about this by 2100 we will be blow past 900 ppm. If we does something now by 2100 we might be around 600 ppm and slowing it down the rate of increase. So if we think of the amount of the greenhouse gas CO2 in the atmosphere as a dial. We know the following from our climate history. * 180 => ice age. * 280 => Climate we've head past 2,000 years. * 350 => Climate 11 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, sea level 100 feet higher. (Last time it was this high was before human existed) * 400 => ? 2015 * 500 => ? 2045 (est) * 600-900 => 2100 (est) We are on track to move that dial to 900 by 2100, and it will keep rising beyond that. What will that do to the climate? Welcome to the Anthropocene.

Marketing video about Storm. https://youtu.be/pO8dlRu24Kc

So why start a new thread, when we already have a perfectly good one in the forum? I feel compelled to repost the chart showing how quickly CO2 levels are rising in the atmosphere. This generation needs to understand what the means for future generations, and what we should do about it.

I'd like to second this post. I've had my Spectra wing loaded at about 1.25 for about 160 jumps. It has never given me a hard opening and every time I've measured it, it has consistently been 600 feet between when I pitch and am in the saddle under a fully inflated canopy. Up high on a hop-n-pop, I've also tried all kinds of inputs and the canopy hasn't -unlike others that I've tried- ever done anything crazy on me. I'm not interested in swooping. I was looking for something that can land in less than ideal conditions and this so far with my modest number of jumps has done well. If I were to down-size I'd likely get another Spectre or a Storm. I really like 7-cell canopies.

I'd nominate Bill Gates. Of course, he's spent the last 20 years or so spending buckets of his own money fighting a variety of tropical diseases and otherwise trying to make poor people's lives better. I wouldn't be interested in Bill Gates as president. His charities are great, but I think most of is the influence of his wife to be a better person.

I think we are missing forward thinking objective and scientifically minded people in your political class. Politicians are more about spinning the truth and manipulating others to pit one group against an other group and that this causes problems for us - since it affects how we see the world and each other. But more importantly it hurts future generations as our current politicians kick the can down the road for our current problems, forget about thinking ahead. If I could select someone to be president it would be Elon Musk. The problem is we cannot select just one leader we need to select like minded people for all the major countries. I am so sick of politics (not just US but globally) and the kind of people that get into it.

And the extent of the Arctic Ice Sheet remains 2 standard deviation below the 1981-2010 years.

I don't have time to talk about how bad that video was point by point, but want to put one of it's so called "myths" into perspective. In "Myth #3" they tried to use a recent study that found that the Antarctica Ice Sheet was getting thicker to disprove the entire concept of global warming. Well these two graphs should put that in context. This data is from a polar orbiting satellite which measure local anomalies in gravity to get the total mass of the ice sheet. The general trend is down, with an exception for that past two years where it goes up slightly. Look at it though, that up-tick is what you could call local variation it the graph, it doesn't disprove anything. But to the guy in the video cleverly forgot to mention anything about the Greenland ice sheet. Which has a very consistent trend.

Nice job!! I like it.

So what you are saying is if it hasn't happened yet, it isn't going to happen at all. Do I have that right? Where that kind of thinking breaks down is you don't understand the time scale under which these changes happen. It is like if you have a pot of water that is being warmed by a flame. The flame has been the same intensity for a long time, so the water has reached a steady temperature. Suddenly we turn up the intensity of the flame. Scientists know that pot is going to get warmer and eventually boil. It is just going to take time. You are like, "See we turned up the flame and nothing happened. So let's ignore it." That is wrong. The debate shouldn't be about whether or not the climate is going to get warmer. It will get warmer. The debate should be what are we going to do about it. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence

"What has been the result?" So far not much. But consider this. Ice ages took 100,000 year to cycle through and during that period the CO2 levels varied by about 100 ppm. We've changed them MORE in less than 50 years and the resulting changes will take 100-200 years to become fully apparent, but once the changes start they will be impossible to stop even if we magically could restore the CO2 levels to what they were originally, which we cannot. What have the effects been so far? Well let's start with the drought in California. Have you seen the reservoir levels recently? The California drought might not be an aberration, it might be the "new normal". And this new normal will lead to a depleted water supply, and water wars between cities and farms and north and south California. In California, Canada and Alaska forrest fires will burn and the trees that are burned will never come back. The habitat will change and many animals will become extinct. In geologic terms the human generated extinction event is happening right now before our eyes. We are just too short sighted (in time scale), to see it. Scientists are already debating to declare the end of the last geologic epoch the Holocene, and declare a new epoch the Anthropocene. If you want to know when the Anthropocene began, look that that chart I posted earlier. It began when we started to spike the CO2 levels in 1950. The question shouldn't be "what has the result been so far", because changes have just begun. The question should be "what will the result be in the future". And in geologic terms they will be an extinction of many species. Parts of this planet will become drier like California and other parts will become wetter like Bangladesh. Many species will become extinct and the biodiversity of the Earth will (indeed already is) drop drastically. Humans will not go extinct by any means but we will kill this planets biodiversity in the process. Anthropocene epoch has begun and what it looks like will be determined over the next 1,000 years by what we do over then next 100 year.

And this link provides the latest data directly from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. In the summer of 2016 it reached a new peak of 408 ppm. http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/graphics_gallery_images/mlo_record.png

The attached graphs should be the starting point for any climate change debate. It shows the amount the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during the last 400,000 years. Look at it carefully. From 400,000 years ago until about 150 years ago it drifted between 175 and 275 ppm. Now look at the spike on the right side of the graph. That is "man made"! That is 100% us humans. Nobody can deny the cause of that. So what is happening with that? Well from the 1750 to 1950 it went up from 275 ppm to 325 ppm because of the industrial revolution. Then from 1950 until now it has gone up to above 400 ppm. This is a value that hasn't been seen since before man existed, and we did it in 50 years. The last time CO levels were that high the earth was 11 degrees fahrenheit warmer than it is today. Why isn't the Earth 11 degree fahrenheit warmer now? The reason is climates take a while to change. Maybe 100 to 1000 years, but change it will. We have started the ball rolling in that direction and once it starts it will be very hard to stop. But that isn't the part to worry about. What we need to worry about is what we will do to CO2 levels during then next 100 years. That will determine the fate of this planet and it's biosphere. If we don't change anything about what we are doing today, In the year 2100 CO2 levels will be more than double what they are now, likely 950 ppm. Even in the best case they will be above 600 ppm. Those are levels that should make us all worry.

Rescue dogs are the best. They love you more because you got them out of a shelter. My cousin down in LA finds spaniels and pulls them out of kill shelters. Where he lives now he is only allowed to have three dogs, so that is how many he has. As soon as I move out of my rental and back into a permanent home, I'm getting another rescue.

The screen of most Digital Altimeters are LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) which work by passing a current through a polymer to turn it on or off. These polymers are very long chains which all align in the same direction when on. As a result the light reflecting off of them is polarized. Now if you buy polarized sun-glasses they reduce the intensity of light by selectively filtering out light polarized in a certain direction. This is great in some situation like when on a body of water with the reflected light all of a certain direction and harmless in most situation because mostly ambient light isn't polarized at all. But it can be an hindrance when trying to read a screen with an LCD screen. If you want to buy sunglasses, make sure to bring along your digital altimeter with you when trying the glasses on, so you can be sure the direction of the light reflected off the altimeter doesn't align with the polarization of the sun glasses. It would really suck to be jumping with glasses + altimeter for the first time and then not be able to read your altitude.

I like this song and thought the original music video by the artist was really good. But I like this video created by skydiver/BASE jumpers better. Right now it's my favorite. The video transitions hit the beat of the music just perfectly and in the middle of the song, going from black to video I think is a really nice effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8mBq0tAZDw That bridge in China is now on my bucket list.

So who wants to volunteer to be in that experiment? I'd like to know if there is any data on the speed of big ways as they grow in size. And I'm also wondering if anyone it makes sense (when trying out a new suit for example) to just take the suit to a wind tunnel and ask them to slow down the speeds to those ranges and see how the suit flies.

The true story was both engines went out after the plane ran into a flock of geese. His options were try to land at an airport in New Jersey (with a very hard landing if he fell short) or land in the Hudson. There was no other engine, or an option to return. According to what I read the only mistake he made was to not throw a switch which closes some valves on the bottom side of the plane so it will sink more slowly in the water. I really like some of the work that Tom Hanks does, Apollo 13 was about as close to reality as Hollywood would get, so I'm going to watch this one and look for the inconsistencies while also enjoying the movie.

This is my favorite music video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo It is the only one actually shot in space that I know of.

What canopy did you have before the Spectre that contributed to the line twists (or tended to line twist.)? It was rental gear before that. Random canopies. The student gear was mostly Navigator, IIRC, but think Pilot was in the mix too. I honestly think the biggest factor was packing though.