confused04

The old google maps had a similar problem with downtown Minneapolis, it almost came out to 4 pixels a block so you couldn't see ANYTHING. They have since fixed it.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/328/img1991no2.jpg Too bad I already posted this image in the Pic thread.

My friends and I. I'm on the left I have weird friends sometimes... but they rock. BTW... Minnesotans rules. __Idiotbox: can I assume you live on the western shore (in either VA or MD)? I'm just taking a wild guess but I'm from the Eastern shore (despite my Minnesota fascination) and we don't have that type of elevation over there

LOL... the pic doesn't show on my laptop! I was wondering why there was only a set of three clues. Now my answer seems really stupid.... oh well

Originally posted by: football_fever This is me...And that girl is just someone that hangs out in my room a lot quote> If your icon and your post in the "Tallest" thread is any clue, can I assume you go to the U of M? Just wondering. I got to school down the road (almost literally) at Hamline.

Wow... I found a HUGE collection of awesome pictures of Minneapolis and St. Paul, quiet a few aerials too. They are copyrighted so I'll just link them to the site which appears to have pictures from multiple users. Besides, there are too many to post. And hopefully this will stop me from posting Minneapolis (which is clearly the best city ) over and over again. http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=420081&page=3

Las Vegas

Originally posted by: football_fever confused04: However, IDS might not be the tallest building in Minneapolis by 2010 as a possible 1000 footer (or at least new tallest so 800 to 1000+) could grace our skyline quote> What the...where did you hear that? I'm from Minneapolis, and that's some exciting news! I'd love for there to a taller building in Minneapolis...it's sad when the Eiffel tower is taller than your tallest buildingquote> Check out www.minnescraper.com or www.skyscrapercity.com under the Minneapolis Development 1 Thread They have already announced the company that is going to design this new tower and they have an order for "cheap" but it also requires 1.2 million square feet, smaller than IDS, but the footprint on the Foshay block (where it will be located) is smaller resulting in a taller, slender tower. Good to know that there are more Twin Cities users here. Edit http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2006/10/16/story1.html?b=1160971200^1360431 Theres an article that announced this. There seems to be a few industry insiders at minnescraper or at least well informed enthusiasts.

Humans may have been inputing greenhouse gases for 150 years, but certainly not at the same rate/magnitude. The population has grown significantly in the past 150 years (almost six fold) and technology across a broad spectrum from recreation, transportation, resource gathering, and so forth have capitalized on mechanization, which requires some form of energy, generally derived from fossil fuels. A lot of the temperature increase had been tempered by the release of aerosols. But now that international agreements such as the Montreal Protocol have reduced aerosols, the results of CO2 build up are now longer masked and clearly evident. The ecology of many ecosystems are sensitive to small changes, small changes we've brought on in a short period of time. Evolution has no chance to account for such changes. Global warming is currently a problem, particularly in northern latitudes as well as low lying areas where even a small increase in sea levels has increased the frequency of coastal flooding. If this "small" change is having measurable affects now, continual build up of "small changes" will continue to accumulate. Thats not even to say that global warming will have synergistic affects with other so called "hippy" concerns. So even minute changes can exacerbate other problems.

I love this pic, thats 225 South Sixth, the second tallest building in Minneapolis, but barely so.

Minneapolis!

It was kinda cold this morning... at -1...fahrenheit!!!! It was kinda bitterly cold this morning. The wind certainly didn't help much with a windchill of -19 F (-28 C). It was worse up north where the temperature dipped to -20 in areas of Northern Minnesota.

The Sun has little if anything to do with the current warming trend as, going by your time example, it would be saying the sun got hotter between 11:36:00.000000001 and 11:36:00.000000002. The output differences between these two times are minimal. This is not to say that there could have been warming attributable to solar cycles, but not within 20 years.

Hmm... I haven't posted in a while and I luckily came on an explanation for those who are wondering why the temperatures in the 1950's to the early 80's were below average. With some thoughts from Sporeum and the recent article stating the Alps are at their warmest in 1,300 years, I finally found out why this occurred. Aerosols have a known effect on global temperature similar to volcanoes. During the 1950's - 80's, aerosol release was very high, enough to overcome the relatively low use of fossil fuels (again... relative to today). After a lot of aerosols were banned or discontinued due to other environmental hazards, their impact increased as they began to either precipitate out of the atmosphere, degrade, or react. The Montreal Protocol ceased CFC production due to the impact it had on the ozone layer. With CFC production gone, a major component of aerosol production ceased and with the coinciding increase of fossil fuel use in both the developed and developing world, a warming trend ensued that not only erased any cooling that had been achieved, but beyond as well. Winters are jokes here now anyway. Minnesota hasn't had a harsh winter that used to lend to its reputation in more than a decade. I mean, our lakes aren't walkable yet and its December! There have been repeated incidents where the temperature in MSP didn't climb above 0 F in weeks, but we've been having winters with RAIN in January. Some "ice box" we are! I love snow and we haven't had our first inch yet! Not that I'm saying I can definitively say that this is a result of global warming, but it certainly supports it. If my Christmas has NO snow, I will be utterly pissed. Regarding "Americans" being to blame.... First- Intuitively, despite being responsible for 25% of all CO2 emissions, there still remains 75% so theres plenty of blame to go around... Second- American manufacturing is STILL the highest in the world (almost double 2nd Place which is Japan, courtesy of whatever news program Katie Couric is on) which inflates the per capita CO2 production. (Just to Note: American Manufacturing stands at a staggering 1.75 trillion dollars still) Third- You say we live in our climate controlled bubble... live in the US without it and you would be clamoring it too. We have a more extreme and variable environment then most other nations excluding Siberia, Northern Sahara. We know what 10 days of 100 F does in Europe (with tens of thousands dead in France alone) and that can be quite common in the US, particularly in the South and even all the way up through Canada. Besides, not everyone works a desk job so we all don't drive from one bubble to another. Many people in the US do notice the effects of Global Warming, its getting a reluctant government to do something about it. Fourth- Lets not blame people because in ten years we'll be blaming China over the United States anyway.

NYC : 321 sq. miles Houston: 602 sq. miles Greater London: 609 sq miles I'm not sure what "Greater London" entails and since suburbanization is far stronger in the United States than in Europe, its hard to define which cities are indeed larger physically, and periodically you will run into even saying which cities are larger by population. Where a city "ends" is hard to define. Also, using CSA might not work as divisions usually follow county lines (which could easily make an area looking physcially larger than it really is). Point being...eh.

Minneapolis Minnesota... pretty!

Its cold... really cold... Currently at MSP International Airport it is 9 F (-13C) with a wind chill of -8 F (-22 C). The forecast for tomorrow is a high of 20 F (-7 C) and a low of 6F (-14 C) with windchills between -2 F and -12 F. Winters finally here in Minnesota

Since I technically live in St. Paul, MN, here's our tallest Someone has already posted the tallest for Minnesota, the IDS Center which stands at 241 meters. Quite a beautiful building and the other two tall downtown buildings are very close at 237 and 236 m for 225 South Sixth and Wells Fargo Center respectively. However, IDS might not be the tallest building in Minneapolis by 2010 as a possible 1000 footer (or at least new tallest so 800 to 1000+) could grace our skyline . This tower will be located next to the first skyscraper of Minneapolis, the Foshay Tower so for a time, the oldest and newest towers will share the same block.

wow... thats one big cable I wonder how much a "ton of capital" is to cover entire deserts

The Medieval Warm Period did exist and preceded the Little Ice Age. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

He's completely mistaken and quite frankly, he's a liar (Braden). Hes trying to take advantage of people who don't know the fundamental principles in science and pulls them out of context, contorts them and uses them to fit his own means so he can sell more books on crackpot science. Is it perhaps that these scientists didn't give their names because there are no scientists to give names. I've been looking up scholarly articles and not ONE will support this zero point theory. So much of his theory is illogical and makes no sense. I find it hard to believe that millions of scientists are wrong, but he... he is right. And if you want to claim that scientists have their own goals and ambitions, Braden's is obviously to earn money by selling more and more books. What he says isnt science, but complete misinterpretation of science for his own "novel" thinking. He has new age thinking that is riddled with fallacies. Who's vinnie?

Many astronomers have already discounted the Milankovich cycles which I've already addressed as the primary reason for the events in the past 100 years (particularly the last 50). Most of the cycles occur in tens of thousands of increments, but not within a timescale of 50 years. The amount of solar energy reaching Earth's surface, though variable, has not been significant enough nor follows a logical trend in increasing global temperatures. There are many corporate studies, government funded studies, and independently funded studies that arrive at the same conclusion, anthropogenic forcing. Plus, a few of the facts are just out there.... A) When the magnetic poles switch, the Earth doesn't stop spinning. B) Earth is actually rotating slower and slower as some of its rotational energy is absorbed by the movement of the moon away from the Earth. It is indeed NOT spinning faster. C) Earths history has never seen a orbital lock with the sun... ever, otherwise we'd probably be a fairly sterile planet. The reason why that entire "hypothesis" has been disregarded is because the science is not sound by ANY stretch of the imagination. I mean, he uses ONE mayan calander to justify as "archeological evidence" when somehow every other culture missed this. If such a catastrophic "reversal of spinning" has occured 14 times in the past 4.5 million years, you would probably think mass extinctions have occured 14 times in the past 4.5 million years, which is indeed not true by ANY stretch of the imagination. Ignoring the ongoing mass extinction, the previous mass extinction occured 65 million years ago (we all know this one). This theory is by no means sound and I have yet to find a scholarly article even supporting one facet of this theory. http://www.2012.com.au/SchumannResonance.html I found the site which tries to prove the occurences with what many people regard as "absurd". http://sacredspaces.org/greggbraden.aspx?Affiliate=1 Lets look at what Gregg Braden has written... seem kinda suspect to you even to the LEAST bit. http://www.skepticreport.com/mystics/braden-book.htm <--- this sums it up a lot better.

Every decade has similar events/upheavals/disasters, not entirely unique to the 00's. Lets look at the 90's Hurricane Andrew, Mitch, Floyd War in the Balkans Israel-Palestine Chechnya really rears its head 1991 Bangladesh cyclone (138,000 killed) Mount Pinatubo Kobe Earthquake Rwanda Genocides among many others. Disasters are fairly uniform in their distribution, its the amount of coverage they recieve that has given the illusion of "increased crappiness" AND where those disasters occur. Unfortunately, a disaster in the United States is not equal to a disaster in, lets say, Uganda. There are many improvements this decade that were built on the previous. Cell phones and other mobile technology has become readily available in just the past 6 years. I personally can't and won't compare decades... they are quite arbitrary divisions in time. Besides, despite the ill events that have occured in the past 6 years, China certainly has LOVED this decade as has Dubai and Bahrain. If you are in the top 1% of the US earnings bracket, its been a mixed decade, you've either earned record profits, or got caught

Wallet, with money and plastic, cell phone, and apartment keys.

For the nay-sayers... why CAN'T it be us. Saying natural variation exists doesn't mean that unnatural variation DOESN'T exist. Thousands of independent studies concur with anthropogenic forcings ranging from geologists, volcanologists, paleoclimatologists, statisticians, astronomers, chemists and biologists. Yes, natural cycles exist, scientists don't doubt that, but the speed at which this is happening IS unnatural and in no circumstances has such a warming been observed (only a few instances of dramatic cooling have expressed higher values of magnitude). The relationship between CO2 concentration and average global temperature is unmistakable... the fact we are converting "inert" carbon to CO2 via combustion is also unmistakable... so why is it all of a sudden that we can't put those two facts together and say... "Hey, WE are at fault for this". Generally speaking, the cycles of variation are caused by the Milankovitch cycles, which the relationships for global warming are not exactly attributeable to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovich_cycles Notice that the last "bottoming out" of CO2 occured at the advance of the Wisconsin Glaciation about 16,000 years ago. Its apparent that as CO2 decreases, so does temperature. Now if we notice the concentration of CO2 has increased dramatically since the 18th century in a regime that saw a generally stable (in the short term) trend. Now... we can say that CO2 concentration has ALREADY surpassed ANY of the last natural interglacial period. How is this possible if the Milankovitch cycles were indeed responsible for global warming? Chances are its not. Not only has our interglacial period been warmer than any of the previous interglacial periods, its certainly on pace to outlast in terms of duration. The biosphere would theoretically be responsible for changes in CO2 concentration, as we can see annualy with a decrease of CO2 during the Northern Hemisphere's summer where most of Earth's vegetation resides, compared to winter when we see an increase in CO2, but the magnitude we are looking at doesn't make sense, especially when additional research has already shown that we've probably already surpassed our biological productivity maximum. The data only makes sense in light of anthropogenic warming, otherwise, we are forced to shrug our shoulders and allow lawmakers to do as they please. The media loves to portray this as a "controversy" yet in the scientific community, its not and I'll put it bluntly... I'd rather listen to the scientific community talk about this subject than some politician or lobbyist.