Their rule doesn't allow "net negative". They went with "no new positive, no matter how much it helps elsewhere". Any new type of pollution would be prohibited, so the (agreed) significant improvement of switching coal to wind power generation would be disallowed ... showing that it's a bad rule to choose.

That would be a terrible rule. If you can't "add new sources and types of pollution", as you say, you've just eliminated perfectly reasonable ways to significantly reduce the sum: you couldn't use wind power, because it adds a "new source and type of pollution" in the form of broken turbine blades. Your rule, as stated, wouldn't let us consider the drastic improvement it makes in the form of reduced coal/natgas combustion. You would effectively mandate BAU.

That's not how I read the above comment at all.

I saw it saying something more like "if the satellites create a problem, you could offset that by a small reduction in an existing terrible industry". But, as I pointed out, I don't have sufficient information to connect them as substitutable effects.

Coal plants burn what you throw in them, and coal isn't pure. That's how you get things like radioactive coal ash.

The questions to ask next would be along the lines of:

• what metallic contents are found in typical fuel coal?
• how much of that gets into fly ash?
• how different are near-surface metallic emissions and stratospheric metallic emissions?

But I don't have data for those.

That scene reminds me of flying over dry African landscapes in 2001, on my way to the Zambia eclipse, holding a real glass glass that wouldn't be available when flying in my country. An unnatural aspect to a usually-normal object can catch you off guard.

Momentum is only conserved in aggregate when there is no external influence. Parts of the system can still transfer momentum between each other. It's quite permitted for us to change our momentum, as long as other things have a change in momentum that is equal and opposite to our change.

I don't have specific sources for "net momentum of the universe is zero in the CMB frame of reference", but it sounds like a good expectation. If we found a way to test that, it would provide either a confirmation or open new scientific questions. Unfortunately, as the observable universe is only a subset of the whole universe, I suspect that we cannot determine the net momentum of the whole universe.

The momentum of the Earth, or a vehicle, or the Sun, or our galaxy, could vary from the aggregate due to any number of interactions. For instance, the Earth orbiting the Sun must involve the Earth and Sun having different velocities, so they can't both match the CMB. As it happens, neither does.

Even pointing a flashlight into space would cause a tiny change of momentum for the Earth: the outgoing photons have momentum, so the flashlight (hence the Earth, indirectly) must experience a change in momentum in the opposite direction.

Suppose we were at exactly zero motion relative to the CMB. If we underwent any gravitational interaction with another body, each would undergo some acceleration. That would leave each body with a non-zero motion relative to the CMB. So any local gravitational interaction would take us away from zero-CMB-motion.

Barring some sort of speculative restorative effect that brings us back to zero-CMB-motion, you'll be left with non-zero motion relative to the CMB.

So local interactions later on would be enough to create some motion.

Many sorts of things. Products ("to produce everything from mattresses, spectacles,road signs and body armour"), agriculture and firefighting through "convict leasing" programs ("Convict leasing was largely banned in the 20th century, but has once more grown in popularity as immigrant labor has become harder to find. Multiple states have now passed legislation allowing agricultural businesses to use prison labor when they cannot find enough workers to hire, and most prison workers are paid significantly less than non-prison labor.").

It's rather widespread.

> In addition to the South Carolina inmates who were hired by a subcontractor in the 1990s to stitch Victoria's Secret lingerie, prisoners in the past two decades have packaged or assembled everything from Starbucks coffee beans to Shelby Cobra sports cars, Nintendo Game Boys, Microsoft mouses and Eddie Bauer clothing. Inmates manning phone banks have taken airline reservations and even made calls on behalf of political candidates.

Earlier this month, we doubled the number of states to have banned involuntary labor in prison … bringing it up to a heady eight, if challenges don't roll any back. We need more states to do so, and the Federal system as well.

… milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom …