h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For those of you who are interested in climate change or making your computer do some work for the benefit of mankind when it's not doing anything, comes the brand new Climate change experiment:

www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange

So if you have five million hours to spare or if the pursuit of the search of Extra-Terrestial intellegence is getting a bit dull. This program is for you.

I've recently downloaded it and wondering why the simulation starts in 1920s. We know what the climate is between 1920-2006, so why start this early?

Presumably that would show wether the extrapolations are correct.

sorry, it works easier if you post web address like this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climatechange/

I must say the design of that page is very dark gloomy, while weather boffins expected it that weather will be hotter!

should not be flamy design! that is just associative thought of mine!

Bloody propaganda.

A8906790

B

This is very well timed, and thanks for the reminder. I saw this while at work and meant to download it when I got home and then forgot.

Can I just say that the books I read in the mid 70s about "the oil crisis" predicted that the world's oil would run out in 30 years'time.

Or round about now, in other words.

RF

My computer uses all spare capacity looking for a cure for cancer - this project went live just after my mother died from same and there is no way my computer will be volunteered before the cancer project is completed.

See http://www.grid.org/home.htm

Be aware that they do other research which is not related to a cure for cancer which you might not want to take part in!

I'm also in the cancer project, and have been for years. There's actually a h2g2 team at
http://www.grid.org/services/teams/team.htm?id=C7DD5E88-ED93-4897-830A-CE7055F06DA5

Azara

I belong to a team started in memory of an Arsenal footballer, David Rocastle, who died of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma aged 33 in March 2001 leaving a wife and three (?) very young children (again around the time that the project started).

He also played for Man City, Leeds and Chelsea.

I was using seti, but a change of email address meant I lost my details and wasn't going to start again. I've been looking for something else ever since (didn't fancy the cancer one, even though I 've lost family to it) and this is just perfect. My pc is running really pants since I installed it though, so possibly I'm going to cancel it again.

Nitpicker,

You may be interested in this good news ....

http://smh.com.au/news/NATIONAL/Shorter-cancer-treatment-boosts-survival/2006/02/15/1139890802693.html

I had been running a mix of Seti and the non-BBC branded version of climateprediction. However in the last few months I've been having a few problems with my PC overheating when running the CPU at full pelt - which is what happens when you run these distributed processing packages do. So as a result I stopped doing running them to save my PC's main fan - bloody noisy thing that it is.

Actually what I probably need to do is to take the back of the PC and give it a damn good clean out.

This climate thing makes the rest of the pc run like treacle, so I just keep turning it off as soon as it starts.

So running a program about climate change makes your machine overheat? That's kind of ironic.

Desky, if you're at the point where the fans making that sort of noise, I'd start scouring about for a new machine. based on experience, that is.

B

What, a new PC already? It's only 14 months old this one.

Traditionally computers last me two years before I do something to totally break them.

I bet those increased CO2 emissions killed it off. They are the root of all evil.

I have no problems with the machine overheating or running slow. I have the program on full-time. It's on now, with absolutely no ill effects. The rest of my programs run normally, as the climate program is designed to be low-priority like a screen saver while other activities are being carried out as a higher priority, and it thus only uses spare capacity if I'm using the computer for something else.

Jab

Well speaking of mine, there seems to be a lot of Sulphates in the Northern hemisphere. I'm at September 1921, does the program take into account Volcanic eruptions, it's the only thing I can think of that accounts for this!!!

They must do, milady, although each model has different assumptions built-in. This would really be a question for the Website, though.

Jab