Absolute proof that Sarli is an ignorant moron

[K. A. Pital]

Indeed. I think there was some sort of back-up shield for Endor that the Rebels managed to set online either before, or during the explosion. This is the only explanation which has any sense (isn't it also the one in the ICS?).

The debris velocity was high, Endor should've been protected or soon gigaton explosions would've shaken everything on the side turned to the Dearth Star.

But you don't need Sarli's moronic ravings to come up at this conclusion.

The Krakatoa eruption was 200MT's (twice Sarli's retarded estimate) and its effects on global climate were extant but FAR too minor to cause planetary depopulation.

An earthquake measuring an 8.0 on the Richter scale releases the equivalent of approximately 1.01 gigatons of TNT; the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake is estimated to have released the equivalent of 100 gigatons of TNT.

Yup. That baby. If that's an HTL blast, it would take some time for the ISD to decimate Earth with HTLs.

[Meest]

Wow that article is from 2004, looks like for years he's been waiting to insert his anti-Saxton type garbage. Then he has the gall to call this type of fandom nerds and not normal, yet he's on a crazed got to debunk Saxton so dumbdowned fans can play RPGs.

[Rogue 9]

And this is why I've never joined the official WotC forums. Well, not exactly why, but official company forums are almost invariably both retardedly moderated and filled with stupid people.

[K. A. Pital]

I already questioned the validity of taking _any_ action in the SW canon based on RPG mechanics. Game mechanics, haven't they been ruled non-canon, eh?

[Ghost Rider]

All said and done, I still see it sad that people think this guy has any knowledge of what he speaks of whatsoever.

It sounds intially pretty but once you take out his buzzwording and decrying of Saxton he presents nothing except to say "I believe this is what happens, but I can't show you how.". I know why this works in the political arena but why do fans so readily accept this as SCIENTIFIC evidence? Are really the fans that cowtow to this shit that fucking stupid(Rhetorical question)?.

It is frustrating that anytime somewhere, somehow shows an inkling of what would be needed to happen out pops yet another moron with clout to show the sheep what they want to bleat because a billion is such a biiiiiiiig number.

[Ghost Rider]

I already questioned the validity of taking _any_ action in the SW canon based on RPG mechanics. Game mechanics, haven't they been ruled non-canon, eh?

Yeah, but trying getting that through the heads of morons. Saying what is and isn't canon is just another buzzword for people to twist and turn. Mike is right in this particular, unless shown to be absolute bullshit...they will screech until the ends of time that you cannot 100% prove them wrong.

[Master of Ossus]

On a lark, I looked up the group that Sarli mentioned in one of his posts (though he refused to post any sort of article or even journal-specific citation) in JSTOR.

Amusingly, both of the studies that came up deal with "major nuclear exchanges" and an optimized release of 2,000 megatons. Forgetting another decimal place, Sarli?

[BTW, those links require access to JSTOR, an academic database.]

[Ritterin Sophia]

Are really the fans that cowtow to this shit that fucking stupid(Rhetorical question)?.

I know you said it was a rhetorical question, but I think the fact that one of the most vocal of his fans in that thread was a creationist and denied the existence of global warming says a lot about his fans in general.

[K. A. Pital]

OT: MoO, I see that you have access to JSTOR. How do you get it? Can one pay for it via credit card or something?

Amusingly, both of the studies that came up deal with "major nuclear exchanges" and an optimized release of 2,000 megatons.

Well, well, well. And I guess the fatality rate isn't even anywhere close to what Sarli was implying, right?

[Darth Wong]

Does he really think he's fooling anyone by desperately running around now trying (and failing) to find studies to back up his completely made-up figures?

[Master of Ossus]

OT: MoO, I see that you have access to JSTOR. How do you get it? Can one pay for it via credit card or something?

I'm not sure. I have it through work, and many universities will almost certainly have it. You may even be able to get it through a local library.

Amusingly, both of the studies that came up deal with "major nuclear exchanges" and an optimized release of 2,000 megatons.

Well, well, well. And I guess the fatality rate isn't even anywhere close to what Sarli was implying, right?

Those papers both deal exclusively with the nuclear winter scenario, linking it to the combustion of large amounts of material and the resultant smoke after cities and urban areas are targeted. They don't specifically go into detail on the casualties, but the first one makes an off-hand reference that several tens of millions of people would be killed immediately in such an exchange.

[Ritterin Sophia]

We have a population of ~6.5 Billion right? How the hell is that supposed to be devastating?

[Darth Wong]

We have a population of ~6.5 Billion right? How the hell is that supposed to be devastating?

Military planners might project tens of millions of casualties in a nuclear exchange and declare that this would be "devastating" in the sense that there would be massive widespread collapse of social and economic infrastructure. However, people like Sarli will seize upon the figure, ignore the bulk of the text, and declare that this somehow justifies his claims of global depopulation.

There's a great website I found a while ago which deals with this:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/315/7109/672

Remember the essays you used to write as a student? You would browse through the indexes of books and journals until you came across a paragraph that looked relevant, and copied it out. If anything you found did not fit in with the theory you were proposing, you left it out. This, more or less, constitutes the methodology of the journalistic review—an overview of primary studies which have not been identified or analysed in a systematic (standardised and objective) way.

In contrast, a systematic review is an overview of primary studies which contains an explicit statement of objectives, materials, and methods and has been conducted according to explicit and reproducible methodology (fig 1).

Now this actually has to do with medical research rather than physics, but the basic gist of the article is completely applicable to 99% of the layperson treatises on scientific issues on the Internet. People literally do not know how to read science-related articles. They think you just search for a piece of text which confirms what you're looking for, rather than trying to grasp the methodology and understand it. They think this because it's how journalists, pundits, editorialists, and politicians do it. But it's not how a scientist or engineer does it.

It's a constant thorn in my side because I see people using my own website the same way, drawing totally wrong conclusions from it because they just look for piecemeal paragraphs or text snippets they can use rather than trying to understand how I came to a particular conclusion.

[K. A. Pital]

You may even be able to get it through a local library.

Perhaps. Just remember that I'm in Omsk. I know there's an outlet at Novosibirsk state uni library, but that's a whooping 1000 km from me an a night of travel...

They don't specifically go into detail on the casualties, but the first one makes an off-hand reference that several tens of millions of people would be killed immediately in such an exchange.

Of course they would. But this isn't what the SW ships performed, tens of millions is a very small loss for a planet with population of billions. Remember how Bothawui was to be grazed? I bet if they wanted to have no survivors or runners from a 2,5 billion populated planet, they better have used multigigaton shots.

[Vympel]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

[white_rabbit]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

I guess he's never heard of slash and burn....

[Ritterin Sophia]

I'm feeling assholish, so tell him that kid who started screaming (I forgot his name) that Kothar would like you to remind him, that Super-class Star Destroyers existed in only in a lie.

[PainRack]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

Wasn't that argument once used by Darkstar himself?

[Darth Wong]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

Wasn't that argument once used by Darkstar himself?

No, it was used by Mike Griffiths, aka "Lord Edam du Fromage". He argued that you could pull off a BDZ by closing mine entrances and setting off enough nuke blasts to cover the land area of Earth with the ignition radii of the explosions (ignoring the fact that not everything within that radius actually catches fire, only things that are easily ignited). Mind you, even using that bullshit methodology, he still came up with a requirement of over a quarter million megatons anyway. And he was still wrong even about that, since I produced a picture of a wooden bomb shelter which survived despite being less than 100 metres away from Ground Zero.

[K. A. Pital]

What's the fucking difference?

Mind you, even using that bullshit methodology, he still came up with a requirement of over a quarter million megatons anyway.

Well, if an ISD can generate a quarter million MT, it can also generate a million or more, that's fucking obvious. I hate those morons with "it's not ONE SHIP again", fuck them.

Okay, Dark Hoegaarden may be impacting my posts right now, but those fucktards never even understand the problem with their own statements.

Why in the fuckin hell are Saxton's estimates unreasonable? The Dankayo example + Caamas and others was good enough to conclude that:
a) ISDs fire high-energy, in the high-gigatonnage range shots (atmosphere blasted off, Humbarine, Bothawui examples require that explicitly).
b) SW ships can utterly ravage planets and destroy biospheres and all life, even if taken as "all sentients", that's a very remarkable feat (all examples require that).

Pathetic fuckers, read the fucking canon. God I really grow tired of the discussion, with ignorant morons popping left and right (and Sarli himself left it)... Why do those fucktards even warrant any attention? FUCK THEM.

[Master of Ossus]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

I love the way he claims that by targeting fault lines and volcanoes he can easily get the planet to do "30-80% of the work for you." In other words, he's going to get the planet, at a bare minimum, to release energy equivalent to some... 60 million Krakatoa eruptions.

You can't make this shit up.

[Darth Wong]

One guy argued that you could destroy mines by collapsing the entrances, and you could destroy arable land by setting it on fire.

I love the way he claims that by targeting fault lines and volcanoes he can easily get the planet to do "30-80% of the work for you." In other words, he's going to get the planet, at a bare minimum, to release energy equivalent to some... 60 million Krakatoa eruptions.

You can't make this shit up.

He must have thought that Wing Commander was a scientific documentary.

[K. A. Pital]

I love the way he claims that by targeting fault lines and volcanoes he can easily get the planet to do "30-80% of the work for you."

Not a far cry from Dark Star (99% - the planet chain-reaction explosion) bullshit.

[Surlethe]

Why in the fuckin hell are Saxton's estimates unreasonable?

Saxton's estimates are not high enough. The Death Star sets a benchmark for power generation that Saxton approaches conservatively for smaller ships. As calculated here, if an ISD's main reactor were as efficient as the Death Star's, it would be able to produce at maximum 2.9 million gigatons per shot. I'd love to see someone's reasoning as to why this power generation technology drops off six orders of magnitude's worth of efficiency (is efficiency the right word?) just because of scaling.

This kind of power generation is what you get when you have a civilization that can build a starship able to blow up planets like fucking firecrackers. Don't like it? Live with it, minimalist retards.

[K. A. Pital]

I'd love to see someone's reasoning as to why this power generation technology drops off six orders of magnitude's worth of efficiency (is efficiency the right word?) just because of scaling.

... Hmm.. Isn't nuclear power badly scalable in real life and requires large reactors to run? Perhaps hypermatter is somewhat the same in SW; this could explain fusion used for lesser shpips and small ground vehicles.

Though I totally agree, those who argue against Saxton don't realise why they aren't contributing ANYTHING, just generating random bullshit which doesn't even fit the canon.