[Flipside]

What I'd like to know is why civilisations across the world have the Great Flood story somewhere in their history, be it in their legends, myths or whatever. I see correlations with the scientists of today and Noah, where the people wish to stick their head in the sand and disbelieve!

Actually, that's not really the case, most scientists will agree to a great deal of evidence to a 'great flood' in history at some point, however, that, by itself does not imply the existence of Noah. Now, there IS some evidence of the possible existence of Arks, or, at least of what appear to be huge shipwrecks where there is no reason for a shipwreck to be there. The problem is, although photographs have been taken of what appears to be 'ribbing' from a ship in the Pack Ice at the top of a mountain somewhere, the government involved refuses to let anyone go take a look, I'm not too certain on the fine details though.

It's not that Scientists stick their head in the sand, it's that, should someone go to this site, and discover that it IS in fact an Ark, then that will mean they will review their opinion, because the data available has changed, though I'll still add that the chances are it wouldn't provide any more weight to the Noah story than to any of the other Ark stories that accompany these Flood Legends

[Wobble73]

I never mentioned anything about the existence of Noah, just that stories like his, regarding a great global flood are found in cultures all over the world. And as you said there is a great deal of evidence of there being a great flood in history at some point. If it has happened before, it could happen again, only this time there is also evidence that we as a species are adding to those effects and bringing it upon ourselves. Yet as a species we are also sticking our heads in the sands and hoping that it will go away!

[Mefustae]

The problem is, although photographs have been taken of what appears to be 'ribbing' from a ship in the Pack Ice at the top of a mountain somewhere, the government involved refuses to let anyone go take a look, I'm not too certain on the fine details though.

Eh? Link?

[karajorma]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searches_for_Noah%27s_Ark

When even members of the Bible Archeology Search and Exploration Institute say it isn't a boat then it probably isn't a boat.

[Mika]

The point of asteroids was that the more sudden and greater the effect, the larger are the chances that it will take a lot of us with it. During time there has been global warming, 3 to 5 generations have passed by, depending on the way you count it.

Talking about global dimming, do you mean that global dimming which was forecasted to destroy the whole of the mankind in hundred years? That global dimming on which environmentalists added a lot of pressure to hurry up the approvals of the new environmental laws? That global dimming on whose wake the scientists found a new threat, global warming? And those climate models that surely showed that the global dimming would continue for a long time, no-one ever noticing this little side effect of CO2, which actually should have been noted back then? Yes, obviously money well spent. Or put it more like:
[Obi-Wan voice]
Good job!
[/Obi-Wan voice]

Makes me wonder what other things have been missed in climate modelling.

A Russian scientist wrote in 1950s that should CO2 be a problem, it could be contained quite with a small amount of sulphur distributed in the athmosphere. But with method one should be quite careful though. This combined with the agreements like Kyoto protocol might be the way out of it.

Global warming does not cause a sudden sea level rise. That will happen gradually. The tales of sudden water rise are related to some other phenomena.

Mika

[karajorma]

Nope. I mean the real one.

Not the strawman you were on about.

[Mika]

It was actually the one I was talking about.

I really mean it when I say the role of CO2 should have been noticed back then. The climate is something you don't mess around with due to the sheer scale of changes what it causes. That's why I said do it right the first time, since there is no room for error.

Norwegian Physicist (God forbid I forgot his name) could simulate the Northern lights in the beginning of 1900s with a model of Earth. Proto-life molecules have been actually generated in the experiments with early Earth like climate. I would think that it should be possible to conduct real laboratory experiments while controlling the climate and solar irradiance and actually see what happens with each parameter. I'm saying it can be done.

Mika

[karajorma]

There's a bit of a difference between the Miller-Urey experiment and trying to model the entire earth in a laboratory though.

Besides, are you telling me that a laboratory experiment would convince you? Or would you simply claim that it wasn't a good enough model if it didn't reach the conclusion you wanted?

[Mika]

Why do I think the model can be simplified quite a lot to observe the effects of CO2 and Sulphur? It could be just me, though.

That model is the best where we could test the simulation results before forcing them to legislation. Like this little global dimming side effect. I would be far more convinced with the experiment in that workbench than simply putting the simulation results into action. It would be like constructing an airplane while never constructing a model of it to test it in a wind tunnel and then sending the perfect design for manufacturing.

What do you mean by reaching the conclusion I want?

Mika

[jr2]

Global Warming emo ppl tend to get quite snippy...

[karajorma]

And just what did that add to the discussion jr2?

What do you mean by reaching the conclusion I want?

Are you seriously trying to claim you're coming at this from an unbiased point of view?


As for the whole model idea, again there is a huge difference between real life modelling of a simple system like that in the Miller-Urey experiment or a wind tunnel and one that is supposed to simulate the weather systems of an entire planet.

The model is far too simple to give any kind of useful data. This kind of thing can only be modelled on computer. A laboratory experiment would be virtually useless.

[jr2]

Well, Mika seems to be pretty cool & level headed.  I hate it when ppl start stuff... it would be soooo much nicer if we could just keep ourselves emotionally detached from things.  Because it's hard to think straight when you're responding to a percieved jab.  (I could be misreading this, heck, probably am...   Whatever.)

[Mika]

I have a bias of course. But it's mine, not global warming's or global dimming's, though. You cannot really create new theories without putting bias to your own preferred side. A typical measurement is somewhat different. It is a lot easier to say "I have no bias so let's just observe" when you already know the answer that the apple will fall. Try doing that when creating something totally new and indeed you will find out that you have a bias. But enough sidetracking.

I actually need to ask how did you come to conclusion it could only be modelled with a computer? What things do you think would be crucial to include in the laboratory setup?

By analogue, would you accept that a new particle exists just because of a computer simulation? Would you accept a system that uses this particle and someone selling it with a hefty price-tag?

Mika

[Ghostavo]

You mean like the higgs boson?

[karajorma]

Couldn't have put it better myself Ghostavo.

When it comes to highly complex systems you rapidly reach the end of what laboratory experiments can tell you. I was going to point out that following your logic we should throw out much of what we know about black holes on the grounds that no one has made a singularity in a lab.

[Wobble73]

The climate not be modeled in lab or on a computer because of chaos theory or even the butterfly effect.

[Mika]

Regarding Higgs boson, I only believe its existence when they get indisputable evidence with the Large Hadron Collider. That means repeatable, actual measurements which display behavior that can only be explained with the attributes that Higgs boson has. And even then this must happen with as capable colliders around the world. Until then it is a possibility and curiosity. Though I fail to see the practical importance of this Higgs boson. From what I know, it either only confirms or removes the concept of Higgs field, trashing or confirming years of theoretical research. I could actually venture so far and say that the science world is biased to find one, since otherwise they have been wasting tons of taxpayers' money.

I find it that nowadays Science has a worrifying trend to give a lot of weight for computer simulations and taking weight from measurements and observations. But I suppose that is because the measuring and observation equipment is expensive. Another thing I find annoying is the concentration on the extreme ends of the scales - well no wonder it is damn expensive! Either it has to be extremely small or massively big, but the normal world, no, that's boring and solved already.

Well, what do we know about Black Holes? I thought that the definition of Black Hole meant that no information can return after passing the event horizon. But it is four years since I read General Relativity so I might be little rusty about this. I seem to recall that the poor thing that passes it is rapidly going to hit the center, but good luck measuring that. I never thought about this before, but anything beyond Event Horizon is pure speculation from pure Physics point of view as this cannot be verified, unless we all decide to jump to event horizon and even then that knowledge would be rather short-lived. Thanks, I shall utilize this insight to annoy some friends from theoretical physics department to no end. So, no, I think I didn't get your analogy. How come we can expect the computer simulations to be any more accurate?

Mika

[Ghostavo]

So if you were somehow "in control" of how science operated, you'd cut the Standard Model and the Grand Unification Theory off of it (amongst many others)?

The basis of today's understanding of how particles behave?

Excuse me if I seem worried.

[Mika]

I fail to see the importance of Higgs boson when compared with the threat of Global Warming. So yes, I would probably cut funding from particle research to find out more of climate. Honestly, which one do you think is more urgent?

Besides, since when the definition of experimental natural science has been dropped from Physics?

And given that we don't have a clue of if Higgs boson exists yet, the Standard model is the best estimate there is, meaning: not confirmed. All beyond that is speculation. Yet I read about predictions to the beginning of the universe based on this - but even more amazing is that this kind of research actually gets funds. Take a look at the history of Kirchoff's Scalar Diffraction Theory at this point.

Mika

[Ghostavo]

That's not what I meant. The Higgs boson in your opinion until verified would be just a "possibility and a curiosity", so would this mean you'd pause all research until you could verify it's existance?

To give an example, if this was the case, we'd still be trying to figure out general relativity because only recently (well, compared to when it was proposed) it was "proved".

Regarding funding, that is up to who actually gives the funds, and unless it's a government, we don't actually have a say in it. Also bear in mind we can't pick up a bunch of physicists and say "From today on, you'll become climatologists!".