Alan Robinson

Agreed. I do wish however we could all also agree that until an idea is proven, it is a hypothesis. Theories are validated hypotheses, and much of what is called Global Warming Theory remains hypothesis.

Can I come to your assistance? I'd say that because there is a scientific theory about certain observable phenomena, that theory is not necessarily a panacea. In support of my postulation I give you the conflict between relativity and quantum theory over gravity. If science has taught us anything at all, it is this; there is always room for improvement in our knowledge.

No, but it is. At the risk of repeating myself, my opinion is that politicians are using the AGW idea to cover up their helplessness over peak oil, peak phosphorus, peak debt, peak this, peak that, exponential increase in world population etc etc. Politicians know full well our lifestyle is unsustainable, they have no attractive practical vision for the future, and so we must all stop burning so much oil, coal and gas. They want us to accept inevitable economic downturn, and offer us environmental excuses as a dummy to suck on. I am quite sure the basic science about so-called greenhouse gases is correct, but like many others, I consider the overall process most complex. For example, the process of the oceans soaking up heat and carbon dioxide is not fully understood. There remains controversy over the whole business of ice core data and historical atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Science seems wavering over the role of the sun and cosmic rays on cloud, playing down the sun's role, notwithstanding that if it "went out", all life on Earth is done for. And what about the effect of CFC gases on ozone? It seems that has had a considerable effect on stratospheric temperatures and thus parts of our climate mechanism that are most difficult to research practically, and those CFCs are not going away for the next few years. How have they affected global temperatures since, say, 1970? Given all this, I'd say it is not unreasonable to be moderately skeptical of dogma, whatever its object.

I am afraid I am with Sir Thomas More on this subject. Foreign Ambassadors to Utopia were the subject of mirth, parading down the street on their arrival, with gold chains round their necks. The Utopians knew fine well that gold is virtually useless to common people. Gold has nowadays a few uses in medicine, and perhaps also in specialist electronics, but otherwise its only curious properties are its resistance to corrosion and its scarcity. That people actually mine this soft and mostly useless metal is astounding, but then, More and Erasmus of Rotterdam knew this five centuries ago. Didn't Henry VIII bebase silver coinage about 50% by dilution so he could spend more? Q: Who cares about gold? A: people that want something for nothing.

If anyone wants to know what Britain's next generation of national grid pylons will look like, here you are. Bystrup Architects of Copenhagen just won a prize of GBP 5000 in a contest arranged by our Department of Environment and Energy, for the design of new pylons. It seems we have somehting like 88,000 pylons, some of which have been standing since the 1920s.

I am sure some Cornucopian businessman will rubbish this and say "hey, if we run out of phosphorus, no problem, we'll just make some more..."

No need to be scared Jane Louise, it is a very common phenomenon. For one thing, at sea under the right weather conditions, lighthouse beams can be seen over the horizon reflecting in cloud. Similarly, I remember the British Army using Chieftain battle tanks, which had a very powerful searchlight, and could easily light up clouds. I gather laser shows can do the same thing though I have never seen it myself.

You into augury then Pete?

I remember riding the train here in Denmark. A class of Copenhagen schoolchildren were in the same carriage, and having noticed some large, four-legged herbivores in a field were debating whether or not they could be cows.So much for modern urban life. By the way, the two white smudges are probably small sailing vessels.

It reads as though they are reluctant to hang out their dirty laundry.

Just wondered how the Express thing ties in with this... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15199065

Somebody is bound to come along and put "what a load of trochoid".

Here you see m v Magnus Jensen in 1982. I worked on re-building the ship, which really ought to have been scrapped. Magnus Jensen got into this state by running over a reef south of Cape Farewell, approaching Greenland December 1981, loaded with all kinds of Christmas goodies, ski scooters and whatnot. Rumour at the shipyard was that when the ship struck the reef there was nobody on watch; all were said to be revelling. Whether true or not I cannot say. By the way, there are plenty of good, entertaining accounts here...http://www.maib.gov.uk/home/index.cfm Then there is the difference between swell and sea. Seas are sumperimposed on swell, and in any case, there can quite easily be two swells from different directions in any one location, which also superimpose. It really is a complex subject. Regarding the Fastnet, I do not want to get going about racing and good seamanship, but I'd just say I would never personally set out if the forecast is for force 7 or more. Getting caught out is however different, and it can be a good idea sometimes to head away from land. For example, I caution all humanity against approaching Cuxhaven from seaward aboard a small vessel if the spring ebb is running and the wind is NW force 6.

That sort of thing happens regularly. I saw an AFRAMAX tanker with its wavebreaker laid flat on the foredeck. The problem I have with vessels like the QE2 is however not steel structure, but big windows. Loadline regulations require that windows in certain locations must be provided with storm shutters for use in the event of glazing failure. Some windows are made pretty big however for aesthetic reasons, and storm shutters are not practical. For this reason authorities might dispensate by dropping the storm shutter requirement provided the glass thickness is suitably increased. All very well, except shipbuilders - in their attempt to cut costs - have more recently been allowed to use glass polished using acid (to reduce the risk of cracking) instead of heat-treated safety glass. Again, all very well one might say, until the glass receives micro-scratches, undoing the effect of acid polishing and leaving the window inferior to the traditionally required safety glass. Waves do not have to be so high to cause a problem........ incidentally, here is the same ship in Greenland... I can just imagine a wave coming green over the bow and taking a large piece of ice with it up to the Wheelhouse front windows...

http://www.dmi.dk/dm...obal_opvarmning According to an article in Geophysical Research letters it seems now that physical processes near the tropopause are not entirely understood. The suspicion is that abnormal thunder storms which extend into stratosphere transport enormous volumes of ice crystals from the troposphere, and in the form of water vapour further towards the poles by the Brewer Dobson circulation. The occurrence of such thunderstorms since 2001 has for some reason been less frequent, and calculations indicate that reduced water vapour in the lower stratosphere has moderated the general rise of surface temperatures. Anne Mette K. Jørgensen at the Danish Meteorological Institute comments that such discoveries only make more difficult the task of explaining climate change to the general public. When the frequency of these very high thunderstorms returns to normal, we shall very likely see global temperatures increasing with a vengeance. (The article here is written in something like tabloid newspaper style, so this is my loose translation containing the essentials).

Oh dear indeed. Paraflares fall slowly to the surface, and hand-held flares are, how can I put it, in the hand.

You do yourself an injustice I suspect, and there is absolutely no harm in studying these matters. I'd like however to take a different tack, and being stuck with Socrates, perhaps I should use his sort of down-to-earth symbolism. Take pigs for example. Pigs are very intelligent beasts, yet there can be little doubt that they have their own particular piggy way of viewing life. Take a look at a field where pigs have been left to roam about for a while, and there can be no doubt that pigs think almost everything is there to be eaten. This is their starting point in just about everything they do; is this food? The field is just mud, with no roots in the ground, because the pigs have dug up everything thinking it might be food. It seems to me, that Homo sapiens have all in common that they start off with everything they come across thinking it can be explained. We have explanations for just about everything under the sun, and if our explanations are implausible, we invent justifications. I mean, I am doing it right now as I type. Now I have no idea if there exist alien races that exceed us in intellect, but it is reasonable to assume that if there do, then they possess senses additional to ours. Perhaps they are telepathic. Pehaps they do like some American indians and go into a sweat lodge for three days, after which they emerge enlightened. Who knows? But if they have abilities that exceed ours, then surely their science is based on more than our 5 senses, assuming they have our senses too. Back here on earth, the only tool a philosopher has is intellect. If my toolbox has only one tool in it - lets say a hammer - and someone asks me to make them a hammer, then I only have a hammer to make a hammer with and the result would be a very poor hammer I'd say. So where does that leave philosophy? In my view, nowhere, and those that have made a difference in this world were not philosophers. I'm sticking with my 5 senses, because I do not always trust the workings of my mind, or anyone else's come to think of it. Maybe psychology is a more valuable branch of science in these times, and as Alexander Pope wrote, presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind, is man.

I think I put in the A levels thread that I don't like progressing with a subject leaving gaps in my comprehension. With respect to philosophy, I remain stuck with Socrates.

You don't need a telescope to see a few of Jupiter's moons. A simple pair of 7 * 50 binoculars does the trick if you steady them against a tree trunk or a post or a wall or something. Last night I could see 3 moons with my binos. By the way, just with binos you cab see Venus change phase like the moon. Okay, this is all very simple, but its a start.

Good stuff, and I am pleased you brought up the question of the function's domain. I was prepared to let this thread rest, but woke up this morning with something niggling me. It is this; perhaps some readers will not grasp the significance of “roots are complex”. That means quite simply that we have to invent numbers in order to solve the equation. That might sound silly, but it is the case. There is no real number, which when multiplied by itself, results in a negative number. All real numbers squared give a positive number. Mathematicians in their wisdom therefore invented the concept of a number i, which simply put has the value of the square root of -1. It is an imagined number, not a real one. Numbers using i are called complex numbers, and it is these that full_frontal_occlusion refers to. Moreover, how anything can weigh less than nothing is beyond me, and I thought the lowest possible temperature - the state of zero energy - is 0 degrees K. Now that is all well and good, and I know electrical engineers find practical applications for complex numbers; except this is where my own skepsis begins. I have heard it said that philosophy is the father of all science. Metaphysics, by its very nature, concerns issues that cannot be verified by the use of our physical senses, and what constitutes metaphysical proof is quite dubious. Philosophy has debated the value of metaphysics ever since Plato pointed to the sky, while Aristotle exhorted him to keep both feet on the ground. I became embroiled in a long debate with my son – who has studied such things in considerable depth – and as I flatter myself I rather got the better of him , his final tactic was to bring Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to his defence of metaphysics. I do not recommend anyone read Kant. Understanding Kant is a specialist task in its own right, and takes years of deep study to become proficient at it. I can simply conclude that Kant’s ideas – once considered the epitome of human thought – has fallen out of vogue again. Instead, I recommend scientists read A J Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic, even if it was the work of a zealous young man who later toned down his enthusiasm for refuting speculative ideas. For my part, I do not consider it science to postulate ideas that cannot somehow be verified empirically. Complex roots of Einsten’s equation are very likey a path to science-fiction.

Maybe you should take up wormholes with full frontal occlusion. See above about negative mass. That stuff is beyond my simple imagination.

Thanks for that. I am like a dog with a bone sometimes, and I have carried on trying to rearrange E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) to v=c/E*sqrt(E^2-m2*c^4). I cannot. I gave up when I finally made a little spreadsheet that finds mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) - that is E - and then using it and the same values of m and c to evaluate c/E*sqrt(E^2-m2*c^4), which is v, and should be the same value of v with which I started with tho find E. The figures do not agree. I suggest that E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) does not rearrange to v=c/E*sqrt(E^2-m2*c^4).

The more I look at that the more I scratch my head. I know I am a bit simple, but how does E=mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) rearrange to v=c/E*sqrt(E^2-m2*c^4) ? In any case, Einstein's derivation was shown to be faulty, because he ignored some higher derivatives and made approximations. People have since shown - using vectors I believe - that E = mc^2. Putting that E = mc^2/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) is a bit like asking a loaded question, because that particlar equation has no solutions if v>c.

Sorry, if v=c/E*sqrt(E^2-m2*c^4) and m = 0, then v = c / e**2. That is nothing more than GCSE maths.

Well at very least, those who are keen on relativity might at least accept that in the future, there may be produced still better explanations for some observable phenomena than Einstein's explanations; otherwise I have to say that religious people who say scientists are hypocritical, have a point. Relativity is not a scientific panacea, and it is likely that sooner or later something else will come along as flavour of the month.