- Joined
- May 17, 2005
- Messages
- 12,255
- Reaction score
- 2,692
The point was that it isn't the mass of a thing per se but what it does. If the bullet stayed in the gun and if all the electrons in the air stayed put then there wouldn't be a problem. A bowling ball dropped on your head is likely to do harm but an equivalent mass of liquid water much less so. It only takes a tiny mass of botulinum or ricin to kill whereas a much greater mass of chocolate is far less fatal.
The difference is that bullets are simple, lightning less so, and climate very much not. But that doesn't preclude experiments. Most of the experiments that laid the foundation for calculating the effects and trajectories of bullets were not done with bullets. They were done with other objects but the principles could be simply applied to bullets.
Lightning has never been replicated in the lab, that is to say no-one has ever made a cloud in the lab and had it throw a spark several hundred metres long. What we have done in the lab is create smaller models of parts of the phenomenon and used our understanding of those parts to attempt to extrapolate an understanding of lightning. It's still not understood very well.
Climate is similar in that we cannot replicate the climate even in our models but we can understand and measure certain sub units of the problem - such as the greenhouse effects of the various gases (and this is very old and confirmed science these days), convection forces in air and water (also old and confirmed), solar inputs (old and confirmed) etc. The problem is to take all the things you know, figure out how they interact and figure out how many other things you don't know that you need to know. Then you build your model and test it and tweak it against the only data you have which is all historical data (since we can't yet have the future data!!) and see what the model says about the future at which time we can check against what happens.
So, yes, complicated, but not outside of scientific investigation. If we had to actually perform every single experiment and recreate every single phenomenon over and over in a lab somewhere we would get nothing done ever. What we learn about are the simple parts of the universe and how they go together and use that to make educated guesses. You can't know what every electron in your computer is doing but you don't need to for the purpose of learning enough to design and build computers.
That the science is subject to politics, that's true of all science because it is done by people and people are subject to politics, such as when a government tells it's departments that they cannot mention global warming in any publications. But more than that, science is ultimately subject to reality - that is the yard stick by which theories are measured. If one theory brings you within an inch or two of the true yard and another gets you nowhere then the former is obviously superior to the latter. The ultimate politicized theory of our time is evolution but reality backs it and that is why creationism and all its offshoots continue to languish in the fantasy files despite huge political organizations that would rather it not.
smithy said:
The difference is that bullets are simple, lightning less so, and climate very much not. But that doesn't preclude experiments. Most of the experiments that laid the foundation for calculating the effects and trajectories of bullets were not done with bullets. They were done with other objects but the principles could be simply applied to bullets.
Lightning has never been replicated in the lab, that is to say no-one has ever made a cloud in the lab and had it throw a spark several hundred metres long. What we have done in the lab is create smaller models of parts of the phenomenon and used our understanding of those parts to attempt to extrapolate an understanding of lightning. It's still not understood very well.
Climate is similar in that we cannot replicate the climate even in our models but we can understand and measure certain sub units of the problem - such as the greenhouse effects of the various gases (and this is very old and confirmed science these days), convection forces in air and water (also old and confirmed), solar inputs (old and confirmed) etc. The problem is to take all the things you know, figure out how they interact and figure out how many other things you don't know that you need to know. Then you build your model and test it and tweak it against the only data you have which is all historical data (since we can't yet have the future data!!) and see what the model says about the future at which time we can check against what happens.
So, yes, complicated, but not outside of scientific investigation. If we had to actually perform every single experiment and recreate every single phenomenon over and over in a lab somewhere we would get nothing done ever. What we learn about are the simple parts of the universe and how they go together and use that to make educated guesses. You can't know what every electron in your computer is doing but you don't need to for the purpose of learning enough to design and build computers.
That the science is subject to politics, that's true of all science because it is done by people and people are subject to politics, such as when a government tells it's departments that they cannot mention global warming in any publications. But more than that, science is ultimately subject to reality - that is the yard stick by which theories are measured. If one theory brings you within an inch or two of the true yard and another gets you nowhere then the former is obviously superior to the latter. The ultimate politicized theory of our time is evolution but reality backs it and that is why creationism and all its offshoots continue to languish in the fantasy files despite huge political organizations that would rather it not.
