Re: For the programming geeks - weather models software coding here

Edward M. Kennedy wrote:
"Kyle T. Jones" <KBfoMe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

If the AGW people can provide the evidence, they can prove their
theory and the debate will really be over.
This may be your biggest problem, Con. With a single line, you "prove" that you misunderstand the entire scientific enterprise.

(hint - no matter how much evidence, no theory is ever proven, and the debate is never over)
Well, some theories such a thermo will not be re-opened without
some damn fine data. More likely is that there will be some tweak
to as to what thermo's laws mean in, say, QM.

Newton's realization that masses attract each other will probably
never be reopened, he just didn't get the explanation right for some
situations. Or, for all practical means, the better explanation collapses
to his in many situations.

--Tedward
Newton didn't get the explanation right, period. Not for "some situations", for all situations. It won't be reopened because it's been disproven via contrary data. The fact that his explanation has practical value in nearly all situations doesn't mean that it was in any way "correct" - it wasn't. At the most fundamental level, it was simply wrong - gravity is not the force that he contended. Rather than being an attractive force between masses, we have a closer approximation to the truth that claims it's a time-space warping force - the appearance of attraction between masses is an indirect/secondary effect of that warping.

Which is semantics at best -- the "appearance of a force" can be
treated just a like a force, for example calculating how much
energy or work it takes to get from point A to B.

While I agree (again) that Newton's theory contains tremendous practical value, I don't agree that pointing out that it's not a true description of the state of affairs (and is fact just a reasonably good approximation, but not as good an approximation as Einstein's replacement) is "semantics at best".

Besides, I was making a point to Con - not matter how firmly entrenched a theory, no matter how well-confirmed by the data - it is never proven as true. It has simply not been disproven. It may never be disproven - but we still cannot make the mistake of assuming that means it's been proven... that we've described a fundamental universal truth. And there are few theories that make that point as well as Newton's ideas about gravity.

Science simply isn't in the business of proving things true. If a scientist thinks that's the business vee's in, vee should either (a) switch over to mathematics/logic, or (b) retake Jr. High science class, where the scientific method is laid out clearly.

So what's your
beef with Newton's gravitational constant? You think he just
stumbled onto such a universal truth without a fucking clue?


No, I think he inferred a very handy pattern with the data available. Newton was a great man - I don't know what I've said that would make you think I though otherwise...

But no matter, there's much, much more to Newtonian physics than
just the gravitational attraction. Relativity's verson of his
second law is again but a refinement of Newton. His realization
of inertial reference frames was no small potatos either.

--Tedward



Yep. He was smrat. SuperDUPER smrat!!!@!

Cheers.
.

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