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Tags Convection , meteorology , storms

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Old 3rd November 2018, 05:25 AM   #81
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
LOL. Do you see a plume of moist air coming off of an evaporating pot of water?

Surreal.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
I'll see your pot and raise you a kettle lake.

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Old 3rd November 2018, 05:28 AM   #82
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Originally Posted by MikeG View Post
There are multiple other ways of showing this effect without the boiling water which seems to stir Jim's blood so much.

I thought it was the idea of water “magically turning to steam at ambient temperatures” that he was having trouble with.
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Old 3rd November 2018, 05:30 AM   #83
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
LOL. Do you see a plume of moist air coming off of an evaporating pot of water?

Do you think that water can evaporate at “ambient temperatures”?
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Old 3rd November 2018, 05:32 AM   #84
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Originally Posted by Mojo View Post
I thought it was the idea of water “magically turning to steam at ambient temperatures” that he was having trouble with.
Yes. Evaporation without passing boiling point seems to be an alien concept for our Jim. Denying that happens is tantamount to denying that water vapour can be suspended in air.
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Old 3rd November 2018, 08:09 AM   #85
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Here is what all of you don't get.

Storms have nothing whatsoever to do with convection, dry layer capping, or latent heat.

Storms are always the result of vortice activity, usually toward the top of the troposphere. That is all storms, including hurricanes.
Well, to be charitable, there's the butterfly effect: A storm has to start somehow, so a vortice somewhere? Well, let's leave it at that.

Now explain, please:

1) How does a local vortice evolve into a storm? Whee does the energy come from?

2) Practical observation shows that a rising column of warm, moist air can form a convection cell that evolves into a thunderstorm. This is something you can watch many times every summer in large parts of the world. How does this fit with your thesis?

3) If, as you claim, most storms start as vortices in the very upper atmosphere, why can't we observe them evolving downward from up there? Instead they always appear to spread upwards. And as a corollary, why do storms NEVER exist only in the higher parts of the atmosphere, but always from the surface up?

Hans
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Old 3rd November 2018, 09:43 AM   #86
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Mod WarningSeveral off topic posts have been moved to AAH. Please keep to the topic of the theories in the OP and their relation to accepted science. If you wish to discuss some other alternative theory, please take it to the appropriate thread.
Responding to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By:zooterkin
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Old 3rd November 2018, 03:09 PM   #87
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Originally Posted by MikeG View Post
Yes. Evaporation without passing boiling point seems to be an alien concept for our Jim. Denying that happens is tantamount to denying that water vapour can be suspended in air.
But, but, but.......surely rain comes from water evaporated near the equator, where it regularly reaches 100+ Celsius? Or have I got that wrong?
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Old 3rd November 2018, 03:29 PM   #88
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Here is what all of you don't get.

Storms have nothing whatsoever to do with convection, dry layer capping, or latent heat.

Storms are always the result of vortice activity, usually toward the top of the troposphere. That is all storms, including hurricanes.

Meteorologists have a taboo about discussing their model of storms. This is because their theory is so bad that any discussion will reveal their failure to figure out storms.

Vortices emerge on moist/dry wind shear boundaries, the most prominent of which is the tropopause.

Meteorologists had zero chance of figuring out storms because to understand storms you need to understand the origins of vortices and to understand the origins of vortices you need to have an in depth understanding of the anomalies of water.

The reason water is involved with storms has nothing whatsoever to do with it magically turning to steam at ambient temperatures. (This is the most obvious clue. You just about have to be a retxxx to miss it.)

The reason water is involved with storms is because of the surface tension of H2O which is maximized on windshear boundaries to produce a hydrophobic plasma that is the basis of vortices.

Another reason meteorologists had no chance to figure out storms is because until somebody--myself--came along that was smart enough to solve the puzzle of H2O anomalies there was no chance anybody would understand H2O surface tension well enough to understand the origin of vortices:

Search YouTube: mcginn pauling's omission

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes

Well, I don't believe you.
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Old 3rd November 2018, 03:39 PM   #89
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Originally Posted by Dabop View Post
He's offering a $100000 prize for anyone who can prove him wrong
U.S.?
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Old 3rd November 2018, 04:13 PM   #90
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Originally Posted by BStrong View Post
U.S.?
Who cares? I'll take NZ, Aus, Can. He is obviously wrong!
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Old 3rd November 2018, 07:57 PM   #91
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Originally Posted by Lurch View Post
On the off chance that someone might not understand why moist air at given temperature is less dense than drier air at the same temperature...

The vast bulk of air comprises N2 (two N) and O2 (two O) molecules. The water molecule is H2O (two lightweight H and one O), which is hardly more than 1/2 the mass of O2. A given volume of gas at a given temperature and pressure contains the same number of particles (be they molecules, atoms or a combination.) The lighter water molecules therefore effectively displace the same number of the heavier molecules, thereby decreasing the density.

The higher the air temperature, the more water vapor which can be held before condensing out. And hence the larger the potential decrease in density.

The impact on density changes with humidity become of minor importance at rather cold temperatures, where the absolute humidity can only be very low.

It's worth pointing out as well that at given air pressure, density still varies inversely as the temperature. In a given volume, at higher temperature the molecules exert a higher pressure, thereby effectively compensating for their smaller number.

This is why, at given station air pressure, warmer air or moister air, and especially warmer *and* moister air, results in longer take-off rolls for aircraft.

Sorry for the basic lesson for those who've already long ago internalized such foundational physics.
Some of us is learning something new. That is the main reason I read these treads. Thanks!
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Old 4th November 2018, 12:01 AM   #92
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Originally Posted by hgus View Post
Some of us is learning something new. That is the main reason I read these treads. Thanks!
Just my words. In the absence of the good old-fashioned woo-woos, we have got the science kooks, and there is a lot to learn from the real scientists and engineers that reply to their theories.
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Old 4th November 2018, 03:39 AM   #93
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Originally Posted by Dabop View Post
He's offering a $100000 prize for anyone who can prove him wrong
Well, till he makes a falsifiable claim, his money is safe.

Hans
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Old 4th November 2018, 03:46 AM   #94
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
LOL. You obviously haven't thought this through. If there is zero moisture in the air then what you are saying is true. But reality is more complex than that Skippy. And warmer air is more of a magnet for moisture than is colder air.

Reality is complex. Humans are simple and gullible.

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Well, you might want to cut down in the snide remarks, at least till you know what you are talking about.

First of all, as Lurch has so nicely explained, moist air is less dense than dry air, simply because water vapor is less dense than air. However, the main difference comes because when air gets hot, it will of course expand, becoming less dense. Therefore, regardless of humidity, warm air will rise if surrounded by colder air.

And here you have the first stage in the formation of everything from summer clouds to hurricanes. .... Would you like me to explain the rest of the process?

Hans
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Old 4th November 2018, 05:41 AM   #95
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Originally Posted by Dabop View Post
He's offering a $100000 prize for anyone who can prove him wrong
Hello James, is that correct? A quick search of your WordPress site didn’t turn this up. $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars) to prove your claims wrong?
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Old 4th November 2018, 02:17 PM   #96
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Originally Posted by BStrong View Post
Originally Posted by Dabop View Post
He's offering a $100000 prize for anyone who can prove him wrong
U.S.?
As long it's not Zimbabwean.
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Old 4th November 2018, 04:40 PM   #97
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Are You skeptical of meteorology's convection model of storm theory? ....
No. The reason being that this is well tested physics applied to Earth's atmosphere that works well in describing storms. This is a tropical cyclone. This is a tornado.

There are certainly puzzles. That does not make the models of storms into pseudoscience
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Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method.[1][Note 1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; and absence of systematic practices when developing theories, and continued adherence long after they have been experimentally discredited. The term pseudoscience is considered pejorative[4] because it suggests something is being presented as science inaccurately or even deceptively. Those described as practicing or advocating pseudoscience often dispute the characterization.[2]
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Old 4th November 2018, 04:52 PM   #98
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Do you see a plume of moist air coming off of an evaporating pot of water?
Real world science is not restricted to eyesight, jimmcginn.
Moist air from a evaporating pot of water is in general invisible to eyesight. A bit of common sense says that this is happening. The pot of water is evaporating. By definition that is water going from a liquid phase to a gas phase. There is air above the pot. Air + water as a gas = moist air.
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Old 4th November 2018, 05:00 PM   #99
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Here is what all of you don't get. ...
We get that unsupported assertions and accusations says nothing about weather and is not any kind of science, jimmcginn.

We understand that YouTube is full of crank videos and are skeptical about citations to it. The obvious exception are the mainstream science video channels.

ETA: A 40 minute video with the title "Pauling's Omission: The Original Sin of the Natural Sciences" and no description does not inspire confidence that it contains valid science. Presumably that is Linus Pauling who was an eminent biochemist and Noble Prize winner. Biochemistry and his specialist field of quantum chemistry is not meteorology. The ADS Database has 359 abstracts for him, 3 for 'Linus Pauling surface', and none for 'Linus Pauling tension'.

The video up to where things get really wrong.
  • The video starts with a fantasy that the surface tension of water has something to do with tornadoes - tornadoes are not made of liquid water!
  • Ignorance of "we just do not understand H2O".
    We understand a lot about water, e.g. hydrogen bonding, the origin of surface tension.
  • Mostly ignores the scientific literature and textbooks and cherry picks a journalist, Philip Ball, who is a prominent science writer with 9 selected articles on water.
  • Plays a YouTube video abut water with textbook physics and states it has absurd claims. If he bothered to actually learn abut water from textbooks, he would know about why it has high heat capacity, high boiling point and surface tension (essentially the hydrogen bonds mentioned in that video!).
  • Incredibility about "70 anomalies", i.e. properties of water, that are not found in other common molecules.
  • Asymmetry of the H and O atoms due to H2O being a polar dipole.
    Simplistic "electric gradient" and "stretching of electron clouds" stuff.
  • Symmetry of O2, methane.
  • 10:20 may be the introduction of a fantasy of turning H2O into a non-polar molecule.
  • 10:45 and we get to hydrogen bonding and his "Pauling omission" error.
    "Linus Pauling credits T. S. Moore and T. F. Winmill with the first mention of the hydrogen bond, in 1912"
    Scientists not knowing about his imagined things in videos and books is not an omission.
  • An imaginary "incidental symmetry" is introduced with cartoons about its results (magically removes the asymmetry that makes H2O polar).
    For example he thinks that a cartoon of 2 HF molecules side by side removes "electrical gradients".
    Hydrogen fluoride is a normally gas, not a solid ! Its molecules do not line up to allow imaginary calculation of electrical gradients. Solid HF fomes a zigzag structure due to hydrogen bonding!
So we have no physics. Just cartoons that do whatever he imagines things do which the physics says does not happen.

There is no "taboo" about discussing models. Meteorologists want to discuss their models. There is the scientific literature where meteorologists discuss their models. There are web sits where meteorologists discuss their models. There are TV documentaries where meteorologists discuss their models.

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Old 4th November 2018, 05:54 PM   #100
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Surreal. Even a moderately intelligent person realizes that it requires a huge leap of faith to think that warm air rising is evidence that the same phenomena powers storms.

How can you call yourself a skeptic? (Or, possibly, you don't?)

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
Warm air and a low pressure system will usually do it. Unstable air mass combined with thunderstorm activity is the basic formula. We don't get many tornadoes where I live but we do get them, and it's never on a sunny day.

More to the point, the science of tornadoes is on-going, this is NOAA's latest:

https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/projects/vortex2/

It you have something to contribute then go through regular channels.
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Old 5th November 2018, 11:39 AM   #101
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
But reality is more complex than that Skippy.

Not just that Skippy, but pretty much all Skippy is less complex than Reality.
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Old 5th November 2018, 11:54 AM   #102
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I wonder when Jim realised that we were unlikely to provide fertile ground for his makie-uppy bollocks. Presumably he's instead spreading this guff somewhere where he found the inhabitants to be further up the gullibility index.

Love the complexity graph, carlitos!!
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Old 5th November 2018, 12:16 PM   #103
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Reality is complex. Humans are simple and gullible.
And condescending, apparently.

Do you really believe that you understand climate better than climate scientists? I guess you've fooled yourself, then.
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Old 5th November 2018, 02:09 PM   #104
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The Weather Wizard is behind it all, with some help from Gorilla Grond and Captian Boomerang.
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Old 5th November 2018, 02:46 PM   #105
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Surreal. Even a moderately intelligent person realizes that it requires a huge leap of faith to think that warm air rising is evidence that the same phenomena powers storms.

How can you call yourself a skeptic? (Or, possibly, you don't?)

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
No, not a leap of faith, but a pretty good understand of thermodynamics, physics, and a tad bit of respect for water as the very cool substance that it is.

It sounds like instead of having respect for water and all those who have studied it for generations, you assume that it is magical and only you can understand it.

If that is right, I look forward to you laying our some falsifiable claims. Because I really like water, even if I'm not much of a scientist.

ETA: Thanks to Lurch for the refresher at the molecular level!
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Old 5th November 2018, 03:10 PM   #106
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Damned Weathermen. Used to be all they did was bombings, jailbreaks, and riots
now they won't tell us how the weather really works.
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Old 5th November 2018, 07:49 PM   #107
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Found this Jan 13, 2017 thread by a "James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes" on the crank Thunderbolts forum.

Thunderbolts are a bunch of rather deluded followers of Immanuel Velikovsky. Posting so-called science on their forum is an automatic failure.

The thread looks like some cut/pastes of his web site or book . If so they are incoherent fantasies.
  • A "Plasma" post which has no real plasma in at all. Reveals that he has had a fantasy that tornadoes are like physical hoses, not air, since he was 10! So he picks an imaginary "plasma".
  • "A Surface Tension on Steroids" post which is mostly a fantasy about tornadoes, moist air, micro droplets and that gaseous H2O has surface tension. Some "taboo" delusions. Learning from TV!
  • A "Hydrogen Bonds" with fantasies on non-Newtonian fluids, irrelevant starch between water molecules, and breaking hydrogen bonds "neutralizing" other H bonds. More "One TV show stands out in my memory" ignorance.
  • "Zeroing of Polarity" fantasies.
    With "a paranoia abysmal ignorance induced rant" about the scientific method and academia.
  • "Conservation of Energy" fantasies that starts with deep ignorance: "Of course this is just ridiculousness".
    This is the well tested conservation of energy.
    However the section is actually a display of incredibility and an inability to understand how water freezes, etc.
An astonishing lack of mathematics and real physics.

There is also a 1 post "International Skeptics Fail to Dispute "Paulings Omission" (" thread which is extremely wrong. We have disputed his fantasies. There is no "Paulings Omission". Pauling credited the first mention of hydrogen bonds to other authors.
The best that can be said about his fact less rant is that he is honest enough to quote a post in full even if he cannot write an actual link back to here..
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Old 5th November 2018, 08:00 PM   #108
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Things get worse for the credibility of "James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes" with this ignorant page
Quote:
I am an atmospheric scientist. Climate change is about money, not facts. This is why climate scientists won’t debate. This is a tactic they learned from meteorologists:
A scientist is someone who has studied science and publishes about science in peer-reviewed journals. That is not him.
Climate change is an observed fact.
Climate scientists do debate. He is unaware that scientific journals exist, can be read and that climate scientists have been debating the causes of the current global warming for decades (since the 1970's?) in those journals. It is the evidence that has formed the current ~97% consensus that we are the main cause of global warming.
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Old 6th November 2018, 12:02 AM   #109
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Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
Found this Jan 13, 2017 thread by a "James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes" on the crank Thunderbolts forum.

Thunderbolts are a bunch of rather deluded followers of Immanuel Velikovsky............
Velikovsky?! Surely not............

I read World's in Collision when I was about 12. Even at that age and with only the school's Encyclopedia Brittanica as reference, I quickly worked out that he was making stuff up. This is the idiocracy in action, isn't it.

Whoever predicted that this chew toy wouldn't last long seems to have got it about right.
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Old 6th November 2018, 12:06 AM   #110
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Originally Posted by Reality Check View Post
Things get worse for the credibility of "James McGinn ..........i-am-an-atmospheric-scientist........
He cannot defend this lie, and didn't even try earlier in this thread. He is not a scientist. He has no scientific qualifications, nor scientific publishings.
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Old 6th November 2018, 09:29 AM   #111
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I wasn't really interested in his claims about tornadoes. Just way too far-fetched and groundless to be interesting, even from a "what bad intuition led to this strange model?" standpoint. (When I posted my first reply, I decided not to snark instead, but I did compose the appropriately snarky post in my mind: basically, "your tornado model is incomplete because you've left out air elementals, phlogiston, and Thor.")

But I do wish he'd tried to answer the simple question about where the water goes when water or something wet dries at room temperature. That's where the departure from reality appears to begin. Does he deny that the phenomenon, familiar to everyone and amply covered in elementary school science classes, actually occurs? Or does he have some theory about how water droplets spontaneously form and detach from a water-air surface? (And if so, what prevents those droplets from spontaneously further subdividing, ultimately with the same results as evaporation?) Or does he think the water just vanishes from existence?

A related question, does he understand that solids can dissolve in liquids, at temperatures far below the melting point of the solid? Is the notion of liquids dissolving in gases at temperatures far below the boiling point of the liquid that much harder to credit?

We'll never know; all we seem to get in reply to such questions is tap dancing and insults.
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Old 6th November 2018, 10:20 AM   #112
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Originally Posted by fagin View Post
I'll see your pot and raise you a kettle lake.

https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/syst...jpg?1522312841
Our station got called out for a wooden fence on fire one humid summer morning. The engine company rolled up to see the water “steaming” off the wet wood, and they pointed this out to the caller, but she continued to insist it was smoke and the fence was actually burning.
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Old 6th November 2018, 10:51 AM   #113
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
all we seem to get in reply to such questions is tap dancing and insults.
Small off-topic tangent.
Tap dancing is important!
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Old 6th November 2018, 01:21 PM   #114
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It is interesting to me that these kinds of thread can continue so long, launched by an absolutely absurd premise in the OP. At one level I would have thought that one rebuttal post would have been enough to just establish the truth for any readers and leave it at that. And let's face it, typically no number of rebuttals, references to facts, links to information sources, etc. will convince the "alternative science/science conspiracy" believers that they are wrong - look at the other threads in this Forum of this nature.

But I will acknowledge that I understand the need to want to fully rebut even absurdities, and the many rebuttals often provide interesting information for the readers, such as myself. So carry on, even though I would say that the premise in the OP has been well and truly slaughtered many times down thread of it.

Last edited by Giordano; 6th November 2018 at 01:22 PM.
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Old 6th November 2018, 01:32 PM   #115
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
I wasn't really interested in his claims about tornadoes. Just way too far-fetched and groundless to be interesting, even from a "what bad intuition led to this strange model?" standpoint. (When I posted my first reply, I decided not to snark instead, but I did compose the appropriately snarky post in my mind: basically, "your tornado model is incomplete because you've left out air elementals, phlogiston, and Thor.")

But I do wish he'd tried to answer the simple question about where the water goes when water or something wet dries at room temperature. That's where the departure from reality appears to begin. Does he deny that the phenomenon, familiar to everyone and amply covered in elementary school science classes, actually occurs? Or does he have some theory about how water droplets spontaneously form and detach from a water-air surface? (And if so, what prevents those droplets from spontaneously further subdividing, ultimately with the same results as evaporation?) Or does he think the water just vanishes from existence?

A related question, does he understand that solids can dissolve in liquids, at temperatures far below the melting point of the solid? Is the notion of liquids dissolving in gases at temperatures far below the boiling point of the liquid that much harder to credit?

We'll never know; all we seem to get in reply to such questions is tap dancing and insults.
After reading his claims elsewhere (and having a bit of fun with posts that are now AAH), I was left with one question: "Just how much current physics and chemistry has to be wrong for him to be right?"
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Old 6th November 2018, 01:39 PM   #116
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Originally Posted by Kid Eager View Post
After reading his claims elsewhere (and having a bit of fun with posts that are now AAH), I was left with one question: "Just how much current physics and chemistry has to be wrong for him to be right?"
Now that you have accepted that there is a conspiracy, now we just need to talk about how big it is!

/s
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Old 6th November 2018, 03:12 PM   #117
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Originally Posted by Myriad View Post
But I do wish he'd tried to answer the simple question about where the water goes when water or something wet dries at room temperature. That's where the departure from reality appears to begin. Does he deny that the phenomenon, familiar to everyone and amply covered in elementary school science classes, actually occurs? Or does he have some theory about how water droplets spontaneously form and detach from a water-air surface? (And if so, what prevents those droplets from spontaneously further subdividing, ultimately with the same results as evaporation?) Or does he think the water just vanishes from existence?

Never mind that, how about “why the sea is boiling hot?”
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Old 6th November 2018, 03:30 PM   #118
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Originally Posted by Giordano View Post
It is interesting to me that these kinds of thread can continue so long, launched by an absolutely absurd premise in the OP. At one level I would have thought that one rebuttal post would have been enough to just establish the truth for any readers and leave it at that. And let's face it, typically no number of rebuttals, references to facts, links to information sources, etc. will convince the "alternative science/science conspiracy" believers that they are wrong - look at the other threads in this Forum of this nature.

But I will acknowledge that I understand the need to want to fully rebut even absurdities, and the many rebuttals often provide interesting information for the readers, such as myself. So carry on, even though I would say that the premise in the OP has been well and truly slaughtered many times down thread of it.
Tough. The fact is that an absurd premise will provoke a reaction from the rational. As it should. At this point all we have is a couple of seagull posts testing the waters here. Finding them not to taste, seagull flys away.
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Old 6th November 2018, 05:55 PM   #119
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Originally Posted by abaddon View Post
Tough. The fact is that an absurd premise will provoke a reaction from the rational. As it should. At this point all we have is a couple of seagull posts testing the waters here. Finding them not to taste, seagull flys away.
I didn't not think that my post overall deserved "tough." My post only indicated that I found the length of these threads surprising, but then I explained how I did have an understanding of the motivation and purpose of the posters.

If it helps people understand my view: if the participants are enjoying themselves then of course my "surprise" is meaningless and the participants should continue to do just what they are finding useful and fun. And of course even that statement may be unwelcome for that very reason: my opinion is of no real legitimacy or meaning for them.

So, I will continue to read this thread from time to time but not offer any further comments.
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Old 8th November 2018, 06:29 AM   #120
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Originally Posted by jimmcginn View Post
Are You skeptical of meteorology's convection model of storm theory?

Yes, No?

If yes how did you come to be skeptical? Did you notice something that didn't make sense?

If No why not? Have you studied the topic? College? Individually?

What parts of it do you think are perfectly reasonable/sound and what parts do you feel unsure about?

Here are some subtopics that you might be able to get you teeth into:

Do you believe warm, moist air is lighter than cool, dry air?

Do you believe dry layers act as a cap to upwelling of lighter, moist air?

Do you believe release of latent heat from water describes the origins of the cold gusty winds of storms?

Are meteorologists being honest with us that they have actually measured, tested this theory or do you think they are pretending to understand and relying on the general confusion of the populace to skirt the issues?

Do you think they have a good understanding of severe weather. For example, did you know that tornadoes are considered by many to be a mystery. Are they doing all they could do to solve this mystery or are they just pretending to do all they can?

James McGinn / Solving Tornadoes
How about you cut to the chase, drop the JAQ-ing off act and tell us what you claim is responsible. Are diving down some rabbit hole involving 'them' that meterologists are all in on? Pity no-one let me in on the act when I was teaching it.

Warm moist air rises. You can watch it happen when you fill a bath, or boil a kettle.

We may not have a perfect model of the weather, but I'll wager it's a lot better than yours.
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