Krishnan's weblog – an assortment of things. A scribble pad. A hybrid microblog. Mostly bread crumbs of an internet journey.
People are not always mindful of the cause. They prefer to stay focussed on what they desire. At least partly, that is the problem with the scientific method. Science is focussed on explanation of effects. The causes are only hypothesized.
Today, a kid cried for candy. The kid eventually obtained candy, but it seldom realizes the full story behind it. Mama gave me candy is not the full story. How did mama get the candy? Who made candy? Where? How did candy get there? If a child eating candy can be such a complex process, imagine the list of possibilities in a complex planet.
You may desire something, but to obtain what you desire you have to pursue a path of acquisition. For people who only desire something and dont understand what it takes to make it happen, the desire almost always turns to disappointment.
But to a learner, the pursuit of cause should not be driven by desire.
There are billions of people on this planet. They do billions of things every instant. There are zillions of things happening in this planet every instant.
These are caused by something and they in turn cause something. Understanding a single planet completely, is technically a zillion variable problem.
Understanding the universe may be even more complex.
But, of course, no human attempts to understand or remember everything. Our brains are so limited by capacity or at least we haven’t still exploited the full working capacity of the human brain because humans live in circles of understanding. An artist understands arts and a scientist understands science. Humans dont see past their limited circle of knowledge. And this circle of knowledge is as big as we make it by our effort.
Even knowing more within a circle of knowledge is a challenge to humans, knowing what to know is a bigger challenge.
How much can a human brain learn?
How big is the truth?
We know, at least generically, what causes the waves in the ocean. But do we know enough to understand ocean waves?
Is the knowledge of the effect sufficient to predict the cause or even is the knowledge of the cause sufficient to predict the effect ?
Is there always a cause? I can’t but help wonder.
In April, KLM had an interesting exclusive in-flight documentary on global warming which I happened to watch.
The documentary goes on to present that man-made CO2 emissions do not cause global warming. It states that earth’s present temperature increase is driven by the sun and not by human activity. A few points presented in the documentary are:
1. CO2 is not the major green house gas. Its concentration change has been too small to explain such major temperature differences. Oceans can emit 180 billion tons of CO2 tonnes of CO2 where as human activity emits only about 7 billion tons. It is argued that water vapour and methane are bigger influences than CO2.
2. Earth has seen decades of temperatures which were significantly higher and and also significantly lower. But the ice did not ever vanish completely.
3. Changing of the size of the polar ice caps is explained to be a normal thing which happens routinely with temperature even between summer and winter.
4. Earth’s temperature is more closely related to solar activity and is known to have had a very good co-relation with it for centuries.
5. Change in CO2 concentration in the polar ice caps is an effect of change of earth’s temperature and it has a 800 year lag. This 800 year year lag is the time required for the temperature of the oceans to change to release or absorb CO2.
6. Earth’s temperature continued to drop from 1940 to 1970 when the economic activity boomed. The present upward trend lasts from only 1970.
7. Yet another observation was that the change in temperature profiles of the earth’s atmospheric layers did not seem to support increased green-house activity.
8. The model used to predict the global climate has several hundreds of assumptions on which not all experts seem to be in agreement. Clearly, a model can only be as good as the assumptions that go up to make it.
The documentary goes on to state that the IPCC report is driven by considerations that are non-scientific and serves to retain several jobs which were created by the billions of dollars funded to study this.
Those who are closely following the global warming issue must be already aware that there is a clear second opinion on the need to limit the emissions from developing countries in order to reduce global warming.
One can’t help but wonder if the entire global warming tale is fabricated by an energy thirsty group of nations who are using misleading pointers to prevent the developing nations from creating a stronger demand for energy.
That documentary was an eye-opener to me.
The guardian reports that scientists have now been able to achieve artificial synthesis of protiens. Mind blowing, indeed.
The article is at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/06/2
Well, Synthetic biology?
I’ve never even heard of it despite being an engineer for over a decade.
I don’t know how many doors this would open though.
One man cannot cause global warming. The globe is warmer now because over several decades , its people have continued to do things that have consumed energy. Cutting down unnecessary energy consumption is the first step to slow down the process. Here is a quick check list that applies in the Indian scenario.
Please print this and paste this in a place so that it hits the eye often.
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJ4VBq4n3U]
Tags: Sustainability
I’m surprised by the claim that oil is not a fossil fuel.
Another webpage states that “oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it appear to have an organic origin dating back to the dinosaurs.”
Can this be true? People please tell me.
DJ Stelios’ blog always interests me.
I found this truly amazing science video, entirely animated, and pretty much mind blowing. A must watch for every guy interested in science and its capabilities.
Watch the video here, you’ll need flash player 8 to view this.
Learning Daily is a personal blog that is just as random as my thoughts. The navigation bar at the top and the search box may be the only things that will help you find something.
My present interests lie in sustainability, peak oil, debian, Web after 2.0, creativity and epistemology. I learn daily. I learn about everything under the sun and even those beyond it. I am a perpetual student whose believes that wisdom is the real reward for learning.