Puzzling Electric Hurricanes

SpaceAdmiral writes "Hurricanes seldom have lightning because they primarily consist of horizontal winds (as opposed to vertical winds). However, three of the biggest storms of 2005 (Rita, Katrina, and Emily) had plenty of lightning and NASA has an interesting write-up about it." Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes."

Comments

Modesty and Knowledge.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bottom line is "we still have a lot to learn about hurricanes.""

Bottom line: we have a lot to learn about a great deal.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Krach42]

Which wouldn't be noteworthy, except for the numerous other factions that make no such admission, ever.

http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/13-12.htm

I'd be quite careful with depicting religious belief as automatically and totally dictating truth.

Any system of control will naturally claim to have all the answers, and some of the general pulic tends to have a misunderstanding that science has all the answers.

In fact, science could be just as usable as a forced authoritarian doctrine to control a people as any religion. The mere fact that it hasn't been yet so abused is not indicative of a fundamental nature of science.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Your theology is sophisticated and admirable; unfortunately, it's also not typical of the people who use religion as a blunt instrument to attack science -- and like it or not, there are a lot of those people, and they have significant political power.

Science could indeed be used as a doctrine of control, but if it were, it would of necessity be warped so far that it would no longer be "science" by any reasonable definition of the word. In fact, there are historical examples: Lysenkoism and Intelligent Design spring immediately to mind, and there are probably others. In order to function, um, scientifically, science requires freedom of both thought and action.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Blindly asserting that anti-scientists must dictate claims of universal, absolute, and revealed truth.

Except I didn't say that; please notice the use of the phrase "tend to follow" in my original post.

In the same vein, Christianity in itself does not dictates absolute truth. There are a variety of Christianities out there, and fundamentally they agree on just a few points. There is a God, he had a son named Jesus who died to release us from our sins, and much of our most accepted foundations of faith are recorded in the Bible.

Just because some dictate authority from this position does not mean that all of them do.

Very true, and you'll notice that I never specified Christianity as the ideology in question. Again, please read what I actually wrote.

But I'm not trying to play coy here; obviously there are varieties of Christianity which do insist on their interpretation of the Bible as absolute truth, and I don't think it's a coincidence that people who believe this way tend to be profoundly anti-scientific. They caricature scientists as authoritarian because that's the way they think themselves; they honestly can't understand people who genuinely do not think the way they do. In their worldview, everyone has some kind of absolute faith, and if it's not God, it must be Science. Those are the only people I'm talking about here; unfortunately, as I said in my reply to another one of your posts, there are a lot of them.

Nor do I claim that Christians are the only ones who exhibit this behavior. Luddite hyper-environmentalists whose version of Absolute Truth is "The Environment" are just as bad; so are Randians who reject any government restrictions on industry even when industrial behavior presents a clear and present danger. Also, as I noted in my reply to your other post, Soviet Communism tended to rewrite science when it conflicted with their interpretation of Marx's Holy Writ -- I get the impression Chinese Communism is starting to grow out of this, but it's got a way to go yet.

In short, the problem isn't the ideology; it's the ideologues. The great advantage of science in relation to all the examples I mentioned above is that it's not an ideology at all, and thus ideologues -- the sort of people who need Something to believe in as The Truth, whatever that Something may be -- tend not to be attracted to it in the first place.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Eli Gottlieb]

If eugenics, the use of IQs to decide destinies, psychiatry, and endless studies on "what's good for you" aren't an abuse of science to control people, than what is?

I would be extremely suspicious when "science" makes any pronouncements related to human life or nature that call for a change in public policy. If it just cures a disease, then by all means do it, but if it creates diseases to cure it's another story.

Re:Modesty and Knowledge.

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Lest someone think you're referring to mainstream Christianity (as opposed to some radical groups):

"For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." -1 Corinthians 13:9-12.

Or verses 9-10 according to Eugene Peterson's version: "We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled."

"You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know." Job 42:3

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." -Psalm 139:6

"The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge; the ears of the wise seek it out." -Proverbs 18:15. This implies that these people don't already have perfect knowledge!

Christianity does not require nor imply knowledge of anything except that Jesus is Lord.

Re:Pardon my Ignorance

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo!

This is an important point that is sometimes forgotten when we study hurricanes. It's always amusing to hear news forcasters say that a certain hurricane is the most violent in 100 years or that it had some characteristic never seen before. How do they know? How do we know if Wilma was bigger than the Galveston hurricane when the Galveston hurricane was out to sea? Heck, how do we even know that the category system of hurricanes is related to energy? Katrina as a Cat 3 made Andrew as a Cat 4 look small. And Tropical Cyclone Tracy--a strong Cat 5--was barely 50 miles across. Then there is Tropical Cyclone Tip that was 1500 miles across. For some reason this seems to me to be like measuring the speed of a car by RPMs of the wheels without taking into account the circumference of the wheels--occasionally a tiny car with 3" tires looks likes its going Mach 3.

Re:Lightning? Not in Katrina

[Rei]

That's because your eyes don't see electromagnetic radiation and you weren't in all parts of the storm during all parts of its lifecycle.

Eugenics...

[Belial6]

The household dog, more than anything else shows that eugenics does work, and that we definitly cannot trust humans to perform it on our species.