Just because it has been modded up, I'd like to respond to the troll: on what basis exactly would you exclude funding for this research? Obviousness? Clearly not, because no one had any idea what a modulating magnetic field would do to the inner workings of the brain. Uselessness? Can't see how you arrived at that conclusion, considering that it indicates a way to manipulate how the brain processes inputs, which has a ton of potential application.
No, the only reason that this is research unworthy of funding is that it doesn't immediately yield a product, which is the lamest, most short-sighted reason for which to deny a grant request.
Stalingrad battle ended in Feb 1943, which was before the Allied Invasion of Italy in Sept of 43. It was the turning point of the European theater.
Yes, it is revisionism to argue that the US had nothing to do with the victory of the Allies in WW2. However, it is revisionism of an equal scale to argue that the Eastern Front wasn't the beginning of the End for the Germans, and that the Russians didn't do the bulk of the work to stop the Germans. By the time the US landed in Europe - heck, by the time they landed in North Africa, the bulk of the work had been done, and what was left was mopping up operations.
Could Russia have won the War by itself? Possible, though not knowable. Could the US have won the War by itself? Unlikely, though not knowable. But Russia certainly was the place where Germany was stopped.
As an example, ME2 has an extra character and weapon available for those who get the game new. The extra character a fairly minor thing, doesn't impact the game much and can be safely ignored. The extra weapons though are completely overpowered.
Technically speaking, there's nothing to stop EA from expanding what the code unlocks. Expect that in the future, games will rely more and more on the use of the code to be actually playable. Specifically online MP will most likely go out the window.
I wonder if Gamestop will buy online codes in bulk, and give people discounts on the codes when they buy the used game? In essence, it's easy to use the codes to completely stop the individual trading of games, but still allow those corporations to participate who pay to play the game.
Just out of curiosity - any idea how much more evaporation it would take to increase the global albedo by a certain percentage? By my calculation, we don't have the energy resources for that... but those were just back of the envelope type calculations with a whole lot of assumptions.
The snarkiness is required. Let's assume we want to increase average ocean evaporation by 1%: about 4000 km^3, and that evaporation means putting it at 1000 meters of altitude. That will require 4*10^12kg*1000m*10m/sec^2= 4*10^16 Joules, or about 1.1 *10^10 MWatt hours.... or the energy put out by about 2000 600MWatt nuclear reactors for an entire year. Yeah, I'd really have to see how much a certain amount of water vapor is going to change the albedo effect before deciding on whether this is going to be useful. In theory, it works, in practice... I don't know about this. Most of that energy would come from coal-plants, and that's just not gonna be a net positive.
Water vapor concentration depends directly on the temperature of the air, and has a life cycle of about 2 weeks. In other words, it is not part of a positive feedback loop. If you pump too much into the air, it just rains out. Once the sun goes down, water vapor condensates out.
You can make Global Warming worse by adding water vapor to the air, but if enough sunlight gets reflected back out through cloud formation, it's a good deal. The cost of putting enough water into the air though.... is a different matter. Not sure if that's a cost-effective way of going about it.
Nonsense. It was started because without a politics section, people would routinely highjack completely random stories and turn them into massive political flamewars.
Granted, it still does happen (see anything about Global Warming), but at least now, when an election rolls around, we don't have to deal with all stories being turned into political battlefields.
Not sure if you'll still see this, but... I consider this a pretty important point.
Again, I point to the tobacco-company researchers who will happily produce plenty of "scientific" evidence that smoking is perfectly safe, cures cancer, makes you live longer, gives you a better erection, or whatever. Do you doubt these claims?
I don't doubt them, I ignore them. Why? For two reasons: * I'm not a professional, and it'll be difficult for me to make a serious critique of the study. Specifically, I won't be able to replicate it. I assume that if there are issues with it, it'll be in subtle areas like selective use of data, etc. * A single contrarian study never means anything. If there are multiple studies coming from different groups I'll start to pay attention. Not before.
But notice the difference - I don't say that they're wrong because of who they are, I merely do not devote time to studying their claims. I leave that to the peer process - which, as you pointed out, is the only way that we have in science of building trust in scientists.
You could argue that the peer review system has conclusively shown that studies funded by Tobacco companies regularly have significant flaws in their data collection or analysis, and that those flaws regularly exculpate Tobacco companies from any blame. However, that is an event that comes after the peer review process has taken place, and should not ever happen before. Because, again, the only consequence of that type of analysis is that every study is flawed: everyone gets their money from somewhere, and everyone has personal biases.
For my first three years as a blogger I posted under my alter-ego, Mr. Pink Eyes, but now I have come out of the closet (so to speak) and post under my real name.
Nice. He actually managed to get quite a few hits from that link from slashdot. I can't believe that an article that only has two links to radical right-wing blogs managed to get on the front page of Slashdot. I have the nagging suspicion I know how the next few elections are going to turn out...
So I point out a few animals that are still around and suddenly it's not good enough?
No, what everyone is saying is that your examples are completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether the theory of evolution explains the facts of evolution.
It's true, you really don't understand evolution. And the reason that everyone stops there is because it's clear that you have no interest in learning what evolution is.
Exactly. In the context that the word was used, it meant something like the horse, which has a very distinct and well-known evolutionary pattern. If you find a modern horse buried with T-Rex, it's either a hoax,or proof that evolution isn't the only thing around.
You still haven't addressed how someone proves their trustworthiness when the only thing that matters - their research - is being called into question based on their trustworthiness. How do you break that cycle?
As for people writing on the mating habits of stegosauruses - you missed the big dust-up in archaeology in the 70s when the two biggest scientists accused each other of theft, lies and scientific fabrication. Everyone has something to lose - which makes that criterion pretty useless.
Except - how do you disprove that kind of concern? Not to mention that this is the epitome of presuming guilt.
The only time that motivation and pay-check comes into play is when you want to figure out how much time YOU want to spend investigating a claim. If a scientist I respect says something I disagree with, I'll take another look at it. If someone from the tobacco industry says that smoking cures throat cancer, I'll wait for someone else to make the same claim before wasting my time on it.
The problem is that at some point you HAVE to trust SOMEBODY. It is impossible to live an effective and efficient life will distrusting everybody.
Do you distrust your doctor when he prescribes you medication? Do you distrust your plumber when he installs piping? Do you distrust Google Finance when it says that IBM has hit a stock price of $100?
The idea that people have to prove their trustworthiness before anyone should listen to them is ludicrous. Note that that is different from asking everyone to listen to them.
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
Correct. Specifically, the global average is going up over at least annual periods, and generally decadal periods.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Incorrect. How warm it has been in the past is irrelevant to whether the earth is getting warmer right now. That's only a data collection issue, not a theory issue.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
Not quite. The concern is that the warming will continue past the point where short-term feedback mechanisms can correct it - things like seasonal rainfalls, ocean currents, etc. Politicians specifically are only marginally interested in whether there's a 50000 year cycle that can correct the current temperature increase.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
Define catastrophic. Was Katrina catastrophic? Seems like it was. And yet, not much actually happened. Is general population migration catastrophic? Is the wholesale change of a populations way of life catastrophic? To some, it is. Generally, it is to the people affected by it.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
Sort of. I'd put it as "human activity has a significant impact on warming".
Right now, I'm looking at two largely correct corollaries, one irrelevant one, one that depends on where you are located, and one that is somewhat misleading. There's plenty of evidence for corollary one, models that predict the third one, regions that demonstrate the impact of localized changes in precipitation for the fourth one, and plenty of evidence for the fifth one.
Now to your questions.
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
The question is wrong, because as is it has no answer. The earth has no optimum temperature (unless you count the one that allows for rock to stabilize and not become an ionized plasma). What you want to know is what the optimum temperature range is for human habitation. As you can see by the current population distribution, it is quite wide, which could lead to the assumption that the optimum temperature range for human habitation is just as wide. That's incorrect. If you drop an Inuit into the Brazilian jungle, a Massai into the Midwest, or a Midwestern farmer into the Alps, they will die very quickly. See for example the pilgrims who first arrived in North America: they nearly died from starvation, even though the temperatures weren't that much different from what they were used to.
As a result, the answer to that question is: exactly the one that you have right now around you. Civilizations have adapted to work in their current environment. Change that only a bit, and the impact on the people can be devastating.
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
See above for why this question doesn't give you a useful answer.
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
Most decidedly. However, you don't want to go through the change again.
How, specifically, do we know this?
Historical records of both temperatures (inferred and directly recorded), and of historical records that chronicle the result of dramatic temperature changes.
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
It's a good question. In general, it is understood to be the yearly average of multiple points across the globe, preferably along all latitudes and longitudes. But yes, temperature measurements are difficult, and it requires a lot of work to make sure that datasets from one source can be used for comparison with other data sets.
I still want to hear staticians weigh in on the time period of data compared to the history of the earth. And some better assessment of the margins of error for the various sampling methods.
Start reading. This is a good start. Once you get through the few thousand pages of actual research, you'll have an idea of where to find the discussions by statisticians and the margins of errors of the various sampling methods.
Oh, wait. That's right. You don't want to hear a statistician talk about this stuff, you want to have someone answer you any and all questions you could have. Sorry, that's not how it works. People who deal with complex topics aren't too keen on spending hours explaining something only to be told "But you doctor your research just like Exxon, why should I believe you?"
oh, too late for that. I don't think that there is much to discuss about Climate Change right now. Most skeptics are skeptics out of principle, and there won't be much that'll make them change their minds. And same for the supporters of Climate Change.
I'm pretty sure that the only time that it'll get interesting again is when we'll again hit some record highs summer after summer. Should be coming up pretty soon - the sun is powering up again, and the next El Nino is around the corner as well.
Actually - you're a lot closer to getting it than I thought. Your example of cross-sectional waterflow doesn't work for a river, but it certainly makes it obvious how turbines can exhibit different capture rates, despite being in a system whose total energy has not changed.
Here's your second food for thought. Assume a water turbine with a cross section of 1 meter. How much energy does it capture in your first example? How much in your second? What percentage of the total energy in the system does it capture in each case?
The only questions left are whether you can see the forest for the trees, and whether you are interested in learning, or just in posturing.
Congratulations. You figured out that the total energy stays the same. But you still haven't figured out what height of the water is in the different situations, and what the flow speed is. Keep trying.
Let's say you have a river. That river has width A. How deep is the water in the river? How fast does the water flow? What's the total energy in the river? How much can be captured by a turbine of width B, where A >> B?
Let's say you narrow the river to a width of B at the point where the turbine is (and only at the point where the river is. What's the total energy in the river? How deep is the water at the turbine? How fast does the water flow at the turbine? How deep is the water after the turbine? How fast does the water flow after the turbine?
It's at this point that you should realize that your understanding of Physics is a caricature of the real world.
You can't make any more energy than is available by the basic fact that water is dropping in a gravitational field.
Damn, you're not even correct on this. The total energy available in all the oceans is a sum of tidal water movement and water movement based on thermal gradients.
But let's just work with tidal/gravitational energy here. Where you went completely wrong is to assume that each water molecule moves up and down in a linear fashion with only one force impacting it: gravity. Instead, there are two more forces acting on each molecule: forces transferred through momentum of surrounding molecules, and forces transferred through van der Waal's bonding. And suddenly, your little one-dimensional, single ball action becomes a mess of trillions of complex electro-static, dynamic and gravitational forces.
What all of this means: your forces are off by 3 orders of magnitude in the worst case scenario. In the more interesting places, it's much more than that.
Or, you can also just go with the people who built actual tidal energy generators, and are already getting their energy from tides - all at a price point that's competitive with oil.
And as with all numbers, the devil is in the detail.
Tide power is generated by water flowing through a turbine. As a result, what matters is the surface of the turbine times the apparent water speed. That gives you a volume over time, which in turn controls how fast the turbine spins. Considering that apparent water speed depends not only on the size of the tide, but the local ocean floor geometry, and the output of the turbines can vary wildly depending on where they're located.
Finally, you made a key mistake in your calculation: a tide turbine doesn't capture the up and down movement of the tide - it captures the horizontal flow of water as it flows from point A to point B. This means that your entire calculation is completely useless. It isn't captured twice a day, it is captured constantly with an oscillating efficiency. The energy captured is only marginally related to a mass of water falling the height of the tide - the falling is translated into horizontal speed, where g is completely overwhelmed by local geometry. And lets not even get into real and apparent water flow, turbine construction, efficiencies, etc...
Really, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said "I don't know how this works".
Wind farms are unlikely to stop the wind. Wind is a byproduct of temperature differentials, and as such, as long as the earth isn't exactly the same temperature everywhere all the time, there will be wind. Tidal farms, on the other hand, I don't know. Tides are due to the difference in gravitational fields at different points on the earth. As such, the tidal energy comes from the Sun's and the moon's gravitational field. Since neither the sun nor the moon are losing mass through the use of tide turbines, what has to change is the distance between the sun, moon and earth. Somehow, I think the time scales on which this becomes a problem are large enough that we'll have entirely different problems then.
The only real problem I can see with tidal turbines is that if they are large enough, they will restrict the flow of the tides, and tides will become less pronounced - which will have an immediate impact on any tidal areas. And since tidal areas and shallow bays are pretty much where the food chains for a lot of marine animals reside, this could be a real problem. But again, it would have to be something on the scale of putting turbines across the entire straight of Gibraltar, and reducing the flow to near zero. Unlikely to happen, but not impossible.
Except they can't pass that cost on to the consumer, because they're still competing in a highly fungible market. Exxon isn't having this problem, Shell isn't having this problem - it's just BP. Which means that if BP raises its prices, people will buy gas from companies that don't have to deal with a multi-billion dollar clean-up.
And if past Oil disasters are any indication, there are probably fines coming along as well. Along with bills related to government operations that had to deal with the spill.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because it has been modded up, I'd like to respond to the troll: on what basis exactly would you exclude funding for this research? Obviousness? Clearly not, because no one had any idea what a modulating magnetic field would do to the inner workings of the brain. Uselessness? Can't see how you arrived at that conclusion, considering that it indicates a way to manipulate how the brain processes inputs, which has a ton of potential application.
No, the only reason that this is research unworthy of funding is that it doesn't immediately yield a product, which is the lamest, most short-sighted reason for which to deny a grant request.
Stalingrad battle ended in Feb 1943, which was before the Allied Invasion of Italy in Sept of 43. It was the turning point of the European theater.
Yes, it is revisionism to argue that the US had nothing to do with the victory of the Allies in WW2. However, it is revisionism of an equal scale to argue that the Eastern Front wasn't the beginning of the End for the Germans, and that the Russians didn't do the bulk of the work to stop the Germans. By the time the US landed in Europe - heck, by the time they landed in North Africa, the bulk of the work had been done, and what was left was mopping up operations.
Could Russia have won the War by itself? Possible, though not knowable. Could the US have won the War by itself? Unlikely, though not knowable. But Russia certainly was the place where Germany was stopped.
As an example, ME2 has an extra character and weapon available for those who get the game new. The extra character a fairly minor thing, doesn't impact the game much and can be safely ignored. The extra weapons though are completely overpowered.
Technically speaking, there's nothing to stop EA from expanding what the code unlocks. Expect that in the future, games will rely more and more on the use of the code to be actually playable. Specifically online MP will most likely go out the window.
I wonder if Gamestop will buy online codes in bulk, and give people discounts on the codes when they buy the used game? In essence, it's easy to use the codes to completely stop the individual trading of games, but still allow those corporations to participate who pay to play the game.
Just out of curiosity - any idea how much more evaporation it would take to increase the global albedo by a certain percentage? By my calculation, we don't have the energy resources for that... but those were just back of the envelope type calculations with a whole lot of assumptions.
The snarkiness is required. Let's assume we want to increase average ocean evaporation by 1%: about 4000 km^3, and that evaporation means putting it at 1000 meters of altitude. That will require 4*10^12kg*1000m*10m/sec^2= 4*10^16 Joules, or about 1.1 *10^10 MWatt hours.... or the energy put out by about 2000 600MWatt nuclear reactors for an entire year. Yeah, I'd really have to see how much a certain amount of water vapor is going to change the albedo effect before deciding on whether this is going to be useful. In theory, it works, in practice... I don't know about this. Most of that energy would come from coal-plants, and that's just not gonna be a net positive.
Water vapor concentration depends directly on the temperature of the air, and has a life cycle of about 2 weeks. In other words, it is not part of a positive feedback loop. If you pump too much into the air, it just rains out. Once the sun goes down, water vapor condensates out.
You can make Global Warming worse by adding water vapor to the air, but if enough sunlight gets reflected back out through cloud formation, it's a good deal. The cost of putting enough water into the air though.... is a different matter. Not sure if that's a cost-effective way of going about it.
Nonsense. It was started because without a politics section, people would routinely highjack completely random stories and turn them into massive political flamewars.
Granted, it still does happen (see anything about Global Warming), but at least now, when an election rolls around, we don't have to deal with all stories being turned into political battlefields.
Not sure if you'll still see this, but... I consider this a pretty important point.
Again, I point to the tobacco-company researchers who will happily produce plenty of "scientific" evidence that smoking is perfectly safe, cures cancer, makes you live longer, gives you a better erection, or whatever. Do you doubt these claims?
I don't doubt them, I ignore them. Why? For two reasons:
* I'm not a professional, and it'll be difficult for me to make a serious critique of the study. Specifically, I won't be able to replicate it. I assume that if there are issues with it, it'll be in subtle areas like selective use of data, etc.
* A single contrarian study never means anything. If there are multiple studies coming from different groups I'll start to pay attention. Not before.
But notice the difference - I don't say that they're wrong because of who they are, I merely do not devote time to studying their claims. I leave that to the peer process - which, as you pointed out, is the only way that we have in science of building trust in scientists.
You could argue that the peer review system has conclusively shown that studies funded by Tobacco companies regularly have significant flaws in their data collection or analysis, and that those flaws regularly exculpate Tobacco companies from any blame. However, that is an event that comes after the peer review process has taken place, and should not ever happen before. Because, again, the only consequence of that type of analysis is that every study is flawed: everyone gets their money from somewhere, and everyone has personal biases.
For my first three years as a blogger I posted under my alter-ego, Mr. Pink Eyes, but now I have come out of the closet (so to speak) and post under my real name.
Nice. He actually managed to get quite a few hits from that link from slashdot. I can't believe that an article that only has two links to radical right-wing blogs managed to get on the front page of Slashdot. I have the nagging suspicion I know how the next few elections are going to turn out...
So I point out a few animals that are still around and suddenly it's not good enough?
No, what everyone is saying is that your examples are completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether the theory of evolution explains the facts of evolution.
It's true, you really don't understand evolution. And the reason that everyone stops there is because it's clear that you have no interest in learning what evolution is.
Exactly. In the context that the word was used, it meant something like the horse, which has a very distinct and well-known evolutionary pattern. If you find a modern horse buried with T-Rex, it's either a hoax,or proof that evolution isn't the only thing around.
You still haven't addressed how someone proves their trustworthiness when the only thing that matters - their research - is being called into question based on their trustworthiness. How do you break that cycle?
As for people writing on the mating habits of stegosauruses - you missed the big dust-up in archaeology in the 70s when the two biggest scientists accused each other of theft, lies and scientific fabrication. Everyone has something to lose - which makes that criterion pretty useless.
Those are not modern animals. And it's Geckos, not Gingkos.
You really don't understand evolution. Go read a book or something.
Except - how do you disprove that kind of concern? Not to mention that this is the epitome of presuming guilt.
The only time that motivation and pay-check comes into play is when you want to figure out how much time YOU want to spend investigating a claim. If a scientist I respect says something I disagree with, I'll take another look at it. If someone from the tobacco industry says that smoking cures throat cancer, I'll wait for someone else to make the same claim before wasting my time on it.
The problem is that at some point you HAVE to trust SOMEBODY. It is impossible to live an effective and efficient life will distrusting everybody.
Do you distrust your doctor when he prescribes you medication? Do you distrust your plumber when he installs piping? Do you distrust Google Finance when it says that IBM has hit a stock price of $100?
The idea that people have to prove their trustworthiness before anyone should listen to them is ludicrous. Note that that is different from asking everyone to listen to them.
Remember, back in the 70s, the climate scientists were telling us all that we were going to go into a massive ice age at any minute.
Wrong. The rest of your comment is pretty much as spectacularly wrong as the tidbit I quoted.
Alright.... let me start with your corollaries.
The temperature of the earth is warming over time.
Correct. Specifically, the global average is going up over at least annual periods, and generally decadal periods.
The amount of this warming is unprecedented.
Incorrect. How warm it has been in the past is irrelevant to whether the earth is getting warmer right now. That's only a data collection issue, not a theory issue.
The warming will continue past the point where the earth's feedback mechanisms can correct it.
Not quite. The concern is that the warming will continue past the point where short-term feedback mechanisms can correct it - things like seasonal rainfalls, ocean currents, etc. Politicians specifically are only marginally interested in whether there's a 50000 year cycle that can correct the current temperature increase.
The warming will cause catastrophic impacts to life on earth, particularly humans.
Define catastrophic. Was Katrina catastrophic? Seems like it was. And yet, not much actually happened. Is general population migration catastrophic? Is the wholesale change of a populations way of life catastrophic? To some, it is. Generally, it is to the people affected by it.
The warming is caused by human activity, if not entirely, then mostly.
Sort of. I'd put it as "human activity has a significant impact on warming".
Right now, I'm looking at two largely correct corollaries, one irrelevant one, one that depends on where you are located, and one that is somewhat misleading. There's plenty of evidence for corollary one, models that predict the third one, regions that demonstrate the impact of localized changes in precipitation for the fourth one, and plenty of evidence for the fifth one.
Now to your questions.
What is the optimum temperature (or range) of the Earth?
The question is wrong, because as is it has no answer. The earth has no optimum temperature (unless you count the one that allows for rock to stabilize and not become an ionized plasma). What you want to know is what the optimum temperature range is for human habitation. As you can see by the current population distribution, it is quite wide, which could lead to the assumption that the optimum temperature range for human habitation is just as wide. That's incorrect. If you drop an Inuit into the Brazilian jungle, a Massai into the Midwest, or a Midwestern farmer into the Alps, they will die very quickly. See for example the pilgrims who first arrived in North America: they nearly died from starvation, even though the temperatures weren't that much different from what they were used to.
As a result, the answer to that question is: exactly the one that you have right now around you. Civilizations have adapted to work in their current environment. Change that only a bit, and the impact on the people can be devastating.
When has it been at that temperature in the past?
See above for why this question doesn't give you a useful answer.
Has it ever been outside that temperature in the past?
Most decidedly. However, you don't want to go through the change again.
How, specifically, do we know this?
Historical records of both temperatures (inferred and directly recorded), and of historical records that chronicle the result of dramatic temperature changes.
In particular, how does one define the temperature of the Earth, and how does then measure that?
It's a good question. In general, it is understood to be the yearly average of multiple points across the globe, preferably along all latitudes and longitudes. But yes, temperature measurements are difficult, and it requires a lot of work to make sure that datasets from one source can be used for comparison with other data sets.
I still want to hear staticians weigh in on the time period of data compared to the history of the earth. And some better assessment of the margins of error for the various sampling methods.
Start reading. This is a good start. Once you get through the few thousand pages of actual research, you'll have an idea of where to find the discussions by statisticians and the margins of errors of the various sampling methods.
Oh, wait. That's right. You don't want to hear a statistician talk about this stuff, you want to have someone answer you any and all questions you could have. Sorry, that's not how it works. People who deal with complex topics aren't too keen on spending hours explaining something only to be told "But you doctor your research just like Exxon, why should I believe you?"
oh, too late for that. I don't think that there is much to discuss about Climate Change right now. Most skeptics are skeptics out of principle, and there won't be much that'll make them change their minds. And same for the supporters of Climate Change.
I'm pretty sure that the only time that it'll get interesting again is when we'll again hit some record highs summer after summer. Should be coming up pretty soon - the sun is powering up again, and the next El Nino is around the corner as well.
Actually - you're a lot closer to getting it than I thought. Your example of cross-sectional waterflow doesn't work for a river, but it certainly makes it obvious how turbines can exhibit different capture rates, despite being in a system whose total energy has not changed.
Here's your second food for thought. Assume a water turbine with a cross section of 1 meter. How much energy does it capture in your first example? How much in your second? What percentage of the total energy in the system does it capture in each case?
The only questions left are whether you can see the forest for the trees, and whether you are interested in learning, or just in posturing.
Congratulations. You figured out that the total energy stays the same. But you still haven't figured out what height of the water is in the different situations, and what the flow speed is. Keep trying.
Food for thought:
Let's say you have a river. That river has width A. How deep is the water in the river? How fast does the water flow? What's the total energy in the river? How much can be captured by a turbine of width B, where A >> B?
Let's say you narrow the river to a width of B at the point where the turbine is (and only at the point where the river is. What's the total energy in the river? How deep is the water at the turbine? How fast does the water flow at the turbine? How deep is the water after the turbine? How fast does the water flow after the turbine?
It's at this point that you should realize that your understanding of Physics is a caricature of the real world.
You can't make any more energy than is available by the basic fact that water is dropping in a gravitational field.
Damn, you're not even correct on this. The total energy available in all the oceans is a sum of tidal water movement and water movement based on thermal gradients.
But let's just work with tidal/gravitational energy here. Where you went completely wrong is to assume that each water molecule moves up and down in a linear fashion with only one force impacting it: gravity. Instead, there are two more forces acting on each molecule: forces transferred through momentum of surrounding molecules, and forces transferred through van der Waal's bonding. And suddenly, your little one-dimensional, single ball action becomes a mess of trillions of complex electro-static, dynamic and gravitational forces.
What all of this means: your forces are off by 3 orders of magnitude in the worst case scenario. In the more interesting places, it's much more than that.
Or, you can also just go with the people who built actual tidal energy generators, and are already getting their energy from tides - all at a price point that's competitive with oil.
And as with all numbers, the devil is in the detail.
Tide power is generated by water flowing through a turbine. As a result, what matters is the surface of the turbine times the apparent water speed. That gives you a volume over time, which in turn controls how fast the turbine spins. Considering that apparent water speed depends not only on the size of the tide, but the local ocean floor geometry, and the output of the turbines can vary wildly depending on where they're located.
Finally, you made a key mistake in your calculation: a tide turbine doesn't capture the up and down movement of the tide - it captures the horizontal flow of water as it flows from point A to point B. This means that your entire calculation is completely useless. It isn't captured twice a day, it is captured constantly with an oscillating efficiency. The energy captured is only marginally related to a mass of water falling the height of the tide - the falling is translated into horizontal speed, where g is completely overwhelmed by local geometry. And lets not even get into real and apparent water flow, turbine construction, efficiencies, etc...
Really, you could have saved yourself a lot of time and just said "I don't know how this works".
Wind farms are unlikely to stop the wind. Wind is a byproduct of temperature differentials, and as such, as long as the earth isn't exactly the same temperature everywhere all the time, there will be wind.
Tidal farms, on the other hand, I don't know. Tides are due to the difference in gravitational fields at different points on the earth. As such, the tidal energy comes from the Sun's and the moon's gravitational field. Since neither the sun nor the moon are losing mass through the use of tide turbines, what has to change is the distance between the sun, moon and earth. Somehow, I think the time scales on which this becomes a problem are large enough that we'll have entirely different problems then.
The only real problem I can see with tidal turbines is that if they are large enough, they will restrict the flow of the tides, and tides will become less pronounced - which will have an immediate impact on any tidal areas. And since tidal areas and shallow bays are pretty much where the food chains for a lot of marine animals reside, this could be a real problem. But again, it would have to be something on the scale of putting turbines across the entire straight of Gibraltar, and reducing the flow to near zero. Unlikely to happen, but not impossible.
Except they can't pass that cost on to the consumer, because they're still competing in a highly fungible market. Exxon isn't having this problem, Shell isn't having this problem - it's just BP. Which means that if BP raises its prices, people will buy gas from companies that don't have to deal with a multi-billion dollar clean-up.
And if past Oil disasters are any indication, there are probably fines coming along as well. Along with bills related to government operations that had to deal with the spill.
BP won't get off free here.