Re: [math-fun] When liberals do science...
I'm not quite sure that Chernobyl is a liberals v. conservatives thing. I don't recall anyone thinking that vastly increased radiation is a good and/or natural thing (although zero radiation may be a bad thing, because the body's repair mechanisms never get triggered, and evolution may be slowed down). Even pro-nuke people fully expected a Chernobyl-type incident, because the Chernobyl-type reactors fail in very bad ways. So the bad guys here were _communists_, not conservatives. Is someone here suggesting that there are nasty Chernobyl-type causes of global warming? Perhaps something going on in Area 51 in Nevada? The problem with global warming is that the Earth is a very complex system involving many negative-feedback loops (the good kind, if you want to keep things more-or-less constant). The Gaia hypothesis says that life itself has modified the Earth's environment to better favor life and buffer it from severe attacks from space in the form of radiation, changes in the Sun's output, asteroids, etc. If we took the arguments of the tree-huggers to their ultimate conclusion, we would get rid of all oceans and all trees and all oxygen to put the Earth back to its "natural" state -- something more akin to Mars/Venus/the Moon. Perhaps Mars was the Sierra Club's/Earth First's original success? It is now becoming clear that "preserving forests from fire" is worse than self-defeating, as well as entirely unnatural. Those of us who live in the West which has been devastated by fires know first-hand how the delusions of these East Coast tree-huggers have been killing off the forests in ways far worse than any logging could possibly have done. Instead of the mild fire every 10-20 years, we now have nuclear winter-type forest fires caused by 100 years of "suppression". It now appears that a proper way to deal with forest fires might be to lay out a geometric grid pattern of some type, color it with 6-8 colors, and then burn the part of the forest of that color each 6-8 years _on purpose_. If properly laid out, the burns of previous years would be natural firebreaks, and by burning on a shorter schedule, it wouldn't be possible to build up enough fuel to get the temperatures so hot as to kill all the larger trees -- e.g., the sequoias. Such smaller, cooler burns also recover much faster -- usually within 1 year. If you want to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by such burns, then perhaps the best thing to do would be to carefully log them first, so there is less to burn. The one thing you won't be able to do using any technology available for the next 100 years is to stop forest fires entirely. We've proved that conclusively -- they still occur, they still put just as much CO2 into the atmosphere, but they are completely uncontrolled. *** This is not a human activity. These fires have been going on for hundreds of millions of years. Get over it. *** At 10:06 AM 1/19/2004, John Conway wrote:
I well remember being in England about 20 years ago when the whole of Western Europe was suddenly very much concerned at the rapid rise in radioactivity that we later learned was the result of an accident at Chernobyl in Russia (but now Ukraine once again).
At 03:57 PM 1/19/2004, Henry Baker wrote:
It now appears that a proper way to deal with forest fires might be to lay out a geometric grid pattern of some type, color it with 6-8 colors, and then burn the part of the forest of that color each 6-8 years _on purpose_. If properly laid out, the burns of previous years would be natural firebreaks, and by burning on a shorter schedule, it wouldn't be possible to build up enough fuel to get the temperatures so hot as to kill all the larger trees -- e.g., the sequoias. Such smaller, cooler burns also recover much faster --
It "now appears"? Foresters have been doing that for at least 40-50 years.
They certainly haven't been doing it here in California, nor in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, etc. Where are they doing this? BTW, if this has been done before, what kinds of tilings have been suggested? At 01:24 PM 1/19/2004, Jud McCranie wrote:
At 03:57 PM 1/19/2004, Henry Baker wrote:
It now appears that a proper way to deal with forest fires might be to lay out a geometric grid pattern of some type, color it with 6-8 colors, and then burn the part of the forest of that color each 6-8 years _on purpose_. If properly laid out, the burns of previous years would be natural firebreaks, and by burning on a shorter schedule, it wouldn't be possible to build up enough fuel to get the temperatures so hot as to kill all the larger trees -- e.g., the sequoias. Such smaller, cooler burns also recover much faster --
It "now appears"? Foresters have been doing that for at least 40-50 years.
I'd vote for a hexagonal tiling with a 7-coloring. R. On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Henry Baker wrote:
They certainly haven't been doing it here in California, nor in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, etc. Where are they doing this?
BTW, if this has been done before, what kinds of tilings have been suggested?
At 01:24 PM 1/19/2004, Jud McCranie wrote:
At 03:57 PM 1/19/2004, Henry Baker wrote:
It now appears that a proper way to deal with forest fires might be to lay out a geometric grid pattern of some type, color it with 6-8 colors, and then burn the part of the forest of that color each 6-8 years _on purpose_. If properly laid out, the burns of previous years would be natural firebreaks, and by burning on a shorter schedule, it wouldn't be possible to build up enough fuel to get the temperatures so hot as to kill all the larger trees -- e.g., the sequoias. Such smaller, cooler burns also recover much faster --
It "now appears"? Foresters have been doing that for at least 40-50 years.
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Hmm... I guess this problem is similar to the allocation of frequencies in a cellular network of basestations, except that the shapes of the cellular "cells" are somewhat weird. In a cellular network, you want to minimize interference, so you want to keep the cells using the same frequency (fire at the same time) as far apart as possible. Only in the forest fire case, you don't have financial pressure from the FCC auctions to minimize the number of frequencies. Of course the shapes of "cells" in the forest fire case would be distorted by prevailing winds, mountain passes, rivers, etc. At 02:18 PM 1/19/2004, Richard Guy wrote:
I'd vote for a hexagonal tiling with a 7-coloring. R.
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Henry Baker wrote:
They certainly haven't been doing it here in California, nor in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, etc. Where are they doing this?
BTW, if this has been done before, what kinds of tilings have been suggested?
At 01:24 PM 1/19/2004, Jud McCranie wrote:
At 03:57 PM 1/19/2004, Henry Baker wrote:
It now appears that a proper way to deal with forest fires might be to lay out a geometric grid pattern of some type, color it with 6-8 colors, and then burn the part of the forest of that color each 6-8 years _on purpose_. If properly laid out, the burns of previous years would be natural firebreaks, and by burning on a shorter schedule, it wouldn't be possible to build up enough fuel to get the temperatures so hot as to kill all the larger trees -- e.g., the sequoias. Such smaller, cooler burns also recover much faster --
It "now appears"? Foresters have been doing that for at least 40-50 years.
At 04:43 PM 1/19/2004, Henry Baker wrote:
They certainly haven't been doing it here in California, nor in Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, etc. Where are they doing this?
In Georgia. My family has been in that business since before I was born. I'm 49 years old, and they were doing it when my age was a single digit. We call it a "controlled burn".
Scientists are not always logical, particularly outside of their own fields. Sometimes they cling tenaciously to a theory when there is only a little evidence supporting it and a massive amount contradicting it. The mere creation or discovery of a new theory will often blind the inventor to the evidence against it. What is most prominent in non-mathematical discussion here is not what the views are, but what the citations are. When discussing mathematics, most of the participants most of the time have a good grasp of the mathematical literature. References are made frequently to particular books and their authors and particular theorems and other shared knowledge. Citations for the non-mathematical subjects are missing and certainly I, and I believe others do not have anything more that a casual familiarity with all of the studies and writings on these subjects. Unlike mathematics, the discussion of whether global warming is mainly anthropogenic, or the discussion of the cumulative effects of small doses of radiation, or the discussion of the probability of nuclear accident, require more than just healthy skepticism but require as well meaningful physical data. We are unlikely to get that necessary information on this group. In addition it is possible to have too great a psychological investment in a particular point of view to be able to discuss these subjects rationally. A rational discussion of the various "liberal theories" would require that they be discussed one at a time. There is no linkage that I can see between nuclear safety and global warming. Posting inflammatory statements such as:
This little chuckle pales in comparison to the damage done by the pervasive belief that nuclear power is unsafe, or that human activity is causing global temperatures increases. Explain this last point to the people in Quebec City. It's -50 and the laughter may help warm them.
Or
This little chuckle pales in comparison to the damage done by the pervasive belief that because there is a creation there must be a creator, some kind of God, or the belief that all of the universe began at some finite instance in time with a giant explosion. Explain this to those not waiting for armageddon. Its blastoff -50 and the laughter may pre-heat them.
Both of the above statements, to generate a chuckle, would require that we share a particular set of beliefs among ourselves, which we clearly do not. The beliefs that we do share all have to do with mathematics, and even in this narrow scope there are some disagreements. What is wonderful about math-fun is that all of us have had the opportunity to say, "aha, I see it now" or even "shucks, I was wrong" and everyone here shares a commitment to searching for answers based fundamentally on the same body of proved works, and fundamentally using the same techniques so that, more than in any other science, we can be sure of the results that we present or discuss here. I would like to see math-fun stay both mathematical and fun. Discussions of the probability of nuclear disaster, absent both good statistics and good data, are only marginally mathematical and marginally fun for a number of people on this group. Regards Otto otto@olympus.net
As one who has many times been tempted towards and not a few times guilty of participating in this sort of thread, I concur wholeheartedly with Otto Smith. His observations bear repetition, though a pity so frequently.
Quoting Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>:
It is now becoming clear that "preserving forests from fire" is worse than self-defeating, as well as entirely unnatural. Those of us who live in the West ....
Well, we're off on another controversial topic. Interestingly enough, today's mail brought in SIAM News for December, with a lead article, "The Power Grid as Complex System" which touches on the forest fire problem as another example of a certain kind of dynamical system. So I guess people are still interested in modelling these phenomona; who knows with what success? Some of the points raised in the article match Henry's comments. - hvm ------------------------------------------------- Obtén tu correo en www.correo.unam.mx UNAMonos Comunicándonos
participants (6)
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David Wilson -
Henry Baker -
Jud McCranie -
mcintosh＠servidor.unam.mx -
Otto Smith -
Richard Guy