Thermodynamic Inertia

One of the articles in my news feed recently dealt with irreversibility of "global warming". My initial reaction was that it was bizarre for any scientist to admit to such a thing. This is right up there with "The Sun is going to go change in a thousand years and there's nothing we can do about it." Sure, the pronouncement is in agreement with my grimmer thoughts, but if we cannot do anything about it, what motivation can we use in order to encourage others to do the right thing as far as being good stewards for future generations. I mean, if something is irreversible, we might as well give up.

I don't much hanker with this giving up business. Upon closer inspection of the report cited in the news, that's not what the study indicated.

What we'd like to be able to do with global warming business is to reverse it. We want to send the Earth's surface temperature back to "normal." As long as the earth's temperature can be kept constant, we could adapt easily as long as we knew what to expect. However, we'd also like someone else (our children, their children, etc.) to pay for it.

This report indicates that is not going to happen. As the atmospheric CO2 and temperature levels rise, the oceans start to act as reservoirs of both. Even downturns in CO2 and temperature will be more than compensated by the oceans releasing CO2 and heat back into the atmosphere.

My issue here is the the ocean has ALWAYS been acting like a reservoir. This is not new. Every change in the thermodynamic equilibrium of our planet needs to be driven by something happening in our atmosphere. The oceans are why we've been existing in this relatively mild climate for the past 10,000 years.

Education is not anti-experience

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."

Vernon Sanders Law

Many educators (and educatees) have this notion in their mind that everything that is important to know can be summarized on a single piece of paper, memorized, and viola, you're smarter.  While I tend to agree with the "single piece of paper" approach, I'm pretty much anti-memorization.  I'm also anti-single channel.   Even parrots can be taught to recite anything verbatim.  They still do not understand it.  I'm pro-understanding.

The most valuable lessons that we learn occur in a mix of approaches/channels.  Learning any new discipline is going to be no different than learning to walk, to talk, to ride a bicycle, to swim, or to drive a car.  You make a lot of mistakes. Memorization won't keep you from making mistakes.  

What? Another blog!

It used to be that in order to establish a presence on the Internet, you needed to post web pages. It raised the bar at a technical level. Either you knew HTML or you did not post.

It has also created a category of individuals who knew how to post web pages but had never posted a blog previously. Now, we could make all kinds of snide remarks about the relative merit of web pages vs web logs. However, we're missing an important point.

This too will change.

One day, in the not so distant future, the users of the web (or whatever we call the "information superhighway" at that point) will be looking back at the era of blogs and static web page and think of both as being quaint. What will they be using instead?