Rogue Waves

[varwoche]

Despite such accounts, many oceanographers were skeptical. The human imagination tended to embellish, they said.

By the same token, many experts were not so skeptical about rogue waves. See Willard Bascom's excellent book Waves and Beaches (1964, revised 1980).

 

[Rodney]

Which they are currently doing. So what's the problem?

The problem is that all this could have been done at least a generation ago if oceanographers had not been so locked into their conventional wisdom.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

The problem is that all this could have been done at least a generation ago if oceanographers had not been so locked into their conventional wisdom.

Only if you have some infallible method of distinguishing between genuine and non-genuine anecdotes.

Do you?

If not, then unless there is a massive increase in funding to allow all reports to be investigated, you have a choice to make. Spend money on things that can be replicated and proven to be real or spend money on what may well turn out to be a wild goose chase. Not that hard a decision really.

 

[tsg]

The problem is that all this could have been done at least a generation ago if oceanographers had not been so locked into their conventional wisdom.

So what would be significantly different if they had done it a generation ago? Providing, of course, that it was even possible.

 

[Dogdoctor]

The problem is that all this could have been done at least a generation ago if oceanographers had not been so locked into their conventional wisdom.

There is some thing called the law of economics. What it says is time and resources are limited. If we go chasing willy nilly after every imagined concept we will waste time that could be better spent on real things. In addition if I recall correctly, rogue waves were ultimately proved by satellites which weren't present years ago.

 

[Rodney]

So what would be significantly different if they had done it a generation ago? Providing, of course, that it was even possible.

According to the article: "In the past two decades, freak waves are suspected of sinking dozens of big ships and taking hundreds of lives." Very likely at least some of these ships and lives would not have been lost had the problem of rogue waves been given the same attention by oceanographers a generation ago that it is now given.

One thing is certain with regard to any situation: A problem can't be solved until it is acknowledged.

 

[Just thinking]

Why should the occurance of Rogue Waves be so unusual or be met with so much skepticism?

In an ordinary rectangular in-ground pool I've noticed many times after numerous people were splashing about that residual wave motion would many times come to a point where what was relatively calm, suddenly splash upward with enough energy to throw a good amount of water up over the pool's edge. Then it would return to almost calm -- and then out of nowhere another splash like before.

So, to me, the ocean would seem quite capable of doing the same -- only on a larger scale.

 

[Hellbound]

What I want to know is...

How do waves get that tall? They must be using kites, because there's no remains of the ten-mile ramps it'd take to build a wave that high, and parts of the wave weigh in at 50 tons...how can that be lifted up by just water!!!






Sorry, couldn't resist

 

[tsg]

Very likely at least some of these ships and lives would not have been lost had the problem of rogue waves been given the same attention by oceanographers a generation ago that it is now given.

Evidence?

 

[The Atheist]

Surely nearly everyone has missed the real point here; a few oceanographers who didn't support the existence of rogue waves seem to have been credited with the being the majority opinion of all oceanographers.

NYT, shame on them, must take the blame for making such a sweeping generalisation.

I'm sure some oceanographers rubbisheded rogue waves, just as some (formerly?) respected scientists are rubbishing the idea of global climatic warming, while yet others perpetuate the perpetual motion myth.

This argument is more about semantics than science, rogue waves have long been known, but not understood, by the greater number of deepwater mariners.

 

[varwoche]

Surely everyone has missed the real point here; a few oceanographers who didn't support the existence of rogue waves seem to have been credited with the being the majority opinion of all oceanographers.

Ahem.

 

[Correa Neto]

Dogdoctor touched a very important piece of information.

Rodney's argument is fallacious (feel free to name the fallacy). Why? Because it completely ignores that many of the tools that are nowdays avaliable were not even dreamt back in the 30s, 50s or 60s.

Before starting this attack, he should have asked himself how one would, back in the 50s or 60s, gather evidence to support the existence of those waves.

Got a global network of oceanographic buoys able to gather data on waves?
Got some computers and algorithms able to process such a huge ammount of data?
Got the theoretical background to predict the existence of those waves?
Got oceanographic sattelites with radars that can locate these waves?

So what's left? Create a team of giant waves hunters based on anedoctal evidence? Cool stuff for a Michael Crichton novel, perhaps, but not very practical.

The reasoning he presented makes sense only for someone who is quite ignorant of what it takes to detect and study such phenomena. Or for a person who is following a personal agenda.

What's the next rant?
Science is not paying enough attention to tsunamis?
Science is not paying enough attention to asteroid impacts?
Science is not paying enough attention to megavolcanoes?
Science is not paying enough attention to Edgar Cayce's readings?
Science is not paying enough attention to bigfoot?
Science is not paying enough attention to UFOs?

 

[The Atheist]

*GULP*

Thank you, varwoche, hoist on my own petard by inadequate proof-reading.

And now edited........

*Self-flagellates 1000 times*

 

[Rodney]

Evidence?

Based on what has been learned in the past decade, oceanographers have already pinpointed certain higher risk areas of the oceans, which all things being equal, can be avoided by ships. Had rogue waves been taken more seriously a generation ago, this predictive process would be much further along today, and almost certainly some shipping disasters would have been avoided.

 

[Dogdoctor]

Based on what has been learned in the past decade, oceanographers have already pinpointed certain higher risk areas of the oceans, which all things being equal, can be avoided by ships. Had rogue waves been taken more seriously a generation ago, this predictive process would be much further along today, and almost certainly some shipping disasters would have been avoided.

Bs they already had all the information necessary to avoid that risk whatever it might be

 

[GreedyAlgorithm]

Rodney, I think you need to read up on opportunity cost.

You're doing what we call in poker "results-oriented analysis". Even if we could have checked a decade ago for the commonness of rogue waves, the mere fact that it would have saved lives and money is still not enough to make the decision to ignore them a bad one. If you fold a 2 and 5 of spades before the flop and then the 3, 4, and 6 of spades come on the flop, that does not mean that folding was the wrong decision, even though if you hadn't folded you would win every time.

Decisions must be made with all the relevant currently known facts in mind, and their correctness cannot be linked to actual results, given that all the information they were based on was true.

 

[Starrman]

Based on what has been learned in the past decade, oceanographers have already pinpointed certain higher risk areas of the oceans, which all things being equal, can be avoided by ships. Had rogue waves been taken more seriously a generation ago, this predictive process would be much further along today, and almost certainly some shipping disasters would have been avoided.

I believe he asked for evidence, not a sweeping load of conjecture on your part. Have you based this conjecture of yours on anything other than 1 nyt article?

 

[Rodney]

Dogdoctor touched a very important piece of information.

Rodney's argument is fallacious (feel free to name the fallacy). Why? Because it completely ignores that many of the tools that are nowdays avaliable were not even dreamt back in the 30s, 50s or 60s.

I stated: "The problem is that all this could have been done at least a generation ago if oceanographers had not been so locked into their conventional wisdom." That takes us only back to the 70s, which for some strange reason is not listed in your chronology. But even in the 50s and 60s, there was technology available to undermine the conventional wisdom about rogue waves. The article notes that "in September 2004 . . . Hurricane Ivan swept through the Gulf of Mexico. It passed directly over six wave-tide gauges that the Naval Research Laboratory had deployed about 50 miles east of the Mississippi Delta. Dr. Wang and his colleagues analyzed the data and found to their surprise waves measuring more than 90 feet from trough to crest." So, while radar satellites are an improvement over wave-tide gauges, the notion that deficient technology prevented oceanographers from seriously studying rogue waves until 1995 is unsupportable. Rather, existing technology was simply not used to analyze the problem because few oceanographers thought it was a problem. (And even radar satellites existed prior to 1995.)

 

[Rodney]

Rodney, I think you need to read up on opportunity cost.

You're doing what we call in poker "results-oriented analysis". Even if we could have checked a decade ago for the commonness of rogue waves, the mere fact that it would have saved lives and money is still not enough to make the decision to ignore them a bad one. If you fold a 2 and 5 of spades before the flop and then the 3, 4, and 6 of spades come on the flop, that does not mean that folding was the wrong decision, even though if you hadn't folded you would win every time.

Decisions must be made with all the relevant currently known facts in mind, and their correctness cannot be linked to actual results, given that all the information they were based on was true.

So are the oceanographers who are now spending a lot of money to study rogue waves making a mistake?

 

[Dogdoctor]

So are the oceanographers who are now spending a lot of money to study rogue waves making a mistake?

Now that they have doccumented that rogue waves are real they are obviously trying to understand how they form. However what have they done so far to keep boats safe that they could not have done years ago without knowing if rogue waves were a frequent cause of ships sinking? How many lives have been saved? Where is the data that this discovery has saved lives?