Rogue Waves

[tsg]

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.

Pure conjecture. I ask again, evidence?

 

[Oldpossum]

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

Yes, they should be spending that money to find Giant Squid.
I mean, by your own logic, giant Squid are a potential danger, we do not understand!
We have reliable reports of Giant Squid attacking small boats, and dragging the people onboard, to their deaths!
I also hear that there is this supposed Giant White Whale, that goes around sinking ships too, we really need to spend lots of money on verifying it's existance too!
Why spend money studying something we already know exists, when there are so many other new things we could be discovering, with that money instead!

PS For those lacking a sarcasam-o-meter, the above post is a frivolus, sarcastic, not under any cirumstances to be taken seriously, response, to someone who obviously dosn't grasp the basics of Logical thought.

Seriously, did Oceanographers even have access to real time, full area, sea state monitoring, untill the last 8 years or so.
Because untill such was possibe, then even if Oceanographers did take rouge waves seriously, they had no way to even observe them, (unless they were very unlucky) never mind track them, and study their formation/behavior!

 

[GreedyAlgorithm]

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

Well, with all the relevant currently known facts in mind, I think they are not making a mistake. Note the words currently and facts. Anecdotes do not constitute much evidence, and what is known currently was not known in the 70s.

Edit: removed assumption about motives

 

[Roboramma]

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

No. But to have spent that money in the past, when they had very little evidence of Rogue Waves, would have been. It might have turned out for the best, but based on the knoweldge available it would have been a mistake.

Similarly, not folding on that 2 and 5 of spades would have been a mistake, even if you did get lucky in this hand.

 

[orpheus]

(*raises paw*) That would be me. A friend of my friend will vouch for that.

Meffy, I just have to say that's a great line. I love it. May I use it? (Giving due credit, of course.)

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

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

No.

To continue the poker analogy, they are now in the position AFTER the flop, knowing they have a straight flush. Clearly folding it would not be sensible.

However that does not mean that whenever you get a 2,5 of spades you should bet on it in the hope that the 3,4 and 6 of spades come on the flop, which is what you are suggesting.

 

[Megalodon]

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.)

Ok, Costeau...

You are a very well funded oceanographer (in the 80's). You have a budget of 1 million dollars to study these waves. No satellite data is available, and even if it was, your department lacks the computing power to do anything with it.

You thus have to deploy moorings with lots of equipment in it. Let's assume they cost 10.000$ a piece (they were on sale).

You were incredibly lucky, and you got 15 days of ship time just for yourself, free of charge, and you can take it wherever you want (also for the trip to retrieve the equipment and data-no satellite communication for that also).

Where do you put your 100 moorings, and what results do you expect to get from that?

Cheers

 

[Rodney]

Anecdotes do not constitute much evidence . . .

Your inclusion of the word "much" shows that my efforts here have not been entirely in vain.

 

[Rodney]

Ok, Costeau...

You are a very well funded oceanographer (in the 80's). You have a budget of 1 million dollars to study these waves. No satellite data is available . . .

Satellites could have been used to study rogue waves in the 80s, but weren't.

 

[Megalodon]

Satellites could have been used to study rogue waves in the 80s, but weren't.

No, they couldn't... The processing power that any given institution had at the time was a fraction of what we have today, sometimes in our own homes.

The use of satellite imagery in oceanography is extremely recent because of this. That and, of course, the fact that it is absurdly expensive. I'm curious how would you cope with it in your already very well-funded project?

And you didn't answer my question... were would you place your moorings and what data would you expect from it?

You talk of "oceanographers" as if we had the power to control the funding. We don't, and to ask for an absurdly high financing to study something that was never relyably observed before, is to ask for a refused project.

By the way, you're still to answer how would you proceed with your project.

Cheers

 

[Correa Neto]

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.)

Oh, Rodney... Yours is the unsupportable position.

Are you aware of the sort of radar satellites avaliable before the current generation? They were designed for land survey... When it comes to oceanography, SEASAT, for example, was launched in 1978 and operated for 105 days...

Suppose you had a global network of oceanographic buoys in the 60s, or even in the 70s at your disposal to look for rogue waves. You would not be able to process all the data. You surely know something about development of computers, don't you? Care to show a computer from the 70s that could do the trick?

Note that to detect the wave, from the raw data of each single buoy you would have to filter the influence of tides, wind-created waves, etc. Now, note that to access, say, the influence of wind-driven waves and waves generated by distant storm systems, what else would you need?

Not to mention that a few scattered buoys deployed for other reasons (gauging sea conditions near ports, for example) would not do the trick. You would need a network similar to the tsunami detection grid. The reliable evidence to back their existence came when the right tools became avaliable.

What's next? What about blaming science for the loss of lives from the South Asia tsunami?

 

[Meffy]

At a Washington Redskins-Dallas Cowboys football game in 2003, fans in three different sections of the stadium started doing "The Wave" almost simultaneously. The chaotic collisions of the multiple moving wavefronts nearly caused the stadium to collapse. Only the timely arrival of Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim's superheroic Rally Monkey, who happened to be flying back to California on its way from saving a dear old blind granny from being run over in a traffic crosswalk, managed to stave off disaster.

Yes, the Angels are a baseball team, not football. Let this not distract from the moral of the story, which is this: Never disrespect the power of waves.

 

[Rodney]

No, they couldn't... The processing power that any given institution had at the time was a fraction of what we have today, sometimes in our own homes.

The use of satellite imagery in oceanography is extremely recent because of this. That and, of course, the fact that it is absurdly expensive. I'm curious how would you cope with it in your already very well-funded project?

And you didn't answer my question... were would you place your moorings and what data would you expect from it?

You talk of "oceanographers" as if we had the power to control the funding. We don't, and to ask for an absurdly high financing to study something that was never relyably observed before, is to ask for a refused project.

By the way, you're still to answer how would you proceed with your project.

Cheers

I'm not an oceanographer now and wasn't one a generation ago, and so I can't answer you specifically. However, in general, the way I would have proceeded had I been an oceanographer a generation ago would have been to first take seriously the many claims of rogue waves down through the centuries. Then, I would have talked with some people who claimed to have experienced the phenomenon firsthand. When I became convinced that rogue waves were a reality, I would have examined the assumptions behind the erroneous mathematical models that concluded that such waves should form only about every 10,000 years. Then, I would have used the available technology to attempt to prove that rogue waves exist. Now perhaps I would have been hamstrung by funding issues, but even if I were, I might have developed a new model that would have been useful to shipping companies in avoiding certain oceanic routes. I'm not sure the exact steps I would have taken, but I certainly would not have said: "All we have are anecdotes, why bother studying this issue?"

 

[Rodney]

What's next? What about blaming science for the loss of lives from the South Asia tsunami?

I'm not blaming science for anything, rather I'm blaming those -- including scientists -- who disregard strong evidence just because it can't be currently verified in a laboratory.

 

[Megalodon]

I'm not an oceanographer now and wasn't one a generation ago, and so I can't answer you specifically. However, in general, the way I would have proceeded had I been an oceanographer a generation ago would have been to first take seriously the many claims of rogue waves down through the centuries. Then, I would have talked with some people who claimed to have experienced the phenomenon firsthand. When I became convinced that rogue waves were a reality, I would have examined the assumptions behind the erroneous mathematical models that concluded that such waves should form only about every 10,000 years. Then, I would have used the available technology to attempt to prove that rogue waves exist. Now perhaps I would have been hamstrung by funding issues, but even if I were, I might have developed a new model that would have been useful to shipping companies in avoiding certain oceanic routes. I'm not sure the exact steps I would have taken, but I certainly would not have said: "All we have are anecdotes, why bother studying this issue?"

Yes, of course. And you would do this in the weekends that you were not not already busy with studying something you actually could study. One of the problems with oceanography is that it's damn expensive to do. Sample water generally costs much more than it's weight in gold. Another problem is that data are scarce. Despite the years of oceanographic campaigns, we know suprisingly little about the world oceans.

As an example, we know that internal waves exist. Everybody knew that for decades, since it's actually very intuitive. But until this century, nobody managed to observe or model internal waves (some attempts were made in the 90s, but I think they didn't work very well). And this is a phenomenon that happens all over the world, and that as a much higher global importance than rogue waves. Not only that, under the right conditions they can contribut to the formation of rogue waves themselves (something also known for a long time, but not observed).

Don't get me wrong, whomever made a "mathematical model" in the 50s, 60s or 70s disproving rogue waves was probably making unsupported assumptions, due to the lack of data. It swings both ways. That is why it was not a 'crazy idea' among the mainstream oceanographic community (AFAIK). It was just an idea impossible to study at the time.

And of course, one of the problems of anedoctes is that people exagerate things. One of the problem with sailors anedoctes is that they tend to really exagerate things, trust me on that one

Cheers

 

[tsg]

who disregard strong evidence just because it can't be currently verified in a laboratory.

For small values of "strong".

 

[Hellbound]

For small values of "strong".

And limited values of "laboratory".

This is just Rodney's typical strawman.

 

[Megalodon]

I'm not blaming science for anything, rather I'm blaming those -- including scientists -- who disregard strong evidence just because it can't be currently verified in a laboratory.

Actually, you are disregarding all the arguments put to you that show that:

a) it was acknowledged by scientists that the phenomenon probably existed;

b) it was impossible until recently to do anything about it, due to the nature of the phenomenon;

Nobody is to blame for anything. Things happened when they could happen.

Cheers

 

[drkitten]

However, in general, the way I would have proceeded had I been an oceanographer a generation ago would have been to first take seriously the many claims of rogue waves down through the centuries. Then, I would have talked with some people who claimed to have experienced the phenomenon firsthand. When I became convinced that rogue waves were a reality, I would have examined the assumptions behind the erroneous mathematical models that concluded that such waves should form only about every 10,000 years. Then, I would have used the available technology to attempt to prove that rogue waves exist. Now perhaps I would have been hamstrung by funding issues, but even if I were, I might have developed a new model that would have been useful to shipping companies in avoiding certain oceanic routes.

This scenario strikes me as somewhat fantastic.

As in the "dragons, unicorns, and faeries at the bottom of the garden" variety of fantasy; i.e. it has little discernible basis in anything I recognize as a reality.

You would have taken seriously "the many claims of rogue waves down through the centuries"? Why these, and not the equally many claims of mermaids and kraken?

"When I became convinced that rogue waves were a reality" -- it sounds like you've already achieved that, without even bothering to move from your armchair or discuss anything with anyone. More specifically -- what would you expect to learn to "convince" you by speaking to people? As has been pointed out, sailors have a huge tendency to exaggerate, and their data isn't especially reliable even when discussing phenomena that are known to exist. What kind of "data" would you expect to get from conversational anecdotes that would somehow allow you to revise the mathematical models?

We have enough problems modelling things that we observe often and can measure quite well -- consider the difficulties we have in predicting the weather. Think about the difficulties we have in prediction the formation and severity of tornadoes. And we know tornadoes exist -- we've captured them on film, and we have people who spend their lives chasing them to study them. What's the theoretical maximum speed of a tornado wind?

 

[Meffy]

I think it's time the politicians woke up to the reality of rogue waves that hate freedom and want to destroy the Murrikin way of life.