The attribution studies are still too simplistic, compared to the systems they are trying to correlate, to be of much use to policy makers.
If done correctly, the interactions in this kind of study, between the atmosphere, sea-surface, deep sea and biology become mind-boggling very shortly after you turn your supercomputer on.
One, just one factor that goes into figuring out what is going on, turbulence, is called the "oldest unsolved problem in physics" and it is but one factor in the complex-chaotic systems - and their interactions - that you are trying to understand. We'll have more on that after the jump.
And we'll have more on fishies and global warming later in the summer.
First though, a survey paper put together by a Korean high-schooler which, if he is at all representative of the Korean education system pretty much tells the rest of the world, even the vaunted Finnish schools, that we are doing it wrong.
One quick note, the school has an English-only policy during the school day, which is helpful for folks who don't speak Korean.
Korean Minjok Leadership Academy
International Program
Kim, Shin
Research Paper, AP World History Class, Fall 2007
International Program
Kim, Shin
Research Paper, AP World History Class, Fall 2007
Jumping ahead to part III of the paper
....III. Cod Migration and the Discovery of the New World
III.1) Introduction
III.2) Why Cod?
III.2.1) General Description of the Gadus Morhua
III.2.2) Significance of Cod Meat In Medieval Times
III.2.3) Cod and Temperature Aberrations
III.3) English Fishermen Excluded From Norway, Into Iceland
III.3.1) Isolation of Iceland
III.3.2) 1410 Shutdown of Bergen & the Hanse Merchants
III.3.3) English Fishermen Move Into Icelandic Waters
III.4) English Fishermen in Icelandic Waters
III.4.1) Establishment of the Trade
III.4.2) The Icelandic Trade
III.4.3) Decline of the Trade
III.4.4) From the Environmental Perspective
III.5) Bristol Fleets' Discovery of the New World
III.5.1) In Search of Hy-Brassyle
III.5.2) What Cabot Sought and What Cabot Found
III.5.3) English Discovery of the New World & the Little Ice Age
III.6) Basque Fishermen's Discovery of the New World
III.6.1) The Basque People
III.6.2) The Great Basque Mystery
III.6.3) Cooling Waters & Basque Explorations; a Hypothesis
III.7) Summary
My initial reaction was "You have got to be kidding me"
I'll leave it to the reader to sample à la carte or take a look at the whole table d'hôte menu.
And back to turbulence.
From the Presentation Speech by Professor Stig Lundqvist of the Royal Academy of Sciences
for the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,As I said, mind-boggling.
The development in physics is on the whole characterized by a close interaction between experiment and theory. New experimental discoveries lead often rapidly to the development of theoretical ideas and methods that predict new phenomena and thereby stimulate further important experimental progress. This close interaction between theory and experiment keeps the frontiers of physics moving forward very rapidly.
However, there have been a few important exceptions, where the experimental facts have been well known for a long time but where the fundamental theoretical understanding has been lacking and where the early theoretical models have been incomplete or even seriously in error.
I mention here three classical examples from the physics of the twentieth century, namely superconductivity, critical phenomena and turbulence. Superconductivity was discovered in the beginning of this century, but in spite of great theoretical efforts by many famous physicists, it took about fifty years until a satisfactory theory was developed. The theory of superconductivity was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics exactly ten years ago. The critical phenomena occur at phase transitions, for example between liquid and gas. These phenomena were known even before the turn of the century, and some simple but incomplete theoretical models were developed at an early stage.
In spite of considerable theoretical efforts over many decades, one had to wait until the early seventies for the solution. The problem was solved in an elegant and profound way by Kenneth Wilson, who developed the theory which has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physics.
The third classical problem I mentioned, namely turbulence, has not yet been solved, and remains a challenge for the theoretical physicists....
More to come re: Fish on the move, previously, (proto) Fish on the Move: "The world’s fisheries are incredibly intertwined, thanks to baby fish".
note: If you are good at such things the Clay Mathematics Institute made the Navier-Stokes equations one of their Millennium Prize problems, solve it and pocket a million bucks:
Prove or give a counter-example of the following statement:Details here.
In three space dimensions and time, given an initial velocity field, there exists a vector velocity and a scalar pressure field, which are both smooth and globally defined, that solve the Navier–Stokes equations.
