Whiskey Tango Friday: Deep Physics and Analogies

XKCD does an excellent job illustrating a huge problem one encounters when trying to explain theoretical work: simplifying how the world works for explanation to the lay person through the use of analogy often robs the listener of true depth and complexity of the situation. True understanding of the world takes years of dedicated study; there are no short cuts.



Expanded upon in great detail by Richard Feynman (especially at the six minute mark):



One of the greatest theoretical courses I ever took was a graduate level electrodynamics course. The entire class was chalk and chalkboard for 3 hours a week. The professor began with Maxwell's equations and moved through derivations until we had two equations that described the combination of slowly varying, quickly diminishing electric and magnetic fields and the rapidly varying fields that propagate through space- light. It was one of the most enlightening moments of my life, and it took years to arrive at this point. I had taken many courses in physics and upper level math, but it culminated to this one moment in time when I actually understood light. I could do my best to use analogies to put this description of the world in terms that someone without a deep mathematical background could grasp, but I would be robbing them of the truly transcendent moment of deep comprehension.

This is a great problem in physics: it is nigh-impossible to impart the depth or appreciation of the knowledge gleaned from this discipline because of the background required to truly understand it. It must be emphasized that this is not a slight on anyone- the smartest people in the world can not tackle these issues without the proper tools.

No Haven for Science, Part 2

When I receive an email like the one I shared in my previous post, I can't help but reply to it in some capacity. The difficulty with this particular message is that I don't know what the person who shared the doomsday story (from here on out, I'll refer to him as "Carl") is looking for -- is he just whipping up trouble on LANL's climate mailing list, or does he want a serious answer? After contemplating possible intents, I realized there was only one way to respond!
And yes, that was a "reply-all".

The next day, I received his response to my rather brash inquiry. Here it is in all its verbatim, sic glory:

I don't know [Spacecataz] it sounds as reasonable a cause for the storm changes as saying "CO2 did it." What if it is a mixture of both. Changes in magnetic flux causing increases and decreases in solar energy. Could it be the reason for the model and reality differences. What if the the global warming science and NASA sciences are stuck in own little boxes and neither can look at the forest.

Just saying! I am a cause and affect Engineer and maybe we are just experiencing something that happens. Just think what the knee jerk reaction would be of our government, and our science today if we around during the dust bowl years of the 30's. We would still be riding horses, no power plants would be built, no industry. This is what I'm seeing happening. Something less happens today and we (well China does anyway) build wind turbines and solar collectors, and ridicules light bulbs to fix it. Like riding horses neither of these industries will do anything to help and history will show that we were enlightened fools.

I will let get back to work. I've got to continue making sure there is a [job related stuff about vacuum chambers]. Just with that little bit of energy we move oceans of air. It is amazing why the earth atmosphere is just not in a huge storm.
["Carl"]

TL:DR -- Yes, he is quite serious.