.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

7 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Take something like String Theory

The usual gobbledygook I've come to expect from you. Rather than quote the whole mess, let's just focus on string theory. Last I checked, which admittedly was over a decade back, there were ten competing string "theories". Like climate science, they were all unprovable, un-falsifiable and essentially useless. Like Hawking who discards the idea of a creator because that requires faith, substituting the canard that there's an infinite number of highly complex universes like this one that completely and randomly pop into and out of existence, because that certainly doesn't require any suspension of disbelief to get behind… 🙄

[surrept33 + 609]

6 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

The usual gobbledygook I've come to expect from you. Rather than quote the whole mess, let's just focus on string theory. Last I checked, which admittedly was over a decade back, there were ten competing string "theories". Like climate science, they were all unprovable, un-falsifiable and essentially useless. Like Hawking who discards the idea of a creator because that requires faith, substituting the canard that there's an infinite number of highly complex universes like this one that completely and randomly pop into and out of existence, because that certainly doesn't require any suspension of disbelief to get behind… 🙄

It is not a comment about string theory specifically, but the "scientific method" as it relates to different fields (in the end it is all about resource allocation, but what's the resource in question? Keep in mind some fields are very capital efficient than other fields because they can lever or create capital, while others are not, like the construction of the Superconducting Super Collider played out in Texas a few decades ago). I was comparing and contrasting atmospheric physics and string theory. Falsification in the popperian sense isn't often even the criterion in question in many fields (what's interesting these days is can a digital twin mimic increasingly realistic physics? it's more surprising and widely applicable than you think).

In Atmospheric physics there is lot of empirical confirmation in the microphysical and macrophysical senses with the accumulation of larger batteries of sensors and fluid dynamics/heat transport models to make sense of human activity vs physical climate-related statistical  variation, very tangible things because the number of sensors and the number of types of models have exploded, as have the ability to concurrently run and collaborate on how to most efficiently allocate resources (computational power - keep in mind many "supercomputers" have become hybrid and are made very energy efficient and power efficient, even in what information they compute via massive parallelization). You can perturb the space of models (ablation) to add or remove all sorts of other model phenomenon to see what happens, which is what the IPCC does to rigorously reduce uncertainty. What's changed over time is how continuously many (but not all) models get updated and integrated. Now, it's _all of the time_ because the models tend to have become more and more open sourced over the years and there is a increase in data sharing and cross organization collaboration. People have realized that the earth is the commons. It's like a river two countries share, except we all share it. 

String theory is not 10 theories. The number of theories is not relevant. Maybe you are talking about the dimensionality (one must be careful with words because the concept of a dimension is overloaded based on context) in supersymmetry theory (10) or M-theory (11)? it's about theory dualities, which is very useful cognitive tool in pretty much every field, including reasoning between fields. In addition, compactification of dimensionality (say you have too much fidelity of arbitrary data, how do you compress those into a point and keep properties of that theory faithful relative to other theories? typically this is done via topology). Note that we have not "seen" a molecule either, but chemistry often works until it doesn't. Most people have not seen "germs", but germ theory explains a lot until it doesn't. 

The crux of string theory is not hard to understand, and actually very easy if you understand group (galois and lie) or category theory from pure math well, or if you learned any classical physical theory like a gauge theory.   These are all methodologies to make it easier to reason about unification (or non-coupling) from different perspectives systematically, which historically exploiting relativistic quantum field theories led to most of modern technology, especially in semiconductors, but still required hacks and a lot of cumbersome calculations. 

Suspension of disbelief is matterful depending on what you know (relative to experimentally confirmed evidence) about aspects of nature that do not relate to everyday human experience (most notably relativistic quantum physics, but also anything bigger or smaller than our decartian view). I'd say in the near future we'll have more immersive devices (via a11y and XR technologies) to let people "thicken" the rectlinear viewport of the environment around them (vs current generation devices like phones or computers), but to me, understanding the connective tissues at the nexus of power and energy are quite interesting from a information sciences point of view (where a more abstract energy integral is often talked about). It's all about about controlled jargonification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science) where instead of a lexicon, you learn a universal personal thesaurus to thesaurus translator. 

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

18 hours ago, surrept33 said:

Without a doubt to what level of uncertainty? Do you have a replicable model with code and data? These can be plug and played into any standard data assimilation metamodel. This is how science in some fields has changed so that instead of wasting time/effort running one model, you an run n^n models where n is information theoretic (for example, most climate models, solar dynamics models, plasma physics, are all doing 'some form' of dynamic 3d fluid dynamics + some perturbations of maxwell's equations) you can run in parallel on supercomputers. The hope with quantum information sciences, one can run n^n^n^n.. (usually n is a number, but the number doesn't matter) more sophisticated models but those are still on their way

Noastradius was one of the bigger hoaxes of all time. 

If QAnon spreads internationally (it looks it is), it will be one of the larger hoaxes of all time. 

If the (majority of) climate scientists are correct, the best course of action is to think like someone in the actuarial sciences (the people who are qualified to write insurance products or the tax products if you prefer). How do you separate out facts from counterfactual evidence (or alt-facts)? Stochastic calculus helps with this, but most people are not very good at it.  How do you take a insurance policy, and then take insurance policies against that insurance policy, and then policies against those policies? In financial mathematics, is is not unlike a volatility smile, what you really are paying money is to prevent tail risk, and then a higher order set of risks, including taking out insurance that your assumption of risk was wrong (in statistical physics terms, this is not like a viscosity solution of a jump diffusion process).

Climate change doesn't fall under either of those categories. The large number of models in for example, the IPCC integrated assessment models are scientists who have examined different aspects of the climate from very different perspectives (with what looks like ot me, uncertainty, error modeling, even things like numerical analysis painstakingly done) . If one model is falsifying empirical models (if it were true) that can be clearly observed directly, it is most likely erroneous.

This all depends on your philosophy of science and the scientific method of course. In physics, especially theoretical physics, this varies widely. Take something like String Theory or a decent amount of cosmology. It has clear underdetermination relative to empirical testing, at least of anything we can build in the near future, but it's led to much innovation as the ideas got transputed across fields and led to virtuous cycles (say like enumerative combinatorics, areas of algebraic geometry in pure math or computer science). That is the unity of science. 

 

Thanks for the monologue, you do have a way with words....but it is not my way.

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

18 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The usual gobbledygook I've come to expect from you. Rather than quote the whole mess, let's just focus on string theory. Last I checked, which admittedly was over a decade back, there were ten competing string "theories". Like climate science, they were all unprovable, un-falsifiable and essentially useless. Like Hawking who discards the idea of a creator because that requires faith, substituting the canard that there's an infinite number of highly complex universes like this one that completely and randomly pop into and out of existence, because that certainly doesn't require any suspension of disbelief to get behind… 🙄

Exactly, a veritable black hole of speculative science.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

 

A string walks into a bar with a few friends and orders a beer. The bartender says, “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve strings here.” The string walks away a little upset and sits down with his friends. A few minutes later he goes back to the bar and orders a beer. The bartender, looking a little exasperated, says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve strings here.” So the string goes back to his table. Then he gets an idea. He ties himself in a loop and messes up the top of his hair. Then he walks back up to the bar and orders a beer. The bartender squints at him and says, “Hey, aren’t you a string?” And the string says, “Nope, I’m a frayed knot.”

[Symmetry + 109]

18 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

The usual gobbledygook I've come to expect from you. Rather than quote the whole mess, let's just focus on string theory. Last I checked, which admittedly was over a decade back, there were ten competing string "theories". Like climate science, they were all unprovable, un-falsifiable and essentially useless. Like Hawking who discards the idea of a creator because that requires faith, substituting the canard that there's an infinite number of highly complex universes like this one that completely and randomly pop into and out of existence, because that certainly doesn't require any suspension of disbelief to get behind… 🙄

Try testing and proving religion... and as for "ten competing theories" try counting the number of religions. The nice thing about science is bad ideas go way over time, not so with blind faith.

The things you hate about science are even worse in theology, where there are no experiments.  Did you pray for a Trump victory?  If so, will you observe the results and accept the null hypothesis?

Having a creator randomly pop into existence is just the same as a universe popping into existence. Just stacking turtles...

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by Symmetry

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

20 hours ago, Symmetry said:

Try testing and proving religion... and as for "ten competing theories" try counting the number of religions. The nice thing about science is bad ideas go way over time, not so with blind faith.

The things you hate about science are even worse in theology, where there are no experiments.  Did you pray for a Trump victory?  If so, will you observe the results and accept the null hypothesis?

Having a creator randomly pop into existence is just the same as a universe popping into existence. Just stacking turtles...

 

Religious theories are actually much more testable than speculative science. Religions predict a life after death...so you and I will both test that assertion before too much time has passed. Christianity expects the return of Christ to rule the planet...so that is something which will be observable to everyone, not a problem testing that idea. These are all experiential modalities, whereas the wilder notions of multiverse are apparently set up to be non-testable and non-experiential, immune from tests or falsification. They do not belong in the realm of science.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Ecocharger

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

The latest development at ERC:

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

March 3, 202110:26 PM ET

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

e

Bill Magness, President and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), testifies on Thursday as the Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources hold a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts.

Eric Gay/AP

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas' power grid manager was fired Wednesday amid growing calls for his ouster following February's deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures.

Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, becomes the second senior official to depart in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The state's top utility regulator resigned Monday.

Magness was given a two-month termination notice by ERCOT's board in a meeting Wednesday night.

"During this transition period, Bill will continue to serve as President and CEO and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT," the organization said in a statement.

Magness, who made more than $876,000 in salary and other compensation in 2019, was the target of much of the outrage over the blackouts that began Feb. 15 when a winter storm plunged temperatures into single digits across Texas, causing skyrocketing demand for electricity to heat homes. Grid operators unplugged more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which Magness has said was necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted months.

 

But the power did not flip back on for days for millions of residents, and the prolonged outages quickly escalated to a crisis of tragic proportions, as people trying to keep warm died of carbon monoxide poisoning and others froze to death. The storm and resulting blackouts have been blamed for more than 40 deaths in Texas, but the full toll may not be known for months.

At the Texas Capitol last week, lawmakers investigating the outages laid into Magness for his handling of the storm.

Over hours of testimony, Magness defended actions that he said kept the grid that serves most of Texas' 30 million residents intact.

"It worked from keeping us (from) going into a blackout that we'd still be in today, that's why we did it," Magness said last Thursday. "Now it didn't work for people's lives, but it worked to preserve the integrity of the system."

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has accused ERCOT of misleading the state about the readiness of the grid, placing blame for the outages almost singularly on the grid operators. His outrage has not extended to the state's Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT and is led by Abbott appointees.

But the commission has also increasingly come under fire. Chairwoman DeAnn Walker resigned after struggling in two lengthy appearances before lawmakers following the blackouts, but said others should also accept responsibility for the outages.

 

At least six ERCOT board members have stepped down in the aftermath of the blackouts. Many of them lived out of state, a fact that only intensified anger toward ERCOT as the crisis unfolded.

[Symmetry + 109]

51 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

Religious theories are actually much more testable than speculative science. Religions predict a life after death...so you and I will both test that assertion before too much time has passed. Christianity expects the return of Christ to rule the planet...so that is something which will be observable to everyone, not a problem testing that idea. These are all experiential modalities, whereas the wilder notions of multiverse are apparently set up to non-testable and non-experiential, immune from tests or falsification. They do not belong in the realm of science.

You must be unfamiliar with quantum weirdness. Start with the double slit experiment using one-at-a-time photons. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

6 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

The latest development at ERC:

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

March 3, 202110:26 PM ET

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

e

Bill Magness, President and CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), testifies on Thursday as the Committees on State Affairs and Energy Resources hold a joint public hearing to consider the factors that led to statewide electrical blackouts.

Eric Gay/AP

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas' power grid manager was fired Wednesday amid growing calls for his ouster following February's deadly blackouts that left millions of people without electricity and heat for days in subfreezing temperatures.

Bill Magness, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, becomes the second senior official to depart in the wake of the one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The state's top utility regulator resigned Monday.

Magness was given a two-month termination notice by ERCOT's board in a meeting Wednesday night.

"During this transition period, Bill will continue to serve as President and CEO and work with state leaders and regulators on potential reforms to ERCOT," the organization said in a statement.

Magness, who made more than $876,000 in salary and other compensation in 2019, was the target of much of the outrage over the blackouts that began Feb. 15 when a winter storm plunged temperatures into single digits across Texas, causing skyrocketing demand for electricity to heat homes. Grid operators unplugged more than 4 million customers as the system buckled, which Magness has said was necessary to avert an even more catastrophic blackout that could have lasted months.

 

But the power did not flip back on for days for millions of residents, and the prolonged outages quickly escalated to a crisis of tragic proportions, as people trying to keep warm died of carbon monoxide poisoning and others froze to death. The storm and resulting blackouts have been blamed for more than 40 deaths in Texas, but the full toll may not be known for months.

At the Texas Capitol last week, lawmakers investigating the outages laid into Magness for his handling of the storm.

Over hours of testimony, Magness defended actions that he said kept the grid that serves most of Texas' 30 million residents intact.

"It worked from keeping us (from) going into a blackout that we'd still be in today, that's why we did it," Magness said last Thursday. "Now it didn't work for people's lives, but it worked to preserve the integrity of the system."

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has accused ERCOT of misleading the state about the readiness of the grid, placing blame for the outages almost singularly on the grid operators. His outrage has not extended to the state's Public Utility Commission, which oversees ERCOT and is led by Abbott appointees.

But the commission has also increasingly come under fire. Chairwoman DeAnn Walker resigned after struggling in two lengthy appearances before lawmakers following the blackouts, but said others should also accept responsibility for the outages.

 

At least six ERCOT board members have stepped down in the aftermath of the blackouts. Many of them lived out of state, a fact that only intensified anger toward ERCOT as the crisis unfolded.

I find it disappointing that politicians blame those that had no control over this situation.

They still ignore fact-finding to get to root causes.

Switching heads does not get there.  Those are the actual people who should be doing the fact-finding job.

[turbguy + 1,543]

From the Houston Chronicle:

"Pressure for both Walker and Magness to resign over the outages increased Monday, when Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick became the most influential lawmaker yet to join the cause.

“The lack of adequate preparation by both the ERCOT CEO and the PUC chair before the storm, their failure to plan for the worst-case scenario and their failure to communicate in a timely manner dictates they are not the ones to oversee the reforms needed,” Patrick said in a statement released to the media on Monday morning".

HUH???  IT WAS THE GENERATORS AND THE CONSUMERS, NOT THE "WIRES. OR THE "MARKET"!

THESE ARE THE EXACT PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE GETTING TO ROOT CAUSES!

I expected Magness would end up the 'Arthur Anderson' of this equation while Abbot and cronies are the 'Enron' for the moment - the question is for how long...

Texas government saw the problem and jumped into action! They found some expendable appointees and fired them. Problem solved? Next?

To recover, restore and improve, Texas must move with deliberation and humility, two things Texas' culture does not seem to value at the moment.

Turning scientific and engineering conversations into partisan standoffs does not make anything better.

I will not be surprised when it happens again.

Edited March 4, 2021 by turbguy

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

7 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

The latest development at ERC:

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

CEO Of Texas Power Grid Fired After Massive Cold Weather Power Outages

According to the most recent analyses, the generators went down primarily due to lack of dry gas. The dry gas was unavailable because of "freeze-off". The generators had contracted for dry gas which the producers failed to deliver. This is not, narrowly speaking, an ERCOT problem, so firing this guy misses the point.  I suppose that you could argue that ERCOT had a responsibility to ensure that its suppliers could be trusted, but that's fairly deep.

Apparently, Texas is unique. It is a massive producer of NG, and a massive consumer of (dry) NG, and it only gets really, really cold about once a decade. This combination led to the dry gas consumers using using dry gas that is produced on demand by processing raw gas from the wells. If you are not a big producer, no problem because you buy and store dry gas (California, Germany).  If you are not a big consumer, no problem because a small amount of storage suffices. If you produce in cold country, your production is winterized. So Texas got a triple whammy. How was the CEO of ERCOT supposed to deal with this?

[turbguy + 1,543]

21 minutes ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

How was the CEO of ERCOT supposed to deal with this?

EXACTLY!

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

I'm OK with firing the head guy, he made a lot of money and misled a lot of people over the years about the reliability of the grid, which was his direct responsibility. Fact is, as we've danced around for weeks now, a highly leveraged grid based on renewable generation is going to have problems if those are counted on for production, period. The only "reliable" system requires an insane amount of standby power to compensate for the intermittent power. That's the elephant in the room with renewables and all the misdirection in the world won't change that fact. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

13 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

I'm OK with firing the head guy, he made a lot of money and misled a lot of people over the years about the reliability of the grid, which was his direct responsibility. Fact is, as we've danced around for weeks now, a highly leveraged grid based on renewable generation is going to have problems if those are counted on for production, period. The only "reliable" system requires an insane amount of standby power to compensate for the intermittent power. That's the elephant in the room with renewables and all the misdirection in the world won't change that fact. 

The "grid" he controls was quite reliable.  It did not go black.  He took the correct actions to keep it reliable.

What was not reliable was generation.  What control does he exercise over that sector (other than perhaps setting the spot price)?

I would be quite willing to admit that "renewable generation" was a potential root cause of the extended blackouts.  Investigation may indeed come to find it was one of the root causes.  So far, I really have not seen any firm evidence for that conclusion.   Perhaps it is there, I just don't see it.

What I do see, is thermal generation continuing to trip offline, forcing the beginning, and cascading, of rolling blackouts in order to keep the "grid" reliable.

EACH of those thermal generation unit trips requires an explanation!

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

20 minutes ago, turbguy said:

The "grid" he controls was quite reliable.  It did not go black.  He took the correct actions to keep it reliable.

What was not reliable was generation.  What control does he exercise over that sector (other than perhaps setting the spot price)?

You're right: Bill Magness made sure the grid didn't go black. He probably aged twenty years worrying about a black start, which no one knew how to accomplish.

But he needed to be a hard-ass, too. There is no way he could be sure that his operators weren't beaming sunshine in his ear, but he could have been harder on them. Demanded integration. Absolutely demanded winter coats. 

ERCOT is not without power. It is the true power-broker. The commission was an old-boy's club. ERCOT shouldn't have been part of that. 

Oh well, the guy ran the biggest grid in the world, except for California. He'll find a better job with a higher salary. Don't cry for Bill.

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

2 hours ago, turbguy said:

EXACTLY!

What is happening is quite clear, culture change from the top down. CEO's in todays are so grossly over uncompensated it almost defy's imagination.

It would seem this CEO took EROCT in the wrong direction. The old adage..A New Broom Sweeps Clean comes into play.

[turbguy + 1,543]

22 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

You're right: Bill Magness made sure the grid didn't go black. He probably aged twenty years worrying about a black start, which no one knew how to accomplish.

But he needed to be a hard-ass, too. There is no way he could be sure that his operators weren't beaming sunshine in his ear, but he could have been harder on them. Demanded integration. Absolutely demanded winter coats. 

ERCOT is not without power. It is the true power-broker. The commission was an old-boy's club. ERCOT shouldn't have been part of that. 

Oh well, the guy ran the biggest grid in the world, except for California. He'll find a better job with a higher salary. Don't cry for Bill.

I'm certain ERCOT has some plan for a black start.  I know they have supposed black start thermal generation to boot the system back up.

Since that plan has never been tested, there are plenty of unknowns to be revealed and overcome (equipment damage, "black start" units that don't, personnel shortages, communication issues, and a whole bunch more). 

I doubt the grid controllers were lying to him, and they probably aged 20 years as well.  Making it "harder" on "them" would do exactly what?? Miss a bathroom break?  They were reacting correctly to a rapidly emerging situation.  Being a "hard ass" does nothing, when the only control he actually had is the spot price, and commanding load shedding.

Oh, and it is STILL an old boy's club...

GIVEN HIS POSITION AND POWERS, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY??

Edited March 4, 2021 by turbguy

[turbguy + 1,543]

28 minutes ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

What is happening is quite clear, culture change from the top down. CEO's in todays are so grossly over uncompensated it almost defy's imagination.

It would seem this CEO took EROCT in the wrong direction. The old adage..A New Broom Sweeps Clean comes into play.

What does "culture change" have to do with this situation?  What's the next guy going to do differently?  Buy the operators pizza?

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

11 hours ago, Symmetry said:

You must be unfamiliar with quantum weirdness. Start with the double slit experiment using one-at-a-time photons. 

Nice dodge, but the point I made is that empirical science is divorced from the multiverse speculations. A simple point, which you may choose not to respond to. I would understand.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Ecocharger

[Ecocharger + 1,473]

4 hours ago, turbguy said:

EXACTLY!

The CEO's hands were tied by a massive over-commitment to green power. That was a result of political commitments and trendy voter fads. The CEO lacked any authority to reconfigure the system, and probably no power to weatherize the green-based generation.

Is this a classic example of scape-goating? Blaming someone for failing to operate an inoperable system.

Edited March 4, 2021 by Ecocharger

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

28 minutes ago, turbguy said:

I doubt the grid controllers were lying to him, and they probably aged 20 years as well.  Making it "harder" on "them" would do exactly what?? Miss a bathroom break?  They were reacting correctly to a rapidly emerging situation.  Being a "hard ass" does nothing, when the only control he actually had is the spot price, and commanding load shedding.

The grid failed. 

The grid failed because each and every energy source failed, to some extent.

They failed because the commissioners belonged to an old boy club and many were out of state.

The operators failed to take the necessary precautions. The commission didn't lean on them. 

BUT, in the final analysis, ERCOT calls the shots. 

So yeah, I suppose I'd have made them cut short a bathroom break, if it determined whether or not a hundred people would die and 5M would go without power. 

Before you pontificate too much, go study the schematic on the ERCOT grid. 

[turbguy + 1,543]

30 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

The grid failed.

Before you pontificate too much, go study the schematic on the ERCOT grid. 

I don't need the schematic.  I am aware of thermal congestion, it's intricacies, and workarounds.

The grid did NOT fail.   Failure is a grid collapse, going black.

Apparently you feel differently.  That's fine.

Did it "stumble"?  Yup.

Edited March 4, 2021 by turbguy

[turbguy + 1,543]

36 minutes ago, Ecocharger said:

The CEO's hands were tied by a massive over-commitment to green power.

That is, indeed, one of the potential root causes. 

Edited March 4, 2021 by turbguy

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,555]

1 hour ago, turbguy said:

What does "culture change" have to do with this situation?  What's the next guy going to do differently?  Buy the operators pizza?

Not bottom up culture but top down.