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Very interesting, but this article is kind of a mess and all over the place. I would expect a shipping lane to have more or less than baseline amounts of light
by potato3732842 1y ago
Very interesting, but this article is kind of a mess and all over the place.
I would expect a shipping lane to have more or less than baseline amounts of lightening regardless of soot on the basis of it being generally more churned up and therefore having slightly different potential than the rest of the ground (which just happens to be liquid water in this case).
It's not clear to me if the study is isolating the variable they're measuring properly.
Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up.
Additionally, it's well known that having a bunch of crap (including water) suspended in the air to bridge the gaps makes it easier for electricity to arc so it's not clear if and/or to what extent this the change a result of sulfer emissions or particulate generally.
It's also well known that particulate facilitates condensation (the article talks about this).
- lesuorac 1y ago> Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up. Isn't the shipping lane the "treatment" group and everywhere else in the world the "control" group? Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y.
- jjk166 1y ago> Like we administered x mg of sulfer to the patient and they saw y outcome while patients not receiving sufler saw z outcome. When we stopped administering sulfer all patients saw z outcome seems to be isolating sulfer as causing y. There is a reason we use placebos for control groups.
- lesuorac 1y agoUh, there's no requirement to use placebos or a control group. For example, covid just uses a treatment group and considers the rest of the world as control. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9124157/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9124157/
- ethanwillis 1y agoCan you explain the reason?
- Scarblac 1y agoOtherwise the sky may realize it's in the control group.
- ethanwillis 1y agoI'm more interested in the reason the OP had in mind. I don't think it's required that you have a placebo control group, but the OP might have a reason in mind that's something I haven't considered.
- ccgreg 1y agoHopefully you read all of the links in the article -- the purpose of thecoversation is to present information to the general public, with references to research that the author has been involved with.
- atoav 1y ago> It's not clear to me if the study is isolating the variable they're measuring properly. > Surely there's a "control" shipping lane somewhere that was cleaner to begin with or never cleaned up. As mentioned in the first paragraph of the article they are using the Global Lightning Detection Network, which is well, global. Then you just need a map of SO2 concentration and compare shipping lanes against non-shipping lanes. You don't need an explicit control group if your data includes the whole planet, since you can just compare shipping lanes against similar areas with less/no shipping. Since both lightning and SO2 also varies over time you can also correlate this way with enough data.
- HocusLocus 1y agoYes, and sulfur isn't the only cloud nucleation trigger. Refineries of ship 'bunker fuel' used to seek contracts from disposal companies to burn their chemical waste at sea. And dirty fuel has lots of natural vanadium. Source: oil spill around my houseboat legal case in the 1980s, fuel company had to disclose breakdown of content.
- cwmoore 1y agoSo…you emitted toxins. Not so smart.
- HocusLocus 1y agoIt was a failed underwater weld between bulkheads on a oil barge and 30,000 gallons of oil caught the wind and drifted into the cove overnight. Are you thinking I poured it into the ocean myself, was suing myself?
- cwmoore 1y agoMy misreading. Thought your houseboat was running the fuel.