[Grendel9]

Once again, Scientists have to admit they know very little about the basic functions of our planet. So, how pretentiously accurate are these SouperBrains that support Gore's statements re Global Warming?

[Ken522]

There should be some Navy or Merchant Marine freepers who could share their experiences with giant waves while out at sea - any one?

[ClearCase_guy]

Bush!

[Personal Responsibility]

Did the Times have any coverage today of yesterday's protest outside their office? Or are they consumed with this kind of "news"?

[finnman69]

STORM SURGE The chief engineer of the Stolt Surf took photographs as the tanker met a rogue wave in 1977. The deck, nearly 75 feet above sea level, was submerged.

[johnny7]

We are only 600+ years removed from when we thought the world flat... and that 'bleeding' was a cure for common maladies.

[Mr. K]

anyone who knows anything at all about wave mechanics knows that this is not only possible but highly probable.

When you have two (ore mor) waves positioned just right, the high and low troughs of the waves ADD together.

If a high and low trough of a wave meet you will have no wave at that point at all, but the waves will actually contune past that point.

However if two (or more) highs happend to meet- look out, you could get waves beyond imagine (hundreds of feet)

[ccmay]

The ship was like a cork in a bathtub,” recalled Celestine Mcelhatton, a passenger who, along with 2,000 others, eventually made it back to Pier 88 on the Hudson River in Manhattan. Some vowed never to sail again.

And I bet half of them have already filed lawsuits against the ship owner.

-ccm

[Jacquerie]

No kidding. Centuries of sailor tales of enormous waves mean nothing until an oceanographer experiences one. For the freeper physicist how about Fourier analysis?

[7thOF7th]

Spot on mate!

[bmwcyle]

AMEN

[The Electrician]

One way that rogue waves apparently form is when the strong currents meet winds and waves moving in the opposite direction . . . A particularly threatening spot, he said, turned out to be where big oil tankers coming from the Middle East ride the Agulhas current around South Africa. There, the westward-flowing current meets prevailing easterly winds, at times disastrously.

Something fishy is going on in the last sentence quoted above. Supposedly the rogue wave problem occurs when currents move in the opposite direction from winds. However, "prevailing easterly winds" blow from the East towards the West, while "westward-flowing current" also flows from the East towards the West. So, this would seem to be in contradiction of the earlier statement, since the Agulhas current seems to be flowing with the wind instead of opposite to the wind. But, then, this is the New York Times, so nothing that is printed there can be taken at face value...

[Citizen Tom Paine]

For all you non-oceanographers out there - If the current is flowing north and there are strong winds blowing south, you will get steep crested waves of enormous size.

[Old Seadog]

Back in the fifties, I once dated a WAVE in Pensacola FL. She was kind of a rogue but not very big. About a 34 "c".

[wizr]

Don't go near the water!! Something else for us poor uneducated yokels to worry about. We need a new Cabinet position to handle Global Warming, sunamis and acts of God.

[tumblindice]

"the usual palliative--free drinks."
`Sea-sick' and drunk, yeah--that's the ticket.

[RightWhale]

While not as often as Killer Asteroid threads and Killer Volcano threads, Giant Wave threads appear on FR with some regularity.

[lepton]

Can't read the article, but there was a satelite put up a few years ago that showed that these rogue waves happen a lot more than anyone thought likely, and some are freaking ridiculously huge. It is only because they are so big for such a short duration and that most of the time there is no human prescence in most parts of the deep ocean that we haven't come across them regularly. I think I recall something like 11 waves over a hundred feet in a month...worldwide.