Thunderous applause!
To my mind, the hardest thing is to develop the (wincing, but no better word handy) intuition of when your program is not working, or is just "having a bad day" ;-)
I appreciate your intellectual honesty in admitting that, akin to stock guru Jim Cramer's writing in "Confessions of A Street Addict."
Back to the subject of DC...
I also enjoyed reading RWP's discussion of the rotational bands (CO2 IIRC) and how they complicate the modeling of the atmospheric physics necessary to predict global warming.
Brought back memories, it did. :-)
Cheers!
An excellent and a great comment by grey whiskers.
"To my mind, the hardest thing is to develop the (wincing, but no better word handy) intuition of when your program is not working, or is just "having a bad day""
But maybe think of this the other way around? That our models are often more perfect than the systems they attempt to replicate, and the question becomes why aren't the systems behaving like they should?
This is where an understanding of thermodynamics and kinetics comes into play. The first describes in the perfect world where everything should get to. The second takes account to how long it takes to get there. The answer to the latter can be never in any practical terms, for a system that is always in flux.
One site that toys at the differences:
http://www.tock.com/chem32/kinT/ )
Each part of the earth is in heat flux on a daily heat cycle, and as well a seasonal basis. Longer term the changing earth orbit and the sun itself are in flux. It never "catches up", it never comes to equilibrium. It starts cooling before it finishes heating up, and vice versus at the other end.
On a slighly more micro-scale, the whole water cycle and what gets evaporated, where it wants to condense into fine droplets, and when and where the droplets fallout as rain, is all about thermodynamic equilibrium being ruled (or overruled) by its kinetics.
It's hugely dynamic and hugely complex from the start. And to combine in cosmic rays, sea salt sprays, desert dusts, smoke flume particulates, SO2/SO3 etc. etc., all the more fun.