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Ya gotta love eBay

There are some wires and some tubes disconnected, and unfortunately it is way over my head. There are many sketches and diagrams of the way it is supposed to be hooked up, and how to start it running. There is also lots of labels on what is what. But, it is still over my head, and I just wouldn't know where to start.

THAT IS WHERE YOU COME IN!
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Me? You mean I can figure this stuff out? Of course I can, since it has all the documentation and is guaranteed to be the real deal by someone who claims that it is way over his head. What could be more confidence inspiring?
 
This thing came from a property auction of the bankrupt Genesis Energy Systems, whose CEO was convicted in 2006 of fraud.

I kind of like to follow the "free energy" scams. It's amazing how many people think that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are some crackpot theory of the physics conspiracy. There's so much of this out there today.
 
Chuck(G) said:
It's amazing how many people think that the first and second laws of thermodynamics are some crackpot theory of the physics conspiracy. There's so much of this out there today.
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Now yer speakin my language. Ferget that Cobol, Fortran, Assembly and C stuff... it's just garbage to me. I'm a meteorologist by trade and all that is, is thermodynamics and hydrodynamics. The equations of motion rule. Well, they rule the weather, at least. :)
 
I think the really interesting part of the auction description is this line;

"if this thing does what the documentation says it does..."

Perhaps if it consumed GreenHouse gases, and spit out an oxygen/nitogen mixture( 21/78 would be good), the scam might work :)
 
Stone said:
Now yer speakin my language. Ferget that Cobol, Fortran, Assembly and C stuff... it's just garbage to me. I'm a meteorologist by trade and all that is, is thermodynamics and hydrodynamics. The equations of motion rule. Well, they rule the weather, at least. :)
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It's been, what, more than 35 years since I last put together a supercomputer proposal for a weather organization--I think it was ECMWF. But back then, it was all FOTRRAN.

100 Megaflops was state of the art then. There were basically two major customers for the really big iron--weather and bombs.

I don't know the difference between an isobar and a thermocline myself, but what's the big weather simulation software written in nowadays?
 
Chuck(G) said:
I don't know the difference between an isobar and a thermocline myself,...
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It's really not all that difficult. Iso-bars are lines of equal pressure and iso-therms are lines of equal temperature. These yield patterns of somewhat concentric circles that reveal the relative Hi points and Lo points of whatever parameter you're looking at, hence Highs and Lows on the weather map. With the isotherms you get to see the hot spots and cold spots. Really, quite elemental.
 
Yeah, I do know what they are. But I was searching for some way to express my lack of sophistication in the dismal science of weather forecasting.

I remember that back in 1976 or so, that the contact I had with ECMWF when writing the proposal stated that if computers were only about 100 times as fast, accurate 24-hour predictions would be a cinch. (That'd be 10GFlop). Well, we passed that mark about 20 years ago and I'm still waiting for a 100% accurate 24-hour forecast.
 
I would think the major issues with real time 100% accurate 24 hour forecasting is having enough censors of the correct type in the correct spots for data gathering and not just computer processing speeds.
 
Well, I don't know if it's still true, but back then, when accumulating data, about 90% of it was discarded. I suspect that there's enough telemetry out there already.

My contact had probably never heard of chaos theory, however.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I remember that back in 1976 or so, that the contact I had with ECMWF when writing the proposal stated that if computers were only about 100 times as fast, accurate 24-hour predictions would be a cinch. (That'd be 10GFlop). Well, we passed that mark about 20 years ago and I'm still waiting for a 100% accurate 24-hour forecast.
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Ahem..... a cinch does not = 100% accuracy. And, FWIW, the 24 hour predictions verify well into the 90% range, probably mid to upper 90s. If you find this difficult to believe I can present a more detailed dialog explaining the particulars. For now, however, suffice to say that the predictions are as accurate as I just stated they were. The real problem is that is most lay people do not quite understand the forecasting method/presentation. Now that, IMO, is the fault of the Weather Service. A little more public education would go a long way.

And, I must agree with what UNKNOWN_K said, too. To some degree a near 100% accuracy is somewhat dependent upon having a tight enough observational grid, AKA sensors, to get a truly meaningful representation of the actual current weather. Satellites have helped in this matter but there are still holes that could be filled in to get better results.
 
Stone said:
And, I must agree with what UNKNOWN_K said, too. To some degree a near 100% accuracy is somewhat dependent upon having a tight enough observational grid, AKA sensors, to get a truly meaningful representation of the actual current weather. Satellites have helped in this matter but there are still holes that could be filled in to get better results.
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I suspect it matters to great degree where one is making forecasts. I live in the west coast where the jet stream tends to make landfall. Especially during spring and autumn, weather patterns can be extremely localized and forecasts are a joke.

Some systems are less linear than others.
 
The only data you toss is stuff you think is wrong, stuff your model is too simple to use, or stuff that wouldn't change the result in a meaningfull way even if included (I would still dump it in anyway if it was available).

Given a super computer and the ability to capture data world wide instantly you should be able to model the whole dam planet in real time. Gathering all that data is the hard part.

I could be wrong but isn't local forcasting just gathering old data and predicting from it what is going to happen now? Like the last 50 out of 100 data samples for conditions being x temp, x barometric pressure, x wind speed, x humidity etc gave rain so we will have 50% chance or rain today? They do have fancy weather tracking radar and satelite images but those pretty much just tell you what is happening in that area now since they don't seem to model where they will end up or disipate that well.
 
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