Posted: Mar 18, 2010 2:34 pm
rainbow wrote:
OK, but I'll not bother doing any calculations as it's already been shown that Cali was wrong.
Cali may or may not have made a small mistake. It looks like he may have put in a value for the solvent rather than the solute. Even once that error is corrected his point still stands. 3.0730 × 1040 is no less a demonstration of his point than 3.0730 × 1043.
rainbow wrote:
Now it doesn't state what would be 'particles of interest , or what reactions they would undergo.
Unstated assumption - FAIL#1
Cali is simplifying it for those of us who don't talk science quite as fluently as he does. It doesn't really matter what they are (you could call them X if you wanted to) but you can easily find out. The "particles of interest" have been indicated numerous times in the relevant scientific literature. It is unusual that Cali doesn't paste an extensive and thorough references list, but he does have posted somewhere a long list of something in the order of 88 papers on the subject. You will probably find your answers in those papers.
rainbow wrote:
Then it claims that it could be anywhere in 100m of ocean. Doesn't explain why this is 100m, rather than 1m - or for that matter 1000m.
Fail to survive scrutiny - FAIL#2
So? That is simply a not explained, it doesn't mean it can't be explained and Cali is probably expecting some prior knowledge. Cali will probably explain it at length when he gets back. Personally I might have gone for 10 or 30 for my estimate plus some at the sea floor. I doubt it would change the point much. The large numbers involved here could be cut into thirds and they would still be very large numbers. You can easily set up an excel spreadsheet to test different scenarios.
rainbow wrote:
Then the concentration: 1 mmol/l - where does this number come from? Could it be nmol/l as suggested in some papers1?
Fail to survive scrutiny - FAIL#3
Failure to provide proper scrutiny I'd call it. There are many papers dealing with these kind of calculations.You would need to read quite a few of then to know if the selection Cali made was appropriate. I'm pretty sure ones I've seen were on the mmolL-1level.
I for one would not expect a full scientific paper to be written as a forum reply. That's why you often have to read the papers behind the forum post. There you should find the answers you seek.