Best hydrology books according to redditors

These are some very broad questions, and some (like the age of the Earth) are outside the scope of biology but you are not alone and your questions, unfortunately, are common, especially for those coming from religiously fundamentalist backgrounds like yourself.

> I need to see evidence for myself.

If I showed you a murder weapon, a fingerprint that was lifted from it, and the finger print of a suspect, and you knew nothing about finger prints then the evidence, even in your hands, physically, wouldn't mean much to you. What's far more important than the evidence itself are the inferences we make from it, based on an understanding of how that evidence matters in some investigation. The same is true in biology and other fields of science.

So while you can certainly visit natural history museums and view their collections (like this or this), just seeing specimens won't really give you the whole story.

> Why should I, personally, be convinced that the Earth is billions of years old?

If you care about having beliefs that are true, then you should devote some time to understanding how we know the true age of the Earth, and the many different methods we use to demonstrate that it is indeed very old.

Wikipedia would be a great start:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
  
  As is typically the case, the sources are the the bottom of each page. If you're like me and you enjoy pop-science documentaries, you might enjoy episode 7 of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, titled The Clean Room which deals with how Clair Patterson became involved with one of the first accurate methods of dating the Earth, using uranium-lead dating. It does a good job of explaining the basics of radiometric dating, why it's accurate, and why we can trust it the way we trust other scientific processes to give us good answers.
  
  > How can I better understand the Fossil record, which supposedly somehow tells us that humans and dinosaurs were not in the same time period?
  
  You likely already know that sedimentary rocks are formed in layers, with newer rocks being deposited on top of older rocks. So while there are processes that tilt distort rocks, we don't find examples of older rocks being found on top of younger rocks, and we don't find examples of rabbit fossils being in the same layers as velociraptors, for example. A lot of the evidence you're likely to encounter is a variation on this theme: things that happened a long time ago leave evidence that is separate from the evidence from things that happened more recently.
  
  While I've not personally read it, I hear it being recommended by people from fundamentalist backgrounds saying that it helped them: The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood.
  
  > And though I get it as a concept, natural selection has always been confusing to me; I can't see how it would practically happen in real life.
  
  It might be that you're used to thinking on time scales you are familiar with. A billion years is an incredibly long time. An analogy here that is often useful is to think of the entire history of the universe, mapped onto a single calendar year, with 00:00 January 1st being the first meaningful moment after the Big Bang, and December 31st at 23:59:59 being now. In this analogy, our planet did not appear until the first week of September, and the first life appearing sometime around the middle of September. The first amphibians, descendants of lobe-finned fish, appeared around December 22nd, and the first mammals appeared December 26th. Anatomically modern humans appeared about 8 minutes before midnight on Dec 31st. You can see more examples here. I know that for me, this really helps me conceptualise deep time.
  
  Dogs are descended from wolves, and they domesticated themselves beginning a few tens of thousands of years ago. Most of the breeds of dogs you are familiar with appeared only in the last few centuries, through artificial selection. If we can go from wolves to chihuahuas in hundreds or thousands of years, it is not a huge stretch to imagine what natural selection could do over millions of years. And, we have lots of evidence to support this idea.
  
  > Because of the way I was raised, a lot of this sounds like science fiction to me.
  
  The difference between any holy book you'll read, and what we know from science, is that behind the person saying it, there is an answer to the question "how did it happen?" At most, a religious answer will involve some shrugging of the shoulders, and what frankly amounts to "magic".

Ah, sorry - I mean that's a pretty sufficient TL;DR, but if you want more of a story, I was never really a great Mormon - I always had my issues with the doctrine, only went semi-actively, and never served a mission, but after moving to SLC for a job I needed friends so I began attending a YSA ward and I was all-in. I met my wife and we became engaged. I went through the temple for the first time at 27 - it disturbed me. I never went back (other than for the wedding) and became an active NOM at that point.

Then one night, in 2014, I was on field assignment in Northern Canada. I was working night shift logging drill core and reading a book about the implausibility of Noah's Flood during my down time. I decided to see how this jived with Mormon beliefs. Well, one thing led to another and I stumbled across the CES Letter. Suddenly it all made sense - why I could never be the good Mormon I was raised to be. Why I had so many issues with the one true church.

I got home, let her know what I had discovered. She was not happy. We argued a lot over religion. A few months later we discovered we were having a little boy. She made it clear our son would be raised Mormon. I hated that because I knew he would be raised to see me as a sinner. I knew she was not a huge fan of Utah, so I decided applying for work anywhere. I ran this across her and she agreed. I figured Godless New England would be our best bet - I must've sent out 100 resumes. No luck for a year. We had our baby, I blessed him in our house, they'd go to church without me. I kept sending resumes and started expanding my locations. Seattle, Portland, Pittsburgh, New York, ... Then finally, at long last I got a job offer! ... The offer was in Detroit. I knew nothing about Detroit other than abandoned homes, but... we needed a new home, and Detroit needs new people, so it sounded perfect!

So we packed up everything, sold our house, and moved 2,000 miles to the Great Lakes State and settled in a little suburb of Detroit. She relaxed the Mormon-image that she was keeping for her family and friends over the first few months. A sleeveless shirt here, a Sunday at the park there, but yes we still argued about church and she still attended most of the time.

One Sunday morning we had an argument about the November 2015 policy. I knew her acceptance of LGBT rights and I knew this terrible policy had to bother her as much as it did me. She left for church angry and texted me about 60 minutes later, "You're right. I don't believe it anymore."

I felt so bad, but so relieved at the same time. Today we go to church on occasion, but for cultural/familial reasons; neither of us believe - though I believe she still maintains a minor NOM aspect and maintains firm belief in Christianity while I'm a bit more Agnostic. Our little boy has never been to nursery and never will. We'll be having a second kid in a few weeks and they'll never know anything of Mormonism other than, "Oh, that's that thing Grandma and Grandpa do on Sundays."

Oh, and did I mention we love Detroit? It's an incredible city! Not just because we moved here, but the history, the arts, the culture, the sports, the cuisine - it's a real big city, but at a discount price. Plus, neighbors don't judge us for not being at church. We just bought a house, and I think we may just make it a long term home.

Keep filling your head with that information. Once you get a good grasp on foraging plants & fungi, you might be interested in picking up these books too:

What the Robin Knows

Reading Nature's Signs

How to Read Water

After you've gone through those, you go out into the woods.....

You know the scene in Superman, where he's a kid at school and locks himself in the closet because he's totally overwhelmed with sensory information? That's what going into the woods is like. Everywhere you look, more information coming in than you can possibly process.

Ocean Engineer here.. I studied in the same program as a scientist that works for surfline. Wave prediction is very complicated but this book is widely regarded as the best resource to learn it. I have read pretty much the entire book and it is well worth you time if you have the math background to understand it.

This book saved my water engineering module at University. Hope this helps!

I lived my whole life as some form of Christian or another. Went to Catholic schools as a kid, became "born again" at 18, went to a pentecostal/evangelical Bible college.

By age 45, I had to objectively acknowledge that Christianity didn't ever perform as had been promised. There was no evidence that I was better off for having been devoutly, obnoxiously religious, and a whole lot of evidence that I was worse off.

I had also long ago realized that Christian "science" was all reactionary stuff that was more about poking holes than actually proving anything. If science was so vacuous, we wouldn't be using computers and flying to the moon and whatnot. So I picked up a book by a geologist showing why the evidence is against Noah's flood, and I read it to understand rather than to poke holes. It blew me away.

From there, I started reading all sorts of science, and scholarly criticisms of the Bible, and it was pretty much the end for me. I realized how much effort I had to put into maintaining faith (a huge amount!), and it all just crumbled.

Timoshenko wrote a good book called Theory of Plates and Shells

I haven't read it, but your claim checks out. Amazon 59 reviews, 4.5 out of 5 stars average

How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea https://www.amazon.com/dp/1615193588/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CCMTDbEG7XAJ1

Here's my books from grad school

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Attenuation-Chlorinated-Solvents-Subsurface/dp/0471197491

https://www.amazon.com/Hydrology-Floodplain-Analysis-Philip-Bedient/dp/0132567962

https://www.amazon.com/Ground-Water-Contamination-Transport-Remediation/dp/0130138401

https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Organic-Chemistry-Rene-Schwarzenbach/dp/0471357502

https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Biotechnology-Principles-Applications-Rittmann/dp/0071181849

https://www.amazon.com/Air-Pollution-Its-Origin-Control/dp/0673994163

I've only been doing sedimentary stuff, so this might not be what you're looking for, but this book is great.

Thanks, my main interest seems to lie in petrology/lithology, mostly of sedimentary rocks at the moment, so I've been eyeing up a copy of Sedminetary Rocks in the Field once I have some spare cash. =)

I don't think this is quite what you're looking for, but I love this as a reference guide for sed deposits. Not a bad price point for a full colour guide. https://www.amazon.com/Sedimentary-Rocks-Field-Colour-Guide/dp/1874545693

I really enjoyed "Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood", which I don't think I've ever seen mentioned here (I only heard about it myself because it was a local author).

It's been a while since I read it, but what I remember enjoying was how the religious beliefs of our earliest geologists influenced their understanding of what they were discovering in the field. The early explorers set out to find evidence for Noah's flood, so it was amusing seeing them trying to wrap their heads around things like finding mammoths in Siberia, that were obviously washed away in the deluge!

I've not read it myself, but I really enjoyed the Your Inner Fish documentary series and have been reading to pick this one up.

A really fascinating book about the history of geology (with a focus on how much of it was shaped in relation to a cultural belief in the Noachian Flood) is The Rocks Don't Lie

Can't recommend it enough. It really puts modern flood geology in perspective.

Here is a book.

I will tackle one subject for now and lets use that as a baseline to see if what is being stated is complete gobbledykook or something that is poorly understood.

\> His speech on water having memory, deconstructed by a chemist here

This is the one I will tackle for now. The quoro link you gave talks about why this presumed IIT guy thinks water can't have memory and goes into structure of water molecules etc etc

here are some readings which suggests we are yet to understand the properties and structure of water well enough.

*****

EZ Water:  Water has three phases – gas, liquid, and solid; but findings from our laboratory imply the presence of a surprisingly extensive fourth phase that occurs at interfaces. The formal name for this fourth phase is exclusion-zone water, aka EZ water. This finding may have profound implication for chemistry, physics, and biology.

https://www.pollacklab.org/research

https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Phase-Water-Beyond-Liquid-ebook/dp/B00N2ASKF2

Professor Gerald Pollack is Founding Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal, WATER and is recognized as an international leader in science and engineering.

The University of Washington Faculty chose Pollack, in 2008, to receive their highest annual distinction: the Faculty Lecturer Award. He was the 2012 recipient of the coveted Prigogine Medal for thermodynamics of dissipative systems. He has received an honorary doctorate from Ural State University in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and was more recently named an Honorary Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Foreign Member of the Srpska Academy. Pollack is a Founding Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Heart Association and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He recently received an NIH Director's Transformative R01 Award for his work on water, and maintains an active laboratory in Seattle.Pollack is recognized worldwide as a dynamic speaker and a scientist willing to challenge any long-held dogma that does not fit the facts

*****

http://thewellnessproject.me/the-magical-properties-of-water-memory-and-consciousness/

Nobel Prize winner and virologist, Prof. Luc Montanier, succeeded in further continuing research to reveal that water contains the electrochemical properties of a substance, even after it is diluted, and has called this phenomenon “DNA Teleportation.” There are other German and Russian scientists that have also been studying the behavior of water in a similar fashion with the same results.

*****

and here is the reddit thread working hard to debunk the Nobel winner's findings claiming contaminants are the best explanation and not his hypothesis

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/f6fuo/dna_molecules_can_teleport_nobel_prize_winner/?limit=500

here is his actual paper with references at the end

https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.5166v1.pdf

taken from

http://www.sciencedebate.com/science-blog/reddit-takes-dna-teleportation-idea-nobel-laureate-luc-montagnier

******

and a brief write up of an experiment from the Japanese guy( now dead) who got famous taking pictures of water molecules

https://www.masaru-emoto.net/en/science-of-messages-from-water/

referred to herehttps://whatthebleep.com/water-crystals/

​

*******

So as you can see there are enough indicators to suggest that there is something serious here to keep doing further research and understand it better. It requires people who think outside the box and are willing to risk challenging the establishment. That is surely not this presumed IIT guy on Quora who wants to follow only the beaten path.

Sadhguru's words on this water memory isn't linked anywhere here and if my memory serves me right it has been answered in context of people's questions. Questions like why do we sprinkle holy water in temples or when a new home is inaugurated, is Ganga jal holy etc etc.

He always answered truthfully to the extent of his knowledge and based on the audience. I haven't seen him state these views out of the blue when talking to verified scientists cause the subject never comes up.

I am happy to tackle the others tropes once this discussion dies down.

I have used both Hendriks' Introduction to Physical Hydrology as well as Dingman's Physical Hydrology. Both are good on an introductory level for physical hydrology.

I am reading an amazing book on the story of Noah's flood and how it is not possible from a geologic standpoint.

Hello fellow wave enthusiast!

For a basic overview, try Surf Science. It's essentially a layman's guide to waves with hardly any math in it.


After that, there's various levels of math you can dive into. Waves are generally easy to formulate in deep water, but when dealing with shallow water, things get bit more complicated. The simpler equations for breaking or shallow water waves are largely empirical, and even then they are paired a lot of assumptions like smooth bottom and constant profile. After that you start getting into the heavy stuff like numerical solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations. You may want to check ocean engineering related textbooks that better connect the math to the physical wave behavior, like this one which I think is a good general textbook on ocean waves.

As for predicting and understanding global wave patterns, that's more meteorology than wave science. You're dealing with wind patterns, cyclone basins, storm prediction etc. Weather models, bouy data, and the numerous NOAA pages all become your best friends. Knowing when your local break works comes mostly from experience. You should watch the local the winds, swell direction, and period and see how things break under given conditions. Of course, keeping an eye on major storms like hurricanes/typhoons also helps.

Good for you for trying to learn. I'll shotgun some information at you here and maybe that'll give you some good leads to get going. I'll be honest, this is a bit of a pulling a thread on a sweater situation. A great many of the design methods used for design of detention ponds, weirs, inlet/outlet control structures, and pipes in general are pretty simple, but the basic assumptions behind them require much more knowledge to ensure safe and competent design. But regardless, it's not rocket science, and any good engineer will help you out when they see the potential for you to help them out more.

Mannings Equation. This is the basis for all gravity flow calculations. Learn it, love it.

Open Channel Hydraulics by Ven Te Chow is the bible for open channel hydraulics. It's 50 years old, but it's by far the easiest text to actually read and understand. It may be tough to directly connect the science to your work at first, but this is where it all comes from.
http://www.amazon.com/Open-Channel-Hydraulics-Ven-Te-Chow/dp/1932846182/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Both the FWHA and TXDOT have some good design manuals and research paper type stuff that you can learn a lot of direct design methods.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/engineering/hydraulics/highwaydrain/index.cfm
http://onlinemanuals.txdot.gov/txdotmanuals/hyd/index.htm

On the hydrology side, the NWS has done a lot of research on rainfall patterns. They have a ton of information, but here's a link to the seminal TP40 paper that many current IDF curves are derived from.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hdsc/PF_documents/TechnicalPaper_No40.pdf

One last thing. I've used Civil 3D every day since it came out, and I still haven't successfully used the Storm & Sanitary add-on. I admit it does look cool, but I could never customize them enough for each City's calculation requirements, and ultimately they weren't worth the trouble for me. You need software for water system modeling and flood modeling, but basic storm and sanitary design is spreadsheet stuff.

Good luck!

Water Resources Engineering - Larry W. Mays or Applied Hydrology - Te Chow for engineering hydrology. They are somewhat outdated in not including some new methods (like ML methods) but both solid for the fundamentals. There is also a PDF copy of the latter floating around if you do a google search.

Chow's Open-Channel Hydraulics book is also great (for channel and hydraulic structures design, non-pressurized), but mind numbing to go through. Also, Fluid Mechanics - Frank White for general fluid mechanics overview.

Finally, although I've not personally read/used it, HEC-22 is a design manual for urban drainage systems and Advanced Water Distribution Modeling and Management for modeling/design of water distribution systems.

Volia! https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1930665334/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=F4V1MW8F6NDV&coliid=I3DFC5NFUJ510J

Check out what your local university or college has listed for their physical geology text book(s), visit their book store and see if they fit the bill. A very useful book for identification, surprisingly, can be in the form of a lab book as well. If those are too costly, perhaps they would make a good future investment or you can find them online as pdf's, or e-books. In the mean time, there are also plenty of field guides, for example that may interest you, or even that you can print out (pdf) for basic identification.

There are some great suggestions here, and I would include The Rocks Don't Lie.

It does a great job recounting the history of geology as the science evolved, and how it affected culture. I different take than the other suggestions, but certainly relevant and well worth the read.

The author is a well known geomorphology expert.

I take your points. I can see how any of us should he skeptical solely based on that video.

Even if he turns out to be a "nutty conspiracy theorist fraud" as you keep speculating in your post, his book on amazon is being reviwed rather well for a "nutty conspiracy theorist".

amazon.com/The-Fourth-Phase-Water-Beyond[...]

Guess there's only one way to confirm/deny the doubts and read the book (which just happens to be available on pirate websites if you don't feel like paying up front, not that I'm trying to advocate piracy or anything).

Edit: after reading more reviews, apparently the book also contains a lot of speculation, but is correctly "marked" as such.

Another genius mind whose insight and inspiration came from Water is Viktor Schauberger, the underrated austrian inventor. Gerald H Pollack and his fourth phase of water is another amazing exploration.

https://www.amazon.ca/Fourth-Phase-Water-Beyond-Liquid/dp/0962689548

Hi,

My wife is a naturopath and cured a few people with headaches with water, one had seen 10 specialist across the globe.

We are dehydrated and when you are your body function start to break. You need to drink like crazy for a few days so that your body start taking the water at a cellular level.

I tried to do research on it to explain, but found very few documents on this. Dr Pollack has some interesting reseach on water: https://www.amazon.ca/Fourth-Phase-Water-Beyond-Liquid/dp/0962689548

Try it let me know!

I'd suggest The Geysers of Yellowstone. Way more up-to-date, way more affordable, way more complete. Allen & Day is strictly for enthusiasts, collectors, and librarians.

Elements of Physical Hydrology by Hornberger, paperback version is super cheap on Amazon. Pretty good reference.

As others mentioned, the Fetter books for Hydrogeology are great. I used it in an Advanced Hydrogeology course and still reference it from time to time. This is the version I used for my course

I would say don't throw out the baby with the bath water. Yes, in the US, you have some bat shit crazy christians that take a literal view of the bible. Go back in time a century or two to any of the universities that the major churches were sponsoring, and they'd laugh at the suggestion that the bible should be taken literally, even in the theology department. Yes, they tried to view the evidence they had through a prism that presumed the bible was in some way true, but they were willing to reject the idea that each word was litterally true. "The Rocks Don't lie" gives a pretty interesting account of that from a geology perspective https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rocks-Dont-Lie-Geologist-Investigates/dp/0393346242/

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The Modern Catholic church doesn't reject science. The pope worked in Chemistry, evolution and the big bang are accepted as facts, even if again the religious prism is applied to map that to "how God did it". The Catholic church still does a lot scientific research, recognising "How" and "Why/Who" are different questions. (Thats not dimiss the major, major issues with the modern Catholic Church, but their treatment of science isn't one of them).

​

At the risk of invoking the no true scotsman theory, a lot of the stuff that American preachers today are saying, were rejected a long, long time ago by theologans.