Fred56

I bet there weren't many H. habilis who knew about this.

My Physics 101 textbook says that the frictional force "always opposes the motion" of a moving body, uphill, downhill, or no hill. Then goes on to give two examples, one uphill, one downhill, and the friction vector points in the opposite direction to the direction of motion. The example with no slope also does this. But then the examples are all for brick-style bodies rather than wheels with only one point of contact. That last sentence might be a clue to why your tutor says it doesn't matter.

I was well and truly alive in the good ol' 80's. I still consider it one of the best decades for modern music. How many of these have you heard of? The Cars, Killing Joke, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, Supertramp, Elton John, Steve Winwood, Joe Jackson, Simply Red.

OK. I make the following observations about the direction this thread has gone so far: The initial query was about what substance there is to the idea the warming trend is due to solar activity, or sunspots. My post was about some research that specifically refutes this idea (but some may have initially believed I was trying to do something else with it), although it does find a bigger forcing, apparently. The relevance of Camp & Tung's work to this discussion is that it suggests other results may be incorrect, and that they could find no secular trend in over 50 years of instrumental data. Assumptions about “someones loyalty” or otherwise, to the “cause”, appear to have coloured my contribution. This isn't especially saddening, or anything (it happens a lot, anyway). Just thought I'd let you all know. “Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!”

Quite. But despite accepting that there is a lot of empirical evidence, and there is also overwhelming consensus (despite the details still to be figured out), you do seem to be clinging to the concept of a “simple” explanation somewhere in amongst all the complexity. If you're interested, there are climate models you can download and run to help out with testing how well they model past climate. You get all the software and the local client takes care of data downloads for model “runs”. Here's the link: http://www.climateprediction.net/index.php

God knows why I'm doing this, but here goes (once more with feeling): Doesn't this poke a big hole in your contention that light is the only available "measure" we have? viz:

Hmm. Funny how I seem to keep finding places to post various bits I've collected from here and there. Check this out: “No one of us can stand and stare for long at a brilliant night sky, and not begin to wonder by what mighty hand it was wrought, and to what purpose. This amazing light show that parades across the heavens we know to be distant stars, rather than holes in some celestial curtain, and the iridescent river, studded with more jewels than a thousand tiaras, a section of one of the arms of our galaxy, in fact, a river of stars. This knowledge doesn't seem to detract from the view in the least. We have front row seats in the Amphitheatre of the Cosmic Dance, a contemplative view of the creation all around us.” What is it about being in a forest, or standing on a shore, or on a mountain, or seeing the heavens, that elicits some deep, almost transcendental feeling of “something” within us? Some primeval emotion that compels us to consume the scene before us, to drink it in, to savour its experience. What is the “experience”? What is it about seeing the ocean, its vastness, the power and crescendo of its waves, the “presence”, of something that we recognise, but cannot identify? Anyone?

My take on the purchase of chemicals (of any description) and equipment for private use, is it's a lot more problematic than it was "back in the day". Probably because of all those terrorist alerts and stuff. You might have more luck contacting a company who can order stuff for you.

SkepticLance: Please note I used the term "some people" and not "SkepticLance". My apologies if my comment was taken as a personal slight.

Yes, that's pretty much how it is. But this "ability to project" has given us Newtonian dynamics, Maxwell's equations, and all the rest.

My biggest question about his conjecture: is: what the hell did people do to tell the time before we developed the technology to "measure" the motion of light?

What I can't get my head around in all this is why some people believe that climate scientists must all be lying, or seriously deceived, or just after funding (so they can keep fooling the public presumably). Science is science. It's that simple. The really odd thing is that many of these “folks” also seem to have a lot of faith in science (as long as it isn't climate science). In other words we can trust all the scientists, but if one of them claims to know about the climate, they should be stood up against the nearest wall and shot.

No problem. I brought it up because this thread is about sunspots and so is their research. Just in closing: one of the implications of their findings (and Tung appears to imply something like this in his email) is that the next cycle should push atmos. temp. upwards over the next 5-6 years, possibly resulting in a few years of highest recorded temp. Which Chris C has also stated, sort of. The other thing is that I think a study that is apparently "believed the first to document a statistically significant globally coherent temperature response to the solar cycle" isn't irrelevant to the discussion at all.

Cheers, I just found an article about the international SKA project. NZ is apparently only a possible site. VLBI in conjunction with Australia has been done here for about 18 months now, except it's never covered in the media (too boring, maybe). I recall the article mentioned the search for black holes in AGNs, and stuff. Guess I'll just have to keep trawling. Or maybe I should bowl up to the institution here and start asking around.

And this conclusion is based on what solid empirical data?

Ok, so you've heard the one about the guy who pulls up to the gates of a crematorium and asks the security guard "You got a light?"...

Attractiveness seems to me to be something we recognise, somehow. There's a concept of ideal beauty, or ideal form, something Renaissance artists tried hard to model or create (Michelangelo, for example). Music has this quality, also, and poetry, and food, and Einstein's equations. It's a phenomenon that can “affect” all of our senses. But why or how do we recognise it? Humans must not be the only animals with this “brain function”, unless we really are special.

Last year, I think it was, I read an article in the community rag about some professor or other who had set up a new office at one of the Tertiary institutions here in Auckland. This is, the story said, to assist with the international VLBA project, which NZ is expected to participate in by constructing part of the international array here (I think somewhere in the Sth Island). Does anyone know about this project? I haven't had a lot of luck chasing this one because I can't remember the name of the consortium.

Isn't there a group of climate scientists who are saying that the "millenial" time-scale for the ice sheets is only a guess? That no-one really knows how stable any of them are (except maybe East Antarctica)?

Hmm. A solid line implies covalent bonding. Hydrogen bonding is represented by a dotted line. This is probably the OH to H you are talking about. It's not complicated or anything, just a representation with some bits of the diagram omitted (implied).

It also says that Lockwood and Frolich are wrong, maybe. So Camp & Tung are providing "unhelpful" research?

Well, it probably isn't so easy to analyse someone else's ideas without creating an impression of nit-picking, or trivial objection. Maybe if we were discussing this face-to-face, or even ear-to-ear, the impression would be a little different. Apologies if I have upset you with any of this, and yes it is a difficult subject. But to continue the discussion: Sure, this is absolutely and scientifically logical and correct. But the physical action is an observation (which is made by observers, i.e. us), and the rest follows from this. We assume that there are lots of events occurring that we don't (or can't) observe, but this is because of our logic, our science, which is our thinking. Well, this looks a lot like a speculation. Can you enlarge on this a little? Watches don't “produce” anything, other than a “memory” in our brains. The concept of stable, linear time is well established, and is a direct consequence of the stable, linearly functioning (it ticks regularly) neurobiological system we are all born with.

Yes, sorry. What I meant was that the concept of time as a measurable quantity, some property of the universe, although firmly established, is based on our experience, our understanding, which is all in our heads, as it were. This then, is ultimately where science is, as well. Of course we have had a lot of, er, time to "extend" this internality into an externality: a "collection" of "memory". All those books, etc.