JohnB

Lemur, if I didn't understand your post then it's a fair bet that others couldn't either, so a PM wouldn't have added to the ongoing conversation of the thread. A post that isn't easily understood isn't very constructive either, wouldn't you agree? I would suggest that if people find your meaning unclear then it would be more worthwhile to structure posts in a clearer and more methodical manner than to be tempted to be insulting. Miscommunication can be from a number of factors and indistinct writing techniques is one of them. Why be angry at me because you didn't express yourself clearly? Put bluntly, I couldn't follow your train of thought and the interconnections therein. In response to a comment about a desire for government to be responsive to the desires of the people you brought in water, food, housing, labour markets, lack of individual responsibility in health care and the pilgrims. I'm having great trouble seeing the connections here. Especially WRT the pilgrims. The motivating forces that made them colonize America are very different from the motivating forces that led to the American revolution and I really can't see a connection at all. Colonization is not revolution. "Independent cultivation of the land" has nothing to do with the situation developing in the middle east. It's about fair and just government. Any reasonably educated person in the region is well aware that under an unjust and biased system his or her chances of economic progress are severely curtailed. It doesn't matter how good or right you are if your opponent (or business competitor) has the ear of the government and can shut you down. I have yet to read anything from Egypt etc that even implies that the people believe that getting rid of the current government will solve all their problems. They simply want the chance to improve economically. There can be no dreams of a better future for your children if their future and lives can be taken arbitarily by the government. A government that is elected by the people and is responsive to the wishes of the people does not guarantee economic prosperity for the individual or the nation, but it is the one that offers the best chance of both. Because it is accountable to the people, there is responsibility for governmental actions. It is this responsibility that is being demanded. I'm uncertain as to why you think I'm "twisting" the causes of the American revolution. I never said it was about economic prosperity. Although you could perhaps argue that I'm referring to people demanding a fair chance at economic prosperity. I thought it was about "No Taxation without Representation" and "Government of the People, for the People and by the People". These aren't food protests, or job protests, they are protests about how their nation is run and the form of government that it has, and a demand to have a say in both. Exactly the same factors that led to popular support for the American revolution. Nobody argues that these weren't strong underlying factors in America and other places where Democracy has come from revolution, yet people seem to be incapable of believing that the same desires are the underlying cause of the unrest in the ME. Even though these are the reasons given to the world by the protestors themselves. Nobody questions the motivation of the Americans back then, so why do they question the motives now? I can only assume that for some reason people in the ME are viewed as "inferior" in some way because there must be some deep, dark motivation rather than the one that is plainly stated.

Sorry, what? I can't even work out if you are agreeing or disagreeing with the quoted sentences.

Marat, it isn't the same world now. One of the reasons things didn't change much with a change in government in the past was a lack of communication. People got used to corruption because there was nothing to measure it against. Any stories about how it was elsewhere were just that, stories from far away places. In the modern interconnected world this no longer applies. For a nation to work even partly in the global economy it requires a proportion of it's people to be educated and in touch with other nations in real time. It's not stories any more. It's what you see in real time on the net, or the news, or what you are told by people that you work with every day but live in other nations. Educated people see that the police and courts don't have to be corrupt, that fair and free elections do occur and that other people can say what they like about their government without being visited by the "Special" police. People accept the status quo because they can't imagine that it could be any other way. In the interconnected world they are being shown every single day how it can be and is different elsewhere. And those who see it talk to others, who talk to others, and so on. Oppressive regimes use problems in other nations to bolster their hold. I have no doubt that the many protests about the Iraq invasion were broadcast often in the Arab world. The problem with doing this is that it demonstrates to the people that others can demonstrate against their government without fear of reprisal. The fact that such protests can even exist is telling. Why is so hard to believe that these people want the same rights for themselves? The Soviets made the same mistake. I read interviews with Victor Belenko years ago. He was the pilot that defected with a shiny new Mig 25. As people may or may not know, privately owned cars were not that common in the old USSR. One of the reasons Belenko gave for wanting to see the West was a presentation by a Political Commisar. He showed a photo of American workers eating hot dogs to demonstrate how poorly treated factory workers were in the USA. However in the background was the factorys parking lot full of cars. This led Belenko to wonder "If the workers are so poor, who owns all those cars?" I find there is almost a racist slant to many commenting on the goings on in the middle east. Looking for deep and dark meanings rather than simply accepting the reason that the protestors themselves have put forward. Honest government and fair elections. They know that with honest government and political freedom then economic freedom will follow. They have said this, why is it so hard to believe? Is there some underlying reason that arabs can't "understand" democracy? Or is it that they "aren't ready" for it? The Americans rebelled in 1776 because they wanted a government that responded to the wishes and needs of the people. I've yet to see anybody argue otherwise. So why is it so hard to believe that Tunisians, Egyptians and others are protesting for exactly the same reasons?

Thanks DH, that simple paragraph explains all. The ISS doesn't need to look pretty or sci-fi, it needs to be efficient. I just think the open lattice type design, once past a certain size would be very inefficient. You would spend too much time travelling through sections to get to your destination. It also means that labs and berths become thoroughfares. Whereas the hub and spoke system means that you exit your current compartment into the hub and then immediately enter your destination compartment. I'm not talking about a 2001 style wheel here, just a hub section large enough to dock the spoke sections to. Such a design is modular and very expandable. I'm sure that there are extremely good reasons for the way it was built. I just don't see them. But then, I also don't have the required training either. I was hoping that like the first question, there is a simple answer.

Thanks CaptainPanic. As they say, "It never rains but it pours", quite literally in this case. Most of the Qld floods are gone but the ground is still mostly waterlogged so any new rain will be runoff and flooding almost immediately. Well, it looks like we've been very lucky. As of 10:00 hrs we have no reports of casualties. Evacuation centres are still in lockdown as there is another storm surge hitting coastal cities as I write. Yasi is inland and downgraded to a Cat 2. It is expected to be a Cat 1 by the time it hits Mt. Isa tonight some 700 km from the coast. This is a bit of a worry as most people in Isa will have never seen any kind of cyclone. The main coastal cities have some damage, but it doesn't seem major. 177,000 homes are without power and this is expected to rise as flooding continues. Communication is out for many small communities and crews are cutting their way in. The Army has 200 generators waiting for deployment as soon as they know where to go and can get into the effected areas. Tully has 1/3 of homes either destroyed or uninhabitable, the evacuation centre there was destroyed and had to be abandoned. Cardwell apparently has boats 2-3 blocks inland, either by wind or storm surge. Severe damage in Mission Beach and we're still waiting for word out of Ingham. It will probably be 24 hours before we know the full extent of the damage. Fallen trees and flooding are blocking roads everywhere, however initial reports are that the main electricity grid "spine" has survived. Right now we are counting blessings. The towns we can and will rebuild but everybody is quite stunned at the complete lack of casualties. 3 babies were born at the height of the storm so the score is being counted as; Queensland 3 - Yasi 0.

Inigo, we must have cross posted before. I did think that you might lose payload in armour, but I wasn't sure. So I asked. As to the "ski jump", I was thinking of a curve with a radius measured in miles that does little more than kick the craft up to a 40 degree angle. You perhaps misunderstood me about the station. I never said it was spinning. I simply meant something that is modular and expandable. Until you make something pretty big I don't see spin as a great idea anyway. Unless there is a fair diameter you would have to spin the thing too fast to get a meaningful gravity effect.

TC Yasi is now a Cat 5 and will cross the coast sometime tonight. http://www.goes.noaa.gov/sohemi/sohemiloops/shirgmscol.html As much as possible we have evacuated the effected cities. There are already reports that outlying weather stations have ceased responding. The following alert was issued today; To give an idea of the size of this thing, the area where the most destructive winds are expected to hit, from Cairns to Ingham, is a distance of about 200 km. Innesfail which was smashed by Larry in 2006 is right in the firing line again. (And we haven't finished fixing it up from Larry yet. ) Down here in Brisbane, we got wet but up north is going to be a mess. Many fear that we will see devastation similar to Tracy tomorrow morning. If anybody has any prayers to spare, they need them up north tonight.

WRT the OP. Yes, it's fine and no, my wife doesn't mind. Lemur, I wouldn't make so much of the "drooling" bit as this would be an extreme case and it is pointless to argue from extremes. I find in many cases the mainstream religious idea behind "covering up" is a phallacy. It assumes that all men are animals and so weak in spirit that they can and will be easily led astray. This is rubbish. Historically speaking it didn't happen in quite advanced ancient cultures where women often went bare topped and it doesn't happen in societies today where the women are bare topped. It is the enforced absence of something which makes it desirable. Having something around makes it passe and not worth your attention. Anybody who has worked in an industry where you associate backstage with catwalk models knows what I mean. You're working in an area where stunningly beautiful women walk around you and take their clothes off, repeatedly. After 5 minutes or less they aren't almost naked women anymore, they are just Karen, Susan and Tina. And you are way too busy with your job to notice what they are or aren't wearing. The rather odd thing is that you don't notice the girls when they are virtually buck naked, but if you see them walking around the show later in jeans and a T shirt, you do notice their figure. Now I will grant that there are some sorry individuals for whom it might be an insurmountable distraction, but they are the extreme cases and societal rules should not be based on extreme cases. Just because a Muslim or a Christian apparently can't see a naked breast without suffering uncontrollable rapacious urges, doesn't mean that this is true for the rest of us. It's the same foolish logic that says that if 1 person can't learn to handle their alcohol consumption in an adult and sensible manner, all alcohol should be banned. I will also add that I think that there is a lot of compartmentalising going on in reality too. As a simple example a normal male who sees a rather busty lady in a white T shirt might wonder how she would look in a wet T shirt competition or have other, similar, sexual thoughts. There might even be a thought of watching her hike up the top and giving everyone a good look, again a sexual thought. However if this same woman reaches around to a carrier, brings out a baby and proceeds to breastfeed, what happens? Nothing, nobody cares. You now know the answer to what she looks like under the T shirt and it means absolutely nothing. Note that this demonstrates that the basic religious idea that "Bare skin = Sex" is totally wrong.

Mr Skeptic, my tongue was firmly in cheek for the last bit. However, if you believe a non linear chaotic system can be modelled with accuracy for a 100 year outlook, mere aeronautics should be a doddle. I wasn't thinking about wings at all, if anything they are superfluous. The shuttle uses quite a bit of power to lift its own mass against gravity as well as accelerating itself. Since the key to orbit is speed, why not lay the sucker down and go sideways? That way all the thrust translates into speed. Run it on a rail across flat land and then up the side of a mountain for the ski jump. The shuttle engines develop some 1.2 million pounds of thrust, much of which is used to counter the effect of gravity and lifting by brute force the mass of the fuel tank and spacecraft. The liftoff weight is 240,000 pounds so almost 1/4 of the trust is wasted lifting the craft. By going sideways that wasted thrust is converted directly into speed. this should mean a larger payload for the same fuel or less fuel required. AFAIK speed is the key, once something is travelling fast enough you would have to expend energy to stop it from going to orbit. The downside is that by going sideways you are travelling very fast at zero feet. A birdstrike at 6,000 mph would be a major problem.

DH, since the big picture is your field, could you please answer a couple of questions that have bugged me for some time? 1. WRT orbital launches, why do we still go straight up? I always thought the old George Pal idea of a horizontal launch and a ski jump was rather good. That way you are using the fuel on the main stage to gain speed rather than using it to lift fuel. Is it simply that a bird strike at 6,000 mph is very ungood? There is still talk about the flyable scram jet booster planes, but they will be big birds to carry a shuttle sized load on their backs. 2. Concerning the ISS design. It seems a rather pointless design. (As in it is an end in itself and not particularly expandable.) SF has put forward the idea for decades that the logical way to build a station is to launch a "Hub" section that the ascent stages of later rockets dock with to become spokes in a wheel. As you need more space you then add another "Hub" and more spokes, or add modules that extend the existing spokes. Eventually you send up the plating and sheet the whole thing in and rebuild the interior into a big tin can. Basically it is a design that can evolve as needs be. Is the problem that space is primarily government funded and politicians can't handle the concept of planning further than the next election? And I just have to add; Perhaps the Aerospace industry needs to borrow the ones the climate modellers use? Apparently theirs are just as good as reality. Think of all the money you could save on testing equipment, if the models agree the ship will fly, then it will fly. The models say so.

I think people are giving religion too much credit and/or blame. The reason for monogamy are very old and quite basic. We tend to forget that for the majority of human history most people lived barely above the subsistence level with the male doing most of the work that fed his family. This naturally leads to a situation where he wouldn't want to be trying feed children that aren't his. Hence the societal preference for monogamy. Religions just tapped into the prevailing mindset and cemented this into their doctrine. There is nothing surprising in this as at the time most religions were forming, most people were still barely above subsistence level. Rather than secular freedom slowly changing attitudes towards sex, I would suggest that economic freedom for women has been the greater force. The ability of women to be financially independent of men has given them an ability to be "choosier" since the requirement of "Someone to support her and the family" is no longer the primary reason for choosing a mate. In many ways I think the "sexual control" as Lemur puts it has shifted from men towards women, but this is due to economic independence and not secularism. However, it should be noted that this "control" is simply more open now. With the exception of arranged marraiges, while the men appeared to have the control, it was always the women who had the true control. I'm sure that many here, like me, can look back at things done when younger and think "I was crazy to do that". Why did we do it? To hopefully impress the girls and get laid. Basic but true. The women chose their partners and we poor fools spent our time trying to work out what would make them choose us. The ladies let us think we were the ones in control while over the centuries we busted our buns to show that we could provide for them, (one of the uses for Harvest Festivals was to show what a good farmer you were) we learned martial arts to show we could defend them. We learned poetry and literature to demonstrate how "cultured" we were. In more recent times we listened to some of the worst poetry in history to show our "Rebel" or "Bohemian" side, joined causes we didn't care about because the hot chicks did care and we go to "Chick Flicks" to demonstrate our sensitive side. Here's a thought experiment to demonstrate who really has the "control". If all men agreed tomorrow that they would only sleep with women who can walk on their hands and told the ladies this, they would laugh in our faces and wait maybe 24 hours for us to cave in. However, if women decided to only sleep with men who could walk on their hands and said they would enforce it, within 7 days half the population would be upside down. There would be a thriving self help industry covering everything from "Handwalking for Beginners" to "Being the Best Handwalker you can Be." Within a month we would have TV shows like "So You think you can Handwalk?", "The Handwalking Factor" and "America has Handwalkers". The ladies have always had the power, but economic freedom now allows them to use it more openly. The only thing saving us mere males from a lifetime upside down is that women in general seem to like men and simply use their control to allow us to make complete fools of ourselves for their amusement, rather than as a tool for our oppression.

Is this the sort of thing you want? http://thecoolgadgets.com/usb-powered-remote-control-helicopter-autopilot-feature/ or this? http://store.rcsupersales.net/servlet/-strse-4408/HeliCommand-3D-dsh--AUTOPILOT/Detail All you are trying to do is fly a model chopper with an autopilot. BTW, unless you design and build the chopper from the ground up, basing it on something like the Chinook, there is no way you will get a 15-20 pound payload.

Stealthy?

Absolute rubbish. While you didn't have the kowledge at birth, you were surrounded by it due to parents and friends. The only way to do what you are suggesting is to remove the children from their parents and tribal lands. If the culture is the barrier, then the only way to remove the barrier is to remove the children from the culture. We tried this and it didn't bloody work. It was an unmitigated f*cking disaster. Try Googling "Stolen Children" or "Stolen Generation". Your idea is 40 years out of date, and doesn't work.

What absolute bollocks. There were a number of differences between the colonial powers, the foremost being that some encouraged the "Rule of Law" and Democracy and others didn't. If you check the histories of the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, you'll see that the majority gained Independence without bloodshed and in a couple of cases Independence was granted even though not wanted by the locals. The move towards self governance was enforced from the time of the League of Nations and reaffirmed by the United Nations later in the 20th Century. The whole "Neo-Colonialism" schtick is getting very old. It might appeal to the ideology of some but it is bereft of factual basis. One of the main reasons for third world poverty is time. A number of years ago Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia called the attitude of the West "unfair". It got a fair bit of play down here and I, like many others thought it a bit strong. When I checked what he said and meant, he was correct, the expectations of the West are many times "unfair". 20th Century Western affluence and Democracy didn't come about overnight. It is the result of more than 5,000 years of wars, rebellions, civil wars and strife, all gradually and incrementally evolving the "West" as we know it today. The legacy of the early times is still with us. The crossed R of the pharmicist derives from the "Eye of Horus", the healer of Pharonic Egypt. The number of seconds in a minute and the number of minutes in an hour, as well as the 360 degrees in a circle all derive from the ancient Sumerian method of using base 60 in accountancy. The size of trains, cars and wagons are directly resulting from Roman war chariots. It has been a very long and bloody road. Yet for some perverse reason many in the West expect Africans and other nations to make this jump in mere decades. That is unfair. This doesn't claim that Africans or anybody else are inferior in any way. I state quite bluntly that we whites couldn't do it either. We are often asking people to make the societal jump in decades that took us thousands of years to do. That is expecting people to be superhuman. If some outside power had come to Europe in the 12th Century offering advanced weapons provided we "used them wisely" and for our own "defence", what would have been the result? The rulers of the times would have gone "Yes, of course, only for our defence, gotcha" and promptly gone to war with each other. The point being that the West didn't do it and since it is beyond belief that the West could do it, why do we expect others to make the societal jump so quickly? We see this in australia on a smaller scale. The last Aboriginal tribe was contacted in 1984. They were a neolithic, hunter gatherer tribe with all the world view that this entails. Bringing them and others into 21st Century society is a problem. I would say that many of the problems we have are due to this "clash of cultures", this demand we place upon the Aboriginal people to integrate into the 21st Century. We try many different programs and often fail in spectacular fashion. The fact that so many of the Aboriginal people in Australia have made the leap from neolithic culture 200 years ago to modern 21st Century culture is a testament to the resiliance and fortitude of the Aboriginal people. Look at the civil rights movement in america in the 60s. How hard was it to change the thinking of a nation? How much harder must it be to go from doing what the tribal chief says to the concept of a central chief for the nation who speaks to other leaders on the world stage? I'm not talking about the leaders and intelligensia here, I'm talking about the farmers and common people who make up the bulk of society. Yet even amoung the leaders, tribal affiliations can be more important than national interests. We see this time and again and wonder why, yet the answer is very simple. Time. How long did it take the West to go conceptually from "I'm the ruler and I get all the good stuff. And I get to make special dispensations for my friends" to Democracy? Compared to our rate, the development towards Democracy, Rule of Law and Human Rights in Africa and other places is lightening fast. Poverty for the masses has been the standard for human society for most of its history. We have in the West, to a great degree, removed this problem, but it took us 5,000 years to do so. To ask "Why?" about third world poverty is to complain that the third world hasn't achieved in decades what it took us millenia to accomplish. Give them a break, they're doing better than we ever did. I fully expect that the third world will be developed and integrated into the planetary economy well before the end of this century. A developmental change in economies, societies, systems of governance and world view that is 10 times faster than the rate of the West. However to achieve this transformation the third world need a number of things. They need cheap, plentiful and reliable power for their people, which means coal, nuclear or hydro power stations. They need fresh water which means dams. They need food and arable land for their crops with increased yields which means fertilisers and pesticides. They need an economic base for their nations which means mines and industry. The Western "Green" agenda is directly opposed to all these things. The another big barrier to the end of poverty in the third world is the "Green" philosophy. Always as part of the answer to any ecological "catastrophe" for the last 40 years is that the third world should stay poor. From "Global Dimming" in the 70s where they shouldn't industrialise because it would lead to more airborne pollutants, through the "Ozone Hole" where they shouldn't have cheap refrigeration, to "Climate Change" where they shouldn't have cheap and plentiful power. Opposition to dams because they flood a forest ignores the fact that the dams will provide cheap electricity for cooking, rather than dung or wood fires, so the horrendous infant mortality rates will go down. They will provide sanitation and clean water rather than dirty water and open sewers running in ditches with all the death and disease that brings. Again we see examples of the same thing in Australia. The "Green Left" supports Aboriginal Land Rights and Aboriginal control over traditional areas. So long as those rights don't include building a house, or fresh water, or electricity, or schooling, or fishing in the rivers, or any sort of development, in any way, whatsoever. So yes, another reason for Third World poverty is the anti-development political power that greens have in Western nations. Since they support some de-industrialization of the West, why on Earth would you expect them to support the industrialization of the Third World?

After a quick chat with a gentleman from the CCC it is apparent that this statement is wrong. I therefore totally and unreservedly retract it. The best that this exercise can demonstrate is that the GISS code appears to introduce a warming bias when it infills data for 1200 km smoothing in this case.

Fraud is possible, but I think quite rare. Fraud being the doing of something with the intent to mislead. Confirmation bias and the pressure to publish along with "publication bias" may have a lot more to do with the number of retractions. Reading Retraction Watch recently I was rather astounded by the Editors response to the question "Why was the paper retracted?" I would have thought that the reason for the retraction was everybodys business. Letting other researchers know where the mistake was will save them time and effort. Retraction Watch article here. There was also an interesting piece in The Guardian on this topic. In the case of one retraction the reason was; Which is not particularly informative. Retraction Watch got in touch with the authors and recieved this reponse; No fraud, just a mistake that led to a wrong conclusion. When the mistake was realised, they retracted the paper. No big deal. Also of interest and perhaps relevent to this topic is this rather longer piece in the New Yorker on the "Decline Effect" and the difficulty some scientists have in replicating their own experiments. Strong findings early on that diminish with time may lead to retractions, or the original papers simply fade away and are no longer referenced.

Just watched it online. What an amazing program. Anybody with an interest in the field, or in the evolution of science in general should watch this piece. I have to give it 5 stars. (So does Theresa)

My version doesn't make me do those things. Do I need an upgrade? Voltman you are making some very strong comments without any real proof. Can you provide some evidence that priests are more likely to be rapists? If you read the link the divorces are not attibuted to Facebook, regardless of the miseading title of the article. Petitions simply contained "references to Facebook". Facebook is mentioned because it is a communications medium. Prior to Facebook cheaters used MSM, prior to that it was texting, before that it was plain old telephone calls and before that cheaters used letters. I'm willing to bet that if you did a similar survey of divorce applications from 15 years ago, the telephone would get a mention in many, would this mean that the telephone is to "blame" for the divorces? People cheat for any number of reasons, however the existence of a particular communications media is not one of them.

SMF, maybe it is a difference in outlook between nations. As I said, if the comments had come in a month or so I wouldn't have minded so much. I simply think that all persons should shut up while the situation is ongoing and save the profound prognostications for later. We still have a number of people missing and many thousands in danger, if you can't see that commenting at this state is to say the least insensitive, then I doubt I can explain it further. I alluded to, but didn't say directly that my contempt and disgust at some of our politicians is far greater than any animosity I might feel for Dr Trenberth in this matter. I do have to wonder what propaganda handbook you get your vocabulary from, although it certainly appears that you are in full agreement that the best way to have a conversation is to cast aspertions on your opponents. "Anti science", "misinformation"? Concerning the FOI I am well aware of the damn stupid stunt that was pulled with the 50 odd requests. I am also well aware that the emails complaining about FOI date to before that occurred. In this respect it is you who is spreading misinformation. Unfortunately for the misinformation, people do actually look at the timeline. While I certainly agree that the concerted effort from CA was both stupid and vexatious, there is zero evidence that the CRU was under undue pressure before that time. You also assert that the information couldn't be given out because "CRU didn't own the datasets", as this was the (I think) third different excuse for not releasing the data, perhaps you can see that it needs to be taken with much salt. IIRC the order was "We don't have the data", "I.P. rights" and finally the "Confidentiality agreements" that were apparently so confidential that even the CRU didn't know who they were with. I can only repeat what others have said in this "If you aren't guily of behaving badly, then stop acting as if you are." I presume that you can provide some sort of substantiary evidence for the claim that; As it hasn't been out long, that was a very quick poll you took. Concerning the deletion of emails, I never said it was Dr Trenberth, I stated quite plainly that it was Dr Jones. Nice try with the "context" bit, but it doesn't change the facts. Phil Jones recienved an FOI request for certain documents. Within days of that request being filed Dr Jones emailed colleagues requesting them to delete the emails that were the subject of the request. This is not an off the cuff "I'm gonna kill the SOB", this is a request for others to commit a crime. Whether documents were delted or not is immaterial, it is the act of making the request that is illegal. Similarly (but obviously a more extreme case) if I were to circulate emails asking for a hitman to kill my wife, that act is illegal. Whether I find a hitman or not is immaterial to the case. Similarly to spread the disinformation that "There has been no legal action against any of the scientists" is disingenuous to say the least. Those that were following the investigations are well aware that the only reason no charges were laid was due to expiration of a Statute of Limitiations. Context doesn't enter the equation, Dr Jones knowingly asked others to commit what he knew to be a crime. For some unfathomable reason this appears to be nothing much to many in the scientific community. I can assure you that it is a very big deal in the outside world. Concerning the three "investigations". If I were you I wouldn't be talking about them too much or people might actually go and have a look at them and that would be unfortunate for your narrative. They might see for example that even though there was prima facie evidence of deletion of documents subject to FOI requests not one of the investigations actually asked the question "Did you delete any documents?" which would surely be a rather obvious question. People might also see that no records of interviews were kept, in fact amazingly little documentation at all for supposedly "rigorous" investigations. People might also see that many of those involved in the whole FOI debacle were not interviewed. Would you consider a police investigation to be in any way complete if they only interviewed friends of the accused? Of course not. Regarding the tree rings. This is not about a series. This is about truncating the results of a published reconstruction. In the spaghetti graph used earlier in this thread Briffa 2001 is cut off in 1960. Again this isn't about a particular series. This is about using the part of a colleagues results that you agree with and dropping the part of his results that you don't agree with. The divergance problem is a very real issue and I frankly have no doubt that the dendro people will solve it. Howver, until that time it should still be shown. I use Richard Feynmann as reference on this; In a number of respects, this isn't about the science per se, but about the philosophy behind how the science is done. There is an old saying that justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done. From my POV, science must not only be done right, but be seen to be done right. If what you have is solid, then no amount of garbage in the blogoshere will change that. It is the hiding, the refusals and the obstructions that make people suspicious. Science, especially publicly funded science should be open and above board. I really don't care what shape the shaft of the hockey stick finishes up looking like, flat as a board or up and down like a mountain range, so long as it is right. I had grave doubts about the original MBH because as a reader of History I knew that the NH at least had had major climatic changes since the Roman period. These are well documented in the records. As was alluded to in the Der Spiegel piece the Huns came from the north to sack Rome. Why? Because they were forced South by the deteriorating conditions and cold. The Roman Warm Period, the cold of the Dark Ages, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age all exist in the historical written records. In the original MBH they vanished. What I could not understand (and frankly still don't) is how a reconstruction, or 5 or even 10 statistical constructs can be viewed as more correct than the written records of the times. I did that earlier, but just for you. Try here. You will find quite a lot of temp reconstructions from proxies from all over the planet. All data is drawn from the published literature. Will that do? Funny how most of them don't look like hockey sticks though, maybe you just have to pick the right ones to get the required result? BTW, your assumption as to my preferred sources of information is rather off the mark. I read both sides and the referenced papers. As a recent example the question of whether or not there is an increase in the rate of sea level rise has occurred. WUWT says no, others (Sceptical Science I think is one) say yes. The easiest way to work out who was full of BS was to d/load the data and plot it for myself. WUWT is correct, the rate of SLR is decreasing. I presume that you are in favour of people actually looking at the data and working things out as opposed to believing whatever they are told like good little morons? Similarly you might look at this thread I started. I can't account for the results and am still working on the problem. I don't know your background (as in which science) but new insight into the topic can't hurt. Or do you wish to continue under the misapprehension that I'm some sort of drone that parrots only what others say? Cheers.

Swansont, perhaps there was confusion. Early on I made this point; I was referring to the truncation of published papers that were being combined into the spaghetti graph. I was likening each paper to the financial reports for various departments within a company and the final graph to a composite of the finances of the company in general. In such a comparison, the entire financial report must be shown and none truncated. My apologies if this was not clear. SMF, I quoted Dr. Trenberth from his comments to the reporter and provided a link to the original article. Perhaps you missed it? (The underlined words in my post are called "links") Attributing 1/3 of the El Nino warmth within days of the weather event is amazingly quick off the mark wouldn't you say? Especially since others have yet to make such an attribution. Of course he may well be an American genius that is far smarter than our homegrown Australian scientists who obviously aren't bright enough to see the connections that he can, but I doubt it. If I sound p*ssed, I am. I have an extreme dislike for people who push an ideological cart by capitalising on the misfortunes of others. While I've mentioned Dr. Trenberth in this instance, he is not the only one and certain Australian politicians will get their comeuppance as well for doing exactly the same thing. If they had waited a month or so, I wouldn't mind so much, but to pull this sort of stunt while the situation is ongoing is disgusting. Dr Trenberth gets the mention because this is SFN, not Australian Politics dot Net. I do wonder about your reading comprehension. The email I quoted (and gave a link to so the full thing could be read) was Dr Trenberth recommending the tactic of "casting aspertions" on his opponents. I dislike and distrust people who recommend such tactics to their peers. You might think ad homs have a place in scientific debate, but I do not. Further, if ad homs are to be the recommended tactic, then that speaks towards a severe lack of actual evidence to back up your case, does it not? Nice switch, very clean. Since you have read the UK FOI, would you enlighten me as to the legality of, and penalties applicable to, destroying or requesting the destruction of documents known to be subject to an FOI request? (Which was what I was talking about.) Could you also perhaps provide proof that the requests were in fact illegal and where in the reports of the various investigations they were found to be so? So far, you are long on rhetoric but rather short on substantiation. You've made the claim the requests were "not legal", can you prove that claim? FX, the ams pdf was the one I linked to. There are various "discussions" about his desire to reverse the null hypothesis knocking around the blogosphere.

I thought we were talking about the graph posted earlier in this thread, the one with the truncated results. Can you show me where the results have been corrected and restored? SMF, if you found my reply demeaning I apologise, it wasn't meant that way. I did use the word "appear" and gave reasons for why it appeared that way to me in my response. As to Trenberth. He might be "highly respected" by some but that is no reason for me to give respect. People earn my respect and Kevin Trenberth has failed to do so. I find his using the floods devastating my nation to push his barrow distasteful to say the least. We have major problems with attribution in Climate Science but he can make attribution statements within a week of the event? Should I point out that freak events should not be used as indicators for long term trends? For years some of the more stupid sceptics have pointed to individual events as proof that AGW was "wrong" and they were soundly (and rightly) told that "weather is not climate". Now Dr. Trenberth is doing the same thing and that's all right? News article is here. Note the view of an Australian Climatologist in the same article. To quote one of the UEA emails; Emphasis Mine. A sterling example of how to respond to critics. Don't argue the facts, just cast aspertions on their character. A methodology truly worthy of respect, would you say? How about the preferred treatment of "deniers" in his upcoming AMS speech? The full pdf is here. Sorry SMF, but he talks like a political hack and not a scientist. Cast aspertions on your opponents and avoid scientific debate, yes those are the words of someone truly wedded to the principles of modern science. My respect for those in the "Team" is zero. As I've been trying to explain to Swansont, they have happily done things that are considered crimes in other industries without a second thought. The infamous email from Dr. Jones to delete emails is another case. Not only is it a crime to ask people to delete or destroy documents that are subject to FOI requests, something even the lowest middle manager knows and understands, there were no objections from his colleagues. Nobody said "Hey, you shouldn't be asking people to do that." So prima facie, the "Team" are quite willing to abet, if not aid, illegal activities. I cannot imagine any of the practicing scientists I've met here making such a request, or recieving such a request without vigorously protesting it. The people here have integrity. I got my indoctrination about scientific principles here at this forum. Where the principles of Karl Popper and Richard Feynman are followed. If you haven't read it, please read Cargo Cult Science by Dr. Feynman. The behaviour of some in the climate science community wouldn't pass muster even under the looser rules in our "Speculations" forum. Finally, you can reassert all you like. The fact is that paleoclimate reconstructions are vital for the correct attribution of forcings and the calibration of our climate models. And is there something unusual about the "blade" that gives cause for concern?

Actually SMF, I'm not, Trenberth is. If someone who should know better wants to use short term local weather events to push his case can you tell me why it is incorrect to use long term weather records to show him wrong? Pointing to some weather events as proof of his hypothesis is just as silly as pointing to other events as disproof. The simple fact is that we will get heavy rains and flooding when a strong La Nina follows a strong El Nino. Always have and always will, there is zip correllation between flood events and CO2 increase in Australias weather history. If you don't want to use floods, how about Cyclones? Cyclones hit the Australian East Coast on; 24th March 1890 1st February 1893 12-14 February 1898 21st January 1918 10th March 1918 9th February 1927 12th March 1934 2-3 rd March 1949 20th February 1954 28-30th January 1967 17th January 1970 24th December 1971 24th January 1974 17-21st March 2006 The historical data shows that rather than an increase in such events as the warming continued, there has in fact been a decrease in this region. If we widen the net to include all Cyclones since 1970 in the entire Australian region which will take in from the Eastern Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific and include all non landfalling Cyclones the number per year is; 1970:1 1971:4 1972:4 1973:15 1974:13 1975:10 1976:16 1977:13 1978:8 1979:13 1980:19 1981:12 1982:12 1983:14 1984:17 1985:14 1986:14 1987:7 1988:6 1989:13 1990:13 1991:9 1992:10 1993:8 1994:11 1995:9 1996:16 1997:10 1998:11 1999:11 2000:11 2001:9 2002:8 2003:9 2004:10 2005:10 2006:11 2007:9 2008:8 2009:9 2010:9 Once again zero correllation over the entire bloody region. If anything it can be very well argued that Cyclones were more common when the temps were cooler in late 70s to mid 80s. The period 1976 -1986 which was before the warming really began (or was just starting) had only one year with less than 12 Cyclones whereas since 1991 there has only been one year with more than 12. My point is that Trenberth must be really short of actual evidence for his theory if he needs to go to cherry picking weather events to back up his arguments. But this is still regional. Let's look at the World Acumulated Cyclone Index and see how much more common big storms a Cyclones, Typhoons, Hurricanes, etc are; As can be readily seen, the increase in CO2 and rise in temperature has led to a great increase in the severity of Cyclones........... Oh wait, sorry, we appear to be at a 30 year low in the index, both for the Northern Hemisphere and the World. To cite Maue (2009) or Maue and Hart (2011). Again, if you have to cherry pick freak (and not so freak) weather events to bolster your theory, you must be very, very short on actual evidence. Climate pseudo science at its best. *The "you" used in the above is a general "you" referring to AGW supporters and is not meant to imply you, SMF, personally.* SMF, from your second paragraph it appears that you have not looked at the subject much in depth. I suggest you do so. A number of the major forcings we have yet to quantify, for example we aren't sure of the sign of clouds, let alone the magnitude of the forcing. Paleoclimate data is important because we use it to derive the climate sensitivity which we then feed into the models to arrive at projections for future change. A good Central Europe reconstruction is invaluable for checking the ability to hindcast a climate change on a regional level. Indeed, one of the reasons that the original MBH reconstruction recieved such a hot reception was that it went against hundreds of years of historical records that showed the MWP and LIA. Cheers.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned a ventilation system. CO2 will stay in the hole rather than flow away. jordehwa, your PVC pipes won't move enough air. You require fans to force the fresh air in or to remove the bad. Likw water, air needs pumping.