NZ Weather Forum

approx 26,000 years.Precession its why its called the tropic of Capricorn and Cancer,it was 2000 yrs ago where the solistice was but moved eastwards into Sagittarius and Gemini respectively and in 13000 years we will see Orion"The Pot" on our zenith when Taurus/Gemini has our summer solstice

RWood wrote:This is the first part of an article from Scientific American, March 2005.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID ... 414B7F0000

In essence it suggests that human activity has for a lengthy period been forestalling the cooling that should have been occurring as part of a 20,000 year cycle (the toplike motion of the earth that goes thru' a 20,000-year "nodding" round). There's little comfort in the suggestion that there may be a large rise in temperature, followed by an even worse fall when the methane & CO2 effects have been played out.

Almost everybody knows about Precession and almost everybody conveniently ignores it in the context of climate and weather studies, because its effect isn't really known, although some claim it is.

To me this Precession-blindness representative of the problem as a whole: people are claiming to know what's happening and what's going to happen, when they don't actually know what's already happened, or without understanding much of the underlying mechanism which make these things happen.

Supposition is fine, as is a campaign to have our environment (and act) cleaned up, but claiming we must do this or that because this or that definitely will or won't happen when in fact we know nothing of the sort is irresponsible.

If somebody publishes a paper which states honetly that the tentative conclusion they've drawn is the result of the small amount of short-term data the researcher has to hand, and that there is a +/- 95% likelihood of innacuracy then I'll consider the possibility that the researcher is not motivated by anything other than a quest to understand.

When I see the vast majority of such published research (or media releases) which professes to be rock-solid factual and conclusive, based-upon the 1.1 billion years of collected data, provided by whichever lobby group they're shilling for, I'll yawn as always and utterly ignore them and cross their names off the credibility list.

So many bogus "facts" being thrown around, all based on patently insufficient data, and mostly because there's grant money in thum thar hills.

Suit yourself, I don't intend to waste my energy on this. I've already heard and seen reams of stuff on both sides of the so-called argument.
I'll stick to my view that the nay-sayers and do-nothings and let's-wait-another-50-years-and-make-sure-it's-settled-beyond-doubt-ers are all members of the ostrich family.

I'm all for everyone doing their bit to clean-up the planet, it certainly needs it, but the possibility that farting cows could change the climate.....nah!

and boggy bogs...there will ned to be a tax on them too then..

The West Siberian bog alone (which is melting) may contain 70 billion tons of methane. Depending on dryness, that should all be released (as methane straight into the air if the bog stays wet, or as carbon dioxide if things dry out). That's a lot of cow farts.

But as I said before, can't be bothered getting into arguments. Waste of time and energy.

RWood wrote: Waste of time and energy.

With gas and power prices the way they are, maybe we should be tapping into this resource

03 Stormchaser wrote:

RWood wrote: Waste of time and energy.

With gas and power prices the way they are, maybe we should be tapping into this resource

JohnGaul
NZTS

Good idea
I'll start pharting at once
Yes we are having onions for tea, lots of them
...by the way, is there any link to methane and thunderstorm development?

hahahaha good one lmao

Yes, all very amusing no doubt. To balance the diatribe from Gary Roberts some might find this of interest.

http://www.marklynas.org/wind/document/30.html

RWood wrote:Yes, all very amusing no doubt. To balance the diatribe from Gary Roberts some might find this of interest.

http://www.marklynas.org/wind/document/30.html

A "diatribe"? When the pros and antis start rolling out their shaky data and blathering on about their dodgy conclusions it's fine, yet to express the opinion that they're all little more than a bunch of greedy opportunists is a "diatribe"?


"Alarm! Alarm! We're all going to die! Unless you grant my research department's new Global Warming Studies lab several million more dollars to investigate further the planet is going to spontaneously combust!"

or...

"My friends in the energy industry have assured me that it's all a bunch of hippy tree-hugging bunkum, so keep paying those illegally inflated fuel prices: it's your duty to the country's economy, consumer! Oops, I mean 'citizen'!"



Both the pros and antis are completely and arrogantly dismissive of any opposing viewpoint and those who hold them. I'm completely dismissive of the pros and antis.

Of course the only people more despised by adherents of one of these new religions or other are those who refuse to accept either point of view without a hell of a lot more solid evidence. The alarmists and the denialists need - and feed off of - each other: the rest of us are just in their way.

Maybe G.W. is a fact, maybe it isn't. Maybe humans are contributing to it or maybe we aren't. Maybe we can diminish or mitigate the effects to some extent with sensible policies or maybe it's too late and out of our hands. But what the climate does it does, and the fact remains we don't really know what it is that it really does over geologic timescales, or what it has actually done in the past or what it's probably going to do in the future. All we have are strident conclusions based upon ambiguous data from pseudo-random core sampling and climate records of dubious veracity bandied about by people chasing financial gains.

If you want to believe (or claim) one thing or another based on that, fine by me. But don't dismiss me or others just because we refuse to join you aboard the Trans-Research-Fund Express, okay?

If you knew what many scientists think of contestable-funding models of the kind introduced here and in many other countries in the last couple of decades, perhaps it would reinforce the point that lot of them would like to do research suppported more strictly on its own merits, but don't have that luxury. However, even if there is a lot of sloppy research done, it remains the case that an overwhelming majority of those analysing climate data consider that GW is real and needs to be taken much more seriously. I'm happy to go with that until/if something major contradicts this. I don't give a stuff if you aren't convinced, I just hope your voices thin out steadily over the years. Sayonara.