Roo

All good here. Thanks Paul and Karl.

Me too...in fact I'm not even sure whether I'm typing this in the right place...all the graphics have gone and I've just got text. Thought it might be due to updates downloaded today, but have tried Firefox, Chrome and IE and all seem to tbe the same.

You've just supported what I said, so why the need for the nastiness originally....as I said, big brains, much missed. No element of 'crashing insult' or anything else. EDIT: And as for cherry picking links that don't conform with personal belief. Hahahahaha! I've picked links that are downright rubbish and I've shown why...doesn't matter what I personally believe about any of it..... Anyway, life is too short and all that..... Please continue as before.

Oh Jethro, at least admit that had I put that it would have had exactly the same effect. There are loads of people here who would have no problem with taking the RE piece as gospel truth. And we've already established that none of us can post the article, for copyright reasons, so I couldn't have done that anyway. The thing is, I am here to learn, not to post information. I don't think I have access to enough good material or understand the minutiae enough to be able to do anything else. I have a good look at what you guys post to try to learn from it. However, sometimes even I can see why something is wrong, and then I say so. I apologise if that offends. We could have a great debate if only the silly stuff got left out. It is sad because we used to have some really big brains here which we could learn from, but over time most have drifted off. I for one am sorry for that.

The thing is, I'm quite happy to let peer review do my leg work. And I know you'll just jump on this, but I trust to those better qualified (who are subject to peer reviewed, critical analysis) if I can see no major holes in what they are doing. If I can see a big hole, then I'll check it out and alert others to it, hence, amongst others, my hunts to find out what SSRC really was and the recent look at what Resilient Earth was claiming. In all cases, things were not necessarily what they first appeared and I stand by what I did and why I did it: it showed a piece of evidence to be false and, as such, removed it from the equation. It's called critical analysis. I like to get to the bottom of things. Academic stuff is usually pretty straightforward: you can see who did what, how they did it and what people had to say about it. It has no major holes for the layman, like me, to get stuck into. However, material from across the internet is not so straightforward and so before I take any of it as read, I like to have a good look at who is saying what and why. This is especially important, when the material is claiming to overthrow the whole peer review process and scientific basis in a few unreferenced paragraphs, as is often the case. I am not pro AGW or anti...I just follow the evidence trail. But I find that a lot of the skeptical evidence is not actually evidence at all and often, as has been shown, is down to bad reporting, iffy research or biased conclusions. Until people stop posting this stuff, I will carry on trying to weed out the rubbish from the sense so that others can see what has actually been said and by whom, rather than what they think has been said.

Lovely afternoon of storms. Had one about half an hour ago with plenty of lightning and thunder. Another seems to be building now as it's gone very dark.

Sorry, just found this! The whole 'who pays for papers' thing is tricky. I work for a society that produces a 5* rated, peer reviewed, humanities journal. The majority of what we publish comes with no funding. We have a policy to publish the best research, regardless of whether it comes with money attached, and this is as it should be. However, this costs and, to be able to do it, we need to charge people access to the journal. We'd love to give it away, but we just can't or we wouldn't be able to produce it in the first place. We also have to cover for the fact that a big proportion of our subcribers will share their papers, thus losing us revenue that way. We are, however, freely available in around 150 libraries in the UK, not all of which are academic, and it is possible to get hold of the articles we publish via a number of online sources. In addition, as I have said numerous times, if one emails the relevant author, most will be happy to email you a PDF of their full article or a summary of their results. In the case of science journals, these often do come with better funding options, but again have problems of covering their reproduction and editing costs and so need to charge. Again, however, most are freely available if you are prepared to make the effort. All university libraries will have some form of access for Joe Public, with most offering free access at library terminals to scientific journals via online systems such as Jstor and Athens. To me, it would be impossible for NW to subscribe as, for something like Climate Change, I suspect that to keep abreast of developments you would be looking at subscribing to 40+ journals. Clearly we could never afford that. However, that doesn't mean that we have to rely on hearsay and second hand material. A lot of information is available online and precis and abstracts are usually available from the authors' websites. In addition, we can ask the authors for summaries/copies of their work. Most will oblige and will be flattered to receive the interest. Would be worth a try?

Myself, I think the scary thing is that the science is so badly misrepresented. It suggests that journals need to find a way to get this stuff to the general public asap before the iffy websites spin it out of all proportion. For me, this has been a really useful exercise!

Many thanks Ian. And sorry for the confusion....but we did get two for the price of one, so many thanks again! I understand that gin helps....

Many thanks TWS. So, would you say (and sorry to put you on the spot!), ignoring whether the Myrhe paper is right or not, does the Resilient Earth piece accurately represent the argument of the Myrhe paper? EDIT: Oooo..hang on. I think we're talking at cross purposes: the paper I was after was the Myrhe one on 'Consistency Between Satellite-Derived and Modeled Estimates of the Direct Aerosol Effect'

Nor can I.... I didn't see the thread either, but have said on a number of occasions of ways around it. However, no-one has EVER tried, and it wears a bit thin having the same old argument of 'we can't get the data' thrown back each time that another dodgy website is posted. It is possible to get closer to the real thing. Take GW's ref for instance: Another Science paper. But this time, reported in Science Daily, so that's a big tick already as that is a website which just reports what's new in scientific research, without adding commentary. Then, at the bottom of the Science Daily piece is a link to the original institution which carried out the research, so if you click on that, you can go and have a look at who they are and what they do: you can also go and have a look at their press release to see whether the Science Daily piece matches with what the researchers said they did. Not the primary paper admittedly, but much, MUCH more reliable.

Arrrggghhhh! Let me spell it out: the original 'article' was nothing more than a talking point on a known, biased, website, based merely on an abstract from a paper, none of us knows the content of: it was almost certainly written without EVER seeing the original paper. You cannot use that website as evidence of the original academic piece. The two are entirely unrelated. Too right I disparaged the original website: it is nothing more than a non-evidenced, opinion piece. This was not my piece of evidence, it was yours: that makes it your responsibility to prove to us, not mine. Pete can see what I mean and that it's not contrariness....but yet again, my posting has started a negative response from you. I'm sick of it. Good Bye!

But I don't want to read the paper, I have to read enough papers in my life without another one .....however, it was your suggestion, so perhaps you might like to? Also, all 2 comments on that previous thread suggested positive options. Did you take any of them up? I have suggested time and time again that people who want access to papers email the authors....no-one has done, which makes me wonder why? Anyway, that's it from me again.

There is no point taking out a sub to one journal and that's why I wasn't a taker: you'd need access to the full spread to catch the relevant stuff. However, obtaining papers from authors is more straightforward...you just email them and most will email you a PDF....most are flattered that someone cares. Something I suggested that those interested should do. Did anybody try it? The fact remains though that without the evidence, there is no discussion: if we can't get hold of the information that means the point can't be made. It's like me saying that '...the earth is flat: there's a paper that would prove it, but I can't get hold of it right now, so you'll just have to believe me'. It doesn't work.

Jethro, I don't know why you are taking this attitude. If you have the original paper and summarize it then where's the problem? I've certainly never said there was. Your word is as good as TWS's, of course it is. My problem, as ever, is with second hand information from websites with an obvious agenda, who do not appear to have even read the full paper themselves. That's fair enough: we can't use that sort of stuff as the basis for a discussion. Please can we keep this civil and stop the rudeness? Then we might get somewhere.

Yes, I do understand about the problems of getting hold of peer reviewed material and the associated copyright issues. However, even though this makes it difficult, we need some way of ruling out websites misquoting such papers: the Resilient Earth website is biassed, and is a bit cheeky: they have created a story around an abstract...I suspect that they have not even read the whole paper, or why would they not have quoted more of it? Without the whole paper we have no way of telling what the authors actually concluded but have instead the Resilient Earth's spin on the abstract. That really can't be used to support anything. And, I'm not being picky...it's just if we really are going to learn from this we need to have the word from the horse's mouth, or a close approximation. Thanks TWS....access to JStor/Athens and an academic library is a wonderful thing!!!

Science IS reputable. However, a secondary source which only quotes the abstract (and with no ability to read the full paper) isn't necessarily. Can we please go back to first principle? If the evidence is there it WILL stand up to scrutiny, but hearsay, from potentially biassed sites, won't get us anywhere.

Going very dark here, and just had a prolonged rumble of thunder. :huh:

But no-one is saying that the sun will get stronger. If GW is happening then it WILL lead to higher rates of skin cancer: the warmer it gets, the less clothes people wear, and the more they sun bathe....hence, higher rates of skin cancer. They're right. It's not scaremongering.

Hurrah! Yes, I am a bit of a moss fan actually...I even have it growing in a pot! Looked at close up, moss and lichen really are fantastic little things.... Have a lovely weekend all...

Courtesy of terrified sheep....

Fab excuse...my lawn is not 'poor', it is 'nature friendly'!

Or you could always just leave it? Lovely to walk on, loved by nature and used by most of our birds to line their nests. Give moss a chance, man

You be careful in there Crazy, we don't want anymore Carradine type accidents!

Yep, not golf balls, but a fair amount about 1cm across..... really twanging off the car bonnets! I was impressed!!! :lol: Still very dark here and seems to be moving slowly, although less bang and crashes than I'd hoped.