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Excellent work! Now, if only I was home and could open that link..!

I've just opened it for you and it's very nice! I now have a hankering to go off and watch Big Trouble in Little China again...

Hardly comparable, Bankers and child abusers?

No, bankers are much worse because their greed starves countless people in Africa to death, fuels wars around the globe and bankrupts entire nations. Those are the ones we're all really rebelling against.

True, but the Pope causes AIDS.

We're not going to have to get into a game of "My Bugbear's a Lot Bugbearier Than Your Bugbear" are we? 

Woo-hoo!

You have no idea how much I've missed this. My day has been made, Sir - thank you!

Very cleverly done, TLS.  I spent a good while looking through that, nice one.

That's very kind of you to say, thanks

As to the covering up of science thing, I think that it does indeed go on. As soon as David Bellamy (remember him, gwubbing awound in the undergwowth?) started questioning the prevailing view of climate change he couldn't get back on telly for love nor money. Which may be a coincidence or he may have run into politics.

Science is being done into climate change that is outside the accepted focus, as with the cosmic ray theory - it's just that the results have a hard time getting through the political and media barriers and into the public eye. Those results and interpretations that do get out tend to be belittled and derided, the scientists undertaking the work characterised as fringe or kooks. For many years, the climate argument was presented as essentially settled and I'm sure even TB would concede that this was never likely to be the case given the sheer complexity of the systems involved.

I have sensed a slight back-pedalling in the global warming assault of late. For one, the very phrase "global warming" has fallen from Apocalyptic grace. It was once on everyone's lips, the same way that "nuclear war" was on everyone's lips when I was a kid, but now I think more and more people accept that the more accurate term for what's happening is the much more friendly "climate change". Changing climate is certainly a challenge the human race has to deal with - but it's a challenge the human race has always been dealing with and probably always will be. Cave men would either kill a particularly furry beast when it's cold or learn how to spin cotton when it gets warmer. Modern man has to figure out how to get around the inconveniences of having built cities in difficult places or managing the water cycle better. In the future, we may be figuring out how to deal with all those unexpected hurricanes and tornadoes plaguing a terraformed Mars.

So you see, I really don't think that all scientists investigating the accepted fields within the climate change issue are in cahoots with big business or politicians. At least, no more than the rest of us. A handful certainly will be political animals. A few will be mavericks. Most will just turn up and do their work to the best of their ability. Politicians and the media have been picking the bits they like from the data, the dramatic bits that make people scared, and also fostered a climate where those bits receive the most focus to the exclusion (in political and media terms) of all other theories. It's not the scientists who are at fault and it's not necessarily the science - it's the politicians, money men and media.

I posted a link to a scientific study of Dutch Birch trees earlier in this thread that seemed to show that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere may not be as big a problem as we thought. In itself, of course, it was just one study and didn't prove anything. That site, though, is replete with examples of studies showing that the CO2 problem really may not be a problem at all. Of course, that's only one website with a limited number of studies on it - but stuff like this is largely ignored by politicians and the media because it does not support the argument for us needing them to fix things. It is, in my humble opinion, up to us to flag these anomalies wherever we perceive them.

This does not mean that by pointing out such things as CO2 being beneficial to crop yields I am entitled to the same recognition or standing as a proper scientist or researcher. All I am is a single voice in a supposedly free country shouting about the hard work done by other people.

One only has to watch the egregious "An Inconvenient Truth", which is basically an advert for carbon tax, to see how the most extreme and alarmist climate research results can be presented as pure propaganda. I read that this horrid little movie is being shown in schools all over the place - talk about getting to 'em young!

I generally find that I don't want anything so badly that I can't get it by letter. At least with a letter you have a record - unless you record your own 'phone calls. They sometimes get very uncomfortable if you tell them that you're recording the call for security purposes as well.  And you can still ask your security questions.

Use their own tactics against them (put them on hold while you put the kettle on, about 3 minutes is about the limit) just for fun.  Impede the buggers back, I say.

Hardly comparable, Bankers and child abusers?

No, bankers are much worse because their greed starves countless people in Africa to death, fuels wars around the globe and bankrupts entire nations. Those are the ones we're all really rebelling against.

Just write to them instead.

Here's a good tip for annoying people who ring you up and ask you "security questions". Ask them security questions first. (What's your full name; job title; direct contact number; line manager's full name; line manager's job title; line manager's direct contact number; name of the department you're working for; contact number of same, etc., etc.). Then politely say "thank you for that, now how can I help you?", when they then try to ask you security questions just say "I'm sorry, I don't discuss sensitive information over the telephone but if you'd like to write me a letter I'll certainly read what you have to say. My address? Well, if you haven't got that already you shouldn't be contacting me, should you? Good day."

I just emailed ESA with it. Should I have used a green font? lol

If you wanted to do a scale image on an A4 page, the planets would have to be drawn with a really, really, really, really sharp pencil. Or not drawn to the same scale as the orbits.

You're right about the sharpness - I reckon it would be possible with a very thin line and a very dense spiral. No?

(I actually got the idea after watching a documentary about the London Underground Map.)

Well if it helps, if you intend to trace the orbits you could just draw them as perfect circles. The elliptical nature of planetary orbits is usually exaggerated for diagrams to make it clearer. For your drawing, the the difference between Aphelion and Perihelion would be no greater than the thickness of the line (assuming the line is thick enough to be visible).

No, that wouldn't work. Here's a pdf I made to try and explain it (230KB):  http://www.mediafire.com/?wc5ta4akzagudnj

Ooh, yeah - I can lose hours on sites like that. I remember in the early days of Satellite TV there used to be this German channel that showed videos taken from the ISS all night after the programmes had stopped. It was simply entitled "Space Night" and I've watched it for hours. I really miss that.

Without the maths skills I don't really know - but I'm fairly confident you could get it to Neptune and optimistic that you could reach the farthest edge of the heliopause. Any maths geniuses want to look at the idea and share the glory/disappointment?? 

I'd never advocate restricting access to scientific data or its interpretation.

I apologise, I had no right to insinuate that. Sloppy of me.

I do think that a layman can be of help in data interpretation. In some cases, the conventional wisdom of scientists can be a straightjacket that the layman just doesn't have. Of course, conventional wisdom has its place - but then, so does unfettered imagination.

When I was at school I was told that it would be impossible to draw a scale picture of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper. This "fact", no doubt established and tested by people far more intelligent and better educated than I will ever be, has vexed me for most of my life. A couple of years ago, however, the solution to this problem hit me. I think that I've found a way to put a scale model of the solar system on an A4 sheet of paper - although I can explain the idea and even illustrate it, I don't know exactly how to do it because my maths aren't nearly good enough. Also, there's really no point to having scale maps of solar systems on an A4 sheet of paper that I can think of. And it might not actually work as well as I imagine. All I'm saying is that if a poorly educated buffoon like me can have a brainwave, then anyone can.

I got it from Universe Today, a site which seems to know its onions:  http://www.universetoday.com/87633/amazing-image-iss-crew-captures-shuttle-atlantis-last-brilliant-trip-through-the-atmosphere/  so I assume so.

...it gives us images like this:



ISS Crew Captures Shuttle Atlantis' Last Brilliant Trip Through the Atmosphere