G'day Paul and Blacknad,
I'm actually involved in research currently at the request of an institute. It involves the review or study of studies on Global Warming, almost wholly focusing on the data used and its validity or otherwise.
It is a study which should take me more than a year. It actually takes a bit of time even to find out what data was used for some major studies, let alone gain access to the data, then review it and any suppositions, assumptions or extrapolations used to create the data. Since the number of studies to be reviewed is not currently been finalised, this could take me a while. I am significantly disabled and mostly bedridden. Because of the effects of my condition and medication my brain does not function as it should and I either cannot work for extended periods or it takes me longer to get the work done.
As to whether the bits of a draft paper I was proposing to post contains any new thoughts or is a collection of others thoughts: the thoughts are mine, the studies are other peoples. The only research I did in this field was in the late 70s and into the 80s and that was on a very specific field relating to the boundaries between glaciations and interglacial periods and their causes. It fascinated me that such a complex system also seems to find a way to remain stable for a time and then flips to another period and this quickly becomes stable. It also fascinated me just how long it took to go from one state to the other. At the time the prevailing wisdom was several thousand years. I thought so to and was asked to write a paper on just that topic but all the evidence I found pointed to an extremely rapid change. You could say at this point I became serious sidetracked and call on the expertise of biologists, vulcanologist and several other fields to correctly understand the evidence which was available.
In addition to that research I was assisting in research on whether any accurate estimate of the average temperature could be made and what changes could be observed year to year if this was true. I was the bunny who had to actually research possible sites to find out whether changes were made to equipment, whether mines were built nearby, and a myriad of other things which could alter the accuracy of temperature records when compared year to year. This was before satellite data of course. What astounded me was just how difficult it was to obtain any accurate data. I thought that ocean air temperatures might be a way to achieve some consistency but after the research we did, we found there was no way at all to obtain even remotely accurate data.
The paper that I am currently preparing is simply a summary of my current views on Global Warming based on the small amount of research I have done recently and my reading of various papers and their data over the years. It is a field which fascinates me so I tried to look at major research papers and data where it was readily available. The object of the exercise is to establish my current biases and then look redo the paper at the end of the research and see how much has changed. My views may be counter to the mainstream but in this instance it was one of the reasons for obtaining the grant in the first place. Apparently they already have similar research conducted from ?true believers? and wanted a different perspective.
Having explained this much it might not be of further interest but it is not any difficulty for me to produce as I need to work on my drafts anyway. The major difference will be the lack of references (as there are several a paragraph and that would increase the size of the post enormously) and the much less formal writing technique I adopt in drafts. I like to write as I would if I was giving a verbal presentation and later I adapt this.
Richard
