zeolite

Wahey! I ran a red and still got my licence! Pesky examiner freaked out and put me off! Anyway I now have the hat and boots but it will be a while before I get a firearm!

It has been sunny and bloody windy this last week and I have been learning how to be an oilfield worm! Some local news has hit the headlines. You no longer need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Wyoming! Makes those road rage incidents all the more interesting I would imagine. Anyway forklift training yesterday and today I am going to get my driving licence!

Been damn windy here in Wyoming but sunny with it. I have been so busy I haven't had time to think. Will write a better update when i get the chance.

I have driven a fair few thousand miles on the wrong side in the US and Europe so that doesn't worry me too much. Anyway here now! That is we are in Casper after driving up from Denver. Got a Jeep Grand Cherokee and it is very nice. Back to work tomorrow.

Sitting here looking at the suitcases in an almost empty room. Tomorrow is going to be a long day and I must remember that from now on I will be driving on the "other" side of the road!

Chris...That was my rods packed up and sent by sea today. Probably wont see them for 3 months! Fishing in Wyoming is supposed to be great so we will see. Off on Monday!

Drive a Vespa When in Wyoming Drive a V8 Ford F150 LWB 4WD pickup truck!

I have my V8 organised. It will be my runabout 5.3l of Ford torque. Trying to organise a car for Mrs Z and it looks like VW Tiguan S. Anyone any experience of these? Week to go. OMG!!!!

Thanks for the good wishes guys. Having a very stressful time with getting the house ready for renting and fighting with banks to get money over here from the US. They have my blood pressure well over boiling. easier if i was in Guautemala!

That is exactly the price I was offered for my 2008 GB270!

No joke. We are emigrating to the States in 2 weeks. No job in this country so I am now employed to dig holes in Wyoming and Colorado. The house is going up for let and the dogs have new homes . I still have the GB270 so it looks like I have to hand it back to the finance company as I have nowhere else for it to go. Mrs Z and I will be getting on the plane without a place to go to (as of yet) with 4 suitcases and a bunch of memories. I oubt if we will end up with an Impreza anytime soon but an Outback might be an option. Anyway thanks to all the SIDCers that I have met and all the best to the new regime.

There is a goat grazing in your inbox!

Very relieved to hear you are OK Wilky. Condolences.

Good luck mate. Times are very tight! I can't afford to put fuel in the scoob at the moment due to the lack of drilling work in the last year. Damned banks won't lend oil companies to drill new wells. Anyway I am off to India next week to see what the rigs out there are like. Has anyone else been out there? I think I am going to work offshore Mumbai.

That saleswoman is my daughter and she would like to see the pic actually. Can you email or post it up? Thanks

Hey. Did you take a photo of the saleswoman with the new Impreza?

Just got £340 for the GB. Being old does have some benefits.

Sheep pumpers, goat touchers its all the same to me. So tell me Wilky? Do the Septics/Cajuns and Trinnys get your..em "ethnic" sense of humour?

Ah the banter!

It's "FANNIES" BTW

mmmmm. Seems my blog reviews haven't been that useful. Welsho...I am not surprised that you had a hard job with Pilmers book considering what you have said in the past about your beliefs and your criticism of radio isotope science. This is the main dating tool for the vast majority of Geological science and without it a lot of what he says I am sure will not make sense. there are other tools such as fossil scales and paeleomagnetism but I don't think they impress you either. Anyway I hope you get something out of it. 4Hero...Man you are on a crusade! As far as I can make out AGW is NOT proven but that doesn't mean to say it is a lie. I just don't think there is enough evidence. I find it hard to believe that humankind could affect the Earths' climate but I still have an open mind about it. There hasn't been a long enough period nor enough data yet. However as a geologist I tend to think in 10s of thousands rather than tens of years. Having said that some things can happen very quickly even in geological time.

As I am a quiet night shift job for the moment I spent a few hours reading the blogs. Whewwww! Firstly, understanding the data is fiendishly complicated. Even something as gathering temperature data is fraught with problems and the programmers scratchpad tells you the problems he has trying to prepare the data in a meaningful and accurate way. The various organisations have gathered data from different sources and different types and of course there are problems with accuracy inherent there never mind the issues of instrument calibration. Proxy sources as far as I can gather are inferred data sources rather than direct temperature measurements Tree rings seem to be a major bone of contention although I have no idea how or why. Even with modern accurate data the devil is in the detail. I haven't seen the Gore movie but apparantly the "hockey stick" diagram is a central issue in it and it now seems to be recognised as b******s. mmmm So the hottest year on record is 1998 is it? Well no it is 2005 say others but no again say NASA it is 1934. They can't even agree on when the data maxes. TBH that doesn't surprise me as natural data is never clear cut. Any scientist knows that data is what it is and trying to force it into boxes is bad science. it is journalists and politicians who want it laid out for easy reading. Damn the accuracy, give me sound-bites. So the reasons why it wa hottests in 1998/2005 or even the last decade? Solar activity, El Nino or carbon dioxide accumulation? I have no idea and neither, it seems does anyone else. lots of argument and some seemingly well informed posters but as usual on the internet you can't believe everything so I can't make any conclusions. Another thing that is evident is the polarisation of the issues. if you don't "believe" in global warming caused by man then you are a "denier". it has become black and white and I really don't like that at all. there has to be room for those who remain unconvinced. science is all about skepticism and disproving. Close scrutiny and questioning should be encouraged. In fact the debates actually remind me of evolution/creationism discussions with there religion/science, belief/logic tensions. So in summary errrrrr f*** knows! However I shouldn't really expect to get any meaningful insight into a subject as vast as this with some 2 hours of reading on the internet and neither should anyone else frankly. I may not be the most intelligent but I have a fair background in science and should be able to understand the issues. To have any real understanding I reckon an undergraduate degree at least before you have to take the word of others at some stage and even then there are some hints that any "negative" conclusions about man-made global warming is being marked down. If that is true then we are in a really bad way.

At the heart of all of this is the fact that understanding science is a difficult thing. It takes time and effort to make sense of the huge amounts of data that are collected. The vast majority of people (and I include myself in that group) have neither the time the expertees or the inclination to gather it and interpret it. This means we are at the mercy of those who choose to disseminate what they have learned. This isn't usually a problem until the politicians and lazy journalists get involved. The journalists winnow away at the conclusions until they are "bite-sized" and easy for people to undrstand and the politicians hitch their bandwagons to the cause of the day. Scientists will always find reasons to disagree and that is just part of the process. This is a strength of the process. Everything will be questioned and tested. Making sense of their arguments from reading their emails is never going to give any kind of accuracy. Disagreement just shows that they are doing their job. It is 22 years since I got my degree and stuff moves on so I am way out of date but the climate change issue has never convinced me one way or another. As the good professor said geologists aren't trained to think in decades. We are looking at much longer periods of time and I just don't believe that any worthwhile conclusions can be drawn over such short periods of time. I really believe that we still won't have any significant trends drawn over my lifetime. I don't think we can do any harm limiting CO2 but I don't think it will do much good either. All it takes is for a Pinutobu or Krakatoa and we lose any gains overnight. The phrase "pissing in the wind" is one that comes to mind. Pilmer got it spot on about it being the politics of the middle classes. Your starving Sudanese or poisoned Bangladeshi are too concerned about surviving the day without worrying about climate change. can their fates be attributed to climate change caused by mans activities? No. They can't. The jury is still out. Meanwhile we are still polluting our planet with plastic that turns toxic and poisons the sea, overfishing the fish stocks and deforesting great areas of jungle. We know these things are harmful so why don't address these issues with the same vigour that climate change is getting? where is sting when you need him?

I can't believe my eyes! Welsho believes a geologist! lol I will read what the man has to say before I comment any further about that. Thing is all us geologists know that the CO2 that man has produced is a very small amount compared to the enormous quantities that large scale volcanic activity produces. The amount that the mid-ocean spreading (occurring at this very second in the middle of all the great oceans btw) must be huge but as it happens 2000 ft down we just don't think about it. There is a school of thought that many of the large scale extinctions in the fossil record (Steady Welsho) were precipitated by large volcanic pulses that create huge lava fields and produce millions of tonnes of CO2 and SO, SO2 etc. There is no doubt that the climate of the planet has changed many times in its history. At one time the production of oxygen killed off a huge percentage of life on earth when it was a sulphurous, toxic (to us) greenhouse. The vast majority of people cannot (or refuse to) think beyond the little window of time that homo sapien has scratched about on planet Earth. Whatever happens the earth does not need saved. It will be fine until the Sun burns out its fuel and even then it will just get a bit colder. What happens to Homo sapiens is another question but one thing I know for sure. as long as we have society we will have goverment and as long as there is goverment there will be taxes.

Pace noes are a guide and not definitive. I wondered how long it would be before this happened. So what next? will a driver sue a co-driver for calling a note wrong? At your own risk Munro! I know Heather Connon and her family and they are a pretty down to earth bunch. I have used notes on the Jim Clark and I have found mistakes in the (Patersons) notes which we corrected but on the SRC you don't get to practise or even check. If this is upheld it will totally transform gravel rallying.