During the middle of the Eocene, about 40 million years ago...

On Nov 6, 4:26*am, oriel36 wrote:

that when readers here can actually see *how Uranus turns to the
central Sun as a means to visually affirm the slow and uneven turning
of a planet as a signature of its orbital motion and *which is crucial
for explaining the *seasons when allied with daily rotation, it
exasperates me no end -

http://astro.berkeley.edu/~imke/Infr..._2001_2005.jpg

The daily rotation of Uranus to the central Sun follows the line of
the Equatorial ring which in turn acts like an orbital longitude
meridian,

Actually, the situation of the planet Uranus is a very bad example for
your view of planetary rotation.

Let us suppose - hypothetically, and I know you don't like that - the
Earth had a strong inclination like that of Uranus. That would mean in
your terminology that most of the Earth would have "polar" seasons
instead of "equatorial" seasons - being dark 24 hours for much of the
year and light 24 hours for much of the year.

An observer on the Equator of this planet (and likely only a narrow
strip around the Equator would be habitable) - what would he see?

Because the Sun's apparent motion in the sky due to the Earth's orbit
around the Sun would now be like a polar orbit instead of an
equatorial one, instead of experiencing a natural noon cycle with an
apparent period of 24 hours, he would find that the time between
successive natural noons was closer to 23 hours and 56 minutes. During
part of the year, it would be slightly shorter, and during the other
half of the year, slightly longer.

However, at the two solstices, day and night would exchange places,
and this jump would make up for the difference between the sidereal
"day" of 23 hours and 56 minutes and the synodic period of 24 hours.

I think they would just take holidays around the solstices to get
their sleep cycles in step rather than living with clocks showing an
average 24 hour day the year around.

John Savard

On 11/6/10 8:57 AM, oriel36 wrote:
Intellectually you can't even rise
to this basic cause and effect,in attempting to believe in an utterly
stupid 366 1/4 rotations in a year therefore a conversation at a more
complex level such as weather and climate is impossible.

Measurement with a gyro yields 366.242199 earth rotations per year.
The same value can be obtained by sighting a bright circumpolar star
the two sticks for a full year.

Those are the undeniable physical observations, Gerald.

You still confuse "day/night cycles", which are approximately 361°
rotations from noon sun to noon sun with earth rotations (360°)
that are measured with respect to the "fixed" stars and the universe
as a whole.

Gyros do not lie, Gerald.

On Nov 4, 5:39*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
The Dependable Warmer

During the middle of the Eocene, about 40 million years ago, a transient
warming event interrupted the long-term cooling trend that had been in
progress for the previous 10 million years.
Sufficient evidence is around that the Eocene warming event
occurred, and was caused by an increase in carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere. However, that was a very big change in carbon dioxide
levels. There is no evidence that the man-made generation of carbon
dioxide even nearly compares to that.
The Eocene was a different world than today. No one is sure what
triggered the increase in carbon dioxide during the Eocene Warming
Event (EWE). The initial warming may not have been due to carbon
dioxide. The increase in carbon dioxide could have been caused by
something else. Remember that the world had been cleansed only about
10-20 MY before the EWE. The world was still out of balance due to the
KT extinction. The EWE may have been a type of "reset" on the earths
climate.
The EWE is not associated with a global extinction. The fossils show
that tropical plants predominated during the EWE. When the EWE ended,
the cold weather plants came back. Very few plants went extinct. The
cold weather plants seem to have dominated previous to the EWE, hid
some where during the EWE, and came back after. Although some animals
did go extinct, most animals recovered. This despite a 6 C increase in
global temperatures. Thus, the argument could be made that man-made
warming, even if real, may not be as significant as feared.
On the other hand, the EWE does show that large climatic changes
are possible. The EWE probably wasn't fun for cold weather organisms
while it was going on. The number of cold weather plants decreased. A
cold weather few survivors apparently lived where fossilization wasn't
common. This probably means in areas where erosion was very large.
Some animal species did go extinct.
For paleontology fans, the EWE marked the border where large
mammals became dominant. After the Creteceous-Tertiary extinction
(KTE), most animals including mammals were very small. The dinosaurs
were gone, but most everything else that was large also died The KTE
had wiped out all the large animals. Large species become common after
the Eocene. So the EWE may have in the long run (millions of years)
been "good" for mammals and other large animals. However, I don't
think such an event would be good for the human species today.

On Nov 6, 7:57*am, oriel36 wrote:

Tell me again how many times the Earth rotates in a year ?.

There are 365 1/4 daylight-darkness cycles in a year, and there are
366 1/4 stellar circumpolar rotations in a year.

The Earth's orbital motion accounts for the fact that those two
numbers differ by exactly 1 for each 360 degree revolution of the
Earth around the Sun.

Reading your posts, it appears that we both agree on those facts,
don't we?

The Earth's orbit around the Sun is elliptical, rather than circular,
and the Earth, because it sweeps out equal areas in equal times in
that orbit, moves more slowly in angular terms when it is farther from
the Sun than when it is closer to it.

Kepler explained this, and, of course, the basic inequality was known
even to Ptolemy. So, again, so far, nothing I have said should be in
dispute.

The crossing of the noon meridian of the Sun does not happen at
exactly 12 noon every day, when timed by a mechanical clock, but
instead varies depending on the time of year, following a pattern
known as the Equation of Time.

Once again, this is something you are aware of, having referred to it
many times in your posts.

But here is a fact that you apparently dispute, although I am not
absolutely sure if you deny it:

The circumpolar motions of the stars, except for very small variations
which are much smaller than those of the Sun's apparent place due to
the Equation of Time, recur at precisely regular intervals when timed
by a mechanical clock.

When Flamsteed noted this, in a remark you often quoted,

"... our clocks kept so good a correspondence with the Heavens that I
doubt it not but they would prove the revolutions of the Earth to be
isochronical..."

he was expressing this truth, confirmed by direct observation. Even if
seasonal wind patterns do cause slight variations in the Earth's
rotation that we are now able to detect.

But you have criticized his remark as embodying some fallacy. Well, it
is true he used the term "revolutions" where today an astronomer would
say "rotations". Otherwise, it is not clear to us what the fallacy is.

Since stellar circumpolar motion is simple and regular, it makes sense
to us to view it as corresponding to the actual physical rotation of
the Earth. The natural noon cycle with its inequalities can then be
seen to have these inequalities because of the specifics of the
Earth's orbital motion, which subtracts one day from the year, but in
a somewhat uneven manner, because the Earth's orbit is elliptical, and
because the poles are inclined to the ecliptic.

It is our "empirical" view, our "predictive/modeling agenda", that
causes us to prefer the regular and uniform stellar circumpolar motion
as indicating the Earth's actual rotation. This is a _choice_. A
choice I believe is valid and correct.

It does not involve some massively wrong understanding of anything
that I can see, the way you are claiming.

John Savard

On Nov 6, 3:26*am, oriel36 wrote:

Unless you haven't noticed,you and many of the other nuisances are off-
topic in what should be a sprawling discussion....

This from the quack who has hijacked more threads than everyone else
combined...

"My insight beats your facts any day"
-Oriel36

\Paul A

On Nov 6, 2:17*pm, Sam Wormley wrote:
On 11/6/10 8:57 AM, oriel36 wrote:

Intellectually you can't even rise
to this basic cause and effect,in attempting to believe in an utterly
stupid 366 1/4 rotations in a year therefore a conversation at a more
complex level such as weather and climate is impossible.

* *Measurement with a gyro yields 366.242199 earth rotations per year..
* *The same value can be obtained by sighting a bright circumpolar star
* *the two sticks for a full year.


In an open forum that has many thousands of readers each day and
nobody will affirm that daily rotation is responsible for the day/
night cycle hence the major problems humanity faces is not climate or
any other perceived external threat but this huge problem.The 24 hour
leap day rotation,I repeat,the Feb 29th 2012 24 hour rotation will
close out almost 4 orbital circuits of 365 1/4 rotations.Is it that
you can't count the squares that make up the 365 rotations and days
between Mar 1st 2010 until Feb 28th 2011 because that actually is the
only effort required and the 366 rotations between Mar 1st 2011 until
Feb 29th 2012 allowing the next sequence of 1461 days and rotations to
commence and keep roughly in sync with the astronomical cycles from
which the timekeeping system emerges.

* *Those are the undeniable physical observations, Gerald.


Every midnight go out an sight a star with your two sticks and the
star will return 3 minutes 56 seconds earlier the next night,sight the
next star at midnight and that too will return 3 minutes 56 seconds
earlier without fail and so on and on without exception.It does not
take any sort of brilliance to figure out that the observation using
the constant return of a star uses days and dates within the calendar
system therefore the observation just tags along in groups of 365 and
366 days.To lie to yourselves at this level is quite something else
for it is actually explaining the convenience of the calendar system
where the steady progression of 1461 days runs into a steady
progression of years using these 24 hour days.If people here were not
so silly,it would be celebrated as a huge human achievement that it
is.

You have to be so dumb to make something of the 3 minute 56 second
difference to 24 hours as the observation will only happen 365 times
from Mar1st this year until Feb 29th 2011 and 366 times from Mar 1st
2011 until Feb 29th 2012.

* *You still confuse "day/night cycles", which are approximately 361
* *rotations from noon sun to noon sun with earth rotations (360 )
* *that are measured with respect to the "fixed" stars and the universe
* *as a whole.

* *Gyros do not lie, Gerald.

What would be the bigger problem ? - that men could no longer
understand that daily rotation is responsible for the day/night cycle
so that there are no more than a full 365 rotations in one orbital
cycle or that carbon dioxide is going to destroy the world as we know
it.There is nothing remotely close to the loss of the most
fundamental correspondence of them all and all because one guy made a
mistake that can be easily sorted out by explaining what a 24 hour
rotation on Feb 29th does ! and you guys still think there is a
difference between 365 1/4 days/rotations and one orbital period.

I love how the ancient system and the brilliant people who created it
can make you and your colleagues look so idiotic because you haven't
thought the principles through correctly.Now I know there are
astronomical doctorates that come here and the fact that they could
manage to maintain something as utterly ridiculous as being a whole
rotation out each year devalues that doctorate to a bankrupt title.I
don't give a damn what astronomers thought before,this is a problem
that is front and center and must be dealt with.

On Nov 6, 10:42*am, oriel36 wrote:

I love how the ancient system and the *brilliant people who created it
can make you and your colleagues look so idiotic because you haven't
thought the principles through correctly.Now I know there are
astronomical doctorates that come here and the fact that they could
manage to maintain something as utterly ridiculous as being a whole
rotation out each year devalues that doctorate to a bankrupt title.I
don't give a damn what astronomers thought before,this is a problem
that is front and center and must be dealt with.

I looked up "Quack" in the dictionary, and your picture was there.

"... (quacks) are basically 19th century physicists, except for the
fact that they don't understand even that. They focus on attacking the
physics of the 1st quarter of the 20th century & its results,
oblivious to the fact that it is backed up by all the dependent
theories & results since then. They want to return to the "good old
days", & constantly refer to archaic papers, as if history had
anything to say about recent experimental results."

Clearly, you would be a lot happier if you had been born 300 years
ago.

\Paul A

On 11/6/10 12:42 PM, oriel36 wrote:
In an open forum that has many thousands of readers each day and
nobody will affirm that daily rotation is responsible for the day/
night cycle hence the major problems humanity faces is not climate or
any other perceived external threat but this huge problem.

There is a reason that nobody affirms you, Gerald. The earth has
to turn a bit more than 360° to line up with the noon sun. The
difference is one hole day per year. The Sun changes 360° in Right
Ascension during the course of a year.

366.242 rotations in 365.25 days.

Since last week there was 48,000,000,000 dollars spent worldwide on
public education, and here we are with not a single adult,much less an
astronomer, capable of understanding that 365 full rotations in a
year correspond to the amount of day/night cycles,the extra rotation
on Feb 29th simply dovetails with the refined value of almost 365 1/4
rotations for each orbital cycle by using an arithmetical sequence of
1461 rotations which allow the calendar system to function.

The sprawling history of longitude and the invention of watches,the
averaging process which creates the 24 hour day and the steady
progression of days which subsequently substitutes for steady rotation
within the calendar system by allowing the 36 1/4 rotations to exist
in groups of 365 and 366 rotations as days and dates as people treat
these things as if they did not exist.

The only concession I make is that there is no precedence for the type
of error as major as the one which saw an attempt to attach an
external reference for daily rotation through 360 degrees thereby
attaching a nonsensical additional rotation in a year.What is it
exactly that readers want ?.

On Nov 6, 11:56*am, oriel36 wrote:

... *365 full rotations in a
year correspond *to the amount of day/night cycles...

Go immediately to the blackboard and write the following 1000 times:

"365 full rotations WITH RESPECT TO THE SUN in a year corresponds to
the number of day/night cycles..."

.... and don't come back until you are finished. This is your
punishment for being stubborn and just plain unteachable.

"Experimental verification isn't important in science."
- could have been said by Oriel36

\Paul A