Safe Speed Forums

Why? I shall for once moment, pretend to agree with you that CO2 levels present a problem.

To tackle such a problem, would the best course of action not be to start at the top and work your way down? i.e. start with the biggest CO2 emitters?

Such as power stations, airlines and public transport? Makes sense to me.

As for cars going altogether, I fear you are letting your prejudices get the better of you there.

With a name like President Gas, I should not be surprised at your stance on CO2. I doubt there is any way to "tackle" the CO2 problem, other than find a bolt hole. I am lucky in that I have two passports, one good for most of EU and another that is good for NAFTA. I've done the same thing for my kids; my hope is that we can get out of Europe before the gulf stream conveyor shuts down. The recent news from Greenland is not good - 10 meters mmelt per year. Now that OPEC is flat out with no margin to increase, and the oil price higher than ever, a reasonable and painless way to delay the inevitable would be to cut the absolute top limit to 50mph, like they did in 73 after Yom Kippur. We can only hope that Kerry gets in and signs up to Kyoto.

_________________
I stole this .sig

What is your vested interest in technology and Road Safety, DevilsAdvocate? Are you talking about monitoring and control systems, or systems internal to the car? What type of technology interests you the most?

_________________
I stole this .sig

Hasn't a lot of recent research shown that global warming is not really as big a problem as it's made out to be?

_________________
-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Thank God ... I was just thinking it was the end of the world, and mike[F] has announced this great news. Marvellous. We're all saved, and I can burn that Canadian passport and make some plans for the future. But wait a minute - havn't you noticed a few strange summer storms over the last few days, and isn't it so that houses that have stood on the permafrost for a century are keeling over? And the ice that the Danish measured in Greenland is vertically melting at 10 metre per year, which will drown new york and London before we get to use up this years vacation! And that weird ice-storm in Montreal a few years ago, and those monster floods in Prague. And havn't they grown spuds up there in Greenland for the first time in 12 centuries? And what about that gigantic iceberg the size of Wales that broke off in Antartica? And the strange new insects we see now, flys with stripes on them. And the fact that the last 10 summers have been the warmest since records began, and the hottest day ever was last year. Oh, and the 20K that got killed in last years heat wave? Oh, and those strange floods in Mozambique and Calcutta? And isn't the tree line moving at a mile a year in Canada? And those poor Puffins and Guilemots have all died because the heat has killed the sand worms. Forgive me for asking this, Mike, but are you absolutely sure that we are saved? I mean, you couldn't just be trying to cheer me up, could you?

One of my lines of work is in Satellite Operations, and a few years back, I was Mission Ops Engineer on a Satellite Mission that scanned the whole of Antartica. The ice people I spoke to from the Byrd Polar Institute (I've still got the tee-shirt somewhere) were most concerned. I'll let them know your views, they'll be most relived.

_________________
I stole this .sig

I'm bending myself into a pretzel to find some common ground with you, El Presidente. Yes, I'd go after the planes by trying to build a consensus about a pollution tax on them. That would be a good start. As for power stations, I'd go nuclear for sure. It makes sense (and, as you might guess, I have a line of business in that direction, having worked at Sellafield in the 80's on comms and controls). I also find geothermal highly attractive, but problematic. I'm sure it could be exploited. I don't like all these offshore wind farms - bring them onshore, I say.

As for public transport - you are trying to provoke me, El Presidente, I can tell

_________________
I stole this .sig

Just come back on after a couple of days. Thought the troll would have been full by now. You've been feeding it enough!!!!!!!!!!

As requested - and here is some 'quality' analysis. Almost up to Basingberk's standard.

By Johann Hari ("Independent" columnist)

Speed cameras and the rise of the new selfishness
I have a confession to make about my McDonald's carton...


The Tory Party yesterday accused the government of being "wildly over-zealous" in its pursuit of paedophiles. Its front-bench spokesman, Damien Green, complained about the "cash-guzzling" police efforts to catch child-killers, and said he wanted to protect browsers of internet pornography from being "endlessly monitored" and "made to feel like criminals" by Tony Blair's nanny state. Child molestors are anyway "otherwise law-abiding people" who "do not deserve to be persecuted".

Well, almost. The Tories were in fact speaking about a far bigger killer. Paedophiles slaughter 15 children a year on average. Speeding kills 150. The same people who whip up lynch mobs against suspected sex offenders are doing everything they can to dismantle speed cameras - even though they have been conclusively proven to save far more children's lives than even the most vigilant anti-paedophile unit.

A detailed three-year study of speed cameras recently found that the cameras slash death rates by 40 per cent. Across Britain they prevent 900 deaths and serious injuries every year; it takes paedophiles 60 years to hit that body count.

Are all those saved lives somehow worth less than the victims of Ian Huntley? Don't the parents of children mown down by speeding cars weep just as surely the parents of Holly and Jessica? Don't they wake at night, hoping against hope that there had been a speed cameras on that road, that day? But somehow all this emotion melts into Britain's tarmac.

There's a reason. The revolt against speed cameras is a symptom of a much wider trend. As individuals, we now find it very hard to bear a small inconvenience to ourselves in return for a large collective good. We can rant against paedophiles because there is no cost to us, but tackling speeding requires each of us to slow down. Setting out ten minutes earlier for a meeting is a small price to pay to save lives, but we find it increasingly intolerable. We put our individual needs above the collective every time.

This trend is scarring the social landscape of every liberal democracy, and it doesn't only hit us on the roads. It's a pain to chuck away litter, to wait in a queue, to turn down your car radio in a residential area, to pay higher taxes. You have to pay a tangible personal price for a vague group you'll never meet. I'm terrible at doing most of these things. Yesterday I justified leaving my McDonald's carton on the Tube by thinking how rushed and stressed I was. Everybody does it, and it stinks.

It's tempting to write off anybody who moans about these problems as grumpy old man - I've done it myself - but it's also callous. It's okay for young people like me who are happy to shrug off aggression, dodge speeding cars and barely notice the mess as we rush around. The people who suffer most from the erosion of these social codes are the weak, especially the old.

Blair is right that this should be a problem that progressives are eager to tackle. The right has always revered the strong and forgotten about the vulnerable; we have no excuse.

So what do we do? First of all, it's essential to point out that the Tory suggestions will make the problem even worse. Their new motoring proposals are a neat illustration of the current Tory philosophy. Cheer on drivers who mow down the wider public good. Hit the accelerator on individual self-interest. Damn anybody who suffers the consequences.

But finding a positive Labour solution is much harder. As the breakdown of these communal codes becomes clear - from speeding to ripping up flower-beds on estates - the Government is trying to step in and recreate them with the force of the law. Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) try to impose social conventions that were taken for granted a generation ago. (Back then, there were other, very different problems, many just as serious. This shouldn't turn into an exercise in bogus conservative nostalgia, and Tony Blair was eye- burstingly unhelpful when he used Sixties-bashing rhetoric in a speech on this subject a fortnight ago.)

The Government too often acts as though this increased responsibility is only for the poor. Yes, it is an important issue for the council estates, but it's also needed for the Volvo estates and the landed estates. Speed cameras are the ASBOs for the middle class, a way of punishing their largest (and most lethal) act of anti-social behaviour.

But just as the victims of ASBOs claim it their "right" to play their music at full-blast at 3am (or whatever), the opponents of speed cameras also make a bogus argument about liberty. In a bizarre insult to our war heroes, a Telegraph columnist recently compared the fight against the cameras to the fight against the Nazis, and begged his readers - on the 60th anniversary of D-Day - to remember "the price of freedom".

Liberty is the most important political value of all, but it is puerile politics to deny that sometimes liberties compete. Your liberty to speed has to be weighed against my liberty not to be run over. Some liberties are so fundamental they must be absolute: the freedom to vote, the right to free speech, and the right to a fair trial. Does anybody seriously think driving at 40mph through a residential area should be the fourth item on this list?

Very few people will admit (even to themselves) that they are acting purely out of selfishness, putting their own mild, momentary convenience over the possible death of an innocent person. Instead, we all create excuses. The pro-speeding lobby accuses everyone else - particularly the Government and police - of being the ones motivated by selfishness. The speeders say politicians don't give a toss about the public good or saving lives. They draw on the nihilism about politics that is spreading like black tar over our culture to claim that Blair and Gordon Brown - "the road bandits" - are only interested in raking in cash from speeding fines. Any claims about dead kids are self-serving lies; anybody who falls for them is mocked as "naïve".

This is a way of shaking responsibility off motorists like dust from an old suit. It is an attempt to change the subject, from the hard evidence about saved lives to an evidence-free debate about the motives of politicians.

Cars bring out the worst in this brand of excuse-making individualism. We all know that carbon emissions are contributing to global warming and ecocide. But do we use our cars less for pointless journeys? Do we even eschew petrol-intensive four-wheel-drives for sane cars? No; it's me, me, me, baby, and - hey! - I hear that global warming is all a myth anyway.

But after all the self-justifying lies, we still have to breathe the same air, use the same roads and live in the same country. However much the speed freaks of Middle England want to imagine they live exclusively in individualised steel cocoons, a speeding car doesn't discriminate. There is such a thing as society, and if the Government doesn't slow us down, nobody will.

From: http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=429

Last I heard virtually the whole US senate, not just the gas guzzling Republicans but the Democrats too, said they would never pass Kyoto. 98 to 2 or something wasn't it? IIRC Clinton signed the thing, but never bothered putting it through as they would never allow it to be ratified. I don't blame them. I'm sure you've heard of Bjorn Lomberg. He's a long way from being a fan of cars and heavy industry, and yet he believes that the Kyoto Protocol will cost a bloody fortune and at best achieve a barely measurable change. I also found it interesting that for daring to go against orthodoxy he was crucified by the green lobby. Nice, eh? FWIW I hope Kerry gets in, but not because he's green. I'm far from convinced he really is anyway. I also hope Phoney Tony gets his marching orders not long after Dubya. This is really because I think the pair of 'em bear some responsibility for the price of oil which is soon going to start hurting us at the pumps again. Beyond that, the Americans are welcome to elect Elvis if they care to and can find him.

We're a long way from tailgating now, basingwerk, but since you work with satellites I'd be interested to hear your views on why the satellite record doesn't show the warming of the surface record (even after the recent corrections it's still way off). Warming, yes, but nowhere near that shown in the surface record. And since balloon measurements agree with the satellites it's the surface record is the one that's starting to look shaky. Then there are various scientists who believe that the warming is entirely natural (although not a climatologist David Bellamy has recently voiced his opinion that anthropogenic warming is a myth, and there are others more qualified that are saying the same).

You yourself said the only thing that's constant is change. You're right of course, and that applies as much to the climate as everything else. We know that the climate was much cooler about 300 years ago, the so called Little Ice Age. We know that in medieval times, and before that in Roman times, it was warmer than it is at the moment. I think it's a given that these changes were entirely natural, and just go to show that the climate has always been changing, and that current conditions are not unprecedented. And of course, there's several recent papers that showed past CO2 increases occurred after global temperature rises. Now, if the temperature goes up first it can hardly be caused by increased CO2 levels a few centuries later. If they're right then maybe we've been putting the effect before the cause. Other research has found that CO2 levels have gone in the opposite direction to global temperature, and if they're right CO2 may have much less importance than we think.

You mentioned summer storms and last year's heatwave. Not unprecedented and not really climate events, though. But sufficiently impressive that they are used to further scare the public into accepting punitive taxes that are supposed to prevent it happening again. Yeah, yeah, heard it all before, and I think you have too basingwerk. Remember the confident predictions of the 70's, you know, the ones that said there was an ice age round the corner, maybe only 50 years or so. Of course, the heatwave of 1976 (worse than last year's btw, though peak temperature was slightly lower) gave that a bit of a heavy knock. Ironically, that wasn't a climate event either, and of itself didn't indicate that there would not be an ice age. All it was was a bloody big high pressure that hit the British Isles and stuck for a few weeks. Not unlike last year's heatwave in fact. It happens from time to time. So do glacial retreats and advances. Not all glaciers are shrinking, you know. There are plenty of advancing ones about. Not as many as many as are retreating, sure, but I'm pretty sure I read that glaciers retreat slowly over a number of years and then advance like the clappers for a shorter period. If so then at any given time we should expect to see more glaciers retreating than advancing than advancing anyway. You mentioned the "iceberg the size of Wales that broke of Antarctica". I assume you're talking about the calving of the Larsen B ice shelf. This ice shelf is itself glacial, it extends a number of miles over the sea, is in part of the 2% of Antarctica that is not cooling currently, and is on a peninsula that extends beyond the Antarctic Circle and into the Southern Ocean. This means that although it is being fed by the mass of ice on the main continent (which I recently read is currently accumulating rather than shrinking), it's being pushed out of the coldest are of the planet into a slightly warmer area where it's eroded by wind from above and waves from below. Of course bits are going to break off from time to time. And being that it's a bloody enormous sheet of ice that is sliding down over the sea, the pieces that calve off are going to be big as well. This will have been going on since long before cars and industry, and was probably old news when one caveman said to his mate "this wheel thing of yours, do you seriously think it's going to work?".

That said, there's a couple of points where I agree with you. One is that internal combustion engines pollute - it's a bugger, but there's no getting away from it. However, CO2 is not the bit I worry about. Having spent more time than I care to calculate chewing on the fumes from London buses I'd prefer engines to be more literally clean rather than merely 'green'. The shit that ends up on London is also going down my lungs, and frankly when I feel like polluting myself I'll light up a ciggie. The heath hazards are probably less than smoking, but it's more the quality of life I'm getting at here. I hated living in London and having tiny lumps of coal fly out of your nose when you sneeze. I don't accept that electric cars, or for that matter any electric transport, are an alternative until we stop powering them by burning fossil fuels. It's just moving the problem around. In the meantime we have cars that are much cleaner and more efficient than those of only a decade or so ago, and as a result vehicle emissions, and even transport emissions, are far smaller than other sources.

I also agree that fission power is about as clean as we can get right now, and is only unpopular because of negative associations with bombs, radiation, Chernobyl and the unresolved problem of what to do with the waste (the only bit that isn't clean). I think that's more indicative of a frightened public than genuine problems, or possibly just plain NIMBYism. I also agree that off shore wind power is no good, though I don't think the problem will be solved by putting them on land. Not just NIMBYism there, but more to do with the bird mincing qualities and the fact that I'm not aware that one fossil fuel burning power station has been shut as a result of wind power. This is simply because the turbines can't work in winds that are too light or too strong (which is most of the time), so a normal power station has to be kept going. Worse, it has to be kept ready to go at a moments notice so it's still using fuel and still polluting. Other, more reliable forms of renewable energy could be developed and would make more sense, but of course they're much further off. If we're worrying about CO2 then cement production should be high on the list. Want to calculate how much cement goes into a wind farm per megawatt compared to other types of power station? Or better yet, calculate total CO2 production per megawatt over a decade, including that produced during construction and, for the windfarm, that produced by the conventional back up power station. I'll be generous and say the back up is a combined cycle gas station. I don't know the answer, but I expect the windfarm to come off second best. Oh, and the turbines themselves are not without problems. From time to time bits fly off, including whole blades, and they have been known to keel over in very high winds. Rare events to be sure, but worth knowing if one gets put up near you.

Shock horror. Gatsobait is about to defend basingwerk. While I frequently disagree with basingwerk, I don't think "troll" is fair. I can't think of any posts that I've found offensive or particularly inflammatory. Frustrating and circular on occasion, but that's all. basingwerk is not the same as the unregistered trolls taking cheap shots on the nonny forum, but is prepared to at least argue a case. If I thought he was a troll I'd have started fuelling the flame thrower long ago. As it is I quite like debating with basingwerk, much as I disagree with a lot of his posts. Also, you'll never persuade a troll that he's wrong as he doesn't really care about the issues as much as he does about yanking chains, whereas people like basingwerk can possibly be persuaded by reasoned argument. I know this, because I used to be a firm believer in anthropogenic global warming, or as Mad Moggie puts it, a muesli muncher. There remains the distant possibility that basingwerk could persuade me that we should sack all the plods and stick Gatsos up every mile or so. Sorry basingwerk mate, not much progress so far, but then we haven't persuaded you yet either, have we?

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

BW

It's difficult to know where to start, given your apparant whole-hearted sign up to all of the standard green myths, so I shall just plunge in and see where we end up.

First, CO2. Now, this may come as a bit of a shock to you BW, but CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is not bad. CO2 is, in fact, good! So good, in fact, that without it we would be dead.

You state that the CO2 "problem" will mean that we have to get rid of cars. OK, let's assume we do this. How much CO2 will that get rid of? Fancy a guess? Ok, I'll tell you. It would get rid of less than 0.02% of atmospheric CO2. Now 0.02 is an interesting number. 0.02% is also the margin of error on the instrumentation we use to measure atmospheric CO2, methane etc.

So, no, even supposing there is a "problem" getting rid of cars won't help one little bit.

Now onto the "problem" itself.

As I am sure you are aware, the temperature on Earth varies in a cyclical nature over time. This has happened since the Earth cooled after formation and will continue to do so until the Sun goes Supernova and wipes it out. Now, before humans even appeared on this planet, we have had temperature swings og huge amounts, like 10 degress over 50 years, we have had humugous amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (10 times todays amount) without a huge warming effect. We have had massive Ice Ages with most of Northern Europe buried under miles of ice.

Now what caused all this hmm?

At the moment, we are in an inter-glacial period. i.e. we are still emerging from the last ice age. And what a suprise! The temperatures are rising slightly.

The fact is that changes in climate are entirely natural. The arrogance of the belief that man can massively change the climate over a time period that is in, climate terms, a few nanoseconds, is staggering.

You have no proof to support your assertion that CO2 is a "problem", other than, it appears, some anecdotal accounts of "strange weather" and a reliance on a computer simulation. A simulation, you should keep in mind, that is produced by the same people who cannot predict what the weather will be like 2 years from now, never mind 100.

It's funny that in the debate about Global Warming, the things you never hear about from the proponents are the following:

*The Sun
*The Earths axis of rotation
*The Earths Magnetic Field
*Sunspots
*Solar flares

What you do hear about is stuff like cars, energy consumption, globalisation, international and national transport, technology and it's downsides etc etc etc

Now, to me that looks a lot like people who aren't interested in the Earths climate and more like people who have an agenda of stifling ecomomic development, technological advance and some weird sort of desire to live in some pre-industrial society.

So please, if you believe CO2 to be a "problem" at least provice some credible evidence to support your theory. Something like "the weathers a bit strange" simply isn't good enough.

The global warming pundits also rely rather heavily on the so-called "scientific consensus". Scientific consensus is a bit of an oxymoron. Consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science - in fact it's the antithesis of science.
Science is all about the rigorous testing of hypotheses, and discarding those which are found wanting. The 'science' of global warming attempts to do the opposite.
Can you imagine if science was by consensus? We'd have scenarios like the following:

"Next on the agenda, the chemical formula for water is H2O. All agreed? OK, next item, E=MC2. Show of hands please. It seems the 'nays' have it. Oh well, never did like that Einstein chap anyway. Right then, let's move on to the next item. Global warming..."

But, on these shaky foundations, we're about to have the likes of Kyoto foisted upon us - which is going to have no effect on anything, but will cost us literally trillions of pounds.

Much the same things can be said about 'speed kills'.

Regards
Peter

Sorry mate! But that is one of this family's fave words for " finest numpty!"

You walked into that one!

Incidentally - I am with Gatobait and the Mad Lad - even though you think I am a dinosaur and better being replaced by robocop!

Actually think it is good to have interesting debate - but you do go off on one a bit at times - mate!

More later - gotta go out again!

You must be confused Gatsobait; the usually impeccably mannered Oscar could not possibly be talking of me in his reference to trolls. I'm sure he means Observer or Pete317, or even (God forbid) the wise authurdent. Either that, or he is enjoying a little playful basingwerk baiting, which I can forgive. Your blockbuster post on CO2 has floored me! Let me think up something good. But in short, my response will be that we should play it safe when there is so much downside. One should avoid risking the End of the World if one can, methinks.

_________________
I stole this .sig

Oh, I didn't think the season started until September.
Yes, I can understand that, as it's a position I have subscribed to in the past myself. However, Kyoto is not playing it safe. Assuming for a moment that anthropogenic warming is really happening (I'll qualify that in a moment), the Kyoto Protocol would buy us about five years. In other words, the scary GCM generated temperatures for 2100 will not occur until 2105. Big deal. It is also worth bearing in mind that for a fraction of the cost of implementing Kyoto you could provide clean drinking water to everyone on the planet who still lacks what we think of as one of life's basics. That applies to lots of things of course, but I'm just pointing out that the world has limited financial resorces as well as natural ones. So should we spend money on a tiny reduction to a problem that may not exist, or on solving a problem that is unarguable.

I said I'd qualify what I said about anthropogenic warming. There is some anthropogenic warming, that's pretty inevitable. If nothing else 6 billion human beings will give off a certain amount of heat , plus industry, transport, constructoin of cities and so on. However, as big a scale as that might seem to us as individuals it is pretty pathetic when compared to the natural processes that have been going on for billions of years. Some believe that mankind's contributions to warming may well turn out to be so small as to be beyond our capability to measure. There is a greenhouse effect that is entirely natural and has been around much longer than we have. I've read that global temperature would be much lower without it, can't remember how much lower, but we might have been able to have snowball fights in Morrocco. I've also read that this natural greenhouse effect is largely due to water vapour, which has a far stronger role than CO2, CH4, etc. Of course, clouds are water vapour and they have a cooling effect. Complicated ain't it? Add to that the effect of regular changes in our orbit, the axial tilt, the cycles of variablity in the sun, and probably a million other variables and it seems laughable, not to say arrogant, to believe we can control the whole shebang by tweaking our CO2 emissions. It's even more laughable to attempt this by going after one of the smallest sources.

There is another important point to consider about the playing it safe option. We may end up shooting at the wrong target, and the fact that this was done with the best intentions will be of no benefit. If the observed warming is entirely natural, as many believe, the money spent on trying to deal with it will have been wasted. If it turns out that the sun is entirely, or even mostly responsible then reducing man made CO2 will have little or no effect. Well, not on the climate at any rate - it may have the effect of widespread recessions in the industrialised countries that have been suckered into signing up to this.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

A troll? Moi?
Tell you what, I'll make a deal. If Paul S. declares that I'm a troll, I shall never make another posting to this forum.
But, somhow, I don't believe he will.

Hi GatsoBait,




There may not even be a trade-off here. If we (reasonably) consider that the “End of the World” represents infinite cost, then even a very small risk is not worth taking because small_risk * <infinity> = <infinity>. If there is any 'significant' risk that CO2 will cause the End of the World, and there is an action we could adopt to stop or slow it, we owe it to our children to engage on that, irrespective of cost (yes, nothing is irrespective of cost, please cut me some slack here; Oscar has hurt my feelings). Otherwise, the correspondent in Orbserver's quote is right to say we all know that carbon emissions are contributing to global warming and ecocide. But do we use our cars less for pointless journeys? Do we even eschew petrol-intensive four-wheel-drives for sane cars? No; it's me, me, me, baby, and - hey! - I hear that global warming is all a myth anyway.



Well, Kerry appears to be both smarter and less big business oriented than Dubya, so it might be possible to convince him by the weight of evidence that backs the “End of the World” hypothesis. Pete317 scorns scientific consensus as ineffective, but gives us no clue as to how decisions should be otherwise made. As for Tony, he has lost contact with reality, I'm afraid, and we need to get him out of the job for the sake of mercy. Although he is making a damn good job of these scameras! I can't really condemn them for the gas price though, much as I'd like to. It may be possible to pin something on them with hindsight, but that's always 20:00.


I'm not sure what you mean by the 'surface record'. Give me a URL so that I can check this. How are these measurements made? Indeed, I didn't know we had temperature data from space. I can only assume someone is using a geostationary weather satellite in some way, or is it a low earth orbiter with some instruments to measure radiation? If so, this is rather remote (36,000 km for a GEO and ~ 300 km for a LEO) and maybe indirect and inaccurate. I really can't say. I was involved with TVSAT1 and 2, DFS 1, 2 and 3, IRS1A, IRS1B, and IRS1C, and RADARSAT. Most of them were Geos related to TV pictures, although IRS1A was Geographic and RADARSAT carried a Sythentic Aperture Radar. This was used to scan the whole Antarctic Continent for the first time ever in September 1997. I planned the passes. The Byrd Polar Institute coordinated the project, and the guys seemed concerned about melt-off even then, although a planned follow up mission to gauge the exact rate cannot be scheduled until Radarsat II is operational.

What I can say is that a low earth orbiting satellite takes about 100 minutes per rev right around the planet, which is somewhat less than a soccer match if you include half time. When you do a pass in the control room, it takes around 45 minutes including pre-pass checks and data processing. By the time you have a cup of tea and a fag, and done a bit of fiddling with the command console, it's time to set up for the next pass. It does bring home to you how tiny the planet is, and its atmosphere (which is a smear of gas on the surface) is so very fine. As for David Bellamy, I can only say that he is a popular Sci-lebrity who may or may not have any relevance. Is he any good? I seem to recall some controversy he stirred up in Tasmania - what's the guff on that? Has someone got to him?



Yes, but in history, we didn't have a population of 6 to 10 billion. Nor did we have industrial expansion blasting out 6 billion tons per year of CO2 into the air. Nature seems to have controlled the climate within bounds recently, but now there are credible theories that the current period of stability could end abruptly if the Gulf Stream conveyor quits. As small_risk * <infinity> = <infinity>, we should try to play it safe if we can, but I fear it has gone to long. As for the idea that past CO2 increases occurred after global temperature rise, fine. But this time the CO2 increases are occurring before it, so says the ‘scientific consensus’. Our capacity to use past performance to predict the future is diminished, due to our much-changed circumstances. Given the global rise in sea water temperature evidenced by coral reef bleaching, and the gradual erosion of island communities in the pacific and other places, it is becoming increasingly evident to many that the warming is a real effect of CO2. The fact that personal experiences and the recent hot summers corroborate this gives it further weight. In any case, even if, as you put it, the Nay Sayers are right, we can only defer the cuts in CO2 output due to oil burning for as long as the oil lasts. As you know, OPEC is at peak production, the North Sea is on the wane. Why put off the inevitable when it is risking the future or the world. The downside is huge. Yes, I know they said in the ‘70s the oil would be gone by now – I actually wish it was, because we would be compelled to finance better alternatives.


It is the weight of all evidence that makes the case for global worming (sorry warming) so compelling. I understand why you might want to test the data in this area, but I cannot believe that, at least in part, you have doubts. It is the pure number of events that have come together in recent times. It is my greatest wish that these dire predictions are false, but we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. As for local pollution, that is not important to me (selfish as ever). In fact, I would be happier if the pollution that is created in London and other cities could be confined there! Having said that, it is possible that I could end up in one of those fleshpots again at one point, having lived in big cities before. So in principle, I like the idea of switching to estuarial, tidal, wind, wave, geothermal (the big constant one) and nuclear (the other big constant one) to give us unlimited quantities of emission free power. New cars do omit progressively slightly less CO2 (and much less other stuff) than older ones, although some studies suggest that more CO2 is created in the production of 1 new car than it ever uses in it's time on the road, so this suggests it is better to encourage the maintenance of older cars.



If it works, it's obsolete. The home secretary has already announced measures that could lead to little yellow RF boxes in all cars to transfer data in and out, along with citizen ID cards and certain biometric measures that could come in by 2014. That could spell the end of cameras, and average speed monitoring between points would be the way it could be done, if we haven’t all been drowned by the rising sea level! However, I am loath to wax lyrical on this as much as I normally would due in case anyone has a funny turn and comes after me again.




There may not even be a trade-off here. If we (reasonably) consider that the “End of the World” represents infinite cost, then even a very small risk is not worth taking because small_risk * <infinity> = <infinity>. If there is any 'significant' risk that CO2 will cause the End of the World, and there is an action we could adopt to stop or slow it, we owe it to our children to engage on that, irrespective of cost (yes yes yes, nothing is irrespective of cost, cut me some slack here). Otherwise, the correspondent in Orbserver's quote is right to say we all know that carbon emissions are contributing to global warming and ecocide. But do we use our cars less for pointless journeys? Do we even eschew petrol-intensive four-wheel-drives for sane cars? No; it's me, me, me, baby, and - hey! - I hear that global warming is all a myth anyway.



Well, Kerry appears to be both smarter and less big business oriented than Dubya, so it might be possible to convince him by the weight of evidence that backs the “End of the World” hypothesis. Pete317 (who is back in the debate) scorns scientific consensus as ineffective, but gives us no clue as to how decisions should be otherwise made. As for Tony, he has lost contact with reality, I'm afraid, and we need to get him out of the job for the sake of mercy. Although he is making a damn good job of these scameras!


I'm not sure what you mean by the 'surface record'. Give me a URL so that I can check the source on this. How are these measurements made? Indeed, I didn't know we had temperature data from space. I can only assume someone is using a geostationary weather satellite in some way, or is it a low earth orbiter with some instruments to measure radiation? If so, this is rather remote (36,000 km for a GEO and ~ 300 km for a LEO) and maybe indirect and inaccurate. I really can't say. What I can say is that a low earth orbiting satellite takes about 100 minutes per rev right around the planet, which is somewhat less than a soccer match if you include half time. When you do a pass in the control room, it takes around 45 minutes including pre-pass checks and data processing. By the time you have a cup of tea and a fag, and done a bit of fiddling with the command console, it's time to set up for the next pass. It does bring home to you how tiny the planet is, and its atmosphere (which is a smear of gas on the surface) is so very fine. As for David Bellamy, I can only say that he is a popular Sci-lebrity who may or may not have any relevance. Is he any good? I seem to recall some controversy he stirred up in Tasmania - what's the guff on that? Has someone got to him?



Yes, but in history, we didn't have a population of 6 to 10 billion. Nor did we have industrial expansion blasting out 6 billion tons per year of CO2 into the air. Nature seems to have controlled the climate within bounds recently, but now there are credible theories that the current period of stability could end abruptly if the Gulf Stream conveyor quits. As small_risk * <infinity> = <infinity>, we should try to play it safe if we can, but I fear it has gone to long. As for the idea that past CO2 increases occurred after global temperature rise, fine. But this time the CO2 increases are occurring before it, so says the ‘scientific consensus’. Our capacity to use past performance to predict the future is diminished, due to our much-changed circumstances. Given the global rise in sea water temperature evidenced by coral reef bleaching, and the gradual erosion of island communities in the pacific and other places, it is becoming increasingly evident to many that the warming is a real effect of CO2. The fact that personal experiences and the recent hot summers corroborate this gives it further weight. In any case, even if, as you put it, the Nay Sayers are right, we can only defer the cuts in CO2 output due to oil burning for as long as the oil lasts. As you know, OPEC is at peak production, the North Sea is on the wane. Why put off the inevitable when it is risking the future or the world. The downside is huge. Yes, I know they said in the ‘70s the oil would be gone by now – I actually wish it was, because we would be compelled to finance better alternatives.


It is the weight of all evidence that makes the case for global worming (sorry warming) so compelling. I understand why you might want to test the data in this area, but I cannot believe that, at least in part, you have doubts. It is the pure number of events that have come together in recent times. It is my greatest wish that these dire predictions are false, but we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. As for local pollution, that is not important to me (selfish as ever). In fact, I would be happier if the pollution that is created in London and other cities could be confined there! Having said that, it is possible that I could end up in one of those fleshpots again at one point, having lived in big cities before. So in principle, I like the idea of switching to estuarial, tidal, wind, wave, geothermal (the big constant one) and nuclear (the other big constant one) to give us unlimited quantities of emission free power. New cars do omit progressively slightly less CO2 (and much less other stuff) than older ones, although some studies suggest that more CO2 is created in the production of 1 new car than it ever uses in it's time on the road, so this suggests it is better to encourage the maintenance of older cars.



If it works, it's obsolete. The home secretary has already announced measures that could lean to little yellow RF boxes in all cars to transfer data in and out, along with citizen ID cards and certain biometric measures that could come in by 2014. That could spell the end of cameras, and average speed monitoring between points would be the way it could be done, if we haven’t all been drowned by the rising sea level! However, I am loath to wax lyrical on this as much as I normally would due in case anyone has a funny turn and comes after me again.

_________________
I stole this .sig

So it must be Observer, then, who is pretty handy with the T word himself :



Shame on you, Observer

_________________
I stole this .sig

Well, I've accused you of being repitive before, but I've never seen it within a single post before.

I'll have to get back to you later or tomorrow about the satellites etc. For now I'll just say two things. First, on global warming my opinions used to pretty much match yours, but the weight of evidence (or perhaps I should say counter evidence) eventually convinced me I'd been had. Secondly, "the End Of The World is an extreme scenario, and one that not even the IPCC claim is likely or even realistic (that I know of - I'm not a climatologist either, but I am a tree hugger and so I'm always interested in reading up on this stuff).

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The End of the World is nigh!!!!

Actually - keep reading that giant meteor (like the one in those films .... is on the way - soon! If that is case - wannna enjoy meself in me car before it hits us and wipes us all out! OK!!!!

As for doom and gloom stakes --- I could really really frighten you all very badly if I printed out what my computer has just forecast to me on subject of lurgies, potential lurgies, metamorphoses, development, evolution of said lurgies - not to mention what would happen if certain bloke managed to get hold of summat he should n't! (Nearly had little accident in lower regions myself when I read this garbage from the "worst scenario prediction!":lol: ) But seriously - if certain lurgies continue at current rate -we have problem. Road deaths will never exceed death from lurgy (though we would actually like this to be case - cos that would mean we really are "little gods" But this will never be because lurgies are also living beings and also have a "survival instinct"!)

End of the world - eh? Caused by motor car? There are worse fates! However, should point out that computer works on model/programm/software - prepared by human machine. This little factor tells me that information is thus distorted and is based on model programmed into the wretched thing n the first place. It is thus a remote possibility - but no more than that.

The technology predicting all other doom and gloom scenarios is based on similar type programms.




You would not want to live near one though! And I can tell you quite a different story on effect of radioactivity upon the human machine's long term health! Then there are leaks, nuclear waste (Sellafield has been in trouble a few times over this in the past.) We had Chernobyl as well.

As for oil fields - turns out Russia (Siberia) has supply which can outdo Saudi Arabia (per FAZ last week). So should be OK for time being as far as oil supplies go.

You want total automation? I want human to retain skills and abilities. If we do not use them - we lose them. If we lose those skills - we will be unable to service and maintain these machines - because the skill of thinking, exploring and doing things for oneself will be lost. We will also be unable to survive - because those survival skills will also have been compromised by over-reliance on a machine.

You said yourself - your German fluency is diminishing through lack of constant use. That is what happens if you fail to maintain any skill.

They have not got the databases for any of these gizmos sorted out yet. And computer programms are only as good as the fallible person who programmed them in the first place.

Lot of problems have come to light in the grand plan for the biometric ID card as well. No system whether computerised or manual is foolproof.

As for all the scaremongering - we are always being told that chocs, booze and chips - all bad for you. Then these same items have "beneficial qualities." All based on a computer's prediction based on how we programmed it.

Basically, basingwerk, we can predict nothing with absolute certainty. We have probables -but another variable can occur to send us off in another direction.

OK - so weak component in this system could be compensated for by stronger one. We have to have give and take - and that applies to all areas of our lives. That is our social and relatively civilised structure.

That is life!

No computer is going to be able to alter this. Heck! We are now acting on Terror Warnings that are out of date. You really think that a terrorist is not going to change his strategy and game plan over that period of time? We are dealing with big criminals here - they plan, lead you up garden path and use these computer systems as weapon too. Think I want my life controlled by something which could be hi-jacked by some evil *********?

We even went to war on 10 year old material and a "probability chart"!



We are right to be suspicious - in wrong hands this can be devastating - more so than global warming.

Speaking of global warming - you cannot judge UK's weather last year as sign that "end is nigh!" We have had cold snaps, excessively hot, wet, freezing (Canada had ice storms two years ago). Again - those claiming that the earth is not overheating are basing their prognosis on a computerised prediction based on the information fed into it. Suspect that if you combined both findings and recalculated the model - we would get to something a little closer to reality.