Safe Speed Forums

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Well, judging by the view out of my window this morning, my only comment is....

Global warming is b*llocks!

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Quite! An unbelievable amount of snow, the like of which I haven't seen for several years (and I can't remember the last time I saw any snow whatsoever in April)! It's a real Christmas postcard scene. Ho ho ho indeed.

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

That's quite a tired one.

The concept is that global warming warms the atmopshere in general and thereby causes more energetic and changable weather patterns, including colder weather in places that were previously warm and warm weather in places that were previously cold.

If digging the earth's old atmosphere out of the ground and putting it back into the current one is having an effect (and it certainly seems it is) then this doesn't necessarily mean summer weather all year round, not for us up here near the arctic circle anyway.

So it's also "tired" when they claim that unusually warm weather, floods and the like are down to global warming?

(And what a surprise that you purport to believe in AGW, BTW. Put it this way: if someone did hate motorists, they'd express all the same opinions that you do, wouldn't they? They'd automatically support every anti-motorist and motorist-restricting measure, they'd claim to believe in AGW, and they'd oppose the majority of Safe Speed members on pretty much every motoring-related subject. Call me old-fashioned but if it looks like a duck....)

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Paul Smith: a legend.

"The freedom provided by the motor vehicle is not universally applauded, however: there are those who resent the loss of state control over individual choice that the car represents. Such people rarely admit their prejudices openly; instead, they make false or exaggerated claims about the adverse effects of road transport in order to justify calls for higher taxation or restrictions on mobility." (Conservative Way Forward: Stop The War Against Drivers)

Weepej,

I’ll agree that the climate is changing, the question is, what’s causing the change? I, as with many others, don’t believe it has anything to do with CO2 emissions.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Well, I figure that millions of years ago "animal" and plant life unwittingly "terraformed" the atmosphere for the likes of today's life by taking the carbon out of the atmposhere (and there was a lot of it) and locking it up before getting buried in the earth's crust, the result being the atmosphere we have today, with enough O for us, and not enough C to poison us.

And now we're digging this all up and putting it back.

Doesn't take much imagination to figure what's going to a happen next in my book.

I've said already, global warming means an increase in the global temperature, only slight, but enough to drastically alter weather patterns, including making places that were hot cold, and places that were cold, hot.

If the UK wasn't wafted by the north Atlanctic Current and all that comes with it it'd be under several miles of ice for instance, it once was, so much ice is was depressed into the earth's crust.



Bombus, I just think we should put more effort into finding ways of sourcing energy to enable the motion of vehicles that doesn't involve digging our old atmosphere out of the ground and putting it back into the current one.

I'm not anti car, I love my car, but at the moment they have two very negative effects: -

1) They're often driven without consideration for others resulting in many deaths and serious injuries that are totally avoidable

2) They're powered by a resource that frankly, should be left where it is

Don't get me wrong, the car has many positive effects, it's why we love them so, and I think the negative effects could so easily be elminated, I don't know why there isn't a greater groundswell to see this happen.

Here we go again, blame it all on the car.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Well, no, there are other ways we could reduce our requirement to dig the black stuff out of the ground, for cars I'm actually more concerened about the local impact of burning petrol on the lungs of those that live and work near as well as use the roads,

And for that it's not cars I'm railing against, but the chosen method of propulsion.

And of course there's the large death toll that is simply not necessary.

So now you’re blaming cars for pollution, and cars for all the road deaths on our roads. Sounds to me like you are just anti car, unless it’s yours that is.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Not not cars, the way they are currently propelled.



Er, no, your words.

One thing is for sure, with predictions that this year is going to be colder than last year globaly, and last year was one of the coldest years this century, ate going to have to fight their corner more than ever before...bring it on.

Oh by the way Nasa have finaly admited they screwed up..



And the seas are not actualy getting any hotter.



Chilly in China



Oh, and regarding the Ice caps






All Breaking news this year....I expect a lot more as this year shapes up to be one of the coldest in over 100 years.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Ice ages (such as the one that we have been coming out of for the last 12,000 years or so) are a lot colder than we are now. True Interglacials (which we are not yet in) are a lot warmer.

The current climate is transitional between the two. From this point we can either go back to ice age conditions (which was suggested in the 70's) or on to a true, and much warmer, interglacial.

Our current cliamte is not a stable one (even assuming any climate is long term). from here it can go one way or the other. Whist I am prepared to accept that human activities can have an effect on climate (De-forestation is a far greater influance than burning the black stuff) the idea that we can drive the climate in the opposite direction to where it is naturally going or manipulate the climate so that current conditions are maintained indefinatly is risable.

Government stratagies to "Prevent" climate change (especially ones involving high taxes) are simply a case of politicians saying "Give us all your money and we will will controll the weather for you"

We should throw eggs at them untill they drown! Its all they deserve!

(Note, I am not saying that the climate isnt changing. What I am saying is that we should be planning for it. To use the canute analogy Instead of simply sitting their and commanding the weather to stay the same, we should be building dykes or moving further up the beach!)

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

There are too many people! It all comes down to this unelectable truth IMO. You don't have to look very far on the Net...

The mechanisms that automatically are activated in nature when a population grows to its extremes are sequentially put in action as soon as the populations break their limits. Some of these mechanisms are wars, increase of crime, hunger, emergent and re-emergent illnesses, etc.

The impact of human populations on the environment has been severe. Some animal species have been extinguished or forced to live in inhospitable regions by the advance of urban areas; pollution is a problem that is increasing gradually because we are using more cars. Emerging countries industrialization is not paying attention to environmental issues because of the feeding demands of their ever-growing populations.

The human overpopulation has been credited to diverse factors, as the increment in life-span, the absence of natural enemies, the improvement in the quality of life, and the accessibility to get better goods.

Every year, more than 81 million people add the world-wide population. Every 10 years almost one billion inhabitants are added to the world’s population.

Due to the opening out of human settings, 16 million hectares of forest are chopped down each year.

The accelerated growth of the human populations has propitiated the destruction of natural habitats of many species. People are invading the habitats of those species, replacing them to inhospitable places and condemning the native species to the extinction.

The speed of extinction of plants and animals attributable to human activities is 10,000 times faster than the natural quotient.

About 5 million people die every year from illnesses associated to organic wastes.

Too dense human communities produce tons of solid wastes (organic and inorganic waste) daily, consume large quantities of energy and emit more pollutants to the environment.

Water necessities will increase to 20% by 2025. Approximately, one half of wetlands around the world have been lost since 1900.

In USA, consumption of materials (wood, metals, synthetics, etc.) has grown 18-fold since 1900.

The Ozone layer has been gradually ruined by the effect of the CFCs.

The concentration of CFCs has been increased as the human population has grown, and the thickness of the Ozone layer has been lesser to the extent that a hole in the layer has been formed.

Scientists have found that there are other emissions derived from human activities, which have contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer.

Half of the mangrove forests, which serve as estuaries in the tropics, have been lost to a combination of coastal development and conversion to aquaculture.

Global aquaculture now accounts for more than one-quarter of all fish consumed by humans. In the case of shrimp and salmon -- the fastest growing segment of aquaculture -- two to three pounds of fish are needed to grow one pound of the raised seafood. Thus this practice is depleting the oceans of food for wild fish, birds, and marine mammals.

About 3000 species of marine life are in transit in ballast water of ships around the world, resulting in a serious invasion of non-native species in our waterways.

A minor but increasing contributor to the problem is escape of non-native fish and plants from aquariums.

There are now some 50 'dead zones' in the world's coastal areas, she reported. The largest in the Western Hemisphere is in the Gulf of Mexico, caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus flowing down the Mississippi River

Half of the world's wetlands were lost last century.

Logging and conversion have shrunk the world's forests by as much as half.

Some 9 percent of the world's tree species are at risk of extinction; tropical deforestation may exceed 130,000 square kilometres per year.

Fishing fleets are 40 percent larger than the ocean can sustain.

Nearly 70 percent of the world's major marine fish stocks are overfished or are being fished at their biological limit.

Soil degradation has affected two-thirds of the world's agricultural lands in the last 50 years.

Some 30 percent of the world's original forests have been converted to agriculture.

Since 1980, the global economy has tripled in size and population has grown by 30 percent to 6 billion people.

Dams, diversions or canals fragment almost 60 percent of the world's largest rivers.

Twenty percent of the world's freshwater fish are extinct, threatened or endangered.



Whether you believe in global warming or not, (and I'm very skeptical), or whether you believe the claims are exaggerated, one thing is for sure - there are too many people demanding ever more resources to the detriment and quality of all life.

And as for China?


(Sorry for the long one)


http://www.overpopulation.org/impact.html

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Those are well understood cycles that can be traced for millions of years, slow changing, enough for life to adapt naturally, with AGW all the evidence suggests you're talking about very "sudden" changes with potentially devastating impact.




Planning for it? If we are causing it or part of it, surely the best thing is to minimise our effect on it as much as possible.

If somebody starting filling your house up with water would you plan for the eventually that they continue to do so until it it toally full up, or simply ask them to stop?

If you landed on a desert island and there was some fruit on the three trees growing there would you chop all the trees down and have a big fire and then plan what you are going to do because you have no food or wood left?

On a side note, King Canute ordered the sea back to prove he couldn't, not to try and show that he could

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Sorry, don't want to buy anymore snake oil today. Amazing how 'being green' is making so much money for those who say we need to 'be green'! It's nothing but pious flagellism.

Well, if somebody can show me that digging up all the carbon under our feet and burning it into the atmosphere where it used to be is not bad for us then I'll shut up.

Naturally if we do manage to return the earth's atmosphere to it's prehistoric state and we all perish then the earth will be OK, some life will take advantage of it, but we probably won't be here. I just think we owe it to nature to be a bit more respectful.

Dunno about you bigtone, but I like people, so if 1,000 people being thoughtful about how they consume can leave a similar footprint than 20 that don't then I'm all for the former situation.