Safe Speed Forums

Free sex with Al Gore?

God what a thought.

The Government is attempting to stop the Met Office from carrying out the re-examination, arguing that it would be seized upon by climate change sceptics.

...Another thing that the pro-AGW lobby are trying now is to confuse the existence of climate change (which pretty much everyone will agree happens) with the man-made aspect and, in particular, that CO2 is responsible. Hence, "climate change denier" is almost certainly a very rare beast.
The Copenhagen Conference should be renamed the Canute Congress for all the good it will do.

I think I posted this before, yonks ago, but notice how 1901 is massively worse than 1932 and 1998. Er, can someone explain that to me please? It's from Stratford Under Water

I note that you have cunningly suppressed the zero level on that picture - a typical politician's trick.

I thought the AGW proponents say that we have got much warmer over the last few years (hockey stick anyone?) due to our recent CO2 emissions and not a "long term trend" as you say in your post. Thus any recent variation is "weather" and can be discounted just like the 1901 flood level which you seek to downplay.

Transport-climate agenda at risk as 'consensus science' crumbles Public trust in the transportclimate change policy agenda may have been dealt a major blow by the unauthorised release of emails and computer code from one of the world's leading climate science centres, the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit eCRU). The material shows that a small group of the climate scientists have worked to block publication of academic papers by skeptics, refused to release data following Freedom of Information Act requests, and even appear to have manipulated data to strengthen the argument that man's CO2 emissions are warming the planet. 'Climategate' - as the incident has been dubbed - has swept across the intern et with Google this week recording over 12 million pages using the term. Mainstream media coverage has been patchier but here too the 'consensus' view that the science is "settled" is breaking down. A page article in The Sunday Times discussed the 'The great climate science scandal' and Wednesday's front page headline of The Daily Express went further, reporting 'The big climate change fraud'. The re-opening of the scientific debate could be significant for transport, given the almost universal acceptance of the man-made warming paradigm \\ithin the sector. The Association of British Drivers, which has been the only transport campaign group to refuse to accept the "settled science" policy framework, said the emails "vindicated" its stance.
"UEA is at the centre of research on current and past temperatures, which claims that the modem warm period has been unprecedented due mainly to man-made CO2 emissions," said its environment spokesman Paul Biggs. "But what if the scientific process has been manipulated, by an influential group of scientists who also dominate the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], in order to make a stronger case for man-made global warming and create and protect a consensus? Some unambiguous emails suggest that this is exactly what has happened." There are signs of a growing backlash against the climate change agenda within the Conservative Party. "Today, the economic climate makes people question whether we can afford the expense of these policies," said prominent MP David Davis in The Independent this week. He said the "fixation" of the green movement with setting ever tougher targets was a policy "destined to collapse". "Many ofthe people signed up to the green movement instinctively believe in statist, regulatory, dirigiste regimes," he added. "They forget these approaches have failed many times before - or perhaps believe the sheer importance of the cause will carry
them through policy weaknesses." Former Tory minister and now broadcaster Michael Portillo said on the BBC's This Week it was time for the scientific data underpinning global warming concerns to be re-examined. Asked by presenter Andrew Neil whether he thought the "one-party state" of global warming was starting to "fray at the edges", Portillo said: "Well I hope it is because it's more than a one-party state, it's almost a religion. It's a new authoritarianism. It's a way of people bossing other people around." The release of the emails provided the perfect launchpad for former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson's launch of an 'all-party non-party' think-tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which aims to foster a "proper debate" on a topic that has become "seriously unbalanced and irrationally alarmist". UEA this week announced that the CRU's director, Professor Phil Jones, had stood down until completion of an independent review into the allegations arising from the "hacking".

Jones accepted that some of the emails did "not read well" but added: "That the world is warming is based on a range of sources: not only temperature records but other indicators such as sea level rise, glacier retreat and less Arctic sea ice. "Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Center in the United States, among others," he added. "Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results." But even some supporters of man-made global warming believe the emails could cause lasting damage. Mike Hulme, professor of climate change at UEA's school of environmental sciences, said last week: "From outside, and even to the neutral, the attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. To those with bigger axes to grind it is just what they wanted to find." He predicted that "the reverberations of this episode will live on long beyond [Copenhagen)."
Leading 'green' commentator George Monbiot said in his Guardian column: "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails ... could scarcely be more damaging. I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them." Some observers say the computer code and accompanying comments by CRU programmers are even more damaging than the emails. The programmer makes frequent pointed criticisms about the quality of the CRU's temperature database and at one point writes: "What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah - there is no 'supposed', I can make it up. So I have "

If you're going to ask me how much above sea level Stratford is, I Dunno

The trouble with using flood levels to compare anything is that there is a failure to compare like with like .
Like - comparing the flood frequency of place A X years ago when certain areas would be wooded glade , and those of today when place A is a concereted over jungle .Years ago ,excess water had somewhere to go - today it also has -the local estates front room . We've probably got the same quantity of water to get rid of ,but the drains can't cope ,and the old soakaways are now housing estates .So what better plan than to put it down to the electorate being naughty and Nanny statehas acure for that - PUNISH THROUGH TAX -like the old boarding school idea of six of the best .
Trouble is that when men of learning stand up against Government tax ideas , the only defence is to ridicule and spin .

What I need to know is how far above the normal river level that plaque is.

Why is it that I, an engineer with a strong belief in the scientific method, just don't believe all the AGW claims? It must be the contra-indicating evidence. That and a nagging suspicion that it is all politically motivated.

http://www.sbwwi.co.uk/cms/Img/SeminarPresentation/File-165.pdf

According to OS the street is about 40ft asl