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I think there's a touch of pot and kettle going on from Michael Mann there. Both sides have been reported as saying things that IMO are closer to ad hominem attacks than debate, and I don't think either have helped matters by doing so.

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

That the River Thames in London repeatedly froze over, to the extent that winter fairs and ox-roasts were held on the ice, is very well documented.
Any idea how much cold it takes to freeze a body of water the size of the Thames - even if, as some have suggested, that the water was standing still? (no mention of where all the water flowing in went to if it was somehow dammed up in London)
For that to happen, the temperature has to be well below freezing over a long period of time. And they're saying that that wasn't a significant departure from the norm? Oh, just by the way, some of the worst storms in history occurred around that time.
And what about the Medieval Climate Optimum? You know, the warm period in the Middle Ages - when wine was grown as far north as York, and Greenland was settled by the Vikings (where do you think it got its name from?). The MCO also never happened, according to Mann's 'Ockey Stick.

But of course it's much warmer nowdays, isn't it? That's why people are dying from the cold in Europe and Canada. That's why Kashmir has seen fifteen feet of snow in the last few weeks - whole villages have been flattened by the snow and hundreds have died.



You won't see the end of it, and neither will I.

That's the beauty of the GW theory - they'll be long dead before they're proved wrong.

Regards
Peter

Sounds like super hero stuff......lets pretend we can save the world so we can all feel important.

The single biggest man made contribution is agriculture. What are we doing about that.

Look back over the billion million years and we have had some pretty extreme climates. No human intervention then. We have had mass extinctions, ice ages, global flooding, none of it man made.
Humans have been reporting extreme climate for more than 5000 years.
Why are we getting so up tight now.

I think that anybody who believes we can do anything about it is barking mad.

Maybe we are all screwed. Maybe we are due another mass extinction. But one things for sure.....I am going to have a damn good time while I am here...

I am not anti climate. I do believe in reducing "real" polution and I do think we made an impact on the Ozone problem. But C02 is another story.

C02 is the latest face of "political correctness" no one is alowed to say the theory is cobblers and there are too many people making vast sums of money out of keeping it on the political/research agenda.

How often do we see a clip on the news showing an exhaust pipe spewing white smoke saying how much polution cars cause....pitty the white smoke is water vapour....

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Speed camera policy Kills

Agreed, it somehow makes them feel better, for some reason



Agreed, the one pollution issue that bothers me is Landfill, as we simply cannot keep putting things in the ground.

What does the Government do about, increase landfill tax. Which seems about the only answer our Government has, STEALTH TAX.

Far better to sort out the supply chain, so that items are made out of material that can be recycled. However that would mean they would then not be able to tax it.

LPG, started getting popular, which is said to be more environmentally freindly. What does the Government do, increase the level of tax on LPG.

People are dying on our roads, in comes the cameras that tax motorists, yet have no effect. The government are very good at producing stealth tax, to look like they are tackling problems, thats why spin doctors are so well paid to get the message over, and try and make the tax look acceptable.



Yet no one is able to state with supported facts that emissions have any effect.

The one deciding factor is that by the government and their brought and paid for scientist's, if they cannot support the emissions theory, they cannot tax it. If the scientist's do not support the Governments way of thinking, they lose their funding..

As Fuel tax is part of the major back bone of the economy, they cannot afford to have it any other way.

We need only look at Shell's & BP's profits for last year, the government get 75% of their Gross fuel sales in tax.

The concentration of building is wiping out the flood planes, we then see flooding and they blame global warming

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Steve

I can't figure this one. We have been digging holes in the ground for hundreds of years to extract ore, coal, quarry materials etc. We have some VERY big holes we can fill in. Also London are using land fill off-shore for land reclamation, landscaping it when finnished. Underground gas is extracted for fuel.

I think the land fill issue is over hyped

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Speed camera policy Kills

Part of my business is disposal,Sites are dwindling and the prices (landfill Tax) are rising all the time.

Have never met someone who wants to live next to a Landfill site either. I only work beside one, it is not pleasant in any form, i certainley would not live next to one.

When a land fill site is complete, it takes years before anything can be done with the land.

Landfill is not sustainable in the long term, their is only so many holes available, yet the extent of the rubbish produced is only increasing.

This can easily be avoided by the correct materials being used, that can then be recycled.

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Steve

When everything that used to be chucked in a landfill was largely natural material that just rotted down it wasn't a big problem. It's little more than composting on a huge scale after all. It's all changed now we have so much more packaging to deal with. Most of us buy milk in plastic bottles from supermarkets rather than having a milkman who takes empty glass bottles away to be washed and reused. Same with fizzy drinks - I'm just old enough to remember taking the empties back for the deposit. Meat mostly comes in polystyrene trays with plastic shrink wrapping, salad comes in plastic bags, even the fresh veg in the supermarket... what do you get given to put it in? There's a little dispenser of polythene bags on the shelf, right?
I think we could do more for the environment by careful shopping and using a milkman than by all this self flagellation about driving to work instead of getting a bus.

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

I would like to see a review of recycling. I am sure some things are not worth it.

I can see the merit in metal recycling. Also some plastics. But I have read that paper is a nonsence. It is biodegradable and uses more energy to recycle than new stuff. So long as we keep planting trees everything is good.

Also glass...whats the point. The world will NEVER run out of glass. It also uses energy to recycle. You may as well put it back in the ground where it came from.

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Speed camera policy Kills

The real villains in all of this are the packaging companies and the supermarkets. Every junction of every road has its accumulation of crisp packets, plastic bottles, sweet wrappers and god knows what else. Now the mess is migrating along every highway. Returning from Singapore last year and flying into Heathrow was the most depressing reallity check ever. The M4 is an open sewer a municipal tip strung out along the exit routes of what should be the UKs premier gateway, it is a disgusting disgrace. If some of the governments endless supply of hot air was used to vacuum up the mess they are presiding over and apparently blind to we would all be a lot happier.
The plastics industry in all its forms needs reining in, when buying a few peas in the pod we are forced to have a plastic tray and a plastic cellophane cover as packaging! What the hell do they think the pod is for. The answer is to enact a take pack environmental bill. All supermarkets would have to accept back that which they sent out as packaging. We all live in hope.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

Clear profit from metal



As metal, you can sell plastic or at least give it away



In excess of £50 per ton to landfill, when you can give the glass to the recycler

Wood, again will compost down, but will cost you in excess of £50.00 per ton to landfill. I pay £10.00 per ton to the recycler.

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Steve

Spot on...we need to revert back to the old packaging methods

I too can remember taking back the empty bottles for my extra pocket money

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Steve

Why....Sounds like land fill is just another tax.

If you take 1 milliion tones of gravel out of a quarry why can't you put one million tones of glass back into the hole. At least you can get to level the land again. We have taken billions of tones of coal out of the ground.

We have some MASSIVE open cast mines as well as open gravel pits.

Everything we put in the ground came from there in the first place did it not!

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Speed camera policy Kills

Yep, paper is daft. You can chuck time effort and energy and pulping and recycling it, or you can bury it for next to nothing and let it rot naturally. Gardeners have been chucking little paper bags of tea leaves into their compost bins for years. It's one reason why I don't take part in the local council recycling scheme - they're recycling the waste that is best disposed of in a landfill. Best of all, they gave me a weak plastic tub to store the paper in until collection, which broke in no time at all and had to be disposed of, and since they don't recycle plastics to my knowledge I imagine it ended up in a landfill where it may remain for centuries . Once again the recyclers shut their balls in the drawer.

Glass I really don't know about. I'd have thought that it's fairly easy to recycle it. Presumably once it's sorted you just steam clean all the shards to get the labels and other muck off, then just melt it down and make it into another bottle. I wouldn't have thought it was much more energy intensive than making it from scratch, and perhaps even the same as you'd have the raw materials ready and waiting. But if a bottle isn't actually broken I can't understand why we're not encouraged to simply reuse it. I've been reminded that pubs still do return empties on the dray for credit, and as I said earlier, some people still use a milkman who collects old bottles. Why are plastic bottles so common and glass ones so unusual now? For a while I thought it was to reduce the problem of broken glass left all over the place by yobby little gits, but then wine and beer still come in glass.

No argument from me there, and nice point about the pod . Yep, you may have an idea there about supermarkets having to take back their waste. I'm sure they'd try to make it as difficult and unattractive a proposition for the customers as they could get away with, but perhaps eventually it would encourage a switch to packaging materials that are cheap and easy to get rid of. A good start would be to go back to brown paper shopping bags instead of the placcy jobs that decorate trees. Okay, paper bags can end up in trees too, but they'll fall to bits after it's rained a few times.

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

Plastic is a good case in point. I have seen great applications for recycled plastic on decking, planks, benches and the like that would normaly be made out of wood. A great application for the material as it cannot rot. Normaly these applications would not be economic if it were "new" material.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Exactley that

Take a look at the WEE directive, that means you cannot put any electrical items into Landfill, similar to the fridge problem.

Our roadsides, are just going to get full by fly tippers, due to Our government making it too expensive to dispose of our unwanted goods.

If they want people to make a recycling choice, they need to start by ensuring companies are producing goods out of material that can be recycled.

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Steve

Bringing the subject back to the original concern. The Highways authority are to blame for a significant amount of the failure to reduce traffic associated pollution. Their practice of stopping traffic rather than smoothing its flow is a major problem, every hump, every set of traffic lights, every chicane, every diversion of local traffic onto through routes by needless one way systems, every de-trunked road destroyed by traffic islands and all forms of street clutter. The article in last weekends Observer makes stark reading I recomend it to all who have a genuine concern for the wellbeing of our world and for the sake of the upcoming generations. Here is a web link that gives access. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/carbontrust
This is not a subject we can afford to ignore.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

By and large I'd agree with that. And also, since oil is a finite resource as far as we know, it makes sense to discourage stop-start traffic. But where it needs to be stop-start for safety it must continue to be that way (and I'm thinking traffic lights and roundabouts rather than traffic calming schemes). But I usually feel less at risk of a collision when the traffic is flowing smoothly.

Erm, link to Observer/Carbon Trust doesn't seem to do much. Just an empty page with the Observer logo at the top and a small non-clickable Carbon Trust banner ad under that. Still, I know what the Carbon Trust believe in so at a guess the article was terribly concerned with CO2 emissions rather than pollutants such as PM10, NOx etc. If anthropogenic global warming and man made climate change weren't mentioned I'd be shocked.

For an alternative look at the issue I'd recommend watching the Friends Of Science video "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change". It's a bit Canada-centric in places, but fair enough, they're a Canadian organisation after all. It's about 25 minutes long so they've broken it into five parts from 9.1MB to 16.3MB. That means you need either broadband or a lot of patience, but worthwhile IMO.
Page about the video
http://www.friendsofscience.org/FOS/climate_1.wmv Part 1 - 9.11MB
http://www.friendsofscience.org/FOS/climate_2.wmv Part 2 - 16.3MB
http://www.friendsofscience.org/FOS/climate_3.wmv Part 3 - 7.82MB
http://www.friendsofscience.org/FOS/climate_4.wmv Part 4 - 12.4MB
http://www.friendsofscience.org/FOS/climate_5.wmv Part 5 - 9.55MB

It doesn't really discuss the issue in relation to traffic, and of course doesn't consider road safety at all. But it does show that we're concentrating on the wrong problems.

Edit: apologies to Safe Speed and mods if this is more appropriate for the General Chat forum.

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

Erm, link to Observer/Carbon Trust doesn't seem to do much. Just an empty page with the Observer logo at the top and a small non-clickable Carbon Trust banner ad under that. Still, I know what the Carbon Trust believe in so at a guess the article was terribly concerned with CO2 emissions rather than pollutants such as PM10, NOx etc. If anthropogenic global warming and man made climate change weren't mentioned I'd be shocked.

Gatso
I dont understand why it doesn't open? I have just tried it again and get the full article?
I will endeavour to find out why it doesn't do what it says on the tin.
The key point is, the Highways Agency is failing to reduce hold ups and is increasing the production of Co2 and other pollutants due to inefficient stop start driving practices forced on society by public servants. They do so claiming it is for safety sake, what it really does is add to pollution in an ever growing urban roadscape migrating into the rural areas by design.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

I suspect the link isn't working because something on the page is making my firewall block it. Three different browsers, two act as I said above and the third (IE6) just goes page not found. No matter really. As I said I suspect the article is predictable given that it's (a) Carbon Trust and (b) Observer/Guardian.

To an extent I go along with that, but for a quite different reason. Unnecessary jams and hold-ups certainly increase pollution, but CO2, not being a pollutant, isn't high on my list of worries. Even if it was there are much larger anthropogenic sources of it than private transport. OTOH I have to repeat how much I hate being behind a bus in a traffic jam, or even just being in a traffic jam somewhere buses operate. Some of those PM10s they're chucking out end up in my lungs. When I want crap in my lungs I smoke, and I have the decency to do so away from children (all the time) and adult non-smokers (mostly and certainly if they ask). Buses are not so discriminating.

I don't think it's at all accurate to use a phrase like "ever growing urban roadscape migrating into the rural areas". Have a look at one of those atlases of aerial photographs if you can. You might be very surprised at how green the country is. But I don't agree with slapping up loads more houses in the South, partly for environmental reasons, partly as they always seem to build them on flood plains and you'd have to be nuts or desperate to buy a house there, partly because it's needlessly stretching the infrastructure, and partly because Two Jags wants to.

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

The difference between arial photograps and maps is startling. I think those who campaign against more roads - "covering the countryside with tarmac" - believe that he width of roads on maps is a true representation.

If you look at photography it becomes clear that roads provide an insignificant area of ground coverage. In some cases you can barely see roads at all.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.