A Bigger Threat Even Than The Debt Crisis?

[bear_or_bull]

Hey that's the difference between the Grandparents and the Jessies that live now - the Grandparents weren't willing to live in fear with a boot stamping on their faces.

Actually, that's a good point.

It amazes me that people aren't out of the streets.

But then it's a combination of lack of education (they don't know what is happening), apathy (they can't be ar*ed), and feebleness (might get muck on that A&F shirt).

Maybe, afer all, we'll get what we deserve.

EDIT typo

Edited December 26, 2008 by bear_or_bull

[bear_or_bull]

So it's not impossible that one day someone may discover that scientists predicting the end of the world as we know it now could be wrong?

Yes, but it doesn't mean that they are wrong this time. They are not wrong about EVERYTHING.

Furthermore, any proof one way or the other will be scientific. Not the musings of hacks with political baggage.

There is a good debate to be had re: global warming. One in which the "fors" out weigh the "nays" by about 80 or more to 20. But we haven't had that debate here. All I hear is bias and spin. Something that Science, over the long run, is quite good at weeding out. They embrace challenge. The whole system is set up to encourage it.

[Guest theboltonfury]

Actually, that's a good point.

It amazes me that people aren't out of the streets.

But then it's a combination of lack of education (they don't know what is happening), apathy (they can't be ar*ed), and feebleness (might get muck on that A&F shirt).

Maybe, afer all, we'll get what we deserve.

EDIT typo

I was really interested in this thread 2 days ago. I want to reply somethng but I'm too pissed.... I've tried. Whiskey will be the end of me

[clv101]

So it's not impossible that one day someone may discover that scientists predicting the end of the world as we know it now could be wrong?

Of course. But the probability of them being very wrong is low (Newton wasn't very wrong about how the planets moved). Current understanding is not perfect but it's the best we have and a function of the confidence (The IPCC agree that there is a 5% chance humans haven't been responsible for most of the warming seen in the 2nd half of the 20thC.) and the magnitude of the risk suggests we'd be daft to ignore it.

[The XYY Man]

I was really interested in this thread 2 days ago. I want to reply somethng but I'm too pissed.... I've tried. Whiskey will be the end of me

Spooky - 'cos I've had exactly the same problem - but I've been drinking vodka.

Go figure...

X

Y

Y

[Guest theboltonfury]

Spooky - 'cos I've had exactly the same problem - but I've been drinking vodka.

Go figure...

X

Y

Y

XYY

Should I go to bed now? I'm not tired but my Mrs says I am!

I am confused

[Minos]

XYY

Should I go to bed now? I'm not tired but my Mrs says I am!

I am confused

The furious one from Bolton has been told to go to bed by his missus :-)

[Guest theboltonfury]

The furious one from Bolton has been told to go to bed by his missus :-)

Careful Minos. I wear the trousers.

Actually, I don't. You're right. I have a 14 week old baby and making time to argue with you lot just isn't so easy anymore. THe lies are becoming mad

"you on the internet again?"

"yes, just checking the temperature in Cos"

I'm on borrowed time!

[clv101]

Minos, any chance you can trim your sig? Maybe to a single line that links to that text elsewhere? It's just that most of your posts end up being one or two lines of content and some 28 lines of signature text! It just makes the conversation harder to follow.

Wouldn't it be nice if the forum enforced something like a 4-line sig rule?

[Guest X-QUORK]

Minos, any chance you can trim your sig? Maybe to a single line that links to that text elsewhere? It's just that most of your posts end up being one or two lines of content and some 28 lines of signature text! It just makes the conversation harder to follow.

Wouldn't it be nice if the forum enforced something like a 4-line sig rule?

Just select the "no signature" option in your settings.

[Kurt Barlow]

Why is that a big deal ? No selfish reasons allowed. I am talking from a purely natural point of view.

6 degrees warmer ? 6 degrees cooler ? No big deal. It really isn't. Well it is if you are part of a massively overpopulated species that likes to live on the edge and expects the Universe to revolve around them....

You do realise that temperatures have been that warm in the UK before ? You do realise that the only reason we have coal in our land is due to previous tropical temperatues in the land that is now Britain ?

For the record my knowledge of this comes from my head and not wikipedia.

And would that be by any chance because the land that makes up the Uk was once much closer to the equator - perhaps in the carboniferous era (which happened to be quite cold!)

Edited December 26, 2008 by Kurt Barlow

[clv101]

Just select the "no signature" option in your settings.

Great! That's the best thing I've read on HPC in days.

[Kurt Barlow]

Ever heard of continental drift? The UK was at a different lattitude in the Carboniferous about 300 million years ago when that happened.

Its a lefty conspiracy!

[Kurt Barlow]

Kurt. What happened to tearful farewells, sueing your old firm and moving to pastures new in the middle east?

Unfortunately the drop in the oil price resulted in the contract never happening. That said they did write to me and say if I was still available they may have positions next autumn and before recruiting would make contact.

Anyway not to worry - making the best of my recent land aquisitions - an allotment and derelict coppice to get back into production (on a 50/50 share with the owner)

Suing the old firm - still on course. The CEX replied to my letter outlining the facts I would be putting before the EAT. Anticipating a compromise settlement by March

[laurejon]

We have had ten years of unprecedented bullsh1t/Madness stretching from liberal values whereby the Criminal is the Victim, where a small island nation is to become home to the worlds poor and if we cannot house them here we provide money to them in their homelands.

Fortunately the long awaited repercussions of our liberal helping of bullsh1t fed to us by our Government is now coming to an abrupt end.

Global Warming is yet another madcap philosophy peddled by those who have a vested financial interest in making something that is myth, true in the eyes of the public.

Well fortunately the power of nature is now going to take over, the so called emerging economies that would have gone through an industrial revolution of unprecedented scale in both terms of time and quantity, pumping out Billions of pollutants into the atmosphere is now no longer to be. Gordon Brown should realise from his own sermons and like Tony have a direct 0800 number at bedtimes to God, that God has decreed that the emerging economies shalt not succeed in destroying our plantet. The fossil fuels shall remain the preserve of the West and the US, and that any upstarts in the future should think again about joining the Old Boys Network as the club has its doors closed to new members.

And I say we should thank God. Had Gordon and his disciples been allowed to continue down the path of deception, the UK working classes would have been paying for the entire worlds troubles via carbon auctions, and the myth of Global Warming would have become accepted as fact as the Generations went by.

[Guest X-QUORK]

And I say we should thank God.

He doesn't exist, so your offspring will be pi$$ing in the wind when they're praying for his help as sea levels rise.

[laurejon]

He doesn't exist, so your offspring will be pi$$ing in the wind when they're praying for his help as sea levels rise.

Well they have two such problems.

The first is sea levels are rising due to the fact that the worlds continents are sinking, so maybe I could be the first to put forward auctions for piling contracts of the worlds continents, and on the other hand sue God for allowing the world to go through yet another phase of warming on Earth and ask politely if he could turn the sun down a tadd as its getting fking hot in here.

In fact if I were truly a believer then I would be praising God for warming our planet as it will lead to us having to burn less fossil fuels to keep it warm.

Edited December 26, 2008 by laurejon

[Kurt Barlow]

Well they have two such problems.

The first is sea levels are rising due to the fact that the worlds continents are sinking, so maybe I could be the first to put forward auctions for piling contracts of the worlds continents, and on the other hand sue God for allowing the world to go through yet another phase of warming on Earth and ask politely if he could turn the sun down a tadd as its getting fking hot in here.

Can you provide a link showing us that the continents are sinking?

And I thought we were at the bottom of the sun spot cycle - well so all the global warming skeptics keep telling me. But you are saying the sun has been turned up a notch or two of late??

[The XYY Man]

XYY

Should I go to bed now? I'm not tired but my Mrs says I am!

I am confused

Tell her you'll be up to bed in half-an-hour mate.

Like I told Mrs XYY fifty-five minutes ago...

XYY

PS: My cunning plan relies on a bit of "front" to make it work.

PPS: And having a computer that isn't located in the bedroom...

[The XYY Man]

We have had ten years of unprecedented bullsh1t/Madness stretching from liberal values whereby the Criminal is the Victim, where a small island nation is to become home to the worlds poor and if we cannot house them here we provide money to them in their homelands.

Fortunately the long awaited repercussions of our liberal helping of bullsh1t fed to us by our Government is now coming to an abrupt end.

Global Warming is yet another madcap philosophy peddled by those who have a vested financial interest in making something that is myth, true in the eyes of the public.

Well fortunately the power of nature is now going to take over, the so called emerging economies that would have gone through an industrial revolution of unprecedented scale in both terms of time and quantity, pumping out Billions of pollutants into the atmosphere is now no longer to be. Gordon Brown should realise from his own sermons and like Tony have a direct 0800 number at bedtimes to God, that God has decreed that the emerging economies shalt not succeed in destroying our plantet. The fossil fuels shall remain the preserve of the West and the US, and that any upstarts in the future should think again about joining the Old Boys Network as the club has its doors closed to new members.

And I say we should thank God. Had Gordon and his disciples been allowed to continue down the path of deception, the UK working classes would have been paying for the entire worlds troubles via carbon auctions, and the myth of Global Warming would have become accepted as fact as the Generations went by.

Oh dear, another unhappy camper.

The realisation that non-jobs like IT are gonna be among the first casualties in Gordon's brave new world must really be making your sphincter oscillate Lozza.

"Half-a-crown, tanner..." as they used to say - er, before inflation that is...

X

Y

Y

[roadtoruin]

Hey that's the difference between the Grandparents and the Jessies that live now - the Grandparents weren't willing to live in fear with a boot stamping on their faces.

I doubt there's any real underlying difference between the generations IMO, though the goin-down-the-drain merchants like to portray all sorts of moral decline, the facts don't really support that position. As for Grandparents in fear not being willing - well they didn't exactly rise up spontaneously, they were told to go to war. In fact, after the first world war it was the last thing much of the population wanted to do.

[laurejon]

Can you provide a link showing us that the continents are sinking?

And I thought we were at the bottom of the sun spot cycle - well so all the global warming skeptics keep telling me. But you are saying the sun has been turned up a notch or two of late??

===========================================================================

http://www.nola.com/coastal/index.ssf/2008..._rising_fo.html

Sea levels have been rising for thousands of years

by Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune

Saturday December 13, 2008, 8:35 PM

Though global warming has sparked increasing alarm in the past decade, one of its most feared effects, sea-level rise, is nothing new.

The oceans have been gaining against coastlines since glaciers began melting at the end of the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, said Virginia Burkett, a senior researcher at the National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette and one of the nation's foremost experts on climate change.

Sea level rapidly rose about 400 feet during 14,000 years, then slowed to an almost imperceptible rate for the next 6,000 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But records compiled by the commission showed an increase beginning in the mid-1800s, to eight inches a century -- then, in 1993, a sudden doubling of that rate.

The climate panel said the scientific record is not long enough to prove the accelerated rates are directly related to activities by man, such as the advent of the Industrial Revolution, which dramatically increased the use of fossil fuels.

Burkett said several possible explanations could account for the recent acceleration. Among them: a natural variability in sea levels, seen in long-term geologic records, or a growth in the volume of the world's seas in response to the heating of the water's surface that has been going on since the 1800s. It's also possible that the quickening rise owes simply to more accurate measuring by new scientific tools.

The panel's computers support the notion that warming waters are causing the rise.

"Because the oceans are so huge and have such capacity to absorb heat, there is a tremendous lag time between heating, and a reaction, " Burkett said. "And what they predict -- with a very high level of confidence -- is that the oceans will begin to respond to this accumulation of warmth, and start to expand."

The climate panel's models predict that expansion will continue well beyond this century, regardless of any reduction in greenhouse gases, because just as it takes a long time for oceans to respond to warming, it takes them a long time to cool.

"The sea level rise from thermal expansion alone may take 500 years to stabilize, " Burkett said. "That's what the models are showing."

===========================================================================

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/causecc/

The character of the Earth's climate system is shaped by the general circulation of the atmosphere and oceans, the winds and currents that move heat and moisture around the planet. The main source of the energy that drives these circulations is the Sun.

So, to identify the reasons why climate varies, we must first look to the Sun...

Variations in the Sun's output

Change in the amount of energy emitted by the Sun is a prime candidate as a cause of climate variability. And there is no doubt that on the longest timescales of Earth's geological history, trends in solar output have played a major role in shaping the Earth's climate – and will continue to do so in the future.

Within our lifetime, though, of more concern are variations on the 10- to 100-year timescales. It has been known for many centuries that the face of the sun exhibits dark patches, ‘sunspots’, and that the number of sunspots varies with a fairly regular cycle of around 11 years.

Is this sunspot cycle an indicator of processes within the sun that might also affect the solar output and, hence, Earth's climate? Despite many studies, the evidence is still controversial. Sunspot cycles have been found in climate parameters, but the fluctuations are weak and tend to appear and disappear without reason.

The 11-year sunspot cycle itself varies in strength on timescale of 80 years and longer, and these longer-term fluctuations have also been linked to climatic change. In the early 1600s, the sunspot cycle almost disappeared and this phenomenon, the so-called Maunder Minimum, has been associated with the height of the Little Ice Age. It has also been claimed that the warming of the 20th century was largely due to trends in sunspot activity, for example, in the length of the sunspot cycle.

But, again, the evidence for these apparent correlations is not strong. Moreover, the fluctuations in solar output that likely accompanied these sunspot trends were not really sufficient to generate the observed climate changes, without some amplifying mechanism.

As the stream of solar energy – heat and light – reaches our planet, the character of the Earth's orbit and of its rotation plays a major role in causing long-term climate change...

Milankovitch cycles

On time scales of a thousand years and longer, changes in the character of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and in its rotation can significantly affect the way in which the energy from the Sun is distributed by season and by latitude. This is known as the ‘Milankovitch Effect,’ and it generates changes which are cyclic in nature.

Comparison of the changes predicted by astronomical calculations with the observed climate record suggests that this mechanism has played a part in inducing the shift from ice age to interglacial conditions on time scales of 10,000 to 100,000 years.

But in order to explain the scale of the observed variations, it is necessary to invoke other factors. One possibility is that the basic effect is magnified by the release and uptake of carbon dioxide as climate alters.

As the stream of solar energy reaches the Earth's atmosphere, the constituents of the atmosphere – gases and particles, clouds and pollution – interfere with the energy stream, reflecting some heat and light back to space, trapping then releasing a proportion...

Volcanic pollution

Explosive volcanic eruptions can inject large quantities of dust and the gas, sulphur dioxide, high into the atmosphere. Whereas volcanic debris in the lower atmosphere falls out or is rained out within days, the veil of pollution in the upper atmosphere is above the weather and may remain for several years, gradually spreading to cover much of the globe.

The volcanic pollution results in a substantial reduction in the stream of solar energy as it passes through the upper layers of the atmosphere, reflecting a significant amount back out to space

=========================================================================

[laurejon]

Oh dear, another unhappy camper.

The realisation that non-jobs like IT are gonna be among the first casualties in Gordon's brave new world must really be making your sphincter oscillate Lozza.

"Half-a-crown, tanner..." as they used to say - er, before inflation that is...

Is that your prediction for 2009, The wold will cast off all computers ? No doubt you are waiting for the spring bounce ?

[laurejon]

I doubt there's any real underlying difference between the generations IMO, though the goin-down-the-drain merchants like to portray all sorts of moral decline, the facts don't really support that position. As for Grandparents in fear not being willing - well they didn't exactly rise up spontaneously, they were told to go to war. In fact, after the first world war it was the last thing much of the population wanted to do.

Are you being serious, or have you just polished off the last of the Sherry in the post Christmas Tidy up.

I think it would be incredible for anyone to even attempt to draw a comparison with a fourteen year old in the 30's and a fourteen year old today.

Going further, can you imagine todays sixteen year old having the responsibilites of yesteryears 16yr old without having a nervous breakdown ?

[roadtoruin]

Are you being serious, or have you just polished off the last of the Sherry in the post Christmas Tidy up.

I think it would be incredible for anyone to even attempt to draw a comparison with a fourteen year old in the 30's and a fourteen year old today.

I didn't mention teenagers (and what are we comparing), though as you bring it up there's always a difference based on the upbringing, economic circumstance, and social norms; doesn't mean the underlying people are that different.

Going further, can you imagine todays sixteen year old having the responsibilites of yesteryears 16yr old without having a nervous breakdown ?

Of course I can imagine that, to think otherwise would be naive. The 'nervous breakdown' would last a few painful days then they'd adapt. Think of the kids who suddenly have to become unpaid carers for their parents. They cope amazingly, they shouldn't have to, but they do. People behave according to their circumstance, when it changes they do; the ability to buckle down and endure hardship can be quickly relearnt even by a mollycoddled generation IMO.