Charity are not second hand shops in this context. The recycling of large goods, tv's, fridge, furniture, seems less so than it was. Could be a number of reasons: stuff built in the last 10 years seems to have a very short shelf life, consumer society = new at any cost, advent of freecycle sites, ebay being used to sell direct rather than giveaway. Funny thunk is, go into one of these shops and the furniture etc is over 20 years old. Says it all really
Agree with all that except: "Charity are not second hand shops in this context." Why not? The stuff in them is second hand and is being given a new lease of life with someone else.
Sorry, I seem to have failed to make myself clear. What I meant in post #159 was that recycled goods were bought and sold. You could take your old lead batteries, clothes, or whatever to a scrap merchant who would pay you money for it. The scrap man then made a profit from selling the stuff on. OK, it was a low-level business, but lots of people made a living of sorts from it. Nowadays we are expected to give all our old stuff away for nothing (sic). Nobody will pay anything for it, so it is therefore valueless to everybody, and nobody makes a living from it unless the council pays them. See?
I do see but not sure i agree. Isn't (wasn't) the whole point of eBay that it allowed people to sell off their old crap to someone? You've got more of a market place for your unwanted jigsaw puzzle on the Bay of Fleas than you have in a local secondhand shop. Isn't that where all this stuff has gone? Yes I suppose scrap merchants have become more specialised and bigger. They are now recyclers, perhaps?
A colleague of mine married the daughter of a scrap merchant who subsequently divorced his wife. She demanded £6 million. He laughed. She said 'I kept your books'. He paid £6million.
We did an awful lot of recycling back in the day. Recycling glass bottles was big business for us kids (we'd take 'em to the shop to get the deposit back, shopkeeper would stack 'em out back, we'd climb over the wall, nick 'em and get the deposit back again...). But everything from clothing to furniture, fixtures and fittings, toys, prams, etc got handed down and reused, cars had to chug along for twenty years instead of the half-dozen or so expected of them now. And there was far less packaging in them days. I saw a program where a scientist who's work had illegitimately been published in an IPCC paper having a rant about the IPCC and the way scientists work in general. He said he couldn't get funding for a lot of the work he did cos no-one was interested (it was to do with insects or something). Let's say he called his study 'the study of insect behaviour'. No-one cared and he couldn't get funding. So he renamed the exact same paper 'climate change and it's effect on insect behaviour'. He described the response as 'all six numbers coming up twice in a row'. According to him only about half the scientists 'associated' with the IPCC have ever agreed to having their work published by them, that much of the work submitted was re-worded by a PR department, and that literally hundreds of scientists have threatened legal action after the IPCC had named them as being involved with their work.
I don't know enough about how the scientific community works. The IPCC is a "meta" organisation. It doesn't conduct any research, just collates the research that has already been published. Does it have to ask for permission to quote a published work? I don't know. If work has been reworded and misquoted thanks to a PR department, that might create difficulties. However, it seems to be acknowledged that, typically, as with any committee workings, IPCC recommendations and findings tend to be conservative and understate what many people think. Was your scientist complaining that his work had been watered down, or that he was a non-AGW believer whose work was twisted to the opposite view? The scientists "associated with the IPCC" are people who are invited to contribute - to collate the work in their field. They are not paid for this work - it's just an add-on to their academic job. I am not aware if you have to get the permission of someone to quote their work once it has been in the public (scientific) domain. Maybe you do.
Excellent post fig. The IPCC is a political body, it doesn't do science, it's agenda is AGW and it's editors edit to that effect.
Not a clue, me. Pretty much all you just said was in the program, and the program was biased towards the nay-sayers of climate matters. But even so the guy sat in front of camera and said what he said, so was clearly happy to be challenged about his views, and was adamant that most scientists used 'climate change' as a bargaining tool to get funding. If they can be so easily swayed by money (and quite frankly, who isn't?) one wonders how much they'd be prepared to 're-word' their findings to make it pay more...
It was set up to address AGW - to advise governments on the scale of the problem (if there is one) and establish the science behind the mechanism (if there is one). It would be perfectly in order for it to collate information and come to the conclusion that: a) there is no AGW b) there is AGW but it isn't a problem Unfortunately, it appears that it thinks there is AGW and it is a problem. People shouldn't ask questions if they don't want to hear the answers. It's not a political body, it's a scientific one, composed of scientists. Which politicians does it contain?
Also, in that same program the founder of Greenpeace told why he'd split away from the group. It had become a political weapon, he said, and the core values had eroded to nothing. He also said they were 'sponsored' to kick up a stink about various causes in order for their sponsors to gain political strength, some he said that left a bitter taste in his mouth. So if the scientists are easily swayed, and Greenpeace corrupt, what minute chance is there of the IPCC being straight up and down..?
I see what you're saying, but it is surely impugning the entire scientific community to assume that it only ever comes up with answers that justify its funding. It would be exactly like saying that the scientists at CERN will find a Higgs boson, whether there is one or not, in order to justify their jobs and the massive expense that CERN undoubtedly represents. If you take that attitude, you can't ask a scientist anything and their entire body of research is a pack of lies or no more than half-truths. It's bound to be true that there are "hot topics" for scientific research which get funding more easily. This is the same as coming to a book publisher with a manuscript. Certain types of books are fashionable and sell. If your manuscript isn't one of them, it might get rejected for publication no matter what its merits. I'll bet you it's easier to get funding for AIDS research than for the common cold. So what's new?
I hope the test bed works, I really do, but I would put good money on it being deemed financially unviable due to the repair and maintenance costs. My degree is in Civil and Coastal Engineering, my coastal lecturer was quite dismissive about wave power, it was his opinion that the sea is too powerful and unpredictable to design a reliable means of generating power from it. Every major experiment in wave power generation has failed due to the sea destroying the equipment. I do not want people to stop trying but there as serious engineering hurdles to overcome...
Have you read the Wikipedia article on the IPCC (unless you think that it has been written by nefarious elements to twist the truth)? If not, read it, then ask your question again.
Well, you're the engineer, not me. Oil rigs don't seem to fall over much, though do they? Despite being in fairly inclement bits of sea.
If it were scientific why would it be lobbying and using such emotive language? Its part of modern western culture now. Sensationalisation and fear. Businesses (zero hours contracts and pay decreases while the CEO takes bonuses anyone?!) and govt's love it. They control, cajoule and generally mislead for their own ends whether it be power or, ultimately, financial reward. Great example yesterday on ITN news where the lead story was entirely mis-represented in the intro summary (a detailed interview was on earlier that I watched) and they made it sound like armageddon was coming (shame I cant remember the bloody story!!) I see this pseudo scientific lot as nothing different. Means to an end and keeps them employed and with power. Sceince; the new Catholic Church
In the case of a) there is no AGW, then it would be disbanded, so there is no real incentive to do so. If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks, then it is a duck. Dr Pachauri who is head of IPCC is an economist.
I think there is a reason why wave power has been at the research stage for literally decades, and you have just put your finger on it.
its (relatively) easy to design a structure that weighs thousands of tonnes, does not move and deflects the waves off it. Its a lot harder to design something lightweight which harnesses, absorbs and converts the energy instead of deflecting it, fatigue is the problem as waves constantly vary in period and amplitude.
