The glaciers in Wales melted quite a while before the internal combustion engine was invented. Deforestation and over population are far bigger threats to the world than burning fossil fuels in super efficient modern engines. the other flaw the eco nuts fail to accept is that there may be more cars in the UK now than there was 10 years ago, but in fact there are no more people who hold driving licenses. so unless people have mastered the art of driving two cars at once, it simply means people have cars for specific purposes. I'm sure even the most ignorant eco mentalist can see there is an environmental benefit in a family that for example has a caravan or boat having a 4x4 to tow, and a small city car for every day use rather than using the 4x4 for everything. I have two bikes and a car, and my housemate has three bikes and a car, yet the maximum number of those seven vehicles in use at the same time is two.
I mentioned above that it is accepted that deforestation puts more carbon into the atmosphere than all the world's transport (planes, cars, lorries, trains, boats). So yes, you are quite right. Stopping deforestation is the easiest and quickest win. But as regards your second argument, traffic congestion has increased massively in my lifetime. So there really are more cars on the road, at the same time, than before. Most of the time, main beam in your car is almost a waste of space. At night, you only get to use it for a few seconds before another on-coming car shows up. It didn't used to be like that. The M4 didn't use to be a permanent traffic jam coming into London.
Indeed you can only consume what you produce - in terms of actual goods and services - and that is a rule which cannot be broken. Credit is a rather different issue. If you lend me some money, to me it's a debit but to you it's a credit (asset). It doesn't matter how large the debts of the world grow, provided they all correspond to credits (assets). The entire economic system of the world is financed on debt, obviously. The problem lies not with debts per se, but with bad debts. If the person/company/government who owes a debt is unable to service it from income nor repay it by liquidating other assets, it becomes a bad debt.
I was thinking more in terms of personal finance. Once you've got the bank loan, maxed the mortgage, maxed the credit cards, there is nowhere else to go. That situation was pretty much reached pre-credit crunch. It also makes no sense to spend all your earnings as people are living longer - meaning more and more years with no income. If you haven't budgeted for this, you'll be in scheissestrasse. Governments and banks do things somewhat differently. For a start, they invent money out of thin air (quantitive easing) by just printing it. Then there is banking, in which you multiply fictitious money. There is also default, in which you just say, "I'm not giving you your money back, I spent it all. What are you going to do about it?" Money is only a confidence thing. Banks can't repay depositors' cash without going bankrupt (run on the bank). Handing people bits of paper in return for a shiny new motorcycle only works so long as everyone believes it does. When they don't (Weimar Germany being only one, but about the most famous example) you find your notes are worth diddly squat. A bad debt is only an attitude of mind really. They didn't have to evict all those sub-prime mortgagees - it would have been better to give them more time to pay. Your accountancy is also not strictly correct: Debtors go in the asset column, credit in the liabilities. If you lend me a tenner, to me it's a liability, to you it's just as much an asset as if you had kept it in cash.
No, sorry, I failed to explain what was meant. Perhaps you are thinking of low-altitude emissions of SO2 by old coal fired power stations; that is entirely unrelated to the proposal in question, which is about high-altitude injection of sulphur into the stratosphere. It would be no more detectable at ground level than e.g. increases or reductions in stratospheric ozone. The point is that if global warming really exists, is a bad thing, and needs to be reversed then it doesn't matter whether it's anthropogenic or not - that is a purely academic question. Rather, efforts should be concentrated on finding practical ways of cooling the planet to whatever extent proves necessary. The fact that Greens have no interest whatever in any such options implies that they do not really think global warming is a problem.
Yes, that is a better explanation. I get it now. And it could be a solution - although it has to be said that whenever mankind interferes with nature, it normally goes tits-up sooner or later with all sorts of black swan consequences. Bit of jumping to conclusions to suggest that Greens (whoever they are) don't believe in global warming after all because they don't like that particular "solution". Isn't that a specious oversimplification and an unjustified deduction?
So in short let's all stop paying our credit's and tell the banks to shove it and go make new money. I like that who is with me?
there is @ 150 years of known oil reserves. come 75 to 100 years the global super powers ( USA ) will be stomping on the rest of the planet to get it for themselves. fighting will break out leading to wwIII and that my friends is that. Global warming, new ice age or a bit of rain is the least of our ( or at least our kids ) problems. so fill ya tanks and get riding coz our time is short !!!!!!!!!!
OK, 'credit' and 'debit' are terms of art to bookkeepers, accountants and economists, with specialised meanings. The average man in the street on a bike is pretty hazy about those meanings, but he well knows what it means if he owes a debt. Look at my post again and tell me if I was wrong.
Just about any human action (or inaction) might, and often does, have unintended consequences. On that argument, we would be paralysed and never do anything! The ordinary human process is to do what seems best today to deal with today's problems, and tomorrow's as far as we can foresee them; if new unexpected problems arise tomorrow, we do what seems best to deal with them as and when. Nothing wrong with that, surely? Who are "the Greens"? In one sense, a political party which gets a pretty small share of the vote in elections in many countries; in another sense a strand of opinion which has a fairly large influence on policies in many governments and institutions. I agree with them that trawling all the fish out of the oceans and burning down all the trees in the forests is a very bad thing - but that principle was well-known millenia ago. I disagree with them about most other things, and what I dislike most is their negativity and their blind, religion-like fervour. Their default position is to oppose in practice every solution to the energy problems they have raised - nuclear power, dams for hydroelectric, wind farms, tidal barrages, new cleaner coal power stations to replace old dirty ones, gas from shale, etc. Sometimes they seem to oppose technology itself out of sheer Luddism, e.g. GMOs - hence the metaphor 'back to the dark ages'. They are also keen on enforcing their views on people who don't share them. In my view the Greens are mainly a reactionary force for ill in the world and I oppose them. You don't have to agree with me, of course!
Don't get me going on global warming and climate change.............other than..... ........"Oooh ooh, there's no ice in the North West Passage"........(Northwest Passage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)...... ....well, as far as I can ascertain and recollection of schooldays, the North West Passage has been called just that for yonks...... ....and why is it called a 'passage'?.....I'll leave you to guess that.......... Besides......It's been raining a lot lately and people have been getting flooded....... I can recall several years throughout my life when it rained nearly every day etc etc........so it isn't anything new.... And the floods?.......Dredge the effing rivers and watercourses like 'they' used to.........since the Env Agency got involved, this doesn't or hardly ever gets done, so most rivers are only half the capacity they used to be, as the banks collapse and silt builds up. AL
By the way of the ice caps do melt. The sea doesn't rise. As the sea is already displaced by the ice. Hence fill a glass with water and ice, when the ice melts the water does not spill over the to! That's all the science I need! It's a theory is global warming but one I don't buy. Either way why are we trying to save the planet forever as it futile! At some point the sun will die anyway! Well that's happy in the meantime buy some more Ducatis and have fun.
What about the 1 mile thick ice that sits on top of the huge land mass that is Antartica? Not to mention the snow/ice on all the worlds mountain ranges?
Well historically the NW Passage was always speculative, or rather a myth. Many explorers' attempts to find it failed, because it didn't actually exist. Recently, in some years, the NW Passage is just about passable by ships in summer (ice breakers), so it is turning from myth into reality. Obviously, that development is a benefit, rather than a problem in itself. Incidentally a number of surface ships have actually reached the North Pole in Summer now, which was previously thought to be possible only with submarines.
There are a number of recorded instances where ships sailed 'over the top' via the North West Passage.......and not recently either....... .....and if it didn't exist, why call something that didn't exist, the North west Passage? A bit like saying I have got a Rolls Royce in my garage, but I can't find it. But........http://www.athropolis.com/map9.htm AL
Has anyone actually measured the level of CO2 in the atmosphere? Only I've never seen any reference to actual figures, or indeed any proof that it gets bigger or smaller. I read somewhere someone's theory that CO2 makes up 0.05% of the atmosphere, and of that only a small fraction can be attributed to man. Can anyone confirm or disprove this? Anyway, the way I see it is this: Man makes CO2. CO2 is plant food, the plants flourish, providing more oxygen, which keeps the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere about the same as it ever was. Hence CO2 is not a problem. The oceans are by far the biggest producers of CO2, dwarfing what man is producing many times over, so what's the problem? The earth is a lickle ball of dust spinning around a huge great fuck-off ball of fire. I may suggest to you good people that this great big fuck-off ball of fire has a far greater effect on our climate than anything us ant-like creatures can muster, so much as to make anything we do completely insignificant. And how on earth can we mere humans damage this planet? Everything we have, everything we make, everything we burn, even fire itself, comes from this ball of dust. How can we kill it with it's own ingredients?
