Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Sunak edging closer in the CON leader betting – politicalbetting.com

1234568

Comments

  • eek said:

    eek said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    Today, in very special Blossom we discover that "essentially the same" means entirely different.
    McDonnell wasn't planning to increase taxes he was going to increase spending.

    Truss isn't cutting spending but seriously cutting (the wrong) taxes.

    Both plans result in borrowing being used to pay for day to day Government spending.
    She's planning on cutting the right taxes, or moreover reverse the very flawed tax rises that are throttling the economy but haven't closed the deficit and reverse tax rates back to what they were.

    That's completely different to increasing spending.

    Cutting tax rates from a record high and leaving them still very high, if it grows the pie, can actually cut the deficit.
    Cutting Corporation tax when all HMRC's recent research shows that low Corporation tax is discouraging Investment is the right policy?

    If you say so but the evidence shows something very very different and I don't think anyone I would trust on economics round here ( @Gardenwalker , @MaxPB to name 2) would agree with you that cutting Corporation Tax makes sense relative to higher Corporation Tax and full allowances for investment...
    Forgive me for my sins but I am not a fan of Treasury Orthodoxy.

    Unless I'm very much mistaken, @MaxPB viscerally opposed the Corporation Tax rise when it was announced, as did I. I stand by that still. Increasing it was a mistake, reversing a mistake is not a bad move.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Mr. Cooke, oh, I'm quite happy to agree that Young is daft as a brush. I remember one QT (a long time ago as I don't watch it now) when he claimed that there was no reason why matters of spying should be kept under the hat (I forget the details it was a decade or more ago). It was spectacularly dim.

    I'm not arguing it hasn't been very hot.

    If people don't want vaccines that's up to them, but the conspiracy theories around MMR especially are not scientifically supported but have sadly gained much support (as the cost of lives).

    I maintain my dislike of the 'denier' tag for anything beyond Holocaust Denial.

    If an argument is flawed then point out the holes. A dismissive response like that is akin to playing the race card to avoid having to actually consider what the other side is saying.

    OK here is a fucking great flaw: you misrepresent a fucking great scientific theory supported by a fuckton of evidence, as a superstitious assumption. It may be a wrong theory, but that doesn't make it a superstition
  • eekeek Posts: 24,919

    eek said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    Today, in very special Blossom we discover that "essentially the same" means entirely different.
    McDonnell wasn't planning to increase taxes he was going to increase spending.

    Truss isn't cutting spending but seriously cutting (the wrong) taxes.

    Both plans result in borrowing being used to pay for day to day Government spending.
    If she is a Minfordite she wants to cut spending. Radically.

    I don't think she's said much about gutting Government spending and it would be hard to do so in the time she has in power anyway.

    So what we are left with is Minford saying that borrowing money for day to day Government spending isn't a problem (when it is)
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 24,178

    Pulpstar said:

    LDLF said:

    Badenoch and Tugendhat, the stars of the leadership contest, are probably going to end up around the cabinet table whoever is in charge, but Mordaunt is now an island around which almost all bridges have been burned and it is difficult to see how either leadership candidate could work closely with her.

    However, having just read the comments here, there would appear to be allegations that, if they emerge in the next few weeks, would turn this contest into a coronation. My only source is the comments on this thread. I must say it would have been helpful if these allegations had emerged a bit earlier (I blame nobody here for that of course, I assume others are trying to suppress it), before the MPs had narrowed it down, but there we are.

    The "allegations" are known about by all and sundry, It's not going to be a coronation because of those reasons.
    In 2022 i doubt very much that an affair would derail anyone. Truss saw off the turnip taliban in 2010 over the Field issue by a landslide before she was known in politics
    Those allegations about to destroy Truss better not be BS. 🤷‍♀️ you guys are either bs ing, or better at searching internet than me. The only thing I found Liz Truss stopped UK media using was the unfortunate gust of wind photo.


    I saw rumours of a Quasi-affair. Would not vouch for their authenticity.
    I'm not sure if this is a phrase we're not supposed to Google, but what on Earth is a Quasi-affair, that's not a term I've ever heard before.

    Women are just as entitled to enjoy sex as men are and what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom is up to them and their partners, nobody else.

    Truss's husband seems to have been OK with her affair in the past and that ought to be the end of the matter. She could have a completely open marriage and it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to her suitability to high office.
    A quasi-affair is, well, if you've not caught on by now, go through a list of Cabinet ministers saying their first names out loud. Whether there is anything in it or just people making a bad joke...
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,960
    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030

    Mr. Walker, ha, I beg to differ.

    Climate has always change and will always change. If someone looks at weather that's hotter than usual, colder than usual, the same as usual, and concludes this proves their view then they have a religious belief, not a scientific theory. If any and every conceivable piece of information confirms a belief, that's not a sceptical, scientific mindset, it's a zealous one.

    Many of the strategies for dealing with 'man-made' global warming are a good idea in and of themselves (security of energy supply, more efficient devices). But when experts predict snow will become a thing of the past in the UK and less than a decade later we have two of the coldest winters in a century their prophetic powers are not necessarily shown to be of the Delphic variety.

    Assuming we must be the cause of the climate's changing is the same human-centric arrogance that led some to conclude Earth must be the centre of the universe.

    What is a refusal to accept that human activity is a material cause of global warming a sign of then?

    I'd go with bone-headedness but I'm open to offers.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829
    eek said:

    eek said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    Today, in very special Blossom we discover that "essentially the same" means entirely different.
    McDonnell wasn't planning to increase taxes he was going to increase spending.

    Truss isn't cutting spending but seriously cutting (the wrong) taxes.

    Both plans result in borrowing being used to pay for day to day Government spending.
    She's planning on cutting the right taxes, or moreover reverse the very flawed tax rises that are throttling the economy but haven't closed the deficit and reverse tax rates back to what they were.

    That's completely different to increasing spending.

    Cutting tax rates from a record high and leaving them still very high, if it grows the pie, can actually cut the deficit.
    Cutting Corporation tax when all HMRC's recent research shows that low Corporation tax is discouraging Investment is the right policy?

    If you say so but the evidence shows something very very different and I don't think anyone I would trust on economics round here ( @Gardenwalker , @MaxPB to name 2) would agree with you that cutting Corporation Tax makes sense relative to higher Corporation Tax and full allowances for investment...
    Ha, thanks for the endorsement.

    One thing I do think about corporation tax is that our very low rate sent a positive message to foreign investors. It was a (the?) totemic policy of Osborn’s open Britain policy.

    Now that we have Brexited and plan to hike corporation tax, that door is now slammed shut, which worries me a bit even if I’ll accept that low corp tax was simply leaking to shareholders to pocket.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,310

    Interesting focus group of members in Bury. They’re backing Truss.

    https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1550027959716782080

    Mmm. A focus group of 5 is pushing it a bit to get any meaningful conclusions, especially as it's not clear how they were selected. I could probably assemble a focus group of 5 UKIP voters or communists from my acquaintances.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829

    Pulpstar said:

    LDLF said:

    Badenoch and Tugendhat, the stars of the leadership contest, are probably going to end up around the cabinet table whoever is in charge, but Mordaunt is now an island around which almost all bridges have been burned and it is difficult to see how either leadership candidate could work closely with her.

    However, having just read the comments here, there would appear to be allegations that, if they emerge in the next few weeks, would turn this contest into a coronation. My only source is the comments on this thread. I must say it would have been helpful if these allegations had emerged a bit earlier (I blame nobody here for that of course, I assume others are trying to suppress it), before the MPs had narrowed it down, but there we are.

    The "allegations" are known about by all and sundry, It's not going to be a coronation because of those reasons.
    In 2022 i doubt very much that an affair would derail anyone. Truss saw off the turnip taliban in 2010 over the Field issue by a landslide before she was known in politics
    Those allegations about to destroy Truss better not be BS. 🤷‍♀️ you guys are either bs ing, or better at searching internet than me. The only thing I found Liz Truss stopped UK media using was the unfortunate gust of wind photo.


    I saw rumours of a Quasi-affair. Would not vouch for their authenticity.
    I'm not sure if this is a phrase we're not supposed to Google, but what on Earth is a Quasi-affair, that's not a term I've ever heard before.

    Women are just as entitled to enjoy sex as men are and what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom is up to them and their partners, nobody else.

    Truss's husband seems to have been OK with her affair in the past and that ought to be the end of the matter. She could have a completely open marriage and it would make absolutely no difference whatsoever to her suitability to high office.
    A quasi-affair is, well, if you've not caught on by now, go through a list of Cabinet ministers saying their first names out loud. Whether there is anything in it or just people making a bad joke...
    It’s common knowledge and it’s not historic.
    It’s not relevant to Truss’s bid, though.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030
    nico679 said:

    Interesting focus group of members in Bury. They’re backing Truss.

    https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1550027959716782080

    Everyone loves tax cuts . So no surprise there. But it seems the membership would have preferred the pathological liar to have stayed as PM which says a lot for them !
    Ought to disqualify them from voting. I'm serious.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,549
    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,963

    Interesting focus group of members in Bury. They’re backing Truss.

    https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1550027959716782080

    Mmm. A focus group of 5 is pushing it a bit to get any meaningful conclusions, especially as it's not clear how they were selected. I could probably assemble a focus group of 5 UKIP voters or communists from my acquaintances.
    I'd find their responses interesting too. You could turn it into a PB header. :)
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,040

    Minford is the “economist” who suggested Brexit would decimate agriculture and industry, but says this is a good thing. Indeed he predicted that a hard Brexit would boost the economy by 6.8%

    He is on record as suggesting that the North of England be wound down, so that resources can move the the productive South East.
    Previously, he suggested a minimum wage would lead to millions of unemployed.

    He’s not good at predictions, either.



    The trouble with Minford is that he lets ideology cloud his judgement. So for instance his models tend to be engineered to deliver a specific answer rather than to match the evidence. There are plenty of conservative economists who I respect, eg John Taylor, John Cochrane, Kristen Forbes or Ben Bernanke, but Minford isn't one of them.
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Walker, ha, I beg to differ.

    Climate has always change and will always change. If someone looks at weather that's hotter than usual, colder than usual, the same as usual, and concludes this proves their view then they have a religious belief, not a scientific theory. If any and every conceivable piece of information confirms a belief, that's not a sceptical, scientific mindset, it's a zealous one.

    Many of the strategies for dealing with 'man-made' global warming are a good idea in and of themselves (security of energy supply, more efficient devices). But when experts predict snow will become a thing of the past in the UK and less than a decade later we have two of the coldest winters in a century their prophetic powers are not necessarily shown to be of the Delphic variety.

    Assuming we must be the cause of the climate's changing is the same human-centric arrogance that led some to conclude Earth must be the centre of the universe.

    Don't be bloody stupid, nobody is *assuming* that GW is caused by humanity's activities. You may disagree with the conclusion (fuck knows on what grounds) but you can't present it as an assumption. Here is the basic science stated in 1912

    "The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries."

    Why are two cold winters evidence, and a dozen all time record hot summers not? Have you not noticed that the hot summers are hotter than the cold winters are cold? Your position was just about tenable 25 years ago. I assume you live in a city and rarely venture outside?
    Because it's a basic tenet of the scientific method that counter-examples are more powerful than examples which agree with the hypothesis or theory?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,960
    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,881
    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
  • kamskikamski Posts: 4,213

    kamski said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    This is strongly influencing me. Sunak's defence and foreign policy is appalling and hopelessly naïve:

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/either-liz-truss-or-rishi-sunak-will-be-britains-next-prime-minister-truss-would-be-a-better-us-ally

    Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
    Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?

    Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
    I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
    China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.

    As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.

    A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.

    The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
    The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
    To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?

    The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.

    But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.

    You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
    You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep.
    Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
    If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.

    Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
    Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee.
    You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
    Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
    The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
    Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.

    Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
    Your attitude is not dissimilar to this:


    I'm a tad confused, in your eyes am I supposed to be the house's resident or Thornberry?

    I know which one I'd identify more with.
    Thornberry.

    Her attitude was "some people who fly the English flag and drive white vans are racist, therefore this is a house where racists live"

    Your attitude seems to be "some people use white and black in some contexts to be racist, therefore all uses of white and black are racist"
    Not remotely the same at all.

    The English flag is still the English flag, continuing to use it represents nothing more or less than being English.

    White and black is antiquated and no longer appropriate good and evil paradigms, even if it used to be in the past.

    Using black as a derogatory term today is not like flying the English flag, its like flying the flag of the Confederacy.
    What about chess? White always goes first, surely that's racist.
    Since neither first nor second is objectively considered "better" or "good" or "bad" I would say no.
    I believe the stats are 52:48 in favour of White
    It's probably rather more than that.

    https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/simple-rule-change-could-mean-check-mate-for-unfair-advantage-in-chess
    ...According to the researchers, in matches that have a winner at the elite level of human play, white has a winning percentage of 64 per cent – equating to an average advantage of almost 2:1 over black.

    And, in a series of matches, research has shown that the person who plays white first carries an advantage into subsequent matches, with a 62 per cent winning advantage at the elite level. This is despite players playing an equal number of games as white and black.

    The advantage enjoyed by white is amplified further in the world of computer chess. In 2020, AlphaZero, said to be the world’s most powerful chess engine, played against itself in 10,000 games, taking a minute per move. White won in 86 per cent of the decisive games, giving it about a 6:1 advantage, though these games constituted only two per cent of the total— 98 per cent were draws...

    Trouble us thats tinkering to sort out the very highest levels.
    The masters database on Lichess covering titled pkayers games gives 33/43/24 white/draw/black so a moderate advantage but the all games database of iver 500 million games which includes all levels from novice to master is 49/4/46. The advantage increases the more 'computer accurate' you get. For 99% of players its minimal.
    They could look at increasing 'positive' results by changes like returning to stalemate being a win or the armageddon rules where black has less time but gets the win with a drawn game.
    I'm a bit surprised at the 49/4/46 stat. But a couple of points:

    -Without checking (do you have a link?) this looks like something that must include blitz/bullet games, do you have stats which only includes longer time limits? Bullet games will definitely even up the stats as inaccuracies by the players will quickly overwhelm the small advantage white has.

    -At higher levels, players are more likely to be playing players at a similar level - if you are playing someone much better or much worse than you, that will be more important than who has white.

    -I'm not sure including novice games is really fair - again mistakes made would quickly be much more important than who went first.

    You have to be able to play a little to make use of white's advantage, and you have to be playing against someone at not too dissimilar level for it to count for anything, and you have to have a time limit where inaccuracies, mistakes and blunders aren't usually going to be worth much more than going first.


    So it depends how you look at it, but as someone who used to play chess quite seriously, I would say you definitely do not have to be anywhere near the "very highest levels" for white to have a clear advantage, especially at longer time limits.
    Its all games, all time limits, link is lichess.com, sign up and its in the free 'analyse games' section. So yes it includes bullet etc which almist always end in a positive result.
    There is a database of classical time control for masters database giving about 35/37/27 white, draw, black.
    I play mid level tournament chess and yeah white is an advantage but you're giving that up on the first ? Or ?! Move, and its not till youre at a titled level that is really ironed out.
    Engines give white 0.3 of a pawn advantage at start. Not a winning edge but an edge. Black of course can choose which defence line to play against whites favoured opening and try and tilt them off prep which at anything below spooky genius level can work wonders
    OK, I haven't played seriously for a long while. But my experience was yes with the first dodgy move with white you give up your advantage - but you often give it up to a position which is then more or less equal. Whereas, often after the first dodgy move with black you're in serious trouble.

    I had a friend I often played several times a week (friendly games with usually 15 minutes each on the clock). We were fairly closely matched, but he was definitely a bit better than me. As I remember, with black I lost many more than I won, but with white the chances were even. Similar with other players at a similar level to me that I played often. Maybe I was just a player that preferred white, I don't know, I tended to be quite impatient.

    I was nowhere near a title, I reached a BCF rating of 157(J) in the 80s, no idea what that translates to now.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    Has he?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,919

    eek said:

    eek said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    Today, in very special Blossom we discover that "essentially the same" means entirely different.
    McDonnell wasn't planning to increase taxes he was going to increase spending.

    Truss isn't cutting spending but seriously cutting (the wrong) taxes.

    Both plans result in borrowing being used to pay for day to day Government spending.
    She's planning on cutting the right taxes, or moreover reverse the very flawed tax rises that are throttling the economy but haven't closed the deficit and reverse tax rates back to what they were.

    That's completely different to increasing spending.

    Cutting tax rates from a record high and leaving them still very high, if it grows the pie, can actually cut the deficit.
    Cutting Corporation tax when all HMRC's recent research shows that low Corporation tax is discouraging Investment is the right policy?

    If you say so but the evidence shows something very very different and I don't think anyone I would trust on economics round here ( @Gardenwalker , @MaxPB to name 2) would agree with you that cutting Corporation Tax makes sense relative to higher Corporation Tax and full allowances for investment...
    Ha, thanks for the endorsement.

    One thing I do think about corporation tax is that our very low rate sent a positive message to foreign investors. It was a (the?) totemic policy of Osborn’s open Britain policy.

    Now that we have Brexited and plan to hike corporation tax, that door is now slammed shut, which worries me a bit even if I’ll accept that low corp tax was simply leaking to shareholders to pocket.
    I think there are better ways of attracting that investment - say by allowances that offer lower corporation tax rates on the first x times amount invested with higher amounts in Freeports where you really want the investment.
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


    It also completely discredits the idea that Boris locked England down too late.
  • Driver said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    By which you mean, you disagree with him.

    "He's wrong because..." is a much more persuasive argument than "he's a fruit loop". Do you have a "because"?
    He said we should get rid of the British car industry!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829
    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    If it isn’t too late (is it?) I’ve no doubt he would.
    He is from the invest-nothing school of Conservatism.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,818
    Not saying things are a tad fractious, but Tory source texts: ‘What a mess though! Getting rid of Boris for a fresh start and we’ve ended up with Batshit and the Billionaire.'
    https://twitter.com/nedsimons/status/1550063715629912064
  • eekeek Posts: 24,919
    IshmaelZ said:

    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    Has he?
    It's already being built. The people in the Chilterns who hate it now want it finished so the hassle the building work is creating is finished once and for all...

    So yep he could bin the Crewe to Manchester bit - but given how crap the viaduct design at Manchester is that wouldn't be a massive loss...
  • Driver said:

    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


    It also completely discredits the idea that Boris locked England down too late.
    The SNP are just as bad as the Tories. No actual policies beyond independence.
  • Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981
    kinabalu said:

    nico679 said:

    Interesting focus group of members in Bury. They’re backing Truss.

    https://twitter.com/paulbranditv/status/1550027959716782080

    Everyone loves tax cuts . So no surprise there. But it seems the membership would have preferred the pathological liar to have stayed as PM which says a lot for them !
    Ought to disqualify them from voting. I'm serious.
    "Tory members demand a vote to keep Boris Johnson as PM

    More than 2,000 sign petition calling for premier to be added to leadership ballot, so members can have a say on if he should carry on"


    https://twitter.com/i/events/1549694007135162368
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    edited July 2022
    Keystone said:

    [snip]

    No doubt you think it's a scandal university professors cannot regularly dip into their stash of grad students every year any more

    There's a wonderful poem about that, by W. D. Snodgrass*

    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42789/april-inventory

    * I thought this name was a spoof when I first heard of him, but it was his real name.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,954

    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p

    For some historical perspective.

    https://xkcd.com/1732/
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    Driver said:

    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


    It also completely discredits the idea that Boris locked England down too late.
    The SNP are just as bad as the Tories. No actual policies beyond independence.
    "No policies" seems to be a bit of a trend across the political spectrum at the moment.
  • NerysHughesNerysHughes Posts: 3,346
    Scott_xP said:

    Not saying things are a tad fractious, but Tory source texts: ‘What a mess though! Getting rid of Boris for a fresh start and we’ve ended up with Batshit and the Billionaire.'
    https://twitter.com/nedsimons/status/1550063715629912064

    You were the number 1 campaigner to get rid of Boris, who did you want to replace him?
  • HS2 is vital. We must get it built.
  • Sunak would clearly be a huge step up from Johnson. Truss, dunno, she seems unhinged.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2022

    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


    Matt Hancock on the "Diary of a CEO" podcast gave a timeline of that period, in which he stated that the modelling said the UK was several weeks behind the rest of Europe in terms of spread and thus they were being told to lockdown not required (need to wait for "optimal" usage). But that modelling was based upon flawed data and actually COVID was much wider spread and on par with rest of Europe.

    Now you could say of course he will say that to cover his arse, but given he stated all this publicly on the record if he is telling massive porkies I am sure it will be brought up during the inquiry, so he is just going to be further discredited as a politician.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,818

    You were the number 1 campaigner to get rid of Boris, who did you want to replace him?

    Someone who wasn't shit enough to be in BoZo's cabinet would be a start
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,963
    Scott_xP said:

    Not saying things are a tad fractious, but Tory source texts: ‘What a mess though! Getting rid of Boris for a fresh start and we’ve ended up with Batshit and the Billionaire.'
    https://twitter.com/nedsimons/status/1550063715629912064

    The only reason someone would say something like that is to ingratiate themselves with the journalist.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,326
    eek said:

    eek said:

    Jesus Christ Patrick Minford is a fruit loop.

    It's telling those that thing Truss is wonderful seem to think McDonnell is nuts, despite having essentially the same policies.

    Today, in very special Blossom we discover that "essentially the same" means entirely different.
    McDonnell wasn't planning to increase taxes he was going to increase spending.

    Truss isn't cutting spending but seriously cutting (the wrong) taxes.

    Both plans result in borrowing being used to pay for day to day Government spending.
    If she is a Minfordite she wants to cut spending. Radically.

    I don't think she's said much about gutting Government spending and it would be hard to do so in the time she has in power anyway.

    So what we are left with is Minford saying that borrowing money for day to day Government spending isn't a problem (when it is)
    Besides- what spending could a Truss (or Badenoch) government cut that the Conservative core vote would be happy with? As in meaningful cuts, not the fiddly bits that go on diversity training, foreign aid and benefit scroungers.

    "We can cut this spending with no ill effects" has been a potent slogan for as long as there have been political slogans. People have put it everywhere, including the sides of buses. Trouble is that it sounds good, even at times when it isn't true.

    The big ticket items are health and pensions. And those cows are utterly sacred.
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522

    HS2 is vital. We must get it built.

    And we will. The question is how many delays will happen before it is completed.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030
    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
  • RH1992RH1992 Posts: 788
    edited July 2022
    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    Not going to happen. The "fiscally sound" former Chancellor throwing £bns already spent on one of the UK's biggest infrastructure projects (with visible, tangible construction work!) down the drain to please a few people in the Chilterns? That'd trash all of his economic credibility which is his big (only) draw against Truss.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172
    edited July 2022
    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p

    No, you are just a numpty. This "article of faith" argument is useless against a reasoned case, even if you think the case is wrong. It just doesn't work. It's like the accused in a murder case saying Everybody dies of something or other, so what is this ludicrous hypothesis that in this case another human being was responsible?
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,993

    I've noticed that Toby Young now believes that Kew Gardens is an airport.
    As is St James' Park.
    And the village of Gringley on the Hill.

    The lengths some people go to to support denialism.

    Kew Gardens literally has greenhouses. You can make up any old excuse if you want.
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,954
    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    Yes, so it is surprising how dramatically average temperatures have gone up in that quarter of a moment.
  • MightyAlexMightyAlex Posts: 1,437
    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    Posted before and you may well be referencing it, this article should banish Delingpole from the society he seemingly wants to burn down.

    https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-great-aids-scam-a-dry-run-for-covid/

    Spectator writers are not having a good war.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    Scott_xP said:

    Not saying things are a tad fractious, but Tory source texts: ‘What a mess though! Getting rid of Boris for a fresh start and we’ve ended up with Batshit and the Billionaire.'
    https://twitter.com/nedsimons/status/1550063715629912064

    The only reason someone would say something like that is to ingratiate themselves with the journalist.
    Why?
    There are plenty of Tory members who would enthusiastically vote Boris were he the third name on the list.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    edited July 2022
    I must say Toby Young's "it wasn't actually that hot at all", is stretching even his line of ludicrous argument.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172
    I think the Membership is furious at the evisceration of Boris. And the last thing we need is an angry PM-making body but here we are.

    I can't see Truss not winning it.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924
    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    Maybe Liz Truss will take her place alongside those titans?
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,326
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited July 2022
    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829
    dixiedean said:

    I must say Toby Young's "it wasn't actually that hot at all", is stretching even his line of ludicrous argument.

    Now you know where BartyBobbins gets it from.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643
    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    You do yourself no favours with that condescending tone. I'm not sure whether it is deliberate or just you. But it grinds my teeth and makes me want to revert to climate change denial

    But I shall not. The evidence is pretty overwhelming now

    As for the UEA thing, the chicanery mattered more than the falsehoods from the "denialist" camp because it is the warmists who are making extraordinary claims - the climate is changing and a humble, 6 foot tall, bipedal ape is doing it! - so they require extraordinary evidence. Also they are the ones demanding huge efforts from society, to stop the warming, so their case needs to be totally watertight and entirely persuasive. For a while it was not

    But it is hard to argue with 40C in Lincolnshire. Something is up

  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030

    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p

    You're a robust free-thinking legend in your own lunchtime, Morris.

    If your ruminations on Caligula could stop the planet warming due in large part to human activity you'd merit a knighthood at least.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,818
    dixiedean said:

    There are plenty of Tory members who would enthusiastically vote Boris were he the third name on the list.

    Which brutally exposes the argument Danny the Fink was making in his column this week; members should not choose party leaders.

    A handful of predominantly elderly white men in Southern England still want BoZo as PM (and are going to give us Truss)

    The voting public want him gone, and will be less forgiving of her
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
    The imagined Thatcher of memory is some way from the one who governed.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
    And you are running the models to be able to separate out different inputs. That's great and impressive.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2022
    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643

    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    If it isn’t too late (is it?) I’ve no doubt he would.
    He is from the invest-nothing school of Conservatism.
    I can see enormous black and yellow cranes in the Euston railway cuttings, slowly building HS2, even as I type this

    I sense it is too late to stop HS2
  • RobD said:

    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p

    For some historical perspective.

    https://xkcd.com/1732/
    What's interesting in that cartoon is how it relates to the "temperatures have already risen 1.2C" from the start of the industrial revolution claim.

    The cartoon, if still accurate, shows the start of the industrial revolution as having been an ahistorical low in modern millennia and the increase in recent years is less than 1C so far from the historical average.

    Manmade climate change is obviously real and has been for a very long time, only a fool would say otherwise. What we should do about it is a different question.

    We don't discuss anywhere near enough how we can adapt to climate change rather than discussions on how to prevent it, which we can't do and isn't in our unilateral hands.
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    edited July 2022
    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,072
    edited July 2022
    Driver said:

    Driver said:

    Claims that Nicola Sturgeon was prevented from imposing an earlier lockdown in Scotland have been undermined by official correspondence.

    Allies of the first minister have insisted the SNP government was pushing to impose pandemic restrictions earlier than her counterparts south of the border. The Scottish government was asked in a freedom of information request for the date Sturgeon received the first recommendation to put Scotland into lockdown.

    It confirmed she was first advised to issue stay at home guidance in Scotland at the same time as the other UK nations, during a meeting of Cobra, the UK government’s emergency committee, on March 23, 2020.

    The disclosure undermines claims that she was prevented from enacting a lockdown sooner.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/snp-early-lockdown-bid-not-blocked-by-no-10-lvvsd06vd


    It also completely discredits the idea that Boris locked England down too late.
    The SNP are just as bad as the Tories. No actual policies beyond independence.
    "No policies" seems to be a bit of a trend across the political spectrum at the moment.
    xxxxxxxxxx
    xxxxxxxxxxx
    xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    xxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    |__In___| |___Out___| |__Too Difficult____|

    Edit. Didn't really work did it? Looks ok on my screen but not when posted.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829
    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    If it isn’t too late (is it?) I’ve no doubt he would.
    He is from the invest-nothing school of Conservatism.
    I can see enormous black and yellow cranes in the Euston railway cuttings, slowly building HS2, even as I type this

    I sense it is too late to stop HS2
    Thank fuck.
    Let’s get Crossrail2 going too.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
    Still, Morris Dancer might be the new Galileo - so we better ease off lest we look like total plonkers in 500 years from now.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?

    Although.
    If I had Covid, I'd be withdrawing pretty damn sharpish* anyway looking at those mountains.
    I could barely get out of bed for a wee.

    *Were I in any condition to be riding the TdF.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,818
    President Biden has COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms, @PressSec says. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1550123914390474752/photo/1
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 24,178

    Betfair next prime minister
    1.82 Liz Truss 55%
    2.22 Rishi Sunak 45%

    Next Conservative leader
    1.79 Liz Truss 56%
    2.26 Rishi Sunak 44%

    Bookmakers now have 8/11 Truss and 5/4 Rishi generally available.
    https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-conservative-leader

    Betfair next prime minister
    1.76 Liz Truss 57%
    2.34 Rishi Sunak 43%

    Next Conservative leader
    1.76 Liz Truss 57%
    2.32 Rishi Sunak 43%
    A slight movement to Truss on Betfair.

    Betfair next prime minister
    1.72 Liz Truss 58%
    2.38 Rishi Sunak 42%

    Next Conservative leader
    1.72 Liz Truss 58%
    2.4 Rishi Sunak 42%
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,829
    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
    The imagined Thatcher of memory is some way from the one who governed.
    And didn’t Thatcher put up taxes when she became PM?

    Liz Truss is no Margaret Thatcher.
    Pussybow or no.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172
    edited July 2022
    As I think I have discussed in here before (with someone who was involved, if tangentially, IIRC), I have a set of emails between Hadley and the Met Office saying that the GISTEMP analysis was not honest. Who's to say who's right
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643
    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    Yes, some of the earlier climate change crusaders made some insane claims, which have told against them. Weren't we all meant to be underwater by now, according to Al Gore?

    However, and it is a big however, I can remember some scary-shit videos made by the warmists in about 2000, which predicted that we'd see 40-50C temperatures in Europe, and that mass migrations would occur, with people fleeing Africa and the ME and climbing on boats and scaling walls to get to cooler climes


    I scoffed, loudly, at these absurd doom-mongering hallucinations...
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    edited July 2022

    RobD said:

    Mr. kinabalu, do you suppose the warming of the reigns of Caligula and Claudius were down to the Romans building coal-fired power stations, or that the cold period in the latter half of the 17th century when the Thames repeatedly froze was because Charles II preferred wind turbines to gas?

    The climate has always and will always change. The human-centric insistence that we are causing this, as if climate stasis is the alternative and man alone influences the world, is a marvellous re-enactment of Catholic orthodoxy in the medieval era.

    But you're right, I'm a bad man. A sinner, one might say.

    :p

    For some historical perspective.

    https://xkcd.com/1732/
    What's interesting in that cartoon is how it relates to the "temperatures have already risen 1.2C" from the start of the industrial revolution claim.

    The cartoon, if still accurate, shows the start of the industrial revolution as having been an ahistorical low in modern millennia and the increase in recent years is less than 1C so far from the historical average.

    Manmade climate change is obviously real and has been for a very long time, only a fool would say otherwise. What we should do about it is a different question.

    We don't discuss anywhere near enough how we can adapt to climate change rather than discussions on how to prevent it, which we can't do and isn't in our unilateral hands.
    Amen to that. The BRICs are going to keep pumping out the CO2 faster than we can reduce our emissions, so we should be taking reducing measures where they have some other intrinsic benefit (for instance, less reliance on gas imports has an intrinsic benefit other than CO2 reduction - so does switching to electric cars) and not just to meet some irrelevant arbitrary target. And we need to mitigate the changes because even if global CO2 emissions dropped to zero overnight there's still plenty of upcoming warming already (if you'll forgive the pun) baked in.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Scott_xP said:

    President Biden has COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms, @PressSec says. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1550123914390474752/photo/1

    It was cancer yesterday, COVID today.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    ""We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time"
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,924

    dixiedean said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
    The imagined Thatcher of memory is some way from the one who governed.
    And didn’t Thatcher put up taxes when she became PM?

    Liz Truss is no Margaret Thatcher.
    Pussybow or no.
    "Tax cuts need to be earned."
    The big Lawson cuts came in 1988.
    She would look askance at funding them by deficits.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
    Good speech, that, and no it isn't where the modern populist right is now. Where they are (on climate change) is a curious mixture of head-in-sand, nihilism, and magical thinking.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Gooooooo Big G......
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,993

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    What would a Spectator-friendly argument on climate look like? Maggie's speech in 1989, where she talked about growth which does not plunder the planet today and leave our children to deal with the consequences tomorrow ought to be at the heart of it, but I'm not sure it's where many on the right are.
    Something along the lines of Barty's posts, that free markets and technological innovation were the route to solving the problem, instead of nanny-statist hectoring of individuals to change their behaviour would also be part of it. I'd also agree with it as a leftie, as I think the lecturing of individuals has been a dead-end.
  • FlatlanderFlatlander Posts: 3,880
    edited July 2022

    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?

    They aren't on the Tour de France. A rider tested positive but was allowed to continue as he had a 'low viral load', although he is now out of the race. Geraint Thomas did admit that he didn't want to ride behind him, though.

    Lets be honest, riding 200km over the Pyrenees isn't really something you'd want to do with Covid, rules or not.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 39,030
    Leon said:

    kinabalu said:

    Leon said:

    Mr Dancer,

    Toby Young has penned an article claiming that the record temperatures this week were due to being measured at airports. That to "climate Thermageddonites got their U.K. heat record of 40°C" thanks to measuring devices placed next to hot jet engines and tarmac.

    He curiously omitted the measurements over 40 degrees in green places miles from any jet engine.

    He's been desperately penning articles on denying all and sundry, from the existence of covid waves, through the efficacy of vaccines (much of his output over the past year has been to platform antivaxxers and conceal the conflicts of interest of having a major antivaxxer group's press releases published as if they're objective news articles), and to outright deny anything about climate change.

    Denialism and its links to conspiracy theories are a major issue, especially with pseudoskepticism

    https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0746-8

    I do wonder what will happen to the entire career of James Delingpole...

    To be transparent, I was a climate change skeptic until about five or six years back: so I can see both sides. When I say skeptic I accepted there was some evidence that warming was PROBABLY occurring, but I was far from convinced that it was definitely man made. Why could it not be something natural, like the medieval warm period? - and so on

    I was also made more skeptical by the warmists fiddling the data - which I believe they did. That scandal at UEA seriously set back the "climate change cause"

    But events in recent years have fundamentally changed my mind. The freak events are mostly on the warm side. not the cold side. And boy are they freaky. The Canadian heat dome, and our own recent 40C. The movements of plants and animals to adapt, the retreat of glaciers. I travel a lot and I see all this

    And when I travel I also see just how many humans there are, and just how much heat and pollution we are pupping out. How can this NOT have an effect?

    I am now 97% sure the climate is changing, quite fast (mainly towards more warmth and volatility), and that man is to blame, at least in part
    There's been a damn sight more nefarious activity on the denier side over the piece than anything that happened at UEA. But anyway, let's not create argument where there is none, it's good you've got to the right place on this. You'd be a natural denier (as it were) with your speccie hinterland so the fact you aren't says a lot about how loonytunes or cynical 'pay the rent' such a view now is.
    You do yourself no favours with that condescending tone. I'm not sure whether it is deliberate or just you. But it grinds my teeth and makes me want to revert to climate change denial

    But I shall not. The evidence is pretty overwhelming now

    As for the UEA thing, the chicanery mattered more than the falsehoods from the "denialist" camp because it is the warmists who are making extraordinary claims - the climate is changing and a humble, 6 foot tall, bipedal ape is doing it! - so they require extraordinary evidence. Also they are the ones demanding huge efforts from society, to stop the warming, so their case needs to be totally watertight and entirely persuasive. For a while it was not

    But it is hard to argue with 40C in Lincolnshire. Something is up
    It's deliberate AND just me. :smile:

    But my point was serious. You WOULD be prime material for some CC denial and the fact you can't get there now - even when provoked by an irritating clear thinking progressive like me - speaks volumes.
  • ToryJimToryJim Posts: 3,392
    Scott_xP said:

    President Biden has COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms, @PressSec says. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1550123914390474752/photo/1

    What’s the betting some lunatic conspiracy theory emerges on the swampy right wing fringes that when he returns to public view they actually swapped him for a double?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,072
    Leon said:

    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    Yes, some of the earlier climate change crusaders made some insane claims, which have told against them. Weren't we all meant to be underwater by now, according to Al Gore?

    However, and it is a big however, I can remember some scary-shit videos made by the warmists in about 2000, which predicted that we'd see 40-50C temperatures in Europe, and that mass migrations would occur, with people fleeing Africa and the ME and climbing on boats and scaling walls to get to cooler climes


    I scoffed, loudly, at these absurd doom-mongering hallucinations...
    I suspect that the conditions that resulted in 40.3C were extremely freakish and we may not see that peak beaten for a decade or more.

    Even if that is the case, however, the trend is clearly hotter and the need to do things to reduce this is more urgent than many appreciated. To that extent I would disagree with a Kemi opposing net zero although I do take her point that we have to watch our competitiveness and indeed our dependency on despotic regimes such as China very carefully.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,919

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    You'll know Sunak is getting desperate when he comes out to scrap HS2.

    If it isn’t too late (is it?) I’ve no doubt he would.
    He is from the invest-nothing school of Conservatism.
    I can see enormous black and yellow cranes in the Euston railway cuttings, slowly building HS2, even as I type this

    I sense it is too late to stop HS2
    Thank fuck.
    Let’s get Crossrail2 going too.
    That's and the Bakerloo line extension have been binned due to TfL finance issues...
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,993
    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
    And you are running the models to be able to separate out different inputs. That's great and impressive.
    That is exactly how the models are run. You can run them with only the natural forcings, or only the anthropogenic forcings, or with all combined.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2022

    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?

    They aren't on the Tour de France. A rider tested positive but was allowed to continue as he had a 'low viral load', although he is now out of the race. Geraint Thomas did admit that he didn't want to ride behind him, though.

    Lets be honest, riding 200km over the Pyrenees isn't really something you'd want to do with Covid, rules or not.
    You are right...although they kicked off 2 riders who were totally asymptomatic

    https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/two-riders-test-positive-for-covid-19-before-final-rest-day-of-the-tour-de-france/
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,072

    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?

    They aren't on the Tour de France. A rider tested positive but was allowed to continue as he had a 'low viral load', although he is now out of the race. Geraint Thomas did admit that he didn't want to ride behind him, though.

    Lets be honest, riding 200km over the Pyrenees isn't really something you'd want to do with Covid, rules or not.
    It would be a completely insane thing to do, potentially fatal.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 51,072
    ToryJim said:

    Scott_xP said:

    President Biden has COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms, @PressSec says. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1550123914390474752/photo/1

    What’s the betting some lunatic conspiracy theory emerges on the swampy right wing fringes that when he returns to public view they actually swapped him for a double?
    Like Dave? How would they get anyone dopey enough to be credible?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643
    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    Yes, some of the earlier climate change crusaders made some insane claims, which have told against them. Weren't we all meant to be underwater by now, according to Al Gore?

    However, and it is a big however, I can remember some scary-shit videos made by the warmists in about 2000, which predicted that we'd see 40-50C temperatures in Europe, and that mass migrations would occur, with people fleeing Africa and the ME and climbing on boats and scaling walls to get to cooler climes


    I scoffed, loudly, at these absurd doom-mongering hallucinations...
    I suspect that the conditions that resulted in 40.3C were extremely freakish and we may not see that peak beaten for a decade or more.

    Even if that is the case, however, the trend is clearly hotter and the need to do things to reduce this is more urgent than many appreciated. To that extent I would disagree with a Kemi opposing net zero although I do take her point that we have to watch our competitiveness and indeed our dependency on despotic regimes such as China very carefully.
    And yet we broke the maximum heat record that was established just three years ago, so who's to say this isn't actually speeding up. So the new record may fall soon. With most of the top ten hottest ever days occurring this century the pattern is, anyway, clear

    I agree with you and @BartholomewRoberts that it is much less clear what we do about it - in the UK and the world - apart from the obvious measures (which would be sensible anyhow) to reduce use of fossil fuels, get rid of polluting cars, and so on
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,522
    Alistair said:

    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    ""We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time"
    That bit was right. But only because councils believed the "no snow" hype and didn't invest properly in snow clearance.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
    And you are running the models to be able to separate out different inputs. That's great and impressive.
    That is exactly how the models are run. You can run them with only the natural forcings, or only the anthropogenic forcings, or with all combined.
    Can you now.

    As I mentioned upthread, there can be disagreements between in that case Had/CRU and GISS. I suppose it's a case of pick your favourite model, that one being the one whose output most closely matches what you believe.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,643
    TOPPING said:

    I think the Membership is furious at the evisceration of Boris. And the last thing we need is an angry PM-making body but here we are.

    I can't see Truss not winning it.

    That is an exceptionally good point


    There will be residual guilt, anger and bitterness at what happened to Boris, amongst many members. That has to be vented. Sunak is seen as the disloyal backstabber, so it will ALL fall on him. And the votes will start coming in over the next days, not in September (by which time Sunak will have had a chance to argue his case)

    Truss should be even more of a favourite than she is

    Jesus. It's going to be Truss!
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Drama in Tour de France.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    Driver said:

    Alistair said:

    The famous "No More Snow" prediction was not that there would be no more snow but that that Snow would be less frequent and more extreme when it happened.

    Since that prediction Britain has had fewer snow days.

    Untrue, I'm afraid. If that were the case, the Independent wouldn't have deleted it.

    Fortunately, the Wayback Machine has it.

    "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past"

    "Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he [David Viner, UEA] said.
    ""We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time"
    That bit was right. But only because councils believed the "no snow" hype and didn't invest properly in snow clearance.
    That's because snow days in the UK continue to fall. Lots of places go a long time without any snow these days.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,993
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Mr. Z, in 1912 and even a quarter of a century later the view of Darwin evolution was that different humans were at different levels of evolution. I'm not sure quoting the early 20th century indicates much beyond cherrypicking the bit that you like (though this is very much the pro-warming camp's approach). Two fantastically cold winters in the face of a recent forecast to the exact contrary is certainly evidence of warming enthusiasts having predictions 100% opposed to what actually happened.

    So now they've broadened the range of change to mean practically anything. What weather events or climate trend would persuade you that you're wrong? Would anything?

    I find it amusing you're outraged I have the temerity that I disagree with you on the science even though we probably agree almost entirely on energy policy.

    That is wrong about Darwinism and whataboutery anyway.

    try looking at global average temperatures. A decade decline in those would look like evidence against the hypothesis. But, again, you are not arguing about science. A hypothesis stated in 1912 being consistently in accordance with the facts for 110 years is quite a strong hypothesis, not an assumption. The "no more snow" claim was a one off, and actually looking not far off the money - out by a decade or so. Again, I have to assume you don't personally interact with the natural world very much?
    110 years is but a half of a quarter of a moment in history as far as climate is concerned.

    Once again PB has got behind a theory and disbelievers are ridiculed. cf lockdowns, pandemic spending, Ukraine, usw.

    All well and good that's what PB is for. But there is a certain desperation about some of the orthodox believers.

    Making no comment on the validity of some of the climate models there have been plenty of people ridiculed throughout history for their non-mainstream views and do you know some of them have been proved right.
    So what? The claim is not that all climate change is man made, but that the current batch is.
    And you are running the models to be able to separate out different inputs. That's great and impressive.
    That is exactly how the models are run. You can run them with only the natural forcings, or only the anthropogenic forcings, or with all combined.
    Can you now.

    As I mentioned upthread, there can be disagreements between in that case Had/CRU and GISS. I suppose it's a case of pick your favourite model, that one being the one whose output most closely matches what you believe.
    I'd recommend reading the technical summary for WG1 of the IPCC reports. They go into all this in an appropriate level of detail that you'd find interesting, and you wouldn't have to suppose things.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,797
    Scott_xP said:

    dixiedean said:

    There are plenty of Tory members who would enthusiastically vote Boris were he the third name on the list.

    Which brutally exposes the argument Danny the Fink was making in his column this week; members should not choose party leaders.

    A handful of predominantly elderly white men in Southern England still want BoZo as PM (and are going to give us Truss)

    The voting public want him gone, and will be less forgiving of her
    I think this argument about the system is overblown.

    Liz was one of only two MPs out of 357 deemed acceptable to send to the membership by those MPs.

    They cannot in any way say they didn't have the chance to filter Liz out. And yet they didn't.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,606
    On corporation tax @eek - I'm not convinced that raising it to the level proposed is a good idea without some permanent measures to lower it with R&D credits. However, now that it's going up I don't think we're in a position to cut it for a while unless the government is willing to raise other taxes or cut other spending.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Sending dick pics can have unintended consequences....

    How the Tamara Ecclestone diamonds case was cracked
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/nm79bgw32f/tamara-ecclestone-burglary
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,373
    Leon said:

    TOPPING said:

    I think the Membership is furious at the evisceration of Boris. And the last thing we need is an angry PM-making body but here we are.

    I can't see Truss not winning it.

    That is an exceptionally good point


    There will be residual guilt, anger and bitterness at what happened to Boris, amongst many members. That has to be vented. Sunak is seen as the disloyal backstabber, so it will ALL fall on him. And the votes will start coming in over the next days, not in September (by which time Sunak will have had a chance to argue his case)

    Truss should be even more of a favourite than she is

    Jesus. It's going to be Truss!
    Not convinced. Could be 50/50.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,172

    Britain's Chris Froome has been forced to withdraw from the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19 before Thursday's stage 18.

    I wonder at what point we say sports being conducted totally in the outdoors you aren't automatically disqualified if you get COVID?

    They aren't on the Tour de France. A rider tested positive but was allowed to continue as he had a 'low viral load', although he is now out of the race. Geraint Thomas did admit that he didn't want to ride behind him, though.

    Lets be honest, riding 200km over the Pyrenees isn't really something you'd want to do with Covid, rules or not.
    You are right...although they kicked off 2 riders who were totally asymptomatic

    https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/two-riders-test-positive-for-covid-19-before-final-rest-day-of-the-tour-de-france/
    I would imagine it depends on the symptoms.

    People, perhaps world class athletes can be unaffected or only mildly affected. I've had Covid twice and both times I could have done whatever it was I was doing before I had it.

    And I am very, very, very, very far from being a world class athlete, it may amaze you to hear.
This discussion has been closed.